Writing a Usable Past

In Writing a Usable Past: Russian Literary Culture, 1917-1937, Angela Brintlinger provides a multifaceted examination of this conflict by looking at the competing claims laid to Pushkin and to his treatment in biographies (and attempted biographies) by three writers: Iurii Tynianov, Vladislav Khodasevich, and Mikhail Bulgakov. As the centenary of Pushkin's death approached, the great poet was elevated to the status of national hero and in the process politicized by the Soviets as a "people's poet". The emigre community launched a counterattack in its journals, newspapers, exhibits, and cultural organizations and held up Pushkin as a symbol of its faith in a "true" Russia and Russian culture.

Brintlinger reveals how the biographers of this period took different approaches to Pushkin's life. Tynianov, a scholar turned novelist, used history to maximize the fictional events of his Pushkin novel; by contrast, Khodasevich, a poet turned scholar, was determined to remain true to historical fact. Bulgakov found the middle ground where history, biography, and fiction intersect. In pursuing the "truth" of Pushkin's life, each writer sought a so-called usable past -- usable for ends that served both political needs and personal, artistic, and intellectual expression.