The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde: The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin 9789004204751, 9789004225596, 9004225595

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The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde

Russian History and Culture Editors-in-Chief

Jeffrey P. Brooks The Johns Hopkins University Christina Lodder University of Edinburgh

VOLUME 9

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/rhc.

The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin

By

Natalia Murray

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012

On the Cover: Kazimir Malevich, Portrait of N. N. Punin, 1933, oil on canvas, 69×57 cm., State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. All the original photographs and drawings, unless otherwise stated © Nikolay Punin’s Archive, St. Petersburg. Six paintings (including the cover illustration) © 2011, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. Painting by Paul Cézanne, Great Pine near Aix © The State Hermitage Museum. Photograph by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets, 2011. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Murray, Natalia.  The unsung hero of the Russian avant-garde : the life and times of Nikolay Punin / by Natalia Murray. pages : illustrations ;   cm. — (Russian history and culture ; v. 9)  ISBN 978-90-04-20475-1 (hardback : alkaline paper) — ISBN (invalid) 978-90-04-22559-6 (e-book) 1. Punin, N. N. (Nikolai Nikolaevich) 2. Art critics—Russia—Biography. 3. Art critics—Soviet Union—Biography. 4. Art, Russian—Russia—20th century—History. 5. Art, Russian—Soviet Union—History. 6. Avant-garde (Aesthetics)—Russia—History. 7. Avant-garde (Aesthetics)— Soviet Union—History. I. Title. II. Series: Russian history and culture (Leiden, Netherlands) ; v. 9. N7483.P86M87 2012 709.2—dc23 [B]

2012012490

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface. ISSN 1877-7791 ISBN 978 90 04 20475 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 22559 6 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

To my late mother and all those who died too early

CONTENTS List of Illustrations ........................................................................................... xi Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... xvii Abbreviations .................................................................................................... xxi Notes on Dates and Transliteration ........................................................... xxiii Introduction ......................................................................................................

1

Chapter One Origins of the Hero ............................................................  1. Punin’s Βackground and Οrigins ...................................................... 2. The Τime in Tsarskoe Selo .................................................................

7 7 10

Chapter Two Education .............................................................................  1. Studies and Teachers ............................................................................ 2. Influences and Interests ......................................................................

23 23 25

Chapter Three Winds of Change: The First World War and Emergence of the New Creativity in Russia .......................................  1. The Breeding-ground—The Last Years of Imperial Russia. Foreign Influences in Russian Art (French Artists’ Exhibitions) ............................................................................................. 2. Growth of Interest in Russian Art. Foundation of the Russian Museum .................................................................................... 3. The First World War and Promise of the Revolution ................ 4. Ideas, Ideas, Ideas. The New Faces. Punin and His Role Among Them .......................................................................................... 5. Private Life. Marriage and Infidelity ................................................ Chapter Four The Dawn of New Hopes: The October Revolution and the Search for New Art ...............................................  1. The October Revolution ...................................................................... 2. The Proletarian Art Enigma ............................................................... 3. The Fight Against Old Art .................................................................. 4. The Saga of the Statues ....................................................................... 5. Art and the State ...................................................................................

31 31 32 46 50 57 65 65 69 82 86 90

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Chapter Five No Future for the Futurists? Attempts to Educate the Masses ..................................................................................................... 95  1. Punin and the State Hermitage Museum ...................................... 95 2. Art of the Commune .............................................................................. 102 3. Closure of Art of the Commune and the State’s First Limitations of Artistic Freedom ....................................................... 120 Chapter Six Gathering Clouds, But High Heart ..................................  1. Punin’s First Arrest and First Disillusionments ........................... 2. Anna Akhmatova ................................................................................... 3. Ginkhuk and Tatlin. Punin’s Lectures and Courses ...................

131 131 139 147

Chapter Seven The Slow Strangulation of Free Culture ..................  1. The New Rules Emerging .................................................................... 2. Keeping the Flame High. Russian Museum Exhibitions ........... 3. Events on the Home Front. Life in the Fountain House ..........

167 167 173 182

Chapter Eight The Victory of Socialist Realism .................................. 193  1. Punin’s Last Articles and Exhibitions. From Avant-Garde to Socialist Realism .................................................................................... 197 Chapter Nine Time of Terror ....................................................................  1. Hard Times. Attack on Principles and Individuals ..................... 2. The Second Arrest of Nikolay Punin ............................................... 3. Life and Work after the Arrest. Separation from Akhmatova. The Arrival of Martha Golubeva .......................................................

207 207 213

Chapter Ten The Great Patriotic War ...................................................  1. Beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Leningrad under Siege ........................................................................................................... 2. Evacuation to Samarkand ................................................................... 3. Return to the North ..............................................................................

231

223

231 243 248

Chapter Eleven The Broken Post-War Dreams ................................... 261  1. The Post-War Cultural Scene ............................................................. 261 2. Punin’s Dismissal and Criticism ....................................................... 268 Chapter Twelve Bitter End ........................................................................ 279  1. The Final Arrest and Interrogations ................................................ 279 2. Life and Death in the Gulag ............................................................... 286



contents

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Bibliography of Published Writings of N. Punin .................................... 297 Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 307 Index .................................................................................................................... 313

List of Illustrations   1. Nikolay Punin as a young student, c. 1905   2. Nikolay Punin’s mother, Anna Nikolaevna, c. 1896   3. The Punin family dacha, Pavlovsk. Photograph by the author, 2006   4. At Punin’s mother’s grave, in Pavlovsk, 1898   5. Nikolay Punin’s step-mother, Elizaveta Antonovna   6. Punin’s family, c. 1905: front row (left to right), Nikolay, his sister Zina and brothers Leonid and Alexander; second row: first on the left is Punin’s step-mother, Elizaveta Antonovna, in the middle is Nikolay’s ‘favourite grandmother’, Varvara Dmitrievna; in the middle of the third row is Punin’s father, Nikolay Mikhailovich, with his youngest son, Lev   7. Nikolay Punin’s first love, Lida Leontieva (‘Lady of the Moon’)   8. An alley in the park in Pavlovsk. Photograph by the author, 2008   9. The old station in Pavlovsk 10. Silver medal awarded to Nikolay Punin on his graduation from the Gymnasium in 1907 11. The large pond with the Admiralty in Catherine Park in Tsarskoe Selo, c. 1912 12. Left to right: Vera, Zoya and Anna Arens, c. 1910 13. N. Punin in 1912, inscribed by himself: ‘After reading Oscar Wilde’ 14. The State Russian Museum. Photograph by the author, 2010 15. N. Punin with the Russian Museum guard, 1914 16. Paul Cézanne, Great Pine near Aix, 1895–1897, oil on canvas, 72×91 cm., The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg 17. Ivan Shishkin, The Pine Grove, 1898, oil on canvas, 165×252 cm., The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg 18. Mikhail Vrubel, Six-winged Seraph (Azrael), 1904, oil on canvas, 131×155 cm., The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg 19. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Princess Zinaida Yusupova, 1902, oil on canvas, 181,5×133 cm., The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg 20. Andrei Rublev, The Purification, c. 1410, tempera on wood, 124.5×92×3 cm., The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg 21. The family together for the last time. From left to right: Nikolay, Alexander, Leonid, Zina and Lev, 1916

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list of illustrations

22. N. Punin with his brother, Leonid. On the back Nikolay inscribed: ‘How one young man with a diplomatic career was trying to persuade another military young man not to go back to war and told him the easiest way to avoid going to front.’ The photograph was taken a few days before Leonid was shot on 1st September 1916 23. Punin’s father, Nikolay Mikhailovich with his two sons, Alexander and Lev, 1917. This was sent to Nikolay by his father with his inscription: ‘Sons worthy of their parent’ 24. A window in Apartment No. 5 25. Vladimir Tatlin with his pipe and tin of Three Nuns tobacco, c. 1916. Photograph: Alexander Rodchenko Archive, Moscow 26. Vladimir Tatlin, Painterly Relief. Collation of Materials, 1914, iron, plaster, glass, asphalt. Whereabouts unknown 27. Vladimir Tatlin, Venice from Kumer, costume design for Tsar Maximilian, 1911, pencil and gouache on paper, 23×17 cm 28. Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik in Petrograd, 1915. Photograph: Alexander Rodchenko Archive, Moscow 29. Petr Miturich, c. 1916 30. Lev Bruni, taken by N. Punin 31. Nikolay Punin, 1918 32. Front page of ‘Iskusstvo Kommuny’ [‘Art of the Commune’], 5th January 1919 33. Nikolay Punin, 1920 34. Anatoly Lunacharsky, c. 1918 35. At the First Regional Conference, 1918. Nikolay Punin is in the middle of the second row. On his left next but one to Punin—Vladimir Tatlin; first from the right in the second row—Kazimir Malevich 36. N. Punin at the meeting of the Council of the Hermitage Museum, c. 1918 37. The Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg. Photograph by the author, 2011 38. The view from the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, much loved by Nikolay Punin. Photograph by the author, 2011 39. Meeting at the Academy of Arts, 1917. Seated in the first row from right to left: fourth—Sergey Chekhonin, fifth—Nikolay Punin, seventh— Nathan Altman 40. The first exhibition of the Petrograd Free Artistic Studios (PEGOSKhUM), 1918 41. Members of the Narkompros’ collegium. Left to right: Karev, unknown lady, Shkol’nik, Chekhonin, Il’in, Shterenberg, Punin, Vaulin, Levin and Baranov-Rossine, 1918



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42. The Cover of Nikolay Punin’s book, The Monument to the Third International, published by the Department of Visual Arts of Narkompros, 1920 43. Vladimir Tatlin in front of his model of the Monument to the Third International, taken by Nikolay Punin, c. 1920 44. Vladimir Tatlin with assistants (I. A. Meerzon and T. M. Shapiro) constructing a model of the Monument to the Third International, taken by Nikolay Punin, c. 1920 45. P. I. L’vov, Nevskiy Prospect, c. 1920, pencil on paper 46. Vasily Chekrygin, Untitled study from the collection of Nikolay Punin, c. 1918 47. The house in which GINKhUK and The Museum of Artistic Culture operated, St. Petersburg. Photograph by the author, 2010 48. Kazimir Malevich, c. 1922 49. GINKhUK (The State Institute of Artistic Culture), c. 1924 50. Nikolay Punin, Kazimir Malevich and Mikhail Matyushin at GINKhUK, 1925 51. Members of GINKhUK. 1925. From left to right in the first row: N. Punin, V. Ermolaeva, K. Ender, M. Matyushin, M. Ender, K. Malevich; in the second row from right to left: P. Pozemsky, B. Ender, N. Kogan, A. Leporskaya, L. Yudin, K. Rozhdestvensky and others 52. Saveliy Sorin, Portrait of Arthur Lourie, c. 1910, pencil on paper 53. Anna Akhmatova in N. Punin’s study, 1926, taken by N. Punin 54. The Sheremetiev Palace, St. Petersburg. Photograph by the author, 2010 55. Anna Akhmatova by the northern gates of the Fountain House, 1925, taken by Nikolay Punin 56. Door to Punin’s apartment at the Fountain House (now the Akhmatova museum) 57. The kitchen in Nikolay Punin’s apartment 58. Corridor in Punin’s apartment with a replica of the chest, on top of which several of Nikolay Punin’s friends (including Osip Mandelstam) and family members used to sleep 59. Punin’s study in his apartment in the Fountain House 60. Nikolay Punin in his study. C. 1926 61. The dining room in Punin’s apartment 62. Around the table at the Fountain House. From left to right: Lev Arens (Punin’s brother-in-law), Nikolay Punin, Anna (Galya) Arens, Anna Akhmatova, Punin’s daughter Irina, Lev Arens’ wife, Sara, and their two sons, Igor and Evgeny. C. 1925

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list of illustrations

63. Nikolay Punin and Anna Akhmatova. Taken by Pavel Luknitsky, 1925 64. Anna Akhmatova with her son Lev and her mother-in-law, Anna Ivanovna Gumileva, 1927 65. Anna (Galya) Arens with fellow doctors. C. 1926 66. Anna Akhmatova in Nikolay Punin’s study, 1926, taken by N. Punin 67. Anna Akhmatova with Irina Punina, 1927. Taken by Pavel Luknitsky 68. Irina Punina with her mother, Anna Arens, 1927 69. Portrait of N. Punin, c. 1927, Artist unknown; pencil on paper 70. The Zubov Institute of the History of Art, where Nikolay Punin worked from 1922 to 1930. Photograph by the author, 2010 71. Committee for the organization of the exhibition of Russian art in Tokyo. Seated at the centre, the head of the committee, O. D. Kameneva (sister of Trotsky), seated next to her Anatoly Lunacharsky. Nikolay Punin and Arkin are standing above them. To the left of Kameneva is the first ambassador of Japan to the Soviet Union, Tanaka Tokitsi, 1926 72. Nikolay Punin on his way to Japan following the train crash. In the train carriage in Vladivostok. March 1927 73. The exhibition of Russian art in Tokyo, 1927 74. Postcard and the breakfast menu from the hotel in Nara, where Nikolay Punin stayed in June 1927 75. Anna Akhmatova wearing a pearl necklace, brought to her by Nikolay Punin from Japan, 1927 76. Presents brought from Japan by Nikolay Punin to his wife, Anna Arens, and his daughter Irina, 1927. Photographed by the author, 2011 77. Punin’s great-great-granddaughter, Varvara, wearing a kimono brought by Nikolay Punin for his daughter in 1927. Photograph by the author, 2011 78. Visit of the Japanese delegation to Nikolay Punin in January 1928. On the left is Punin’s ex maid, A. B. Smirnova, next to her is Anna (Galya) Arens. In the centre is Irina Punina in her kimono. First on the right is Anna Akhmatova with Vladimir Lebedev and Kenzo Midzutani. Standing behind is Evgeny Smirnov (Punin’s new neighbour). Taken by Nikolay Punin 79. Gifu paper lantern—a replica of the original one given to Nikolay Punin by Kenzo Midzutani in January 1928 80. Nikolay Punin, wearing a dressing gown from Japan, at a Black Sea resort, summer 1928 81. Vladimir Lebedev, c. 1928



list of illustrations

xv

  82. Vladimir Lebedev, Portrait of N. S. Nadezhdina, 1927, oil on canvas, 65×50 cm., State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg   83. Nikolay Punin at the Russian Museum, c. 1930s   84. At the exhibition of Vladimir Lebedev, organised by Punin at the Russian Museum in 1928. From left to right: Nikolay Punin, V. N. Anikieva, the director of the Russian Museum P. I. Neradovsky and Vladimir Lebedev   85. Nikolay Punin with artists in the 1930s   86. Irina Punina, Petr Neradovsky and Kazimir Malevich at the hanging of the exhibition ‘Artists of the RSFSR in 15 years’, The Russian Museum, 1932   87. Nikolay Punin with Vladimir Lebedev and Nadezhda Dobychina (ex owner of the gallery, where Malevich’s Black Square was first exhibited in 1915), at the Russian Museum, 1930s   88. Irina Punina after her operation following complications with measles, 1929   89. Nikolay Punin with his daughter, Irina, in the garden of the Fountain House, 1930’s   90. Arrest papers of Nikolay Punin in 1935. Among the confiscated items are a Portrait of Nietzsche, Punin’s diary (24 note books), ‘The other side of good and evil’ by Nietzsche, 4 issues of newspapers, 2 note books, 4 manuscripts and 3 books by Mandelstam   91. Anna Akhmatova. C. 1938   92. Martha Golubeva (Tika), 1930s   93. Photograph of Nikolay Punin given by him to Tika, c. 1938   94. Nikolay Punin with his students after the trip to the Russian Museum, 1939   95. The Passes of the inhabitants of Punin’s apartment in the Fountain House—Irina Punina, Ana Akhmatova and Nikolay Punin, c. 1946– 1947   96. Nikolay Punin with students and academics of the State University in Leningrad, c. 1946   97. Nikolay Punin with Sergey Konstantinovich Isakov, step father of Lev Bruni and the owner of Apartment No 5, c. 1946   98. Nikolay Punin at a meeting of the Union of Artists, c. 1947   99. The staircase at the Fountain House, which bid farewell to Nikolay Punin in August 1949 100. Nikolay Punin after his final arrest in 1949. Photographs from his KGB file. c. 1950

xvi

list of illustrations

101. The NKVD (later renamed the KGB and now FSB) headquarters in Moscow, known as the ‘Lubyanka’ 102. Proof of receipt of a parcel, signed by Nikolay Punin on 6th November 1952 103. List of the items sent to Nikolay Punin in one of many parcels from Leningrad 104. Letter from Nikolay Punin, sent from Abez to Tika, “corrected” by the censor, 8th November 1950 105. Nikolay Punin’s fellow prisoner, the philosopher Lev Karsavin (1882– 1952) 106. Nikolay Punin’s fellow prisoner, the Physicist, A. A. Vaneev, author of the book ‘Two years in Abez’ 107. The cemetery in Abez, where Nikolay Punin was buried, c. 1956. Photo by V. Shimkunas 108. Remains of the prison cemetery in Abez, 2007, Courtesy of the centre ‘Memorial’, St. Petersburg 109. Memorial cemetery in Abez, 2007, Courtesy of the centre ‘Memorial’, St. Petersburg 110. Memorial at the place of Nikolay Punin’s burial with the original metal number plate “X-11” which marked his grave after his death in 1953, 2007, Courtesy of the centre ‘Memorial’, St. Petersburg 111. Final testament of Vladimir Serov against Nikolay Punin, in which he blames Punin for being an ideologist of ‘left art’, and a preacher of the reactionary idea of ‘art for art’s sake alone’, 21st November 1949 112. A stone brought by Nikolay Punin’s family from Abez to his family grave in Pavlovsk 113. The second volume of the text book on history of art with the inscription by Nikolay Punin: ‘To dear Viktor Mikhailovich Vasilenko in atonement for all the resentment of Abez. In blessed memory. May 1951, Nikolay Punin, Abez’. It was returned to Punin’s daughter after his death

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The idea of a biography of Nikolay Punin was inspired by research I was doing for one of my lectures on Kazimir Malevich and his journey to and through the Black Square. Further research into the founding fathers of the Russian avant-garde brought me to the archive of the Anna Akhmatova museum, in the Fountain House in St. Petersburg. This turned out to be situated in the former apartment of her long-term lover, Nikolay Punin, and, reading Punin’s beautifully written articles, most of which were never re-printed (not to mention translated into any other languages) from 1913 to 1917, in his flat, I could not help feeling how unjust was the fate of this talented, courageous man. This true hero of the Russian avant-garde, who helped to determine its destiny, to support its artists and to ensure their work was not destroyed when they fell from favour, has been forgotten and indeed remained deleted for many years from most books on the history of 20th century Russian art, following his dismissal from the Academy of Arts for non-conformity with the new State art rules, and his death in the Gulag. In this, the first biography of Nikolay Punin, I have attempted to tell the story of his life, which cannot be separated from its context, the most controversial sixty years in the history of Russia. Although a detailed analysis of all of Punin’s writings remains beyond the scope of this biography, it aims to introduce readers to him and his work. Further research into the evolution of Punin’s thought through his books and articles (the full list of which can be found in this biography), as well as the translation of some of them into English, deserve separate books, which will, no doubt, follow. Throughout the research and the writing of this book, many people have been enormously supportive and helpful to me, but I would particularly like to thank Nikolay Punin’s granddaughter, Anna Kaminskaya, who holds the Punin archive, and her son, Nikolay Zykov. This book could not have been written without their help, advice and support. I would also like to express my gratitude to the director of the Akhmatova Museum, Nina Popova, who introduced me to Natalia Pakshina, who was in charge of the archive at the Akhmatova Museum at the time, and the head of the educational department, Svetlana Prasolova, who patiently read and edited the first version of my manuscript. I would also like to

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thank the late Professor Tsitsiliya Nissel’shtraus—one of Punin’s favourite students, whose lectures on medieval European art I was lucky to attend as a student at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and whom I interviewed during my research. Her testimony, of which I have made profuse use, together with recollections from Anna Kaminskaya, built the spine of this book, and provided me with essential insights into Punin’s life. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the late Professor Norbert Lynton, whom I was honoured to know in the last years of his life. Our conversations and discussions on Punin and Tatlin provided an irreplaceable inspiration for my book. I am also grateful to Norbert for introducing me to Professor John Milner, who soon became a very good friend and an endless source of encouragement and inspiration for me, and with whom I now work at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. His immense encouragement and trust in my book was truly irreplaceable. I am very grateful to all my friends and colleagues who discussed and shared ideas with me. In particular, I would like to thank Professor Emeritus Robert Rainsford Milner-Gulland, Matthew Platts of Sussex University, Alexandra Loske, Andrew Spira of Christie’s Education, Ann Dumas, exhibitions’ curator at the Royal Academy of Arts and my former professors from the Academy of Arts and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg— Tatiana Verizhnikova and Charmian Mezentseva. I am immensely grateful to the author of the most profound biography of Anna Akhmatova in English ‘Anna Akhmatova. Poet and Prophet’, Roberta Reeder. Our meeting in her flat in Venice and several discussions of the relationship between Punin and Akhmatova made a great impact on my book. I would like to thank the editorial board of Brill Publishers for including my book in the series on Russian history and culture, and especially Ivo Romein for his trust in my manuscript and all his support and advice. I am also very grateful to Professor Jeffrey Brooks for all his corrections and suggestions, which enhanced my manuscript, as well as ‘the anonymous reader’ for all his (or her) useful remarks. My family and friends have been hugely supportive and patient with me when I was working on my book. I would like to thank my parents and sister for their faith in me, and especially my late mother, who inspired my interest in art history. My very special thanks go to our small daughter, Alexandra, for keeping faith with her mummy, whose mind is often in 1920s Russia.



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Most of all, I thank my beloved husband, Nicholas, who read and patiently edited my manuscript more times than anyone should have to and provided persistent and constructive criticism of my English language and of my knowledge of Russian history. Without him this book would have never been completed. Words cannot convey all my gratitude to him, and to all my friends and colleagues.

ABBREVIATIONS Throughout this book, translations of passages cited from Russian sources are by the author unless otherwise indicated. The following abbreviations are used throughout the Notes and Bibliography: AP

Archive of the President of the Russian Federation [Arkhiv Prezidenta Rossiyskoi Federatsii]. Cheka All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (also VChIK; In Russian: Vserossiiskaya Chrezvychainaya komissiya)— the secret police from 1917 to 1922, superseded by OGPU. OGPU The Unified State Political Administration (Also GPU; In Russian: Ob’edinennoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie)—the secret political police from 1922 to 1934, superseded by the NKVD. Had been founded to fight political and economic counter-revolution. Narkompros The People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment (In Russian: Narodnii Kommissariat Prosveshcheniya). NKVD The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (In Russian: Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del)—the secret police from 1934, later replaced by MVD— The Ministry of Internal Affairs. Sovnarkom The Council of the People’s Commissars (In Russian: Sovet Narodnikh Kommissarov), was the highest government authority under the Bolshevik system after the success of the Socialist Revolution. VTsIK The Supreme Council of the National Economy (In Russian: Vysshii tsentral’nyi komitet). AA Roberta Reeder, Anna Akhmatova. Poet and Prophet, revised edition, Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2006. Chukovskaya Lydia Chukovskaya, The Akhmatova journals, vol. I, 1938– 1941, transl. M. Michalski and S. Rubashova, Evanston, Illinois: Northwest Univ. Press, 1994. Diary Nikolay Punin, The diaries of Nikolay Punin: 1904–1953, ed. Sidney Monas and Jennifer Greene Krupala, trans. Jennifer Greene Kupala. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.

xxii MSL Mandelstam I Mandelstam II RCKhIDNI RSI

abbreviations N. Punin, Mir Svetel Lubov’u. Dnevniki, pis’ma, ed. Leonid Zykov. Moscow: Artist. Rezhisser. Teatr, 2000. Mandelstam, Nadezhda ‘Hope against Hope. A Memoir’, trans. by Max Hayward, Penguin Books, 1975. Mandelstam, Nadezhda ‘Hope Abandoned’, trans. by Max Hayward, Penguin Books, 1976. Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of the Documents of Newest History [Rossiiskii Tsentr Khraneniya I Izucheniya Documentov Noveishei Istorii]. N. N. Punin, Russkoe i sovetskoe iskusstvo. Mastera russkogo iskusstva XIV-nachala XX veka. Sovetskie khudozhniki. Izbrannye trudy o russkom i sovetskom izobrazitel’nom iskusstve, ed. Irina Punina, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1976.

Notes on dates and Transliteration Since this book spans both pre- and post-Revolutionary years, unless otherwise stated, I have used the Old Style (Julyan) calender for the dates before February 1918 and the New Style (Gregorian) calender for the subsequent dates. Russian names and place names have been transliterated using the Library of Congress system, except for using y instead of ii or i in the name Nikolay and in the end of surnames, such as Mayakovsky, ya instead of ia, and the omission of ‘ to denote the presence of a soft sign in the established names and titles (e.g., Proletkult rather than Proletkul’t). Well known names, such as Chagall, appear here in their generally established form.

INTRODUCTION* As they say, A bungled story. Love’s boat Smashed Against existence.      (V. Mayakovsky)1

Nikolay Punin is not a name widely known in the West. His file has languished in the KGB archives since his death in 1953, and his grave in the Gulag where he died is marked only by a number. Furthermore, his own reputation became submerged under that of his lover, the poet Anna Akhmatova. Proof of this is that the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the House on the Fontanka in St. Petersburg, is in fact in Punin’s old apartment. Yet, during his life, this remarkable individual was one of the most influential figures in the turbulent but exciting arena of post-revolutionary Russian art. The story of modern art in Russia became Punin’s personal fate. Born in the late years of the 19th Century, Punin grew up in the genteel surroundings of Tsarskoe Selo. The son of a stern military doctor, he had the fortune to attend the Gymnasium (a superior form of grammarschool) there, which operated under the spell of its poet-headmaster, Innokentii Annensky, who ‘managed to bring something from Parnassus into the very essence of studies’.2 This started the process of Punin’s broad and deep cultural education. By speaking impromptu at a Gymnasium political debate, he realised his potential as a confident and passionate speaker, despite having a stutter and a nervous tic, said to derive from the death of his mother 10 years earlier. He also learned the hard lesson that fame can come at a price. A few days after his speech, Punin and six other students were expelled from the Gymnasium, and he was only readmitted after the strenuous efforts of his father. * Throughout this book, translations of passages cited from Russian sources are by the author unless otherwise indicated. 1 V. Mayakovsky, The last letter, 12/4/30, quoted in W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, p. 526. 2 Quoted in V. Shubinskiy Nikolay Gumilev. Zhizn’ poeta, p. 70.

