A.S. Pushkin in the perception of “Russian Harbin”

Mekhtiev Vurgun Georgievich Doctor of Philology Professor, Department of Literature and Journalism, Pacific National University 680035, Russia, Khabarovskii krai, g. Khabarovsk, ul. Tikhookeanskaya, 136, of. 416 mextiev@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Literary critics systematically mastered the creativity of the western part of the Russian emigration, as evidenced by the volume of research, publications, and reference materials. It is enough to name scientists who have made a serious contribution to understanding the legacy of Western emigration: O.A. Korostelev ^{[6, 7]}, V.M. Tolmachev ^[16], S.R. Fedyakin ^[18], M.D. Filin ^{[5, 15, 17]} and others. According to the results of numerous studies, the idea of P.B. Struve was confirmed, who believed that "the most valuable contribution of foreign writers to the common treasury of Russian literature will have to be recognized by various forms of non-fiction literature." Among the "non-fiction literature", he put criticism and essay studies in the first place ^{[13, p. 239]}.

But the Russian diaspora in China was less fortunate. There are several reasons for this. The work of the eastern branch of the Russian exile remained on the periphery for a long time; it was treated with distrust, there was an opinion that in terms of meaningful and expressive qualities it was inferior to the criticism and essayism of Western emigrants, which is partly true. In addition, their writings are scattered almost all over the world, and this creates a problem for scientists. Russian Russian China" (mainly "Russian Harbin") criticism and journalism deserves careful treatment, however, the available material convinces. It is not only the big names that deserve attention, of which there were not so many; it seems that one cannot turn away even from texts, so to speak, of the average category, designed, as a rule, for periodicals.  There were no "thick" magazines in Russian China, with the exception of Rubezh. But only in Harbin newspapers, one-day editions, and almanacs were published more than three hundred articles about Russian literature. Of these, more than a hundred are about Pushkin. Moreover, the Day of Russian Culture was held annually, dedicated to the name of the classic. In this sense, it is possible to speak with good reason about Pushkin's Harbin. Some of the articles have recently been published in the form of two books with comments; biographical information about the authors is provided ^{[11, 12]}. One of them consists entirely of publications about Pushkin. Despite this, the work on the analysis of artistic and aesthetic experiences of Eastern emigrants cannot be considered complete. Research over the past few years shows that each new appeal to her reveals curious meanings of the Russians' stay in China ^{[8, 9, 10, 19]}.

The Pushkin theme in the periodicals of the "Russian Harbin" was reflected in various ways. Emigrants, regardless of their views, were united by their love for Pushkin, who acquired in their eyes the status of a symbol of the Motherland, and his works – the national Bible. Pushkiniana Harbin covered articles, reviews, and essays written not only by those who lived here. There were often publications belonging to emigrants from the West. For example, A.V. Amfiteatrov, who spoke in the newspaper Zarya with an article "Pushkin in the life of Gogol." Or N.V. Kalishevich (pseudonym R. Slovtsov), who lived in Sofia and Paris after 1917 and was known, among other things, for his Pushkin notes in The Dawn, the Mouthpiece. The most significant of them is "The Last Days of Pushkin" ^{[11, pp. 329-337]}. One can name I.G. Akulinin, a member of the circle of Cossack writers in Paris. His book "The Orenburg Cossack Army in the fight against the Bolsheviks" was published in Shanghai. 1917–1920». His article "Pushkin's Trip to Orenburg and Uralsk" was published in the Harbin press. The story of the Pugachev rebellion. The captain's daughter" [Ibid., pp. 224-335].  The essay in A.K. Semenchenkov's "Mouthpiece" "Pushkin and the Cossacks" echoed the problems of this publication. Or M.D. Vaintrob, who emigrated to Riga, a charming man, but defenseless in the face of harsh historical circumstances; he committed suicide. His article for the "Dawn" "Prophetic dreams of Pushkin" was written in line with the psychological trend in literary criticism. P.M. Pilsky lived there, in Riga, after emigration. He collaborated with the newspaper Segodnya (Riga). He wrote under the pseudonyms: R. Velsky, Gr. Devier, Petronius, F. Stogov, P. Trubnikov and crypts: P.P., S.F., T.B.R., P.Tr. In the "Mouthpiece" for 1929 and 1937, he published notes: "Pushkin and his novels. Letters from women to the great poet", "Could Pushkin have been saved?".

