1 From here on out, “Mandeľshtam” refers to Nadezhda Mandeľshtam.

2 Carl Proffer, “The Attack on Mme Mandelstam,” The New York Review of Books, February 21, 1974, available online at https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1974/02/21/the-attack-on-mme-mandelstam/.

3 Ibid.

4 For another treatment of Mandeľshtam as a ‘proto-feminist’ figure, see also Isenberg, Charles, “The Rhetoric of Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope Against Hope,” in Harris, Jane Gary, ed., Autobiographical Statements in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature (Princeton, 1990), 193–206Google Scholar.

5 Ibid.

6 Wielgohs, Jan and Voronkov, Viktor, “Soviet Russia,” in Pollack, Detlef and Wielgohs, Jan, eds. Dissent and Opposition in Communist Eastern Europe: Origins of Civil Society and Democratic Transition, (Burlington, 2004), 112–14Google Scholar. Ann Komaromi, Kevin Platt, and Benjamin Nathans echo Wielgohs and Voronkov’s “mixed private-public” formulation: Komaromi, “Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Publics,” Slavic Review 71, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 71, and Platt and Nathans, “Socialist in Form, Indeterminate in Content: The Ins and Outs of Late Soviet Culture,” Ab Imperio, no. 2 (2011): 319.

7 Lidiia K. Chukovskaia, “The Preservation of Muteness,” New York Times, September 19, 1973, 47.

8 Jonathan Bolton, Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (Cambridge, Mass., 2012), 3.

9 See, for example, Barbara Martin, Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From de-Stalinization to Perestroika (London, 2019).

10 One exception is Anke Stephan, Von der Küche auf den Roten Platz: Lebenswege sowjetischer Dissidentinnen (Zürich, 2005). Stephan aims primarily to study women as individuals rather than interrelated actors within the dissident movement.

11 To my knowledge, Mandeľshtam never spoke of herself explicitly in terms of dissidence, and Chukovskaia was aware (and suspicious) that the term was vested with western interests. For Chukovskaia’s discussion of the terms dissidenty and inakomysliashchie, see Chukovskaia, , “Gnev naroda,” in her Sochineniia: v 2-kh tomakh (Moscow, 2000), 2:531Google Scholar.

12 Komaromi draws on Fraser’s notion of “competing counterpublics” as a “necessary part of a progressive trend toward greater inclusiveness.” “Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Publics,” 85.

13 Scott., Joan W. “Fantasy Echo: History and the Construction of Identity,” Critical Inquiry 27, no. 2 (Winter 2001): 304, 290Google Scholar.

14 Chukovskaia, Lidiia Korneevna, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …”: (1938–1994) (Moscow, 2015), 174Google Scholar.

15 For more on samizdat and tamizdat, see Kind-Kovács, Friederike and Labov, Jessie, eds., Samizdat, Tamizdat, and beyond: Transnational Media during and after Socialism (New York, 2013)Google Scholar.

16 Take, for example, Pratt, Sarah, “Angels in the Stalinist House: Nadezhda Mandeľshtam, Lidiia Chukovskaia, Lidiia Ginzburg, and Russian Women’s Autobiography,” in Chester, Pamela and Forrester, Sibelan E. S., eds., Engendering Slavic Literatures (Bloomington, 1996), 158–73Google Scholar.

17 Beth Holmgren admits in passing that her comparison between the two “would likely discomfit both women.” Women’s Works in Stalin’s Time: On Lidiia Chukovskaia and Nadezhda Mandelstam (Bloomington, 1993), 3.

18 Iurii Freidin, Mandeľshtam’s legal heir, has suggested that the Chukovskaia fell prey to ingrained and ultimately misguided ‘Sovietism’ in her charges against Mandeľshtam, while a response to Freidin suggests, among other things, that Chukovskaia was politically active in years when Mandeľshtam was convalescing in the Crimea. In the most extreme instance, observers conclude that, beyond being widowed in 1938, the two women had nothing in common—an assertion as unwarranted as it is unproductive. (“Не лишне напомнить, что Надежда Яковлевна в эти годы еще не бунтовала.”) Ernest Shtatland, “K 40-letiiu ‘Vtoroi knigi’ Nadezhdy Mandeľshtam: Velikaia proza ili antologiia lzhi: Iurii Freidin—prodolzhateľ dela Nadezhdy Mandeľshtam” (blog), June 17, 2012, at http://nmandelshtam.blogspot.com/2012/06/blog-post.html (accessed September 29, 2020).

19 Third Book was prepared for publication by Iurii Freidin. In an interview with the author, Freidin was surprised to learn of the existence of “Lida.” Iurii Ľvovich Freidin, interview, Moscow, May 12, 2017.

