The father of the Soviet Union was also a Latin buff who adored Goethe and liked to compare his enemies to figures in novelsLiterature shaped the political culture of the Russia in which Vladimir Ilyich Lenin grew up. Explicitly political texts were difficult to publish under the tsarist regime. The rasher essayists were holed up in asylums until they `recovered`: in other words, until they publicly recanted their views. Novels and poetry, meanwhile, were treated more leniently - though not in every instance.The chief censor was, of course, the tsar. In the case of Pushkin, the `father of the people`, Nicholas I, insisted on reading many of his verses before they went to the printer. Some, as a result, were forbidden, others delayed, and the most subversive were destroyed by the frightened poet himself, fearful that his house might be raided. We will never know what the burnt verses of Eugene Onegin contained.A number of his own close comrades denounced him. In a sharp riposte, Lenin quoted MephistophelesThe classicism that was so deeply rooted in Lenin acted as a bulwark to seal him from exciting new developments in art Continue reading...
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