ANNA AKHMATOVA: PRIMARY SOURCES

ANNA AKHMATOVA (RADIO ADDRESS DATE SEPTEMBER 1941)

SOURCE: Akhmatova, Anna. "A Talk on Leningrad Radio in Late September 1941." Soviet Literature, no. 6 (June 1989): 25.

In the following transcript of her radio address to the women of Leningrad, broadcast in September 1941, Akhmatova praises the mothers, wives, and sisters of the city for their strength and courage during the German siege.

Dear fellow-citizens, mothers, wives and sisters of Leningrad:

For more than a month now the enemy has been threatening to overrun our city and inflict upon it mortal wounds. The enemy threatens the city of Peter the Great, the city of Lenin, the city of Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Blok—our city, with its great tradition of culture and labour—with death and disgrace. Like all Leningraders, I am horror-struck at the thought that our city, my city, may be trampled into the dirt. My entire life has been linked with Leningrad—it was in Leningrad that I became a poet, Leningrad is the very air that my verses breathe …

At this moment, like all of you, I cling to the unshakeable faith that Leningrad shall never belong to the fascists. And I feel my faith strengthened when I see the women of Leningrad defending their city with simple courage and maintaining its normal human life …

Our descendants will pay honour to every mother who lived during this Patriotic War, but their gaze will be drawn as by a magnet to the women of Leningrad, who stood on the roofs as the bombs fell, holding their hooks and tongs, ready to defend the city against the threat of fire; the women of the Leningrad civil-defence corps, who went to the help of the wounded while the ruined buildings blazed around them …

No, a city which has bred women like these cannot be defeated. We Leningraders may be suffering hardship and danger, but we know that the entire country and everyone in it is with us. We sense their alarm at our plight, their love, their efforts to help and support us. We thank them and we promise always to stand firm and never to lose heart …

September 1941