Anna Achmatova's ‘Cleopatra’: A Study in Self-Portraiture

This paper offers a new reading of Achmatova's ‘Cleopatra’. It takes into account her life-as-art strategies, her vision of Stalinism and the Silver Age and the gendered nature of her writing to demonstrate that, by depicting herself as a queen victimized by a new aggressive ruler, Achmatova manages to transform her cult as the best woman writer into that of “Anna of all the Russias”, claiming to be the only and unique heir to the Silver Age.