Some examples of oppression in Russia during the time of Pushkin?

Question by Roman Y: What are some examples of oppression in Russia during the time of Alexander Pushkin?
Also, would his poem, “Uznik” … be a work of literature that reveals this oppression…

Also, if someone knows where to find an English translation of this poem, plz share…

Thanks…

Answers and Views:

Answer by Charles K
Uznik
“Uznik” (“The Prisoner”) was written the previous year. From April 1820 until July 1823, Pushkin lived in quasi-exile as a foreign ministry employee in Kishinyov (Chisinau, today the capital of Moldova), where he was sent by administrative transfer after being interrogated about certain political poems.

I sit behind bars in the dankest of blocks.
A captive young eagle, the king of the hawks,
My sorry companion here, lifting his wings,
Pecks bloody food by the sill, pecks and flings,

And looks out the window, away, away off,
As if he, with me, fell to thinking one thought.
He summons me now with his look and his cry,
And wants to speak plainly, aloud: “Let us fly!

“We’re free birds in truth; it is time, brother, time!
To go, where o’er clouds, the high mountains are white,
To go, where the sea realm’s as blue as the sky,
To go, where the wind alone wanders… and I!” http://www.schillerinstitute.org/transl/trans_pushkin.html

Uznik was written when Pushkin was only twenty-three years old, but even at this age the poet realised that society, in which he lived, specifically created invisible barriers and restrictions, wrong ideals and illusions, and Pushkin expressed his longing for real freedom. Deviating from the political treatment of freedom, Pushkin realises that a poet should be free both from people and from authorities; only in this case it is possible to create freedom-loving poetry. In Pesni o veshem Olege Pushkin points out that any literary work should be free and truthful. After the Decembrists’ defeat, Pushkin continues to dream of freedom, hoping to realise this dream. As Pushkin claims in his poem Vo glubine sibirskich rud dedicated to his friends-Decembrists, http://www.ukessays.com/ Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals. This angered the government, and led to his transfer from the capital (1820). He went to the Caucasus and to the Crimea, then to Kamenka and Chisinau, where he became a Freemason. Here he joined the Filiki Eteria, a secret organization whose purpose was to overthrow the Ottoman rule over Greece and establish an independent Greek state. He was inspired by the Greek Revolution and when the war against the Ottoman Turks broke out he kept a diary with the events of the great national uprising. He stayed in Chisinau until 1823 and wrote there two Romantic poems which brought him wide acclaim, The Captive of the Caucasus and The Fountain of Bakhchisaray. In 1823 Pushkin moved to Odessa, where he again clashed with the government, which sent him into exile at his mother’s rural estate in Mikhailovskoe (near Pskov) from 1824 to 1826.[11] However, some of the authorities allowed him to visit Tsar Nicholas I to petition for his release, which he obtained. But some of the insurgents in the Decembrist Uprising (1825) in Saint Petersburg had kept some of his early political poems amongst their papers, and soon Pushkin found himself under the strict control of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will. He had written what became his most famous play, the drama Boris Godunov, while at his mother’s estate but could not gain permission to publish it until five years later. The drama’s original, uncensored version would not receive a premiere until 2007.

Pushkin’s wife Natalya GoncharovaIn 1831, highlighting the growth of Pushkin’s talent and influence and the merging of two of Russia’s greatest early writers, he met Nikolai Gogol. After reading Gogol’s 1831–2 volume of short stories Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, Pushkin would support him critically and later in 1836 after starting his magazine, The Contemporary, would feature some of Gogol’s most famous short stories. Later, Pushkin and his wife Natalya Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, became regulars of court society. When the Tsar gave Pushkin the lowest court title, the poet became enraged: he felt this occurred not only so that his wife, who had many admirers—including the Tsar himself—could properly attend court balls, but also to humiliate him. In 1837, falling into greater and greater debt amidst rumors that his wife had started conducting a scandalous affair, Pushkin challenged her alleged lover (correction: man who insulted his wife), Georges d’Anthès, to a duel which left both men injured, Pushkin mortally. He died two days later.

The government feared a political demonstration at his funeral, which it moved to a smaller location and made open only to close relatives and friends. His body was spirited away secretly at midnight and buried on his mother’s estate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin

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