“He was not of a lily nature …”

On December 27, 1938, in the transit camp Vladperpunkt (Vladivostok), at the age of 47, the Russian poet, prose writer, essayist, translator, literary critic Osip Mandelstam died of typhus.

As Anna Akhmatova recalled (quoted from A. Heit’s book “Anna Akhmatova. Poetic Journey”, Moscow, ed. “Rainbow”, 1991), “Mandelstam was arrested on May 2, 1938 in a nervous sanatorium near Cherusti station” (sanatorium ” Samatikha” was located 30 km from the Cherusti railway station. S.I.). This was the second arrest and the second conviction of Osip Emilievich: in 1934, for anti-Soviet activities (in fact, for a poem about Stalin – “We live under us without smelling the country …”) he was sentenced to exile for 3 years in the city of Cherdyn. On his way to the place of exile, he attempted suicide. Due to Mandelstam’s illness, the point of exile was changed to Voronezh, where he remained until the spring of 1937.

As reported in the book of the Swiss literary critic Ralph Dutley “My age, my beast. Osip Mandelstam. Biography ”(Moscow, publishing house“ Academic Project ”, 2005), Mandelstam unexpectedly received a ticket to the Samatikha sanatorium from the Writers’ Union on March 2, 1938:

“Mandelstam was offered to stay there, ostensibly in order for him to improve his bad health (throughout the spring of 1938, the unemployed Mandelstam suffered from depression. – S.I.). Today it is known that “Samatiha” was a trap. It was necessary to isolate the poet, who constantly rushed between Moscow and Kalinin (now Tver, where Mandelstam lived with his wife Nadezhda Yakovlevna, since after the exile he was forbidden to live in the capital. – S.I.), place him in a remote place, tear him away from his acquaintances in order to arrest him at the right time without any special complications. And the “right moment” was not long in coming.”

On March 8, 1938, Mandelstam and his wife arrived at Samatikha, where they were placed in a separate house, located at a distance from the main building. And already on March 16, as Ralph Dutley writes, a letter-denunciation was received in the name of People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs Nikolai Yezhov from Vladimir Stavsky, Secretary of the Union of Writers, with a request to deal with Mandelstam:

“In his letter, classified as “top secret”, Stavsky informs Yezhov that Mandelstam, expelled from Moscow, violates the ban on staying in Moscow and begs among Moscow writers, who, in turn, make him a “sufferer” – “ genius poet, recognized by no one. Stavsky does not miss the opportunity to remind Yezhov twice that Mandelstam is the author of “obscene, slanderous poems about the leadership of the party and the entire Soviet people” (meaning the poem of 1934) and urgently asks the people’s commissar “to resolve this issue about O. Mandelstam.”

During his stay at Samatikha, Mandelstam repeatedly asked to be taken to Cherusti, but his request was invariably rejected under various pretexts. The chief physician and director of the sanatorium, named Fomichev, apparently had instructions: under no circumstances should the poet be released while the state security officers were investigating and “sewing” a new case.

On April 29, 1938, Deputy People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs Frinovsky issues a resolution: “Arrest”, and the next day an arrest warrant was issued.

“In the early morning of May 2, 1938, two NKVD officers knocked on the window. They were accompanied by the head physician Fomichev. Mandelstam’s belongings were thrown out of the suitcase into a sack. The whole procedure lasted only a few minutes. Nadezhda Yakovlevna was not allowed to accompany her husband even to Cherusti station. Without saying a word, she said goodbye to him. She will never see her husband again. Their life together lasted exactly nineteen years: from May 1, 1919 to May 2, 1938.

Decades later, Nadezhda Mandelstam, in her Memoirs, tried to comprehend her own helplessness and constraint in those fateful minutes:

“Why didn’t we, for example, smash the glass, jump out the window, give vent to stupid fear that would drive us into the forest, to the outskirts, under the bullets? Why did we stand still and watch how they rummaged through our things? Why did O.M. obediently go after the soldiers, and I didn’t rush at them like a beast? What did we have to lose?”

Mandelstam was first placed in the “inner prison” of the NKVD, located in the courtyard of the Lubyanka. Then, on May 3, he was photographed for the last time in his life: in profile and full face, like all criminals. On July 20, 1938, an indictment was issued, according to which Mandelstam was accused of “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” – a crime under Article 58-10 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. On August 2, 1938, the troika of the Special Meeting of the NKVD sentenced him to 5 years in a forced labor camp for counter-revolutionary activities. Considering Mandelstam’s deranged health, such a sentence could be considered a death sentence. On August 4, 1938, Mandelstam was transferred to the Butyrka prison in Moscow to be sent to the Kolyma camp.

“On September 7, 1938, prisoners from various prisons in Moscow and the Moscow region are brought to the Krasnaya Presnya station. A train of 34 wagons awaits them here. According to documents discovered recently, stage No. 1152 consisted of 1,770 prisoners and 110 escorts. On September 8, 1938, the special train leaves Moscow. Among the accompanying – not a single doctor; dead bodies are simply unloaded at the stations, ”according to the book by Ralph Dutley.

The only letter from Mandelstam, written in the camp, has survived. It is addressed to brother Alexander. Around November 2-3, 1938, before the Revolution, the prisoners were allowed – as an exception – to write a letter home on a piece of wrapping paper. All letters were subjected to camp censorship, which delayed their dispatch by another three to four weeks. Postmark on Mandelstam’s letter: 30.XI.1938.

“Dear Shura!

I am located – Vladivostok, SVITL, barrack 11. Received 5 years for k.r. by decision of the CCA. From Moscow, from Butyrki, the stage left on September 9, arrived on October 12. Health is very poor. Exhausted to the extreme. Lost, almost unrecognizable. But I don’t know if it makes sense to send things, food and money. Try it anyway. I’m very cold without things. Dear Nadinka, I don’t know if you’re alive, my dove. You, Shura, write about Nadia to me now. Here is a transit point. They didn’t take me to Kolyma. Wintering is possible.

My family, I kiss you.

Osya.

The line used as the title for this article was taken by me from a prophetic poem (prophetic, because he was buried “in a pit” – in a mass grave) by Mandelstam himself, written in 1935, when he was in exile in Voronezh. It was called “Mandelstam Street”:

What street is this?

Mandelstam street.

What the hell is the last name?

No matter how you twist it,

It sounds crooked, not straight.

There was little linear in it,

His temper was not lily,

And so this street

Or rather, this hole

That’s what it’s called by name

This Mandelstam…

Sergei Ishkov.

Photo mandelshtam.lit-info.ru