The Spark of Anti-Tsarist Tyranny – Pushkin's Poem "Sending siberia"

Text/Ma Jiajun

Dark clouds hung over Moscow, and the bronze statue of Pushkin in the square seemed to gaze thoughtfully into the distance. A group of workers, citizens, and intellectuals, in the cold wind, took off their hats to pay tribute to the great poet. Someone recited the poet's "To Chadayev": "Comrade, believe it: the stars of charming happiness will rise high and shine, Russia will awaken from its slumber, and on the ruins of despotism will be written our names." ” ...... Suddenly, a group of agents and police officers attacked, sticks and gun butts, and people fought with the suppressors, and some were arrested and put into police cars. The salute ceremony was washed away. The news spread among the whispering crowds in the streets. This is not the social upheaval of the Russian tsarist era, this is the struggle against fascist rule that often takes place today among the unyielding Soviet people. Why is the ruling clique full of "humanity" and "freedom" so afraid of the great Russian poet who has been dead for one hundred and forty years? Let's look at history and reality.

Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 to an aristocratic family. His parents were obsessed with pleasure and did not care about their children's education. From an early age, Pushkin absorbed the nourishment of rich folklore from the serf nannies. In 1811, he attended the Imperial Village School, where he received The Culture of the European Enlightenment from its progressive teachers. The following year, napoleon invaded Russia and was repulsed by the Great Patriotic War, which awakened Russia, which was sleeping under serfdom, and bourgeois revolutionary ideas were brewing among advanced aristocratic intellectuals and officers. Pushkin became acquainted with Chadayev, an officer stationed near the school, and initially realized the evils of feudal despotism and serfdom. During his studies, he established friendships with advanced classmates and began to write poetry.

In 1817, he graduated from the school. During his tenure, he joined the secret literary society "Green Lantern Society". At this time, Tsarist Russia acted as a European gendarme to suppress the revolutions of the peoples. Internally consolidate serfdom, strengthen supra-economic feudal exploitation; strengthen the state apparatus of tsarist tyranny, and brutally suppress any disgruntled ideas. A group of aristocratic intellectuals and military officers organized secret societies to plot to overthrow the tsarist autocracy and carry out social reforms. Among them were Pushkin's close friends and classmates. Pushkin's poems express the thoughts and voices of these revolutionaries. In Ode to Freedom (1817), he loudly called: "Shudder, the tyrant of the world!" And you, creeping slaves, listen, cheer up, awaken!" He exposed the "ruthless landlord" who "used a coercive whip to force all the peasants—labor, land, time—into their own hands." (The Countryside, 1819) The Tsar discovered pushkin's poems circulating among intellectuals, officers, and soldiers, and exiled the poets to southern Russia.

During the exile in southern Russia, although the reactionary authorities monitored and tortured Pushkin, the poet's spirit of resistance increased unabated. He got to know the revolutionaries of southern Russia, attended their secret meetings, and spread progressive ideas to the local youth. In the poem The Short Sword (1821), he calls for the killing of the tyrant with a weapon. He wrote a series of long poems expressing rebellious ideas and even praising "robbers". In 1824, the Tsarist government privately dismantled Pushkin's letter, discovered his atheistic remarks, and the Tsar's informant to the Tsar that Pushkin had "taught" the city's youth, so the Tsarist government escorted the poet to the territory of the poet's parents and imprisoned him in the desolate countryside of the north. Between 1824 and 1826, Pushkin studied the customs, oral literature, and language of the people in the countryside, studied Russian history, and wrote a large number of works. In the historical tragedy Boris Godunov, he pointed out that the tsar's demise lay in the loss of popularity. The poet said: "The people are always secretly sympathetic to the rebellion", showing the spirit of resistance of the Russian people. During this period, in December 1825 an armed uprising of revolutionaries broke out in the capital Petersburg, which was suppressed by the Tsar. These revolutionaries were called Decembrists. The five leaders were hanged by the Tsar. Among them was Pushkin's friend, the poet Ryleev. Other members of the party, many of whom were Pushkin's classmates and close friends, were also exiled to Siberia for hard labor and imprisoned in cells and mines. Society was in darkness, and secret agents sneaked into Pushkin's exile to collect evidence of the crime in order to arrest him. In the face of no results, the gendarmes arrived and escorted the poet to Moscow.

Pushkin, a dusty servant, was brought before the Tsar. The Tsar asked him if he would take part in the uprising if he were in St. Petersburg. Pushkin replied boldly: "Definitely participate, all my friends are participating, I will not stand by." "The Tsar wanted to woo Pushkin to become a court poet. But Pushkin did not surrender. He was loyal to the ideals of the Decembrists, and in 1827 he said in the poem "Arion" that he was in the same boat with the party, and suddenly a storm struck, and the helmsman and the sailor died, leaving him alone as a singer, thrown to the shore by a storm: "I sing the old lead song, and dry my damp clothes, by the rocks under the sun." In the same year, the wife of the Decembrist Muravyov, despite the obstruction of high society and aristocratic families, decided to go to Siberia to meet her exiled husband and stay behind. At a party before leaving, Pushkin quietly took a poem she had written to Siberia. This is the famous poem "Send Siberia".

In the short sonnets of "Sending Siberia", Pushkin comforts the Decembrists that, despite their misfortunes, misfortune and hope are twin sisters. The Party members are not alone, love and friendship, the poet's free poems, are all supporting them. As long as you muster up the courage to fight, victory will come sooner or later. The poem declares that the great prison of Tsarist Russia will one day collapse. The psalmist encourages the Party that you will be set free, and that the land of war will rescue you and fight with you. But at the time of the defeat of the Decembrists, a new generation of aristocratic revolutionaries of Herzen's generation had not yet emerged, and the poet's proclamation was only an empty fantasy. The limitations of class and the times blind Pushkin to the bourgeois character of the Decembrists' programme, to the fundamental weakness of the Decembrists' detachment from the masses of the working people, and therefore he can only give general encouragement and cannot propose a practical way out.

