When a poet falls from his pedestal, it is rarely in the literal sense. At the end of April, however, the municipal team of Tchernihiv (Ukraine) pulled out all the stops to make pay his “debt” to the poet Alexander Pushkin, literary genius of the 19th century. On April 30, a bust bearing his likeness was removed from the park where he had been enthroned for one hundred and twenty-two years. The author ofEugene Onegin went to the backyard of the local history museum, in the company of figures from the Soviet era. The author is therefore condemned to anonymity, he who had known Ukraine for a few years, during an exile (1820-1826) imposed by Tsar Alexander I.
Similar scenes have been observed in the cities of MykolayivMukachevo and Zabolotiv, thanks to a “derussification” movement following the invasion of the country. “We have no choice: everything Russian must be dismantled”, meanwhile, said the mayor of Ternopil as a farewell to the poet. In Ouzhhorod, it was also the municipal council* that sealed the fate of Alexander Pushkin and unsealed his statue. Taking advantage of a vague resemblance to Joe Dassin, an unknown person had already attacked the genius by inscribing the name of the Franco-American singer on this bust. The message addressed to the poet is clear: let him go and whistle up there on the hill. And far, if possible.
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To date, a dozen statues of the writer have already been removed across the country, according to the BBC (link in Russian), which more broadly recorded 80 destructions of monuments, most bearing the image of officers from the Soviet or Tsarist era. The “Pushkinopad” follows the path of the “Leninopad”, this movement which laid down several hundred statues of Lenin after the country’s independence (1991). These demolitions continued after the Ukrainian revolution, as part of the “decommunization” laws adopted under the presidency of Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019).
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This cultural revolt is also topographical. In the great city of Kharkiv, the cultural capital of Ukraine, the regional council has decided to rename* the Drama Theater of the Russian Academy Pushkin in order to “to rid the public space of propaganda narratives”. Some 200 place names will soon be replaced by the town hall, while the fate of Boulevard Pouchkine is not yet entirely decided. In total, Ukraine has about a hundred streets named after the poet. And as many local debates on the validity of this “cancel culture” with Ukrainian sauce.
So what are the charges against Alexander Pushkin, a posthumous actor in the conflict? A program has been posted on the social network Telegram – “But what did Pushkin do to you?” – to automatically provide arguments for renaming streets with Russian names. In the case of the poet, the object of wrath is a glorification of “aggressions committed by Peter the Great against neighboring nations”in a passage of the poem Poltava (1828) composed to the glory of the Tsar.
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Contrary to the Western romantics, he is also accused of having delivered an inglorious portrait of Ivan Mazeppa, hero of the Cossacks, allied with Sweden to try to obtain the independence of Ukraine in 1709. “When Pushkin described them (…) as bloody and cruel, it was only the 19th century version of the current propaganda narrative about so-called Ukrainian Nazis”summarizes the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko in Foreign Policy (link in English).
In the eyes of Ukrainian experts, Alexander Pushkin would be no more than a pale substitute for his Western contemporaries. Looking towards the West, the intellectuals accordingly praised the artistic merits of the British romantic poet Lord Byron, considered to be far superior. And too bad if Pushkin suffered exile, experienced censorship and condemned tsarism on numerous occasions. To the point, moreover, of having reviewed its initial position on Peter the Great in The Bronze Horseman.
“Russian culture is a terrible instrument of enslavement”affirms in particular the Ukrainian philosopher Vakhtang Kebuladze, in an interview on the radio Hromadske*. To the point of considering Vladimir Putin as “a product of Russian imperialism and of that literary tradition which goes from Pushkin to the present day”. The great Russian classics must now atone for their membership in this fantasized empire, from which Ukraine is trying to tear itself away. “Pushkin’s poems can be a weapon”declared in an interview * the actress Olesya Zkurakovskaya, yet rocked by her writings.
At the same time, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy is preparing regulations for public and school libraries, in order to operate the withdrawal of the works concerned in the following order: pro-Russian books, Russian books published after 1991, then classics. Conceived as a global rejection of the “Russian world” and its figures, “derussification” must accompany the awareness of a national identity, as expressed by Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko to the BBC (in Russian).
“We are now talking about an identity war for the Ukrainian people. And the main factor of this identity is culture.”
Oleksandr Tkachenko, Ukrainian Minister of Cultureat the BBC
Some 100 million books are concerned in total, according to the estimate of Oleksandra Koval, director of the Ukrainian Book Institute (UBI). Pushkin and Dostoyevsky “laid the foundations of a ‘Russian world’ and in a form of messianism”she justifies to the Interfax-Ukraine* agency. “Lulled by these stories since childhood, people believe that the mission of the Russian people (…) is to save the world against their will.” According to her, these books must therefore remain confined to university and research libraries, in order to“study the roots of totalitarianism”.
All of the classic Russian-language authors are therefore now in the hot seat, from Leo Tolstoy to Fiodor Dostoyevsky, via Mikhail Bulgakov, a child from kyiv who nevertheless suffered from Soviet censorship all his life. Rare exceptions: Nicolas Gogol, whom the two countries are fighting over, and Taras Chevchenko, master of Ukrainian romanticism.
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This “derussification” does not stop there. On June 19, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a law* prohibiting the import and sale of books printed in Russia. It will also be prohibited* to broadcast in the Ukrainian public space music composed by artists who obtained Russian citizenship after the fall of the USSR in 1991. The musicians concerned may, however, request a broadcasting authorization from the Ukrainian authorities, on condition of having publicly condemned the war. These texts await the signature of President Volodymyr Zelensky to enter into force.
A group of experts has also proposed to the Ministry of Education to modify the curricula of middle and high schools in Ukrainian and foreign literature, by removing the compulsory teaching of Russian and Belarusian authors. “How do you explain to children that it is necessary to study the literature of this ‘world’ which is brought to us by fire and sword?” justifies MP Nataliya Pipa*. “Study the works of Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad and Victor Hugo instead”recommended these experts.
The elected also denounces the excessive weight of Russian authors in the foreign literature program: four out of seven writers for the first half of the 20th century.
“Resentment against Russian did not arise with the 2022 war, or even in 2014 with the conflict in Donbass”emphasizes the linguist Nicolas Tournadre, in a column published in The world (article reserved for subscribers). “In the time of the tsars, Ukrainian was already forbidden and despised. Be that as it may, it is clear that the present war will have lasting consequences on the use of Russian and Surzhyk [mélange d’ukrainien et de russe] in this country.” The specialist mentions a “understandable rejection” of Russian literature, but also regrets a “considerable impoverishment for Ukrainians”.
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These caveats are rare in Ukraine, but they do exist. Despite pressure to erase the memory of the famous poet, the mayor of Odessa refuses for the moment to rename Pushkin Street, located near the city hall. “Odessa is the intercultural capital of Ukraine and I am concerned about the rising hatred against anything Russian.”justified the Russian-speaking elected New York Times (link in English). Presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych sparked controversy when he declared* that Ukraine must preserve its diversity, in order not to become “a big country with a small culture”.
* Links followed by an asterisk are in Ukrainian.