Editing Osip Mandelstam (section)

=== Exile ===
On 26 May, Mandelstam was sentenced neither to death, nor even the [[Gulag]], but to three years' exile in [[Cherdyn, Perm Krai|Cherdyn]] in the Northern [[Ural (region)|Ural]], where he was accompanied by his wife. This escape was looked upon as a "miracle"<ref name="Fear"/> – but the strain of his interrogation had driven Mandelstam to the verge of insanity. He later wrote that "at my side, my wife did not sleep for five nights"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mandelstam |first1=Osip (translated by Richard & Elizabth McKane) |title='Kama' The Moscow & Voronezh Notebooks |date=2003 |publisher=Bloodaxe Books |location=Tarset, Northumberland |isbn=978-1-85224-631-0 |page=128}}</ref> – but when they arrived at Cherdyn, she fell asleep, in the upper floor of a hospital, and he attempted suicide by throwing himself out of the window. His brother, Alexander, appealed to the police for his brother to be given proper psychiatric care, and on 10 June, there was a second "miracle", which banished  Mandelstam from the twelve largest Soviet cities, but otherwise allowed him to choose his place of exile.<ref name="Fear"/>

Mandelstam and his wife chose [[Voronezh]], possibly, partly, because the name appealed to him. In April 1935, he wrote a four line poem that included the pun – ''Voronezh – blazh', Voronezh – voron, nozh'' meaning 'Voronezh is a whim, Voronezh – a raven, a knife.'. Just after their arrival, Boris Pasternak received a phone call from Stalin – his only conversation with the dictator, in which Stalin wanted to know whether Mandelstam really was a talented poet. "He's a genius, isn't he?" he is reputed to have asked Pasternak.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mandelstam |first1=Nadezhda |title=Hope Against Hope |page=146}}</ref>

During these three years, Mandelstam wrote a collection of poems known as the ''Voronezh Notebooks'', which included the cycle ''Verses on the Unknown Soldier''. 

Actually, the fact that Stalin had given an order to "isolate and preserve" Mandelstam meant that he was safe from further persecution, temporarily. In Voronezh, he was even granted a face-to-face meeting with the local head of the NKVD, [[Semyon Dukelsky]], who told him "write what you like", and turned down an offer by Mandelstam to send in every poem he wrote to police headquarters. After that meeting, NKVD agents ceased shadowing the couple.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mandelstam |first1=Nadezhda |title=Hope Against Hope |pages=206–209}}</ref> There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that Mandelstam even rang Dukelsky to recite poetry over the phone.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Nerler |first1=Pavel |title=Пусти меня, отдай меня, Воронеж ("Let me go, give me back, Voronezh" |date=24 June 2004 |url=https://iz.ru/news/291445 |publisher=Izvestya |access-date=12 December 2020}}</ref>