20 For a discussion of truth in the era of dissidence, see Barbara Martin, “Diverging Truths,” in her Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union, 157–79.

21 As Holmgren writes, “these women were working in a medium traditionally accessible to Russian women—one that, ideally, afforded them unmediated self-definition and, at the same time, justified what the reading public perceived as the audacity of their authorship because they wrote to commemorate political victims,” Women’s Works, 2.

22 Nadezhda Mandeľshtam, Hope Abandoned, trans. Max Hayward, [1st ed.] (New York, 1974), 295.

23 I refer to Hope Against Hope and Hope Abandoned as Reminiscences and Second Book, respectively, to signal my emphasis on its reception by a Russian-speaking audience.

24 “I think she should write rather than edit” ([она] должна бы писать, а не редактировать), Chukovskii wrote in his diary. Kornei Chukovskii, Diary, 1901–1969 (New Haven, 2005), 334; Sobranie sochinenii v piatnadtsati tomakh (Moscow, 2001), 13:41.

25 Lidiia Korneevna Chukovskaia, Opustelyi dom: Povest' (Paris, 1965); Spusk pod vodu (New York, 1972); Going Under (New York, 1976); Sof'ia Petrovna; Spusk pod vodu: Povesti (Moscow, 1988).

26 Holmgren, Women’s Works, 46. Chukovskaia’s ability to publish came at the cost of her uncompromised authorial integrity (as, for example, the passage included by the editor of her book about the Decembrists’ explorations of Siberia, praising Stalin’s destructive construction projects). Bella Hirshorn, Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya: A Tribute (Melbourne, 1987), 47.

27 Chukovskaia, Lidiia Korneevna, Pamiati Anny Akhmatovoi: Stikhi, pis'ma “Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi” (Paris, 1974), 11–12Google Scholar.

28 Lidiia Korneevna Chukovskaia, The Akhmatova Journals, trans. Peter Norman, Milena Michalski, and Sylva Rubashova (London, 1994). The Journals were also published in New York the same year.

29 Komaromi, “Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Publics,” 86.

30 Holmgren, Women’s Works, 114.

31 Lidiia Korneevna Chukovskaia, The Deserted House, [1st ed.] (New York, 1967). For an example of its reception, see M. Korallov, “Nado zhit' dolgo,” Novyi mir, 1988, no. 11 (November 1988): 248–50; cited in Holmgren, Women’s Works, 44.

32 Sandler, Stephanie, “Reading Loyalty in Chukovskaia’s Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi,” in Rosslyn, Wendy, ed., The Speech of Unknown Eyes: Akhmatova’s Readers on Her Poetry, 2 vols. (Nottingham, Eng., 1990), 2:267Google Scholar.

33 See, for example, Holmgren, Women’s Works 168.

34 “[Б]листательная литературная вещь,” Lidiia Korneevna Chukovskaia, “Pis'ma chitatelei,” Sochineniia v 2 tomakh (Moscow, 2000), 2:453.

35 “Сильная книга….И умно, как она сама,” Chukovskaia, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e…,” 163.

36 Holmgren, Women’s Work, 141.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., 94.

40 Chukovskaia, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …,” 316–18.

41 Olga Carlisle, “The Real zek’s Story,” review of The Notebooks of Sologdin, by Dimitri Panin, trans. John Moore, The New York Times, April 18, 1976, 4.

42 Pratt, “Angels in the Stalinist House,” 158.

43 Holmgren, Women’s Works, 26.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid., 3–4. Holmgren writes that Chukovskaia “respects and inscribes traditional hierarchies, rituals, and symbols” whereas “Mandelstam embraces some of this traditional sensibility, but in her writing manner she very often plays the iconoclast, unmasking the symbols and violating the hierarchies and forms that Chukovskaia carefully observes.”

46 Like me, Annette Julius also contests this characterization, though she seems to be unaware of Holmgren’s work: Annette Julius, Lidija Čukovskaja: Leben und Werk (Munich, 1995).

47 “Местами доростает до прозы; на ¾—небрежно, недоработано, неряшливо, как она сама. И умно, как она сама. Разумеется, мания величия налицо,” Chukovskaia, “ Dnevnik —boľshoe podspor' e …,” 163.

48 Nina Christesen, introduction to Bella Hirshorn, Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya : A Tribute (Melbourne, 1987), 9; Mandeľshtam, Hope Abandoned, 11; Vtoraia kniga, 15–16.

