Nadezhda Mandelstam

Nadezhda Mandelstam is the widow of Osip Mandelstam, one of the Soviet Union's most famous poets. She is also a poet in her own right. In 1933 her husband wrote a sixteenline satirical poem about Josef Stalin; he was immediately arrested and imprisoned, and Nadezhda was exiled from Moscow. This selection from her memoirs describes the difficulty with which a "stopiatnitsa," a female exile, supported herself. Her experience was typical for many "criminals without crimes," the relatives of political prisoners.

During my wanderings I have met all kinds of ordinary folk and I have almost always got on better with them than with those who consider themselves the cream of the Soviet intelligentsia—not that they were so anxious for my company either.

Immediately after M.'s arrest I lived for a time in Strunino, a small cotton-mill...