This set of nine postcards celebrates the 60th anniversary of the first publication of Anna Akhmatova's "Requiem," an iconic text of the Stalin era. Composed as separate poems over the course of two decades since the mid-1930s but never committed to paper until 1962, when it became a cycle, "Requiem" was submitted to the Soviet journal Novyi Mir (after the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), but was rejected. The manuscript was then smuggled out abroad and published in the original Russian in 1963 in Munich. It was translated into numerous foreign languages, nine of which are featured in this set of postcards made from the original book covers:
- Anna Akhmatova. Requiem. Munich: Tovarishchestvo zarubezhnykh pisatelei, 1963.
- Anna Akhmatova. Requiem. Tr. into Czech by Robert Vlach. Cover by Vojtěch Jirků. Rome: P.U.G., 1964.
- Anna Akhmatova. Requiem. Tr. into German by Mary von Holbeck. Frankfurt am Main: Possev, 1964.
- Anna Akhmatova. Requiem. Tr. into French, with a preface by Paul Valet. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1966.
- Anna Akhmatova. Requiem. Tr. into Spanish, with a foreword by Aquilino Duque. Barcelona: El Bardo, 1967.
- Anna Akhmatova. Requiem. Tr. into Estonian by Marie Under, with an introduction by Alexis Rannit, and with an epilogue by Francois Mauriac. Washington D.C.: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1967.
- Anna Akhmatova. Requiem. Tr. into Latvian, with an introduction by Pēteris Aigars, and with an epilogue by François Mauriac. [Washington D.C.]: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1968.
- Anna Akhmatova. Requiem. Tr. into Ukrainian by Borys Oleksandriv. Cover by Myron Levitsky. [Munich]: Suchasnist, 1973.
- Anna Akhmatova. Requiem. Tr. into Hebrew, with a foreword by Ezra Zussman. [Tel Aviv: Eked], 1973.
Designed by Evgenia Chernoshchechkina.
