Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891-1938) was a Russian poet and essayist. He was the husband of Nadezhda Mandelstam and one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poets. He was arrested by Joseph Stalin's government during the repression of the 1930s and sent into internal exile with his wife Nadezhda. Given a reprieve of sorts, they moved to Voronezh in southwestern Russia. In 1938 Mandelstam was arrested again and sentenced to a camp in Siberia. He died that year at a transit camp.

The ninety-odd poems Mandelstam wrote in Voronezh are the pinnacle of his poetic achievement, bearing witness to his consistent independence of mind and concern for the freedom of thought.