The Pioneers of Russian Women Writers.

             Thesis Map: Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova were two of Russia"s greatest lyric poets, but the influences of their writing, their lewd love affairs, and how their country perceived them made them very different people.

             For years, Russian women have been regarded as incapable of producing great literary works of art.

             Such dismissive views of women"s writing recur again and again in Russian history, their recurrence being partly explained by the extreme reverence with which educated Russian"s regard to philosophical and aesthetic views of the past (Kelly 3).

             Yet, two powerful women, Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova, forced Russia to take note of the skill of women writers. Along with other Russian women writers, they helped to pave the way for future women writers. Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova were two of the modern Russia"s greatest lyric poets (Dybka), but the influences of their writing, their lewd love affairs, and how their country perceived them made them very different people.

             Marina Tsvetaeva was recognized as an excellent poet when she was in her teens (Karlinsky 176). The meaning of her early works were derived form common family, friends, and life problems (175). Years later, as she matured as a writer, Tsvetaeva"s theme in her poems reflected the occurrences in her .

             life. For instance, a poem from " Poems to Chekia," Tsvetaeva discusses the effect of events surrounding Communism:.

             They took the sugar, and they took the clover.

             they took the North and took the West.

             They took the hive, and took the haystack.

             they took the South for us, and took the East.

             --1939, ( Trans. Feinstein 49).

             On the contrary, a lot of Anna Akhmatova"s writing stemmed form the political issues in Russia. Since Akhmatova believed in Acemeism, 'a movement that praised the virtues of lucid, carefully-crafted verse and reacted against the vagueness of the Symbolist style which dominated the Russian literary scene of the period (The Academy of American Poets)," she was persecuted by the Soviets.