Anna Akhmatova's poetic work was familiar to Ilya Ehrenburg even before the revolution. The writer considered the young poetess extremely talented. In the early 1920s, Berlin published his anthology of poems Portraits of Russian Writers, the introductory part of which was his article about Anna Akhmatova. Throughout his life, he collected a large library, in which many books were signed by their authors. Publications of poems with commemorative inscriptions by Anna Andreevna were especially valuable for Ehrenburg.

For the first time, Ehrenburg met with Akhmatova in Paris under very interesting circumstances. Walking with his friend, artist Nathan Altman, through the streets of Paris, he saw an attractive Frenchwoman walking in front. She and a friend began to discuss her merits aloud when the lady turned to them and said sharply in pure Russian: “I'm tired of you!” This is how they met, and later Altman painted a portrait of Akhmatova, which is now in the [Russian Museum] (http://kudago.com/spb/place/russkij-muzej/).

By the way, many other literary figures lived in house No. 8 on Tverskaya Street: poet Demyan Bedny, publicist Alexey Adzhubey, writer Vyacheslav Shishkov. Until Soviet times, this place was Vargin's apartment building, in which Belinsky and Tyutchev rented apartments. During the reconstruction of the capital's streets in 1935, the former house was demolished and instead a building was built, now familiar to Muscovites.