Akhmatov has a lot in common with Ukraine, Odessa, and Kyiv, including his Ukrainian origin.

Mykola Bazhan recalled: Akhmatova told him that her father was a Cossack officer. In Kiev graduated from high school (it is on the former Fundukleevskaya, now B. Khmelnytsky), with Kiev is associated the vicissitudes of her affair with the poet Nikolai Gumilev, who later became her husband.


Akhmatova wrote many poems in Kyiv. For example, a hundred years ago a poem dedicated to St. Sophia was written cathedral:
The gates are wide open,
Lindens are beggarly naked,
And dark dry gilding
An indestructible concave wall.
Altars and crypts are full of rumble,
And beyond the Dnieper a wide bell flies.
So heavy is Mazepa’s bell
It is buzzing over Sofia Square.
All the more formidable rages, unyielding,
As if heretics are being executed here,
And in the forests of the rivers, reconciled,
Cheers fluffy fox cubs.


September 15, 1921
In 1915 a poem was written, also connected with Sophia of Kyiv:
And in the Kiev temple of the Wisdom of God,
When I came to Sole, I swore to you,
What will be my way,
Wherever she twisted.
The golden angels heard that
And in the white coffin of Yaroslav,
Like pigeons, simple words curl
And now at the solar heads.
And if I weaken, I dream of an icon
And nine steps on it.
And in the formidable voice of the Sofia bell
I hear the voice of your anxiety.
LET’S CHANGE ANNA AKHMATOVA – HER WORD, HER POETRY, HER IMAGES WITH US FOREVER!

Sergey Trimbach