A. A. Akhmatova and M. I. Tsvetaeva

Anna Akhmatova (real surname Gorenko) was born on 23 June 1889 in Odessa. She took her pen name from her Tatar great-grandmother. In 1891 the family moved to Tsarskoye Selo, where she studied at the gymnasium; she finished a gymnasium in Kiev in 1907. She wrote her first poem at eleven. Her first collection «Вечер» (46 poems) appeared in 1912, and «Чётки» in 1914 brought her real fame. In 1922 «Anno Domini» was published. In «Реквием» she spoke for all women who lived through the years of terror and repression; it was printed in 1987, after her death. During the siege of Leningrad she flew to Moscow and then to Tashkent, where she stayed until May 1944. In 1964 she received the Italian «Etna-Taormina» prize, and in 1965 Oxford University made her an honorary doctor of letters. She died on 5 March 1966 at Domodedovo.