Goodbye unwashed Russia - ideological sabotage

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Old falsification as a weapon of Russophobes

Study of M. Yu. Lermontov at school often begins and ends with a poem "Goodbye, unwashed Russia", learning it by heart is mandatory for schoolchildren for several generations. This led to the fact that if not all eight lines, then the words "unwashed Russia, the land of slaves, the land of masters", which have become a powerful ideological cliché, are known by almost everyone.

Lermontov has a lot of brilliant poems, just not nearly comparable in level with the aforementioned "poem", but they are not included in the school curriculum at all, but this. A crooked syllable, poor comparisons and a complete lack of depth, so characteristic of Lermontov. It is difficult to find a worse piece to represent his work. Undoubtedly, every poet or writer, no matter how great he is, has good and bad things, and it would be natural to select the best examples for study in school. If, of course, the goal is developmentthe younger generation, and not something else.

There are very good reasonsto believe that the main purpose of the appearance of this creation in textbooks and its all-round, mass replication were not literary merits, but its screaming Russophobia. That is, it is an act of literate ideological war.

But maybe the people who introduced it into school textbooks, despite the protests of literary specialists, simply have such peculiar literary tastes and “where can we, the poor,” judge the level of the poem, this is the business of the inhabitants of heaven?

No, this is not about the disputes of the aesthetes. The fact is that soviet(and for the most part Russian at the early post-Soviet stage by inertia) textbooks were built on the principles of strict scientific character. Doubtful hypotheses and ambiguous things were not allowed there and even close. Errors, of course, were encountered, but they only reflected the difficulties of the development of science and the change of theories.

This, if I may say so, the work is strikingly different from other poems by Lermontov (in addition to off-scale Russophobia, antipatriotism and, to put it mildly, non-genius) in that there is no direct evidencethat it belongs to him, and not to another person. That is, none at all.

There is only a thousand times repeated statement, which from multiple repetitions acquires the status of truth in the mass consciousness. And these repetitions are replicated in school textbooks and publications of the poet's works. According to the requirements of scientificity, it is the supporters of the fact that this poem belongs to this poet, and must prove it … But they are not going to do this, referring to … the scientific and literary tradition, which they themselves create. As an argument, hysterics and arguments are usually presented, such as a reference to the opinion of Korolenko somewhere from 1890 (half a century after Lermontov's death). For some reason they really needso that children from an early age consider the Motherland "unwashed" and wretched.

And what is washed, what is clean? Maybe Persia, India or China? In no case. Pure and progressive - the West, of course, you need to take an example from it, or even pray for it.

That is, the purpose of this work is not at all to acquaint children with the best examples of the great Russian literature, but completely different - drive a Russophobic stamp into the heads of children … It can be argued that the only reason why the poem was included in school textbooks is its powerful Russophobic "message", presented in a wrapper from the poems of the genius Russian poet, stamp, which will be embedded in the subconsciousness of almost the entire population of the country.

For what?

Of course, for the subsequent manipulation with unkind goals by people who have already grown up. Well, if people of genius spoke of Russia like that, it’s probably really wretched, disgusting and smelly ?! But tell me, write them honestly: "Poem by an unknown poet of the late 19th century."and the whole halo will fly off him instantly. Who needs it, if it weren't attributed to Lermontov? So it was not in vain that they included it in textbooks and collections, violating all the principles - it was very necessary.

By the way, the phrase "unwashed Russia", if anything, is remarkable, it is its meanness and turning the situation upside down. In terms of hygiene, a Russian peasant from the most run-down village who has washed in a steam bath for hundreds of years at least once a week cannot be compared not only with European peasants who have washed twice in their lives, but also with the most refined French nobles who have washed in at best, once a year and invented perfume and cologne to fight off the unbearable stench of an unwashed body several times in their lives, and noblewomen who wore flea traps.

