Inspiration...

From Max Hayward's introduction to Poems of Akhmatova (tr. Stanley Kunitz, Max Hayward):

Apart from literary salons and gatherings, there was another place at which the Petersburg intelligentsia met: the celebrated Stray Dog, a cabaret artistique... There was a small stage from which poets of all the contending "schools" came to read their verse to an after-theater crowd: Blok, Bely, Bryusov, Khlebnikov, Mayakovski, Kuzmin, Gumilev, Yesenin... The public often went there just for the "show," and it was the scene of many notable encounters.... The atmosphere of the place, the decor, and Akhmatova's feelings at a certain moment about the society for which it was a venue are poignantly evoked in her poem "We're All Drunkards Here..." (p. 13, Poems of Akhmatova)