Hello! Akhmatova in the Borscht“What can you tell me about Anna Akhmatova?” I asked my mother as she peeled beets in the kitchen, the red bits falling from her fingers like petals. “She was popular when I was young,” she told me, hands fumbling with the knife. “I couldn’t read much of her before I left Russia because they called her anti-Stalin, but I heard of her often.” “Was she censored?” I asked, and she nodded, scraping the beets into a big metal pan full of water and placing it on the stove.