One of the most elaborate commemorations of A. S. Pu&shachek;kin
took place during the turbulent weeks of January and
February, 1937. As incongruous as it may seem that the
party would seek to honor a nineteenth-century poet on the
eve of the revolution's twentieth anniversary, the pragmatic
dimensions of the event can reveal much about its ultimate
character. It is useful to remember that during the mid-to-
late 1930s, Soviet society witnessed a major ideological
about-face, russocentric and Great Power
(velikoder&zhachek;avnye)
appeals superseding earlier internationalist slogans.
Stalinist ideologists privileged these themes to
enhance the legitimacy of the state and to mobilize
popular support. Soviet literature's curious co-optation of
Pu&shachek;kin thusly dovetails with the party's rehabilitation of
Aleksandr Nevskij and the Red Army's revival of the cult of
A. Suvorov.
Although there is a growing corpus of material dealing
with the 1937 Pu&shachek;kin commemoration, little has been
written that concentrates on the commemoration's
relationship to the official party line
during the late 1930s.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most traditional accounts skirt the
Pu&shachek;kin politics of 1937 to focus tightly on the era's
scholarly achievements. Recent discussions have more
directly addressed the state's manipulation of the Pu&shachek;kin
canon, authorities like Katerina Clark noting that Pu&shachek;kin
was even styled as anticipating socialist realism and the
revolutionary mores of Soviet society. Detailing how the
commemoration reflected preceding cultural forms,
commentators including Marcus Levitt have looked back to
Pu&shachek;kin celebrations under the old regime. Others like
Stephanie Sandler have called attention to the poet's
increasing prominence in the post-revolutionary popular
imagination, as well as the renaissance in Pu&shachek;kin
scholarship during the 1920s and the perseverance of
individual Pu&shachek;kinisty during the following decade. Yet
despite the transparency of 1937's ethnically-polarized
Pu&shachek;kin propaganda (velikij russkij nacional&soft;nyj
poèt,
gordost&soft; velikogo russkogo naroda
),
few works have
connected the Soviet co-optation of Pu&shachek;kin with the regime's
peculiarly populist and nativist sentiments. A historical
analysis of the jingoistic tone of the official Soviet Pu&shachek;kin
centenary, this paper examines the Sovietization
of
Pu&shachek;kin using accounts drawn from the newly-opened
Soviet archives, recently published memoirs, diaries and
little-known scholarly treatments of the subject.