T. Binyon - Pushkin

By the end of March he had collected a good deal of what he considered to be subversive literature – including Pushkin’s epigram on Sturdza – which he incorporated into a report sent to Kochubey on 2 April. Though this consisted largely of a disquisition on the present state of Russia, combined with proposals for a number of reforms, it included an attack on the Lycée, where, he wrote, ‘the emperor is educating pupils who are ill-disposed both to him and to the fatherland […] as is demonstrated by practically all those who graduate from it. It is said that one of them, Pushkin, was secretly punished by imperial command. But among the pupils more or less each one is almost a Pushkin, and they are all bound together by some kind of suspicious union, similar to Masonry, some indeed have joined actual lodges.’ To this remark he appended a note: ‘Who are the composers of the caricatures or epigrams, such as, for example, on the two-headed eagle , on Sturdza in which the person of the emperor is referred to very indecently and so on? The pupils of the Lycée! Who make themselves known to the public with suggestive songs at an age when honesty and modesty are most decorous? They do.’ 33

Having submitted this report to the emperor, Kochubey invited Karazin to call on him on the evening of 12 April. After their conversation Karazin made an emotional note of its content on the back of the invitation. He was extremely disconcerted to discover that the emperor was not at all interested in the substance of his paper, neither in his analysis of the situation nor his proposals for reform. Its sole result, he wrote, ‘was the desire of his majesty to assure himself that the epigram mentioned in my note was actually written […] that it was not my invention! […] My God! […] It’s almost unbelievable! […] What a sad but true picture of the position of the state is produced!’ 34 He washed his hands of the whole affair, refusing Kochubey’s request to obtain manuscript copies of the epigram.

Following this conversation Miloradovich, the military governor-general of St Petersburg, was ordered to impound Pushkin’s writings. He sent a police spy, Fogel, round to Pushkin’s apartment when the latter was out. Fogel offered Nikita fifty roubles for the loan of his master’s poems, promising to bring them back in a short time. Nikita refused and, on Pushkin’s return, told him of the visitor. Pushkin immediately burnt his manuscripts. The following day he was summoned to see Miloradovich. Before going, he went to see Glinka – who had been the general’s adjutant during the war and was now attached to his office – to ask his advice. ‘Go straight to Miloradovich, don’t show confusion and don’t be afraid. He is not a poet; but in his soul and in his chivalrous impulses there is much that is romantic and poetic: he is misunderstood. Go and rely unconditionally on the nobility of his spirit: he will not abuse your trust.’ Heartened, Pushkin set off for Miloradovich’s house on the Nevsky. A few days later Miloradovich told Glinka of the meeting:

Do you know, my dear fellow, Pushkin was with me the other day! You see, I’d been ordered to arrest him and impound all his papers; but I thought it more delicate to invite him to my house and ask him himself for his papers. Well, he turned up, very calm, with a bright face, and, when I asked about the papers, answered: ‘Count! all my poems are burnt! – you will find nothing of mine in my apartment, but if you please, everything is here (he pointed to his forehead with his finger). Order a quire of paper to be brought, I’ll write everything that I’ve ever written (of course, except that which has been printed), with a note : what is mine and what has been circulated under my name. ’ Paper was brought. Pushkin sat down and wrote, wrote … and filled a whole note-book … Here it is, look at that! Tomorrow I’ll take it to the emperor. And do you know? Pushkin charmed me with his noble tone and manner of behaviour. 35

Miloradovich had read the verses, laughed, and said to Pushkin: ‘If you’ve really decided to attack the government, why don’t you write something about the Senate, which is nothing but a menagerie or pigsty.’ He had concluded by pardoning Pushkin in the name of the emperor. 36

Alexander, however, extremely displeased with the idea that the Lycée was a hot-bed of revolutionary fervour, and outraged by Pushkin’s verse, was disinclined to ratify Miloradovich’s generous gesture. Meeting the director of the Lycée, Engelhardt, he expressed his feelings to him as they strolled through the palace garden at Tsarskoe Selo. ‘Engelhardt!’ he said. ‘Pushkin must be exiled to Siberia: he has flooded Russia with seditious verses; the entire youth knows them by heart. His frank conduct with Miloradovich pleases me, but that does not amend matters.’ Engelhardt endeavoured to soften the tsar’s attitude, referring to Pushkin’s literary reputation, and adding: ‘Exile could have a baneful effect on the ardent temper of this young man. I think that magnanimity, your majesty, would be more likely to make him sensible.’ 37

Alarmed by the danger – it was rumoured that Pushkin would be sent, if not to Siberia, then to the Solovetsky monastery on the White Sea – his friends hurried to his aid. Chaadaev asked his superior, General Vasilchikov, to intercede with Alexander; and, going to Karamzin, persuaded him to speak with the dowager empress, Mariya Fedorovna, on Pushkin’s behalf. Zhukovsky and Aleksandr Turgenev used their influence at the court, and Gnedich visited Olenin, who promised to mention the matter to Alexander. Pushkin himself, somewhat cowed by events, swallowed his pride and called on Karamzin. After exacting a pledge that he should refrain from writing verse against the government for two years, Karamzin undertook to help him, and, going to the empress, asked her to intercede. The emperor relented. Pushkin was not to be banished, but was to be attached to the chancellery of General Ivan Inzov, the Chief Trustee of the Interests of Foreign Colonists in the Southern Territory of Russia, then stationed in Ekaterinoslav. ‘[Pushkin’s] liberal mouth has been closed for two years,’ Aleksandr Turgenev wrote to Vyazemsky on 21 April. ‘He has been saved from the misfortune into which he fell by my good genius and his good friends,’ and, on 5 May, ‘He has become quieter and more modest and, in order not to compromise himself, even avoids me in public.’ 38 A few days later Vyazemsky heard from Karamzin: ‘Pushkin, having been for a few days completely in unpoetical fear because of his verses on freedom and some epigrams, gave me his word to cease […] He was, I think, moved by the emperor’s magnanimity, which was genuinely touching. It would take too long to describe the details, but if Pushkin does not reform now, he will be a devil long before he gets to hell.’ 39

On 4 May 1820, Count Capo d’Istrias, the head of the Foreign Office, an honorary member of Arzamas , who, according to Wiegel, had ‘dared to point out’ to Alexander the cruelty of exiling Pushkin to Siberia, and had suggested that he should be transferred to Inzov’s chancellery, 40 composed a letter to Inzov which was signed the following day by the Foreign Minister, Count Nesselrode. ‘At the Lycée,’ Capo d’Istrias wrote, ‘his progress was rapid, his wit was admired, but his character appears to have escaped the vigilance of the tutors.’ He continued:

There is no excess in which this unfortunate young man has not indulged – as there is no perfection he cannot attain through the transcendent superiority of his talents […] Some pieces of verse and above all an ode to liberty directed the attention of the government towards Mr Pushkin. Amid the greatest beauties of conception and style this latter piece gives evidence of dangerous principles drawn from the ideas of the age, or, more accurately, that system of anarchy dishonestly called the system of the rights of man, of liberty and of independence of nations.