Poet, prose writer, translator. One of the most significant figures of twentieth-century world literature.
Early YearsAnna Andriivna Horenko, known by her literary pseudonym Anna Akhmatova, was born on 23 June 1889 near Odesa, in the Kherson Governorate. She was the third child in a large family that included sisters Inna, Iryna, and Iya, as well as brothers Andrii and Viktor.
In December 1889, Anna was baptized in Odesa’s Transfiguration Cathedral. The family lived in Odesa for a little over a year before moving away in August 1890. Nevertheless, Akhmatova returned to the city three times thereafter — in 1904, 1906, and 1909.
Beginnings of Her Creative PathHer journey into poetry began in Odesa. The summer of 1904, which she spent in Lustdorf at the home of her aunt Aspasia Horenko, proved especially formative. Inspired by her first romantic infatuation with writer Oleksandr Fedorov, the young Anna composed her earliest poems during this time.
Literary CareerAkhmatova’s debut publications appeared in 1907 in the Paris journal Sirius, founded by Mykola Gumilyov and Odesa native Mstyslav Farmakovskyi. In 1910, together with Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Volodymyr Narbut, and Mykhailo Zenkevych, she founded the literary group The Guild of Poets, which initiated a new literary movement — Acmeism.
Her first poetry collection, Evening (1912), earned her recognition among critics and readers alike. The second collection, Rosary (1913), became a true sensation and went through thirteen reprints, including a “pirated” edition published in Odesa in 1918. That same year, the collection Poems of 1918 was issued in Odesa, featuring works by Akhmatova alongside poems by Oleksandr Blok, Ivan Bunin, and Oleksandr Fedorov.
Despite her popularity, her literary fate was far from simple. After 1922, both her new and earlier poems were almost entirely banned from publication for nearly fifteen years. Only in 1940 did her collection From Six Books finally appear in print. In 1946, following Andrei Zhdanov’s infamous speech, Akhmatova and writer Mikhail Zoshchenko were severely denounced and expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers.
Her return to the literary sphere became possible only after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Her key works — Poem Without a Hero and Requiem — were fully published in the USSR only posthumously.
Later YearsAkhmatova was permitted to travel abroad only twice: in 1964 she received the Italian Etna-Taormina Prize, and in the following year she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford.
Anna Akhmatova died on 5 March 1966 in a hospital near Moscow.
Memory and LegacyOdesa holds the memory of the poet in special regard. A memorial plaque with a bas-relief by sculptor T. Suddina is installed on the house near the 11th Station of the Great Fountain where she was born. The nearby Ukrainska Street was renamed Anna Akhmatova Street. In 1989, the anniversary year, Odesa published the collection A Wreath for Akhmatova, featuring about one hundred poems dedicated to her — including those by Odesa poets Yurii Mykhailyk, Isaak Reiderman, and Ihor Neverov.

Anna Akhmatova. Photo NPR.