The Stalin epigram, also known as The Kremlin Highlander (Russian: Кремлёвский горец) is

a satirical poem by the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, written in November 1933. The poem

describes the climate of fear in the Soviet Union.[1]
Mandelstam read the poem only to a few friends, including Boris Pasternak and Anna
Akhmatova. The poem played a role in his own arrest and the arrests of Akhmatova's son and
husband, Lev Gumilev and Nikolay Punin.[2]
The poem was almost the first case Genrikh Yagoda dealt with after becoming NKVD boss.
Bukharin visited Yagoda to intercede for Mandelstam, unaware of the nature of his "offense".
According to Mandelstam's widow: "Yagoda liked M.'s poem so much that he even learned it by
heart - he recited it to Bukharin - but he would not have hesitated to destroy the whole of
literature, past, present and future, if he had thought it to his advantage. For people of this
extraordinary type, human blood is like water."[3]

The Stalin Epigram

Osip Mandelstam - 1891-1938
Our lives no longer feel ground under them.
At ten paces you can’t hear our words.

But whenever there’s a snatch of talk

it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer,

the ten thick worms his fingers,

his words like measures of weight,

the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip,

the glitter of his boot-rims.

Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses

he toys with the tributes of half-men.

One whistles, another meows, a third snivels.

He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom.

He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes,

One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye.

He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries.

He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.
Mandelstam composed this in 1933. He read it to a small circle of trusted friends, but someone
betrayed him. It led to his exile in Voronezh, and ultimately to his deportation to and death in the
Gulag in 1938.

It is a very complex poem. Among its challenges are to work out what some of the
colloquialisms and neologisms might mean, and then to find a way to express them in English. In
the second line of the second stanza of the original, for example, “Он играет услугами
полулюдей” means “He plays with the services of half-people”, so “On the dim-witted pawns he
unleashes his hounds” may be stretching things a little. That said, if a poem is to work in
translation the translator must take some creative liberties.

This website proved helpful in unravelling some of the images, and it also presents a number of
alternative translations. The writer of the piece, however, appears not to have noticed that
Mandelstam departs from his metre in the sixth line of the second stanza – but I decided not to
attempt to emulate this in my own translation.

We’re unable to live, for this country’s absurd,

At ten paces’ remove are our voices unheard,
But opinion, when muttered, half-spoken,
Kremlin highlander’s spectre’s awoken.
Podgy fingers he has that are meaty like worms,
But his speech is deliberate, its measure confirms,
Whiskers’ cockroaches sputter with laughter,
Polished jackboots are shiny, looked after.

And a slender-necked rabble of stooges surrounds,

On the dim-witted pawns he unleashes his hounds.
With a whistle, a mew and a whimper
They respond to malevolent simper,
Like a horseshoe he forges decree on decree.
Into groin and on forehead he presses his knee.
Retribution for him is a doddle,
Ample-chested his Caucasus waddle.

ANALYSIS OF THE STALIN EPIGRAM

Our lives are not safe in this country. Ten steps away and you can’t hear us. When someone does
speak, it turns into a spy with big fingers, heavy words, hissing laughs, and shiny boots.
Surrounded by chicken-like bosses, he makes fun of men below him. One may whistle, meow or
snivel. He alone takes pleasure in poking out his finger. He orders official papers of different
body parts. He talks about the executions like they are nothing. He wishes he could be there like
as their friend.

There are a significant amount of imagery Mandelstam included to represent the chaos of
Russia’s hierarchy. The way he described the Kremlin mountaineer-a Kremlin is a citadel or
cathedral in Russia-depicts a high class, broad-shouldered man, especially with the large hands,
literate speech, and cynical cockroach-like laugh. The shiny boots show that this mountaineer is
in the upper class and is not a laborer otherwise, his boots would be filthy.

The bosses are viewed as chicken-necked possibly because chickens are known to cluck
continuously, just like how a politician can talk about the lower levels of social class, also known
as “half-men.”

“He” is being referred to Stalin. Stalin is controlling Russia with his poking finger and is
targeting the “groin, one the forehead, temple, eye” of Russia, the government and its people.

Stalin just wants everyone to be friends.

Mandelstam connects his subject, Stalin, with animals: mentioning the worms, cockroaches,
chickens, meows, and horseshoes. As the epigram gets closer to its closing, the evolution of
animals become more complex. Assuming that Stalin is gaining popularity or more notoriety.

The epigram is written with a couplet structure. There isn’t a common rhyme but the subject of
each two-line stanza ends making it a couplet.