2

introduction

He studied literature, but especially enjoyed art and its historical and social development. Later, he taught and lectured about art; he wrote about art (in lyrical prose much against the usual dry academic norms); he edited an art newspaper, organised art exhibitions, encouraged artists and commissioned their work; directed art museums both old and new and was—while still in his twenties—at one point Commissar of the Hermitage and the Russian Museums in Petrograd. Perhaps above all, he argued about art, often when it might have been wiser not to, but this was a man of absolute integrity, even at the cost of his own life. During this time, he studied and became an expert in Russian icons and in Byzantine art. He restructured the approach to teaching art history (which previously operated only chronologically and stopped at the Renaissance). We also have Punin to thank for ensuring that the wonderful collection of the Hermitage Museum was returned to Leningrad (as Petrograd was named from late January, 1924) and not broken up into several parts and retained in Moscow. It had been moved there, ahead of the German threat in the First World War. He also ensured, largely by stealth, that the collection of modern art was kept, when no longer exhibited, in the Russian Museum, rather than being destroyed when it fell from grace in the early 1930s. Punin was an erudite and influential man, but also handsome, charming and funny. Even when, in his sixties, he was in the Gulag, a fellowprisoner’s attention was drawn ‘to a man, who was walking around the wards. He was quite tall. The ordinary patient garb looked on him like the clothes of an elegant dandy’.3 Punin’s personal life would make headlines today—for fifteen years his wife and their daughter, his mistress Anna Akhmatova, her son and, for a period her mother and his father-in-law, together with the family of his former maid, all lived in his apartment, during which time Punin started a further affair with one of his students, Martha Golubeva, who was known as Tika. He seemed never quite able to make up his mind whom he loved or didn’t love, paradoxically with the exception of his true wife, the faithful doctor Anna Arens, whom he had married in 1917. In his role as art critic and organiser, he dedicated himself tirelessly from 1917 to ensuring that the cascade of art stimulated by the Revolution, became integrated with the new Proletarian society the Bolsheviks had

3 Anatoly Vaneev, Dva goda v Abezi. V pamyat’ o L. Karsavine, pp. 17–18.



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created. He believed that ‘art should be comprehensible and beloved’.4 It is worth noting that the scope of the History of Art faculty that was eventually brought into being, extended well beyond just the history and evolution of artistic movements. It was defined as the ‘faculty of theory and history of the science of fine art’, and Nikolay Punin’s work on both the underlying theory and indeed the science of different forms of art were highly expert and informative as well. However, Nikolay Punin soon found himself in disagreement with the Bolsheviks, as the state increasingly defined the rules for art, and then for its purposes. He had aligned himself with the Futurists, many of whom were his friends, though he also had his own ideas about how any stage in art evolved directly or indirectly from others. The confrontational Futurists’ view that all old art was static and should be rejected quite quickly fell out of political favour. Lenin found most modern art incomprehensible, and when it came down to it, if Punin’s mentor Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Minister of Education in the new Government, could have determined the new proletarian culture, it would not have been avant-garde by any definition. From 1933 onwards the only literature or art permitted was that which reflected Socialist and Soviet values, real or increasingly, as imagined. From then onwards ‘cheerfulness became mandatory’. Especially after the Great Patriotic War, any reference to works by foreign scholars was dubbed cosmopolitanism, a term fraught with dire political consequences. For someone who simply could not deny—or see why he should deny—the influence of Western European artists, especially that of Cézanne, on all subsequent art, and insisted on continuing to lecture on it, this led first of all to dismissal, then to a labour camp, and in effect, to death. Punin died in the small settlement of Abez, in the Gulag, on the morning of 21st August 1953. Perhaps the supreme irony of Punin’s life was that it was the representatives of this proletarian society for whom he so fervently wished to interpret art, who eventually rejected everything he worked for and stood for, and then literally consigned him to the abyss. He was in good company on this journey, as it was also the fate of such great names as Mandelstam and Babel, killed in the purges. Some, such as Chagall, were

4 N. Punin, Kvartira No. 5—A Fragment from the book ‘Art and Revolution’, in Diary, p. 27.

4

introduction

able (or forced) to emigrate, and others, such as Mayakovsky, committed suicide. It is a further irony that the Soviet state seemed so badly to want to ignore the fact that Russia produced such a large proportion of the outstanding pioneering artists in the first quarter of the 20th Century. This phenomenon was perhaps a product of Russia’s rigorous artistic training, and of its own cultural traditions. Its exposure to European artistic movements (such as Impressionism) encouraged this, as, by contrast, did a stiff Academic tradition to revolt against. All these trends accelerated after 1917. A conscious avant-garde was relatively recent in Russia. In 1910, the critic Alexander Benois, leader of the World of Art group, is credited with being the first to apply the term. In this case, he referred specifically to the paintings of Larionov, Kuznetsov and Yakulov, but from then on the work of artists representing new movements in Russian art would be called avant-garde. By 1910, intellectual and refined Symbolism had exhausted itself in Russia—it no longer believed that it could conquer and transform the world. Now this role was taken up by the Futurist movement, which originated in Italy but was seized upon by a group of Russian artists, and writers and poets, with the basic idea of ‘starting art again’. In 1912, the Hylea group of Futurists proclaimed the idea of a ‘self-sufficient word’, which later became the main principle of Cubo-Futurism. Like the Italian Futurists, they praised technology, urbanisation, speed and movement. They wanted to fight against the cultural and moral degeneracy of bourgeois society. They called for a new cultural revolution. It is worth remembering that these thoughts were being articulated in the relative calm of the period after the 1905 Revolution, and before the outbreak of the First World War and the 1917 Revolution. The post-October 1917 artistic mood was summed up well by the composer Arthur Lourie—before he could know the irony of his words: For the first time we, young dreamers, were told that we could make our dreams come true and no politics would interfere with our pure art, for which we joined the Revolution without hesitation.5

The treatment meted out to these poets, playwrights, musicians, artists and art critics, none of whom stood at a barricade or hurled paving-stones

5 Arthur Lourie, Nash Marsh (Petrograd, 1918).



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at the forces of law and very few of whom wrote, sang or painted anything overtly subversive, begs a further question. Why did the Soviet state, which had grown so strong by the end of the 1940s, to the point that it regarded itself and its political system as invincible, feel it was necessary to spend such huge resources on harassing, interrogating, imprisoning and sometimes executing these talented people? Did they fear the power of the word, however softly whispered, or of pictures, or of ideas, or was it that the greatest transgression became that of just not being seen to conform to whatever edict it issued, however irrelevant or incomprehensible? Perhaps the best epitaph for Nikolay Punin is provided by a letter he received in November 1944, from an army officer who had heard him lecture at LIIKS, the Leningrad Institute of Engineers of Communal Construction, where Punin worked between 1937 and 1941: Honoured Professor Nikolay Nikolaevich! Let me greet you and wish you many years of happy life—to inspire your listeners with bright, exciting lectures, which stay deeply in one’s heart and mind. Four years ago I was lucky enough to listen to your lectures in LIIKS. Since then I fought as an officer in Stalingrad, participated in the liberation of Ukraine and Poland; but what I heard from you still inspires me and the images of the Renaissance, of France, Spain and Holland are still fresh in my mind. I hope that I will hear your lectures again and will feel happy once again. Georgii Obradovich.6

6 Letter from G. Obradovich to N. Punin on 10 November 1944, MSL, p. 389.

Chapter one

ORIGINS OF THE HERO Will I ever be able to write my autobiography using my diary; probably not . . . One needs to love the hero, but all the heroes are cancelled . . . (N. Punin)1

1. Punin’s Background and Origins Nikolay Nikolayevich Punin’s life ended in a freezing camp beyond the Arctic Circle, but it started in relatively wealthy and comfortable surroundings. The intellectual and cultural seeds that brought him to the Gulag were sown in these early years of his life. Nikolay Punin was born on 28th [16th new style] November 1888 in Helsingfors [now Helsinki], where his father, Nikolay Mikhailovich Punin, a nobleman by birth, had been posted as a junior military doctor in an infantry regiment after graduating from the Military-Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. At the end of the 19th century, Finland was part of the Russian Empire, but in Soviet times, after it became independent (and thus ‘foreign’), the fact that Punin was born in Helsinki allowed accusations of spying to be made, and caused trouble at several points in his life.2 In 1890, the family moved to the small town of Pavlovsk, outside St. Petersburg, home of one of the summer palaces of the Romanovs. Punin’s father was working as a junior doctor in the Cavalry-Artillery Division while his mother, Anna Nikolaevna, was looking after the growing family. In the seven years following Punin’s birth, his parents had three more sons—Alexander (1890), Leonid (1893), Lev (1897)—and a daughter, Zinaida (1895). In his diary of 1904, Nikolay Punin would describe his father as a strict but kind man. Nikolay had ‘his heart in his throat’ when his father was teaching him to read, but after an intense lesson Nikolay

1 Quoted in Nikolay Krishuk, To, chto delaetsya dnem—svetom, a noch’iu—temnotoiu, in the newspaper ‘1 sentebrya’, no. 18, 2002 . 2 I. N. Punina N.N. Punin in ‘Tainy remesla. Akhmatovskie chteniya.’, ed. N. V. Kovaleva and S. A. Kovalenko, Nasledie, Moscow, 1992, p. 273.

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Mikhailovich would sit with his son on the floor and make model houses, decorating them with great patience.3 A doctor’s salary, especially a doctor with five children, could not secure Nikolay a wealthy childhood, and the first present from his father that he remembered was a laundry basket full of bits of unwanted wood from the carpenter, which served as children’s bricks. Nevertheless, Nikolay had a happy and comfortable childhood, studying in the small private school run by Anna Semenovna Syrovyatkina in Pavlovsk. They lived near the beautiful ‘English’ park, which soon became the extension of their nursery for Nikolay and his brothers—they used to bring toys there and spend most days among its beautiful alleys and luscious meadows: . . . . there we were hunting in the hills pretending to be wild animals; rustling leaves and collecting acorns in tin buckets.4

But a dark cloud was about to descend on Nikolay’s happy childhood— when he was eight years old, he and his brothers and sister were suddenly sent away from home for the summer. His mother was very ill, ‘getting thinner and sicklier’ every day. His father was trying to keep calm, as Punin later described in his diary: I don’t know whether my father knew exactly what her illness was immediately, but he, as I recall, was not especially disturbed, while my mother was digging all the time in father’s books and looking for clues to her illness and it was not in vain that she searched; she found out that summer that she had cancer.5

Nikolay Mikhailovich, who seemed to have loved his wife very deeply, tried to comfort her as much as he could, and knowing that her death was inevitable, was hoping for a miracle. While she would spend most of the time that summer lying in a hammock in the garden thinking, small Nikolay and his father would go to church every day and pray for her. ‘That is how the religious period of my life began’,—he would write in his diary. Having lost faith in the ability of medical science to cure his wife, doctor Punin would go to the Aleksander-Nevsky monastery in St. Petersburg, hoping to bring back relics of St. Pantheleymon, which were considered

3 Diary, pp. 3–4. 4 N. Punin Kvartira N 5. Glava iz vospominaniy in ‘Panorama iskusstv’, n. 12, M-L, 1989, p. 187. 5 Diary, p. 4.



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to have healing powers, and were supposed to cure his wife magically. On one rainy day, Ioann of Kronshtadt—a famous miracle-healer who was later canonised—arrived at their house in Pavlovsk and conducted a service in Anna Nikolaevna’s bedroom. Everyone was still hopeful, but before Ioann left, he gave his blessing to the bewildered children and said that they were unfortunate.6 Nikolay used to read to his mother, trying to cheer her up, but all was in vain—when August came, his mother had only five days of life left. Nikolay was sent to his grandmother Varya, who lived in St. Petersburg. On the morning of 5th August 1897, after getting up early and ‘praying zealously to God for mother’s health’, when Nikolay was playing one of his favourite games, coachman, collecting fares from all his passengers, a servant suddenly arrived with a telegram stating that ‘Anya passed away today at three’. Her short life was over, and Nikolay was rushed back to Pavlovsk with his grandmother: After we had cried a bit, we went into the bedroom, where mother’s body lay on the bed. I loved her terribly tenderly, and I knelt before her silent corpse, making the sign of the cross and kissing her, yet I did all this only because it was what had to be done . . .7

The nine year old Nikolay was so badly affected by this loss that he developed a nervous tic, which stayed with him for the rest of his life. He also lost faith in the power of prayer, and in God, who in his view had failed to save his mother: How I would like to pray. To pray fervently and with faith. But there is no one to pray to. I wanted to try to seek out God, but no sooner did I lift up my head than I laughed. To this fantastic idol? To pray? There is no one to pray to anymore. But how I want to! If only to believe, to hope! To pray? The world is so cold and empty. There isn’t a single spark in it. Everything is ruined, everything is trampled underfoot. If only some holy splinter remained. Nothing!8

But life had to go on, and two years later Nikolay’s father married again. His new wife, Elizaveta Antonovna, whose maiden name was Zhanin Perro, was a good and loving woman, who managed to take on the role of mother to her husband’s children and raised them as educated and noble people, worthy of their father.

6 Diary, p. 5. 7 Diary, p. 6. 8 N. Punin, Diary note of 25 May 1906, Diary, p. 8.

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Nikolay’s father was not only a doctor, but a highly educated man, with an extensive knowledge of French, German, Latin and Ancient Greek and had been researching the conditions under which infectious diseases develop. In 1894, he had received a PhD in Medicine and in 1900, published a book on ‘A Medical and Topographical Description of Pavlovsk’. A pioneering work, Nikolay Mikhailovich focused on the ecological problems of Pavlovsk and their influence on people’s health. In 1908, his first son, Nikolay, would write about his father in his diary: My father never betrayed my mother, never stole, never undermined others. His diligent attendance at church gave him a Christian reputation, his conscientious attitude toward his responsibilities inspired respect, and, finally, his dependability, honesty, along with his humble pride, created a distinct aura around him and around us, which for us had the value of providing a living example of the virtuous life . . .9

About then, Nikolay started painting with oils, as well as collecting postcards with reproductions from the paintings of Botticelli, Piero Della Francesca, Mantegna and Giotto. 2. The Time in Tsarskoe Selo In 1900, after working for 12 years as a junior doctor, Punin’s father was promoted to senior doctor in the First Royal Rifle Battalion, which was based in Tsarskoe Selo—another summer residence of the Romanovs, just a few kilometres away from Pavlovsk. From now on, Punin’s family would live in Tsarskoe Selo [“the Royal Village”] and spend holidays and weekends at their dacha in Pavlovsk. Both towns were extraordinary places for the children to grow up in. Set among beautiful palaces and elegant parks, these 18th century summer residences of the Russian Tsars were bursting with history and memories of the famous poets, artists and musicians who had lived and worked there in the 18th and 19th centuries. Like Pavlovsk, Tsarskoe Selo also had a powerful influence on its dwellers, which was described by Valentin Krivich, the son of the famous poet Innokentii Annensky: The charm of the enchanting garden-city, where allées are filled with history, and where legends turn into history, enters your blood and poisons

9 Diary, p. 18.



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you, and for many years I met people who could not sever their ties with this town.10

At the turn of the 20th century, Tsarskoe Selo was dominated by oneor two-storey wooden houses surrounded by picket fences, with the occasional burst of golden church domes and the splendour of its many palaces. Despite its provinciality, Tsarskoe Selo was a very progressive town—it was the first place in Europe which was fully electrified. At that time, although 85% of the Russian population were still working on the land, industrialization and its related urbanisation had been developing strongly, especially since 1860. The city population doubled, initially through peasants moving from the land on short-term contracts (there was a rural overpopulation problem), and later through the establishment of a settled urban working population. There had been partial emancipation of serfs (who represented about 50% of the peasant population) in 1861, and labour reforms followed in the 1880s and 1890s, with the first Trade Unions being legalised in 1902. Simultaneously, an urban entrepreneurial merchant class had developed, often from long-established trading families, and domestic and foreign investment grew. This new class did not seem to be heavily involved in national politics, but set about ensuring that their offspring were better educated than they were. Several of these merchants became great patrons of the arts, with Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov (1832–1898) being a good example. A keen collector of contemporary Russian art and a philanthropist, Tretyakov first opened a gallery in his house in Moscow, which in August 1892, he donated to the city in order to show the development of the domestic school of art to the general public. This collection was named after its donor, and is still known as the Tretyakov Gallery—one of the most important collections of Russian art in the world. A true patriot, who dedicated his whole life to collecting Russian art for the nation, Pavel Mikhailovich wrote: From a very young age, I had an ambition to become prosperous in order to return all the riches which I would acquire from society back to it (to the people) in the form of some sort of useful institution; I carried this thought through my entire life.11

10 Valentin Krivich, Valentin Iz vospominanii, quoted in A.A., p. 5. 11 Quoted in Irina Nenarokova Pavel Tretyakov i ego galereya, Moscow: Art-Rodnik, 1998, p. 7.

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However, at the time of Tretyakov’s rise to fame, our hero, Nikolay Punin, was still a small boy, growing up in what was essentially a rather provincial suburb of St. Petersburg, famous only for embodying one of the most glamorous summer palaces of the tsars—Catherine Palace, in Tsarskoe Selo. In the 1900s, the population of this town (about 30,000 people) mainly consisted of gentry and of military men. Seven regiments were based there. Even though after the 1905 Revolution, Tsar Nikolay II would spend quite a lot of time in one of the Romanov residencies— Alexandrovskii Palace—the court did not attract as many representatives of St. Petersburg intelligentsia as it used to in the 18th century. It was a provincial town ‘with all the vices of the near-by capital, but without its virtues.’12 Nevertheless, Tsarskoe Selo had two very good Gymnasia (one for boys and one for girls), which by the beginning of the 20th century had produced quite a few famous people in all fields. At that time, only graduates of the Gymnasia were admitted into the Universities without entry exams. The basis of their curriculum consisted of advanced studies in Greek and Latin. Often the ancient languages were taught without any insight into the history or the art of Greek and Roman civilizations. The main purpose of learning these languages along with advanced studies of mathematics was to develop students’ systematic and logical thinking. One or two modern languages—mainly French and German, were also included in the curriculum. The Russian language was taught in conjunction with the Old Slavic language and literature of the XI–XVI centuries. The course in Russian literature would end with the 1860s—possibly excluding Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as contemporary writers. Studies of current affairs and politics were strongly discouraged. Gymnasia were mainly intended for middle-class children. There were also private schools for the children of aristocrats, and so called “city colleges” for workers. From 1902, Punin’s father worked as a doctor in the Imperial Nikolaevskaya Boys’ Gymnasium, where two of his sons— Nikolay and Alexander were studying. It was a prestigious institution, founded in 1870, occupying a yellow neo-gothic building, designed by the Italian architect, Monigetti, built between 1862 and 1869 as a monastery. In 1889 the Russian architect, Smirnov, added a second floor to the Gymnasium.

12 Sreznevskaya, V. quoted in V. Shubinskiy ‘N. Gumilev’, p. 28.



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Punin’s father—by then a prosperous doctor with a good reputation— became a close friend of Innokentii Annensky, who was a poet and the influential headmaster of the Gymnasium from 1896 to 1905. Even though the young Punin was not taught by Annensky, he was influenced by this remarkable poet and by his style of writing, since it was Annensky who advised Nikolay’s father on which books his son should read. Anna Akhmatova, who lived and studied in Tsarskoe Selo at the same time as Nikolay Punin, also highly admired Annensky, who was then a trustee of the Mariinsky Women’s Gymnasium where she studied. Later she wrote about this great poet: While Balmont and Bryusov were culminating what they started . . . Annensky put life into the next generation . . . I don’t wish to say everyone was influenced by him, but he went along so many paths at the same time and carried within him so many new things, that all innovators looked like him in a certain way.13

Another contemporary of Nikolay Punin and Anna Akhmatova, Erikh Gollerbakh, said that Annensky ‘managed to bring something from Parnassus into the very essence of studies in the Gymnasium, and beams of his Hellenism killed the bacillus of boredom. He would make a poem out of Greek grammar.’14 Most professors of the Gymnasium admired Annensky as much as his students did. One of the professors, P. Mitrokhin, described him in his memoirs: Both pupils and we, teachers, liked him because he managed to breathe love of our profession into us and gave us the freedom to express our strengths and talents . . . Innokentii Feodorovich (Annensky) didn’t order, but only asked and advised us, and his charm was so great . . . that everyone would listen to him not only attentively, but with great inspiration. He was loved, and liked—because of his distinctive handsome appearance, his always delicate, a little bit old-fashioned manner of talking to people, and his kind responsiveness to our needs and requests. In the end the whole school of professors and scholars was formed around Innokentiy Fedorovich.15

At the time when Nikolay Punin was a student at the Gymnasium, Annensky was in his fifties. He was a renowned poet, talented teacher and a good administrator. He was also famous for his translations of the Greek tragedies of Euripides. Throughout his life he was a great admirer of another

13 Chukovskaya, I. Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi, v. II, p. 30, quoted in A.A., p. 9. 14 Quoted in V. Shubinskiy ‘N. Gumilev’, p. 70. 15 Ibid., p. 71.

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‘great son of Tsarskoe Selo’, Alexander Pushkin, and made sure that his fame and his connection with this small town, would be carried on in generations to come. When Annensky was 24, he married a widow who was in her forties, but later, when he fell in love with the wife of his stepson, who was also in love with him, he refused to pursue this relationship, being devoted to his wife and not willing to ruin the lives of those who were close to him. For 25 years he wrote poems but never thought of publishing them. In 1899, at the age of 44, he burned all his writing and started again. It was the poems written in the next ten years that made him a leading and influential poet of the 20th century, and had a great impact on the work of Anna Akhmatova, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Boris Pasternak. Meeting with Annensky was one of the strongest influences on young Nikolay Punin. Perhaps it was at that time, under the influence of this great poet, when Punin’s love affair with poetry, philosophy and visual art began. In the language and intonations of his first articles one can easily see the direct influence of his teacher. Not surprisingly one of Punin’s very first articles was dedicated to ‘The Problem of Life in the poetry of I. Annensky’. In great admiration of this extraordinary man, Punin wrote a few years after the poet’s death: From those who knew him, no one can any longer walk down the allées of the park in Tsarskoe Selo and be free of nostalgia, melancholy or at least an ordinary recollection, the relentless memory of the poet, whose fame is tainted with the bitterness of death.16

He believed that the reason why Annensky was not recognised and fully understood was that ‘he was ahead of his school, his contemporaries and even himself.’17 Annensky collapsed and died at the railway station in his beloved Tsarskoe Selo on 13th December 1909. It was almost certainly triggered by discovering the non-inclusion of his poems in the first issue of one of the most fashionable journals of the time, Apollon. But, despite his premature death, this extraordinary man and legendary poet had a very strong and lasting influence on his devoted students, not least on Nikolay Punin. Literature and poetry became his favourite subjects at the Gymnasium,

16 N. Punin, The Problem of Life in the poetry of I. Annensky in ‘Apollon’, 1914, no. 10, p. 47. 17 Ibid.



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and already in 1904, at the age of sixteen, he wrote reviews of the performances and plays at the amateur theatre in Tsarskoe Selo. In August 1903, Nikolay had become the editor of the ‘AstrologicalPhysical Bulletin’ which was printed on a stenograph in a small flat in Tsarskoe Selo. In December 1903 the journal was re-named ‘Muraveinik’ [Anthill] and in 1904 it was re-named yet again as ‘Nature’. As the chief editor of this exciting publication, young Punin collected articles from other students on such subjects as human anatomy or the design of a bicycle or a steam engine. He also wrote about the latest inventions and discoveries, as well as recently observed comets. Nikolay and his friends eagerly observed nature, describing in their articles the exciting new world around them. Punin’s father already predicted Nikolay’s future, and then used to call him ‘furious Nikolay’, after one of his son’s idols, a first professional Russian critic, Belinsky, whose nickname was ‘vehement Vissarion’. In his diary of 4th December 1904, Punin admitted that this name greatly flattered his self-esteem.18 Four years later he wrote about his studies at the Gymnasium: My studies in astronomy did not last long. I was mainly interested in the biographies of great astronomers and the philosophical implications of this science, so as soon as I had exhausted all the popular and general-philosophical books on astronomy, and it was necessary to begin to study pure mathematics, my interest in astronomy dissolved like a fog. In vain I listened to the reproaches of Ivanov and of the maths teacher Travchetov, a very original man and a talented mathematician. Astronomy had left me forever. I devoted myself to literature and my idols—forgive me, my gods—became Belinsky and Rousseau.19

Punin spent most of his time at the Gymnasium writing essays—‘both those that were assigned and those that weren’t’. At the age of 16, Nikolay was working stubbornly on his writing style and finally got an ‘A’ for an essay entitled ‘Autumn in Tsarskoselskii Park’. He had yet to master grammar fully, but he felt victorious. Four years later, reflecting on winter 1904, in his diary of 8th September 1908, he wrote: ‘That same winter I very quickly moved from Belinsky to philosophy, to history, to religion . . .’20 He passionately read the biographies of great people, examining himself by their standards and their manner of dressing and lifestyle. Predicting 18 Diary, p. 4. 19 Diary, p. 9. 20 Diary, p. 10.

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himself a great future, Punin became endlessly frustrated when he found differences between himself and his heroes: Schopenhauer’s notion that a genius must have a short neck tormented me terribly, because I have a long neck.21

At the same time, several events in the political history of Russia began to make a big impact on the life of young Punin. In 1904–05, the conflict between an increasingly industrialized society, and the increasingly remote, mystic authority of the Tsars, was growing. The harsh regime of Alexander III had polarised Russian politics, and Nicholas II refused to grant liberal concessions on his accession in 1894. At this time, the peasants were resentful about their tax burden and the factory workers were angry about working conditions and their lack of rights. The Russian-Japanese war also played a major part in this disaffection. Nicholas II (famous for his lack of will and obstinacy) declared war on 10th February 1904, with the hope of a quick victory. The result was a humiliating defeat eighteen months later. This war originated in rival attempts to penetrate Manchuria and Korea. The Japanese attacked Port Arthur. The Russians defended their positions on land with some success, but the Japanese annihilated their fleet, which they had sent from the Baltic, at the famous battle of Tsushima. Punin felt the humiliation keenly, as did many other Russians: . . . the Tsushima battle had been fought and I always remember that dark, sad day when we learned of this horrible event. I was choked with tears; sorrow filled my soul. Russia was sad and the whole country silently mourned the impossible defeat.22

The Americans interceded to create the New Hampshire treaty, which was not unfavourable to Russia. Defeat in the East further diminished the authority of the Tsar and brought discontent (including agitated dissent) into the open. On Sunday January 9th 1905, a demonstration led by Father Gapon, who headed a police sponsored workers’ association, in which several thousand workers took part, culminated in front of the Tsar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. They came in peace to the almighty Tsar—Father of all Russians (as he liked to call himself)—with a petition of grievances, but

21 N. Punin, Diary note of 5 September 1908, Diary, p. 10. 22 Ibid., p. 11.



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were met by the army and police, who opened fire, and killed hundreds. This day remained in history as ‘Bloody Sunday’. It was followed by mass strikes of workers and street battles in Moscow and all the major Russian cities. Under pressure from his advisors, Nicholas II reluctantly signed a manifesto on October 17th 1905, granting his people such constitutional rights as freedom of speech, assembly and membership of political parties. But neither these new freedoms, nor the announcement of the creation of the first elective Russian parliament (the Duma) could defuse the situation in Russia. Not only workers, but most of the Russian cultural elite reacted to the revolutionary tumult of 1905. Nikolay Punin called the 9th January ‘a bloody slaughter’ and together with his fellow students requested the director of his Gymnasium permission to perform a requiem for those killed in the shooting of this peaceful protest. When Annensky, ‘using an extremely complicated and unfair argument’, refused their request, they started singing the hymn Eternal Memory in the corridor. When the authorities took measures, putting the daring delegation under special supervision, the students began to whistle their heroic song.23 The rebellious moods of Punin and his friends reflected the general spirit of the Russian people at the time of these revolutionary events. In 1908, Punin described it in his diary: . . . October came; there was agitation everywhere, everything overflowed its banks. I was morally exhausted; thanks to biographies and Shopenhauer . . . everywhere everyone was awaiting something, hoping for something.24

The Tsar promised to set up a ‘consultative assembly’, but this did not calm strikes, or assassinations and eventually the mutiny on the Potemkin in June 1905. By the end of October, all Western Russia was paralyzed by strikes, directed in St Petersburg by the first Worker’s Soviet. On 30th October 1905, the Tsar reluctantly conceded a constitution (The October Manifesto) with a legislative Duma, and a first-ever Prime Minister, Count Witte. This split the revolutionaries, but the Soviet continued to foment the overthrow of the system, leading to street fights in Moscow, which were put down forcefully with over 1,000 deaths. 23 N. Punin, Diary note of 5 February 1905, Diary, p. 7. 24 Diary, p. 11.

