Interpretation of travel

The publishing house "New Literary Review" represents the book of the historian of culture and literary critic Alexander Etkind. "Interpretation of travel. Russia and America in injuries and intertexts. "

The cultural dialogue between Russia and America has lasted centuries, despite all historical obstacles. The writers and philosophers of both countries carefully monitored the political, social and artistic experiments of each other. Real and imaginary travels for the ocean that they committed for this helped them comprehend the experience of another and better understand themselves. These contacts and fantasies gave rise to unusual rapprochement of ideas and plots. Reading the well -known texts of Russian and American literary traditions from the point of view of the relationship of two cultures, Alexander Etkind offers their new interpretations. How did Pushkin read the famous Tokville treatise on how the American ambassador entered the Bulgakov Roman, and the girl from Leningrad had an influence on the financial leaders of America? Why are the plots of Nabokov and Pasternak intertwined and what story is told in the letters of Zinaida Trotskaya? Etkind is looking for answers to these questions using a method that he characterizes as “new historicism”. For this publication, some chapters are processed and supplemented by the author.

We offer to read one of the essays included in the book.

Russian communism in America: William Frey

One of the followers of Ivan Mokrievich still managed to realize his project of communism. William Frey (aka Vladimir Gaines), the Estland nobleman, a guards officer and a he geodeusist mathematician, was close to a radical underground 1 , but suddenly abandoned both quarry, scientist and underground. Having read the book of William Dixon “New America” and having written off with Mokrievich, Gaines emigrated to the New World in 1868 to join the biblical communists there. It is known that Frey corresponded with John Neoeis 2 , but at that time the commune no longer accepted new members. Also, after reading the “New America” in the Russian translation and another review of it in “Contemporary”, Mikhail Sazhin 3 left for America . He was in a political link; According to him, "none of us knew how much the road from Vologda to New York would cost." Probably, it was an escape, but in 1869 it did not seem obstacle. As a result, Sazhin became a member of a certain branch of Onayda in Minneapolis.

Frey wrote down in his diary with disapproval that Sazhin and Mokrievich live in communes in idleness and debauchery. Sazhin stayed in America for about two years. Having moved to Europe, he got closer to Bakunin and did not recall Neuzin. From America, Frey sent an overview of the presidential campaign to “Domestic Notes” (1870) and “Communist letter” to the emigrant magazine “Forward” (1874). He wrote that communism would not only solve economic problems, but will commit a complete revolution in human relations. Love for each other will make people equal in wealth, Frey believed.

In the spirit of Neuza, he argued with the economists and Marxists who believed in the opposite - that equalization of property will help to love the near 4 . Neusha did not accept Frey-Gight in Onayda, although according to Korolenko, he still managed to live with the biblical communists. He had to establish his own commune in Kansas, where several more Russians joined him, among them Ivan and Vladimir Dobrolyubov, the younger brothers of the famous writer, and Grigory Machetet. The reference book on "communist societies" in America calls this community "Russian materialists"; It was included in it, according to the reference book, also a certain sculptor known in Russia (probably Fedor Kamensky) 5 . The Machit described the leader of the commune with ambivalence, the source of which will soon become clear to us:

Frey, a stocky, tightly folded man, with a smart and beautiful face. <...> It was felt: ... before you, the mind is extremely non -independent, staggering, unstable 6 .

The Malchtta described the order of life in the commune of Frey as the most similar to the community of the “Father of Neaz”; But, according to him, the “way to solve the family question”, which was practiced in Onida, was not accepted in the commune of Frey. It is interesting that Machita mentions a certain P., a Russian officer who came to America with Freem, but in Kansas quarreled with him and lived nearby the life of a farmer. “This quarrel of two good, honest compatriots who arrived in America together grew up and grew up in a serene prairie,” Machete said; Reading this, it is difficult not to recall Kirillov and Shatov, the heroes of “demons”.

