Russia’s Literary Outcasts Are Reborn

In this city that for centuries has been the literary font of Russia, Tamara Nikitina worked for 35 years at a major library without ever finding a word from the works of her favorite poet.

To read the cherished verses of Anna Akhmatova during the Soviet era, brave admirers such as Nikitina had to borrow flimsy, tattered pages of underground manuscripts from the most trusted of friends and then smuggle them home for clandestine perusal out of sight of the thought police.

Today, devotees of Akhmatova, Vladimir Nabokov, Mikhail Zoshchenko and other once-banned writers can relive the triumphs and tragedies of their repressed heroes now that democracy and capitalism have combined to allow their resurrection.

Museums dedicated to literary giants who were virtually erased by the Communist culture conspiracy have opened throughout St. Petersburg to belatedly celebrate their contributions.

From the grim communal flat on the Fontanka Canal where Akhmatova burned the written copies of her verses after committing them to memory to the elegant mansion where Nabokov was born into privilege and wrote his first sensual tributes to an ill-fated love, the restored sites have reacquainted residents and visitors with the full richness of this imperial city’s literary heritage.

Pariah Status Ends

St. Petersburg has long been replete with monuments to those writers who weathered the 20th century’s political turbulence, either by virtue of having died before the revolution or by joining with the revolutionary fervor for ideological correctness. The restored apartments of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev and Alexander Pushkin were authorized places of pilgrimage even during the Soviet era.

But only since the advent of glasnost a decade ago and the more slowly emerging concept of philanthropic support of culture have the works and memories of the repressed writers been brought to the fore.

A museum commemorating Nabokov opened only last year, and Akhmatova’s belongings have taken time to be reassembled even though the apartment-memorial has been in the works for nine years.

For fans of the writers whose genius the Communists sought to erase, late is gratefully accepted as better than never.

“I was already retired when this museum opened, but I had to come to work here,” says the 67-year-old Nikitina, who stands a voluntary and dedicated vigil over the tiny room where Akhmatova holed up during the worst years of the Great Terror, Josef Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. “It wasn’t possible to bring her works to the attention of the masses before, and now that it is possible, I have to dedicate myself to the cause of helping her achieve her overdue fame.”

In the tiny room with its narrow bed and a brewer’s chair for a night stand, Akhmatova secretly penned her masterful “Requiem,” recounting the tortured vigils staged by the wives and mothers of those imprisoned by Stalin during the purges.

At 47 Bolshaya Morskaya St., the small museum preserving the early history and writings of Nabokov opened in full only this year after an extensive renovation of the three-story house where the author of “Lolita” spent his first 18 years. As members of the elite, young Nabokov and his family were forced to flee Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. But in the stately home once again graced by crystal chandeliers and inlaid wood paneling, Nabokov produced a book of verses for his first girlfriend, Valentina Shulgina.

“To her, for her, about her,” the 17-year-old Nabokov wrote in dedicating the poems that the Nabokov Foundation underwriting the museum has reproduced in their original Old Russian version, including footnotes with the tragic history of Shulgina.

“She met with an unhappy fate after the Nabokovs left,” confirms one of the curators of the exhibit. “Her parents were imprisoned, and she was forced to marry a commissar to save herself.”

The tiny, newly restored apartment of Zoshchenko at 4 Malaya Konyushennaya St. is hailed as a fitting tribute to the writer who ran afoul of the authorities for his biting satire on the discomforts and indignities of the communal apartments they carved out of elegant mansions.

Unlike most of the museum-homes, Zoshchenko’s two-room apartment remained in his family after his death in 1958 and retains many of his personal belongings.

Sponsorships Sought

Restoration of the homes of prominent writers has been slow, in large part because the impoverished Russian state has curtailed funding for cultural projects and because corporate sponsorship remains in its infancy here. But one local charitable organization calling itself the Foundation for the Renaissance of St. Petersburg is working to instill a culture of giving among the entrepreneurs and industrialists emerging in these early days of capitalism.

“Our main goal is to revive and preserve the historic and cultural heritage of St. Petersburg, but we now have to rely almost solely on the donations of sponsors,” says Nina Purgina, deputy director of the renaissance foundation. So far, the main supporters have been foreign philanthropic organizations such as the New York-based Soros Foundation and Britain’s Know-How Fund, but the group hopes to generate patronage among wealthy Russians and to train museum directors in the ways of fund-raising and self-reliance.

Extra Income Possible

None of the literary museums has yet teamed up with a publishing house to offer a full array of any of the commemorated artists’ works at the scene of their creation--a merchandising initiative that could earn extra income for the museums.

To date, the hundreds of sites where Russian literary greats lived, worked, were arrested or dueled to the death for love or honor are mostly noted only with plaques or small statues, if at all.

Only Pushkin, Russia’s most revered writer, is recognized with multiple tributes throughout the city, from the fully restored Pushkin House museum with his 4,000-volume study to the obelisk marking the Black River embankment scene of his 1837 duel that ended his life two days later.

Dostoevsky lived in at least 20 different apartments during his three decades in St. Petersburg, last and longest at the recently restored corner house at 5 Kuznechny Lane. But the more intriguing visit for the Dostoevsky student is the “Crime and Punishment” tour offered by private travel agencies that follows in the footsteps of the author’s brooding character Raskolnikov to the real-life scenes of darkness and dilapidation mentioned in the novel.

Another capitalist twist on Dostoevsky’s dark musings on good and evil is the Cafe Idiot, which opened last year on the Moika Canal embankment. With its low, vaulted ceilings, mismatched furniture and the ubiquitous crowds of chic young patrons, the smoky cellar evokes the very atmosphere often constructed by the author.

For some local residents, however, the commercial ventures revisiting scenes from the city’s literary past offer an environment a little too close to reality for comfort.

“Many Russians don’t like the Idiot,” says Yevgenia Borisova, a St. Petersburg journalist who says her crowd hangs out elsewhere. “We already live in cramped, shabby apartments. Why would we want to re-create this in places for relaxation?”