Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

The patriotic grand opera about the rise of the Romanov dynasty and a biting satire attacking the Russian bureaucracy were both supported by Nicholas I, who brought them to the stages of his theaters—evidence of how broadly the tsar interpreted the ideology of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.” (Nicholas also liked two other great Russian comedies that scared his censors: Alexander Griboedov’s Woe from Wit and Alexander Ostrovsky’s Don’t Get into Someone Else’s Sleigh.)

At the premiere, Nicholas and his heir, the future Alexander II, sat in the royal box, laughing wholeheartedly and applauding demonstratively, prompting the applause of the aristocrats who had filled the hall, knowing that the tsar would attend.

Some ministers hissed angrily, “Why did we bother to come for this stupid farce? As if there is a city like this in Russia! Couldn’t Gogol portray one decent, honest man?” But because the monarch liked the play, they could not express themselves openly. Still, it was a mystery to many courtiers why Nicholas had approved a play that mocked the authorities so blatantly.

When the performance was over, the actors heard the emperor’s loud voice as he came onstage from his box: “Everyone got what he deserved in this play, and I more than the others!”⁴ The leading actors were given a raise and valuable presents. Gogol, who had been paid 2,500 rubles for the play, also received a gift from the tsar.

This was the first of the financial handouts from the imperial treasury that Gogol would request and receive until the end of his life. Pushkin asked for money with great reluctance, considering it extremely humiliating. Gogol, much more practical, was a great fund-raiser and usually got what he wanted (mostly with the help of Zhukovsky).

Pushkin did not show up at the premiere of The Inspector-General: was he demonstrating his unhappiness over the stolen plot? The fact is that Pushkin suddenly became alienated from Gogol, and at the very moment when the young writer was hysterical. After the premiere, Gogol fell into a panicked state: “Everyone is against me. Esteemed officials scream that nothing is sacred to me. The police are against me, the merchants are against me, the writers are against me. If not for the high protection of the Sovereign, my play would never have been staged. Now I see what it means to be a comedy writer. The slightest hint of truth—and everyone rises up against you, not just one person, but entire strata.”

So Gogol took Pushkin’s coolness—perhaps overreacting—as betrayal. Six weeks after the premiere, in June 1836, Gogol fled Russia for Europe, whining to a friend, “A contemporary writer, a comedy writer, an observer of morals must be far away. No man is a prophet in his own land.” From Hamburg, Gogol complained in a letter to Zhukovsky, “I did not have time and could not say good-bye even to Pushkin; of course, that is his fault.” On that bitter note, Gogol’s personal relationship with Pushkin ended.

In Europe, Gogol learned of Pushkin’s death. From that moment, Gogol seemed to forget how Pushkin had injured his feelings. He began integrating Pushkin into his own mythos, sending letters from Rome to various Russian friends, all with much the same message: “My loss is greater than anyone else’s … My life, my highest pleasure died with him … I never undertook anything, I never wrote anything without his advice. Anything that is good in me I owe to him.”

Although settling in Rome, Gogol did not become a dissident. On the contrary, he quickly distanced himself from the satiric extremes of his play and embraced the Nicholas I–Uvarov ideological triad, “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.” In fact, he was the first great Russian writer to accept this doctrine fully and unconditionally. (The second was Dostoevsky.)

Gogol’s evolution was apparently sincere. While the path had been cleared somewhat for him by the late Pushkin, Gogol went much further.

This is Gogol on Orthodoxy: “Reason does not give man full ability to strive forward. There is a higher ability; its name is wisdom, and only Christ can give it to us.” Gogol explains that the poet “better than others hears God’s hand in everything that happens in Russia, and feels the proximity of another Kingdom. That is why our poets’ sound turns biblical.”

On autocracy, Gogol cites what he allegedly heard from Pushkin: “The state without a plenipotentiary monarch is an automaton: at best it could achieve what the United States has achieved. And what is the United States? Carrion; a man there is so worn down that he’s not worth a shelled egg. A state without a plenipotentiary monarch is like an orchestra without a Kapellmeister.”