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Not surprisingly, the Marxist revolutionaries remained frustrated, particularly because, despite all their efforts, Russia entered a period of relative peace and prosperity. A general strike in November 1905 failed, and the St Petersburg Soviet was soon disbanded by the police. The idea of a Duma proved popular, and the first Duma was elected in March 1906, representing 40 parties but with the Liberal Constitutional Democrats— the Kadets—in charge. In Punin’s life in the Gymnasium, an important change occurred at the same time—a new teacher of the Russian language, V. Orlov, arrived and ‘subtly and stealthily liberalized the Gymnasium’. In his diary, Punin remarked that even though Orlov was a man of ‘extremely doubtful morals’, ‘the Tsarskoe Selo Gymnasium owes its participation in Russia’s political movement to him.’25 Thanks to Punin’s knowledge of literature and of the writings of his much-admired Belinsky, he moved quickly to the head of his class, and from now on his essays came to be much praised. At the time of the Revolution of 1905, which reached a peak with the October Manifesto (a precursor to a Constitution), ‘debates on social themes’ replaced Russian lessons in the Gymnasium. Punin was already familiar with Bebel, Lassalle and Marx, but was more interested in their philosophy and inner experiences, and could not see the connection between ‘these deep meditations on suffering humanity’ and their strikes at the Gymnasium. A few years later he would write about his feelings at the time of the first Russian Revolution: My heart felt somehow strangely constricted and there was that exceptional feeling of expectation which occurs before church service at sunrise or before the observation of a lunar eclipse.26

At that time, strikes and assemblies accompanied by political discussions became the quintessential purpose of life at the Gymnasium. For a while Punin was in disfavour, and friendly chiefly with the sons of wealthy parents, until he made an openly political speech, claiming that the constitution existed on paper alone: Once I demanded the right to speak, not knowing ahead of time whether I would speak in favour of the right or the left. I spoke heatedly and passionately, I didn’t know then that I could speak like that. I was carried away

25 N. Punin, Diary note of 5 Sept. 1908, Diary, p. 11. 26 Diary, p. 12.



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by my own talent, I saw transfixed faces before me, and the president and his comrades behind the table to the right turned towards me. I saw their amazement, their satisfaction, and a boundless pride filled me and motivated each of my phrases . . . As I finished, the thunder of applause drowned out my words—my first applause. Since that day every one of my speeches has been accompanied by applause.27

This was the beginning of Punin’s passionate romance with revolution. His extraordinary talent for making unforgettable public speeches had been demonstrated for the first time. He was, he discovered, a confident and passionate lecturer, despite his stutter. Like the famous Roman orator Marcus Cicero, he would exercise his speech by talking several times a day with his mouth full of stones. He was not someone who would be discouraged by a physical disability. Despite his nervous tic and stutter, he became first a great speaker, and then an outstanding lecturer. Punin always enjoyed recognition and applause, but at the Gymnasium he was disappointed with the insincerity of his speech, which was lacking faith in the great ideals of the Revolution: . . . I stood in front of the crowd. But I had lost my independence, my world, I had poisoned my soul with that mercenary speech.28

On that day, for the sake of his ambition for public recognition, Punin betrayed many of his friends and indeed the director of the Gymnasium. Further, although even those who were supporting the Revolution in Nikolay’s class soon ‘lost hope for the solidarity of all classes and were resorting to obstruction’, a few days after his speech, Punin and six other students were expelled from the Gymnasium by the pedagogical union. His brother was threatened with expulsion from the Cadet corps, and their father with tears in his eyes begged Nikolay to give up his intentions and to break his relationships with the revolutionary-oriented minority. Later Punin reflected on these challenging times: For me, insanely tortuous days began, when my whole soul moaned from the battle between ambition, power, popularity, a vigorous life, and the tears of my father.29

Nikolay was seeking refuge in the shady alleys of the park in Tsarskoe Selo. He felt that everyone at home hated him for torturing his father.

27 Diary, p. 13. 28 Ibid. 29 Diary, p. 14.

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chapter one

He felt that he was ‘losing all his bearings’. He had to sacrifice his ambition and glory. Unable to witness his father—‘dry, pedantic, iron-willed man’—crying and begging his son to change his mind, Nikolay decided to go back to the Gymnasium and ask for forgiveness from the director. He still believed in the Socialists, but ‘no longer lived by them’. Then the spring of 1906 came, ‘overflowed noisily and majestically’ the park and brought love into the dramatised life of 18-year old Punin. His family moved to their dacha in Pavlovsk, and Nikolay met Lidia Leontieva—the first love of his life, who managed to replace his passionate belief in Socialism with a humble faith in the eternal power of love: She was the first to show me the true reason for my attraction to Socialism; she penetrated to the very depth of my soul, and there she dug out my ambition and laid it before me, washed clean of any so-called ideals. In half an hour she convinced me of the lie of Socialism by the simplest means: she asked me about the sufferings of mankind—could it really be simply material? When I returned home I was no longer a Socialist, not in body or soul, and I no longer bore within myself those stupid ideas. Instead I had her sad, her wondrous image, always on my mind.30

White nights and a beautiful hot summer began, and Punin would walk amidst the wilderness of the Pavlovsk Park at night, hoping to meet Lidia, who would also usually walk there. She talked about the sufferings of the world with ‘feminine concern and deep understanding’, capturing the impressionable young boy with her charm and wisdom. Usually ‘stubborn and wilful with women’, he ‘obeyed her slavishly’. Punin started reading Schopenhauer again, getting more and more disappointed with mundane life on earth. Lidia and Nikolay had endless conversations walking down the dark alleys of Pavlovsk Park, until August came and Punin went away for a week. On his return, he learned of Lidia’s love-affair with a student who lived opposite her, Evgenii Fedorov. Punin wrote: Then everything was destroyed in me, over everything stood the cross of rejection, and I was exhausted and lost. The autumn arrived. The woods breathed more and more quietly, the sky paled, clouds, white and soft like sadness, spread across the sky in shreds. Everything bright and alive was dying, and the happiness I had experienced also died.31

30 Diary, p. 15.  31 Diary, p. 17.



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He started drinking, and soon discovered that the love of his life was now planning to marry Fedorov. But unlike Nikolay Gumilev, who tried to drown himself when Akhmatova had rejected him in 1906, Punin went back to his studies. He returned to the Gymnasium and soon forgot about this betrayal. That autumn he discovered Nietzsche, and his ‘return to health and success at the Gymnasium began’. He believed in the ‘fight in the name of morality’ and professed the philosophy of Nietzsche. Two years later he wrote in his diary: I went from being an excessively virtuous follower of Christ to being virtuous in general, attracted to good people, to the philosophy of morals, to the morality of the so-called ideal, and each step in this direction threw me into battle, because I, as an animal organism, could not accept morality, since morality was a frame by which I was supposed to limit myself. It was impossible, and my whole life, all of it, to this very day, has been a battle of my whole being with the limits of every system of morals.32

Punin blamed his ‘impeccable moral upbringing’ for making him too vulnerable to the triviality of life. Resisting following a single philosophy in life, he was searching for a new altar, and soon discovered the magic power of art. The distinguished personality of ‘immortal Annensky’, the special atmosphere of the Gymnasium and the grandeur of the palaces of Tsarskoe Selo gave a good start to the remarkable life of Nikolay Punin, even though at the time he was not writing very favourably about his experiences in this town: The Clock in Tsarskoe Selo stopped when Nelson died. We lived by this clock; from time to time we would go to St. Petersburg, but when we were back we felt that we have been living in the town of the dead.33

Bored with Tsarskoe Selo, Punin never forgot Pavlovsk and ‘the huge luxurious hall of its station’.34 Anna Akhmatova, who used to attend the concerts which were held at the Pavlovsk train station, would later describe its magic smells, which she said she was doomed to remember for her entire life, ‘like the blind, deaf and mute’:

32 Diary, p. 19. 33 Ibid. 34 Diary, p. 2.

22

chapter one First—the smoke of the pre-historic steam locomotive that brought me here—Tirlevo, the park, Salon de Musique (which was also called ‘soleniy muzhik’ [pickled peasant]), second—the polished parquet floor, then a smell from the barbershop, third—wild strawberries in the station shop (from Pavlovsk!), fourth—mignonettes and roses (coolness in the stuffiness) from the fresh wet boutonnieres (Bouquet-makers), which are sold in the flower kiosk (on the left), then cigars and greasy food from the restaurant.35

Throughout his life Nikolay Punin would return to this beautiful station and the gracious allées of the ‘English’ park. Even in the busiest period of his life—the 1920s—he would come back to Pavlovsk to teach at the Slutsk art school, and in the 1930s, in his memoirs Art and Revolution [Iskusstvo I Revolutsia], Punin would write once again about his favourite place: . . . For me the most important thing in Pavlovsk Park was its dampness. There was an eternal smell of dampness there—damp earth, rotten leaves; and in spring because of the smoke from the fires, the park would become blue-grey; the smoke would stretch for miles; one could also smell the smoke, when a locomotive would burst into the woody edge of the park with a whistle. The smell of damp earth, coming from below, from under one’s feet, and a smell of something burning—is a true essence of the park in Pavlovsk—always chilly and gloomy, and deserted, with slender pine trees, with the soft paths, down which the horses would walk silently, quiet in summer days, even blissful; in autumn—humming with the tops of the trees in the wind, melancholic, like romanticism itself . . .36

The elegant glory of Pavlovsk and the grand provinciality of Tsarskoe Selo coloured the first stage of Punin’s life. The next step in his education was to be connected with St. Petersburg—the artistic capital, and a city of irresistible beauty.

35 Anna Akhmatova. Desyatie godi, p. 22. 36 Kvartira N 5. Glava iz vospominaniy, ‘Panorama iskusstv’, n. 12, M-L, 1989, p. 187.

Chapter two

EDUCATION 1. Studies and Teachers In 1907, Nikolay Punin graduated from the Gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo and entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. He still lived in Pavlovsk but the overwhelming charm of the capital had already captured him, as it had so many other victims who were unable to resist its beauty. Anna Akhmatova was also captivated by this grand city after the quiet provinciality of Tsarskoe Selo. In her essay ‘Gorod’ [‘City’] she described St. Petersburg in the beginning of the 20th century: This is the Petersburg of Dostoevsky, before trams, full of horses.€.€.€. Petersburg covered from head to toe with signs which hid the houses without mercy. [This Petersburg] was most perceptible after the quiet and fragrant Tsarskoe. Inside Gostinny Dvor [the department store] were clusters of pigeons. In the corner niches of its galleries were large icons covered with gold embossing, with icon lamps burning. The Neva was full of vessels, and you could hear many foreign tongues on the streets. The houses were painted in lovely colours—red, purple, pink. Magnificent wooden houses and the mansions of the nobility lined Kamenni Ostrov, avenues and streets near the station for Tsarskoe Selo€.€.€.€It lacked parks and greenery at that time—it was mainly a city of granite and water.1

But the political situation in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century was unlikely to leave St. Petersburg’s grand serenity unspoilt for long. For the Tsarist administration and its land-owning and conservative supporters, the first Duma seemed altogether too liberal, and when land-law reforms were proposed, the Tsar dismissed the assembly. The next Duma was elected a year later, but the Tsarist administration found it even more distasteful, not least because Lenin and the Bolsheviks were amongst those elected. After this, the government—quite unconstitutionally—changed the electoral system to allow higher representation of conservatives, so the third Duma served its full term. Despite its biases, it did introduce several profound reforms. 1 A. Akhmatova, Gorod, quoted in A.A., pp. 25–26.

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In this unstable situation, the Russian army was actively recruiting young people and out of Punin’s family, Nikolay was the only one who escaped pursuing a military career, due to his short-sightedness and the nervous tic that he had had since his mother’s death. Reading law at University seemed to be the next noblest occupation to serving in the army, and Nikolay Punin became one of its 6,000 proud students. In the glossary to Punin’s diaries, Sidney Monas wrote: ‘Paradoxically, during this period Russian universities were among the freest in the world.’2 At that time, the majority of the students in St. Petersburg University were the more radically-oriented children of lower middle-class parents, who would give private lessons in order to pay their tuition fees, and take special pride in their bohemian looks and bad manners. Punin belonged to the minority: children of noble parents, disciplined and reliable. In 1909, his younger brother Alexander entered the faculty of natural studies in St. Petersburg University. The same year marked one of the most important meetings in Nikolay’s life—his brother introduced him to the sisters of Lev Arens, one of his friends from the Gymnasium and, later, the University. Several years later one of the Arens sisters, Anna, would become Nikolay Punin’s wife, and in many ways his most loyal friend. An old noble German family from Hanover, the Arens came to Russia around 1762, when Johann Feodorovich Arens (1737–1825) was invited to take the position of Ober-Bereiter of the Royal Stables of Catherine the Great. The family was not rich and supported itself mainly by military service. The great-great-grandson of Johann Feodorovich, Evgeniy Ivanovich (1856–1931) was a navy lieutenant-general, and from 1903 was in charge of the Peterhof wharf and the Admiralty in Tsarskoe Selo. He was also responsible for keeping one of the treasures of Peter the Great—the Gatorpsky Globe, which was later to be put on top of the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg. Evgenii Arens had three beautiful daughters—Vera, Zoya and Anna (nicknamed Galya by her relatives), and a son, Lev. They lived in the Admiralty, a pavilion in neo-gothic style by the lake in the park of the showy baroque palace of Catherine the Great at Tsarskoe Selo. Boat parades and imperial celebrations would take place on the lake under the command of General Arens. The romantic appearance of the Admiralty and the renowned beauty of the General’s daughters attracted many young men from the social elite to spend long winter evenings in this fairy-tale pavilion. They would meet 2 Glossary to Punin’s diaries, Diary, pp. 232–233.



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there to discuss art and to recite poetry, and soon the Admiralty gained a new name: ‘Salon of Science and Art’. A photograph taken in 1912 shows the three Punin brothers, including twenty-four year old Nikolay, dressed in the special costume for the carnival held there to celebrate Shrove Tuesday. Perhaps under the influence of these meetings in the ‘Salon of Science and Art’ and that of his new friends, the poet Count Vasilii Komarovsky and the composer Vladimir Deshevov, Nikolay gave up his pursuit of a political career a few years after entering the law faculty, and changed to the historical-philological faculty of St. Petersburg University. He had always dreamed of a career as a writer. When he was 15, he started writing his diary, and in the Gymnasium under the influence of Annensky, he wrote short stories, poems and fairy tales. However, back in 1909, he showed one of his short stories to the professional writer Sergey Auslender, and was told that ‘everybody writes like this’.3 Perhaps this particular incident in turn determined Punin’s decision to concentrate on art history instead of writing prose. 2. Influences and Interests At the point when Punin decided to read art history, the development of this subject was still in its early stages. At the beginning of the 20th century, the history of art in Russia was hardly a separate discipline. It was seen as part of history, archaeology and philology. In St. Petersburg State University, the faculty of history of art had been officially founded as early as 1863, when, following the High Decree of the Emperor Alexander II of 18th February 1863, the new faculty of the theory and history of art was formed, as part of the faculty of history and philology.4 However, when in 1869, a student named A. V. Prakhov wanted to read art history, he was sent to study this new subject abroad, since at that point, St. Petersburg University did not yet have an appropriate professor who could give lectures on the history of art.5

3 Interview with A. G. Kaminskaya, February 2009. 4 Ob izmenenii Ustava i shtatov Imperatorskikh Universitetov: Imennoi Visochaishii Ukaz, dannyi Pravitel’stvuushchemu Senatu 18.06.1863 in ‘Ustav Universitetov 1863 goda’ (SpB, 1863), pp. 1–2. 5 See T. E. Sokhor, K voprosu o vremeni obrazovaniya kafedry istorii iskusstva Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universiteta, in ‘Puninskie chteniya. Tezisi. 1998’ (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo St. Peterburgskogo Universiteta, 1998), p. 70.

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Prakhov spent four years studying in Munich, and in 1874 became the first lecturer (‘magistrate’) of the ‘faculty of theory and history of the science of fine art’.6 In the 19th century, all the European Academies of Arts, including the one in St. Petersburg, considered the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome to be the basis of the entire world’s history of art. Professor Prakhov’s lectures at St. Petersburg University were also limited to the history of Greek sculpture. Explaining Ancient Greek monuments to the undergraduate students three times a week, he used photographs of the sculptures from the museum of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Oriental, African and American art were hardly studied at all, until in the early days of the 20th century another Russian scholar, Vladimir Markov, insisted that one can not study the history of art without looking at Asia, Africa and America. Later, in the 1930s, Punin wrote that Vladimir Markov ‘knew better than others what art history needed at the time; and could see and understand better than others’.7 Meanwhile the strictly chronological ‘iconographical’ method, created in Russia by Nikodim Kondakov for studying Byzantine art, and completely unsuitable for European art, was used for all research into the history of art. Old Russian icons and church relics were studied only from a religious or archaeological perspective. Facts about works of art rather than their content were explored.8 As a student of St. Petersburg State University, Punin could not avoid this approach, and many years later one of his friends drew a caricature portrait of him as a dry skinny professor with a monocle, and signed it: ‘Secret agent Punin, author of many papers on the history of Futurism in Russia. This drawing celebrates his golden wedding anniversary with Mrs. Archaeology. It was she who dried him out.’9 Punin’s professor, Dmitrii Ainalov, was a specialist in Byzantine art. Like most of his contemporaries, Ainalov believed that art after the Renaissance was not worth studying. He marked Punin’s final paper on Traces of antiquity in the landscapes of Giotto as ‘pretty satisfactory’, and commented that Nikolay should wait for the publication of his own book 6 Ibid. 7 N. Punin, Iskusstvo i Revolutsiya, (manuscript in N. Punin’s Family Archive, St. Petersburg), p. 30. 8 More on the early days of art history in Russia in Vzdornov G. I., Kratkie Ocherki po Istorii Otkrytiya I Izucheniya Drevnerusskoi Zhivopisi in ‘Restovratsiya i Nauka. Ocherki po istorii otkrytiya I izucheniya drevnerusskoi zhivopisi’, (Moscow: Indrik, 2006). 9 Signature of the anonymous caricature of N. Punin, which is presently held in N. Punin’s family archive.



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on the paintings from Novgorod, where he also wrote about Giotto and the Byzantine mosaic artists.10 For Ainalov, his own book seemed to define the height of perfection, which his loyal student had to strive to reach. Paradoxically, it was from this selfsame book by Ainalov that a new approach to the history of art began. Ainalov and his students would now add their own personal observations to the otherwise rather dry scientific papers. The history of art was stepping out of the realm of science into the uncultivated field of popular, although still elitist, culture. Punin quickly adopted this new trend, and impressed his professor to such an extent that he invited his young student to stay and pursue an academic career at the University. But Nikolay had a different vision of his future. By the time of his graduation from the University (in 1914) he had, thanks to the connections of his friend from Tsarskoe Selo, the poet Komarovsky, already published an article on Byzantine art in one of the most prestigious journals of art and literature that inspired the revival of refined taste in Russia, Apollon. He had also already been working for a year at the Russian Museum as a registration clerk in the department of Old Russian Art—a very respectable position which was the prerogative of the educated cultural elite. So when Ainalov called Punin to his office and told him that he could not combine an academic career with the career of an art critic, Nikolay chose the latter and started his professional life writing articles for Apollon and working at the Russian Museum. Punin was developing a gift for expressing his analysis of works of art in the most beautiful and compelling manner. When the Russian poet and secretary of Apollon, Mikhail Lozinsky, gave Punin a book of his poems, he made a note on its front page: ‘To Nikolay Nikolaevich Punin, whose prose is more poetic than poems’.11 In the summer of 1914, Nikolay wrote to his future wife, Anna Arens: .€.€.€I am not an artist, not a diplomat, not a general, but a writer. It is true that I am not a poet, not a satirist or novelist, not a historian, but I am the one who knows words in a very special way and has his own thoughts.12

The main editor of Apollon, Sergei Makovsky, admired Punin as a ‘true writer’ and was happy to give him many commissions for writing articles on art-related subjects.

10 Punin’s family archive, St. Petersburg. 11 L. Zykov, Introduction to Punin’s diary, in MSL, p. 8. 12 Ibid.

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From this point on, throughout his life, Punin pursued his one and only true religion—faith in art and its great influence on people’s lives. Back in 1910, arguing about the role of art in society, he refuted the accusation that art was elitist, saying that even ‘a tradesman or a footman, kneeling down in the evening in front of an icon, lit by the pink light of an icon lamp, is already connected with art’.13 His friend Alexandra Korsakova wrote to him that he must ‘love art more than anything else, like God, like something that brings us closer to God’,14 and Punin, talking about his ambitions in life, said that: Ambition—is a wound, for which art—is a plaster; if you take it off—the wound bleeds, but it is a deformity and a suffering always to walk around with the plaster on.15

For Punin, art was a saviour from selfishness and self-centeredness. He even decided not to sign his articles with his own name when he started writing for Apollon. When he showed Makovsky his first article on Byzantine art, he suggested that he would sign it with a nickname ZhanninPerro (his step-mother’s original surname), but the editor pointed out that it sounds French and the readers would most certainly say that it is such a good article because it is written by a Frenchman.16 The art of the Byzantine Empire, the spiritual mother of Old Russia, which influenced Gustave Moreau and many representatives of the Jugendstil, found dedicated followers (such as Mikhail Vrubel) in Russia. Spirituality in art became more important than the slick realism of 19th century academic art. Sensitive to these new tendencies in Russian art, Punin wrote his first article ‘To the problem of Byzantine art’ [‘K probleme Vizantiiskogo iskusstva’] (Apollon, 1913). Full of metaphors and romantic reminiscences, this article was Punin’s reaction against dry analytic academic articles, written by those who have seen in Byzantine art nothing but historic documentation of this ancient culture. In his article, the twenty-five year old Punin wrote: Like a phoenix, Byzantium arose from the ashes of diverse and dying cultures, in order to rage in the Hippodrome for many centuries to come, and argue on the square about the divine nature of Jesus, and to revere in the atrium of St. Sophia. But the swings of fame, which took Byzantium to an unreachable height, and Christianity, which shrouded it with its wise and

13 Diary note of 01.02.1910, MSL, p. 21. 14 Letter from Korsakova to Punin, 10.10.1910, MSL, p. 29. 15 Diary note of 04.06.1910, MSL, p. 24. 16 Diary note of 20.11.1912, MSL, p. 38.



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dogmatic chasubles, tear apart its womb, and in the whole period of its existence Byzantium feels to us like a huge inflamed wound, for which the lips of Hellenism are not gentle enough, and the centuries of oblivion are not long enough, and now, agitated by its ambitions, drunk by the vinegar of pain, it is blazing towards us through her lethargic sleep, giving off a horrible and wild odour of rotting flowers.17

He believed that Byzantine art was ‘the most artistic of all arts’, and that Constantinople was ‘the bath of oriental and Hellenistic traditions, in which Byzantine art was bathing, and a cradle, where the descendants of the previously mighty cultures were rocked to sleep.’18 These beautiful reminiscences were too picturesque in style for the dry academicians and too complicated and allegorical for the general public. But Punin was prepared, at least at the time, to be understood by a selective audience. He wrote in his article that the problem is that ‘we think about our everyday life too much to take time to understand the splendour of a cut sapphire.’19 He admired the people of ancient Byzantium, who could accept and feed this amazing culture for many centuries, and described Constantinople as a magical city where ‘the butcher would not sell a piece of meat without expressing his view on the greatness of the Virgin, which he had contemplated overnight, and where people would argue about the Holy Trinity, the holy birth and the nature of Jesus on the squares and in the shops.’20 He felt that things that we consider too sophisticated in Byzantium were part of the everyday life of people of all castes. He concluded his article by saying: And—a strange phenomenon—realistic art takes us back to the past. After five centuries of quest it brings us to the original springs, on the shores of which it has been frozen, in eternal admiration of its own reflection. Realism becomes a period for us, and who knows, perhaps it is a period of decline, but in its agony—in this last heavy flap of its cut wings—we heard a whisper, a strange and truly dying whisper of numb lips—style, and at the same time a failing look has stopped on the line of the horizon, behind which the sun was rising.21

The twentieth century opened a new chapter, a new approach in studying the history of art, and Nikolay Punin became one of the first researchers to write its first page.

17 N. Punin, To the problem of Byzantine Art, in ‘Apollon’, No. 3, March 1913, p. 18. 18 Ibid., p. 19. 19 Ibid., p. 21. 20 Ibid., p. 23. 21 Ibid., p. 25.

Chapter three

WINDS OF CHANGE: THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND EMERGENCE OF THE NEW CREATIVITY IN RUSSIA Russia, beloved, what have they done to your blessed body, these barbarians, these swine!         (N. Punin, Diary note of 25 November 1915)1

1. The Breeding-Ground—The Last Years of Imperial Russia. Foreign Influences in Russian Art (French Artists’ Exhibitions) The end of the 19th century was marked in Russia by a blossoming of the arts under the impetus of a new generation of painters,2 writers, poets, producers and composers, and of an expanding interest in artistic movements in other European countries. At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian artists and art-critics discovered the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin became new gods for many. The paintings of Cézanne attracted avantgarde artists by their promise of a new system in art—a new language, incomprehensible to academics and inspiring for the devotees. The first painting by Cézanne appeared in Russia in 1903. It was the still-life Fruits, which was purchased by the famous Russian collector, Sergey Shchukin from the Gallerie Durand-Ruel in Paris, and exhibited at his gallery in Moscow. Between 1904 and 1910, Shchukin built an exceptional collection of works by Cézanne, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh and Gauguin. He believed that the introduction of the newest and most influential movements in European art to Russian society was his mission in life. In 1907, after the sudden death of his much-loved wife Lidia, Shchukin opened his house for free visits and wrote in his will that his collection should form part of the Tretyakov Gallery after his death. From then on anyone could come on Sundays and see his priceless collection of French artists. The influence of Shchukin’s collection on the development of Russian art at the beginning of the 20th century is hard to overestimate. In his 1 N. Punin, Diary note of 25 November 1915, Diary, p. 39. 2 The artistic movement Mir Iskusstva was launched in 1898.

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article ‘Review of new trends in the art of St. Petersburg’ [‘Obzor novikh techenii v iskusstve Peterburga’] Punin wrote: ‘Who among Russian artists does not count in his past, as a moment of enlightenment and light from ‘nowhere’, Shchukin’s gallery? Everybody does.’3 Following Shchukin’s example, Ivan Morozov, another Russian collector of French Impressionists, started buying paintings by the recentlydeceased Cézanne in 1907. It was he who purchased the painting Grand Pin Près d’Aix-en-Provence (now in the Hermitage collection) in 1908. Composed of separate blocks of paint, this painting represented the new era of Post-Impressionist art. Punin used this painting for his explanation of Cézanne’s work. He compared it to the academic landscape by one of the Russian Wanderers, Ivan Shishkin. He said that if you pull a branch of Shishkin’s tree, it will come out together with roots and earth; in Cézanne’s painting, together with the branch, part of the sky will be torn. Punin’s comparison reflected the holistic nature of Cézanne’s landscapes.4 Unlike Shchukin’s house, Morozov’s gallery was only accessible to selected artists and art students, but in 1912 Apollon (No’s 3–4) published a catalogue and reproductions of the paintings in his collection. Following this publication in 1912, Apollon, in collaboration with the French Institute in St. Petersburg, opened a huge exhibition in the capital called ‘A Hundred Years of French painting (1812–1912)’. The most influential artdealer and collector of Cézanne, Ambroise Vollard, sent sixteen paintings by this fashionable French master, which made this exhibition one of the most significant early retrospectives of Cézanne outside France. This exhibition played a major role in the development of Russian Cézannism, and was an especially big influence on the artists of The Knave of Diamonds [‘Bubnovii valet’]. Formed in 1911, these were Punin’s favourite group of Russian artists at the time. 2. Growth of Interest in Russian Art. Foundation of the Russian Museum Between 1905 and 1910, industrial and agricultural production in Russia expanded, and the newspaper industry, benefiting from relaxed censor3 N. Punin, Review of the new trends in the art of St. Petersburg in the magazine ‘Russian art’ (Petrograd-Moscow, 1923) N. 1, pp. 17–28. 4 Ibid., p. 22.



