A.S. Pushkin on the topic of the day: “Defeated” or “unrecognized” (anniversary, theatrical, “merezhkovskoje”)

The article offers a historical commentary on little-known journalistic texts of the Silver Age. All of them are united by attention to A.S. Pushkin as a phenomenon of mass consciousness, which increased in connection with the celebration of the writer’s centenary and the appeal to his legacy on the theatrical stage of St. Petersburg and Moscow. In particular, based on newspaper periodicals, the conversation included speeches by D.S. Merezhkovsky, which were not included in the author’s books of articles, collected works, were not taken into account in his bibliography and still remained outside the field of view of specialists. All of them relate to the Moscow Art Theater, and above all to the “Pushkin Performance” (1915), which caused a wave of criticism. Opinion of D.S. Merezhkovsky on the issue under discussion is considered not only locally, in line with the statements of L.N. Andreev, S.A. Vengerov and F.D. Batyushkov posted on the pages of “Birzhevye Vedomosti”, but also in the broader context of topical interest in A.S. Pushkin from 1899 to 1918: from the story of the nationwide collection of donations for the construction of a monument to the poet in St. Petersburg, which ended at the height of the First Russian Revolution with the establishment of the Pushkin House, to the beginning of the Civil War, when Pushkin’s family estate was looted and partially burned by peasants.