Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations

Why Pushkin Did Not Become a Decembrist

60 Why Push­ kin Did Not Be­ come a De­ cem­ brist Igor Nem­ i­ rov­ sky The opin­ ion of De­ cem­ brist and mem­ ber of the ­ United Slavs Ivan I. Gor­ ba­ chev­ sky (1800–69) about Push­ kin is per­ haps the most scath­ ing and ta­ booed con­ tem­ po­ rary ap­ prai­ sal of the per­ son­ al­ ity of the poet in Push­ kin stud­ ies. Con­ tained in a let­ ter from Gor­ ba­ chev­ sky to an­ other De­ cem­ brist, Mi­ khail A. Bestu­ zhev (1800–71), ­ Gorbachevsky’s im­ pres­ sion of Push­ kin so em­ bar­ rassed the Push­ kin­ ist Mi­ khail I. Se­ mev­ sky that he ex­ cluded it from the first pub­ li­ ca­ tion of the let­ ter, ex­ plain­ ing his ac­ tion, un­ or­ tho­ dox for an his­ to­ rian, by stat­ ing that ­ Gorbachevky’s views could not be pub­ lished be­ cause they were “ex­ tremely harsh about the per­ sonal char­ ac­ ter of a great poet, and un­ sub­ stan­ tiated.”1 In a schol­ arly ­ about-face, ­ Gorbachevsky’s opin­ ion was ad­ mit­ ted into schol­ ar­ ship not long be­ fore the 1917 rev­ o­ lu­ tion, when the au­ thor­ ity of Push­ kin began to cede prom­ i­ nence to that of the De­ cem­ brists as the in­ itia­ tors of the Rus­ sian rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary move­ ment. Pavel E. Shcheg­ o­ lev, the pub­ lisher of ­ Gorbachevsky’s ap­ prai­ sal of Push­ kin, was not only an im­ pres­ sive Push­ kin­ ist and his­ to­ rian but also a pro­ fes­ sional rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary. There­ fore ­ Gorbachevsky’s let­ ter ap­ peared in full for the first time on the pages of the rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ary (Men­ she­ vik) news­ paper Day (Den’), and only after that was it pub­ lished in a sep­ ar­ ate edi­ tion of Nemirovsky / Why Pushkin Did Not Become a Decembrist 61­ Gorbachevsky’s notes and let­ ters.2 It was not ac­ ci­ den­ tal that this pub­ li­ ca­ tion oc­ curred in the ­ hundredth-anniversary year of the De­ cem­ brist up­ ris­ ing in 1925. Fur­ ther­ more, as late as 1963, in the next ac­ a­ demic (that is to say, ­ would-be com­ plete) edi­ tion of ­ Gorbachevsky’s notes and let­ ters, the ­ Decembrist’s as­ sess­ ment of Push­ kin was pub­ lished with a cut. I quote it here in full: I can­ not for­ get that pamph­ let that I read to you—that essay by our own Iv[an] Iv[an­ o­ vich] Push­ chin about his ly­ ceum up­ bring­ ing and about his Push­ kin, about whom he wrote a lot. Poor Push­ chin ­ doesn’t even know that we were in fact for­ bid­ den by the Su­ preme Duma to be­ come ac­ quainted with the poet Al­ ex­ an­ der Ser­ gee­ vich Push­ kin when he lived in the south. And why this was was ­ stated di­ rectly: that be­ cause of his char­ ac­ ter and co­ ward­ li­ ness, be­ cause of his dis­ si­ pated life­ style, he would im­ me­ di­ ately make a de­ nun­ ci­ a­ tion to the au­ thor­ ities about the ex­ is­ tence of the Se­ cret So­ ci­ ety. And now I am com­ pletely con­ vinced that it is so; he him­ self near his death con­ firmed it to Zhu­ kov­ sky: “Tell him [Em­ peror Nich­ o­ las I] that if not for this, I would have been com­ pletely his.” What does this mean? And this was said by the Na­ tional Poet, the name by which all the aris­ to­ crats and toad­ ies call him. Read care­ fully about their up­ bring­ ing in the ly­ ceum; is that ­ really the soil from which grow na­ tional poets, re­ pub­ li­ cans, and pa­ tri­ ots? Was our youth­ ful life like ­ theirs? Did they suf­ fer­ through those wants, those hu­ mil­ i­ a­ tions, those dep­ ri­ va­ tions, like hun­ ger and cold, that we suf­ fered ­ through? And look at them from the per­ spec­ tive of mo­ ral­ ity. ­ Murav’ev-Apostol and ­ Bestuzhev-Riumin told such sto­ ries about­ Pushkin’s es­ ca...