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ship, also boomed. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Empire was second only to America in the overall length of railways, and first in the world in output of oil. Much of this progress was due to the abilities of Feodor Stolypin, Prime Minister from 1906. He escaped a first assassination attack, but succumbed to a second one in 1911. The swing away from Revolution disappointed some of the artists, such as Blok and the Symbolists, but it gave birth to a new artistic blossoming, especially in literature and on the stage, where Stanislavsky, Mayerkhold, Diaghilev and Fokine held sway. Towards the end of the 19th century, there was also a revival in collecting Russian icons, which in turn encouraged a new wave of interest in this subject among artists and art critics. The discovery of a process which enabled the restorers to remove darkened varnish and layers of soot from the old icons, revealed the most beautiful treasures. But the cleaning of the old icons was not welcomed by everyone and soon became a highly controversial issue. Thus the Latvian artist Voldemārs Matvejs,5 one of the founding members of the St. Petersburg society of artists ‘The Union of Youth’, argued against the intrusive restoration of the icons. He dedicated a chapter of his renowned book ‘Printsipy Tvorchestva v Plasticheskikh Iskusstvakh: Faktura’ [‘Creative Principles of the Plastic Arts: Texture’] to this subject. Here he argued against those who were ‘unable to find anything interesting in dark icons, quickly wanted to see them cleaned’.6 Matvejs believed that restorers were not knowledgeable enough to proceed with cleaning the icons. In his thesis he wrote that ‘although the paint on the icons becomes fresh and bright straight after cleaning, six hours later they already start getting more and more yellow, and finally get dark again.’7 Matvejs also argued that the restoration of old icons destroyed their texture [ faktura]—the old varnish and layers of soot that most were striving to get rid of, according to Matvejs, contributed to the mysterious appeal of the old icons.

5 Voldemārs Matvejs was the Latvian sculptor and critic, who wrote under the pseudonym Vladimir Markov (1877–1914). 6 Voldemārs Matvejs, Printsipy Tvorchestva v Plasticheskikh Iskusstvakh: Faktura, first published in 1914, re-printed in ‘Voldemar Matvejs. Statii, Katalog Proizvedeniy, Pis’ma, Khronika Deyatel’nosti “Souza Molodezhi”, Neputns, 2002, pp. 43–57, p. 53. 7 Ibid.

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Similar views were also expressed by one of the most progressive English art critics, Roger Fry, who wrote in his essay of 1920 ‘Art and Socialism’: Patina, then, the adventitious material beauty which age alone can give, has come to be the object of a reverence greater than that devoted to the idea which is enshrined within the work of art. People are right to admire patina. Nothing is more beautiful than gilded bronze of which time has taken its toll until it is nothing but a faded shimmering splendour over depths of inscrutable gloom; nothing finer than the dull glow which Pentelic marble has gathered from past centuries of sunlight and warm Mediterranean breezes.8

However, Roger Fry also said that: ‘.€.€.€no patina can make a bad work good, or the forgers would be justified. It is an adjectival and ancillary beauty scarcely worthy of our prolonged contemplation’.9 Unlike Fry, Voldemārs Matvejs had strong beliefs about the importance of the original work. He wrote: Cleaned icons have a ragged appearance, they look as if they were made to look like Western European paintings—as a result icons disappear. The dark St. Georges come to mind—with such a special dark surface, such play of brown and golden tones and sheen, dressed in gold and silver,—which one will never find either in the paintings by Rembrandt, nor Leonardo, nor Ribera.10

Matvejs’ declaration of the superiority of Russian icons over European art had its roots in the 19th century. The voice of the Slavophiles, who already in the 1830s opposed Westernizers in defence of a messianic nationalism, found a strong wave of resonance among the artistic intelligentsia. In his book ‘The Russians’, professor Robin Milner-Gulland wrote: ‘The building and furnishing of a small pastiche Old Russian Church at Abramtsevo, on the Mamontov estate north of Moscow in 1880, was a significant moment in preparing for the coming re-evaluation of Old Russian art.’11 In his country house at Abramtsevo, Savva Mamontov restored and developed traditional arts and crafts. His joinery and pottery workshops attracted many talented artists. Before long, his country estate became a centre for modern design and the starting point for the Russian Art Nouveau School. 8 Roger Fry, Art and Socialism in ‘Vision and design’, London: Chatto & Windus, 1920, reprinted in ‘Art History Supplement’, issue 002, June 2011, p. 2. 9 Ibid. 10 Voldemārs Matvejs, Printsipy Tvorchestva v Plasticheskikh Iskusstvakh: Faktura, p. 54. 11 Milner-Gulland, R.R. The Russians, London: Blackwell Publishers, 1997, p. 198.



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At about the same time, the question of the need for a national public museum of specifically Russian art, became centre of attention for most educated people, as well as for the royal circle. Such a museum was necessary due to ‘the thriving Russian art at the time, as well as the high position of the Russian Empire in the educated world’.12 Sensitive to these moods, Tsar Alexander III decided to open such a museum of Russian art in the capital. His initiative was followed up by his son, young Nicholas II. In 1895, he signed the decree to establish the ‘Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III’ in the recently purchased Mikhailovskii Palace in the centre of St. Petersburg. On 7th (19th new style) March, 1898 (only 139 years later than the British Museum in London, and six years after the foundation of the Tretyakov gallery in Moscow) the Russian Museum, founded in memory of Alexander III and dedicated to glorifying his personality and the history of his reign, as well as Russian culture, was officially opened to the public. The museum was managed by the Ministry of the Imperial Court and its director had to be appointed by the Royal Order of the Emperor himself. At that time the collection of the Russian Museum was based on works from the Hermitage Museum and the Academy of Arts, as well as those donated and purchased from private collections. The department of Russian icons and church relics, in which Punin had been working since 1914, embodied a Museum of Christian Relics (formerly part of the Academy of Arts) as its base. The purchase of the famous collection of Greek and Russian icons from Likhachev provided the Russian Museum with the largest collection of icons in Russia. Between 1903 and 1904, the ‘Old Testament Trinity’ icon by the legendary Russian artist, Andrei Rublev, had been cleaned for the first time. In 1913, the tercentenary year of the founding of the Romanov dynasty, an exhibition of newly restored icons called ‘Ancient Russian Painting’ was held in Moscow. After looking to the West for two hundred years, Russians were turning to their own traditions and heritage. This was the Russian Renaissance—‘an awareness of Russian consciousness, revitalization in philosophy, the sciences, literature, music, painting, theatre. What these years lived by and what they gave to the spiritual world would never die.’13

12 Note from Duke Trubetskoy to the Minister of Imperial Court from 1889. 13 W. Weidle, Tri Rossii, quoted in AA, p. 47.

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Jane Sharp explained in her book ‘Russian Modernism between East and West’: The shift in orientation from West to East in the decade that followed the Revolution and Russo-Japanese war betrays this generation’s different assumptions regarding the authority of Tsarist institutions. Goncharova and her colleagues were uniformly sensitive to their status as emissaries of Western culture, on the one hand, and as receptors for Western influence, on the other. They saw themselves not as serving the purpose of empire but as colonists subversively seeking to reverse the process of colonisation. To a large extent, their turn to the East was compensatory. Like the Slavophiles before them, the Muscovites sought to redefine an excessively Europeanized present and privileging Russia’s prior assimilation of Byzantine and Eurasian cultural traditions.14

In spirit with the new fashion for icons in 20th century Russia, Punin dedicated his articles written in 1914 to these ancient relics, which for him represented much more than just great works of art. He perceived them as a revelation, and as the highest ideal for the newly emerging Russian avant-garde. As John Milner confirmed in his book on Vladimir Tatlin: For Tatlin, as for Malevich and Goncharova, the icon provided a living and Russian alternative to Western traditions. Their search for a Russian identity could find spatial systems in the icon that were not imported. Furthermore, many icons were pictorially superb, their painters’ control complete and their emphasis upon materials crucial.15

Nikolay Punin expressed a similar opinion in his article of 1923 ‘Obzor techenii v iskusstve Peterburga’ [‘Review of movements in the art of St. Petersburg’], where he concluded that ‘the influence of Russian icons on Tatlin is undoubtedly greater than the influence of Cézanne or Picasso upon him’.16 However, before the October 1917 Revolution a new chapter in the book of Russian art history was being written, and Nikolay Punin was not just one of the first, but one of the most dedicated people to write in it. From 1913 onwards, icons preoccupied Punin’s work and imagination. In his letter to Anna Arens of 19th April 1913, he proclaimed

14 Jane Ashton Sharp, Russian Modernism between East and West. Natal’ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 24. 15 John Milner, Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant-Garde, New Haven and (London: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 24. 16 N. Punin, Obzor techenii v iskusstve Peterburga in ‘Russkoe iskusstvo’, No. 1, 1923, p. 18.



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that icon-painting is such a mature form of art, in front of which ‘the whole of European art (perhaps only with the exception of the Renaissance)—are toys.’17 Three days later he wrote another letter to Arens, in which he referred to the icon of The Virgin Mary from one of the Moscow churches: If only people in St. Petersburg knew what kind of treasures are buried in Moscow. In just one Virgin Mary from the Novikov church, which I saw today, such spiritual energy is concentrated, that if one takes the souls of all the heroines of Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Pushkin, as well as the souls of the sisters Arens and the souls of the spiritually advanced women—even this synthesis would not exceed in the strength and depth of this one icon.18

In 1914, Nikolay Punin, by now an experienced clerk in the department of Old Russian Art, was promoted to Secretary of the Society for the Research of Old Russian Painting, and a member of the editing committee of the periodical ‘The Russian Icon’ (‘Russkaya Icona’). Published six times a year, printed on lusciously thick paper, with 30 to 35 beautiful reproductions in each issue and a special script, this anthology of Russian icons was criticized by many contemporary critics for its focus on style and appearance rather than the quality of its contents. Thus in his article dedicated to this periodical, one of Punin’s contemporaries, Pavel Muratov wrote: The editors would have been better off if they had only included beautifully reproduced illustrations, without filling the big pages with strange colourless text. Who needs articles, which look as if they were taken from unreadable archaeological books, even if they are printed on fine thick paper with red vignettes?19

In his article, Muratov remarked that at least foreigners will be happy to look at this periodical, since without being able to understand the text, they can appreciate beautiful illustrations. The only article that Muratov considered worth reading in the first issue of the ‘The Russian Icon’ was one by Nikolay Punin on the icons from Likhachev’s collection. He admired the emotional angle from which Punin had written it, but criticized it for being too shallow and for its inability to give a true understanding of the

17 N. Punin, Letter of 22.04.1913, MSL, p. 46. 18 Ibid. 19 Pavel Muratov, Peterburgskaya Russkaya Icona, ‘Sofia’, 1914, no. 4 (April), quoted in P. Muratov. Old Russian Painting. History, discoveries and research, (Moscow: Airis-Press, Laguna-Art, 2005) ch. 2, p. 348.

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significance of this renowned collection of icons.20 In this article Punin was supposed to date and describe the most remarkable icons from the Likhachev collection (by then part of the permanent collection of the Russian Museum). But a dry academic description was not good enough for the romantic Punin. The spiritual aspect of the icons and their emotional impact formed the central part of his analysis. Concentrating on the Italian influences on Russian icons, Punin once again stressed the importance of Byzantine tradition in its development. In his article on the Likhachev collection, he described the historical and stylistic significance of these icons: An icon—one cannot forget—is not only an example of a certain style, not only an example of the power and the wealth of colour, but a certain substance, a certain part of eternity, the fulfilment of another life and another spiritual realm, different from the tradition which fed our artistic experiences so far.21

In his article, Punin stressed that one must see the spiritual side of icons before their historical or aesthetic significance. He wrote that in icons ‘the form was given before the content and thus became a tradition’. He finished his opus by saying that ‘the full description of this collection is still awaiting its author, we have no doubt about it—someone more attentive and less passionate.’22 Perhaps disapproving of the emotional manner in which he found he was analysing Russian icons, Punin only wrote one more article for this periodical, dedicated as it was to the private collections of icons belonging to the wealthy merchants Ostroukhov and Ryabushinsky. This time, Punin chose the question of the interrelations of Hellenistic and Oriental traditions in Russian icon painting: The East and Greece—these two trunks, from which two branches of the world of art have grown—have always determined the significance and nature of each individual work of art€.€.€.23

20 Ibid, p. 349. 21 N. Punin, Zametki ob ikonah v sobranii N. P. Lichacheva, St. Petersburg: Russkaya ikona, 1914, vol. 1, p. 23. 22 Ibid., p. 47. 23 N. Punin, Ellinism I vostok v ikonopisi. Po povodu sobraniya ikon I.S. Ostroukhova I S. P. Ryabushinskogo—Russkaya ikona, sbornik 3, Petrograd: t-vo R.Golike I A.Vilborg, 1914, p. 181.



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Once again he pointed out the progression of Russian art from the Byzantine: ‘A complicated artistic phenomenon in its own right—Byzantine art—could not avoid lending its complexity to Russian icon painting.’24 But Punin’s most significant article on icons was written in 1915, dedicated to one of the most mystical (and indeed canonized) Russian artists, Andrei Rublev. It first appeared in Apollon (No 2) in 1915, and a year later it was published as a separate booklet, and became one of the first descriptions of the artistic style of this unique artist, as well as of the tradition from which it was born. At the beginning of his article, Punin stressed that Russia, bordered by both East and West, became ‘an extraordinary full cup of spiritual forces’,25 for which the European and the Oriental traditions were equally important. Both Byzantium and Europe influenced the development of Russian icons and frescoes, and by the beginning of the 15th century, Russian art had gained ‘a new dress, on which Byzantine and European Renaissance have already embroidered their patterns—its tender, classically beautiful ornamental attire.’26 Punin admired Rublev both as a unique artist and a humble monk—‘a tender and strong flower, which has grown from the rich and fertile soil of the Orthodox East’.27 He wrote that the significance of Rublev for Russian art is expressed in ‘the purity and security of the ancient traditions which fed his art, which he made stronger and which he carried on into the next centuries.’28 He felt that ‘the whole epoch around Rublev’s time is marked by the strong influence of this master’.29 He pointed out that Rublev’s fame, in a time of unknown icon-painters, was due to his unique talent. He was so closely connected to the artistic tradition of his time that it is quite difficult to distinguish the icons painted by him from the ones by other artists under his influence. Punin based his arguments about the style of Andrei Rublev on his most significant icon—The Holy Trinity, and inspired by the heavenly beauty of this icon, wrote: .€.€.€an icon of such God-inspired beauty, that we, like flowers towards the sun, raise our soul to it and in the triviality of our deadly desires can not

24 Ibid., p. 184. 25 N. Punin, Andrei Rublev in RSI, p. 36. 26 Ibid., p. 41. 27 Ibid., p. 39. 28 N. Punin, Andrei Rublev, (Petrograd 1916), p. 23. 29 Ibid., p. 23.

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chapter three reject the thirst for knowing, finding, calling the name, which distinguished a genius in this world, who was elevated to such lonely, such tenderly-beautiful and pure heights.30

He praised this unique work as ‘a triumph of motionless contemplation, as if three souls, with equal plenitude of spirit and vision, came together to experience their humility and wisdom of life, full of suffering and sorrow.’31 Punin called Andrei Rublev—‘a genius, the light of the early period of our painting, a sun which dominated the horizon for at least a hundred years€.€.€.€a marvellous and delicate prophet of divine essences.’32 This article marked the end of Punin’s research into Russian icons, though his attempts to find true Russian artistic traditions never ended. He finished his article about Rublev by saying that: ‘Art does not get born in one day, art needs life and it needs the past, art can never live without traditions. Where are our traditions?’33 For many years after this, Punin continued to stress the importance of icons for Russian art, fighting for their preservation after the October Revolution. In 1918 in his article ‘A spoonful of Antidote’34 [‘Lozhka protivoyadiya’], Anatoly Lunacharsky—a person who would play a major part in Punin’s life—wrote: ‘Not for nothing does the fighting Futurist Punin sweat for all he is worth in order to save the traditions of icon painting in Mstera and is concerned about the prohibition of local authorities to export icons from Mstera€.€.€.’35 In May 1913, Punin had written an article about Mikhail Vrubel, published in Apollon (No. 5), thereby being amongst the first Russian critics to describe the unique drawings of this, at that time, much-underestimated artist. Vrubel’s studies of Byzantine and mediaeval art had contributed to the renewed interest in folklore in Russia, while his later paintings earned him the title The Russian Cézanne. This article was written with all the intensity of Punin’s early work. He started it by saying that ‘once the first shoots of Vrubel’s genius appeared on the eclectic academic soil, they grew into a blatant, rebellious plant, some sort of orchid or ‘caladium’ which held all the burden of its huge, heart-shaped leaves on its shaggy, swollen stems’.36

30 RSI, p. 41. 31 N. Punin, Andrei Rublev, (Petrograd 1916), pp. 19–20. 32 Ibid., p. 23. 33 RSI, p. 48. 34 Published in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’ of Dec. 29, 1918. 35 Quoted in Wiktor Woroszylski, The life of Mayakovsky, p. 250. 36 N. Punin, To the drawings of M. Vrubel, (‘Apollon’, No.5, 1913)—in RSI, p. 125.



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Punin’s language was still full of symbolism and poetic comparisons, but what a vivid description of Vrubel’s work this was! Following his temperament to the full, Punin described the unique shapes in these paintings which ‘decay and fall down, suddenly bursting into flames, like sharp needles, and combined, starting to shine with shafts of many rays, which rise, like psalms to the roof of the temple’.37 Unlike Punin, most of Vrubel’s contemporaries found it hard to understand his paintings. One of his largest panels, Mikula Selyaninovich (1000 x 1600 cm.), which was painted in 1896, in a somewhat modernist manner, was rejected by the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg and excluded from the All-Russian Industrial Art Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, causing a great scandal. It was then folded up and put into storage, but restored ten years later by the World of Art’ artists Sergey Sudeikin and Pavel Kuznetsov (Vrubel was already too ill to do it himself), and subsequently exhibited in Diaghilev’s 1906 Russian exhibition in Paris. It was at this exhibition that Sudeikin saw ‘a thickset man who would spend hours in front of Vrubel’s work every day of the exhibition’. This man was the father of cubism himself, the young Pablo Picasso.38 Like Picasso, Punin distinguished and admired Vrubel’s avant-garde style of painting ahead of most of his contemporaries. He believed that Vrubel’s drawings, in which ‘surfaces are broken up into thousands of facets, which collide with each other and, flickering like frost on windows, cut with their sharp needles into a fluidity of lines’, can convey all the ‘beauty, despair and splendour’ of the artist’s work better than the best biography, written about him’.39 Vrubel’s life ended in a mental hospital. Blind, underappreciated and frustrated in his attempts to create a perfect work of art, he died at just fifty four years of age on April 14, 1910, convinced that ‘in future, painters will abandon paints, and will only use pencil and coal, since the public will learn to see colours in black and white drawings’.40 Nikolay Punin felt that Vrubel ‘wanted to make shapes talk in the circumstances, under which they could only fall to pieces and rot’, and finished his article by saying that:

37 Ibid., p. 126. 38 S. Volkov, Istoriya Russkoy Kul’tury XX veka. Ot Lva Tolstogo do Alexandra Solzhenitsina, (Eksmo, Moscow, 2008), p. 43. 39 N. Punin, To the drawings of M. Vrubel, (‘Apollon’, No.5, 1913)—in RSI, p. 127. 40 V. Brusov, Poslednyaya rabota Vrubelya in ‘M. Vrubel. Perepiska, vospominaniya i khudozhnik’, (‘Is-vo’, L-M, 1963), p. 334.

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chapter three .€.€.€no tissues could bear such persistent and intense work; the wings which ascended so high up had to break, weakened; but before hanging down, they majestically stretched up into the sky; and the last work of the artist, the portrait of Brusov, was as beautiful as any of his previous works€.€.€.41

A year later he would reveal to Anna Arens: What can I write about Vrubel? He is flying very high, but his zeal is overwhelming; it is not a human fervour€.€.€.€Every brush stroke is grandiose, black paint, and in the depth of it—the tone of majestic life. Most importantly there is not a drop of dishonesty—everything is solemn, sincere, like a church service, and full of life—there is the sea of life in every tiny brush stroke—mad and wild life, perhaps excessive, but what can one do if one’s soul is burning and there is no peace€.€.€.?42

Punin was, in fact, not the first to write about Vrubel. A biography of this unique artist was written two years before his articles, in 1911, by another art-critic, Stepan Yaremich. It was published as a series of illustrated monographs, which were dedicated to Russian artists and edited by the artist Igor Grabar. While Punin stressed the spiritual side of Vrubel’s paintings and his significance for contemporary art, Yaremich showed Vrubel to be a rational, realistic artist, who developed under the influence of the academic painting tradition, and of Byzantine art. In the introduction to Vrubel’s biography, Yaremich wrote: The spiritual individuality of Vrubel is very complicated. He can be compared with the great poets of the first half of the XIX century. Amazing restraint shapes his character. In the same way his artistic works are built with an ideal structure—the high structure, which distinguishes great art.43

In 1914, while still publishing his articles and reviews in Apollon, Punin started writing for the recently established Severnye Zapiski [‘Northern Notes’] magazine. His first article for this new magazine was a review of the exhibition of one of the most talented Russian artists at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, Valentin Serov. For Punin, Serov represented ‘all the best and most precious in the past’.44 He believed that by following his very own independent path, this talented Russian artist had

41 N. Punin, To the drawings of M. Vrubel, p. 131. 42 Punin’s letter to A. Arens from 24 July 1914, MSL, p. 64. 43 Stepan Yaremich, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo, Moscow: Izdanie I. Knebel, 1911, p. 8. 44 Punin, V. Serov, in RSI, p. 119.



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opened one of the ‘most important and influential pages in the history of Russian art’.45 Punin remarked that Serov did lack ‘virtuosity, spontaneity and strong temperament’, ‘his hand was too weak and his pencil was too heavy’.46 But the critic still considered Serov as one of the best draughtsmen, who ‘like no one before him, felt the style, felt the rhythm, felt the epoch, which he was re-creating’.47 In 1911, Igor Grabar, then a leading artist and art-critic, who was also an active member of the World of Art movement, published the beautifully illustrated biography of Valentin Serov (which was reviewed by Punin in February 1914). In this book, Grabar confirmed Punin’s view of Serov as ‘an important artist of the past’ by describing how in the 1906 exhibition of Russian artists organised by Sergey Diaghilev in Paris, paintings by Serov were greatly admired, but considered to be rather old-fashioned. Grabar wrote that even though Serov was much superior to many Russian and French modernists represented at the Autumn Salon, his paintings were seen as academic, and he was almost rejected from this exhibition, which was supposed to bring together rebellious rather than traditional artists.48 Nevertheless, Grabar felt that Serov was ‘the last great portrait-painter of the old school’. He wrote: There will be many more masters of light, colour and beautiful compositions, but the successor to Serov is nowhere to be seen, and there will hardly be any artist, emerging in the near future, who would be able to get into one’s personality so deeply—regardless whether he likes this person or not,—and attempt to open up one’s innermost being, like only Serov could. The last staunch singer of human beings is now gone.49

Nikolay Punin admired Valentin Serov as a great portrait-painter, but found it hard to forgive his answer to a survey, organised by the newspaper Rannee Utro, in March 1908, which aimed to see what the then most famous artists thought about the future of Russian art. When the newspaper editors interviewed two of the old Wanderers, Serov and Victor Vasnetsov, the first said that ‘art should return to classicism and

45 Ibid., pp. 120, 122. 46 Ibid., pp. 120, 122. 47 Ibid., p. 124. 48 See Igor Grabar, Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov. Zhizn’ I Tvorchestvo [Life and Creative Work], Moscow: Izdanie I. Knebel, 1911, p. 5. 49 Ibid., p. 278.

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even pseudo-classicism’, and the latter announced that ‘passion for modernism and decadence in art will be finally crushed, and everything will go back to healthy realism’.50 During 1914, Punin wrote thirteen reviews of recent art publications for Severnye Zapiski, but in 1915, returned to Apollon, where he published his famous article on Japanese prints. At the time, it was primarily Japanese poetry that was discussed in Russian literature.51 The only art critic who had written a short article on coloured Japanese wood-cuts before Punin was once again Igor Grabar.52 Yet Punin’s broader essay on Japanese prints constituted an irreplaceable source for Russian artists. It attracted wide interest from the specialists in this subject, and in 1927, was translated into Japanese and published in Tokyo. For over fifty years Punin’s article was the main source on the subject of Japanese prints in Russia. It was only followed in 1956, by the exhibition of Japanese coloured prints of the 18th and 19th centuries, which took place in Moscow, and in 1963, by the album ‘Japanese engravings’ [Yaponskaya gravura’].53 Though writing on such a broad range of subjects, Punin was still primarily interested in Russian art, and a few months after his article on Japanese prints, he wrote an article about three young artists—Boris Grigoriev, Nikolay Sapunov and Nikolay Krimov.54 This elegantly written paper was highly praised by Punin’s contemporaries, and many years later, he would refer to it as one of his best works. In his letter to Anna Arens of 10th June 1915, Punin wrote that Apollon’s editor, Makovsky, called him to say how much he loved his article about Grigoriev and that he felt that Punin should write more, since the magazine would benefit from emotional rather than boring academic articles.55 This article consisted of three elements, connected by the one theme of the romantic quest followed by these artists—very different from one another, united by their search for a higher realm of life in the controversial reality of pre-revolutionary Russia. Punin started the first part of his

50 Iskusstvo budushchego. Anketa [‘Art of the Future. Survey’], in Rannee Utro, N 97, 1908, 14 March, p. 3, quoted in A. V. Krusanov, Russkiy Avant-Garde: 1907–1932, historic review in 3 volumes, St. Petersburg: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 1996, v. 1, p. 6. 51 See Moichi Yamaguchi, Impressionism kak gospodstvueshchee napravlenie Yaponskoi poezii, St. Petersburg, 1913; G. A. Rachinsky, Yaponskaya poeziya, St. Petersburg, 1914. 52 Igor Grabar, Yaponskaya tsvetnaya graviura na dereve. Ocherk, St. Petersburg: Izdanie S. Scherbatova I V. Mekk, 1903. 53 Yaponskaya gravura, edited by B. Voronova, Moscow: Izogiz, 1963. 54 In ‘Apollon’, N. 8–9, 1915, pp. 1–14. 55 MSL, p. 83.



