PUSHKIN

No matter how much Western Russian experts may boast of their vast erudition in Russian culture, they do not understand Pushkin. For them he is primarily a great Russian poet, arguably the greatest. But Pushkin is vastly more than anything that can be expressed in biographical or professional terms. He has become an inalienable part of the Russian national soul. His genius is harmoniously attached to the strings of the Russian spirit, and one might even say that Russia herself has been attuned to his lyre, like a grand orchestra receiving the pitch from its concertmaster.

It is always inadequate to talk about Pushkin’s life or his art, whatever one can say about it. A true Russian may just as well start reciting Pushkin from memory, as everything else feels inferior and disrespectful. In this book Pushkin dwells in every section and in numerous entries, which is a far better tribute to him than even the best laudatory special entry about him.

There is just one rather unusual point that I want to make in this particular special Pushkin entry. Since the onslaught of the iconoclastic madness of the 1990’s in Russia, many icons have been attacked, and Pushkin, being one of the icons, has been attacked as well. The anti-Soviet crowd of attackers has effectively accused Pushkin of serving as a poster-child for Soviet propaganda! Pushkin’s personality cult in the former USSR, they have alleged, was helping to promote the personality cults of the Soviet leaders, such as Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, plus it served to buttress the whole edifice of the Soviet State!

…Why should I even be talking of such obvious ridiculous nonsense?, a Pushkin-loving reader may ask. Well, even such apparent nonsense may serve us well to make a valuable point. It is true that there was a veritable Pushkin cult in the USSR, but it was perfectly justified. Pushkin and Russia are so inextricably tied together that a Pushkin cult is by the same token a cult of Mother Russia, and, conversely, no Russian patriot can ever be indifferent to the genius of Pushkin, which naturally amounts to a full-blown and ever-blossoming cult of one of her greatest heroes.

A Postscript and Reminder: In the recent academic/national poll Imya Rossiya (see a large cluster of entries earlier in this section), designed to vote “The Greatest Russian,” Russia’s greatest Saint, Prince Alexander Nevsky won this title in every round. Pushkin was second in the first round and fourth after Petr Stolypin (a rather artificial choice, to be quite honest) and Comrade Stalin who came third in the final round. Coming either second or fourth is still a huge ranking, considering that it was a serious contest among all Russians of history, which long list included at least three hundred (out of five hundred) bona fide geniuses and Russian national symbols.