This collection presents for the first time poems by A. Akhmatova in a collection that could be titled 'The Secret Akhmatova.'
These are poems by Akhmatova that were never published during her lifetime, poems that Akhmatova's friends memorized and the originals of which were burned. In them, one can hear the voice of a great civic poet who shared the suffering of his people and was able to tell about it.
'There is no need to live in the Kremlin - Preobrazhenets is right, / There the microbes of ancient atrocities still teem: / The wild fear of Boris, and all the malice of Ivan, / And the arrogance of the Pretender - in exchange for the people's rights.'
The series 'The Real Akhmatova' differs from all previous editions of poems and verses by A. Akhmatova, above all, in the quality of textual preparation: all the texts in this series have been verified against autographs stored in state archives and private collections, as well as against the first publications in the periodical press. In the books of this series, the features of the author's writing are preserved as far as possible, the author's punctuation of the originals is preserved, and the type of writing of the texts of the works is observed as far as possible: the arrangement of lines, indents, 'ladder', italics, uppercase and lowercase letters, etc.
All books in the series are provided with introductory articles and notes.