The Stalin epigram, also known as The Kremlin Highlander is a satirical

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 poem by the Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived in Russia during and after its revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets...

, dated as being written in November 1933. Only 16 lines in length, the poem was in large part responsible for Mandelstam's arrest, imprisonment and ultimate death; it is both a suicide note and a searing indictment of leader Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

 and his entourage. The Kremlin

Kremlin

A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...

 Highlander

North Caucasus

The North Caucasus is the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas and within European Russia. The term is also used as a synonym for the North Caucasus economic region of Russia....

, of course, is Stalin, referring to his Caucasus Mountains

Caucasus Mountains

The Caucasus Mountains is a mountain system in Eurasia between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus region .The Caucasus Mountains includes:* the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range and* the Lesser Caucasus Mountains....

 origin. The last words in the poem about "Ossetian torso" refer to a rumor that Stalin was born from a person of Ossetian ethnicity rather than from his official father, Besarion Jughashvili

Besarion Jughashvili

Besarion Vanovis Jughashvili was Joseph Stalin's father. His surname means son of Juga, and is derived from either the Ossetian йуга Juga or the old Georgian ჯუღა djuga - 'steel'.-Family and early life:...

, who was a Georgian

Georgian people

The Georgians are an ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America....

. The poem describes the climate of fear in Soviet Russia

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....

:

We are living, but can’t feel the land where we stay, More than ten steps away you can’t hear what we say. But if people would talk on occasion, They should mention the Kremlin Caucasian. His thick fingers are bulky and fat like live-baits, And his accurate words are as heavy as weights. Cucaracha’s moustaches are screaming, And his boot-tops are shining and gleaming. But around him a crowd of thin-necked henchmen, And he plays with the services of these half-men. Some are whistling, some meowing, some sniffing, He’s alone booming, poking and whiffing. He is forging his rules and decrees like horseshoes – Into groins, into foreheads, in eyes, and eyebrows. Every killing for him is delight, And Ossetian torso is wide.

Russian: Мы живем, под собою не чуя страны...