Was Pushkin an Imperialist?
When “cancel culture” becomes a cancelled culture
As we know, with the outbreak of any military conflict, human culture is the first to come under attack. The current war in Ukraine is no exception. Destroyed museums, burned libraries, lost archives and architectural monuments, even as terrible as it looks in the 21st century, churches and monasteries. This is all a picture of modern warfare. To this has recently been added another detail: demolished monuments. The war on monuments has become a visible part of “cancelling Russian culture” in Ukraine and an element of a broader phenomenon: cancel culture in the West.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukraine has been gradually getting rid of Russian and Soviet cultural heritage and this struggle symbolically reflects the confrontation on the front line. The first to be hit was the Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin.
Ternopil authorities in Western Ukraine removed the statue of Alexander Pushkin in April as other regions in Ukraine have started to question why monuments from Soviet (and pre-Soviet) times remain after Russia invaded the country in February.
“Pushkin doesn’t have anything to do with what we need to build here in Ukraine, like our own culture,” says one of the activists, who works as an IT manager in Ternopil.
“We should demolish all those postcolonial things, which don’t belong here and highlight local poets and artists.”
“Pushkinfall” affected almost all regions of Ukraine. Monuments to Alexander Pushkin were dismantled in Uzhhorod, Ternopil, Konotop, Chernihiv and other places. Sometimes, as was the case in Chernihiv, the museum staff themselves insisted on dismantling the monument in order to save the statue from vandalism.
Seeing the bewilderment of intellectuals, historians, and museum workers, one cannot help but wonder: was Pushkin really an imperialist? Is it possible to associate his poetry and historical legacy with the goals of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine?
Culture, of course, cannot defend itself because it is inseparable from human society and its values. And, importantly, it rarely finds impartial advocates. Nevertheless, to separate Putin from Pushkin is important for a deeper and more objective understanding of the causes of the conflict. Otherwise, the situation with Pushkin is reminiscent of the well-known proverb of the Soviet era, when the question “Who did it?” or “Who will pay for it?” was followed by a universal answer: “Pushkin”. This was the favorite answer of uneducated and dull-witted people in the Soviet years, and it could literally be applied to any situation. Today, however, the situation is different.
Pushkin and Ukraine
Alexander Pushkin is considered by many to be the most talented poet and one of the greatest writers of Russia. He was born into a noble Russian family in Moscow in 1799 and died following a duel in 1837. His life was short, but extremely rich in literary work. He became a prominent Russian poet, playwright, and prose writer already at his young age, in the 1820s.
The poet’s vibrant creative life was closely associated with Ukraine. His stay in Ukraine during his exile from Russia in 1820–1824 (Katerynoslav, Odesa, Kamianka, near Bila Tserkva, and, for a visit, Kyiv and Chernihiv) acquainted Pushkin with the Ukrainian national culture. In 1823, Alexander Pushkin spent his first weeks in Odesa after being exiled from St Petersburg by the Tsar Nicholas I for mischievous epigrams. Governor Mikhail Vorontsov subsequently humiliated the writer with petty administrative jobs. But it took only 13 months and more epigrams for Pushkin to be thrown out of Odesa too. Somehow, he still found time while in town to finish the poem, The Bakhchysaray Fountain.
The first chapter of his masterpiece, Eugene Onegin, was also written in Odesa, on Ukrainian soil.
In 1820–1830s Pushkin maintained close relations with the Ukrainian intellectuals Mykola Markevych, Mykhailo Maksymovych, Dmytro Bantysh-Kamensky, and Orest Somov. It was he who helped the Ukrainian and Russian genius Nikolai Gogol to establish himself in Russian literature. He maintained an interest in Ukrainian folklore, and his book collection included Opyt sobraniia drevnikh malorossiiskikh pesnei (An Attempted Collection of Old Little Russian Songs, 1819) by Nikolai Tsertelev, Malorossiiskie pesni (Little Russian Songs, 1827) and Ukrainskie narodnye pesni (Ukrainian Folk Songs, 1834) by M. Maksymovych, and Zaporozhskaia starina (Zaporizhia Antiquities, 1833) by Izmail Sreznevsky.
Pushkin wrote an enthusiastic review of Gogol’s first published work, Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, filled with brilliant Ukrainian traditional folklore and poetry. Until the last days of Alexander Pushkin’s life, they maintained a close friendship. Nikolai Gogol later thanked his teacher by mentioning Pushkin’s name in the famous play written in 1835, The Government Inspector (the idea of which was also suggested to him by the great Russian poet).
Critics argue that Pushkin’s poem Poltava contained an official governmental view of the history of the Northern War of 1700–1721 and of Peter the Great himself. However, they forget how this poem was received by the intellectual Ukrainian society of the time. The prominent Ukrainian writer and poet Eugene Grebenka translated Pushkin’s poem into Ukrainian as early as 1831. In 1836, a complete translation of this masterpiece (which was originally to be called Mazepa after the famous Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa) came out.
Later, many prominent poets and writers of Ukraine turned to Pushkin’s works and translated his poems into Ukrainian. Panteleimon Kulish, an outstanding ethnographer, writer and historian, a friend of Ukrainian genius poet Taras Shevchenko, was greatly influenced by the ideas of Alexander Pushkin. It wasn’t just a spiritual connection. P. Kulish is the creator of the modern Ukrainian alphabet, which all Ukrainians use to this day. His contribution to Ukrainian literature and culture is difficult to overestimate.
Pushkin and imperialism
Imperialism, as we can learn from Encyclopaedia Britannica, is nothing more than “State policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas.” Britannica argues that “Russia, Italy, Germany, the United States, and Japan became imperial powers in the period from the middle of the 19th century to World War I.” Alexander Pushkin, as we know, was mortally wounded in a duel in 1837.