If we return to the aforementioned work, then literary scholars have long established with a very high probability that the poem "Farewell to unwashed Russia" does not belong to Lermontovand its author is a completely different person. Here are the main signs of this:

• no autograph of the author (original).
• the work first appeared 32 years after the death of the poet, and appeared in print only in 1887.
• analysis of the style shows a complete inconsistency with the style of Lermontov. So crooked images of "blue uniforms", "pasha" are not found anywhere else.
• The most likely true author is quite clearly defined - a poet-parodist Dmitry Minaev, an ardent antipatriot and anti-state, even a Russophobe, who actively wrote his parodies and epigrams just at the time when "the poem was found." It is for him that the stylistic turns of this poem are characteristic.
• Initially, there were several versions of the poem. So there were versions with the words "I will hide from your kings" and "I will hide from your leaders", which would be strange in more than 30 years.

Sklochnik and alcoholic Minaev he did not hide his hatred of the Russian classics - he himself could not measure his talent with them, his own poems were hopelessly weak, and his ambitions were exorbitant. Very similar to the now forgotten parodist poet Alexandra Ivanova, the same cosmopolitan, Russophobe, the same one who squealed that he would support the fascists in the war, because under "fascism there was private property." By the way, he also died from alcoholism.

There is, probably, not a single classic and major work that he would not spit and misinterpret. His name was usually mentioned in connection with literary falsifications, for which he was a master, and some vulgar scandals. To enhance the effect of falsifications, scandals and practical jokes, they sometimes acted together with the journalist and weird publisher Bartenev. They say that Minaev could have been a good writer, but exchanged his abilities for vulgar mockery, giggling and bilious mockery. The geniuses have remained, and no one remembers the clown … And I would not remember if it were not for his old falsification, then used by unkind people.

Who benefited, despite the protests of experts, to include this poem in Lermontov's collections? This is an interesting question. It seems like there was an attempt to introduce the poem into the school curriculum in the 20s, but in the early 30s, when Stalin began to gain strength, it disappeared from there, along with many other Russophobic creations. Then many active Russophobes were "innocently repressed" as a potential (or already formed) "fifth column" on the eve of the impending Great War.

For the first time, the massive stuffing began in 1961, under Khrushchev. Among literary scholars there are rumors that they were pushed from the level of the Central Committee of the CPSU through the Academy of Sciences. But who exactly was behind the idea of this stuffing, and who forced to introduce the poem into the complete collection of works, thus making it a literary canon, still unclear.

One very old hoax

Irregularity for all the creativity of M. Yu. Lermontov's poem Farewell, Unwashed Russia, attributed to him and persistently imposed even in school textbooks, has long raised doubts about its authenticity. But it usually happens that if a lie is repeated many times, then they get used to it, and she already seems to be true … So it is with this poem. For several generations, he was forced to memorize at school, and it began to seem to everyone that Lermontov's authorship was undeniable here. This imposed bias is very difficult to distract from. But it would seem that it was enough just to put it next to other verses - and rudeness, the clumsy lines would immediately catch the eye … And the very story of the appearance of this poem - many years after the death of the "author" - is very strange.

And one had to really want to, nevertheless, attribute this poem to Lermontov, include it in the category of undoubtedly author's, make it one of the few compulsory for study at school. And if he had not been attributed to Lermontov, then surely Pushkin would.

A. S. Pushkin: "To the Sea"

Goodbye free element!

For the last time in front of me

You roll blue waves

And you shine with proud beauty.

Attributed to M. Yu. Lermontov: "Goodbye, unwashed Russia"

Goodbye unwashed Russia

A land of slaves, a land of masters.

And you blue uniforms

And you, their loyal people.

Usually a literary hoax, as opposed to a malicious forgery, which is just a funny joke, uses an easily recognizable work as an original, the first lines of which are subject to only minor changes. This technique is also widely used in the genre of parody, in contrast to which a hoax still presupposes an element of cunning deception, someone else's signature. In the following lines, the author of a parody or literary hoax, as a rule, departs far from the original, and therefore the second stanzas of the two poems practically do not coincide anymore:

Like a mournful murmur of a friend, How is his call in the hour of farewell, Your sad noise, your inviting noise

I heard for the last time …

(Pushkin)

Perhaps behind the wall of the Caucasus

I will hide among the pasha, From their all-seeing eye

From their all-hearing ears.

