Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

Even the outstanding expert on the Pushkin era Yuri Lotman described Nicholas as “untalented, uneducated, and dull … tormentedby uncertainty, suspicious, painfully aware of his mediocrity and terribly envious of bright, merry, and successful people.”¹⁶ Lotman seems to be describing his boss at a state university in Soviet times rather than the autocrat of all Russia, who, as Lotman correctly pointed out elsewhere, was absolutely certain of his divine right to rule.

While understanding that Pushkin was a genius and soberly assessing the political achievements and human qualities of Nicholas I, we must also remember that the main sticking points in these intertwined and uneven relations were their diametrically opposed ideas of what constituted “service.”

This difference imbues “The Bronze Horseman,” Pushkin’s shortest (only 481 lines) but most complex narrative poem, written in 1833. The plot centers on the clash between the poor clerk Yevgeny (Pushkin originally planned him to be a poet) and the famous equestrian statue of Peter the Great by Falconet towering over Senate Square in St. Petersburg. This fantastic confrontation, perhaps a delirious dream, perhaps not, playing out during the terrible flood of 1824, remains the most potent Russian literary symbol of the conflict of the all-powerful state and the defenseless individual.

The flood kills Yevgeny’s bride, and, maddened by grief, he blames her death on Peter, who insisted on erecting his new capital in a treacherous location. Yevgeny, “teeth clenched, fingers in a fist,” threatens the statue: “All right, you miracle-working builder! You’ll get it!”

Suddenly, the statue comes to life: a wrathful Peter on his steed pursues the poor madman through the empty, moonlit streets of St. Petersburg. Yevgeny dies, while the great city created by the emperor still stands, “as steadfast as Russia,” with the Bronze Horseman reigning in its center.

Both Yevgeny and the emperor are in the right, according to Pushkin, and it is up to the reader to decide whose right prevails. This philosophical ambivalence confused and angered its first reader, Nicholas I. For him the answer was obvious—the monarch, the embodiment of the state, was right. He leads the country to greatness, paying no attention to human sacrifices, and the people must obey him—that is, “serve”: that is God’s will.

Nicholas read the manuscript closely and underlined and crossed out many passages. He was particularly outraged by Yevgeny’s threat to Peter. Pushkin was ordered to change the poem in accordance with Nicholas’s ideas, and the poet accepted some of them, but he refused to eliminate the challenge to the mighty ruler from his wretched subject: “All right, you miracle-working builder! You’ll get it!”

For Pushkin, this passage was the poem’s climax (which Nicholas seemed to intuit). Pushkin preferred to leave “The Bronze Horseman” in his desk drawer, where it lay until his death, first appearing in a mutilated form in April 1837. Ever since, the poem has remained at the center of Russia’s continuing debate over which is more crucial: the power and majesty of the state, or the rights and happiness of the individual? And how to compare the achievements of the national leader and those of the national poet? Which is more important for history and the country’s self-image?

.  .  .

Karamzin as author of the History of the Russian State, which Pushkin called “not only the creation of a great writer but the exploit of an honest man,” was Pushkin’s model of how a poet should serve the state.

The reference to “an honest man” underscores Pushkin’s conditions for his collaboration with the state, in which his concept of honor must not be threatened. He liked Karamzin’s aphorism “Il ne faut pas qu’un honnête homme mérite d’être pendu” (“An honest man does not deserve hanging”). In 1831 he wrote to Alexander Benckendorff, chief of the Third Department of the Imperial Chancellery (overseeing state security) and official intermediary between Pushkin and Nicholas, that he wanted to do “historical research in our state archives and libraries. I do not dare nor wish to take on the title of historian after the unforgettable Karamzin; but I can with time fulfill my long-held desire to write the History of Peter the Great and his heirs.”

Nicholas approved the ambitious application from the poet still considered politically unreliable. Soon afterward, Pushkin was able to tell a friend, “The tsar (between us) has taken me into service, i.e., given me a salary and permission to dig in the archives to compile a History of Peter I. Long live the tsar!”