But that’s not the point at all. The point is what position Pushkin took in relation to the imperial powers and personally to Emperor Nicholas I. Pushkin was in exile twice, both times for serious misconduct before the official authorities and for an impertinent front, which seemed to have no limit. The first, southern exile lasted from 1820 to 1824. The reason for this was impertinent epigrams on high-ranking Russian officials, and even on the Tsar. During his first exile Pushkin was able to visit Ukraine, Moldavia and the Crimea. The second time Pushkin was sent into exile in 1824–1826.
Pushkin’s relations with the new Russian monarch Nicholas at first did not develop at all.
It is known that only his absence in St. Petersburg prevented Pushkin from taking part in the uprising on Senate Square together with his friends who were in opposition to the government. The enthronement of Tsar Nicholas I (December 14, 1825) and the events accompanying the coronation caught Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovskoye, his mother’s ancestral estate, where he was sent from Odessa in July 1824. Pushkin maintained friendly relations with the Decembrists until the end of his life. The unsuccessful uprising on the Senate Square was reflected in his works. Pushkin’s classmate and Decembrist Ivan Pushchin (an active participant in the 1825 uprising in Senate Square) was one of the closest friends of the Russian poet.
One could say that these facts would be enough to show the complete lack of connection between Pushkin’s fate and the fate of Russian imperialism. The rejection of despotism was for him an integral part of his philosophy of life. And the current war in Ukraine would not have dreamed of the poet in the most terrible dream.
Pushkin’s poetry is permeated with the idea of freedom, the exact opposite of which seemed to him the new Russian monarch Nicholas I. This inner freedom was the main feature of Pushkin’s character, which so attracted his contemporaries and descendants. It is this quality that laid the foundation of his literary genius.
Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, who idolized Pushkin’s friend Ivan Pushchin and the Decembrists, after his release from exile tracked down Pushchin’s daughter and painted her portrait. In March 1858 genius Ukrainian poet Shevchenko wrote: “With Nina, Pushchin’s daughter, I met her foster mother M.A.Dorokhova. Surprisingly cute and frisky creature! On November 4, 1857 I painted a portrait of Nina on my way back from exile in Transcaspia, waiting for the highest permission to settle in the capital, and I gave her painting lessons. The pupil makes excellent progress”.
So the fates of Russian and Ukrainian poets finally joined.
Pushkin and World Culture
The eminent Russian thinker and writer Fyodor Dostoevsky gave a speech on June 8, 1880, in honor of the opening of the Pushkin monument in Moscow, established on voluntary donations. Later, similar monuments appeared in other parts of Russia and Ukraine. In particular, in 1900, a bust of Pushkin in Chernihiv was also installed on voluntary donations. It was this monument that was moved to the museum this spring and thus saved from destruction.
In this speech, which itself has long ago entered the golden fund of world literature and has been translated into many languages, Fyodor Dostoevsky gave his vision of Pushkin’s role in world culture. In our era of conflicts and modern challenges, his view is especially relevant.
“Pushkin alone of all world poets possessed the capacity of fully identifying himself with another nationality. Take scenes from Faust, take The Miserly Knight, take the ballad ‘Once there Lived a Poor Knight’; read Don Juan again. Had Pushkin not signed them, you would never know that they were not written by a Spaniard. How profound and fantastic is the imagination in the poem ‘A Feast in Time of Plague’. But in this fantastic imagination is the genius of England; and in the hero’s wonderful song about the plague, and in Mary’s song,
Our children’s voices in the noisy school Were heard…
These are English songs; this is the yearning of the British genius, its lament, its painful presentiment of its future. (…)
In the sad and rapturous music of these verses is the very soul of Northern Protestantism, of the English heresiarch, of the illimitable mystic with his dull, sombre, invincible aspiration, and the impetuous power of his mystical dreaming. As you read these strange verses, you seem to hear the spirit of the times, of the Reformation, you understand the warlike fire of early Protestantism, and finally history herself; not merely by thought but as one who passes through the armed sectarian camp, sings psalms with them, weeps with them in their religious ecstasies, and with them believed in their belief. (…) No, I will say deliberately, there had never been a poet with a universal sympathy like Pushkin’s. And it is not his sympathy alone, but his amazing profundity, the reincarnation of his spirit in the spirit of foreign nations, a reincarnation almost perfect and therefore also miraculous, because the phenomenon has never been repeated in any poet in all the world. It is only in Pushkin; and by this, I repeat, he is a phenomenon never seen and never heard of before, and in my opinion, a prophetic phenomenon, because... because herein was expressed the national spirit of his poetry, the national spirit in its future development, the national spirit of our future, which is already implicit in the present, and it was expressed prophetically. For what is the power of the spirit of Russian nationality if not its aspiration after the final goal of universality and omni- humanity? No sooner had he become a completely national poet, no sooner had he come into contact with the national power, than he already anticipated the great future of that power. In this he was a Seer, in this a Prophet.”
From these words of the world-famous Russian writer, we can conclude that Dostoevsky did not consider Pushkin and his poetry as an instrument of Russian imperial politics, but a powerful message to humanity and a call to unite people through culture. Because only in a universal culture, which is already the domain of all peoples, could the greatness of such world-class poets as Shakespeare, Byron and Pushkin be truly revealed.
Alexander Pushkin was definitely not an imperialist. Just as Adolf Hitler was not a Jew and Vladimir Zelensky is not a Nazi. These claims are the result of primitive propaganda, which is nothing more than a tool for the destruction of culture, with the aim of abolishing it completely and permanently.
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