MOSCOW
TRIAL
239
Sinyavsky's impious references
to
Lenin clearly pale before Pushkin's
horrendous innuendos about the
~n
of Him by whose divine will
Nicholas I sat on the throne of all the Russias. The poem was pub–
lished only after the October Revolution, and has since regularly ap–
peared in
all
Soviet editions of Pushkin's works, despite its clearly
"psychopathological" delving into sexual matters (at one point Gabriel
sinks
his teeth "into that part wherewith the Devil sinned").
In 1828 a Government commission was set up to investigate the
authorship of the poem which was widely attributed to Pushkin, who
at first denied that he had anything to do with it. Nicholas I then
invited Pushkin to communicate with
him
personally, bypassing the
Commission. Pushkin wrote the following letter which was passed to
Nicholas:
On being interrogated by the Government, I did not regard
myself bound to admit to a prank as shameful as it was crimi–
nal... '. But now, being asked directly by my Sovereign I here–
by state that the
Gabrieliad
was written by me in 1818. I throw
myself on the mercy and generosity of my sovereign. Your im–
perial majesty's humble servant: Alexander Pushkin, 1828.
On a written inquiry from the commission as to how they should proceed
and whether they should continue to interrogate Pushkin, Nicholas
scribbled this
"characteristic"
(this
is the word used by the correspondent
of
Komsomolskaya Pravda)
remark:
"1
know all about this case and
regard it as closed."
At least somebody in the editorial offices of the London
Daily
Worker
saw the point, since this excursion into Russian literary history
was published side by side with its Moscow correspondent's report on
the verdict in the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel.
