Internal Immigrants 1924

The apartment on the embankment of the Fontanka River in house number two, where Anna Akhmatova lived in 1924, did not belong to her but to her constant friend Olga Sudeikina. The apartment is on the first floor, the fifth and sixth windows from the corner of the Summer Garden with a view of the Neva. Akhmatova lived there from April until the end of October 1924. The house stands next to the small humped Laundry Bridge over the Fontanka. Olga was not only an actress but also an excellent puppet sculptor, and she received the apartment as an artist of the porcelain factory. Here, the friend allocated Anna a small narrow room with a window facing the Neva – from which you can now see the cruiser "Aurora." By the way, Akhmatova’s brother served as an officer on this cruiser; he miraculously survived and emigrated to America. From there, he wrote ten letters to his sister – Akhmatova replied only to the last one, before her death. During those days, visitors to the friends included Sologub, Zamyatin, Petrov-Vodkin, and the hugely popular prose writer Boris Pilnyak, who had been in love with Akhmatova for many years. K.I. Chukovsky, after visiting Akhmatova in this house on the Fontanka, left a note in his diary: "She sits in front of the fireplace – a candle burns on the mantelpiece – during the day. Why? – No matches. The stove will have to be lit – there’s nothing to light it with." In K.I. Chukovsky’s diary entry dated May 6, 1924, there is an interesting note related to this period of Akhmatova’s life: "A huge house – former court laundries. She sits in front of the fireplace, a candle burns on the mantelpiece – during the day. 'Why?' – 'No matches. The stove will have to be lit – there’s nothing to light it with.' I put out the candle, ran to the painters working in the neighboring apartment, and bought matches for Akhmatova." In the summer of 1924, Mandelstam brought his young wife to her here. Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam became a great friend of Akhmatova for life. Living in this house, she wrote the last published poems up to 1940, "New Year's Ballad" and "Lotova’s Wife." On September 23, Akhmatova was caught in a flood on her way home to the Fontanka: "Hurricane wind on the embankment, wet shoes… I ran from one lamppost to another, holding onto them. Old lindens were falling in the Summer Garden… Petersburg, with its flood-upturned ends, looks like a person whose skin has been torn off." This was the third strongest flood in the history of Petersburg, occurring exactly one hundred years after the flood described by Pushkin in "The Bronze Horseman." Akhmatova counted the 1924 flood among other "Petersburg horrors"; contemporaries perceived it as a kind of Apocalypse, retribution for the Soviet regime. One day, drunken Yesenin and Klyuev barged into this house. And when Klyuev fell asleep across Akhmatova’s bed, Yesenin, unexpectedly sober, began to curse the government and everything happening around. The next day, meeting Akhmatova on the street, he only touched two fingers to his top hat, greeting the one whose opinion he had so recently valued. Near this house, she would encounter Mayakovsky, who admired her poems, and two years later would declare her and Mandelstam "internal emigrants." This was a time of farewells: some emigrated, some were executed, and some openly renounced yesterday’s friends and idols. Thus, the Silver Age was dying...

Sources:

https://kudago.com/spb/place/peterburg-ahmatovoj-naberezhnaya-reki-fontanki-2/

https://izi.travel/en/browse/babc41ba-9baf-41ba-b93f-71572a24a6ec/en

http://ahmatova.niv.ru/ahmatova/about/hrenkov-v-peterburge/veter-velikih-peremen.htm