Requiem, Akhmatova's poem-cycle, was a literary monument to the victims of Stalin's Terror. The earliest poem dates from 1935 and the remainder w[ere] apparently written in 1938-40. The prose foreword was added in 1957. The work was first published in 1963 in Munich and in Russia it appeared in 1987. The central core of Requiem consists of ten short, numbered poems. The first originally reflected the arrest of her husband Nikolai Punin in 1935 and other close friends, but primarily the poems deal with the author's experiences and her agony following the arrest of her son Lev Gumilyov in 1938. Lev had been arrested [for the] first time in 1935 and released after Akhmatova wrote a letter to Stalin, ending with the words, "Help, Iosif Vissarionovich!" The tenth poem switches from contemporary Russia to the scene of the Crucifixion. The wails of grief reflect the voice of others who had suffered loss during the terror.
No foreign sky protected me,
no stranger's wing shielded my face.
I stand as witness to the common lot,
survivor of that time, that place.
(from Requiem)
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