It is necessary to focus especially on V.V. Peremilovsky. In the mid-1920s, he taught Russian at the New Mixed Gymnasium in Harbin. He was published in the magazine "Questions of school life". In Harbin, he published the books "Pearl Necklace" (1923), "Pushkin" (in two parts, 1934, 1935), "Lermontov" (Harbin; Prague, 1941). Later, what he wrote was collected in the book of sketches "Conversations about Russian Literature" (Harbin; Prague, 1935). In 1935, the newspaper "Rupor" published excerpts from this book about Pushkin: "The Bronze Horseman", "The House in Kolomna", "Eugene Onegin", "The Miserly Knight", "Mozart and Salieri", "Feast during the Plague".

However, the Harbin Pushkin's novel, with rare exceptions, did not go beyond the range of representations of the Russian diaspora as a whole; the image of Pushkin was subjected to mythologization, although there were attempts to recreate the realities of the poet's biography, however powerless to make a significant change in his established image. Here we must pay tribute to the "indigenous" Harbin residents G.G. Satovsky-Rzhevsky – the author of the article "Letters of N.N. Pushkin"; the theologian N.P. Pokrovsky ("Pushkin and his contemporaries"). In 1922, L.N. Viktorov (Archbishop Nikander), who emigrated to Harbin, published "Pushkin lived here. House No. 12 on the embankments of the Moika River", and O.V. Golubtsova – from the articles "The historical appearance of A.S. Pushkin".

Amphitetarov, for example, subjected to skeptical rethinking the myth of personal friendship between Gogol and Pushkin that still exists today. A. Semenchenkov, calling Pushkin "the first poet of the Russian Cossacks," emphasized that he "saved from oblivion and revived with his "genius" the traditions of the hoary Cossack antiquity and oral legends about the folk heroes of the freedom-loving Cossacks"; the poet He brought the folklore of the Cossacks back to life. The article is actually about the Cossack centurion V.D. Sukhorukov, the historian of the Don Cossacks, and about Pushkin's meeting with him in Arzrum. It is known that V.D. Sukhorukov published materials on the life, rituals and traditions of the Cossacks back in 1825, which interested the poet ^[14]. The author shows that "Pushkin's interest in Pugachev and his fascination with St. Razin can be traced from 1820 to the last months of his life" ^{[11, p. 50]}.

Peremilovsky's sketches are significantly influenced by the book "The Wisdom of Pushkin" (1919) by M.O. Gershenson. In addition, they have a noticeable atmosphere of criticism of the symbolists. The sketches were supposed to impress with their freshness and originality of observations.  So, the author compares the character of the "House in Kolomna" countess with the grown-up "present Pushkin", a man suffering, although trying to seem happy. Parasha is the same Pushkin, only "at the time of the Lyceum." And the image of Tatiana in "Eugene Onegin" reveals the soul of "our many-loving poet" ^{[11, p. 55]}. Russian Russian poet Peremilovsky thought that Pushkin saw in his heroes "representatives of Russian society, not random people": "But just as Pushkin depicted only the largest of the vast Russia – St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa", "so Pushkin took the most interesting, the best representatives of the Russian society at that time how a whole crowd of colorless, limited, ordinary people is making noise and fussing around these two – Eugene and Tatiana." Pushkin put it precisely when he wrote: "the eternal murmur of the soul," characterizing Onegin. The sketches depict the image of the first "Russian intellectual", "a man with a restless soul, with a serious mind", but "merciless in the face of harsh reality" [Ibid., pp. 55, 56]. The conflict shown in "The Bronze Horseman" is transferred by Peremilovsky to a metaphysical plane, he comprehends it through the confrontation of Christianity and paganism, through the idea of "renouncing one's self in God, led by a humble official" and a superhuman hero. In "Mozart and Salieri", according to the author, the tragedy of passion is shown, but the poet also highlights here "the moment of this passion when it ceases to be despicable", because "it illuminates with a tragic glow a person hopelessly struck by it." Similarly, Pushkin showed the tragedy of avarice in "The Miserly Knight". The parallels drawn between the images of the Baron and the moneylender Solomon are interesting: "In order to more sharply set off this poetry, this mysticism of gold, next to the Baron, another miser is brought out, but no longer a knight, not a poet, but the thunderstorm itself – the moneylender Solomon, for whom money is a means to drag out his miserable existence"; "Solomon is not a tragic figure it will never be" [Ibid., pp. 64, 65, 73, 77]. 

Often, reflections on the majestic image of Pushkin were accompanied by a rather cruel and not always fair criticism of Soviet Pushkin studies. For example, V.V. Engelfeld, a lawyer and orientalist, professor at the Beijing Institute of Russian Language and Legal Sciences, and after moving to Harbin, head of the Department of Administrative Law at the Faculty of Law, spoke sarcastically in this regard.