In the 19th century, literary hoaxes were widespread and a fashionable parlor game. Passing off your original work or stylization as someone else's or unknown author was a fun writer’s prank. This was precisely the attribution of M. Yu. Lermontov of this poem. But later it was widely promoted for completely different purposes by Russophobic ideologists and turned from a hoax into a falsification on a given topic.

From the editorial board of "Literary Russia"

The poem "Farewell, unwashed Russia" first surfaced in a letter to P. I. Bartenev to P. A. Efremov on March 9, 1873 with the note "copied from the original." In 1955, a letter from the same Bartenev to N. V. Putyate, written no later than 1877 (the year of Putyata's death) with a similar postscript: "from the original hand of Lermontov." In 1890, the same Bartenev published another version of this poem (in all three cases there are discrepancies) in the journal "Russian Archive" published by him with a note this time - "written down from the words of the poet by a contemporary."

Three years earlier, P. Viskovatov had published in the journal Russkaya Starina, without indicating the source, the same Bartenev version, with only one word changed - "leaders" (No. 12, 1887). The autograph referred to in Bartenev's letters, of course, has not survived. Moreover, a professional historian, archaeographer and bibliographer has never said anything about this autograph anywhere: where he saw it, who has it, etc. For a person who has devoted his whole life to finding and publishing unknown materials and literary and biographical documents about Russian writers, such an unprofessional concealment of the source address - "the original, the hand of Lermontov" - is simply a mysterious thing.

Thus, in all cases, except for one where the source is not named, we are dealing with the same person - P. I. Bartenev … And every time we encounter serious contradictions: in his letters he refers to an unknown autograph, and in his publication he points more carefully to the “phenomenal memory” of an unknown contemporary, which, half a century later, made it possible to reproduce this “unknown masterpiece”. It is logical to ask: who is he, this only source of a strange poem that suddenly surfaced decades after the death of the poet!

Bartenev Pyotr Ivanovich was born in October 1829, and at the time of the murder of Lermontov he was only 11 years old. Among his writings, a number of books and articles about Pushkin (“Stories about Pushkin, recorded from the words of his friends PI Bartenev in 1851-1860”, etc.) Herzen the sensational Notes of Catherine II, published by the latter in London in 1859. Since 1863, for half a century, he has been publishing the Russian Archive magazine, specializing in the publication of unknown documents about Russian writers. However, according to the opinion of the "Brief Literary Encyclopedia", "Bartenev's numerous publications in archaeographic and textological terms were not at a high enough level." And that's putting it mildly.

Cooperation with Herzen and his uncensored press characterizes the social and political position of P. Bartenev. The intensity of political passions and demands of the time for the authority of national poets recognized by the whole society demanded precisely such revelatory documents. And demand, as you know, gives rise to supply, and if a professional publisher who has devoted his life to publishing a magazine specialized for this purpose does not have the necessary material at hand, then what can you not do to maintain interest in your magazine, to save circulation?

Bartenev was well acquainted with Pushkin's work, sympathized with revelatory propaganda, and got his hands on "sensational discoveries" and their publication. He wrote eight oakish lines, albeit with difficulty, with the help of borrowings from Pushkin - he was quite capable of that. And there was no risk. Unmasked, such a crude hoax did not threaten him with anything but laughter and public attention. But Bartenev himself hardly expected that this rally would have such consequences.

It is interesting that the compilers of the collected works of M. Yu. Lermontov (1961) commented on this poem quite wittily. Unable (for obvious reasons) to openly expose this hoax, turned into a fake by speculators, they pasted in a facsimile of M. Yu. Lermontov's "Homeland" (v. 1, p. 706). Indeed, nothing reveals a forgery better than comparing it with the original. However, if it is very necessary, then you can not see the original and stubbornly repeat the mediocre forgery. Although it is clear even to a layperson that Lermontov and this imitative daub have nothing in common.

