Not under foreign skies
Nor under foreign wings protected -
I shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
[1961]
INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]
So begins a famous poem by Anna Akhmatova. 'Not under foreign skies, Nor under foreign wings protected' is familiar but I did not know where it came from, or understand what it was about, until I read something by a man who kept it in his wallet, through many travels in the Cold War years, and tried to learn it by heart.
Some translations have “‘Could you describe this?' And I answered ‘I can.’” But I prefer the version above, which seems to emphasise not so much that the poet is capable of describing, but that she steps forward bravely as an individual human witness.
If you want to know why the journalist tried to memorise the poem, and about Akhmatova’s story, see http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180515-requiem-how-a-poem-resisted-stalin
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There is a passing reference to secret reading clubs in that story: "…material was typically read alone or in groups in a single sitting, often at night, and passed on to the next trustworthy reader. It was against the law and risky…". Those Soviet-era reading clubs have been mentioned a few times over the years on various Radio 4 programmes.
You would be quietly asked by a friend if you would like to read something from the West or a banned author. If you agreed, they would take you to an address where you'd find some other people assembling. Nobody was introduced, just anonymous pleasantries then they sat and read in silence. The books being read would have been split into its quires, or come in chapters, or 10 or 20 page sections held together in some way. You'd be given part of a book. When you finished it you passed that to someone else and whoever had the next part gave it to you. At some point the evening would come to an end, there would be agreement to meet again next week, or not, maybe here, maybe some place else. You'd take your pages and go, to return next time and carry on reading.
Occasionally the pages were from a book smuggled in from the West, sometimes a poorly made duplicate, sometimes a typed copy.
You knew the person who invited you, but maybe not their name if it had been someone in a bookshop, for example. You knew anyone you might subsequently invite. But you would not know the names of the other book club members. If you met them in the street you passed by without looking, as if you had never met, just in case.
These secret, silent, underground book-reading clubs ran for years.
In one account, a woman who had attended one of these for many years was surprised to find, once information started to flow between West and East, that we in the west didn't spent all our time reading literature. She found she was far better read in Western literature and poetry than almost all Westerners, and disappointed we don't appreciate what we have.