Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

The girl’s upbringing led to a furious row with Leo Tolstoy that almost ended in a duel with rifles. Turgenev was boasting in company that included Tolstoy how Paulina did charity work: she mended the clothing of the poor. Tolstoy (whom Turgenev dubbed a troglodyte for his directness and coarseness) sarcastically countered that “a dressed up girl, with filthy and stinking rags on her lap, is playing an insincere, theatrical scene.”

The argument suddenly flew out of control, and although bloodshed was avoided it left a break in relations between the two writers that lasted twenty years. The true cause of the altercation was still the same: the Christian anarchist Tolstoy hated Turgenev’s liberal posturing, and the animosity was returned. The role of women in society was part of the conflict.

Turgenev’s ideal woman was a mix of the real Pauline Viardot, her depiction in the novels of George Sand, and a big dose of Pushkin’s Tatiana from Eugene Onegin. All of “Turgenev’s maidens” are like that—pure, idealistic, and strong. The men in Turgenev’s works were mostly weak and indecisive. A pervasive melancholy envelops Turgenev’s prose, but there is always an acute sense of the bigger social issues important for Russia. That’s what made Turgenev’s writing so topical, and his eye for a telling detail and fine craftsmanship ensured lasting success with Western readers. But his moderation was ultimately his undoing.

In June 1880, Turgenev appeared as guest of honor at the unveiling of the first monument to Pushkin in Moscow. As a natural centrist, he found himself at the crossroads of clashing political forces. Alexander II wanted on this occasion to send an encouraging signal to the Russian intelligentsia. The unveiling of the Pushkin monument was taken under royal patronage.

The progressive intellectuals also wanted to be heard. For the liberal elite, the event was an opportunity to stress the independence of culture. In this situation, Turgenev appeared to be the spokesman of choice for all parties concerned, since he was looked upon as Pushkin’s successor.

But in Russia, being a moderate liberal and Westernizer is the most precarious position, especially in tense moments. This is where Turgenev lost. At the solemn convocation in the auditorium of the Nobility Assembly, with le tout Moscou present, Turgenev gave a mellow speech in which he took neither the side of the government (which Alexander II had expected of him) nor the side of the opposition (as the students present had hoped).

For all his admiration of Pushkin, Turgenev praised him cautiously, since he knew that Pushkin was not particularly famous in the West. The disappointed audience reacted with little enthusiasm. Turgenev was perceived as one of his own indecisive characters. But the true blow came from Dostoevsky, who delivered his Pushkin oration the next day in the same hall.

In his fiery speech, Dostoevsky declared Pushkin a world genius who was greater than Shakespeare or Cervantes because of his special, somehow purely Russian quality of “universal receptivity.” That was exactly what the whole audience—conservatives and progressives alike—desperately wanted to hear.

Turgenev’s careful equivocations were rejected, while Dostoevsky’s emotionally charged exaggerations carried the day. The stark contrast between the big, handsome Turgenev and the small, emaciated, hunched, and ugly Dostoevsky, whose coat drooped as if on a hanger, worked in the latter’s favor: Dostoevsky was one of their own, a Russian sufferer, while Turgenev looked like a wealthy tourist from Paris.

The audience was spellbound by the extraordinary nervous energy of Dostoevsky’s delivery. When he concluded with the words that Pushkin “carried away with him to the grave a certain great mystery. And now we must uncover it without him,” a hysterical cry came from the crowd—“You have uncovered it!”—which was picked up by other loud voices: “You have! You have!”

People in the audience shouted and wept and embraced one another. Dostoevsky wrote to his wife, “I hurried to save myself backstage, but they forced their way in, especially the women. They kissed my hands, tormented me. Students ran in. One of them, in tears, fell before me in hysteria and then passed out. It was a total, complete victory!”¹⁶

While he was speaking, someone managed to sneak out and get an enormous laurel wreath for him; as he reported triumphantly in the same letter, “a multitude of ladies (more than a hundred) rushed up on the stage and crowned me in front of the entire audience with the wreath.” (A telling detail: when the volunteers were bringing in the laurel wreath, they bumped into Turgenev, and one of the women pushed him aside, muttering scornfully, “It’s not for you!”)