The tone of this poem is high, the words are solemn and simple, and the artistic conception is far-reaching. The poet transforms the will and ideal into a perceptible image, and perfectly integrates the situation of the party with the poet's feelings. The poem uses more of the future tense verbs (translated as "will", "will") to express good wishes.

The poem quickly spread in penal colonies and labor pits. The Decembrist poet Alexander Odoevsky wrote a poem "Reply to Pushkin", in which he said: "Rest assured, poet! We are proud of our shackles, of this fate, and though we are locked inside the prison gates, we mock the Tsar in our hearts. Our work of mourning will never fail- watching the spark of the stars burn into a raging flame, we will forge the chains into swords, and then we will burn the fire of freedom, and the flames of anger will be raised to the Tsarist people and breathe happily! The phrase "see the spark of the stars burning into a raging flame" in the poem was quoted in the masthead of Lenin's 1900 magazine Mars.

In the reactionary years, Pushkin wrote the famous poetic novel "Yevgeny Onegin" in the history of Russian literature. Marx and Engels repeatedly quoted it, pointing out that Pushkin had long understood Adam Smith's principles of the transformation of money and commodities. Pushkin described and praised the peasant revolt in The Song of Skinna Racine, The History of the Village of Goliusino, Dubrovsky, and The Captain's Daughter. Although these works still have ideological weaknesses, the resistance struggle of the working people expressed by the author through them in the reactionary years is invaluable.

Pushkin, who used his writings to erect a non-artificial monument, proudly said: "The reason why I am always close to the people is because I have used my poetry to arouse people's kindness, and in this cruel century I have sung the praises of freedom,......" Pushkin, of course, did not celebrate the freedom of the proletariat, there was no proletariat in Russia at that time. But his struggle against the tsarist tyranny and feudal serfdom must have had his historical merits. Precisely because Pushkin did not submit to the Tsarist government, the reactionary ruling class kept slandering him and instigating a despicable foreign rogue, Dantes, to kill Pushkin in 1837 using the so-called "duel". The same Dantes, in 1871, became the executioner of the workers who suppressed the uprising in the Paris Commune.

When the news of Pushkin's murder by the Tsarist government came out, tens of thousands of mourners became a demonstration against the reactionaries. The Tsar sent gendarmes to secretly escort Pushkin's coffin back to his parents' domain for hastily burial. On the day of Pushkin's death,-- new poet, Lermontov, protested angrily. Lermontov was exiled for writing "The Death of the Poet" in mourning Pushkin, and four years later he was also killed by the Tsarist government.

It was in this way that the old Tsar suppressed the people's spirit of resistance. Today's followers of the old Tsar are futile in putting groups of people who rebelled against fascist rule in prison and exile in Siberia for hard labor. As Pushkin's poem says, "Heavy shackles fall and prisons fall." The spark of a spark will surely ignite the plains, and the Soviet people, after more than a hundred years of struggle, will surely raise the red flag of the October Revolution again.

[Attached] Pushkin's "Sending Siberia" (translated by Ma Jiajun)

In the depths of the Siberian mines,

I hope you will maintain your proud tolerance,

Your miserable labor,

And the lofty ambitions of the mind will not fade.

Unfortunate faithful sisters, Hope,

In the midst of the dark caves,

Through the dark prison,

Just like my free voice,

Heavy shackles will fall,

Prison will perish — and freedom,

Will happily greet you at the door,

The brethren will give Litron into your hands.

（1927）

Published in the February 1979 issue of Mass Literature and Art [Xi'an].

(Note: The author of this article has authorized this headline)

(Ma Jiajun, a native of Qingyuan, Hebei, born on October 5, 1929, is currently a professor at the College of Literature of Shaanxi Normal University, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a member of the Chinese Dramatists Association, a member of the Chinese Filmmakers Association, an honorary president (former president) of the Shaanxi Foreign Literature Society, a principle of the Chinese Foreign Literature Society, a principle of the Chinese Russian Literature Research Society, a former president of the Shaanxi Provincial Higher Education Drama Research Society, a former consultant of the Shaanxi Poetry Society, and a former executive director of the Shaanxi Provincial Federation of Social Science Societies. Shaanxi Province to build socialist spiritual civilization advanced individuals, Shaanxi Province to teach and educate advanced teachers, etc., enjoy special allowances from the State Council.

He is the author of 12 kinds of "Nineteenth Century Russian Literature", "The New Stage of Aesthetic History", "Poetry Exploration", "Exploration of World Literature", etc.; 4 kinds of "The Essence of World Literature" and "History of Western Drama" co-authored with his daughter Ma Xiaoyi; 9 kinds of "History of World Literature" (3 volumes) and "Research on Gorky's Creation"; edited 4 kinds of "30 Lectures on European and American Modernist Literature"; co-edited and co-authored "100 Topics of Marxism-Leninism", "Cultural Research Methods", "50 Lectures on Oriental Literature", "Western Literature in the Twentieth Century", etc. and more than 40 kinds.

It has been listed in more than 40 kinds, such as the Dictionary of Chinese Writers, the Dictionary of Chinese Poets, the Dictionary of Chinese Social Science Scholars, the Cambridge Dictionary of International Biographies (27th Edition in English), the Directory of Experts in Russian Studies Abroad (Russian Edition) of the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Classics of Shaanxi Century of Literature and Art. ）