Poet and tsar: history of relations between Pushkin and Nicholas I revealed the Year of Literature

The Year of Literature declared by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, the Presidential Library posts on its website and presents in the collections new arrivals of rare books that adequately reveal the drama of relationships between the poet Alexander Pushkin and the Emperor Nicholas I.

It is known that only the absence of Pushkin in St. Petersburg disengaged him from participation in the uprising at Senate Square with his friends who were in opposition to the government. The accession of Emperor Nicholas I (14 December 1825) and the events surrounding the coronation, caught Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovskoye, the family estate of his mother, where he was sent from Odessa in July 1824. The poet had long been anticipating the freedom and asking for permission to live in St. Petersburg: there were his comrades, including the poets- a breeding ground for the development of his poetic talent. It was fundamentally important what kind of relationship would develop between him and the new monarch.

Professor E. V. Petukhov’s speech, delivered at the state reception in the University of Yuryev December 12, 1896 and published a year later, "On the relationship of Emperor Nicholas I and A. S. Pushkin" (its electronic copy is a gem of Pushkin collection of the Presidential Library) provides a serious analysis of the circumstances that determine the dominant of life of the greatest Russian poet: "These mutual relations, extremely close for people with such a different social position, were full of benevolence and generosity on the one hand, and on the other – of independent frankness, dignity and noble qualities, represent the most curious page in the history of our modern literature."

August 28, 1826 the Emperor signed a resolution on the immediate delivery of Pushkin in Moscow, and the poet was immediately presented to Nicholas I in Maly Nicholas Palace. There is every reason to believe that it was there that the rarest of their kind relations between the monarch and his subject, the poet, arose. It is well known that both of them worshiped the personality of Peter the Great as tsar-reformer. In 1831, Pushkin asked Nicholas to entrust him officially with writing the story of Peter I. The Emperor authorized Pushkin to use materials from the State archives and depositories, although this did not prevent him to express subtle and true judgments about the great reformer of Russia and his historical role.

In the living interest in the poet "...the emperor saw something akin to chivalrous and noble inclinations of his own nature, says the book "On the relationship of Emperor Nicholas I and A. S. Pushkin." Probably due to the frankness and nobility in the relationship between the Emperor and Pushkin, their good relations remained relatively stable, little affected by the slander and denunciations of people, for whom closeness of the poet to the Emperor was a blow to the ego and a source of malicious envy."

Rapprochement between the ruler and the poet was swift and caused mixed reviews from friends, enemies and admirers of Pushkin. Pushkin replied to them in his poem "To My Friends" where he characterized his relationship with the Emperor: "No, I am not a flatterer / when I freely praise the tsar; / I feel free to express feelings / I speak the language of the heart!" We know that this poem submitted to the emperor by Benckendorf aroused emperor’s sympathy, but at the same time he expressed a desire that it remained unpublished.

Pushkin and Benkendorf: "Both of these men did not like each other, and it was quite natural, says a brochure of Petukhov. Dull, cold-hearted, narrowminded and strictly executive (for which he was valued by the sovereign) Benckendorf with distaste saw in Pushkin a great educational force, not sympathizing himself neither with education in general, nor with literature in particular. In his courteous by form letters to Pushkin he praised his poetic talent only because Pushkin was appreciated by the Emperor himself, and never missed an opportunity to look down on the great poet, as on a person engaged in unnecessary and even harmful business that he believed literature to be. "It seems to me that he would like to completely abolish the Russian literature, and he considers himself sehr gebildet, says A. O. Smirnova about Benckendorf. She was very close to the circle, which Benckendorf considered his own. In turn, Pushkin, of course, could not love Benkendorf, seeing in him as a malevolent not only in respect of himself, but also of the literature, which the poet was completely engaged with.

Meanwhile, Count Benckendorff managed to win the trust of the Emperor and become a mediator in his official relations with Pushkin. Historian of Russian literature should considerably regret this mediation: if in the place of Benckendorf was a different person with different views on literature and education, someone sharing the spiritual interests of the Russian people, the great poet would have been spared from many misunderstandings in his relations with the supreme power, his poetry, which depended a lot on some external circumstances could have benefited from it considerably!"

Fortunately, Benkendorf was not the only mediator in the relationship between the sovereign and the poet: a confidant, more sympathetic to Pushkin and to literature, was one of the most educated women of the then secular society A. O. Smirnova-Rosset.

As a result, the tsar allowed the poet submitting his works for review to him personally instead of undergoing the ordinary censorship. Pushkin, having returned from Moscow to Mikhailovskoye, enthusiastically notified Yazykov: "Tsar relieved me from censorship. He himself is my censor. The benefit, of course, is immense." However, three weeks later, he had to make excuses to Benckendorff for reading, while in Moscow, in a close circle of friends a handwritten copy of his tragedy "Boris Godunov."

All those things did not quite dispose to poetic work, and one can only wonder how the ingenious author was overcoming all interference, admire his "living need for writing, which inspired Pushkin to create new works in that unprecedented hostile environment."

As to Nicholas, his attention to Pushkin concealed not only his benevolence to the poet, but also a real interest in the fruits of his poetic activity which the Emperor considered to be the pride and glory of Russia.

Emperor Nicholas I, as we know, was a true lover and connoisseur of art and literature. "He carefully read Pushkin's works not only as a "censor," notes Petukhov in his "On the relationship of Emperor Nicholas I and A. S. Pushkin" but as an expert friendly to the author, often making notes and corrections in the margins regarding the content and style, which sometimes Pushkin wholeheartedly agreed with."

When dying, the poet asked Zhukovsky: "Tell the Emperor that I don’t want to die; instead I would have served him. Tell him I wish him a long, long reign, I wish him to be happy with his son, happy with Russia."

The Year of Russian literature, readers will find much of interest in Pushkin collection of the Presidential Library, which in the early 2015 holds more than 370,000 units.