One of the most horrible periods in all of Russian history was the winter of 1921. The country was being wracked by civil war, executions, famine, and insurrection. While some still harbored hopes that a return to normalcy was just around the corner, it was already clear that the old familiar way of life was gone forever.
The madness of War Communism* had caused hundreds of thousands to die a cold and hungry death, and there was a sense that at any moment power would slip from Bolshevik hands. Almost all of Tambov Province was up in arms, the Baltic fleet was reaching for its weapons, and the sailors stationed at Kronstadt – one of the mainstays of the revolution – were in a state of rebellion.
In the spring of 1921, a cunning move by the Soviets – the introduction of the New Economic Policy – alleviated the famine and bought the Bolsheviks some time, so that they could consolidate their regime. Their socialist brothers – the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who had long since been forced underground by their open opposition to the Bolsheviks – would soon be put on trial, and in a year the “philosophers’ ships” of tragic fame would carry away the expelled flower of the Russian intelligentsia.
Amidst the cold, hunger, and misery, a group of badgered and degraded Petrograd writers decided to commemorate Alexander Pushkin on the anniversary of his death (Feb. 10, 1837; Jan. 29, old style). One might have thought this was hardly the time for such an event. With civil war, political terror, and desperate poverty all around, surely there were more pressing concerns. On the other hand, it would not be the first time that people in the midst of material hardship turned for solace to the immaterial.
The commemorations were to be held at the Petrograd House of Writers. Later, in emigration, Alexander Amfiteatrov recalled how this institution came into being in 1919.
It started very simply and modestly as an ordinary cafeteria that served a somewhat better meal than the Soviet cafeterias, for a slightly higher price. Back then, you still had to pay at Soviet dining establishments – or rather establishments of mass food poisoning. And they should have kept it that way, since once they became free, Soviet dining halls, which were already beyond all imagination, became absolute cesspools in which the horrific pilfering of the Petrograd Consumer Commune was rivaled by the carelessness and incompetence of the administration, the filthiness of the kitchen, and the dissipation of the personnel. So the much-talked-about free dining, instead of serving as the powerful demagogic measure it was supposed to be – something akin to the frumenium1 of Ancient Rome – quickly degenerated into a universal laughingstock. It cost twice as much to eat at the writers’ cafeteria, but it was five times as nourishing. It was as if the mark-up in price took the place of the former membership and cooperative dues and helped to build up some working assets…. As a cafeteria designed to serve 500 diners, it had the right to a sizable facility. The founding members put in the necessary energy to arrange for the allocation and occupation of a large, vacant, mansion with a garden on Basseynaya Street, close to where it joins with Liteyny Prospect – in other words, in the very center of the capital. An even worse horror for the Petrograd intelligentsia than their hunger for food was their hunger for fuel. We lived in apartments devoid of furniture, which had been burned in bourgeoiska stoves2 when it was freezing or well below freezing inside and people did not take off their overcoats and worked in hats and gloves or at least wrapped their numbed hands in rags. The House of Writers offered its members daytime warmth or even, in cases where someone wound up displaced by the cold or the proletariat, a place to sleep at night. It was natural for something like a professional club to emerge around this warmth, and although it was not named or sanctioned as such, its functions kept expanding. As soon as the most minimal material needs were satisfied, spiritual ones followed.
It started very simply and modestly as an ordinary cafeteria that served a somewhat better meal than the Soviet cafeterias, for a slightly higher price. Back then, you still had to pay at Soviet dining establishments – or rather establishments of mass food poisoning. And they should have kept it that way, since once they became free, Soviet dining halls, which were already beyond all imagination, became absolute cesspools in which the horrific pilfering of the Petrograd Consumer Commune was rivaled by the carelessness and incompetence of the administration, the filthiness of the kitchen, and the dissipation of the personnel. So the much-talked-about free dining, instead of serving as the powerful demagogic measure it was supposed to be – something akin to the frumenium1 of Ancient Rome – quickly degenerated into a universal laughingstock.
It cost twice as much to eat at the writers’ cafeteria, but it was five times as nourishing. It was as if the mark-up in price took the place of the former membership and cooperative dues and helped to build up some working assets…. As a cafeteria designed to serve 500 diners, it had the right to a sizable facility. The founding members put in the necessary energy to arrange for the allocation and occupation of a large, vacant, mansion with a garden on Basseynaya Street, close to where it joins with Liteyny Prospect – in other words, in the very center of the capital.
