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Pushkin's Literary Gamble

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Allen McConnell
Allen McConnell*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Queens College
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Extract

Pushkin was a gambler all his life. He gambled at cards; he gambled on his creative genius to support an extravagant wife; he gambled his life in challenges to duels before dying of a duelist's bullet at thirty-seven. He was also a gambler much of the time when he wrote a poem, a drama, or a story, for the censor was ready to block or distort anything that might be unsuitable to an autocracy based on serfdom and fearful of criticism.

One of Pushkin's longest gambles—one which failed during his lifetime—was the attempt to rehabilitate the name of Aleksandr Nikolaevich Radishchev, author of the banned and destroyed Journey From St. Petersburg to Moscow (1790), a book which only in 1906 enjoyed reprinting in Russia in an edition not prohibitively expensive. Pushkin's attempt in two articles on Radishchev was beset with particular difficulties, for he not only had to damn Radishchev enough to get the article passed by the censor, but somehow to insinuate his own admiration for Radishchev.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 1960 , pp. 577 - 593
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1960

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References

1 Sakulin, P. N., Pushkin i Radishchev. Novoe reshenie starogo voprosa (Moscow, 1920), p. 75 Google Scholar.

2 Radishchev, Pavel N., “Aleksandr Nikolaevich Radishchev,” Russkij Vestnik, t. 18 (December, 1858), kn. I, 395–432 Google Scholar.

3 Sochinenija Pushkina. Izdavaemy Annenkovom, P. V.. VII (St. Petersburg, 1857), pp. 3–4 Google Scholar. In a subsequent article, Annenkov held that both articles on Radishchev reflected the “conservative-artistocratic theory” which Pushkin elaborated in the 1830's. See “Obshchestvennie idealy Pushkina; iz poslednikh let poeta,” Vestnik Evropy (June, 1880), kn. 3, pp. 624-25.

4 Gercen, A. I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, pod redak. Lemke, M. K., IX (Moscow, Petrograd, 1922), p. 275 Google Scholar.

5 Galakhov, A. D., Istorija russkoj slovesnosti, t. I, chast’ 2, (St. Petersburg, 1880), pp. 273-76Google Scholar.

6 Stojunin, V., Istoricheskija sochinenija, chast’ II (St. Petersburg, 1881), p. 365 Google Scholar.

7 Sukhomlinov, M. I., “A. N. Radishchev, avtor Puteshestvija iz Peterburga v Moskvy,“ in his Izsledovanie i stat'i, I (St. Petersburg, 1889), p. 649 Google Scholar. The article had first appeared in 1881.

8 Russkij Arkhiv (1881) , kn. 1, p. 235, cited in Sukhomlinov, op. cit., p. 649.

9 Spasovich, , Sochinenija, I (St. Petersburg, 1890), p. 205 Google Scholar, cited in Sakulin, op. cit., p. 20.

10 Jakushkin, V. E., “Radishchev i Pushkin,” Chtenie Imp. Obshch. 1st. i Drevn. Ross, pri Mosh. Univ. (1886)Google Scholar, kn. II, chast’ 2: Materialy istoriko-literaturnye, pp. 1-58.

11 Jakushkin's thesis was accepted by many scholars, including P. A. Efremov and P. O. Morozov, each of whom edited multivolumed collections of Pushkin's works; Semevskij, V. I., Krest'janskij vopros v Rossii v XVIII i pervoi poloviny XIX v., II (St. Petersburg, 1888), pp. 261-62Google Scholar; Veselovskij, A. N., Zapadnye vlijanie v novo] russkoj literature, (3-oe izd., Petrograd, 1916), p. 177 Google Scholar.

12 M. O. Lerner held that fear made Pushkin incapable of fairness to Radishchev: “The specter of revolution frightened Pushkin, who finally reached such a point that he could not speak calmly of Radishchev and his book… A feeling of anger finally blinded him and he finished the article with words condemning Radishchev's monstrous incomprehension.” “Proza Pushkina,” in Ovsjaniko-Kulikovskij, D. N., ed., Istorija russkoj literatury XIX v., (Moscow, 1910) , p. 418 Google Scholar.

13 See the scholarly work by Frank, S. L., Pushkin kak politicheskij myslitel (Belgrade, 1937)Google Scholar . Frank concentrates on the last decade of Pushkin's life and underestimates Pushkin's reservations on Peter the Great, which are shown in W.Lednicki's, Pushkin's “Bronze Horseman” (Berkeley, 1955)Google Scholar . The latter brilliant study draws upon a comprehensive knowledge of Pushkin's life and works.

