ABSTRACT
In the 1940s, lyric poetry practically disappeared from print in the USSR, and was produced only for the author’s desk drawer or the readership of close and trusted associates. Zhdanov’s attack on Akhmatova in Leningrad in 1946 confirmed the intelligentsia’s concern that lyric poetry under Stalin had become a dirty word, and thus it remained until there was a change at the highest level of power in 1953. Very soon after Stalin’s death, Ol’ga Berggol’ts and other poets began to publish articles promoting lyric poetry, and lyric poems returned to the pages of the thick journals and newspapers, and to the stages of literary evenings.1 There followed an upsurge in lyric poetry in the USSR: the public began to show more interest in reading and listening to poetry, and a fashion developed, particularly among young people, for writing poetry.2
