His first poetic experiments in populist style date back to the 1906, whereas his systematic work on poetry started in 1908, and the first publication appeared in 1910. Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam started as a representative of acmeism and belonged to the Guild of Poets initiated by Nikolai Gumilyov. His poetry is rich in cultural and historical images and motives and marked with detailed substantial perception of the world and tragic feeling of culture dying.

In May 1934 he was arrested for his poem My zhivyom pod soboyu ne chuya strany ("We live not feeling a land beneath us," 1934), an epigram on Stalin, and was exiled to the Urals.

In May 1938 he was arrested again “for counter-revolutionary activity” and was sent to Kolyma. The poet died in a transit prison camp, in a condition close to madness. According to the official report, the death was caused by cardioplegia. His name was banned in the USSR for about twenty years.