Parodying a poet

DD Minaev is a poet of "Iskra", a parodist, a reporter, who did not disregard a single great creation of the previous "aristocratic" era and rewrote them in the spirit of liberalism - "nothing is sacred." I think that "Farewell, unwashed Russia" is time to return it to the real author.

Modernity is always looking for support in the past and seeks to interpret it in its own interests. On this basis, there is a lot of conjuncture and falsehood, when the past turns into a hostage of the present. The struggle with the past and for the past is taking place in a social and symbolic universe. In the symbolic universe, one of its main directions is fiction, which, more than any other writing (text), is closer to the masses, to practical consciousness. The main reason for the hoaxes and disguises and deceptions undertaken at different times is (although this sounds unfashionable now) social struggle. Many hoaxes are based on the ideological processing of literary masterpieces in order to adapt to the demands of the new reality. So, "Eugene Onegin", "Woe from Wit", "Dead Souls", "Demon" and other great and popular works were "corrected".

The poem "Farewell, unwashed Russia" is attributed to M. Yu. Lermontov.

It was first mentioned in a letter to P. I. Bartenev in 1873, 32 years after the death of the poet. The strangeness is that the poet's contemporaries almost did not react to this discovery. Their reaction did not follow even after the first publication in 1887. No joy was expressed, no controversy arose in the press. Maybe the reading public knew who these lines belonged to?

Literary scholars who value their reputation usually stipulate the absence of an autograph and never attribute a work to an author without at least lifetime copies. But not in this case! Both publications - P. A. Viskovatov, and then P. I. Bartenev, although they were not once convicted of dishonesty, were accepted without a doubt and in the future disputes were only about discrepancies. And here a controversy unfolded, which has not subsided until now. However, the arguments of opponents of Lermontov's authorship were not taken seriously in this dispute. The poem became canonical and is included in school textbooks as a masterpiece of the great poet's political lyrics.

Here is the eight-line, which really casts doubt on the patriotism of M. Yu. Lermontov:

D. D. Minaev:

In another epigram:

When day after day is sick, I went to the Caucasus

Lermontov met me there, Spattered with mud once …

In the poem "Moonlit Night", the motives of Lermontov's poem "Mtsyri" are sung, and each stanza ends with a refrain: "… From the blue sky … The moon looked at me." All this on the motive "Everything is good, beautiful marquise …"

As they say, nothing is sacred. Minaev himself admits:

I perfectly comprehend the secret, How to write original:

The verse will begin pompously

And I'll end it trivially …

Suddenly bringing together all kinds of objects, I am sure - oh reader! -

That you will find talent in me.

It is no coincidence that the parody "Goodbye, Unwashed Russia" emerged in 1873. Most likely, it was then that it was written by D. Minaev. As Klechenov convincingly showed in Literary Russia, this is rather a parody of Pushkin's To the Sea.

In 1874-1879 D. Minaev wrote the satirical poem "The Demon", which contains the following lines:

The demon is racing.

No interference

He does not see on the night air

On his blue uniform

Stars of all ranks sparkle …"

It is quite logical that here the author used his own find - "blue uniforms". As you can see, it is more inherent in D. Minaev and typical for him. But M. Yu. Lermontov has nothing of the kind. Why are the frequency dictionaries of great writers created, if not for the study of poetic images and vocabulary? In the famous eight-verse, all the laws of parody are observed: the discrepancy between style and thematic material; reduction, discrediting of the stylized object and even of the entire artistic and ideological complex of the original, of the poet's world outlook as a whole. This is exactly what the authors of Iskra did, parodying the poets of "pure art".

Gradually (and especially now, in our time), the hoax, carried away by the publishers of the parody, turned into a falsification, working for the opponents of Russia. Especially in the eyes of the younger generation, who take it for granted as a work of a great poet. It seems that the duty of all responsibly thinking researchers of Russian literature is to put everything in its place.