Lydia Chukovskaya and Anna Akhmatova were brought together by a common tragedy (both had lost loved ones in the purges of the 1930s) and by a common passion for literature. The journals are excerpts from Chukovskaya's diaries kept at great risk to herself and to those about whom she wrote, but now to be published in Moscow to celebrate the centenary of Akhmatova's birth. The journals compose a portrait of a poet of genius and a remarkable woman, and also provide a unique picture of Russian intellectual circles in the terrible years of World War II, years of hunger, disappearances and queues of prison-widows. When the publication of "The Journals" is complete in English - volume II will end with 1958 and volume III with Akhmatova's death in 1966 - it will stand as a testament to a poet's life and the cultural life of a nation under a totalitarian regime.