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article, dedicated to the drawings of Boris Grigoriev, with the brave proclamation: ‘Irony and poetry—everything else is tasteless and banal!’56 He felt that these words can describe Grigoriev’s art better than any other. He admired the artist’s ability to find something deep and eternal in everyday life. He liked the irony in Grigoriev’s drawings, but he also remarked that these brisk works lack real feelings and big thoughts and ideas: ‘try to understand them and unravel them and only a handful of lead dust will be left on the palm of your hand’.57 Punin found the same lack of temperament as in Grigoriev’s work in the work of Nikolay Sapunov—‘a fop, romantic lover of antique vases, a boor, who loved taverns with anxious tenderness, noisy, unpredictable and dissolute’,58 who died young—in the very beginning of his artistic career. He wrote: Sapunov died almost at the dawn of his creative golden age—a young boy, who had just fallen in love with his muse, who had come out onto the square especially for him—to the carnival booths, taverns—she walked with him hand-in-hand down the autumn evening allée of the old park, picking asters—the most common asters, which were still twinkling like pomegranates; and then she kissed him on his lips, for a long time standing by the pond, whispering banal words of love in his ear.59

Punin called Sapunov ‘a dissolute realist—wild and greedy, inconsistent and insatiable’,60 but in his work, the art-critic found the very essence of Russian life—the national spirit of this strange, unpredictable country. Punin finished his article by saying: ‘At the end of the day aren’t we all like Sapunov—“selflessly” in love with beauty, with aesthetics, romanticism, blue vases, styles and epochs?’61 The final article in this series was dedicated to the dreamy, harmonious landscapes of Nikolay Krimov—‘the master of light, who studied well the laws of composition, and was a good stylist and a first-rate, although academic, composer’.62 The romantic irony of Grigoriev’s paintings, the wild love of beauty of Sapunov and the naive faith in an impossible dream of Krimov, clearly appealed to Punin’s passionate nature.

56 N. Punin, Risunki Borisa Grigorieva, in RSI, p. 136. 57 Ibid. 58 N. Punin, N. Sapunov, in RSI, p. 141. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., p. 142. 61 Ibid., p. 144. 62 V. Petrov, N.N. Punin i ego iskusstvovedcheskie raboti, in RSI, p. 20.

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This remarkable article was followed by a brilliant revelation of the paintings of the academic master Pavel Fedotov63—‘a lonely and tragic artist; selfless and persistent master, who died too early in his fight for his vocation’.64 Punin wrote that only ‘some of his paintings can be called pure art—noble, inspired art—the rest have something unpleasant, pretentious and dry.’65 He felt that Fedotov was not a very good artist, and that his paintings were too realistic, too cold-hearted: Fedotov painted badly; even a dead decorator could not paint worse than he did; as if he did not have either skill or life: everything is mixed together in some sort of mass of shapes—neither seen, nor understood, his paints are dirty, his brush strokes are uncertain, they are rough and they lack character.66

For one of his works, however, The little Widow, Punin could forgive all Fedotov’s vices: This melodious, intimate and charming creation of Fedotov’s inspiration— in its palette it is, perhaps, one of the most noble works of the whole Russian realistic school of painting; almost without any anecdote, any story, it is still full of poetry; but it is the poetry of shapes, lines and colours; it is not lyrics, but a work of art, not a novel but a painting.67

In the end of his article, Punin remarked on the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, which had helped to develop Fedotov as an artist. He wrote that even though it is true that there was no ‘heart and love’ in academic education, it was due to the certain period in Russian history when the academic system was formed. 3. The First World War and Promise of the Revolution In 1914 and 1915, Nikolay Punin wrote fourteen articles and twenty two reviews of various books on art and exhibitions. But while he was indeed filling a new page in the newly-emerged specialism of the history of art, the First World War was developing and was threatening to destroy all Russian traditions together with all the artistic beauty that Punin admired so much. 63 In ‘Severnye zapiski’, September 1915, pp. 94–99. 64 N. Punin, P. A. Fedotov, in RSI, p. 113. 65 Ibid., p. 114. 66 Ibid., p. 115. 67 Ibid., p. 116.



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In July 1914, St. Petersburg had been transformed in just a few days: Since the mobilisation was announced, St. Petersburg stopped being what it always was. Just a few coachmen about and almost no trams. Pavements are not swept since there is nobody to do it, everywhere are workers—walking around, waving their hands and reading papers; there aren’t many representatives of the ‘intelligentsia’ around or perhaps they are just too conspicuous among the common people. Every once in a while soldiers from the reserves are going to war with their small bundles and their wives; when they go through the crowds, they are welcomed with the screams: “Win!”; everyone is waving their hats and scarves at them; lots of windows are open, since most people came back from their dachas as there are no short-haul trains any more€.€.€. Demonstrators are walking up and down Nevsky Prospect the whole day long, while coaches and cars are carrying officers dressed in uniform.68

In 1914, in order to limit the Germans’ expansionist aims, France, and subsequently Britain, signed a military pact with Russia. These matched the agreements between Germany and Austria-Hungary. Germany declared war on Russia on 1st August 1914, following Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia four days earlier. Russia had been concerned about the Austro-Hungarian attempts to fill the vacuum in the Balkans left by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and chose to support Serbia instead. Britain declared war on Germany on 4th August, 1914, when the Germans invaded neutral Belgium. Punin’s father, brothers and sister were all actively involved in the war. Nikolay’s younger brother, Leonid, formed a guerrilla detachment in October 1915, which fought behind the lines. Soon his younger brother Lev—a recent graduate from the 2nd cadet school and infantry college in Pavlovsk—joined Leonid’s troop. The guerrillas were very successful and contributed a lot of essential information to the northern Russian front. Leonid Punin—a brave ataman, God and Tsar to his partisans—was shot by German troops on 1st September 1916 and died from loss of blood. Two days later his third brother, Alexander—a recent graduate from St. Petersburg University—arrived at his division to take up his brother’s heroic role. In March 1917, the guerrillas elected Alexander as their new commander; a bit earlier, in February 1917, his sister, Zinaida, had become a nurse in this same legendary detachment. Their father, Nikolay Michailovich was also engaged in the war, as a major-general of the first Royal Rifle battalion.

68 Letter from Punin to A. Arens, 20 July 1914, MSL, p. 60.

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Nikolay Punin had been exempt from military service due to shortsightedness and his nervous tic. Nevertheless, on 30th July 1914, two days before Germany declared war on Russia, Nikolay did consider joining his future wife, Anna Arens, by going to war as a Red Cross hospital attendant. His father was inspired when he heard about this and offered him money to pay for his journey. Punin admitted that he only wanted to go to war because Nietzsche was in the Red Cross, and because he wanted to understand the people’s suffering. Little did he know then that, later in life, he would learn more than he would ever have wanted to know about death and suffering through personal experience€.€.€.: What inspires me to go to war? The desire to know suffering, discover and develop love, experience the boredom of everyday life, Nietzsche, vanity? What stops me from going? Fear that I won’t bear it all (go mad or become bored and tired), too much vanity in my choice to go, unwillingness to postpone my exams, and you.69

In the same letter Punin wrote that if Anna Arens changed her mind about going to the battlefields because of her parents, he would be happy to stay in St. Petersburg with her. Whichever of his arguments won, he stayed, admitting in his diary note of 7 September 1914: ‘.€.€.€For us, who remained behind, the war means half living—that’s how we spend our days, weeks, and for months to come we will be staying in this state in our dump, with our sense of alarm, and in my case€.€.€.€inevitably, with my writing.’70 Punin continued to work at the Russian Museum, reviewing books and exhibitions. By then he had become part of the heart of the artistic life of Petrograd.71 His aim was to provide an essential link between the old realistic tradition and the newly-emerging avant-garde movements. But, despite his achievements as a successful art-critic, Punin probably still found it embarrassing when on the back of a photograph of his father and his two brothers, Alexander and Lev, his father wrote: ‘Children who are worthy of their father’.72 Though overall it lasted a full year longer, by September 1917, the First World War was approaching an end in Russia. Initial Russian advances into the Carpathians and East Prussia gave way to long, slow defensive actions, including a bad defeat at Tannenberg, an exception being Brusi69 Letter from Punin to A. Arens, 30 July 1914, MSL, p. 68. 70 Diary note of 7 September 1914, MSL, p. 73. 71 The city changed its name from German-sounding ‘St. Petersburg’ to Petrograd in 1914, and the capital moved to Moscow in 1918, as the Germans advanced upon Petrograd when the negotiation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk proved too slow for them. 72 This photograph is held in Punin’s family archive.



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lov’s successful attack on Austria in the summer of 1916. By 1917, the management of the war effort was collapsing; from 5.5 million casualties, chaotic transport and shortages of ammunition and food, demoralization emerged. None of this was helped by incompetent Government, squabbling ministers (in one year four different Prime Ministers, and three different War Ministers and Foreign Ministers came and went) and the Tsar’s dabbling. The state capital moved to Moscow in March 1918, ahead of the threat of a German resumption of war on the Russian front, itself a threat made in part to deter further the Russian foot-dragging prior to the Treaty of Brest–Litovsk, peace negotiations having started in December 1917, by the new post-Revolutionary government. This Treaty effectively took Russia out of the War, which lasted elsewhere until 11th November, 1918. In his unfinished book ‘Art and Revolution’ [‘Iskusstvo I Revoluysia’], Punin wrote about the end of the First World War: ‘Peace could not be expected from anywhere, and nobody was expecting it. We were expecting something else, but nobody could say what exactly—some special way out of war, which was impossible to define.’73 He said that it felt like life had stopped and the only wheel that was still turning with enormous speed was the wheel of absolutism, the wheel of ‘the house of the Romanovs’. The whole city lived on rumours about Revolution. And Revolution was coming, ‘sneaking around all the towns of the Russian Empire’.74 Punin wrote that many people who had made money out of war were buying art, choosing ‘the kitschiest works’. He explained that these people could not buy anything else, since that’s what one who ‘pops into art like into a café’, would buy. The language of the new art had to be explained to these people, and not for the last time, it was Nikolay Punin who undertook the role of teacher and promoter of the Russian avant-garde. ‘Futurism is all that is still worth thinking about,’75—wrote Punin to his future wife on 30 November 1913. Soon, ‘a pioneer in the renaissance of interest in old Russian icons’ became ‘the most respected voice of the Russian Futurism in the visual arts’.76

73 N. Punin, Iskusstvo I revolutsiya in ‘Iskusstvo Leningrada’, 1989, p. 9. 74 Ibid., p. 13. 75 Letter from Punin to A. Arens, 30 November 1913, MSL, p. 54. 76 Sidney Monas, Nikolay Punin and Russian Futurism, Introductory Essay in The Diaries of N. Punin, p. xi.

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chapter three 4. Ideas, Ideas, Ideas. The New Faces. Punin, and His Role Among Them

There has not been another artistic movement so rich in classicist potential as Futurism.    (N. Punin)77 Futurism has taken over Russia with a mortal grip. (V. Mayakovsky)78

Between 1915 and 1916, Punin became a true revolutionary in spirit, and had become probably the most forward-looking art-critic of his time. His prophetic talent was expressed ‘in that passion, that fearlessness, that boldness, with which he would defend all that is best, progressive and true in art’.79 During these confused years in pre-revolutionary Russia, Punin became one of its leading art-critics. In his own words, he concentrated on ‘discovery of the individual sensation which created a specific work of art and the historical soil in which this work has developed’.80 From 1916 onwards, his love and passion concentrated on the new developments in Russian art. His new interest in contemporary art was first expressed in the article ‘The drawings of several young artists’ [‘Risunki neskolkikh molodykh’], which was published in the 4th and 5th issues of Apollon in 1916. Here Punin described the demands that this controversial time in the history of Russia placed on a young artist, using drawings by N. Altman, P. Lvov, P. Miturich, L. Bruni and N. Tirsa to illustrate his arguments. At the beginning of his article Punin announced: The world ceased to be a passing vision (I am talking about the French artists), the sun ceased to be God, as Turner claimed; neither a moment nor the air play any or almost any role now. The reality, but not the reality that only exists as an external appearance, but reality as formation, as something that can be experienced with our whole body—that is what I consider to be the context of the new art.81

77 Punin’s article in ‘Iskusstvo kommuni’, no. 2, Dec 15, 1918. 78 V. Mayakovsky in the magazine ‘Vzyal’, December 1915, quoted in Kvartira Nomer 5. Glava iz vospominaniy, ‘Panorama iskusstv’, n. 12, M-L, 1989, p. 180. 79 Antonina Izergina, Kvartira N 5. Glava iz vospominanii in ‘Panorama iskusstv’, n. 12, M-L, 1989, p. 163. 80 V. Petrov, Ibid. 81 N. Punin, Risunki neskolkikh molodykh, in RSI, p. 145.



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Punin believed that even though Matisse and Van Gogh should not be forgotten by future generations, their art is fading in the ‘fire, which Picasso has powerfully and despotically spread across modern perceptions of art’.82 He believed that even if we do not fully understand Picasso, his influence on European art is overwhelming. In this article Punin raised, for the first time, the question of the role of form in art, which would preoccupy his writing on contemporary art for several years to come. He felt that in Altman’s drawings, shape dictates the colour and forms the composition, while for Lvov ‘the eternal form’ is the centre and the pre-dominant purpose of his art. He wrote that Bruni’s style can be compared with ‘the body in all its tension’, for form alone the artist can sacrifice ‘the beauty, composition and colour’.83 Once again Punin was raising the question of the essential dimensions of the ‘new art’—‘powerful and solid’, which can not any longer speak ‘the vulgar market language’ and which should instead adopt ‘more refined, even aristocratic language’, which is simple and noble, and has more nuances than letters’.84 Envisaging the establishment of a new national artistic tradition, Punin could not see the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich as its new base. For him it was too individualistic to serve this mighty purpose. He also felt that non-objective art ‘is taking away the quality of the material from life itself’.85 He could not agree with Malevich’s statements that in the new art, which should be above any recognisable forms, ‘objects should disappear like smoke’.86 A passionate supporter of the Russian avant-garde, Punin believed that such art could not fully respond to the needs of contemporary (still pre-revolutionary) Russian society. He felt that ‘art should be comprehensible and beloved; and if it is good art, it should be immediately comprehensible’.87 However, it did not stop him from being interested in Malevich’s work. And it was certainly not coincidental that the front cover of Punin’s ‘Cycle of Lectures’ [‘Tsikl Lektsii’] (Petrograd, 1920) was designed by Malevich,

82 N. Punin, Risunki neskolkikh molodykh, in RSI, p. 145. 83 Ibid., p. 155. 84 Ibid., p. 152. 85 Kvartira N 5. Glava iz vospominanii, p. 183. 86 Ibid., p. 186. 87 N. Punin, Kvartira No. 5—A Fragment from the book ‘Art and Revolution’, in Diary, p. 27.

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and became the only example of the artist’s application of Suprematism to book design. At the same time, Punin became the first Russian critic to support a new artistic movement, The Knave of Diamonds [‘Bubnovii Valet’]. Through 1914 to 1916, this new chapter in the history of Russian art was still under construction, and ‘the most radical and innovative of the early Soviet art critics’,88 Nikolay Punin, was writing about it, combining his analytical approach with his great knowledge of Russian icons and their overpowering influence on the young avant-garde artists. At that time, some of the most progressive Russian artists, poets and musicians would gather once a week at Apartment No. 5, which belonged to the young artist Lev Bruni. Apartment No 5 became the true epicentre of new Russian art. Later, in his memoir ‘Art and Revolution’ [‘Iskusstvo I Revolutsia’] (which was originally supposed to be called ‘Striving for the newest art’, and which, for reasons that will be revealed, was never published), Punin admitted that these meetings in Apartment No. 5 became his favourite memory of his youth: In 1915, it seemed to me, and probably to most of us, that in Apartment No. 5, life was lived more fully and more intensely than anywhere else. We gathered there, shared our work, and reflected on it; we followed up the developments in literature: we read articles, listened to poems; hurried up the lazy ones, brought down the arrogant ones, looked after each other; studied art. We had a truly intensive life there, and if we were given another turn in history, perhaps, our meetings in Apartment No 5 would have remained in our memory as the period of the utmost completeness. But something else happened: we lived “there”, but that time has been absorbed into us, and what was absorbed, was so much more powerful than our private life, that now, reflecting on those years, I can clearly hear the hum of that time, although I almost cannot hear our own individual voices.89

At these historic meetings, young artists were trying to interpret the artistic trends of these difficult times by means of their discussion and passionate debates: Theories were not ready. We lived without theories, like sheep without shepherds€.€.€.€The road to cubism has been opened, and all the ways to Futurism were opened as well. Trains would always go towards Futurism, making lots of noise and blocking all the railways, creating traffic jams; signals would

88 Theory and Criticism. 1902–1934, ed. and transl. by J. E. Bowlt (The Viking Press, N.Y., 1976), p. 171. 89 Kvartira N 5. Glava iz vospominaniy, p. 173.



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get to red and go down. We did not know then that Futurism—is only the direction, and that everyone, who tried to get there, would eventually find themselves in Expressionism.90

In early 1917, the meetings at Apartment No 5 were replaced for Punin by equally inspiring discussions of the questions of modern art in yet another apartment—now that of S. K. Isakov, where the so-called ‘Leftist Bloc of the Active Artists Association’ used to gather. Punin complained that ‘almost all Russian visual art is crushed by literature, eaten by it. All the corners are stuffed full of Expressionism, all the artists are filled with it, like dolls; even Constructivism is becoming Expressionism’.91 Punin wrote about Picasso, in whose paintings he saw more art than any spiritual values, and concluded that he ‘can not be taken as the dawn of a new era’.92 He felt that this great leader of modern art was not a good influence on the Russian artists, many of whom ‘go into cubism, leaving life behind and treating art as a method’. Punin believed that ‘every work of art—is the footprint of a fight; and a witness of someone’s behaviour in the battle.’93 He felt that Expressionism was a wrong choice in this fight, that it lacked strength, was too weak and impulsive. He also believed that Symbolism, as the way to experience the world around us, would bring us to a deadlock. In February 1913, he wrote in his diary: Our aspiration (both unintentional and intentional) to see a symbol and a window to the “next world” in every reality, has so much isolated us from life, has so strongly blown away the realisation of the authenticity of every moment, that we began to juggle with our life, building ephemeral people and environment, in which we would transfer all our feelings into a phrase, a bit of chatter, a pose, which would be fake. We exhausted the very pose and imagination (if not all than at least some of us) to such an extent that a depressing and degenerate state of our spirit became dominant in our life; we were miserable and “angry”, since there was no base for the symbol anymore and no more strength for a dream and ephemeral beauty—our mistake became evident—Symbolism has failed.94

In his arguments against Symbolism, Punin used to quote the words of Osip Mandelstam:

90 Ibid., p. 174. 91 Ibid. 92 N. Punin, Tatlin:protiv kubisma, (1921), p. 7. 93 Kvartira N 5. Glava iz vospominanii, p. 177. 94 Diary note from 16 Feb. 1913, MSL, pp. 40–41.

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chapter three Let’s take, for example, a rose and a sun, a dove and a girl. For a Symbolist (we would say—Expressionist) none of these subjects is interesting on its own, and the rose—is a semblance of the sun, the sun resembles a rose, a dove—is a semblance of a girl, a girl resembles a dove. Images are eviscerated, like stuffed animals, and are filled with someone else’s meaning. The perception is demoralized. Nothing is real, true. A scary contradiction of “conformities”, pointing at each other. Eternal winking. No clear words, only hints, failure to tell it all. The rose points at the girl, the girl at the rose. Nobody wants to be themselves.95

Punin felt that Kandinsky, Chagall, Filonov, Tishler and Babel were ‘infected with Expressionism’. He remarked that more and more, modern painting—‘the one which is eaten by literature’—has been filled with ‘Expressionist blood’. He trusted that only useful art can be loved. Tatlin’s Constructivism became not just another ‘ism’, but a new method, and the answer to Punin’s prayers. In Tatlin, members of the group gathered at the Apartment No. 5 saw ‘the short cut to ownership of quality, especially quality of material’. Punin felt that in St. Petersburg, filled with the graphic understanding of material, which had been imposed by the ‘World of Art’ movement, artists did not feel the material very well and needed Tatlin ‘like bread’.96 When in 1916, Tatlin arrived from Moscow at Apartment No. 5, many artists would come over ‘just to look at him’. Punin described the excitement of Tatlin’s visit by saying that they awaited him ‘as one awaits an event which could warrant expectations and move everything forward, as one awaits a leader’.97 He came and brought with him ‘new tastes, a new understanding of art, an elemental will to create, and an indomitable faith in the future of Constructivism’.98 They listened to him eagerly, trying to remember his every word, every gesture; they felt that his every thought was a breakthrough into the future, the new culture. Later in the 1930s, Punin wrote that ‘what in the period of War Communism became the core of the programme of the Department of Fine Arts of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment, had come from the main artistic principles of Tatlin.’99 Punin considered Tatlin as ‘the only creative force capable of moving art out of the trenches of the old front line.’ He believed that ‘Tatlin gave, through his representational matter, a new form to the world. New 95 Kvartira N 5. Glava iz vospominanii, p. 176. 96 Ibid., p. 183. 97 Ibid., p. 193. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid., p. 194.



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form—high relief—is opposite to the past, it went outside all the limits of painting, it is a cloud of arrows—into the future, without looking back.’100 Punin essentially put all his trust in Futurism, which was declaring its first positions, marching in on the shoulders of such artists as Filonov, who according to Punin ‘could have been a prophet if he only believed in anything apart from his own art’.101 Unlike cubism, which only renounced the measurements which were acceptable before (parts instead of a whole etc.), Futurism ‘allowed the intuition to walk without any obstacles around various forms’.102 In his unfinished book ‘Art and Revolution’ [‘Iskusstvo i Revolutsiya’], Punin wrote: .€.€.€The artist—is a shot. Form—is a reality; the artist may miss, wound or kill the form; but a work of art can only be of high quality when reality is killed straight-away, with one shot, nailed to the surface. In Bruni’s studio we were mainly talking about method; we didn’t look for something new,— but we were seeking means to capture reality, methods with the help of which we could take reality with a mortal grip, not torturing it and not being tortured by it and its convulsions, moans and agony on the canvas. Artists needed a good eye and well-trained hand, a hunter’s sense of smell, a hunter’s skill; an animal was being frightened: no one could expect or want a mercy for a miss. In everything that was done then, in all the works and searches was severity; people were serious and honest. All of us are too tired of the proximities and conventionalities of aestheticism as well as from all the ordeals of the futurist jungle; we were looking for strong and simple art, as simple as it could be in the years of transformation.103

As mentioned before, the Futurists play a major part in forming Punin’s outlook. He seemed not to be fully committed to all the principles of the Futurist Movement, but he admired its temperament, its rebellious spirit. Futurism had arrived in Russia from its source, Filippo Marinetti’s publication of the Futurist Manifesto in Le Figaro in 1909. As they did to so many movements, they ‘adapted’ it (to the extent of shunning Marinetti when he visited Russia in 1914). The Russian Futurist movement is usually dated from the manifesto of the Hylea group (which included Khlebnikov, Kruchenyk, Mayakovsky and Burlyuk)—‘A Slap in the Face of Public Taste’ [‘Poschetchina obshestvennomu vkusu’], which appeared in December, 1912. Many other Futurist groups were formed, and unlike 100 Ibid., p. 194. 101 Ibid., p. 191. 102 N. Punin in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 8, 26.01.1919. 103 N. Punin, Kvartira No. 5, in Glava iz vospominanii, p. 182.

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elsewhere, Futurism in Russia spilled into literature and theatre as well as painting and sculpture. It shared a fascination with machines, speed and dynamism with its originators, as well as the concept that it repudiated the art of the past, defining it as ‘static’. Interestingly, one of those who patronised the Hylea group was Anatoly Lunacharsky, soon to become Lenin’s minister of education. In 1918, Punin wrote that early Futurism was ‘the unseen rebellion on an enormous scale and in extraordinary depth, of the new against the old.’ He added that a similar riot, but on a smaller scale, could be seen only in renaissance art.104 Punin admitted that back in early 1916, ‘Left’ art in Petrograd still lived underground; but at that time ‘for everyone who wanted to sit between two chairs, there was a hole instead of a seat’.105 It was time to choose, and declare one’s firm position in art. In his article for the Futurist newspaper Art of the Commune, written in February 1919, Punin predicted: This is the day of the crash of the whole old world—you understand how the heart should be beating—the crash of the whole old world—and it will come; it will come when only teachers of drawing will be still talking about Suprematism, when finally all the paintings will be taken to the museum, and all the museums to geological, ethnographical and other institutions. The distant future.106

In his letter to Alexander Benois which was published in March 1916, in the newspaper Rech [‘Speech’] the critic wrote: .€.€.€My duty, since I understand the tasks of criticism, is to observe the appearance of new forms and new connections; I will, and if you let me repeat your own words, not get tired of pointing out what in my view promotes and destructs the development of artistic forms and human creativity.107

But what Punin did not see at the time was that ‘what could have been the threshold of a Renaissance, became instead the presentiment of the end.’108 The prophesy of the great Russian ballet impresario, Sergey Diaghilev, made in his speech at a banquet after the opening of the exhibition of historical portraits at the Tauride Palace back in 1905, was coming true after the Revolution:

104 N. Punin in ‘Iskusstvo kommuni’, no. 2, Dec 15, 1918. 105 N. Punin, Kvartira No. 5, in Glava iz vospominanii, p. 193. 106 N. Punin in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 10, 09.02.1919. 107 N. Punin, An open letter. A. N. Benua, in ‘Rech’, 4 March 1916. 108 W. Weidle ‘Iz stati ‘Tri Rossii’, quoted in A.A., p. 47.



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We are witnesses of the greatest moment of summing up in history, in the name of a new and unknown culture, which will be created by us, and which will also sweep us away€.€.€.109

At the time when ‘equalising everything, despicable Socialism’110 was threatening to smash the very essence of the Russian culture, Punin was desperately trying to find a new form of visual art which would combine highly meaningful content with perfect expression. He was also struggling to combine his role of an art-critic with his rather confusing private life. 5. Private Life. Marriage and Infidelity On 3rd July 1917, Nikolay Punin married Anna Arens, a woman, about whom he wrote in 1913: ‘I know that I can lean on you, like on a rock, if life smashes me.’111 They had a modest wedding in the church of the Konstantinovsky Artillery College. What influenced their choice of having their marriage registered at the military college? Was it Punin’s tribute to his family’s participation in the war? Or was it an echo of his own diary note written a year earlier: ‘Today none of my desires are here. They are all there, on the battlefields.’112 Punin’s wife was not especially beautiful, or exotic, like some of the other women he admired. Back in 1913, he described her in his diary: ‘.€.€.€Kind, not beautiful, a reticent, considerate girl; a little bit nervous, but generally calm, capable of unheard-of selflessness.’113 Little did he know then, that thanks to this self-denial and generosity of spirit, this amazing woman would persevere through unimaginable circumstances in her life with the often rather self-centred Punin. In 1913, he wrote about his future wife: Galya (the nickname name of Anna Arens) is not beautiful, her facial features are too soft, which makes her look rather vague, her eyes under pale and thus not very distinctive eye-brows, are surrounded by heavy swollen eyelids, her nose is not defined by one certain line, it is weak and “disconcerted” in its line, her lips are more expressive, but they are also spoiled by the same vagueness of her face, same absence of the distinct lines. But the oval of her face is much more significant—soft, with subtle meaningful 109 Arnold Haskell, Diaghileff: His Artistic and Private Life, quoted in A.A. pp. 34–35. 110 S. Makovsky, quoted in Punin’s diary from 3 April 1913, MSL, p. 45. 111 N. Punin, Diary note in MSL, p. 52. 112 Diary note of 25 May 1916, Diary, p. 40. 113 Ibid., p. 55.

