ABSTRACT
The war against Germany was halfway through its third year when the first successful Russian revolution took place in February 1917 after outbreaks of popular disorder in the capital. The Soviet epoch had begun, but the immediate effect of the 1917 revolutions on the four poets was far from catastrophic. This was partly because each upheaval accomplished a transfer of power within a few days without involving widespread military operations such as were to follow in 1918-21. The lyric is an outstanding example of Mandelstam’s art, and an extreme instance of a poet turning his back on current events. But there are other, no less admirable, poems in which he vividly reacts to contemporary pressures, and which include certain vague but poetically impressive premonitions of impending doom. Akhmatova came closest of all the four poets to equating her country’s destiny with her own.