49 Andrei Siniavskii, “K 115-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia Nadezhdy Mandeľshtam,” Radio Svoboda, at https://www.svoboda.org/a/26713998.html (accessed September 30, 2020).

50 See M.V. Figurnova and O.S. Figurnova, eds., Osip i Nadezhda Mandelshtamy v rasskazakh sovremennikov (Moscow, 2002), 477–78; Carl R. Proffer, The Widows of Russia and Other Writings (Ann Arbor, 1987), 59.

51 Mandeľshtam, Hope against Hope: A Memoir, trans. Max Hayward (London, 1971), 46–47; Mandeľshtam, Vospominaniia (New York, 1970), 49–50.

52 Joseph Brodsky, “Nadezhda Mandelstam (1899–1980),” New York Review of Books, March 5, 1981, at https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1981/03/05/nadezhda-mandelstam-18991980/ (accessed September 30, 2020).

53 Chukovskaia, Dom poeta, in her Sochineniia v 2-kh tomakh, 2:29–30. As early as 1943, in her diary Chukovskaia candidly states that there is something “parasitic” about Mandeľshtam, who lived “solely by the soul of another” (Она есть нечто паразитичесткое,…жив[ет] только чужой душой), “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …,” 25.

54 Mandeľshtam, Hope Abandoned, 526–27; Vtoraia kniga, 592–93.

55 “В моих глазах по уровню душевной культуры недалеко ушла Надежда Яковлевна от тех троих молодцов, которые делали обыск в семье нэпмана,” Chukovskaia, Dom poeta, 82.

56 Chukovskaia, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …,” 331, 340.

57 Lawrence Van Gelder, “Lidiya Chukovskaya, Champion of Dissidents and Chronicler of Stalinist Abuses, Dies at 88,” The New York Times, February 9, 1996, B6.

58 In Pamiati detstva (To the Memory of Childhood), Chukovskaia stages herself as a son rather than as a daughter to her late father, see Holmgren, Women’s Works, 32.

59 “[П]ора…достичь мужскую природу,” ibid., 200.

60 Chukovskaia, Pamiati Anny Akhmatovoi, 69; Chukovskaia, The Akhmatova Journals. Volume 1, 1938–41, trans. Peter Norman, Milena Michalski, and Sylva Rubashova, 1st American ed. (New York, 1994), 59.

61 Holmgren, Women’s Works, n66. In her diary, Chukovskaia writes that it is “because of [Akhmatova], for instance, undoubtedly because of her, that I did not become a poet” (из-за неё, например, безусловно из-за неё, я не стала поэтом), Chukovskaia, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …,” 281.

62 Holmgren, Women’s Works, 65.

63 Ibid., 77.

64 Ibid., 142.

65 For Akhmatova’s reaction to Mandeľshtam’s presence, see Holmgren, Women’s Works, 147 and Figurnova and Figurnova, Osip i Nadezhda Mandeľshtamy v rasskazakh sovremennikov, 427–28.

66 Holmgren, Women ’s Works 94. “[Б]удто А.А. пишет обо мне, а не я о ней,” Chukovskaia, “ Dnevnik —boľshoe podspor' e …,” 281, 293.

67 After hearing a review of her Going Under on the BBC, for instance, Chukovskaia writes: “The general assessment: worse than ‘Requiem’ and the memoirs of Nad. Mandeľshtam. Why compare a novella with a ‘Poem’ and with memoirs?” (Общая оценка: ниже ‘Реквиема’ и мемуаров Над. Мандельштам. А почему повесть надо сравнивать с ‘Поэмой’ и с мемуарами?), ibid., 273.

68 Holmgren, Women’s Works, 148.

69 Ibid., 149.

70 Ibid., 147.

71 “[Ч]резвычайно опасно.” Chukovskaia, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …,” 255.

72 Holmgren, Women’s Works, 114.

73 As Holmgren notes, “the poet allow[ed] other women to perform certain tasks for her that a wife might perform,” ibid., 83.

74 Chukovskaia, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …,” 285, 315.

75 “[Н]ас было трое, и только трое.” In fact, she very nearly begins The Poet’s House with these words. Mandeľshtam, Hope Abandoned, 231; Vtoraia kniga, 260–61; Chukovskaia, Dom poeta, 9–10.

76 “[О]чень высоко держит знамя русской литературы,” B. S. Kuzin, Vospominaniia, proizvedeniia, perepiska (Saint Petersburg, 1999), 715.