An even worse horror for the Petrograd intelligentsia than their hunger for food was their hunger for fuel. We lived in apartments devoid of furniture, which had been burned in bourgeoiska stoves2 when it was freezing or well below freezing inside and people did not take off their overcoats and worked in hats and gloves or at least wrapped their numbed hands in rags. The House of Writers offered its members daytime warmth or even, in cases where someone wound up displaced by the cold or the proletariat, a place to sleep at night. It was natural for something like a professional club to emerge around this warmth, and although it was not named or sanctioned as such, its functions kept expanding. As soon as the most minimal material needs were satisfied, spiritual ones followed.
The House of Writers began to rescue collections of books from being burned for heat or merely sold off for a song. Then it started to organize literary evenings. The auditorium was always filled to capacity. Attending an event at the House of Writers meant not only spending time in a more or less heated building among likeminded people, but also finding reassurance that culture was not, despite evidence to the contrary, dead.
It is not surprising that during that unbearably dark, cold, and hungry February of 1921 so many people took part in the commemoration of Pushkin. The “evenings” stretched out over several days, and the star of the show was always Alexander Blok, who was wildly famous, having already written his poem The Twelve (which turned some against him, while earning him the adoration of others). He was also severely ill and in a state of deep depression, but nevertheless delivered a rousing lecture that began with the famous words, “From an early age, our memory retains a cheerful name: Pushkin.”
A cheerful name, a light, carefree name – this is what Blok saw in Pushkin at the time, but this was not some foolish, superficial cheer, not meaningless lightness, but internal freedom that allowed the poet to preserve the self under any circumstances.
And in this speech Blok, genius that he was, already sensing his own approaching death, said:
It was also not D’Anthès’ bullet that killed Pushkin; it was a lack of air. His culture was dying with him. “It’s time, my friend, it’s time! / The heart seeks naught but peace.” This was Pushkin’s dying sigh, and the sigh of the culture of the Pushkin era. “On earth we’ll find no bliss / But can seek calm and freedom.” Calm and freedom. They are essential if the poet is to unleash harmony. But calm and freedom can also be taken away. Not outward calm, but the calm of creation. Not childish freedom, not the liberty of permissiveness, but creative freedom – secret liberty. And the poet dies because there is nothing left to breathe; life has lost its meaning. Vladislav Khodasevich describes Blok’s lecture in his memoirs.
It was also not D’Anthès’ bullet that killed Pushkin; it was a lack of air. His culture was dying with him. “It’s time, my friend, it’s time! / The heart seeks naught but peace.” This was Pushkin’s dying sigh, and the sigh of the culture of the Pushkin era. “On earth we’ll find no bliss / But can seek calm and freedom.” Calm and freedom. They are essential if the poet is to unleash harmony. But calm and freedom can also be taken away. Not outward calm, but the calm of creation. Not childish freedom, not the liberty of permissiveness, but creative freedom – secret liberty. And the poet dies because there is nothing left to breathe; life has lost its meaning.
Vladislav Khodasevich describes Blok’s lecture in his memoirs.
His inspired words about Pushkin came last. He was wearing a black jacket over a white, high-collared sweater. Wiry and lean, his wind-blown, ruddy face gave him the appearance of a fisherman. He spoke in a muffled voice, clipping his words, with his hands in his pockets. At times he turned his head toward Kristi3 and enunciated the words, “Bureaucrats are in essence our rabble, the rabble of yesterday and today…. May those bureaucrats who are planning to guide poetry along their own channels, encroaching upon its secret liberty and preventing it from fulfilling its mysterious purpose, beware of worse sobriquets….” Poor Kristi was visibly suffering, squirming in his chair. I was told that, before he left, while he was putting on his coat in the foyer, he loudly said, “I didn’t expect such tactlessness from Blok.” Although in this setting, coming from Blok, such a speech did not sound like tactlessness, but rather profound tragedy, perhaps, in part, repentance. The author of The Twelve was leaving Russian society and Russian literature a last will and testament that they preserve the final legacy of Pushkin – freedom, however “secret” it might be. And, while he was speaking, there was a feeling that the wall between him and the audience was gradually crumbling. The ovation he was given was imbued with the sort of pure joy that always accompanies reconciliation with a beloved person.
His inspired words about Pushkin came last. He was wearing a black jacket over a white, high-collared sweater. Wiry and lean, his wind-blown, ruddy face gave him the appearance of a fisherman. He spoke in a muffled voice, clipping his words, with his hands in his pockets. At times he turned his head toward Kristi3 and enunciated the words, “Bureaucrats are in essence our rabble, the rabble of yesterday and today…. May those bureaucrats who are planning to guide poetry along their own channels, encroaching upon its secret liberty and preventing it from fulfilling its mysterious purpose, beware of worse sobriquets….”
