Nikolai Gumilev

Nikolai Gumilev - the poet shot in 1921, not his son Lev the historian - founded a movement dedicated to saying exactly what things are. He was born in Kronstadt, the son of a naval doctor, published his first collection at twenty, and married Anna Akhmatova in 1910 after several refusals and at least one suicide attempt. He travelled to Africa repeatedly, going up-country in Abyssinia and bringing back material for an ethnographic collection, at a time when Russian poets did not do that sort of thing. In 1912 he and Sergei Gorodetsky founded Acmeism, in reaction against the Symbolists: poetry should use words in their ordinary meanings, describe the visible world with precision, and value craft over mystical suggestion. Akhmatova and Mandelstam were the other two who mattered, and between them the movement outlasted every argument made against it. He volunteered in 1914, served in the cavalry, and won the Cross of St George twice, which was unusual for a poet and entirely characteristic of him. He came back to Petrograd after the revolution, taught, translated for Gorky's publishing house, and made no secret of being a monarchist. He was arrested in August 1921 for alleged involvement in the Tagantsev conspiracy and shot with sixty others; the case is now generally held to have been fabricated. He was unpublishable in the Soviet Union for sixty-five years, and his former wife spent much of hers memorising poetry that could not be written down. His son Lev was arrested repeatedly on the strength of the father's name, spent more than a decade in the camps, and became a historian of the steppe - which is why searching for the surname alone will find two different men.

• Lived: 1886 CE – 1921 CE
• Nationality: Russian
• Roles: poet