Jealous Poetess or Pushkinist? Anna Achmatova in the Works of Andrej Bitov

The article examines the presence of Anna Akhmatova, both in person and her texts, in the works of Andrei Bitov. Akhmatova, in this schema, quite literally represents the bridge from post-Stalinist culture to pre-Revolutionary silver Age. The ironic stance adopted toward Akhmatova in Bitov's novel Pushkin House, as well as in the autobiographical note on Bitov's real-life meetings with Akhmatova, is dropped in Bitov's Reminiscences about Pushkin. In this last work, Bitov adopts strategies similar to those employed by Akhmatova in his essays on Pushkin, whom she views not only as her great predecessor in Russian poetry, but also as her “contemporary”.