Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n writer and educator, and the wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...

, who died in 1938 in a transit camp to the gulag

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

of Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

. She wrote two memoirs about their lives together and the repressive Stalinist

Stalinism

Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 regime: Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974), both first published in the West in English, translated by Max Hayward

Max Hayward

Max Hayward was a British lecturer on and translator of Russian literature.After schooling in London and Liverpool, Hayward went to Magdalen College, Oxford in 1942 on a scholarship to study German. He soon dropped German for Russian, graduating with a first-class degree in 1945...

.

Of these books the critic Clive James

Clive James

Clive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...

 has written : "Hope Against Hope puts her at the centre of the liberal resistance under the Soviet Union. A masterpiece of prose as well as a model of biographical narrative and social analysis it is mainly the story of the terrible last years of persecution and torment before the poet [ her husband Osip] was murdered. The sequel, Hope Abandoned, is about the author's personal fate, and is in some ways even more terrible, because , as the title implies, it is more about horror as a way of life than as an interruption to normal expectancy. [The two books] were key chapters in the new bible that the twentieth century had written for us."

Early life and education

Nadezhda Khazina was born in Saratov

Saratov

-Modern Saratov:The Saratov region is highly industrialized, due in part to the rich in natural and industrial resources of the area. The region is also one of the more important and largest cultural and scientific centres in Russia...

, southern Russia, the youngest of four children (she had an older sister and two older brothers) of a middle-class Jewish family. Her parents were Yakov Arkad'evich Khazin and Vera Yakovlevna Khazina, and the family was wealthy enough to travel. Her mother was among the first group of women in the Soviet Union to complete training as a medical doctor, and her father was an attorney. The family did not practice Judaism, and kept Russian Orthodox holidays. Later they converted to Christianity. The family moved to Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

, Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

, for Nadezhda's father's work, a larger city with greater cultural and educational opportunities. There she attended school. After gymnasium

Gymnasium (school)

A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 (secondary school), Nadezhda studied art.

Career

Nadezhda met the poet Osip Mandelstam at a nightclub in Kiev in 1919, and they started a relationship which led to marriage in 1921-1922. They lived in Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 at first, but moved to Petrograd in 1922. Later they lived in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, and Georgia

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

. Osip was arrested in 1934 for his poem entitled "Stalin Epigram

Stalin Epigram

The Stalin epigram, also known as The Kremlin Highlander is a satirical poem by the Russian Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam, dated as being written in November 1933...

" and exiled

Exiled

Exiled is a 2006 Hong Kong action crime drama film produced and directed by Johnnie To, and starring Anthony Wong, Roy Cheung, Francis Ng, and Simon Yam. The action takes place in contemporary Macau.-Plot:...

 with Nadezhda to Cherdyn, in Perm Oblast

Perm Oblast

Until December 1, 2005, Perm Oblast was a federal subject of Russia in Privolzhsky Federal District. According to the results of the referendum held in October 2004, Perm Oblast was merged with Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug to form Perm Krai.The oblast was named after its administrative center,...

. Later the sentence was lightened and they were allowed to move to Voronezh

Voronezh

Voronezh is a city in southwestern Russia, the administrative center of Voronezh Oblast. It is located on both sides of the Voronezh River, away from where it flows into the Don. It is an operating center of the Southeastern Railway , as well as the center of the Don Highway...

 in southwestern Russia, but were still banished from the largest cities, which were the artistic and cultural centers.

After Osip Mandelstam's second arrest in May 1938 and his subsequent death at the transit camp "Vtoraya Rechka" near Vladivostok

Vladivostok

The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...

 that year, Nadezhda Mandelstam led an almost nomad

Nomad

Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...

ic life. Given the repression of the times, she tried to dodge an expected arrest, and frequently changed places of residence and took only temporary jobs. On at least one occasion, in Kalinin

Tver

Tver is a city and the administrative center of Tver Oblast, Russia. Population: 403,726 ; 408,903 ;...

, the NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

 came for her the day after she fled. As her mission in life, she set out to preserve her husband's poetic heritage, with the goal of publication one day. She managed to keep most of it memorized because she did not trust paper. Many years later, she was able to work with other writers to have it published.

Through the terrible years, she managed to gain her college degree and taught English in various provincial towns. After the death of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

, when government's repression eased, Nadezhda Mandelstam returned to her studies and completed her dissertation in linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 (1956). It was not until 1964 following the first phase of Mandelstam's rehabilitation (under Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

) that the government allowed her to return to Moscow. She had spent 20 years in a kind of internal exile until the "thaws" of the late 1950s. Nadezhda began writing her memoir, which was published in English as Hope Against Hope in 1970, in part as a way of restoring her husband's memory and integrating her own struggles. It first circulated in a samizdat

Samizdat

Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...

version in the Soviet Union in the 1960s.

In her memoirs, Hope Against Hope (memoir) (1970, 1977) and Hope Abandoned (1974, 1981), first published in the West

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

, she made an epic analysis of her husband's life and times. She elevated her husband as the figure of an artistic martyr

Martyr

A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...

 under Stalin's repressive regime. She criticizes the moral and cultural degradation of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 of the 1920s and later. The titles of her memoirs are puns, as nadezhda in Russian means "hope".

In 1976 Mandelstam gave her archives to Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

 in the United States. Nadezhda Mandelstam died in 1980 in Moscow, aged 81.

Works

• Hope against Hope (1970) (ISBN 1-86046-635-4) (word play
  Word play
  Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...
  
  : nadezhda means "hope" in Russian
  Russian language
  Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
  
  )
• Hope Abandoned (1974) (ISBN 0-689-10549-5)