Editing Osip Mandelstam (section)

=== First arrest ===
{{see also|Stalin Epigram}}
In the autumn of 1933, Mandelstam composed the poem "[[Stalin Epigram]]", which he recited at a few small private gatherings in Moscow. The poem deliberately insulted the Soviet leader [[Joseph Stalin]]:
<poem>
...
His thick fingers are bulky and fat like live-baits,
And his accurate words are as heavy as weights.
Cucaracha’s moustaches are screaming,
And his boot-tops are shining and gleaming.
...
</poem>

In the original version, the one that was handed in to the police, he called Stalin the "peasant slayer", as well as pointing out that he had fat fingers. Six months later, on the night of 16–17 May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested by three [[NKVD]] officers who arrived at his flat with a search warrant signed by [[Yakov Agranov]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Shentalinsky |first1=Vitaly |title=The KGB's Literary Archive, The Discovery of the Ultimate Fate of Russia's Suppressed Writers |date=1995 |publisher=The Harvill Press |location=London |isbn=1-86046-072-0 |pages=168–69}}</ref> His wife hoped at first that this was over a fracas that had taken place in Leningrad a few days earlier, when Mandlestam slapped the writer [[Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy|Alexei Tolstoy]] because of a perceived insult to Nadezhda, but under interrogation he was confronted with a copy of the Stalin Epigram, and immediately admitted to being its author, believing that it was wrong in principle for a poet to renounce his own work. Neither he nor Nadezhda had ever risked writing it down, suggesting that one of the trusted friends to whom he recited it had memorised it, and handed a written copy to the police. It has never been established who it was.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Shentalinksy |title=The KGB's Literary Archive |page=172}}</ref>

Mandelstam anticipated that insulting Stalin would carry the death penalty, but Nadezhda and [[Anna Akhmatova]] started a campaign to save him, and succeeded in creating "a kind of special atmosphere, with people fussing and whispering to each other." The Lithuanian ambassador in Moscow, [[Jurgis Baltrušaitis]] warned delegates at a conference of journalists that the regime appeared to be on the verge of killing a renowned poet.<ref name="Fear">{{cite book |last1=McSmith |first1=Andy |title=Fear and the Muse |pages=110–11}}</ref> [[Boris Pasternak]] – who disapproved of the tone of the Epigram – nonetheless appealed to the eminent Bolshevik, [[Nikolai Bukharin]], to intervene. Bukharin, who had known the Mandelstams since the early 1920s and had frequently helped them, approached the head of the NKVD, and wrote a note to Stalin.