Poor Kristi was visibly suffering, squirming in his chair. I was told that, before he left, while he was putting on his coat in the foyer, he loudly said, “I didn’t expect such tactlessness from Blok.” Although in this setting, coming from Blok, such a speech did not sound like tactlessness, but rather profound tragedy, perhaps, in part, repentance. The author of The Twelve was leaving Russian society and Russian literature a last will and testament that they preserve the final legacy of Pushkin – freedom, however “secret” it might be. And, while he was speaking, there was a feeling that the wall between him and the audience was gradually crumbling. The ovation he was given was imbued with the sort of pure joy that always accompanies reconciliation with a beloved person.
A few days later, Khodasevich himself spoke at one of the Pushkin evenings. For him – a marvelous poet, critic, and literary scholar – Pushkin was a guiding light, about whom he had written approximately 80 articles. In February 1921, he used a slightly altered line from Pushkin’s poem To the Poet as the title of his lecture – “The Shaken Tripod” – and talked about the arrival of a new generation for which Pushkin would be alien, or at least less familiar than for previous generations. He likened the new generation to the mob we see in Pushkin’s poem, a mob that is blind to the poet’s greatness and “in its childlike playfulness shakes the tripod,” the tripod that holds the poet’s flame, his offering to the gods.
February is one of the darkest months, and in the northern city of Petrograd it was a month of almost perpetual night. One can only imagine the shudder with which the audience, as it walked out into the cold and gloom, recalled what Blok had said about Pushkin being killed by a lack of air, or the words with which Khodasevich concluded his lecture:
Perhaps the resurgent interest in the poet that many have sensed in recent years arose out of foreboding, out of a driving need, in part, to understand Pushkin before it is too late, before the connection with his era is lost and, in part, by a passionate desire to feel his closeness, because we are living through the last hours of this closeness before we must bid it farewell. And our desire to make the anniversary of Pushkin’s death a day of public celebration is, it seems to me, in part, prompted by that same foreboding: we are agreeing on the name that will be used in crying out to one another, by which we will know one another in the impending gloom. A half-year passed, and in August 1921 Blok died, hungry, tormented, and mad. In June 1922, Khodasevich left Russia forever, to die of cancer in 1939 in a Paris hospital for the poor. The words that they penned about Pushkin with their heart’s blood during that winter of 1921 remain with us, as do the lines of a poem written by Blok during that same February:
Perhaps the resurgent interest in the poet that many have sensed in recent years arose out of foreboding, out of a driving need, in part, to understand Pushkin before it is too late, before the connection with his era is lost and, in part, by a passionate desire to feel his closeness, because we are living through the last hours of this closeness before we must bid it farewell. And our desire to make the anniversary of Pushkin’s death a day of public celebration is, it seems to me, in part, prompted by that same foreboding: we are agreeing on the name that will be used in crying out to one another, by which we will know one another in the impending gloom.
A half-year passed, and in August 1921 Blok died, hungry, tormented, and mad. In June 1922, Khodasevich left Russia forever, to die of cancer in 1939 in a Paris hospital for the poor. The words that they penned about Pushkin with their heart’s blood during that winter of 1921 remain with us, as do the lines of a poem written by Blok during that same February:
Пушкин! Тайную свободу Пели мы вослед тебе! Дай нам руку в непогоду, Помоги в немой борьбе!
Не твоих ли звуков сладость Вдохновляла в те года? Не твоя ли, Пушкин, радость Окрыляла нас тогда?
Вот зачем такой знакомый И родной для сердца звук – Имя Пушкинского Дома В Академии Наук.
Вот зачем, в часы заката Уходя в ночную тьму, С белой площади Сената Тихо кланяюсь ему.
Pushkin! Having you to guide us We sing secret freedom’s song! With your help we’ll bear this onus. Help the silent struggling throng!
Was it not the sweetness of your Words that filled us with delight? Pushkin, was it not your rapture, That lifted us in wingéd flight?
This is why a loving tremor ‘Wakens deep within our hearts – Pushkin House – the very tenor Of this name our love imparts.
This is why, with darkness falling, Heading home at end of day, Crossing Senate Square so sprawling, I send a quiet bow its way.
* WAR COMMUNISM was the Bolsheviks’ state of emergency economic policy imposed during the Civil War (1918-1921). It nationalized factories, centralized foreign trade, made private enterprise illegal, introduced rationing, forced requisitions from farms and imposed severe labor discipline.
1. Free distribution of corn.
2. A portable cast-iron wood stove that to this day retains the nickname “bourgeois woman.”
3. Mikhail Kristi, plenipotentiary of the People’s Commissariat of Education in Petrograd.
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