77 Benjamin Nathans, Habermas’s “Public Sphere” in the Era of the French Revolution, no. 3, Society for French Historical Studies (Durham, 1990): 620–21. Komaromi, “Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Publics,” 89. For the development of the public sphere in pre- and post-revolutionary Russia, see Dietrich Beyrau, “Arcane and Public Spheres in the Soviet Union,” in Jan C. Behrends and Thomas Lindenberger, eds., Underground Publishing and the Public Sphere: Transnational Perspectives (Berlin, 2014), 99–142.

78 Komaromi, “Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Publics,” 89.

79 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Craig J. Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 117. Cited in Komaromi, “Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Publics,” 86. As Komaromi notes, Habermas’s thinking later evolved to include a “decentered collection of publics” (“Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Public,” 84). Fraser’s views on the public sphere have also continued to evolve, and she has since critiqued her own as well as others’ assumptions about the functioning of the public sphere at a transnational level. See Nancy Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World,” in Kate Nash, ed., Transnationalizing the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Eng., 2013), 8–42.

80 Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 118. See also Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, 1988), and Geoff Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century,” in Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, 289–339.

81 Anke Stephan, Von der Küche auf den Roten Platz, 27.

82 Holmgren has suggested that Akhmatova cultivated a “childlike” pose in her marital relations as well as with the younger female admirers who surrounded her in order to avoid domestic duties, Women’s Works, 119.

83 Holmgren has suggested that, by recording Akhmatova’s words of praise and encouragement of Chukovskaia’s prose in her Akhmatova Journals, Chukovskaia “quietly…let Akhmatova establish her as an important and talented writer,” Women’s Works, 92.

84 “For Nadezhda Mandelstam,” Holmgren writes, “Akhmatova must remain problematic—a female authority who combined great strength and a free spirit with vestiges of troubling conventionality,” ibid., 148.

85 “Ахматова ощущала поэтическую правоту в гораздо меньшей степени, чем Мандельштам, зато в житейских делах, особенно в изменах и разводах, всегда настаивала на своей ‘несравненной правоте’….Правота Ахматовой, как и правота Мандельштама, принадлежала к высшему разряду, и женские счеты—кто кого бросил—здесь ни при чем. Им принадлежит правота внутренне свободных людей, которые стояли на том, на чем должны были стоять.” Mandeľshtam, Hope Abandoned, 248; Vtoraia kniga, 281. According to Holmgren, Mandeľshtam “recognize[d] the dangers and restrictions involved in conforming to a culturally assigned and accepted womanhood,” and “being a woman may guarantee greater strength, but it also threatens a possible repressing of her individual character,” Women’s Works, 148.

86 “[Д]амскость,” Mandeľshtam, Hope Abandoned, 245, 247; Vtoraia kniga, 277–78, 280.

87 “[И] жертвенно-женское, и негодующе-женское,” Chukovskaia, Dom poeta, 135.

88 “В I Ахматова только велика—в тоске и горе…а в II она бывает мелковата в своих претензиях к Б.Л.…в сосредоточенности на своих обидах,” Chukovskaia, “ Dnevnik —boľshoe podspor' e …,” 304.

89 “Гениальность озаряет [Пастернака] с удивительной зримостью. В А.А. мы видим сначала красоту, а потом ум, благородство внешней формы, юмор—гениальность видна в её стихах, а не в ней,” ibid., 78. Chukovskaia was impressed with Pasternak’s masculine persona early on, ibid., 32.

90 “И Ахматова, и Цветаева—великие ревнивицы,” Mandeľshtam, Hope Abandoned, 465; Vtoraia kniga, 520.

91 “Судя по ‘Второй книге,’ ревновать прекрасно умела и Надежда Яковлевна: обращаться к мужу с криком ‘Я или она!,’ укладывать чемодан и т.д. Разница между Цветаевой и Надеждой Яковлевной, Ахматовой и Надеждой Яковлевной не в том, что Цветаева и Ахматова ‘великие ревнивицы,’ а она будто бы нет, а в том, что, ревнуя, они создавали стихи, она же била тарелки,” Chukovskaia, Dom poeta, 119–20.

92 According to Holmgren, the Akhmatova Journals “conveniently [release] Akhmatova from the social and cultural confines of her gender,” Women’s Works, 76.

93 “Все это для А.А., для ее памяти, чрезвычайно опасно, потому что Над. Як.—большой авторитет,” Chukovskaia,“ Dnevnik —boľshoe podspor 'e …,” 255.

94 “‘Запад, впрочем, все переварит,’ говорит Надежда Яковлевна о мемуарах Георгия Иванова. Почему же только Запад? И только мемуары Иванова? Вторую книгу Н. Мандельштам с аппетитом проглотит и переварит Запад, Восток, Юг, и Север. Столько сплетней…!” Chukovskaia, Dom poeta, 29. Elsewhere she writes, “Thank goodness for foreigners, who understand only the literal meaning of a word in the best of cases” (Благо иностранцам, понимающим в лучшем случае только содержание, только прямой смысл слова), ibid., 105.