The reference book of 1875 calls several Americans living with Freim “spiritualists” 7 . The mast called them "spiritualities"; With this word, he called American shakers and Mormons without analysis. Later, in his essay, “Spirita and Spirits” described the ritual with jumps and prophecies, he saw in America:

Medium, like a frantic, jumped up from a chair. <...> Foam beat him from his mouth, his whole body ... as if cramped in convulsions. <...> The medium sang ... and began to jump and spin. <...> One of the women, jumping up as a obsessed, began to rave, scream, sob and sing. <...> Another, third, rose behind her. <...> All this ... jumped and spun together. <...> I decided to sobering, bringing into consciousness all this terrible Bedlam. I quickly jumped up ... I ran to the lamp and started a strong stream of light. <...> All the sitting accurately came to life, somehow sighed freely and ... Like after a heavy sleep, they left their places 8 .

The description of the mast is quite consistent with the many American descriptions of the shaker “dancing”, but very unfriendly; According to its intonations, Machts is close here rather to Melnikov-Pechersky, describing the Hlystoy Grying. But the connoisseur of Russian sects himself was never in the wound, and Mashtt literally tried on the role of an enlightenment agent. Those who knew the shakers according to the descriptions perceived them differently. Friedrich Engels wrote in the article 1845 with enthusiasm: “The first people in America and all over the world who created a society based on socialized property were so -called shakers” 9 . In 1869, Peter Lavrov compared shakers with scopets: no versions of religious asceticism, Lavrov wrote, "could not destroy sex drive, if they did not resort to radical measures of scotzers." Shakeers, he believed, a purely psychological plan was successful:

Most fanatical sectarians ... came to a distortion of the human physical body; But other, for example, the SHAKERS [Imer], apparently, managed to distort a person in this regard mentally 10 .

Closer to the end of the century with shakers, Tolstoy was very sympathetic.

Let us return, however, to the commune of Frey. “The community should be considered as a family,” said, in the spirit of Chernyshevsky and Neuza, the first point of its “Constitution” 11 . There was no private property; “All the property that members could have, or can get, whatever its source is, irrevocably surrendered to the commune.” Frey's case was the complete merger of all the vital manifestations of communitymen into a single group stream, in which there is neither the possibility of personal life, nor the need for it. Then individual communes merge with each other and so a peaceful, non -violent revolution will happen.

The community was engaged in unusual manual labor, suffered brutally and had a typographic machine, which produced a monthly “progressive communist” sheet: freedom of speech that was used by the American communes of that time and which the Russian sects were completely deprived of. Progressive communists practiced “open life” with periodic “rallies”, “public confessions” and a weekly ritual of mutual criticism. According to the mast, “on Sundays there were ... completely unknown meetings in Europe, developed by most American communities, these are meetings for“ criticism ”.” As we know, such meetings were arranged in the early 1870s and in St. Petersburg.

The real follower of Rakhmetov, Frey combined extreme asceticism in food and life with the layered freedom in sex matters. In “Open”, he also went farthest, offering once and for all to abandon private, separate conversations. The wife shared his eyes. Two years later, Mary Frey’s community life had a connection with young Grigory Machete. In accordance with the ideas of Frey, the problem was openly discussed in the commune (the mattress later recalled these meetings with disgust). After the next novel by Maria, with another member of the community, Frey realized that he was not ready for the socialization of his wife.

At this difficult moment, the community was visited by the "God -man" led by Malikov. In the fall of 1874, when his comrades went to the people hundreds, Tchaikovsky read the article by Frey in the magazine “Forward” and moved to New York with his wife. Soon, Malikov followed him with his wife Claudia Prugavina, and Semyon (Samuel) Klyachko, a tie-tier. All of them then believed in the God -humanism and decided to join the Kansas community of Frey. Then he expressively called her “communist” order of Tchaikovsky “moral castration” (h, 126). Ecstatic Malikov also did not like the atmosphere of forced frankness, mechanically reproduced at every meeting. In the summer of 1877, the commune broke up.

