Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

AA took the courageous step of writing to Stalin (Much respected Josif Vissarionovich) with a dignified petition that he should free Punin and her son Lev from prison.

EF published Anna of All the Russias: A Life of Anna Akhmatova, an account taking in both Tsarist and StalinistRussia and extremes of wealth and poverty.

After Stalin fell from power, with Poem Without a Hero circulating in manuscript, there was serious thought about publishing it.

She observes that she can write at first hand about most of the men who—to-day—are making war, or struggling to prevent it in three continents. The dominant figures of Hitler and Stalin are flanked...

The implicit message of these poems is praise of Stalin , but they did nothing to soften him towards her.

RF published when Mussolini had conquered and exiled Haile Selassie , but before Queen Wilhelmina had fled from home before the invading Nazis , or Russia had switched sides and entered the war against Germany...

Of Martha's twin quests, that for emotional fulfilment brings her more pain and loss than pleasure, and that for a viable political creed is no more fruitful. She becomes a Communist, and is later dismayed...

The manifesto masks its serious political content with a certain tongue-in-cheek tone: We do not like the way Mussolini has organised his colonial empire. / We do not like the way Hitler has managed his...

HA arranges her discussion under three headings: anti-Semitism, imperialism, and totalitarianism. Together they compose a bleak picture of current trends: the decline of nation-states and of traditional class alliances, and the rise of anti-Semitism, Nazism

For Meanjin she wrote about the current falling-out in Paris between Camus (who had taken an anti-Stalinist line in L'Homme révolté) and Sartre . For Stead neither writer was a good enough Communist...