95 “Пушкин обмолвился однажды…о безнравственности нашего любопытства. Вся Вторая книга написана в расчёте на эту безнравственность,” ibid., 150.

96 Lidiia Chukovskaia, “Texts of Soviet Writers’ Petition to Kremlin and of Letter of Protest,” The New York Times, November 19, 1966, 6.

97 Her sense of distinction permeates even her acknowledgment of shared suffering. As Holmgren writes, “Nadezhda Mandelstam empathizes with [her fellow widows] and derives a certain sense of solidarity from their efforts to survive and cope. But…they offer no defining ‘we’; their public silence and obedience preclude her own individual difference,” Women’s Works, 164.

98 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI), f. 1893, op. 3, d. 340 (N. Ia. Mandeľshtam, “Akademiki,” “Detstvo,” “Lida,” “Otets,” “Devochki i maľchik.” Vospominaniia. Polnye teksty i nabroski. Chernovoi avtograf).

99 Although “Lida” is catalogued by RGALI, it is possible that this had yet to be done when Holmgren was researching what would later become Women’s Works in Stalin’s Time (she cites others’ material from Tsentraľnyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (TsGALI), but not RGALI).

100 Chukovskaia, Pis'ma chitatelei, 453.

101 “Над. Як. была при нем девочкой на побегушках, a теперь строит из себя Бог знает что,” Chukovskaia, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …,” 296.

102 “Мать ежедневно явилась во двор. Я выносила ей стул, и она подолгу сидела. Уставившись на запрещенную дверь родной дочери,” RGALI, f. 1893, op. 3, d. 40.

103 Mandeľshtam, Hope Abandoned, 210; Vtoraia kniga, 237.

104 “Now I think that we were wasting our time transporting sick Lida to and fro,” she writes (Сейчас я думаю, что мы напрасно возились с больной Лидой). RGALI, f. 1893, op. 3, d. 40.

105 “Kornei Ivanovich was himself indignant at Lida’s behavior: ‘To take money from your mother and then not to let her in,’” Mandeľshtam writes (Сам Корней Иванович возмущался Лидой: ‘брать у матери деньги, а потом не пускать’), ibid.

106 “Она не любила человека, от которого родила прелестную дочь Люшу…Погиб он во время войны, убегая из блокированного Петербурга. За что его Лида не любила, не знаю.” “[I]t was the same Voľpe who published the illegal ending to ‘Journey to Armenia,’…for which he was fired from ‘Star’” (это был тот самый Вольпе, который напечатал запрещенный конец ‘Путешествия в Армению’…за что и был выгнан из ‘Звезды’), ibid.

107 “[Н]е знаю, сказала ли ей, кто её отец. В Ташкенте, во время войны Люша этого во всяким случае не знала,” ibid.

108 “[Н]е выносила своего крошечного племянника, сына убитого брата,” ibid.

109 “[О]на еще следит за литературой—кого [пырнуть], кого помил[овать],” ibid.

110 “[В]едь обе обладали ‘несравненной правотой,’” ibid.

111 Chukovskaia, “Pis'ma chitatelei,” 453.

112 Liudmila Sergeeva, “My s toboi na kukhne posidim…,” Znamia, 2014, no.11, at https://magazines.gorky.media/znamia/2014/11/my-s-toboj-na-kuhne-posidim-8230.html (accessed October 5, 2020).

113 According to Helena Goscilo, Mandeľshtam “boldly adopts the stance of cultural historian who arrogates to herself the power of moral and esthetic judgments” and, in the process, “violat[es] gender genre premises,” Goscilo, “Widowhood as Genre and Profession à La Russe: Nation, Shadow, Curator, and Publicity Agent,” in Andrea Lanoux and Helena Goscilo, eds., Gender and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Russian Culture (DeKalb, 2006), 65–66. Proffer writes that Mandeľshtam “could have played the grand role of poet’s widow in the accepted way. But she alone broke free,” Proffer, “The Attack on Mme Mandelstam.”

114 Chukovskaia, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …,” 174.

115 Chukovskaia, “The Preservation of Muteness.”

116 “Кроме ‘общего’ меня убило ‘частное,’ которое есть одно и то же.” Chukovskaia, “Dnevnik—boľshoe podspor'e …,” 304.

117 Bolton, Worlds of Dissent, 18.

118 Ibid.

119 Berlant, Lauren, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (Durham, 2008), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.