In the article "Pushkin and the Russian Classics in Soviet Russia," he wrote that "in the turbulent revolutionary era," the authority of "Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev and others born into the noble environment" was in question. It was proposed to replace the classics with "their own", "proletarian literature". It was only decades later that the Bolsheviks, albeit one-sidedly, "realized the significance of Pushkin and our other classics." The 19th century, which, according to the author, is far from "political and social radicalism", is contrasted with the radical beginning of the twentieth century. Russian Russian classics, led by Pushkin, he calls the genuine intelligentsia, who took upon themselves the "responsible mission of creating Russian culture"; "the introduction of class discord and hatred was not included in the program of the then government policy." On this fertile soil, the poems "Poltava", "The Bronze Horseman", the poem "To the Slanderers of Russia" were written, in which the "voice of the Russian patriot" is heard. Engelfeld idealizes the imperial power, elevates Nicholas I, the supposedly merciful censor of Pushkin, who ensures that the "sins" of Pushkin's love of freedom do not contradict "governmental trends." It was Nicholas I, like no one else, who saw in the poet a genius "ready to give his brilliant pen to serve Russian national interests." The words about the tsar's merciful attitude towards the "opposition" sound strange ^{[11, p. 79]}. 

As for the Bolshevik government, it inevitably realized that "boring Soviet literature with its anti-artistic "works" and by no means poetic poetry cannot satisfy even a modest and unpretentious Soviet reader." At the same time, the names of Demyan Bedny, Gladkov, and Shaginyan are mentioned. M. Gorky is also mentioned, allegedly reflecting in his texts only the "unsightly Soviet reality", which is already "met at every step by the Soviet philistine." Literature in the USSR "treats" readers with an artificial tie and denouement, offers them "dry schemes". She lacks genuine "life dramas", but she prefers "false enthusiasm and "boundless" love for leaders." The scorched field of literature simply forced the Soviet government to republish "millions of volumes" of classics and, first of all, "the revered Pushkin". For without Pushkin's work, the Soviet reader is deprived of everything that mentally and spiritually elevates. The article concludes with a high pathos: "So make way for Pushkin, the way enlightened by the genuine genius of Russian poetry! For this is not the poetry of today's socialist slaves, but the poetry of the true sons of a free and great Russia, which alone could give the world such great artists of thought as Pushkin and Lermontov, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky" ^{[11, pp. 78-83]}.

Malicious assessments of Soviet literature can be attributed to the "common place" of emigrant speeches. In a short essay by A.I. Nesmelov (Mitropolsky) "Pushkin and Russia", the style typical for emigrants is used: "anti-national forces", "wreckers of Russia", "enemies of Russia", "Sovietchina". The names of Pisarev, the "nihilists" of the 19th century, Burleks, Kruchenykh, Krupskaya are summed up to them. Meanwhile, "a country exhausted, robbed, drenched in blood and sewage, has only one sun left – Pushkin." However, it should be remembered that Pushkin's "immortal soul" does not reside "there", that is, not in Soviet Russia, where the "Pushkin celebrations" are held, "but with us, the guardians of that Russia to which he gave his genius" ^{[11, p. 41]}.

Nesmelov noted another "common place", perhaps it is quite fair to think that we look at the world, at history through the eyes of Pushkin, although we do not think about it: "Isn't, for example, the image of Peter the Great, which is present in every Russian soul, not the creation of Pushkin's genius? Yes, it is! <...> If this is so, and it really is, then the question arises: why does Pushkin's vision merge with our vision, why did his vision of Russia take over us?" Is it because "the eyes of our great poet merged" "with the eyes of the nation"? The Russian man looks not only at Peter 1 through the eyes of Pushkin, "absolutely this also applies to Pugachev, Boris Godunov, Pimen, the Impostor. Yes, Pushkin's power over us is exorbitantly great!" [Ibid., p. 39].

