Pushkin Anniversary: The Poet in Perspective

There are names that mean so much and are repeated so often that they run the risk of losing their true significance. For Russians, Pushkin is such a name. Probably only Lenin was mentioned more often in our school textbooks; only Lenin's genius was taken as much for granted.Strangely enough, even though he was imposed on us almost as heavily as revolting Soviet propaganda, Pushkin was hardly an object of our pervasive skepticism. I remember how much of a challenge my friend Mikhail Berg, a writer, had when he composed an essay dedicated to the people's poet, Alexander Pushkin, hero of socialist labor and laureate of the Lenin prize. Many people remember the scandal caused by the publication of "Walking With Pushkin" by dissident writer Andrei Sinyavsky. This challenged the conventional wisdom about Pushkin, and Sinyavsky was accused of the most terrible of mortal sins -- Russophobia. He dared to touch the untouchable. But Berg and Sinyavsky -- as well as Daniil Kharms in his recently published absurdist jokes about Pushkin and Gogol, tried to give perspective to the blind reverence everyone seemed to have for Pushkin.The poet, born 195 years ago last week in Moscow, is celebrated nationwide around his birthday on June 6. He certainly was celebrated in St. Petersburg, where he spent most of his life. Pushkin's images of St. Petersburg, from the Bronze Horseman to the Queen of Spades' house, are inseparable from the city. At the same time, Pushkin himself is unimaginable without his gorod pyshny, gorod bedny, or "city of luxury, city of poverty," the city he both loved and hated.The beautiful, elegant courtyard at the National Pushkin Museum -- his last apartment on the now demolished Moika Naberezhnaya in the most aristocratic part of the city -- was the site of the first "Pushkin-St.Petersburg" festival. The celebration, with dignitaries including Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and noted Pushkin scholar Dmitry Likhachev among its organizers, is meant to take place each year until 1999, the 200th anniversary of Pushkin's birth.The museum is having serious problems making ends meet and has already lost its biggest branch, a wing of the Catherine Palace in the suburban town of Pushkin, where the poet spent his student years. Likhachev calls the situation "a disgrace." The town itself may soon be renamed Tsarskoye Selo following the current trend for towns to return to their pre-revolutionary names.During his recent visit to St. Petersburg, Prince Charles attracted everybody's attention to Pushkin by launching a previously unpublished edition of Pushkin's notes. Along with Likhachev, the Prince was the first to be awarded the newly established Pushkin Medal.