Barkova, Ánna Aleksandrovna (1901–1976)

Russian writer whose revolutionary poetry resulted in her 20-year imprisonment. Name variations: Ánna Aleksándrovna Barkóva; (pseudonym) Kalika perekhozhaia (Wandering Cripple or Wandering Beggar-Bard). Born Anna Aleksandrovna Barkova on July 16, 1901, in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Russia; died on April 29, 1976, in Moscow; educated at a public school (gymnasium); never married; no children.

Selected works:

Woman (1922); (play) Natas'ia Kostër (Natas'ia Bonfire, 1923).

Though short-lived, the years immediately following the Russian Revolution saw some of the nation's most intense, emancipated poetry; poetry praised for its individuality. This was precisely the characteristic that earned many Russian authors, including Anna Aleksandrovna Barkova, decades of imprisonment and exile. For more than 20 years, one of Russia's most promising female poets was stifled by political censorship. After glasnost in 1989, her country rediscovered her poetry, though Barkóva had been dead for more than a decade.

Anna Barkova was born in 1901 into a working-class family. Little is known of her childhood, outside of poetic descriptions of deep unhappiness. When Barkova was very young, her mother died. Though her father was a heavy drinker, his position as watchman at a local gymnasium allowed her to attend school, a rare opportunity for one of her social status. Finding shelter in books, Barkova began writing as a teenager. Though the Bolshevik Revolution halted her schooling, she believed so strongly in the movement that she regarded its effect on her education irrelevant.

Seeking a writer's community, Barkova joined the "Circle of Genuine Proletarian Poets," as Lenin had dubbed them. Publishing her first poems in their newspaper Workers' Land, she also worked as a reporter using the pseudonym Kalika perekhozhaia (Wandering Cripple, or Wandering Beggar-Bard). She caught the attention of Lenin's commissioner of education, Anatoli Lunarcharski, who, promising to advance her poetry, invited her to Moscow in 1922 and offered her work as his secretary. Later that year, her first volume of collected poems, entitled Woman, appeared. A play followed in 1923, along with more illustrious patronage. Marie Ulyanova , Lenin's sister, helped Barkova find work at Pravda, the country's largest newspaper, and encouraged her to write a second volume. But politics were to intercede.

In Barkova's lifetime, no other collection of her work appeared. Lenin's death and Stalin's assumption of power left writers in peril. On December 26, 1934, Barkova was arrested for her writings. Released in 1939, Barkova was exiled to Kaluga for the duration of World War II. Imprisoned again in 1947, she was not released until Nikita Khrushchev's general amnesty in January 1956. Freedom, however, lasted only a year. Convicted of mailing manuscripts with content "dangerous to society," she was returned to prison for another eight years.

Ulyanova, Marie (fl. 1880–1930s)

Russian revolutionary. Name variations: Mariia Ul'lanova, Ulianova. Flourished from 1880 through the 1930s; daughter of Ilya Ulyanov (a school administrator) and Maria Alexandrovna (Blank) Ulyanova; sister of V.I. Lenin (1870–1924, whose real name was Vladimir Ulyanov); sister of Alexander Ulyanov who was arrested for plotting the assassination of Tsar Alexander III and was executed in 1887.

Released for the last time in 1965, Barkova was forbidden to publish. Granted a meager pension by the USSR Writers' Union, she lived in Moscow, "rehabilitated," from 1967 until her death of cancer in 1976. Among her papers a lifetime's worth of writing was recovered, though friends believe some of her work was confiscated or destroyed. Newly published Barkova works include political pieces, love poems dedicated to women, and diatribes against the advancement of old age.

Crista Martin , freelance writer, Boston, Massachusetts