Anna Akhmatova: Courage/Анна Ахматова: Мужество

Anna Akhmatova: Courage

We know what trembles in the scales,
What has to be accomplished.
The hour for courage. If all else fails,
With courage we are not unfurnished.
What though the dead be crowded, each to each,
What though our houses be destroyed? —
We will preserve you, Russian speech,
Keep you alive, great Russian word.
We will pass you to our sons and heirs
Free and clean, and they in turn to theirs,
        And so forever.

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Trotsky: The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism

LEAVING out of account the weak echoes of pre-Revolutionary ideologic systems, the only theory which has opposed Marxism in Soviet Russia these years is the Formalist theory of Art. The paradox consists in the fact that Russian Formalism connected itself closely with Russian Futurism, and that while the latter was capitulating politically before Communism, Formalism opposed Marxism with all its might theoretically.

Literature and Revolution: The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism