The Twelve

by Alexander Blok

Alexander Blok was a poet living in the early 20th century. He wrote about the achievements and disasters of revolutionary Russia. He centred on a rabble that was roaming through the streets of Petrograd at the end of 1917. And he used this very refined language that he had developed many years earlier and combined that with snatches of folksong and street jargon that make for one of the really great pieces of Russian poetry – and also world poetry – in the first half of the 20th century.