SOURCE: "If Poet's Room Could Speak, It Would Tell of Grief," in New York Times, June 28, 1995, p. A4.

In the following essay, Specter discusses the museum dedicated to Akhmatova.

St. Petersburg, Russia—In the diffuse, almost endless light of summer, it is hard to regard this city as a place of suffering. Few people could gaze at the noble mansions and monuments and easily summon thoughts of despair.

In many ways St. Petersburg has, since its creation, always been the spiritual center of the country, the center of science, sophistication, culture and art. But for the last century culture has usually been at war with Russia. Pushkin died here in a foolish duel and Dostoyevsky was taken from the city in chains. Osip Mandelstam, Pushkin's heir, was destroyed by Stalin.

Somehow, though, the poet Anna Akhmatova survived. She lived through the revolution and the Nazi siege, through hunger...