Fedin and Akhmatova may have met in the spring of 1921 at a meeting of the Serapion Brothers literary group at the Petrograd House of Arts. Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) was a Russian poet, translator and literary scholar. She was already known all over Russia at the time, while Fedin was only starting to make a name for himself as a writer, having won the first prize with his story The Garden at a contest for young writers at the Writers’ House. Anna Andreevna sometimes attended meetings of the Serapion Brothers group as a guest. The Serapions, united in October 1921, were reluctant to accept new members. But the guests were welcome.
Pavel Luknitsky gave a different account of how Akhmatova and Fedin met in his 1927 diary. Luknitsky (1902–1973) was a Russian Soviet writer, poet and journalist who collected materials about Anna Akhmatova and Nikolay Gumilyov. In his diary, Luknitsky wrote that Akhmatov and Fedin first met in a Petrograd restaurant in 1922 at a celebration held in honour of the Russian Soviet prose writer Boris Pilnyak (1894–1938). After the event, Akhmatova and Fedin went to the theatre as Anna Akhmatova had a spare ticket. They kept in touch ever since. Fedin visited her every year on her birthday to congratulate her. That’s how they remained friends.
At the time, Akhmatova was living on the Fontanka embankment, not far from Fedin’s apartment on Liteyny Avenue. The two would often go to the Mariinsky Theatre together. A note written by Akhmatova in the early 1920s has been preserved in the museum’s collections. In the note, Akhmatova calls Fedin a good acquaintance and wonders what kind of performance they might like to attend next: an opera or a ballet.
