“We live, but we do not feel the land beneath us,
Ten steps away and our words cannot be heard.”

—  Osip Mandelstam , Stalin Epigram

"Stalin Epigram" (November 1933) (Russian: Мы живем, под собою не чуя страны... http://www.litera.ru/stixiya/authors/mandelshtam/my-zhivem-pod.html; English: "We live, not sensing our own country beneath us", http://www.tonykline.co.uk/PITBR/Russian/MoreMandelstam.htm#_Toc103483111) trans. A. S. Kline.

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Osip Mandelstam photo
Osip Mandelstam 5
Russian poet and essayist 1891–1938

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