Barkova, Anna Aleksandrovna (1901–1976)

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Barkova, Anna Aleksandrovna (1901–1976)

Russian writer. Name variations: Ánna Aleksándrovna Barkóva; (pseudonym) Kalika Perekhozhaia (Wandering Cripple or Wandering Beggar-Bard). Born Anna Aleksandrovna Barkova, July 16, 1901, in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Russia; died April 29, 1976, in Moscow; never married; no children.

Joined "Circle of Genuine Proletarian Poets" and published 1st poems in their newspaper Workers' Land; was invited to Moscow by Lenin's commissioner of education, Anatoli Lunarcharski, who promised to advance her poetry and offered her work as his secretary (1922); published 1st vol. of collected poems, Woman (1922); received help from Marie Ulyanova, Lenin's sister, who assisted in securing work at Pravda; left in peril after Lenin's death and Stalin's assumption of power; arrested for writings (1934); released (1939) and exiled to Kaluga for duration of WWII; imprisoned again (1947) and not released until Khrushchev's general amnesty (1956); convicted a year later of mailing manuscripts with content "dangerous to society" and returned to prison for another 8 years; released for last time (1965) and forbidden to publish; lived in Moscow, "rehabilitated" (from 1967); work rediscovered after glasnost (1989).

See also Women in World History.