Word: akhmatova
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Leningrad, ruled by Politburo Member Andrei Zhdanov, was waging an esthetic purge. Two outstanding literary figures, Poetess Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko (whom many Russians consider their best short story writer since Chekhov), were barred from all Soviet publications for "decadence" and "rotten lack of ideology." The literary magazine Leningrad was suspended and Zvezda condemned for ignoring "the vital foundation of the Soviet system, its political policy" and "spreading a spirit of obsequiousness to the contemporary bourgeois culture of the West." With obsequious haste, the Leningrad writers' union voted to abandon "the theory of pure art" and, instead, "train...