Even smart, distinguished by the subtlety of observations and wide erudition, G.G. Satovsky-Rzhevsky did not escape the tendentious view of Soviet Pushkin studies. He saw his task as turning Pushkin's "living man" into a "historical figure", into a "man and citizen". In the articles "Two words about the Great", "Pushkin is a superman", he insisted that the concept of "the greatest" does not suit Pushkin; he is "a poet beyond comparison, the only one", to such an extent that even the Bolsheviks, who threw "the name of Russia out of the lexicon", "did not dare to encroach on the name of Pushkin". He calls the Bolsheviks "communist vulgarians" who robbed Peter the Great "in favor of the half-witted Lenin": "There is no St. Petersburg in Russia, there is no Petrograd, there is, if you please, Leningrad. What an honor, just think, for the city to bear the name of a man touched by progressive paralysis! But as long as the "Bronze Horseman", "Poltava", i.e. Pushkin, will exist in Russian literature, there is nothing to mourn for the shadow of Peter the Great." Pushkin "remains an honorary guardian" of St. Petersburg, "Petersburg Russia".  Calling Pushkin "the best exponent of our national soul" and "the best interpreter of Russia," Satovsky-Rzhevsky ironically writes about the "Bolsheviks" who "unceremoniously appropriated Pushkin." The emigrant is sure that Pushkin "as a great patriot and singer of Great–Power Imperial Russia" is "not only organically alien, but also simply hostile to Bolshevism and no matter how hard the Soviet "Pushkinites" try to make a revolutionary out of him, the bright spirit of Pushkin is not with them now" ^{[11, pp. 89, 100]}.

Russian Russian Harbin's style, which was common to many representatives, was determined by the authority of Pushkin's Western emigration and, to no lesser extent, the authority of K.I. Zaitsev, who spent a total of fourteen years in China and zealously stood out in conducting Pushkin celebrations and Days of Russian Culture. His journalism is mostly familiar to the modern reader. The articles "The Struggle for Pushkin", "The Death of Pushkin", "Where is Pushkin leading us?", "Pushkin and Music" were published in Harbin. Zaitsev consistently opposed the sociological method of studying Pushkin, called the Pushkin scholars of Soviet Russia propagandists engaged in falsification and "scientific deadness"; the Soviet government sees Pushkin as a writer who anticipated the socialist system.  In reality, Pushkin and his work are a field of ideological struggle between emigrants and Soviet Pushkin studies. Pushkin is a symbol of that Russia, "to which all Russian emigrants consider themselves to belong, without distinction of political shades"; "Pushkin is our everything", everything else is "arbitrary stylization, and sometimes genuine fiction" ^{[11, pp. 248, 250]}.

K.I. Zaitsev is least interested in Pushkin's historical content of his personality. As for the artistic side of his work, here the thesis put forward by Ap Grigoriev in the 19th century: Pushkin "contains the right artistic and moral measure" ^{[1, p. 58]} - has never been questioned in the Russian diaspora. On the contrary, their activities were largely aimed at deepening and interpreting this provision. If we add to this the phrase: "Pushkin is our everything", put into use by the same Ap. Grigoriev, then Pushkin's name was filled with completely unexpected mythologems, which the critic, perhaps, did not think about. Zaitsev appeals to Pushkin as a representative of the "great-power people". Pushkin is presented as "the embodiment of Imperial Russia, Great Russia." And if we talk about the poet in a providential sense, then, undoubtedly, with all his work he calls on descendants "to restore the Russian Great-Power statehood." Pushkin showed: "the path to Great Russia goes through Holy Russia," that is, through loyalty to the precepts of Orthodoxy ^{[3, p. 11]}.

In the article "Pushkin's Religious Problem", Zaitsev wrote: "Pushkin created and in his work gave a certain ideal image of being on which one could learn to live, which with irresistible clarity solved the most difficult, most painful, most tempting problems" ^{[2, p. 115]}. The author raises the question of ontology, the inner nature of Pushkin's work, noting such a property of his creations as "spiritual authenticity"; Pushkin's poetic world is marked by the fact that it reflects everything that the poet personally experienced. This is followed by an "artistic depersonalization", which marks the obsolescence of the personal principle in the artistic image. Creativity in Pushkin's understanding, Zaitsev believes, "is an act of overcoming the "personal", an act of self-purification from it (catharsis)" [Ibid., p. 119].

The artistically written "Pushkin's Religious Problem" was polemical. It is directed against the main theses of M.O. Gershenson's book "The Wisdom of Pushkin" (1919), in particular, the idea that Pushkin should be known too sharply expressed in it, but one cannot live by Pushkin; Pushkin, according to Gershenson, was a pagan and a fatalist, which was, as it were, a challenge to the Orthodox understanding of personality and the works of the Russian poet.

The writings of philologist and historian E.F. Shmurlo stand out in the Pushkinian of Eastern emigration. Russian Russian Culture Day was published in various periodicals of the Russian diaspora, including the Harbin yearbook. Back in 1899, he gave a speech "Pushkin in the development of our self-consciousness", which was subsequently published in the Pushkin Collection, published by the Imperial Yuriev University on the occasion of the anniversary of the poet's birth. And in 1931, in the already named Harbin collection, his great work "What gave us Pushkin's work?" was published, which fully deserves to be included even in school textbooks on literature.

