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Internet Modern History Sourcebook
Stalin Poems
The Stalin Years: Two Poems
WE LIVE, NOT FEELING…
by
Osip Mandelstam (1934?)
We live, not feeling the country beneath us,
Our speech inaudible ten steps away,
But where they're up to half a conversation-
They'll speak of the Kremlin mountain man.
His thick fingers are fat like worms,
And his words certain as pound weights,
His cockroach whiskers laugh,
And the tops of his boots glisten.
And all around his rabble of thick-skinned leaders,
He plays through services of half-people.
Some whistle, some meow, some snivel,
He alone merely caterwauls and prods.
Like horseshoes he forges decree after decree-
Some get it in the forehead, some in the brow,
some in the groin, and some in the eye.
Whatever the execution-it's raspberry to him
And his Georgians' chest is broad.
***
THE HEIRS OF STALIN
by
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1962)
Mute was the marble.
Mutely glimmered the glass.
Mute stood the sentries,
bronzed by the breeze.
But thin wisps of breath
seeped from the coffin
when they bore him
out the mausoleum doors.
Slowly the coffin floated by,
grazing the fixed bayonets.
He was also mute---
he also!
But awesome and mute.
Grimly clenching
his embalmed fists,
he watched through a crack inside,
just pretending to be dead.
He wanted to fix each pallbearer
in his memory:
young recruits from Ryanzan and Kursk,
in order somehow later
to collect strength for a sortie,
and rise from the earth
and get
to them,
the unthinking.
He has worked out a scheme.
He's merely curled up for a nap.
And I appeal
to our government with a plea:
to double
and treble the guard at this slab,
so that Stalin will not rise again,
and with Stalin-the past.
We sowed crops honestly.
Honestly we smelted metal,
and honestly we marched,
in ranks as soldiers.
But he feared us.
Believing in a great goal, he forgot
that the means must be worthy
of the goal's greatness.
He was farsighted.
Wily in the ways of combat,
he left behind him
many heirs on this globe.
It seems to me
a telephone was installed in the coffin.
To someone once again
Stalin is sending his instructions.
To where does the cable yet go
from that coffin?
No, Stalin did not die.
He thinks death can be fixed.
We removed
him
from the mausoleum.
But how do we remove Stalin
from Stalin's heirs?
Some of his heirs
tend roses in retirement,
but secretly consider
their retirement temporary.
Others
from platforms rail against Stalin,
but,
at night,
yearn for the old days.
It is no wonder Stalin's heirs,
with reason today,
visibly suffer heart attacks.
They, the former henchmen,
hate a time
when prison camps are empty,
and auditoriums, where people listen to poetry,
are overfilled.
My motherland commands me not to be calm.
Even if they say to me: "Be assured..."---
I am unable.
While the heirs of Stalin
are still alive on this earth,
it will seem to me
that Stalin still lives in the mausoleum.
This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook.
The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted
texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World
history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the
document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying,
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No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook.
(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is located at the History Department of Fordham University, New York. The Internet
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© Site Concept and Design: Paul Halsall created 26 Jan 1996: latest revision 20 Oct 2025 [CV]
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