Selected Poems of Pushkin

Author: Shanghai Bookstore Press
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Nicholas had to change his attitude toward the matter, pretending to highly value Pushkin's death, considering it a great loss to the nation. Dantes was demoted to a soldier because of his foreign nationality and was expelled from the country. As for the Count of Heerloon, he was recalled from his ambassadorial post and returned to the Netherlands at the request of the Tsar. On the other hand, Nicholas hurriedly blocked all avenues that could express intense public outrage. He strictly ordered the newspapers to "maintain the appropriate mild and appropriate attitude" regarding Pushkin's death. One newspaper was punished because it published headlines such as "The sun of our poetic world has fallen" and "He died in the middle of his great journey." Guards were stationed in the houses near Pushkin's residence, and informers wandered back and forth at the entrance and inside his home. On the night of the funeral, January 30th to 31st, after the crowd dispersed, only a few close friends remained at Pushkin's residence. At this time, General Dubert, the chief of the constitutional troops, arrived with the constitutional guards. They did not move the coffin to the Saint Isaac Cathedral for the next day's memorial service but instead took it to the stables church. On the day of the memorial service, police were stationed at the entrance of the church, only allowing those invited to enter. After the memorial service, the coffin was placed in the church's basement.
On the night of February 2nd to 3rd, a hearse and two carriages arrived at the church entrance. One carriage was occupied by the chief of the constitutional guards, and the other by Alexander Turgenev, a friend of Pushkin, who was ordered to transport Pushkin's remains to the Holy Mountains Monastery near Mikhailovskoye Village in Pskov Province for burial. They loaded the coffin onto the hearse and swiftly drove out of the city. The governor of Pskov Province had received special orders from the Tsar. When the coffin passed by, "no special expressions were allowed, no welcoming ceremonies, in short, no rituals." This special funeral procession rushed through the snow day and night, as if criminals were trying to quickly and secretly conclude their deeds. At one station, a professor's wife saw the suspicious constitutional guards urging the carriage drivers to quickly change the horses for a cart covered with straw, on which lay a coffin wrapped in straw mats. She asked a guard nearby what was happening. "God knows what's going on. I heard that a man named Pushkin was killed, and they wrapped him in straw and mats and rushed along the station—may God forgive me, as if he were a dead dog."
Tsarist Russia under Nicholas's rule buried this great Russian poet in the early morning of February 6th (18th in the Gregorian calendar). More than a hundred years have passed since Pushkin's death, the autocratic regime that killed him has collapsed, and the social system where some toiled and suffered while others lived idly and shamelessly has also collapsed. The people's reverence for Pushkin has only grown over the years. He was necessary and infinitely precious to everyone. Everyone needed him and cherished him because...