Russian literature. A short introduction

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and the Soviet Government announce with the very deepest regret that on the 10 February (29 January, Old Style) 1837, as the result of a tragic duel, the course of the life of the great Russian poet Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, aged 37, has come to a sudden and untimely end.

Comrade Pushkin was always distinguished by high principles, a sense of responsibility, and a demanding attitude towards himself and others. In every post that he was deputed to occupy he displayed boundless fidelity to the appointed task, a military valour and heroism, and all the elevated qualities of a patriot, a citizen, and a poet.

He will always remain in the hearts of his friends and those who knew him well as a rake, a joker, a tearaway, and a terrible boozer.

Pushkin’s name will live for ever in the memory of the Russian people as the eternal flame of Russian poetry.

From ‘the father of Russian literature’, Pushkin had become a jester, a participant at bachelor revels. He was even paid the dubious compliment of a pornographic forgery, his so-called Secret Memoirs of 1836 and 1837, which confessed, among other things, to three-in-a-bed frolics with his wife Natalya and her sister Aleksandra. And his key works now included, besides Evgeny Onegin (not as Belinsky’s ‘encyclopedia of Russian life’, but as a playful piece of eavesdropping on gossip and an example of ‘manipulation of plot’), The Little House at Kolomna, The Gabrieliad, and Count Nulin.