Anna Akhmatova and the Pushkin Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2025-35-387-417
EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/BECZFA
УДК / UDK: 821.161.1; 82.09
Publication Type: Research Article and Publication of Archival Documents
Issue:

no. 1 (35), 2025
Author: Alexey Yu. Balakin
About the author:

Alexey Yu. Balakin, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Makarova Emb., 4, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7194-5461

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Author 2: Vladimir V. Turchanenko
About the author 2:

Vladimir V. Turchanenko, Junior Researcher, Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Makarova Emb., 4, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0573-4583

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Funding Sources:

The study was carried out at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the grant of the Russian Science Foundation no. 24-28-01206 (https://rscf.ru/project/24-28-01206/).

We express our deep gratitude to N.I. Krayneva and Ya.V. Slepkov for detailed consultations during the work with the A.A. Akhmatova fund. We thank T.I. Krasnoborodko, K.A. Chudakova and D.S. Krasilnikova for assistance in archival research, and R.D. Timenchik for valuable bibliographical references.
Abstract:

Anna Akhmatova’s participation in the guild of Pushkin scholars consists not only of her profound and absolutely professional articles about Pushkin, but also of her direct involvement in the institutional work of Russian Pushkin scholars. The proposed article problematizes Akhmatova’s relationships with representatives of academic Pushkin studies in the 1930s–1960s. Using archival material (including documents from A.A. Akhmatova’s personal collection in the OR RNB), the authors reconstruct the history of one of the crucial Russian humanitarian academic institutions, i. e., the Pushkin Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the 1940s–1950s, while simultaneously filling in the “blank spots” in Akhmatova’s biography. Particular attention is paid to identifying evidence of her personal contacts with D.P. Yakubovich, Yu.G. Oksman, and V.V. Vinogradov. For the first time, the article presents the personal compositions of the Pushkin Commission (1945 and 1958), the letter of T.G. Tsyavlovskaya to Akhmatova from March 1934, dedicated to the work on the volume “By Pushkin’s Hand,” and other materials for the biography of Anna Akhmatova, and provides comprehensive information on the materials of the Pushkin Commission and the sector (group) of Pushkin studies, deposited in Akhmatova’s personal archival fund. The article ends with the attribution of a group photo portrait.
Keywords: “Pushkin Studies” by Anna Akhmatova, A.S. Pushkin, academic Pushkin studies, V.V. Vinogradov, Yu.G. Oksman, B.V. Tomashevsky, D.P. Yakubovich.
For citation:

Balakin, A.Yu., and V.V. Turchanenko. “Anna Akhmatova and the Pushkin Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences.” Literaturnyi fakt, no. 1 (35), 2025, pp. 387–418. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2025-35-387-418
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