Poetic Obituaries: Although apolitical as a poet,

she [Izabella Akhatovna "Bella" Akhmadulina] openly supported persecuted writers like Boris Pasternak and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and political dissidents like Andrei D. Sakharov. In 1979, she fell out of favor by contributing a short story to Vasily Aksyonov's unofficial collection Metropol, a transgression that froze her already chilly relations with the government.

Despite her shaky official reputation, she was always recognized as one of the Soviet Union's literary treasures and a classic poet in the long line extending from Lermontov and Pushkin.

"She was one of the great poets of the 20th century," said Sonia I. Ketchian, the author of "The Poetic Craft of Bella Akhmadulina" (1993). "There's Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam and Pasternak--and she's the fifth."

from The New York Times: Bella Akhmadulina, Bold Voice in Russian Poetry, Dies at 73
then Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Bella Akhmadulina's Poetics Of Survival

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