Letters to the Editor
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‘Russia’s Century-Long Culture Crisis’
Martha Mercer begins her review of Solomon Volkov’s “The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn” by repeating the author’s claim that “Tolstoy … is … the first modern example of the commingling of Russian culture and politics” [Arts & Letters, “Russia’s Century-Long Culture Crisis,” April 1, 2008].
A generation earlier, Pushkin and Gogol merged Russian politics and literary culture in new and astounding ways.
Thus, Pushkin’s “The Bronze Horseman” (1833) and Gogol’s “Dead Souls” (1842) — to say nothing of Pushkin’s drama Boris Godunov (1825), produced in censored version only in 1866.
It would be truer to say that Tolstoy married the language of Pushkin to the realism of Gogol to reach a culmination, a new and greater literary height. His unfinished “The Decembrists,” a precursor to the epic “War And Peace” (1869) is a tribute to those, Pushkin and the poet Ryleyev among them, who earlier launched a first revolt against Russian autocracy and backwardness.
ALLEN TOBIAS
Brooklyn, N.Y.
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