In Blairite Britain, writing an anti-Russian rag became a hallmark of a public intellectual. In 30-40s France to exist as a public intellectual one had to be either a Communist or a Nazi. In the 50-60s only a self-proclaimed leftist could be published or be appointed to an academic post in humanities though the approval of USSR's policies became outmoded and one had to to be anti-Soviet, Maoist leftist. Italy repeated this trajectory with 10-15 year lag. From late 70s to early 2000s, to be in good standing with the French intellectual milieu one had to praise Islam and publicly support islamist causes. British situation is peculiar only because the requirement to publish anti-Russian rants somehow graduated from being a necessary to an only qualification of an intellectual. Even "The Economist", which used to be a voice of intellectual British establishment turned in requisite parts into a mouthpiece of a Polish plumber: hatred of Russia with racial undertones poorly covered up, the picture of the Cold War having all of the sophistication of McCarthyist leaflets and stories from the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistant wars, reminiscent in their candor or truthfulness of Napoleon's "Moniteur" war reports from 1812 Russia.
This justifies an emergence of such bizarre opuses as Binyon biography of Alexander Pushkin or Orlando Figes' "Natasha's Dance", which he modestly qualifies as "Russian cultural history." So far, poor A. Pushkin, an approximate counterpart to the English Bard, was a relatively uncontroversial figure among Russian greats. He was killed on a duel long before the Communist takeover, progressed from youthful radicalism into safe Monarchist-liberal conservative political views and did not care much of the Ortodoxy. Compared to his contemporaries, he did not sexually abused children like Lord Byron, stupefied himself by drink to the degree of Alfred de Musset, or consumed copious amounts of opium as did poor Coleridge-- as a result of medical quackery-- or T. DeQuincey, completely voluntary.
From Binyon's book you will hardly learn that Pushkin wrote something of value,
for which he provides self-excuse that he will not discuss his poetry, prose or dramaturgy. But there is also nothing about the evolution of Puskin's political views, journalism-- in his world of aristocratic artists he practically pioneered for-profit writing-- or historical scholarship.
His book a scurriluous collection of obscene anecdotes and sexual affairs mostly lifted from the writings of Pushkin's personal enemies. And he had plenty: cuckolded husbands, police spies, usually lowlifes with a prurient eye for the lifestyles of the hereditary aristocrats, and high society homosexuals and their hangers-on whom he outed with savage epigrams. Binyon repeats their accusations verbatim without slightest attempt at verification of their plausibility or bias.
Even if these slanders were 100% true, all that would prove is that Pushkin was a typical nobleman of his time, progressing from adolescent sex with female servants to prostitutes, with the acquisition of independent means, and settling for continuous nights of drinking and gambling in his thirties, then into comfortable marriage within his own class punctuated by mutual adultery. This makes him little different from Wellington, Palmerston, Disraeli, Beau Brummel or any number of approximate contemporaries.
Yet, these dissolute rakes mapped the South Pacific, discovered Antarctica,
defeated Napoleon, criss-crossed a couple of continents with railroads and, amidst these distractions, created the like of "She walks in beauty" or the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
I can envision Binyon spilling ink from his quill, or drumming at his laptop in
his Oxford townhouse with exclamations of bravado: "Damn Russkies! Get this, and this and now this. How about this?" I am not offended, just sad, that Oxford tenured this bigot.
Orlando Figes' book is not much better. Based on strange interpretation of alleged uniquely Russian infatuation with the culture of the raw and primitive (how about Paul Gogen, or Mata Hari, or the Der Brugge?), he proclaims that human sacrifice and cannibalism are the centerpieces of the Russian culture. A single unconvincing example of the "Rites of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky is being dragged through nearly 800 pages of Figes' screed. Certainly, the great composer, as were most intellectuals of his age and his class, was a (very non-radical) racist and an anti-Semite. But, first, he is about as representative a figure for the Russian turn-of-the XXth century culture as De Sade was for the French Enlightenment. Second, he hardly was a born-again pagan with occultist sympathies similar to the members of German "Thule Society" or D. H. Lawrence or Windham Lewis.
Similarly to Schoenberg whom he scorned during the latter's life but reappraised after his death, Stravinsky had a taste for mysterious and unexplicable and a very keen eye for tradition as well as the trends of contemporary life. As a member of propertied classes uprooted by the Russian Revolution, Stravinsky had conservative political leanings and resented socialist tendencies in contemporary Europe.
If anything, these two books, contrary to racist and vulgar intentions of their authors, confirm how thoroughly and boringly European Russian intellectuals have become since the birth of Pushkin just on the eve of XIX century till the death of Pasternak and Akhmatova who became the last vestiges of the "Silver Age" of Russian letters and arts.
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