The "Stalin Epigram", also known as "The Kremlin Highlander" () is a

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual arts, visual, literature, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently Nonfiction, non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ...

poem by the

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n poet Osip Mandelstam, written in November 1933. The poem describes the climate of fear in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. Mandelstam read the poem only to a few friends, including

Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, ''My Sister, Life'', was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an imp ...

and

Anna Akhmatova Anna Andreyevna Gorenko rus, А́нна Андре́евна Горе́нко, p=ˈanːə ɐnˈdrʲe(j)ɪvnə ɡɐˈrʲɛnkə, a=Anna Andreyevna Gorenko.ru.oga, links=yes; , . ( – 5 March 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova,. ...

. The poem played a role in his own arrest and the arrests of Akhmatova's son and husband, Lev Gumilev and Nikolay Punin. The poem was almost the first case

Genrikh Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. A ...

dealt with after becoming

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

boss.

Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (; rus, Николай Иванович Бухарин, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ bʊˈxarʲɪn; – 15 March 1938) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist. A prominent Bolshevik ...

visited Yagoda to intercede for Mandelstam, unaware of the nature of his "offense". According to Mandelstam's widow Nadezhda: "Yagoda liked M.'s poem so much that he even learned it by heart – he recited it to Bukharin – but he would not have hesitated to destroy the whole of literature, past, present and future, if he had thought it to his advantage. For people of this extraordinary type, human blood is like water." We are living, but can’t feel the land where we stay, More than ten steps away you can’t hear what we say. But if people would talk on occasion, They should mention the Kremlin Caucasian. His thick fingers are bulky and fat like live-baits, And his accurate words are as heavy as weights. Cucaracha’s moustaches are screaming, And his boot-tops are shining and gleaming. But around him a crowd of thin-necked henchmen, And he plays with the services of these half-men. Some are whistling, some meowing, some sniffing, He’s alone booming, poking and whiffing. He is forging his rules and decrees like horseshoes – Into groins, into foreheads, in eyes, and eyebrows. Every killing for him is delight, And Ossetian torso is wide. The phrase "Ossetian torso" in the final line refers to the possible Ossetian ethnicity of

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

's paternal grandfather.Robert Service, ''Stalin: A Biography'', p. 18.

References

{{Joseph Stalin 1933 in the Soviet Union 1933 poems Russian poems Works about Joseph Stalin