‘Hope against Hope’ by Nadezhda Mandelstam

After reciting an unflattering poem about Stalin to a small group of friends, Osip Mandelstam was betrayed to the police and endured five years in exile before dying in transit to the gulag. His wife, Nadezhda, spent the rest of her life dodging arrest, advocating for Osip’s work and writing what came to be known as Hope against Hope.

Hope against Hope is a testimony of life under Stalin, and of the ways in which ordinary people challenge and capitulate to power. It’s also a compendium of gossip, an account of psychological torture, a description of the poet’s craft and a love story.

Pankaj Mishra joins Adam to discuss his final selection for Human Conditions. They explore the qualities that make Hope against Hope so compelling: Nadezhda Mandelstam’s uncompromising honesty, perceptiveness and irrepressible humour.

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Further reading in the LRB:

Seamus Heaney: Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n15/seamus-heaney/osip-and-nadezhda-mandelstam

Clarence Brown: Every Slightest Pebble

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n10/clarence-brown/every-slightest-pebble

Frances Stonor Saunders: The Writer and the Valet

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n18/frances-stonor-saunders/the-writer-and-the-valet

Pankaj Mishra is a writer, critic and reporter who regularly contributes to the LRB. His books include Age of Anger: A History of the Present, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and two novels, most recently Run and Hide.

Get in touch: [email protected]

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