Georges Nivat, one of the greatest Slavic scholars of the 20th century, a person whose life and work are intertwined with Russian literature, and who also has a personal connection (Nivat was engaged to the daughter of Boris Pasternak’s muse, Olga Ivinskaya, and this marriage was personally thwarted by Khrushchev), a hero of Bulat Okudzhava’s poems, a companion and translator of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, wrote an article about Pushkin.
It might seem unremarkable when a Russian literature specialist writes about Pushkin. But this is a different article, a very bitter one. Nivat noted in the works of the great poet, in Russian culture itself, something that Western connoisseurs have stubbornly refused to see: imperialism, cruelty, solidarity with power when it kills others. It’s astonishing that the famous scholar now analyzes Pushkin’s works through the lens of Arthur Drone’s works — and the imperialist pathos of Pushkin’s creations becomes incredibly relevant.
It would seem there should be no surprises here. Pushkin’s work was accessible even without Arthur’s books, and Adam Mickiewicz, a contemporary of Pushkin, made the same accusations against his Russian colleagues that Drone might make against Russian classics. So why is there a shift in understanding Pushkin only now?
Because the matter is not really about Pushkin, but about Russia. Pushkin lived in times when he was not the only bard of imperialism in the world — a rereading of Kipling is enough to understand this. However, over the past few centuries, the world, at least the West, has drawn conclusions and rejected imperialism and aggression — but Russia has not. Therefore, Kipling seems like a historical poet and is interesting to read to understand how people viewed the world not so long ago. But Pushkin remains a relevant poet because his lines about “Slavic disputes among themselves” can now be quoted in Russian news broadcasts or Putin’s speeches. The Russians have forgotten nothing and have learned nothing — and that is why Pushkin remains “our everything” for them, because he simultaneously wrote about love, the dream of unattainable freedom (for his own), and praised the empire in all its forms and manifestations. And yes, Pushkin is Russia, a Russia that is incapable of change.
Incidentally, the relevance of Shevchenko and other Ukrainian classics is also not so much about us, as it is about them. In the years since Shevchenko’s death, Ukraine has changed beyond recognition, and when we read the lines of the Kobzar about his contemporaries who go mute into serfdom with their children, we know for certain this is not about us but about the past. Our Katerynas no longer love Moscow soldiers, and if they do, they are not perceived as their own. It’s all historical because Ukrainians listened to Shevchenko.
And Russians did not. So Shevchenko remains a living prophet, his words about an empire where from a Moldovan to a Finn (well, from a Karelian to a Tuvan) everything is silent in all languages, can also be broadcast in Russian news and quoted in Putin’s speeches as his greatest achievement. (For Pushkin, all those Finns and Kalmyks had their recommendations — he wished to see them at his monument as Russified, and in this, too, he coincided with the people). Shevchenko’s “Caucasus” is a vivid and harsh portrayal not of the past, but of the contemporary Russian Empire, and his poems continue to describe the Ukrainian struggle against it. If Russia changed, all this would be history. But it has not changed. And it is unlikely to change. Future generations of Russians will just as now circle around Pushkin’s pedestal, because the poet will remain their contemporary.
By the way, it hasn’t always been that way. For the empire, Pushkin was too free-spirited — and only decades after the poet’s death did it understand how it could use his legacy. The Bolsheviks also rejected him. Love seemed too bourgeois to them, freedom was supposedly won by the “working people,” and the imperial myth did not align with the idea of world revolution and the self-determination of nations.
Stalin returned Pushkin to the pedestal in 1937. He did so because he had finally transitioned from the idea of world revolution to the idea of imperial restoration under the red flag, and he liked the proposal to solemnly commemorate (what blasphemy) the centenary of the poet’s death. “Pushkin is completely ours, Soviet, because the Soviet government inherited everything that is best in our people,” wrote Pravda. And this was true, because such a people — ready to die for the empire, dreaming only of freedom — was exactly what Stalin needed. And then the city of Pushkin appeared, along with new streets, cultural parks, and sanatoriums. Stalin was the main hero of the solemn meeting dedicated to Pushkin’s memory, lines from the poet’s verses greeted concentration camp prisoners, carefully hung above the entrance to the GULAG… So, Pushkin never descended from his pedestal again.
And, as you see, there is no great fault of his own. We are unlucky with neighbors, he was unlucky with the people. If those people were capable of something more than expansion and destruction, if they believed their poet that the star of alluring happiness is freedom, not submission, Georges Nivat would continue to analyze Pushkin’s love lyrics, and we would pass by his monuments without emotion.
It was not Pushkin who made Pushkin relevant. It was Putin who made Pushkin relevant.
Illustration: Boris Orlov “National Totem A. S. Pushkin in Marshal’s Uniform,” 1982