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chapter three expression, it gives a special mystery to her whole face, reminding one of Leonardo’s types or, at least, Luini. This oval, softly supported by the magnificent charm of her light-golden hair, moves with some harmonic consistency into the line of her neck, supple, sensual, reminding me of the drawing of the neck in “La donna nuda” at the Hermitage collection.114

In the same diary note Punin admitted that he had never been very kind or selfless before the evening when he met his future wife. He was especially astonished at Galya’s great wisdom and sharp mind. He was never madly in love with her, but already in 1913, he agreed “to carry the heavy train of her Byzantine dress.”115 In September 1914, he wrote to Galya: ‘I love you with endless strength, to the very end, without anything left in my heart.’116 He developed a great admiration for her pure loving nature—‘uncomplaining and unselfish’, she reminded him of a saint—‘a shadow of St. Francis’.117 Punin was indeed completely devoted to Galya for the four years until their relationship was solidified in marriage, which marked a culmination of their love-affair and a new beginning of deeply rooted friendship, full of respect and admiration. ‘In this love there is neither romanticism, nor creativity, nor springtime’,118—admitted Punin in his diary in February 1916. However, shortly after their wedding and a short honeymoon in a village near Mogilev, Punin’s affections came to be shared, first with one of his 17–year-old students, and then with famous Lily (Lilya) Brik, a woman who broke several hearts and lived with her husband and Mayakovsky in a ménage à trois, which was rather common at the time. But did this reflect Punin’s rather egoistical form of love or was it a sign of this controversial time when traditional morals were being erased by the Revolution? Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had entertained the view of the disappearance of the institution of the family,119 and their Soviet followers became convinced that the family as such was a largely unnecessary unit in the Communist state. In his book ‘The Whisperers. Private Life in Stalin’s Russia,’ Orlando Figes discussed this redundancy of family values and the disintegration of the family in the new Bolshevik state:

114 Diary note of 4 December 1913, MSL, p. 55. 115 Letter from N. Punin to A. Arens of 18 July 1913, MSL, p. 52. 116 Diary note of 26 September 1914, Diary, p. 36. 117 Letter from N. Punin to A. Arens, 4 June 1915, MSL, p. 83. 118 Diary of 5 February, 1916, Diary, p. 40. 119 See Geiger H. Kent, The Family in Soviet Russia, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1968).



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The new Code on Marriage and the Family (1918) established a legislative framework that clearly aimed to facilitate the breakdown of the traditional family. It removed the influence of the Church from marriage and divorce, making both a process of simple registration with the state. It granted the same legal rights to de facto marriages (couples living together) as it gave to legal marriages. The Code turned divorce from a luxury for the rich into something that was easy and affordable for all. The result was a huge increase in casual marriage and the highest rate of divorce in the world— three times higher than France or Germany and twenty-six times higher than in England by 1926—as the collapse of the Christian-patriarchal order and the chaos of the revolutionary years loosened the sexual morals along with family and communal ties€.€.€.120

At the time when marriage lost its spiritual and religious foundations and the commitment to the Communist party and its collectivist values was regarded more highly than commitment to your spouse and children, having multiple relationships became a norm rather than an exception. New ‘liberated’ people had to be free from any ties and morals, able to dedicate themselves fully to building the new life to very selfish criteria. ‘People can come together, and then part. This depends upon circumstance and upon temperament,’ wrote Anatoly Lunacharsky in 1927.121 After 1918, it was sufficient for a couple wishing to register their marriage to make a declaration to the house management committee. All the house manager had to do was to make an entry in the appropriate book, which subsequently could easily be deleted. Lenin, who thought that the Revolution ‘cannot tolerate orgiastic conditions’, explained the burst of sexual freedom in his new Communist state in these terms: The desire and urge for enjoyment easily attain unbridled force at a time when powerful empires are tottering, old forms of rule breaking down, when the whole social world is beginning to disappear.122

But even ten years after the Revolution, when life in the Soviet Union was supposed to have become more stable and predictable, the undermining of the family continued:

120 Orlando Figes, The Whisperers. Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, p. 10. 121 See Geiger H. Kent, The Soviet Regime confronts the family in ‘The Family in Soviet Russia’, p. 80. 122 Ibid., p. 84.

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chapter three The “great break” of 1928–32 destroyed old ties and loyalties uniting families and communities. It gave birth to a new kind of society in which people were defined by their relation to the state.123

As a young doctor, Anna Arens worked in military hospitals, often outside Petrograd. Punin evidently missed her, writing letters to her every week. But he found it hard to resist all the temptations that life threw at him in the frequent solitude and the ‘deadly silence’ of his beautiful flat. The editor of the English translation of Punin’s diary, Sidney Monas, has attributed Punin’s infidelity to his early loss of a loving mother. He wrote that he ‘always felt the powerful need for a woman’s love and approval, and no single love, no single source of feminine affection, could ever be quite enough.’ Sidney Monas believed that Punin needed ‘a woman who regarded him as central to her life’.124 And one may suggest that patient and loving Anna Arens could perfectly fulfill the role of Punin’s missing mother, but she was away for several months and the space had to be filled in by someone else. In 1919, he had a rather strange love affair with one of his students from the Academy of Arts (at the time the ‘Petrograd Free State Studios’), whom in his diary he calls ‘N.’ She was only 17 then, with ‘brown hair in two braids over her shoulders, an animated face, suddenly blushing, flushing, and at the same time darkening’.125 In his diary, Punin tells the story of meeting N. one day on his way to the Department of Visual Arts. He told her that he saw her in a dream and that he loved looking at her. And then ‘.€.€.€her youthful voluptuousness flowed, disturbing me, penetrating into me, little by little, and causing my eyelashes to flutter.’126 N. followed Punin into the Department on St. Isaac’s square, outdistancing her friends (presumably his students as well). When they arrived and Punin discovered that his office had been moved from the large hall of the Myatlev house to the small winter quarters around the corner, they went to his new and now rather small office, where he happily signed some papers and gave several orders, flirting and showing off in front of his young, but perhaps not so innocent student. He remembered the words of his friend, Poletaev, about N., who advised Nikolay to make her his lover, since ‘she is still young and passionate’. Soon he shut the door of his office. N. was 123 Figes, p. 135. 124 Sidney Monas, Introductory Essay. Nikolay Punin and Russian Futurism, in Diary, p. xxii. 125 Diary note of 28 September 1919, Diary, p. 59. 126 Ibid., p. 58.



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standing by his desk, laughing and singing ‘the aria of Silva at the table’ from Verdi’s opera Ernani: ‘Looks like we’ve got a bit of the devil in us€.€.€.’ He kissed her hand, and was about to kiss her passionate lips, when the Director of Affairs, A. Shakol, came in€.€.€. N. left, and when Punin was leaving the office with Shakol, she said to him: ‘You’re not the totally iron man you’d like to be, either.’127 She advised him to remain childish and innocent, but when Punin got back home, he saw his wife and felt that he had betrayed her. But he also decided that this affair ‘has nothing to do’ with his devoted Galya: ‘It offends her—from her point of view, yes; from mine, no.’128 He kept asking himself why he had to get married—‘because it was the right thing to do?’ On the other hand, he felt that now he loved Galya even more, since he felt guilty and ‘feared her a little’. But his whole body ‘was burning from the love in his blood’—passionate and rather rudimental love for N., who would laugh and fight with her neighbour at Punin’s lectures, causing him to shout at her. Punin was struggling with having a ‘student-lover’, and kept asking himself: ‘Two ways to relate to one person; how does this work?.’129 And N. enjoyed challenging her poor professor: ‘Her touches burned, like love; and were even painful like a fever, tormenting me with its changing fire.’130 But she was ‘insanely dear’ to him, even if their affair did not last long€.€.€. Two months later, in January 1920, Punin decided that he was ‘imprisoned among elders’ and started a romance with Lily Brik (after a short fling with A. Shakol herself). It gained strength in spring 1920, when Punin wrote in his diary: My dear life, dear life, my life, how I love you in the springtime, windwhipped and crackling, like a splinter in the sunlight. I especially love you, because I have new breeches€.€.€.131

He called Lily Brik ‘the most fascinating woman’ who ‘knows much about human love and sensual love’. In May 1920, Punin wrote: ‘I cannot imagine a woman whom I could possess more completely. Physically she was made for me, but she speaks about art—and I could not€.€.€.’132 At the beginning of May, Punin went to see his wife, who was working as a doctor in Pskov. On 14th May, he returned to Petrograd and wrote 127 Diary, p. 60. 128 Ibid. 129 Diary, p. 61. 130 Ibid. 131 Diary note of 13 April 1920, Diary, p. 63. 132 Diary note of 20 May 1920, MSL, p. 129.

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Anna Arens a letter, first saying that the saddest thing in his life was her absence and then telling her about visiting Tatlin, who had ear-ache and asked if Nikolay knew a doctor. Punin replied that his wife, who could help him, was not around anymore since they separated because of Lily Brik. But he felt that all his friends were on his wife’s side, rather than his, and a week later he decided (at least for a short time) that his love for his loyal wife and their marriage were more important after all. On 20th May 1920, he wrote about Lily: If we had met ten years ago it would have been an intense, long, and difficult involvement, but I can’t fall in love like that anymore, so tenderly, so completely, so humanly naturally, as with my wife.133

He kept asking himself what these infidelities were about, why after less than two weeks after his return from his wife, his ‘blood was already yearning-bitterly, darkly, and inescapably’, why would he keep ‘looking under every pair of eyelashes’? And then, on 31 May, Lily returned from Moscow (where she lived with her husband), and Punin telephoned her at the Astoria Hotel, where she was staying. He wanted passionate physical love—but without any commitment or any future. He told her that he only found her ‘interesting physically’, and that ‘if she agreed to take him that way too, then they could see each other, otherwise he didn’t want to, he couldn’t.’134 He told her that if she would not agree to these conditions, they should never meet again. Proud Lily Brik replied: ‘We won’t see each other’, and hung up. They ran into each other two days later, but walked past each other. One of Punin’s friends told him that when he saw her on the same day, she was furious and ‘completely hysterical’. Her pride and vanity were shaken— one of her many victims had actually managed to escape! And Punin, who was still ‘thirstily grasping at snatches of burnt-out feelings’ for this dangerous woman, decided to wait for his wife: I am waiting for you, without knowing why, from the feeling of hopeless loneliness in this world, which I feel in the emptiness of my study, where it is so vaguely-quiet, so coolly-silent, where I am all alone, as if I am alone in the whole world. I would so much like a small son or a daughter to run in now, so that this study would be a strangely unknown world for them, which they would remember like a kingdom of the king of children’s and fathers’ 133 Diary note of 20 May 1920, Diary, p. 64. 134 Diary note of 3 June, Diary, p. 66.



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studies. If they have just been digging in the sand, if their hands are dirty, and their eyes look like yours, if they are healthy and happy, I wouldn’t want anything else from them.135

In November 1921, Punin’s daughter, Irina, was born. Around the same time, his love-affair with the most enticing, talented and, as Punin would later call her, “mystical” woman in St. Petersburg, Anna Akhmatova, began. At the time, Akhmatova was married to the Oriental scholar, Vladimir Shileyko, which did not stop her from having several other relationships at the same time, even before Punin. She would later say that ‘divorce is the best institution invented by human kind’ or ‘by civilization’136 Akhmatova finally divorced Shileyko, her second husband, in 1926—two years after she moved in to live with Punin. She never married again, even though she often referred to Punin as her husband. A new era in Nikolay Punin’s young life had begun.

135 Letter from N. Punin to A. Arens-Punina, 30 May 1920, MSL, p. 131. 136 Nayman, Anatoly, Remembering Anna Akhmatova, p. 71.

Chapter Four

THE DAWN OF NEW HOPES: THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION AND THE SEARCH FOR NEW ART It was unbelievable what was going on at the period. For the first time we, young dreamers, were told that we could make our dreams come true and no politics would interfere with our pure art, for which we joined the Revolution without hesitation. (Arthur Lourie ‘Nash Marsh’)1

1. The October Revolution The twentieth century brought several waves of revolution, which swept across Russia, each greater and more substantial than the last. The basis of the Revolution, or revolutions, of 1917 could be found in that of 1905, but the character and the behaviour of the Tsar must have contributed to the worsening of the situation. Nicholas II was not able or willing to recognise the public mood, and remained deeply attached to conservative forces. The Tsarina Alexandra’s meddling, and eventually (from 1905) her increasing dependence on the disreputable Gregory Rasputin, further reduced the Tsar’s reputation and that of his office. Nikolay Punin described his impressions of this critical moment in Russian history in his opus ‘Apartment No 5’ [‘Kvartira № 5’]. He wrote about the Tsarina: . . . . How much we hated this long, narrow face, wandering around the Alexandrov Palace in Tsarskoe Selo—behind the windows, which we felt, were never lit. If we could only replace it then with the head of Madame de Lamballe!2 Her (the Tsarina’s) attitude to the war was known to the whole capital, her whole life was clearly visible; all the worst that we went through was coming from there—from this hill, covered with beautiful gardens and

1 Arthur Lourie, Nash Marsh (Petrograd, 1918). 2 Princesse de Lamballe (1749–92) was a French aristocrat, who married Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Lamballe, but was left a widow after a year of marriage. Beautiful and charming, she was made by Marie Antoinette superintendent of the household and her own intimate companion. In 1791 she escaped to England, but soon returned to share the Queen’s imprisonment in the Temple. She refused to take the oath of detestation of the King, Queen and monarchy, and was torn to pieces by the mob. (Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Ed. By M. Magnusson, W&R Chambers, Edinburgh, 1990, p. 853).

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chapter four shiny domes of its churches. Tsarskoe Selo was a black hole, which shouted without any voice, with the silence of hundreds of thousands dead. From there the sense of alarm was descending onto the capital—the alarm for those, who were in the war—it raised in us powerless anger.3

In the meantime, had the status of a constitutional monarchy been achieved, it would have prolonged its survival, but the constant meddling after the Duma was established, plus the visible influence of Rasputin, mortgaged that hope. The final farce was the Tsar’s insistence on being made Commander in Chief, with Rasputin still influential (until his death in December 1916), as the chaos grew. There were two main groups of revolutionaries active in Russia, but with opposing objectives: the liberal intelligentsia, who were hoping to transform Russia into a democratic republic and to win the war, and the Bolsheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who believed the imperialist war was lost and wished to transform Russia’s economy and social structures as a first step in a world proletarian Revolution. The Liberals carried Russia through the February 1917 Revolution. This began with the Duma demanding the formation of a new cabinet, on its own terms which, when it refused to comply with the Tsar’s decree to disband the Duma, it effectively assumed the role of government. There had been large-scale rioting in Petrograd on 8th March, after which the troops sided with the rioters. The Duma appointed a Provisional Government under Prince Lvov, and secured the abdication of the Tsar on 15th March 1917. When his brother, Grand Duke Michael refused to succeed, the Romanov era was at an end. Mayakovsky wrote: ‘Like the chewed end of a fag we spat their dynasty out.’4 There then began a period of parallel government, with the Bolsheviks building power, reviving the 1905 Soviet of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers, and challenging every move of the Provisional Government. The latter continued on its path of working towards a democratically elected constituent assembly, based on universal suffrage with secret ballots. It was a perfect ‘prescription for anarchy’. By mid 1917, Soviets were established in all major cities, although the Bolshevik party accounted for only

3 N. Punin, Apartment No. 5, p. 196. 4 Quoted in V. Woroszylski, The life of Mayakovsky, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1972, p. 112.



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16% of the 650 delegates and the majority continued to be the Mensheviks or Socialist Revolutionaries. In April, 1917, the Germans ‘allowed’ Lenin to return to Russia from Zurich by sealed train with the aim of triggering the collapse of the Russian war effort; he duly denounced the war as ‘imperialistic’, and demanded all power to be given to the Soviets. However, the first power seizure failed and Lenin went into hiding, accused by the government of being a German agent. He had accepted leadership of the Bolsheviks in 1900 from abroad (they in fact only adopted this name “Bolshevik” in 1903), and had returned in 1905 to organise the St. Petersburg Soviet. He had to escape yet again to Finland in 1907, and had then settled in Switzerland. After the failed coup and the resignation of Lvov, the Socialist Kerensky was appointed Prime Minister, but came into conflict with the popular but conservative new Commander-in-Chief, General Kornilov, whom he had just appointed to that role. After his relative successes on the Front, Kornilov made a bid for power. When this was revealed, he was dismissed (despite Kerensky having appeared earlier to support his ambitions), but refused his dismissal, and dispatched an armed force towards Petrograd. Ironically, Kerensky had to call on the Socialists’ mass supporters to turn him back, thereby losing access to the only force (the army) that could have defended his government against the impending unconstitutional grasp of power by the Bolsheviks. Doubly ironically, this engagement also enhanced the standing of the left. Exploiting apathy on one hand, and fear of shortages and of another winter of war on the other, the Bolsheviks revolted against the Provisional Government, at the point when elections were due. On 1st September 1917 Punin wrote in his diary: ‘Here it is—the revolutionary city in the year of disasters—hungry, corrupt, frightened, sprawled out, mighty and absurd. Some (Fyodor Sologub) confirm that now it strangely reminds one of Paris.’5 The coup d’état took place on 25th October 1917 (7th November newstyle), when the Red Guards seized all government buildings and communications sources. By many standards, it was quite a peaceful Revolution; the trams ran all day, and the cinemas and theatres remained open; 47 people were known to have been killed and about 50 injured, though many more had died during the July disturbances. As a result of the coup, power effectively transferred to the Petrograd Military Revolutionary 5 Diary note of 1st September 1917, MSL, p. 112.

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Committee, a situation given legitimacy by the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies which opened on 25th October 1917. On the news of the fall of the Winter Palace, the Council adopted a decree transferring power to the Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies, effectively ratifying the Revolution. The Second Congress consisted of 670 elected delegates, of whom 300 were Bolsheviks and about 100 Left Socialist Revolutionaries. The elections nonetheless took place, and the Bolsheviks still represented only a minority (now up to about 24%—the Mensheviks and SR’s still being the majority). Lenin had to move to replace this too-democratic form of government. When the assembly reconvened the next day, the non-Bolshevik delegates, despite harassment by the Red Guards, still turned down many of Lenin’s proposals, so the Bolsheviks walked out, to the taunts of Trotsky: ‘Go where you belong from now on—into the dustbin of history!’ The next day (October 26th) the Congress elected a Council of Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom). Later that day, the delegates were forcibly evicted by the Red Guards. The following day, the Bolsheviks formally dissolved the Constituent Assembly and the arrests of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks began, followed by the Constitutional Democratic Party being outlawed. It took until November 16th 1917 for Moscow to fall into line, and for the Bolsheviks to occupy the Kremlin. Opinion is still divided on whether this move reflected mass support, accelerated by dissatisfaction with the Kerensky government, or a coup d’état with or even without popular support. Lenin’s view was well known, as declared in his 1902 Pamphlet ‘What to do?’ [‘Chto delat?’]—control over the state had to be seized. Lenin promised Peace, Land and Bread; local Soviets took control of cities, Workers’ committees took control of factories, private trade was forbidden, Church property and that of ‘counter-revolutionaries’ confiscated, foreign debts repudiated. At the same time the first in the succession of the Soviet state security organisations, the CHEKA under Felix Dzerzhinsky, was created (by decree on December 20th 1917), and the process of neighbour denouncing neighbour started, now made easier by the first wave of communal housing (itself seen as a process of creating Communistic thinking and behaviour), often based on previously private-owned ‘bourgeois’ residences. This was the criterion applied to Punin’s apartment in the Fountain House. Though the Okhrana, the notorious Tsarist secret police, had provided something of a precedent, this was the start of the use of terror as a conscious part of politics; indeed it was officially launched as the Red Terror, in September 1918.



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During these early days in the history of the new Russia, Punin and most leaders of the Russian avant-garde were not yet aware of the darker undertones of the new regime—they welcomed the October Revolution as the dawn of new hopes. Now all the private collectors, commercial art dealers and galleries were replaced by the one all-powerful patron—the new Communist state, which denounced all the previous patrons of the arts in order ‘to liberate artists from exploitation’. Like any other regime ‘the Bolsheviks aspired to attract representatives of artistic circles to cooperate with them, trying to decorate their ruling with talents’.6 The art of the newly-emerged country had to be established by art’s representatives and many Futurist artists and art-critics were appointed to important positions. At the same time as the new proletarian society was to be formed and disciplined by law and by organization, it was recognised that culture, in all its manifestations, would play an urgent part in achieving at once solidarity and advancement. In his memoirs Lunacharsky wrote that in 1918 Lenin told him: ‘. . . it is necessary to promote art as a means of agitation.’7 2. The Proletarian Art Enigma A radically new society could hardly be presented with, or represented by, old art. The new and radical nature of this society, in this case a Proletarian society, should be reflected in its art, deliberately and politically from its beginning. The attempt at definition, and the organisation, of this new art was now taken up by Nikolay Punin, recently awarded the honorary position of People’s Commissar of the State Hermitage and the Russian Museum. Anatoly Lunacharsky became the first Commissar for Education. Cultural diversity flourished in the new Soviet state for ten years, until the new form of Communist art was defined as ‘collective in production, public in manifestation and Communist in its ideology’.8 In his book ‘Art and Revolution’ [‘Iskusstvo I Revolutsia’] Punin wrote:

6 A. V. Krusanov, Russkii avant-garde: 1907–1932: Istoricheskii Obzor, V. 2, book 1, p. 70. 7 Quoted in Mayakovski. 1930–1940. Stat’I i materialy, Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1940, p. 21. 8 John Milner, Introduction to the exhibition ‘A Slap in the Face! Futurists in Russia’, Estorick Collection, London, 28 March–10 June 2007.

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chapter four The February Revolution had just opened the door slightly, wanted to see: ‘What is there?’, but tried to close it again. Immediately with all our strength, we also tried to shut it down but all our attempts were in vain: Revolution came through the gap and the gap started to get wider; the door was now wide open—but it soon became too narrow; the Revolution started to come through all the doors, windows, chimneys, holes and by October filled up the whole house; only by October has Russia filled up completely and began to breathe deeply with its whole chest.9

In five days the axle of the wheel of ‘the house of the Romanovs’ was broken, and the crazy wheel of absolutism stopped rotating.’10 At this exciting time in the history of Russian art, the term avant-garde re-gained its original meaning, which implied both innovation and revolution.11 The beginning of the new Soviet era felt like the answer to the prayers of the French revolutionaries, or the fulfilment of Comte’s prophecy, who had written in the middle of the 19th century: . . . when a stable, homogeneous and at the same time progressive state of society shall have been established under a positive philosophy, the fine arts will flourish more than they ever did under polytheism, finding new scope and prerogatives under the new intellectual regime.11

The larger question of how to produce art which will appeal to simple, uneducated people, as opposed only to the educated elite, was perhaps first consciously approached in England in the 1820’s, with the opening of the first public exhibition of art in the fashionable Vauxhall Gardens in London. The entrance fee was 1 shilling; in an era when mill workers, seen as elite, earned 12 shillings per week (60p), it was still comparatively expensive, but it meant that workers could and did afford to go there. In Europe, the revolutions of 1848 brought visions of a new culture, which would be distinct from that of bourgeois society. At the end of the 19th century Socialists all over Europe were talking about the need for new art and new culture in a new Socialist society. Socialist schools for workers were established at Ruskin College in Oxford in 1899, and at the Rand School of Social Science in New York in 1906. Klara Zetkin, the German Communist and radical feminist, speaking on Art and the Proletariat at a conference in Stuttgart in 1910, took the argument a step further. She proclaimed that ‘the working class wants not only 9 N. Punin, Art and Revolution, p. 15. 10 Ibid. 11 See R. Williams, Lunacharsky and Proletarian Culture in ‘Artists in Revolution’, p. 32.



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to enjoy art but to create it.’ This spoke not just of art for the Proletariat, but art of the Proletariat. But even though many European and American artists had tried to make art appealing to the working classes back in the 19th century, the term ‘proletarian culture’ was used for the first time by the early Russian revolutionary, Alexander Bogdanov. In his work ‘Empiriomonism: Articles in Philosophy’, published in three volumes between 1904 and 1906, Bogdanov had argued that Socialism had to reconsider the role of the arts. He believed that the aim of Socialist art was to enlighten the proletariat, and that the proletariat should be in charge of all the artistic developments under it. In June 1909, when Bogdanov was defeated at a Bolshevik conference in Paris, organized by the editorial board of the Bolshevik magazine Proletarii, he was expelled from the Bolshevik faction and joined his brother-in-law, Anatoly Lunacharsky and the writer, Maxim Gorky, on the island of Capri, where they started a school to educate and train workers for propaganda inside Russia. The ‘First Higher Social Democratic Propagandist and Agitator School’, as it was finally called, began operating in the summer of 1909. To finance this venture, Gorky obtained considerable funds from his own royalties, as well as from Krasin, Andreeva, Feodor Chaliapin, and a Nizhnyi Novgorod steamship owner, Kamensky. Lenin (who visited Gorky on Capri in April 1908) had in mind better uses for the 200,000 roubles raised by Krasin than the 500 rouble stipends provided for workers who left Russia to study on Capri. He was also against Gorky’s ‘God-Building’ philosophy, which sought to recapture the power of myth for the Revolution and to create a ‘religious atheism’ that replaced God with collective humanity and was imbued with passion, wonderment, moral certainty, and the promise of deliverance from evil, suffering, and even death. Lenin was furious about the idea of the Capri school. Already in December 1908 he wrote to his sister Elizarova, criticizing Lunacharsky and Bogdanov for ‘creating a new religion’. However, though ‘God-Building’ was suppressed by Lenin, Gorky retained his belief that culture, as the moral and spiritual awareness of the value and potential of the human self, would be more critical to the Revolution’s success than political or economic arrangements. One of the aims of Gorky’s school was to combine ‘God-Building’ with revolutionary ideas. The main purpose of the Capri school was to strengthen the intellectual energy of the party and to create overseas courses for training organizers and propagandists.

