His cockroach whiskers leer
And his boot tops gleam.
Around him a rabble of thin-necked leaders -
Fawning half-men for him to play with

The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam wrote these lines about Stalin. Not surprisingly, he was arrested for it. Between his arrest and his eventual death in a labour camp he and his wife Nadezhda spent a twilight life in Russia as outcasts of the Soviet regime.

She preserved her husband's life and talent as long as it was humanly possible to do so. More, she preserved his poetry and, indeed, herself; for she still lives in Moscow, and it is her story that is told tonight.

with Betty Hardy as Nadezhda Mandelstam