Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations

The Red Pushkin and the Writers’ Union in 1937: Prescription and Taboo

378 The Red Push­ kin and the ­ Writers’ Union in 1937 Pre­ scrip­ tion and Taboo Carol Any Amid the ideo­ log­ i­ cal ­ shifts of the early and mid-1930s, Push­ kin went from being a land­ own­ ing mem­ ber of the op­ pres­ sor class to a ­ nearrevolutionary ­ comrade-in-arms of the De­ cem­ brists, train­ ing his art­ against the ­ throne. The pub­ lic un­ veil­ ing of this new, ­ quasi-Soviet Push­ kin took place in the oxy­ mo­ ronic year of 1937, which ­ paired mass slaugh­ ter with ­ staged pub­ lic ju­ bi­ lee over the new con­ sti­ tu­ tion, the tri­ um­ phal twen­ ti­ eth an­ ni­ ver­ sary of the rev­ o­ lu­ tion, and the Push­ kin cen­ ten­ nial. The Sta­ li­ nized Push­ kin be­ came a ubiq­ ui­ tous cli­ ché ren­ der­ ing all other inter­ pre­ ta­ tions of Push­ kin taboo; yet we ­ should not im­ a­ gine that it was sim­ ply ­ handed down from above in ­ ready-made form at a cer­ tain point in time and im­ me­ di­ ately inter­ nal­ ized by the pub­ lic. Even as the re­ gime po­ si­ tioned Push­ kin in sup­ port of So­ viet ideo­ log­ i­ cal prem­ ises, writ­ ers and in­ tel­ lec­ tu­ als ex­ pressed al­ ter­ na­ tive inter­ pre­ ta­ tions. Steph­ a­ nie San­ dler has shown that writ­ ers like Mi­ khail Bul­ ga­ kov and Da­ niil ­ Kharms wrote works that in­ voked the of­ fi­ cial Push­ kin while si­ mul­ ta­ ne­ ously under­ cut­ ting the overt, “safe” mes­ sage with ­ veiled al­ lu­ sions to the Great Ter­ ror.1 These works ­ failed to pass cen­ sor­ ship in Any / The Red Pushkin and the Writers’ Union in 1937 379 1937, but not all taboo inter­ pre­ ta­ tions were kept ­ safely out of the pub­ lic arena. This chap­ ter ­ argues that such inter­ pre­ ta­ tions found their way into pub­ lished ar­ ti­ cles about Push­ kin, as well as into ­ high-profile­ speeches at one of the cul­ mi­ nat­ ing ­ events of the ju­ bi­ lee, the ­ fourth ple­ num of the ­ Writers’ Union, known as the Push­ kin ple­ num, held in Feb­ ru­ ary 1937. Writ­ ers used their re­ marks about Push­ kin to ex­ press their ob­ jec­ tions to so­ cial­ ist re­ al­ ist aes­ thet­ ics and to al­ lude to their own lit­ er­ ary and moral cap­ tiv­ ity. After the rev­ o­ lu­ tion and through­ out the 1920s, Bolshe­ vik of­ fi­ cials had re­ garded Push­ kin as a mem­ ber of the op­ pres­ sor class and down­ played his sig­ nif­i­ cance. The chief lit­ er­ ary cen­ sor in the 1920s, Pavel I.­ Lebedev-Poliansky, ex­ cluded Push­ kin from the list of ap­ proved lit­ er­ ary clas­ sics.2 Even the old in­ tel­ li­ gent­ sia, eager to find in Push­ kin and other ­ nineteenth-century in­ tel­ lec­ tu­ als a model of he­ roic be­ hav­ ior that they could em­ u­ late, often found that Push­ kin fell short.3 The em­ i­ nent and in­ fluen­ tial Push­ kin ­ scholar Vi­ ken­ tii Vere­ saev, in the pref­ ace to his 1929 book V dvukh pla­ nakh (On Two ­ Planes), ­ hinted at his dis­ ap­ point­ ment in Push­ kin as a ­ failed hero. He wrote that in Push­ kin, I ­ thought I would find the high­ est, most ra­ di­ antly il­ lu­ mi­ nated ­ bearer of “the liv­ ing life,” the most au­ then­ tic crown­ ing of that rare abil­ ity among hu­ mans—to trans­ form life in his con­ scious­ ness into ­ beauty and glad­ ness. In the ­ course of my work on Push­ kin I be­ came con­ vinced that my ap­ proach to him was­ thoroughly wrong, that I would not find in him what I ­ sought. What I did find will be told in this book.4 In the end, ­ Veresaev’s book drew a stark line ­ between the “per­ fect” art­ ist and the ­ deeply ­ flawed man. De­ spite ­ Veresaev’s in­ itial in­ ten­ tion, his book ­ turned out to be very much a prod­ uct of the 1920s, an era that­ viewed Push­ kin with sus­ pi...