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One of the organizers of the Capri school was N. E. Vilonov, (Party nickname Mikhail) a worker from the Urals who was sent to Capri from Geneva by Bogdanov, who felt that Maxim Gorky needed a true member of the proletariat to attract workers to his school. Inspired and financed by Gorky and the fund he created, in the summer of 1909 Vilonov had returned to Russia and recruited 20 workers for the school. Once on Capri they encountered an impressive range of lectures—from the history of art and European socialism to Russian literature, political theory and the practice of agitation—presented by Bogdanov, Gorky, Lunacharsky, the Moscow historian M. N. Pokrovsky and the lone Bolshevik Duma delegate G. A. Aleksinsky. The school only survived for a few months, but by August 1909, even the Paris branch of the Russian political police, the Okhrana, was well informed about the school through its agent on Capri, Andrei Romanov. By December 1909 the Capri circle had established its own rival journal Vpered in Geneva, which made Lenin even more furious. In June 1909 Lenin called a meeting of the Proletarii editorial board in Paris and condemned ‘god-constriction’ within the Bolshevik party. In the autumn of 1909, upset by the death of his second son and continuous quarrels between his wife and Andreeva, Lunacharsky left Capri and settled for a time in Naples, but soon moved north—to Bologna. In 1910, Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky and their supporters established a new school at Bologna, where they had 17 students and a small faculty headed by Lunacharsky, Bogdanov, and Gorky. Since only Lunacharsky could speak Italian fluently, he served as director. Lenin and his allies soon started a rival school outside Paris. Anatoly Lunacharsky had started writing about proletarian art back in 1907, when he explained for the first time that such art would be realistic in style and would be created by proletarian artists. He had written then that proletarian art should be positive, optimistic, and comprehensible to the masses. On 16th October 1917 Lunacharsky, then the president of the culturaleducational commission of the Petrograd Party Committee, called the first conference of proletarian cultural-educational organizations. 208 voting delegates representing the Petrograd Party Committee, Soviets, trade unions, factory committees, youth, army and peasant organisations, as well as city and regional Dumas, gathered at this historic conference. Here the Petrograd Proletkult—the association of proletarian cultural organizations—was brought into being. In their book Proletcult



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(Proletarian Culture), which was published in London in 1921, the English Fabian Socialists, Eden and Cedar Paul, wrote: Proletcult is a compact term, a “portmanteau word”, for proletarian culture. . . . Proletarians who are alive to their class interest (which is the true interest of civilisation) will insist upon doing their own thinking; they will insist upon Independent Working-Class Education, upon proletarian culture, upon Proletcult.12

They exclaimed: ‘Now Proletcult is the lamp whereby all the roads of advance are lighted!’13 On 29th October 1917 (old calendar), now under the new regime, Lunacharsky made his first declaration on the subject as Commissar for Education. In it he proclaimed an abdication of the powers of Soviet governmental institutions in the direction of cultural affairs. In Petrograd, Proletkult was distinct from Narkompros (The Peoples’ Commissariat of Education), and even though it was sponsored and subsidised by it, it chose to remain an independent body. In Moscow, Alexander Bogdanov became one of the founders of Proletkult. In his lectures and articles, he called for the total destruction of the ‘old bourgeois culture’ in favour of a ‘pure proletarian culture’ of the future. The Bolshevik leaders recognised that culture, in all its manifestations, should play a critical part in achieving at once solidarity and advancement in this new society, but what that culture should comprise, was still under debate. For the first few years after 1917 all forms of art flourished in Russia. In his book ‘Artists in Revolution’ Robert Williams wrote: ‘Revolution bred innovation. For a time all barriers were down, all ways open, anything possible. The breaking of rules became legitimate.’14 ‘The Revolution is most wonderful for its lack of logic,’—wrote Punin in his diary two years after the October Revolution.15 If art was to play its role in the definition and advancement of this new society, what type of art would that be? This thorny subject—the definition of the new proletarian art and subsequently its organisation, was taken up 12 Eden & Cedar Paul, Proletcult (Proletarian Culture), London: Leonard Parsons, 1921, p. 19. 13 Ibid., p. 18. 14 R. Williams, Innovation, Revolution and the Russian Avant-garde in ‘Artists in Revolution’, p. 32. 15 See Diary, Note of 14 November 1919, p. 61.

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by Nikolay Punin immediately after the 1917 February Revolution, when he became involved in the earliest efforts to revive cultural life in Russia. From then, he worked desperately to protect the interests of the avantgarde artists, to whom the main threat came from the cultural right. In The Appeal of the Founders, issued at the meeting of the Freedom of Art Association and summarised on 12th March 1917, Nikolay Punin was named as one of those ‘who is defending the freedom of artistic art’.16 At the end of March 1917 the Union of Art Workers [SDI—Soyuz Deyateley Iskusstv] had been founded with the specific aim of developing new democratic forms of managing artistic life in Russia. Representatives of all the artistic movements participated in this new organisation. It was informally divided into three groups: the ‘left’, which included V. Mayakovsky, Osip Brik—a literary critic and a close friend of Mayakovsky, who played an important role in integrating the Russian avant-garde into the Soviet reality, and Nikolay Punin; the ‘non-party centre’; and the right or so-called ‘delovoi blok’ [‘business section’], led by the architect L. Sologub.17 Nikolay Punin took an active part in the voting committee of the Union, and after the October Revolution he tried to bring the leaders of the Union and the new Bolshevik government together. He conveyed to the leadership of the Union Lunacharsky’s opinion that the question of artistic development of the new Russia should be resolved by the government, despite his statement made only days before proclaiming Soviet governmental institutions should abdicate their powers in the direction of cultural affairs. On 12th November 1917, Punin informed the Union of Lunacharsky’s proposal for the establishment of a State Soviet on Art Affairs. It was suggested that half of the members of this Soviet would represent artists and musicians, and another half would be comprised of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies. Not surprisingly, the Union members (including Punin himself ) rejected this proposal. Nikolay Nikolaevich voted against this proposal because he was objecting to the suggested interference of the non-artistic delegates in the organization of artistic matters, and most members of the Union were against the intrusion of Lunacharsky, and the State, into their affairs.

16 W. Woroszylski, The life of Mayakovsky, p. 176. 17 For minutes of the SDI meeting see A. V. Krusanov, Futuristicheskaya revolutsiya. 1917–1921, in ‘Russkiy avant-garde. 1917–1932. Istoricheskiy obzor’, Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2003, vol. 2, kniga 1, pp. 19–23.



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After this rejection of his proposal to the Union, Lunacharsky made a second, more moderate proposal for cooperation between the Union and Narkompros in the protection of art treasures. But even this more reasonable plan was rejected. In November 1917 the Arts Union was planning to appeal to the Constituent Assembly for funds to support art schools, state theatres and museums, declaring itself to be ‘the only organ which has the right to direct the artistic life of the country’.18 The artistic world, especially in Petrograd, demanded autonomy from the new government, and in the first months after the Revolution, the Arts Union was its flagship. In her book ‘The Commissariat of Enlightenment’, Sheila Fitzpatrick observed: In dealing with the arts, Narkompros confronted a world which was both hostile and amorphous. There were few institutional channels by which it could be approached, and almost all its members—writers, actors, artists and musicians—were determined to boycott the new government.19

In October 1917 the majority of the artistic institutions which had formerly been under the jurisdiction of the Palace Ministry, had come under Narkompros, but most artists and writers ignored Narkompros’ leadership, treating it with hostility and suspicion as a Bolshevik Government, organ. For several months after the Revolution, the only cultural organisation to which Lunacharsky could turn was the newly-formed Proletkult. But like his Narkompros, the Proletkult had no influence or standing among members of Petrograd intelligentsia. It was soon suggested that a separate Commissariat for the Arts should be established outside the Commissariat for Education, with Lunacharsky at the head of both, Pavel Malinovsky as his deputy for the arts and Mikhail Pokrovsky as the deputy for education. But Lunacharsky, together with the other key figures of Narkompros, opposed this suggestion, arguing that a Ministry of Arts was an old-fashioned idea which resembled the time when all artistic affairs were under the control of the Palace. The head of the theatre section of Narkompros, Olga Kameneva made a powerful point: While art is in the Commissariat for Education, the government has one aim—an educative one, to demonstrate and explain. Russia is in the stage of development when it has to be educated in art.20 18 Quoted in Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 114. 19 Ibid., p. 110. 20 Quoted in Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 113.

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The Union of Art Workers, which spent most of its time arguing about minor issues, and then lost almost all its influence in art circles, refused to cooperate with the government, which inspired Lunacharsky to organise an alternative body which would replace the old-fashioned Union and would deal with artistic matters more efficiently. So it had only to be expected that when Nikolay Punin and his friend, the futurist composer Arthur Lourie, came to see Lunacharsky in his small office in the Winter Palace one cold morning in December 1917, their conversation moved quickly on from the question of the Commissar’s permission to use the Hermitage Theatre for the production of Death by Mistake [Smert’ po oshibke] (written by Velimir Khlebnikov and staged by Vladimir Tatlin), to that of the creation of a new proletarian culture, and the participation of the members of intelligentsia in it. In his article ‘In the days of Red October’, Punin recalled these events: Lunacharsky willingly and at length talked to us about art, of the tasks of the Communist Party and the position of the intelligentsia. Soon our little project of staging in the Hermitage theatre was left far behind. The question under discussion was of organization of a new administrative apparatus in all fields of art.21

This conversation was followed by a string of meetings between Lunacharsky and Punin. In January 1918 the Department of Visual Arts (IZO), which formed a part of Narkompros, was established in the Myatlev house on St. Isaac’s Square. Punin first joined the collegiate of IZO, retaining his membership of the left-wing of The Arts Union, but soon became first deputy-head, then, after David Shterenberg moved to Moscow to be appointed head of the Moscow branch of IZO in place of Vladmir Tatlin, he became head of the Petrograd branch of IZO. He worked in this capacity until the IZO department was closed in 1921. This gave him power and authority firstly to fight for the preservation of monuments and palaces after the Revolution, but also to educate representatives of the new Communist society in artistic matters. David Shterenberg was a talented artist, whom Lunacharsky had first met in Paris in 1914, and when he returned from emigration after the October Revolution, Lunacharsky saw him as an ideal candidate to lead IZO. However, some of the more right-wing artists, such as Alexander Benois, found it hard to accept Shterenberg as the new artistic leader. In

21 N. Punin, In the days of Red October, Zhizn’ iskusstva (1921), np. 816, 8 Nov., p. 1.



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his diary of 4th January 1918 this conservative leader of the World of Art movement wrote: After dinner, finally, appeared “comrade” artist Shterenberg—new proxy of Lunacharsky, who has recently arrived from Paris—whose “director’s functions” are still not clear.22

In a later note of 7th December 1918 Benois explained: He [Shterenberg] became a commissar (although he himself is not sure of which commissariat) by chance, after meeting Lunacharsky, whom he knew in Paris, and whose understanding of art he very much doubts, but whom he likes and considers to be a kind and soft-hearted person.23

But in reality Shterenberg was much more confident about his role in Russian post-revolutionary art. In his article ‘To the crisis of Proletkult’, written in February 1919, he proclaimed: You shout about proletarian culture. You have taken a monopoly on yourselves. But what have you done for all this time, when you have had every chance to act?. . . . Nothing.  You are an empty place. And if we, a group of young artists, created schools in which each proletarian could receive technical skills and show his face, we have the right to say that we have done something. If we, destroying old forms of human culture, created new forms appropriate to new content, we have the right to state that we are doing great revolutionary work.  And you? You are pouring new wine into old, tattered wine-skins.24

Representatives of the more radical, ‘leftist’ artistic groups gathered around IZO. They were not all Futurists, but ‘from the time when Futurism first emerged in Russia, this concept had quite a wide meaning, and incorporated aesthetics of the left art instead of some specific artistic principles’.25 In May 1918, Narkompros, the parent of IZO, issued the first declaration, in which the principles of new art were drawn up. This declaration was published in an article by Boris Kushner called ‘Socialisation of Art’ 22 See full quote in Dedinkin, p. 95. 23 Ibid. 24 D. Shterenberg, To the crisis of Proletkult, in ‘Iskusstvo Communi’, no. 10, 9 Feb. 1919, p. 3. 25 T. Goryacheva, ‘Tsarstvo dukha’ I ‘Tsarstvo Kesarya’: Sud’ba futuristicheskoi utopii v 1920–1930h godakh, in magazine Iskusstvoznanie, No. 1, 1999, p. 286.

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[‘Socializatsiya iskusstva’], which appeared in the newspaper of the left Socialists Banner of Labour [Znamya Truda] on 3rd May 1918. Kushner’s article called for ‘socialisation of art’ and welcomed the ‘code’ of new art, which consisted of eleven main principles:  1. Art and creativity are free.  2. Art is public and political.  3. Socialist art is the art of the proletarian masses.  4. Forms of the socialist art should not be predetermined.  5. Revolution in art has started. Its development opens new forms in art, which mature in the process of social rebirth.  6. Proletarian dilettantism is not proletarian art.  7. Subject and theme do not determine anything is art.  8. Establishment of a certain form in socialist art is up to the artist himself.  9. The distinctive quality of socialist art is its mass character. 10. The mass nature of socialist art demands changes in principles material expression in art. 11. The mass character of socialist art demands organisation of artistic forces.26 Futurists or not, after the October Revolution, left-wing artists moved to the foreground of the new Soviet Russia. For the most part, they supported the Revolution because it promised to incorporate them into a new system of artistic culture. In effect, they created the first official art—a merit which probably saved them from later repressions in Stalinist times. Ten years after the October Revolution, Lunacharsky would explain that this union with the Left artists was never desirable or ideal: . . . even though proletarian Revolution was brewing for a long time in the bowels of the old Russia, it had not been prepared for its cultural expression, especially in art.27

In the early days of the 20th century, no less than seventy-two artistic movements were active in Russia. The traditionalists were led by the Imperial Academy of Arts, which by 1917, incorporated the formerly rebellious Wanderers, and occupied the right wing.

26 Quoted in Kushner, Boris, Socializatsiya iskusstva, in ‘Znamya Truda’, N 194, 3.05.1918, p. 2. 27 A. Lunacharsky, Ob Izobrazitelnom Iskusstve, Moscow, 1967, v. 2, p. 340.



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The centre stage belonged to the famous World of Art movement [Mir Iskusstva], which combined pro-Western tendencies with attempts to resurrect traditional Russian folk art. But even though the members of this movement proclaimed that ‘art should serve people’, by 1917 they had become the trendsetters for bourgeois tastes rather than those of the newly-emerged proletariat. The Bolsheviks, reflecting Lenin’s extremely conservative tastes in art, would have preferred to work with them rather than the more radical left-wing innovators, but they were not ready to step down from their pedestal and start talking to the masses. Lunacharsky’s views on art were much more broad-minded than Lenin’s, but even he wrote about Kandinsky back in 1911 as a man ‘obviously in the final stage of psychic degeneration’, who “scrawls some lines with the first paints that come to hand and signs them, the wretch—‘Moscow’, ‘Winter’, and even ‘St. George’ ”.28 Lunacharsky could not understand how Kandinsky was ever allowed to exhibit such ‘art’. In November 1919, the Commissar for Education announced that ‘the journeys of Futurism and proletarian art do not coincide—the proletariat has to be careful of such revolutionary individualists, which does not mean that they should be kept away from the proletariat; using its class instinct, the proletariat will be able to sort them out.’29 But how workers and peasants could be expected to have strong enough instincts to distinguish good art from bad, if even Lenin, when asked to express his opinion about a work of art, would usually reply: ‘I don’t understand anything here, ask Lunacharsky.’30 The Commissar for Education was not the worst person to ask. He had received a doctorate from Zurich University and as a young man had even worked part-time at the Louvre as a guide for Russian tourists. Between 1905 and 1922 Lunacharsky published 122 books, including two volumes on fine art, called ‘About Visual Art’ [‘Ob izobrazitel’nom iskusstve’]. He would have probably preferred to put more established and professional artists at the head of the new Soviet culture, but as he admitted in 1927 ‘many of them fled abroad and the others felt like fish out of water for quite some time’.31 28 Quoted in S. Volkov, The Magical Chorus, p. 56. 29 A. Lunacharsky, Speech at the dispute in Moscow Proletcult on 23 November 1919, quoted in M. O. Dedinkin, Tovarishestvo Proletarskogo Iskusstva’ Fridriha Brassa: Kollekziya nemezkogo avant-garde v Sovetskoy Rossii, Exhibition catalogue (St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Publishers, 2009), p. 35. 30 A. Lunacharsky, Vospominaniya I Vpechatleniya, Moscow, 1968, p. 192. 31 Quoted in S. Volkov, The Magical Chorus, p. 56.

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Lunacharsky had realized by then that any union of the Left artists with the new political regime was more pragmatic than natural; it felt rather like a ‘marriage of convenience’, but they were keen and democratic, and that is what mattered at the time. In 1920 he told VtsIK (the highest legislative, administrative, and revising body of the Soviet state): ‘I never was a Futurist, am not a Futurist, and will not be a Futurist.’32 But back in 1918 he felt that the future belonged to ‘Left’ artists, since ‘they are young, and youth is revolutionary’.33 In 1919, Lunacharsky wrote: . . . If we cannot speak of Futurism as a whole as proletarian art, we can talk of individual artists of Futurist persuasion as artists close to the proletariat. And we already see that this young art is winning its place in the proletarian artistic ideology . . .34

But the main reason for Lunacharsky’s patronage of the Futurists was that they were the first artistic group to join Narkompros in its efforts to create the new art necessary for the new society. The famous Russian writer, Evgenii Zamyatin35 wrote in his article ‘I am afraid’ [‘Ya bous’], which was published in the magazine House of Arts [Dom Iskusstv] in 1920: The Futurists turned out to be the most nimble of the lot: not wasting a minute, they announced that the official school of painting is—of course— them. And for more than a year we have not heard anything but their yellow, green and crimson celebratory calls. But the combination of the red hubcap with the yellow jacket and a blue flower on a chick, still remaining from yesterday—was hurting the eyes of even the unpretentious ones too blasphemously: those, on whose false heralds Futurists were riding, showed them the door.36

32 Quoted in Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 124. 33 Ibid. 34 A. Lunacharsky, Lenin and art (reminiscences), in ‘Ob izobrazitel’nom iskusstve’, Moscow, 1967, vol. 2, pp. 301–2. 35 Yevgenii Ivanovich Zamyatin (1884–1937) was a Russian author, most famous for his 1921 novel We, a story of dystopian future which influenced George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Zamyatin supported the October Revolution, but opposed the system of censorship under the Bolsheviks. His works were increasingly critical of the regime and were banned and he was not permitted to publish, particularly after the publication of We in a Russian émigré journal in 1927. But being among the ‘lucky ones’, Zamyatin was eventually given permission to leave Russia by Joseph Stalin in 1931, after the intercession of Maxim Gorky. He settled, impoverished, in Paris with his wife, where he died of a heart attack in 1937. During his time in France, he notably worked with Jean Renoir, co-scripting his film Les Bas-fonds . 36 Zamyatin E., I am afraid, in the magazine Dom Iskusstv, No. 1, 1920, p. 15, quoted in M. Dedinkin, p. 25.



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In her book ‘ “Lef ” and the left front of arts’, the Polish academic Halina Stephan wrote: The Futurists may have been radical in their attempt to blend art and politics, but they were extreme not in their commitment to the political system, but in their determination to use that system to create a new type of art, they were willing to go to great lengths to eliminate the conservative competition which, ironically, had the support of the new Soviet State. They were vocal in championing the cause of modern art, but the new system for which they designed their art did not correspond with the Soviet reality. A further irony lies in the fact that the whole Soviet government’s refusal to support the Futurist programme as the basis for all of Soviet culture led to the ultimate demise of Futurism, the Revolution that brought that government to power appears to have given the Futurists a chance to prolong their movement a few years longer than would have been possible without the Revolution. . . .37

Halina Stephan concluded that: ‘In effect, the Revolution gave the Futurists a new lease on life, for, despite all the difficulties and frustrations of trying to gain access to the public, the Soviet system stimulated the Futurists into developing new reasons and new ways to continue their art.’38 The Futurists were hoping that the most progressive political system in the world, established by the Revolution, would encourage equally modern, non-traditional art. They proposed the aesthetics of Futurism as the corner stone in building the new art, and Nikolay Punin placed his faith into them. Ironically, since by the very nature of its output, Futurism was unlikely to gain popular support, Punin’s patronage was critical to their survival and development under the Soviets. Punin believed that ‘although the masses never follow innovators, the future belonged to Futurists, since all the young creative tension belongs to them’.39 He wrote: . . . Futurism is not just an artistic movement, but a whole world outlook, which is only based on Communism, but which will eventually leave it, like any other culture, behind; Futurism—is the movement which widens and deepens the cultural base of Communism, bringing the new elements into it—time, dynamics,—not of the masses—but of forms,—and of time.40

37 Stephan, Halina, ‘Lef ’ and the left front of arts, Munchen: Verlag otto Sagner, 1981, pp. xii–xiii. 38 Ibid., p. xiii. 39 N. Punin, Speech at the dispute ‘Art of yesterday, today and tomorrow’, took place on the 4 May 1919 at the Exhibition in the Palace of Arts. Quoted in M. O. Dedinkin, p. 34. 40 Ibid.

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One of Punin’s first major tasks became the reorganization of the Academy of Arts into the Petrograd Free Artistic Studios (PEGOSKhUM). Already in November 1917 (19th and 28th November 1917), following two meetings organised by the students of art colleges, the Petrograd Soviet of Art Teaching Organisations [Petrogradskii Soviet Uchebnikh Khudozhestvennich Organizatsiy] was created. Osip Brik became the president of the Soviet. Students from various art colleges, apart from the Academy of Arts, became members of the Soviet. At these meetings the teaching and administrative structure of the art colleges were criticised. The Academy of Arts could not stand back from this criticism for long. At a meeting of the Soviet which took place on 21st December 1917, the project of the reform of the Academy of Arts was proposed by one of the professors from the Academy, A. Tamanov. However, this proposal, which suggested moderate reforms, was found by the Soviet ‘unsuitable for the hopes of artistic youth’. It was decreed that the Soviet should create a special committee which would criticise Tamanov’s proposal and come up with a ‘counter-project’.41 Proposals created by this special committee were discussed at the conference of the students of art colleges, which took place on 14th April 1918 at the Academy of Arts. However, already on 1st March 1918, at a meeting of the collegium of artistic affairs, led by the then head of Petrograd IZO, David Shterenberg, the Imperial Academy of Arts had been formally liquidated!42 The beautiful 18th century building of the Academy survived, but the Academic internal structure had somehow to be modernised. Not surprisingly, the Arts Union was against government interference in the affairs of this historic institution, which they wanted to modernise themselves. They also protested about the fact that the reorganisation of the Academy was entrusted to the Commissar, the artist A. E. Karev rather than their own ‘right’ candidate, Romanov. On 19th April, Lunacharsky addressed a meeting of the Arts Union, trying to explain the government’s decision to liquidate the Academy of Arts. In his speech he said that the government stood for ‘complete separation of art from the state, for complete liquidation of all diplomas, titles, honours and exclusive privileges’, and also opposed state support of ‘any

41 See Krusanov, vol. 2, book 1, p. 86. 42 See M. Dedinkin, p. 95.



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single artistic group or organization on the grounds that it would inhibit the development of other groups.’43 And on 1st May 1918 the New Petrograd Newspaper [Novaya Petrogradskaya Gazeta] announced: The general meeting of the members of the Central Committee of Proletkult, following comrade Shterenberg’s report about the liquidation of the Academy of Arts, decreed: To welcome liquidation of the Academy of Arts, and to treat it as an act of revolutionary creativity, which liberates the way to the creation of proletarian art; and to support work of the Visual Art Department of Narkompros in their efforts to organise a free art school.44

Not all newspapers were so supportive of this hash decree. On 4th May 1918, the more traditionally oriented newspaper Our Century [Nash Vek] announced: . . . Discussing the question of liquidation of the Academy of Arts, the public agreed that publication of this decree was too hasty, since the Academy itself formed a special committee, which consisted of representatives of artistic societies and organisations, which put together an alternative project for the reform of the Academy of Arts.45

However, the decision to liquidate the Academy of Arts had been taken, and all further discussions of this issue became rather futile. Lunacharsky’s attempt to make art accessible to everyone led to the cancellation of entry exams or any specific requirements for admission into this formerly highly selective institution. On 8th August 1918, the detailed instruction specifying the structure of the Free Artistic Studios was written by the Moscow collegiate of Narkompros and accepted by the Petrograd IZO without any changes. It specified that students could now choose all their professors themselves and belong to any artistic movement they preferred.46 However, the Futurist-oriented collegiate of the IZO soon came to regret this decision, since against all their expectations, the students chose right artists as professors over the left ones. Thus nobody subscribed to Altman’s studios, only two students chose Tatlin and four chose Punin’s

43 See Fitzpatrick, p. 115. 44 V. Ignatov (secretary), Ot Proletkulta, Novaya Proletarskaya Gazeta, N. 86, 1 May 1918, p. 3. 45 Okhrana pamyatnikov I dvortsov, in ‘Nash Vek’, N 89 (113), 4 May 1918, p. 6. 46 See the whole document in Krusanov, vol. 2, book 1, pp. 88–89.

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other friend, Lev Bruni. By contrast, forty students subscribed to PetrovVodkin’s studio, and even more to academic artists (fifty two to Vasiliy Shukhaev and eighty two to the former professor of the Academy of Arts, Dmitry Kardovsky).47 So a few days after these disappointing elections, democracy had to be abandoned, and in lieu of ‘studios by choice’, ‘studios by appointment’ were established. The first professors of PEGOSKhUM, the Petrograd Free Artistic Studios, to lead the ‘studios by appointment’, were N. I. Altman, A. A. Andreev, B. P. Popov, V. E. Tatlin and L. V. Shervud.48 Students were appointed to the studios of these artists, just as they had been before the reforms. The Arts Union criticized the ‘irresponsible commissar’ of IZO-Narkompross, Nikolay Punin, for imposing Left artists’ studios on students, and for not inviting enough right artists to teach at the new Free Artistic Studios. Nevertheless, on 10th October 1918 the Petrograd Free Artistic Studios, PEGOSKhUM, were officially opened. And on 13th October, in the conference hall of the former Academy of Arts a meeting, dedicated to the revolution in art, took place. It was opened by Nikolay Punin, who announced: In the new State Free Artistic Studios there is no place for any canons and dogmas. From here masters, who will create art beyond class and in opposition to bourgeois art, will emerge.49

When Punin was criticised for not attracting many popular artists to the professorship of PEGOSKhUM, he replied: We called everyone to join us, but in return got the same sabotage as in politics. So the whole responsibility falls not on us, but on the artists who refuse to help us to build a new free artistic life.50

Punin concluded his speech by saying that proletariat does not understand the new art yet: We are not afraid of loneliness, since it is only temporary. The proletariat will come, it will have to come to us, since we are united by the revolutionary methods of fighting.51

47 See O. Dedinkin, p. 95. 48 See Krusanov, vol. 2, book 1, p. 89. 49 ‘Meeting ob Iskusstve’, Severnaya Kommuna, 1918, No. 130, 15 October, p. 4. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid.



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On 25th October 1918 Punin replaced A. Karev in his role of the Commissar of PEGOSKhUM. Osip Brik became a deputy director of PEGOSKhUM. In his new role of the head of the Free Artistic Studios, Punin was determined to give a chance to all the artists from different artistic strands and movements to teach and to share their ideas with the students. Soon Puni, Karev and Malevich were asked to teach at the Studios. Kazimir Malevich, who was teaching in Moscow at the time, accepted Punin’s invitation, and appointed one of his pupils and followers, Mikhail Matyushin, to lead the studio of Spatial Realism, which was opened on 1st December 1918.52 The Academy of Arts had to be closed down, because leaving it would have implied keeping its privileged position and giving state support to one particular artistic group. But pluralism was abandoned, and both Punin’s and the general Narkompros preference for left art soon began to determine the artistic policy of the Free Artistic Studios. They believed in complete separation from the old artistic tradition, and on 2nd December 1918 Punin and Brik ordered the removal of all the antique plaster casts, which had been traditionally copied by the students of the Academy, into the yard of the Free Studios. A huge canvas by the former head of the World of Art, Nikolay Roerich, ‘The Taking of Kazan’, was taken out of the storeroom of the former Academy and cut up into pieces for students to use as they pleased for their work at the studios. The realistic painter Arkadii Rylov in his reminiscences described Tatlin’s studio at the former Academy of Arts: Instead of easels, palettes and brushes there were anvils, carpenter’s benches, a lathe, and other related tools. There they [students] would build compositions out of various materials: wood, iron, mica; combining them with each other without giving thought to their meaning. The works were incongruous, but bold.53

Rylov also recalled that Tatlin used to say: ‘Who needs anatomy? Who needs perspective?’54 In 1939, one of the witnesses of these reforms, Gollerbakh wrote that after 1917 Punin ‘wore a Cavalry overcoat and spurs, cancelled art and organised together with the Futurists, a true bordello at the liquidated Academy of Arts’.55

52 See Krusanov, vol. 2, book 1, p. 91. 53 A. Rylov, Vospominaniya, Leningrad, 1977, p. 193. 54 Ibid. 55 Gollerbakh, A., Vstrechi I vpechatleniya, St. Petersburg, 1998, p. 268.