14 Semennikov, V. P., “Radishchev i Pushkin,” Radishchev: ocherki i issledovanija (Moscow, Petrograd, 1923), pp. 241ȓ318 Google Scholar.

15 Makogonenko, G. P., “Pushkin i Radishchev,” in Leningradskij Gosud. Univ., Uchenye zapiski, No. 33 (1939), pp. 110–33Google Scholar.

16 Stepanov, N. L., Pushkin i Radishchev, (Moscow, 1949), pp. 4, 13, 23Google Scholar. This study and the preceding one illustrate the ingenuity and unabashed persistence with which scholars, at Party command, defend grotesque propositions.

17 Pushkin's “Puteshestvie iz Moskvy v Peterburg” is given in Akademija nauk SSSR, Institut russkoj literatury (Pushkinskij dom), Pushkin, A. S.. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desjati tomakh, izdanie vtoroe, (Moscow, 1956-58), t. VII, pp. 268–305 Google Scholar. Excerpts from the first draft are given ibid., pp. 627-41 and Notes, pp. 699-701. All subsequent references to Pushkin's works in this article are to this edition unless otherwise noted; roman numerals indicate the volume and Arabic numerals the page.

18 Mejlakh, B. S., “ ‘Puteshestvie iz Moskvy v Peterburg’ A. S. Pushkina,” Akademija nauk SSSR, Izvestija. Otdel. lit. i jazyka, VIII, No. 3, (1949), p. 216 Google Scholar.

19 It appeared without deletions for the first time in the Efremov edition of Pushkin's works in 1880, at the time when the Pushkin monument was unveiled in Moscow. Jakushkin, op. cit., p. 18.

20 Catherine's Notes on Radishchev's Journey are translated, with notes, in Thaler, Roderick P., ed., Radishchev's Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, (Cambridge, Mass., 1958) , pp. 239–49.Google Scholar References to Radishchev's Journey hereafter are to this translation. Nicholas’ condemnation of the Decembrists as men deluded by foreign ideas “incompatible with the ways and character of the Russian people” and his warning that improvements could never come from such “insolent and always destructive dreams” were given in his Coronation Manifesto, July 13, 1826. See Florinsky, M. T., Russia, A History and an Interpretation, II (New York, 1953), 755 Google Scholar.

21 Pushkin's frustration as a pardoned close friend of the Decembrists and as a writer whose works were censored by the Tsar is shown with discrimination and sensitivity in Professor Ernest Simmons, J., Pushkin (Cambridge, Mass., 1937)CrossRefGoogle Scholar , esp. Chap. XVIII, “A Prisoner of the Tsar's Court.“

22 Pushkin later used a modification of this incident in his unfinished story, “Dubrovskij,” which told of how an unfairly dispossessed landowner burned up, with the help of his serfs, the drunken officials who were installed in his manor.

23 Sukhomlinov, M., “A. N. Radishchev—avtor ‘Puteshestvija iz Peterburga v Moskvu,’ ” (St. Petersburg, 1883), p. 120.Google Scholar In the same year, the first biographical sketch of Radishchev appeared in D. Bantysh-Kamenskij's Slovar doslopamjatnykh ljudej russkoj zemli (Chasf IV, p. 258).

24 See Russkij bibliofil, No. 3 (1914); cited in Orlov, V. , Radishchev i russkaja literatura (Leningrad, 1952), p. 179 n. 2.Google Scholar

25 Mejlakh, op. cit., p. 227.

26 For Pushkin's true view of “the great empress” Catherine, see his savage unpublished “Istoricheskie zametki,” esp. VIII, 127-31.

27 Contrary to Semennikov, Pushkin did not neglect to note Radishchev's moderate projects.

28 Modzalevskij, B., “Biblioteka Pushkina,” in Pushkin i ego sovremenniki, t. III (St. Petersburg, 1909), vyp. 9-10, p. xvii Google Scholar.

29 Mirsky, D. S., Pushkin, (London, 1926), p. 52 Google Scholar.

30 Semennikov, op. cit., pp. 268-69; V. Orlov, op. cit., pp. 185-86.

31 See my article, “Radishchev's Political Thought,” in American Slavic and East European Review (December, 1958), pp. 439-55.

32 Russkij Arkhiv (1881).