Originally, Akhmatova was in favor of socialism in Russia, seeing it as a way to topple the upper class and ease the suffering of the proletariats. When WWI broke out in Europe, “Akhmatova interpreted the war as a spiritual event,”3 seeing it as God’s punishment to the aristocracy for ignoring the needs of the commoners.4 She writes in her poem, “July 1914:”
All month a smell of burning, of dry peat smouldering in …show more content…
By 1917, the Russian people were miserable. There was massive corruption in the government, a scarcity of food, as well as consistent defeats of the ill-organized Russian army by the Germans.7 Revolution was inevitable, and in March of that year Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown by the St. Petersburg garrison and a provisional government was put into place.8 During those tumultuous months, the Bolshevik party formed, gathering considerable support from the workers and soldiers with their ideals of “peace, land, and bread”. In November, the Bolsheviks and other socialist parties staged a coup, overthrowing the provisional government and forming a new one made of mainly