In 1871, Dostoevsky inserted the American plot into the novel "Demons", re -reading "What to do?" And having, apparently, rumors about the adventures of Frey or Debogoria-Mokrievich. Two years before the revolutionary actions described in the “demons”, Kirillov and Shatov went to America “to try the life of an American worker”: the route, chronology and motivation are the same as Rakhmetov’s. “We praised everything: spiritualism, Lynch’s law, revolvers, vagabonds,” said Shatov. - We hired there to the workers to one exploiter; All of us, Russians, gathered for six people - students, even the landowners from their estates, were even officers, and all with the same majestic goal. " Then Shatov and Kirillov left the owner and "for four months in the hut lay on the floor." Gloomy Kirillov paid for a ticket from America by the obligation to kill himself in the name of the revolution, which he fulfilled. Shatov, on the other hand, returned to Russia with Stavrogin's money, worked out by him, Shatov, his wife: when he was in America, his wife was in connection with Stavrogin. Now he cannot give this money and therefore allows himself to be killed. So Dostoevsky interprets the love triangle from "What to do?" And the journey of the noble Lopukhov. As a result, the American temptation is included in the plot of its key moment; It is because of their trip to America that both victims, each in its own way, cannot break with revolutionaries and die. If Chernyshevsky in his heroes, Lopukhov and Rakhmetov depicts a trip to America as a means of solving the main Russian problems, then Dostoevsky in his heroes, Shatov and Kirillov, shows the mortal danger of America for a Russian man.

As for Frey, he still did not escape group marriage. He lived in Kansas with his wife, with her children from different partners and with Lidia Eichhof, a student of Malikov, after his departure remaining with Freim. He was not disappointed in his understanding of communism and was looking for new communities.

In 1877, Frey corresponded with the leaders of the American utopian commune of Ikaria, founded by Etienne Cabe; But by this time Ikaria almost broke up. In 1883, he helped a group of Jewish refugees from Russia to establish a community in Oregon, called New Odessa 12 . There was also complete communism here; Four years later, however, this community of 60 people broke up. In 1885, Frey, disappointed with America, went to Russia. Several times he visited a clear meadow with an obvious goal to turn Tolstoy to his version of communism, met with a new generation of terrorists and went to the Caucasus to visit local sects. Tolstoy Frey liked it, we do not know the reaction of Molokan. In any case, Frey did not establish new communes in Russia. He finished his life in London in 1888.

1. According to Gershenzon, Gains-Fray was part of the "land and will"; Having been carried away by his hero, Gershenzon, in the preface to the publication of his letters, calls him “one of the best Russian people of the recent past” (Russian propheels / comp. And preparation for the press of M. Gershenzon. M .: Sabashnikovs, 1915. T. 1. P. 276).

2. Baturinsky V.V. K. Gaines // Russian Biographical Dictionary. M., 1912. S. 356; Yarmolinsky A. a Russian's American Dream. R. 12; Korolenko V. G. History of my contemporary. P. 178. The composition of Onida was already stabilized by 1856, and the commune refused new people. Neuzes believed that proselytes cause excessive tension.

3. Sazhin M.P. (Arman Ross). Memories. M.: Ed. All -Union. Froke Politkatorzhan and Osenno-Selets, 1925. P. 21.

4. Review of Frey's works in America see: Yarmolinsky A. a Russian's American Dream. R. 50–52, 82; For Frey and his commune, see also: Kuropiatnik GP Russian in the United States: Social, Cultural, and Scientifi C Contacts in the 1870s // RussianMerican Dialogue On Cultural Relments / Ed. by ne Saul and rd mckinzie. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997. R. 131–138.

5. Nordhoff Ch. The Communistic Societies of the United States. R. 354.

6. Marytet G. Communist Party Frey // Marytet G. Complete works. St. Petersburg: T-Wo Enlightenment, 1911. T. 1. S. 197–202.

7. Nordhoff Ch. The Communistic Societies of the United States. R. 354.

8. Marytet G. Spirita and perfumes // Maln G. Complete works. T. 1. S. 150–152; In the “Church rally” - a friend of his essay from American life (Ibid., P. 243–259) - Maryt respectfully described the ecstatic rituals of American sects; The characterization of American members of the Frey community as “Spirits” see: Ibid. S. 197.

9. Cit. by: Kumar K. Utopua and Antiutopia in Modern Times. R. 83; Kumar, in turn, refers to a special work: Lewis S. Feuer. The Infl Unce of the American Communist Colonies on Marx and Engels // Western Political Quarterly. Vol. 19. 1966. No. 3. R. 459, 461.

10. Lavrov P. Historical letters. 2nd ed. SPb., 1905. S. 186–187.

11. Nordhoff Ch. The Communistic Societies of the United States. R. 355–356.

12. The story of the New Odessa see: Oved Y. Two Hundred Years of American Com Munes. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1988. R. 223–231.