Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

Alexander’s sudden death brought hope to the nearly desperate Pushkin, prepared to do almost anything to escape the countryside. News of the rebellion of December 14 began reaching Mikhailovskoe. Learning of its failure, Pushkin panicked; he later explained to Prince Vyazemsky, “I’ve never liked rebellion and revolution, that is true; but I was in contact with almost all of the conspirators and in correspondence with many of them. All inciting manuscripts were attributed to me, the way all the lewd ones go by Barkov’s name.”

Pushkin hoped for help from his mentors, Karamzin and Zhukovsky, who had retained their privileged court positions under the new emperor. Zhukovsky knew that the Investigative Commission was trying to tie Pushkin to the Decembrists. He wrote from St. Petersburg to Pushkin at Mikhailovskoe: “You are not involved in anything—that is true. But each of the conspirators had your poetry in his papers. This is a poor way to make friends with the government.”³

After the Investigative Commission, the Supreme Criminal Court took over the case. Pushkin wrote to a friend, “I impatiently await the decision on the fate of the wretches … I have firm hopes in the magnanimity of our young tsar.”

But many in Nicholas’s entourage urged him to punish the rebels severely. When Nicholas asked one of the hard-liners whether he thought that a death sentence would be too harsh, he replied, “On the contrary, Sire, we fear that you will be too merciful.” Nicholas countered, “Neither one—there’s a need to give a lesson: but I hope that no one will argue with me about the best right of Sovereigns—to forgive and soften punishment.”⁴

Was Nicholas being hypocritical? Or did he sincerely believe himself to be a merciful person? When the court sentenced the five revolutionary leaders to being quartered, Nicholas changed that to hanging; some others were condemned to hard labor for life instead of hanging. More than 120 men were sent to Siberia. Pushkin and his friends shuddered.

Pushkin, who knew all the executed men personally, obsessively drew a scaffold with five hanged men while writing his novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, and added the caption, “And I could have been …”

Pushkin wrote to Zhukovsky, “Perhaps it would please His Majesty to change my fate. Whatever my thoughts may be, political and religious, I keep them to myself and do not intend to madly contradict the generally accepted order.”

Meanwhile, Zhukovsky went abroad, Karamzin died. Pushkin was left without protection at the court. Now the young tsar would decide the poet’s fate by himself. Paradoxically, this was better for Pushkin.

Thirty-year-old Nicholas, imperious and determined, hated being pressured. He apparently sincerely esteemed Karamzin and Zhukovsky, but for him they were still Alexander’s people, and despite all his protestations of great love for his older brother, Nicholas was jealous of him.

In Russian history, a new strong ruler usually rejected the policies of his predecessor and selected a more distant model to emulate. That was the case with Peter I, Elizabeth I, and then Catherine II, Paul I, and Alexander I: each tried as quickly as possible to erase the memories of the previous monarch’s achievements, starting their own reign on a clean page.

Nicholas I was no exception: he did not orient himself on Alexander I but on Peter the Great. Like his brother, Nicholas was an excellent actor, but unlike Alexander, he wore his mask (or masks) much more comfortably. He was not burdened by his power, he relished it.

Nicholas I read a lot—primarily books on military issues, geography, and history, but also fiction, mostly foreign. One of his favorite writers was Sir Walter Scott, whom he met in 1816, when he traveled to England as a duke. Curiously, Scott predicted to Nicholas that he would be the tsar (there was no hint of it at the time), which elicited an embarrassed response: “Fortunately, poets are not oracles.”

When Nicholas became emperor, literature became another stage on which he decided to wrestle with his late brother: Alexander had banished the poet, so he, the new ruler, would allow Pushkin to rehabilitate himself.

In late August 1826, in Moscow for his coronation, he ordered “Pushkin to be sent here.”⁵ Nicholas knew little about Pushkin. But he intuited that there was an opportunity for an effective symbolic gesture. But, as people would say a century later, “it takes two to tango.” The presumed paradigm required a ready partner. Would the stubborn, volatile, and insolent Pushkin take the part?

As it happened, Pushkin was ready for a dialogue with the tsar. The shift in his position was due to the political situation, the advice of friends, and age, but also to the completion of his tragedy Boris Godunov, ten months before Nicholas summoned him. Pushkin proudly informed a friend, “My tragedy is finished; I read it out loud, alone, and I clapped my hands and shouted, Bravo, Pushkin, Bravo, you son of a bitch!”