From Publishers Weekly
Born to a man who became a high-ranking Soviet physician, Gerstein (1903–2002) rebelled against her father’s political affiliations early on. After a string of unsatisfying jobs, she followed a desire to write, establishing herself as a literary scholar and ensconcing herself among the literati of Soviet Russia. Her life changed dramatically in 1928, when she met Mandelstam and his wife, Nadezhda; Gerstein now had access to a quite famous living poet and his circle of friends, eventually including Akhmatova. The group suffered through the political woes of the time but also reveled in its literary excitement. Weaving biographical threads with autobiographical filaments, as well as selections from the poetry and letters of these two Soviet literary giants, Gerstein offers insightful glimpses into their world. She recalls how, when in transit, Akhmatova would paste an inoffensive poem over a more offensive one (the poem on Stalin that got Mandelstam repeatedly exiled was too hot to write down), as well as the way Akhmatova aged before Gerstein’s eyes when she learned of her son’s imprisonment. While the standard first-person account of Mandelstam is his wife’s Hope Against Hope, Gerstein’s portraits provide angles absent in that great work, despite a flat translation. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Moscow Memoirs: Memories of Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Literary Russia under Stalin FROM THE PUBLISHER
A unique and radical review of Russia's two greatest 20th century poets, Anna Akmatova and Osip Mandelstam, which also provides memorable glimpses of numerous other literary figures from the Soviet 1930s.
SYNOPSIS
Gerstein's collected memoirs were first published in Russian in 1998, when she was 95; they knocked the socks off the critics, and they knocked Akhmatova and Mandelstam from the pedestals where the great poets had long resided. In this first English translation of her memories of the Soviet 1930s, Gerstein—a specialist on early 19th century Russian literature who died in 2002—offers a forthright description of her friendship with the poets, who became literary martyrs of the Stalinist era. Gerstein breaks through the legend that surrounded Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and others, restoring a human dimension to their lives, their works, and their deaths. With scattered b&w images. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Originally published in Russian in 1998, Gerstein's book allows readers intimate access to two of Russia's greatest 20th-century poets, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam. Gerstein maintained close relationships over many years with Mandelstam; his wife, Nadezhda; Akhmatova; and her son, the historian Lev Gumilyov. Although Gerstein's career was as a literary researcher, specializing in Russian poet and novelist Mikhail Lermontov (The Destiny of Lermontov), she was bound to them by strong friendship rather than professional ties. Gerstein's memoirs mainly recall events that took place in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in the 1930s and early 1940s. Mandelstam, Akhmatova, and Gumilyov were all persecuted under Stalin, and Gerstein's memoirs depict the harrowing uncertainty and suffering of those times. They are valuable, as well, because they offer a counterpoint to Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoirs (Hope Against Hope; Hope Abandoned). A significant addition to any collection of Russian literature; highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries. Maria Kochis, California State Univ. Lib., Sacramento Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Searing, unsentimental portrait of Soviet intellectuals' sufferings under Stalin. Emma Gerstein (1903-2002) created a furor in post-Soviet Russia when she published her blunt accounts of her friendships with poets Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova. Contradicting the well-known, highly selective memoirs of Mandelstam's wife Nadezhda (Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned), Gerstein depicts the poet as high-spirited and brilliant, but difficult, and terrifyingly reckless; he recited his infamous "Stalin Epigram" (which referred to the dictator's "fat fingers oily as maggots") to many more people than was safe, and when arrested promptly gave his listeners' names to the police. Gerstein also states that Mandelstam, who died en route to a labor camp in 1938 after a series of arrests and internal exiles, tried to lure her into a menage a trois with himself and the bisexual Nadezhda. In the case of Akhmatova, Gerstein contradicts the bitter reproaches of the poet's son Lev Gumilyov, who claimed his mother abandoned him during his lengthy incarcerations. Close to both of them (she had a stormy affair with Gumilyov and corresponded with him in the camps), the author shows Akhmatova doing everything she dared to help her son, crippled by the knowledge that the actions of a banned poet could easily do more harm than good. Herself a distinguished Lermontov scholar whose career was severely damaged by her relations with these and other dissidents, Gerstein freely acknowledges the compromises and betrayals forced on even the best-intentioned people by a brutally repressive state; she judges them gently, perhaps because her own father, a Jewish doctor, remained loyal to the Revolution even after itconsumed some of his closest friends. Yet no one will come away from her detailed, pitiless record of the horrors inflicted on its citizens without concluding that the Soviet system was politically, economically, and morally indefensible. A valuable addition to the growing list of Soviet memoirs, countering sanitized depictions of martyrs and monsters with plain truth-telling about human beings trapped in a murderous society.
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