Page "Anna Akhmatova" Paragraph 36
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In 1921, Akhmatova's former husband Nikolay Gumilyov was prosecuted for his alleged role in a monarchist anti-Bolshevik conspiracy and on 25 August was shot along with 61 others.
According to the historian Rayfield, the murder of Gumilev was part of the state response to the Kronstadt Rebellion.
The Cheka ( secret police ) blamed the rebellion on Petrograd's intellectuals, prompting the senior Cheka officer Yakov Agranov to forcibly extract the names of ' conspirators ', from an imprisoned professor, guaranteeing them amnesty from execution.
Agranov's guarantee proved to be meaningless.
He sentenced dozens of the named persons to death, including Gumilev.
Maxim Gorky and others appealed for leniency, but by the time Vladimir Lenin agreed to several pardons, the condemned had been shot.
Within a few days of his death, Akhmatova wrote:
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