The author combines his reflections on the past, present and future of Russia. Shmurlo's focus is on Pushkin, who revealed the Russian national picture of the world to his descendants. And only in the final part does the author turn to pathos in order to express his concern for the fate of Russia and the Russian people as emotionally as possible: "Pushkin is our Mother Earth, the source of our strength; we are all little Anthea. Breaking away from this source, we perish. But when we touch it, we grow, grow stronger spiritually" ^{[11, p. 209]}.

Reflection on Pushkin's main achievements in the field of artistic creativity is accompanied by anxiety about the "refugee situation" of emigrants with their "anxious worries" about existence – "among the kaleidoscopic change of daily, most often small interests." The bustle of emigrant existence distracts from the "uplifting deception", the urgent need "to enjoy the harmony of his sounds for an hour or two in a calm, thoughtful conversation with our great poet, to mentally restore the artistic images created by him." But it is necessary to bring "peace and harmony into our ordinary anxious life, to get the right to look at the world of God more cheerfully and boldly, not to feel so hopelessly lost in it, as we may feel ourselves more than once now, in the long gray days of our timelessness" [Ibid., p. 193].

What did Pushkin's work give us? Pushkin with unprecedented evidence discovered the "great importance of the idea of national" – as "the main guiding principle of our personal, social and state life"; his personality and creations consolidate personal, socially responsible and state life.  The Russian people had yet to discover themselves, to look into their own soul. It was Pushkin who carried out this mission of looking into himself, discovering himself. He led the Russians on the path of self–determination - a path on which the layers torn from their native soil would regain it equally, and the national strata would have the opportunity to preserve and cultivate for the benefit of subsequent generations" [Ibid., p. 197].

Russian Russian poet E.F. Shmurlo insistently repeats the thought: "only Pushkin for the first time caught the beating of the Russian heart, not the heart at all; only for the first time did the flight of this mind and these agitations of the soul were outlined with that coloring, with that individuality, which is inherent in the Russian person." Before Pushkin, he believes, the Russian man did not suspect the presence in his "soil" of Tatiana, the modest Maria Ivanovna, the naive old nanny, the unhappy Mermaid with her unrequited love. It was only thanks to Pushkin that the Russian people realized that they were all "entirely ours, created by us." In "Eugene Onegin", "Belkin's Novels", in "Dubrovsky", "The Captain's Daughter", "The House in Kolomna" – we have almost the entire complex way of "undeveloped, unimaginative" Russian life. Even the "English fold" did not prevent Onegin, our "Muscovite in Harold's cloak" from being a product of the Russian soil [Ibid., p. 200].

Pushkin's merit, according to the publicist, lies not only in the fact that he revealed ourselves to us, but also in the discovery of Russian nature: "Of course, even before Pushkin, our poets sang "field" and "forest", "morning" and "evening", but their fields and forests came out as-then they are impersonal, colorless, saying nothing: after all, everywhere in Russia, Germany, Europe and Africa, the field can be “wide”, the forest “dense”, the evening “quiet”, and the morning –frosty". Russian Russian Russian Russian forest and only from Pushkin did we see that there is still a Russian forest, unlike other forests, and that such a forest gives not only a different impression, but also a different mood; that there is a Russian morning, Russian evening, Russian summer, Russian winter, etc." (Italics are preserved everywhere – V.M.) Pushkin painted Russian nature in dynamics, captured it in varieties and shades, thereby giving us new sensations and experiences of the native landscape. Russian Russian, according to Shmurlo, the classic showed the Russians "that they are Russian", explained to them "what their Russianness is." Russian Russian people, the Russian soul" [Ibid., pp. 201, 204]. That's why to understand and know Pushkin means to bring oneself closer to the knowledge of the Russian nationality, the Russian soul."

E. Zamyatin wrote the words: "I am afraid that Russian literature has only one future: its past" ^{[4, p. 124]}. Utopia can be directed both to the future and to the past. The emigrants were mostly conservatives, nostalgic for the past. Russia's past, all its social, state foundations and moral characteristics have been mythologized. Pre-revolutionary Russia was seen as a "lost paradise", a "blissful place". They needed an argument to justify their utopia and mythology. The myth they created about Pushkin extended to the entire historical past and vice versa. Pushkin was perceived by emigrants through the idea of the providential path of Russia; the poet was perceived by them as a miracle revealed and justified by God.