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Ironically, the Academy of Arts, which Punin among others initially liquidated, but for which he subsequently worked so loyally, would in 1948 liquidate him in turn. Back in 1918, however, Punin still had the full support of the State, and when the Arts Union suggested to Lunacharsky the replacement of IZO by the Executive Committee of the Arts Union, the Commissar of Education said that although the government did fail to come to terms with the greater part of the artistic intelligentsia, ‘we stand for the policy of the active minority and, in art, for union with separate outstanding talents.’56 He added that ‘the Constituent Assembly of artists proposed by the Union would be nothing more than a congregation of the untalented’.57 Not surprisingly, after these harsh words of Lunacharsky, the Arts Union decided to break off all relations with the Commissar of Education and his Narkompros. 4. The Saga of the Statues Another major reason of the Arts Union’s disagreement with Lunacharsky and the State was the Sovnarkom (Sovnarkom was the Council of People’s Commissars) decree On the taking down of monuments raised in honour of the Tsars and their servants, which was issued on 12 April 1918, and which the Union called ‘barbarian and illiterate’.58 This decree was influenced by Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda, which according to Lunacharsky was inspired by Tommaso Campanella’ utopian book ‘The City of the Sun’, first published in 1623 in Latin as ‘Civitas Solis’. In his book, Campanella described a communistic city-state, which was governed by reason and by the laws of nature. In this phantasmagorical Socialist city, murals on the walls of the houses were painted in order to teach young people about history and to raise noble feelings in them. Unlike Campanella, Lenin chose monuments as the means of educating young Soviet people. He believed that monumental art provides the most powerful means for political propaganda. The new monuments glorifying the heroes of the Revolution and leaders of the new society had to be erected, and in a very short period of time.

56 Quoted in Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 116. 57 Ibid. 58 See Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 115.



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In his article ‘Russian sculpture and Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda’,59 John Bowlt wrote that Lenin had formed the idea of decorating metropolitan streets with statues of revolutionary and popular heroes as early as the winter of 1917–1918. Lunacharsky announced to painters and sculptors after meeting with Lenin: . . . He [Lenin] intends to have the squares of Moscow decorated with statues and monuments in honour of revolutionaries, great fighters for Socialism. This denotes both agitation for Socialism and a wide field for our sculptural talents to manifest themselves.60

When Lunacharsky questioned Lenin’s plan on the basis of high cost, Lenin replied: ‘Please do not think that I imagine marble, granite and golden letters. At present we have to do everything modestly. Let everything be made of concrete with clear signs on it. At the moment I can not afford to think about eternity.’61 Shterenberg, in his role of head of IZO, questioned Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda on the basis of a lack of artistic ability in this area. Tatlin also warned Lunacharsky that the plan had to be thought through very carefully, since to hurry would mean to detract from any possible artistic value of the proposed monuments.62 But Lenin felt that artists from all the artistic trends and movements had to be mobilised for the fulfilment of his plan ‘as a matter of urgency’. Professional sculptors such as Nikolay Andreev and Alexander Matveev found themselves working next to art students. ‘We tried to fulfil Lenin’s goal with great enthusiasm, with all our strength and skills’,—wrote one of the leading Soviet sculptors, Leonid Vladimirovich Shervud.63 Due to lack of funds in war-torn Russia and the urgency of this state commission, most monuments were made out of gypsum and wood, and deteriorated rapidly. Perhaps just as well . . . The first monument in the fulfilment of Lenin’s plan was the bust of the 18th century Russian author and social critic, arrested and exiled at the time of Catherine II, Alexander Radishchev. This monument was put in the symbolic hole made by revolutionaries in the fence around the Winter Palace in Petrograd. It was designed by Shervud and opened on 59 Bowlt J., Russian sculpture and Lenin’s Plan of Monumental Propaganda in ‘Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics’, Cambridge, MA: 1978. 60 Ibid., p. 184. 61 ZGALI Spb-fond 258. 62 Bowlt J., Russian sculpture and Lenin’s Plan of Monumental Propaganda, p. 184. 63 Ibid.

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22nd September 1918. A copy of this monument, also made of gypsum, was placed in the Triumphal Square in Moscow a few months later. At the opening of the monument in Petrograd, Lunacharsky announced: ‘Radishchev belongs to us now. Keep your hands off him, members of the Mensheviks! He was a true revolutionary, who did not compromise with tyrants. To him—the first present from the Russian Revolution!’64 But all was not well. On 19th January 1919, the Red Guard delegated to look after the Radishchev bust reported: ‘I would like to report to the superintendent that today, during my duty at 5 am, the monument to the comrade Radishchev on the corner of the former Winter Palace, fell down and broke into pieces.’65 Nikolay Punin did not seem to be too upset though—on 9th March 1919, he noted: ‘I walked every day past the Radishchev monument, but only on the eighth day did I notice that it had fallen down.’66 In September 1918, Lenin wrote in fury to Lunacharsky: ‘There is no outdoor bust to Marx! I reprimand you for this criminal negligence.’67 Lunacharsky’s response was swift and within two months the first monuments dedicated to the founder of Communism had been put in place. On 7th November 1918 the new plaster monument to Karl Marx, designed by Matveev, one of the leading Russian academic sculptors, appeared in front of the new headquarters of the Bolshevik Party in Petrograd, the Smolny Institute. The ceremony of the official unveiling of this monument unleashed a string of celebrations dedicated to the First Anniversary of the October Revolution. Commissar Punin had the honour of ‘revealing’ this sculpture to the world for the first time: . . . As early as 8 o’clock in the morning, long lines of people coming from all over the city, stretched along the streets, empty of all traffic, towards the place where the celebrations were to take place. The celebrations were opened first at the Smolny Institute. Here, wrapped in red material, stood a monument to the great leader Karl Marx. At 10 o’clock, delegations from the Red Army, the Navy and the city’s districts began arriving at the Smolny Institute with banners and standards. Sometime after 11 o’clock the Second City District arrived. A band played the ‘Internationale’ and Comrade Lunacharsky appeared on the rostrum and addressed everyone with a few brief words of welcome . . .

64 Quoted in O. Dedinkin, p. 20. 65 Ibid. 66 N. Punin ‘O Pamyatnikakh’ in Iskusstvo Kommuny, no. 14, 9 March 1919, p. 2. 67 Quoted in O. Dedinkin, p. 21.



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To the sounds of the ‘Internationale’, Comrade Punin, Commissar for Fine Arts, pulled the cover from the statue. There were shouts of ‘Hurrah!’ and ‘Long live the world social Revolution!’ Then, on behalf of the Fine Arts Section, Comrade Punin presented Lunacharsky with a china statue of Karl Marx, made at the State Porcelain Factory . . .68

At the same time as Matveev’s ‘Karl Marx’ in Petrograd, a monument to Marx and Engels, designed by the less well-known Sergei Mezentsev, was unveiled in Teatralnaya square in Moscow. Both sculptures only survived a few Russian winters, and soon had to be replaced. Altogether, between 1918 and 1920, no less than 25 monuments were put up in Moscow, and 15 in Petrograd. The focus of criticism was a statue put up in Moscow in the winter of 1919, to the 19th century revolutionary and anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin. It was designed by Boris Korolev, a colleague of Altman, Mayakovsky and Punin, and a propagator of Futurism. The scaffolding around the severely distorted cubist figure of Bakunin was never removed. When it was finally used as firewood, the statue was also removed and broken up. In late September 1918 Tatlin wrote to Lunacharsky stressing that the new monuments should be ‘free creations in a socialist state’, and that artists should work ‘not only on monuments to prominent figures but also on monuments to the Russian Revolution, monuments to a relationship between the State and art which has not existed until now.’69 In 1919, the well-known sculptor, Nikolay Andreev, contributed a symbolic image of the Soviet Constitution, which was put up in Soviet square in Moscow. This proved to be more popular with the masses than the statue of Bakunin, and survived until 1940. On the first anniversary of the October Revolution, Nikolay Kolli’s rather more successful abstract sculpture of a white block representing the forces of counter-revolution, fractured by a red wedge—the victorious Red Army, was erected in the Revolution square in Moscow. The white block consisted of a plywood box structure, which had a door in the back and could double up as a store room for the local street cleaners’ brooms and shovels. Apparently, one of the fellow students of the architect Berthold Lubetkin, who could not find any accommodation in Moscow, secretly

68 Report from ‘Izvestiya’, no. 244, 9 November 1918, quoted in Street Art of the Revolution. Festivals and Celebrations in Russia. 1918–1933, ed. by V. Tolstoy, I. Bibikova and C. Cooke (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), p. 71. 69 Quoted in Norbet Lynton, ‘Tatlin’s Tower’, Yale University Press, 2009, pp. 54–55.

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lived inside the sculpture during the particularly cold winter of 1918. A good example of the functionality of Soviet art! In March 1919 Punin wrote an article about the new monuments, in which he stressed that: . . . the artist must forget sculpture in the narrow sense of the word; the form of the human body can henceforth no longer serve as an artistic form; form must be invented anew.70

Punin argued that figurative monuments could no longer change the city environment and that they should demonstrate ‘a synthesis of the different types of art’, and employ ‘the geometrical forms modernity called for.’71 5. Art and the State Back in 1918, for Punin the conflict seems to have been between the principle of the complete autonomy of art, which he had advocated before the October Revolution as a member of the Arts Union, and the practical advantages of securing government support for the Futurists. The political views which led him to support the Bolsheviks were essentially anti-liberal. They were expressed in a book he wrote with the philologist and then head of the Narkompros department of middle schools, Evgenii Poletaev. Their book was titled ‘Against Civilization’ [‘Protiv Tsivilizatsii’] and was published in 1918. Lunacharsky wrote an introduction to this brave opus against the replacement of culture by progress,72 which some felt was nothing more than ‘the intelligentsia’s repentance, thrown onto a machine.’73 Here the authors identified the Germans as striving towards culture, and England and France as striving to fulfil the idea of progress: ‘Two worlds stood against each other at the turn of the XX century—the creativity-oriented German world, striving to proclaim ownership of culture, and the English-French world, dominated by the desire for happiness.’74 Punin always admired Germany and for some reason disliked Great Britain. He felt that Russia should also turn towards culture rather than

70 Punin O pamyatnikakh, Iskusstvo Kommuny, no. 14, 9 March 1919, pp. 2–3. 71 Ibid. 72 In his book Punin called defined ‘progress’ as ‘civilisation’. 73 R. Williams, Artists in Revolution, p. 9. 74 Evgenii Poletaev, Nikolay Punin, Protiv Tsivilizatsii, predislovie A. Lunacharskogo, SPb, 1918, p. 60.



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progress or industrialisation. He felt that Russia must take over Germany’s right to be the ‘throne of culture’, since ‘the nation without a past, must have its future’.75 In his diary, Punin noted someone’s comment on this book: ‘I have never seen a more brilliant defence of more repugnant things.’76 Punin’s book ‘Against Civilization’ supported Lunacharsky’s calls for order instead of anarchy. Struck by the Commissars’ isolation from the Petrograd intelligentsia after the Revolution, Punin provided the much needed link between Lunacharsky, the intelligentsia and the Futurists. In the first years after the October Revolution, Punin also supported the new artists in a practical way by helping them to survive in times of starvation. On 21st November 1918, Sovnarkom had forbidden all private food trade, and put into operation a rationed distribution of food in accordance with people’s class. The first category consisted of workers and officials, who were allowed ½ pound of bread per day; the second category—public servants—¼ pound of bread; the third—the bourgeoisie—1/8 pound of bread; and the last, fourth category of dependants—1/16 pound of bread a day.77 Since artists were selling their works, they were considered to be small businessmen, and were qualified as the third category, namely bourgeoisie. Thus the question of positioning the artist as proletarian became even more vital. Punin, together with another member of the Visual Arts Department, Osip Brik, played a most crucial role in trying to persuade the authorities that artists were working as hard as others and should be given a place next to other members of the commune, such as shoemakers, cabinetmakers and dressmakers.78 Articles in support of Punin’s and Brik’s arguments started appearing in Petrograd newspapers already in January 1918. Thus the ‘political and literary newspaper’ New Petrograd Newspaper [Novaya Petrogradskaya Gazeta] on 27th January 1918 published an article by one of its correspondents, A. Chesnokov, called ‘Artistic Life’ [‘Khudozhestvennaya Zhizn’], which stated:

75 Diary note of 18 September 1916 in MSL, p. 101. 76 Diary note of 13 April 1920, Diary, p. 63. 77 O poryadke vydachi khleba i produktov po khlebnym kategoriinym kartochkam, in ‘Petrogradskaya pravda’, No. 230, 20 October 1918, p. 3, quoted in O. Dedinkin, p. 29. 78 O. Brik, Khudozhnik i Kommuna, in ‘Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo’, No. 1, November 1919, pp. 25–26, quoted in O. Dedinkin, p. 20.

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chapter four Undoubtedly Russian people really appreciate art . . . But in what sort of conditions and under which circumstances these builders of spiritual culture have to work, is hardly discussed . . . An artist essentially is not different from an ordinary worker: he spends his working day, which is not limited by any particular working hours or salary, covered in paint, clay or ink, in often pretty doubtful living conditions.79

Chesnokov finished his article by saying that ‘art at the present moment is more essential for people’s education than anything else’, and that artists ‘should have the same rights as other workers’, since their work is ‘essential for people’s future happiness’.80 But there was a catch—in order to be qualified for the first privileged category, artists had to start working for the state (the first move towards the Party’s control over art). Actors who worked for the state theatres belonged to the first category already. Then, all the journalists who joined the newly-emerged Union of Journalists, were classified as workers. Artists were still in a difficult situation. They belonged to different unions, which were yet to be replaced by the one almighty Union of Artists. In the new state everyday survival became an instrument in the hands of Bolsheviks. In the newspaper Art of the Commune, Osip Brik published a whole article called ‘Artists of the 3rd category’ [‘Khudozhniki Tretiey kategorii’], in which he called on artists to start working for the state, to become members of the proletariat, which would more than double the amount of bread they would be getting.81 A further vital question was how could impoverished artists sell their paintings in this ruined country? In their letters, artists used to beg Punin to buy their paintings, and he did his best to influence the decisions of the Russian Museum, Narkompros and of the porcelain factory, to purchase their new work. As a member of the Committee for Purchasing Works of Modern Art for the Museum of Artistic Culture, he was trying hard not only to persuade the committee to exhibit avant-garde art, but also to make sure that the museum got sufficient funds to pay artists for their work. In the recollection of his letters and fragments from his diary ‘Mir svetel lubov’iu’, there is one of 27th November 1919, sent by Punin to David Shterenberg at IZO in Moscow, asking him to transfer more funds

79 A. Chesnokov, Khudozhestvennaya Zhizn’, ‘Novaya Petrogradskaya Gazeta’, N 19, 27 January 1918, p. 3. 80 Ibid. 81 O. Brik, Khudozhniki Tretiei kategorii, ‘Iskusstvo Kommuny’, No. 4, 29 December 1918.



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to Petrograd,82 and several letters from artists to Punin, pleading him to help them financially.83 From his position as the Head of the Petrograd branch of the Department of Visual Arts, Punin set about cajoling the new Bolshevik government to support avant-garde artists. And his efforts were not wasted: the avant-garde artists could not only survive, but promote their radical views in the newly emerged media, and even publish books at a time of catastrophic paper shortage. Thus, for example, at the time of the so-called café period in Russian literature, when writers and poets were unable to publish their works and were obliged to give readings in semi-underground establishments, Kandinsky (who at the time was also a member of the collegium of IZO Narkompros in Moscow) published his autobiography ‘Steps: An Artist’s Text’ [‘Stupeni’] in the early 1919. In his article ‘Our tasks for the Professional Unions of Artists’ [‘Nashi zadachi dlya professional’nikh souzov khudozhnikov’] Punin wrote about the public importance of these new artists. He said that before the revolution, the bourgeoisie was the main commissioner of artists, and the latter used to get rich by inheriting artists’ values and ideas, but now the state must take over the role of the bourgeoisie and support the new Unions of artists.84 In September 1918, a special committee responsible for purchasing paintings for the State Fund gathered to discuss the proposed list of artists. This committee was formed of six artists (K. Malevich, V. Tatlin, N. Altman, A. Matveev, P. Miturich, A. Karev) and three art critics (N. Punin, P. Neradovsky—from the Russian Museum and S. Yaremich— from the Hermitage Museum). The original list of paintings which were suggested for state purchase was compiled by Kazimir Malevich, and consisted of the works of all the six artists from the committee, starting with the father of Suprematism— Malevich himself—as well as 34 Futurist artists, plus Picasso and Derain. In November 1919 Pravda criticized the Department of Visual Arts and Nikolay Punin as its head, for spending two million roubles on purchasing the wrong works of art.85 The editors of this newspaper complained that instead of purchasing paintings by such respected maîtres of the World of

82 Letter from Punin to David Shterenberg, MSL, pp. 125–126. 83 See letters from Miturich of September–October 1920, MSL, p. 138. 84 N. Punin, Nashi zadachi dlya professional’nykh souzov khudozhnikov, ‘Iskusstvo Kommuny’, no. 3, 22.12.1918. 85 See ‘Pravda’, 24.11.1919.

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Art movement as Benois and Golovin, the department spent money on works by Futurist artists, who belonged to ‘a school of painting, the future of which is still questionable.’ Two weeks later Anatoly Lunacharsky and David Shterenberg replied to this attack by a short article in the leftist paper Art of the Commune [Iskusstvo Kommuny]. Here they stated that the Department will be purchasing all paintings that are worthwhile, irrespective of the movement to which the artist belonged. They also pointed out that it will be only fair to exhibit young artists who are not yet represented in museums, and to help them financially rather than continue to support artists who are already famous and quite well off. Later, Lunacharsky also provided a more practical explanation of the committee’s preference for the works of avant-garde (or, as he called them ‘left’) artists. He said that the purchasing committee did not just prefer left artists, but could not afford to pay high prices for the works of the established masters of the right anyway!86 Nevertheless, taking into consideration public opinion, the final list approved by Lunacharsky was broadened to 143 artists and now included representatives of the World of Art and The Wanderers movements. But at least things now seemed to be moving forwards and in November 1918 the International Office of IZO [Mezhdunarodnoe biuro otdela izobrazitel’nykh iskusstv] had been set up in order to ‘effect the unification of the progressive fighters of the new art in the name of constructing a new universal artistic culture’.87 Nikolay Punin became a director of this new department, together with Lunacharsky, Shterenberg, Tatlin and Kandinskiy. It was supposed to expand on the social role of art, which, ‘harmoniously uniting nations and societies’, will make art ‘a powerful weapon in the struggle for the realisation of world socialism’.88 Their first project became the organisation of an International Congress of Russian and German artists, which was the first step in their ‘appeal for international unity in the creation of the new artistic culture’.89

86 A. Lunacharsky, Ob Izobrazitelnom Iskusstve, Moscow, 1967, v. 2, p. 94. 87 Quoted in Ch. Lodder ‘Russian Constructivism, p. 233. 88 Ibid., p. 303. 89 Ibid., p. 234.

Figure 1. Nikolay Punin as a young student, c. 1905.

Figure 2. Nikolay Punin’s mother, Anna Nikolaevna, c. 1896.

Figure 3. The Punin family dacha, Pavlovsk. Photograph by the author, 2006.

Figure 4. At Punin’s mother’s grave, in Pavlovsk, 1898.

Figure 5. Nikolay Punin’s step-mother, Elizaveta Antonovna.

Figure 6. Punin’s family, c. 1905: front row (left to right), Nikolay, his sister Zina and brothers Leonid and Alexander; second row: first on the left is Punin’s stepmother, Elizaveta Antonovna, in the middle is Nikolay’s ‘favourite grandmother’, Varvara Dmitrievna; in the middle of the third row is Punin’s father, Nikolay Mikhailovich, with his youngest son, Lev.

Figure 7. Nikolay Punin’s first love, Lida Leontieva (‘Lady of the Moon’).

Figure 8. An alley in the park in Pavlovsk. Photograph by the author, 2008.

Figure 9. The old station in Pavlovsk.

Figure 10. Silver medal awarded to Nikolay Punin on his graduation from the Gymnasium in 1907.

Figure 11. The large pond with the Admiralty in Catherine Park in Tsarskoe Selo, c. 1912.

Figure 12. Left to right: Vera, Zoya and Anna Arens, c. 1910.

Figure 13. N. Punin in 1912, inscribed by himself: ‘After reading Oscar Wilde’.

Figure 14. The State Russian Museum. Photograph by the author, 2010.

Figure 15. N. Punin with the Russian Museum guard, 1914.

Figure 16. Paul Cézanne, Great Pine near Aix, 1895–1897, oil on canvas, 72×91 cm., The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Figure 17. Ivan Shishkin, The Pine Grove, 1898, oil on canvas, 165×252 cm., The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Figure 18. Mikhail Vrubel, Six-winged Seraph (Azrael), 1904, oil on canvas, 131×155 cm., The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Figure 19. Valentin Serov, Portrait of Princess Zinaida Yusupova, 1902, oil on canvas, 181,5×133 cm., The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Figure 20. Andrei Rublev, The Purification, c. 1410, tempera on wood, 124.5×92×3 cm., The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Figure 21. The family together for the last time. From left to right: Nikolay, Alexander, Leonid, Zina and Lev, 1916.

Figure 22. N. Punin with his brother, Leonid. On the back Nikolay inscribed: ‘How one young man with a diplomatic career was trying to persuade another military young man not to go back to war and told him the easiest way to avoid going to front.’ The photograph was taken a few days before Leonid was shot on 1st September 1916.

Figure 23. Punin’s father, Nikolay Mikhailovich with his two sons, Alexander and Lev, 1917. This was sent to Nikolay by his father with his inscription: ‘Sons worthy of their parent’.

Figure 24. A window in Apartment No. 5.

Figure 25. Vladimir Tatlin with his pipe and tin of Three Nuns tobacco, c. 1916. Photograph: Alexander Rodchenko Archive, Moscow.

Figure 26. Vladimir Tatlin, Painterly Relief. Collation of Materials, 1914, iron, plaster, glass, asphalt. Whereabouts unknown.

Figure 27. Vladimir Tatlin, Venice from Kumer, costume design for Tsar Maximilian, 1911, pencil and gouache on paper, 23×17 cm.

Figure 28. Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lilya Brik in Petrograd, 1915. Photograph: Alexander Rodchenko Archive, Moscow.

Figure 29. Petr Miturich, c. 1916.

Figure 30. Lev Bruni, taken by N. Punin.

Figure 31. Nikolay Punin, 1918.

Figure 32. Front page of ‘Iskusstvo Kommuny’ [‘Art of the Commune’], 5th January 1919.

Figure 33. Nikolay Punin, 1920.

Figure 34. Anatoly Lunacharsky, c. 1918.

Figure 35. At the First Regional Conference, 1918. Nikolay Punin is in the middle of the second row. On his left next but one to Punin—Vladimir Tatlin; first from the right in the second row— Kazimir Malevich.

Chapter Five

NO FUTURE FOR THE FUTURISTS? ATTEMPTS TO EDUCATE THE MASSES 1. Punin and the State Hermitage Museum Even though building the new proletarian art was seen as an important task, the immediate concern of the Bolshevik-appointed authorities was re-organization of existing museums, and the protection of the abandoned palaces from looting by the revolutionary masses. In order to ‘protect’ old master paintings, the State Hermitage Museum in 1918 offered to ‘accept for temporary conservation’ the works of West European art from private collections. This was a time when starvation and theft were rife, so quite a number of people entrusted their precious treasured paintings, sculptures and jewellery to the museum. Most of them knew that they might never see their collections again, but were hoping that by donating their works of art, they would secure a place in the new ‘society of workers and peasants’. On 14th November 1918, a new decree was announced. From now on, none of the works of art which were given to the Hermitage for restoration, valuation or temporary conservation, could be taken out of the Museum under any circumstances.1 ‘Expropriation of the expropriated’ had started. Those who refused to part with their priceless belongings were forced to ‘register’ them following the ‘Decree of Obligatory Registration’, which was published on 10th November 1918 in the newspaper Northern Commune [Severnaya Communa]. Many of these works of art would soon be confiscated by the new regime. As Commissar for the Hermitage Museum, Punin was creating a liaison between Lunacharsky and the Council of the Museum. At this early stage in the establishment of what was to become a new Museum of West European art, Count Tolstoy was still director of the museum, and several members of the pre-revolutionary aristocracy, such as Baron Koskul, worked as curators. 1 Zhurnaly zasedanii soveta Ermitazha, part 1, 1917–1919, ed. By M. Piotrovsky (St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, 2001), p. 188.

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For more than eight months after the Revolution, the Council of the Museum, under its chairman Count Tolstoy, had weekly meetings, discussing new acquisitions and demanding more money, but by August 1918 most of the floors of the museum were still closed to the public and a large part of the collection was still in Moscow, where it had been evacuated during the First World War. ‘The republic is relying on you!’—announced Lunacharsky in one of his conversations with Punin, when on 31st July 1918 Nikolay had been appointed Commissar of the Hermitage museum. It was Lunacharsky’s decision, and at first the Council of the museum was against this intervention into the internal affairs of the Hermitage.2 At the thirty-third meeting of the Council of the Museum held on 6th August 1918, Punin explained that the authorities did not wish to intervene in the affairs of the Hermitage until it became obvious that the work of its Council was insufficient.3 He blamed the members of the Council for not working hard enough, and announced at the same meeting that first of all the Hermitage must be reorganised, more rooms should be opened for the general public, and all the evacuated exhibits should be returned from Moscow. The state capital had of course moved to Moscow in March 1918. Punin was not made welcome as Commissar at the Museum, which did not even have a full list of its collection and was still under threat of losing a large part of this to the museums in the new capital, Moscow. It was one of the most challenging jobs in the new Russia, but with his enthusiasm, determination and adherence to principle, Punin was the perfect candidate for this important role. Throughout his life, Punin never compromised in his beliefs, and he never worried about what other people thought of him, a most dangerous set of qualities in Soviet Russia, which in the end would cost him his life. Always seen as an outsider by the staff of the Hermitage, Punin would still openly criticize museum’ curators for not coming to work on time and would suggest firing some of them.4 On several occasions they questioned his power on such matters, but the Commissar remained adamant. Back in May 1918 the New Petrograd Newspaper [Novaya Petrogradskaya Gazeta] came up with an article by Foma Railyan called ‘The role of the intelligentsia from the government’s perspectives’ [‘Rol’ intelligentsii v persÂ�

2 Ibid., pp. 90–94. 3 Ibid., p. 92. 4 Ibid., p. 143.



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pektivakh pravitel’stva’]. The journalist proclaimed that the intelligentsia was not included at all in the political programme of the new government. He complained that in his speeches Lenin only spoke about workers and peasants, and that members of the intelligentsia were not trusted by the Bolsheviks. Railyan concluded: Now we understand why there is a political commissar next to every general and officer. Not only members of the bourgeoisie but also the working intelligentsia are deprived of political trust.5

However, in spite of its resistance, the Council of the Hermitage needed the new Commissar to fight for the Winter Palace to become part of the proposed Museum of Western European art, as well as to persuade the new government to transfer some works of art from the summer palaces around the city to the Hermitage. After the October Revolution, the Winter Palace, the cradle of the Tsar’s absolutism, was renamed the Palace of Arts. The palace of the Tsar and his family became the palace of the proletariat and its new culture. In the meantime, another threat was emerging. As a result of the multiple personal relationships now tolerated or even implicitly encouraged in the new Russia, as well as of the Revolution and the First World War, large numbers of orphans appeared on the streets of Petrograd. In her book ‘Everyday Stalinism’, Sheila Fitzpatrick wrote: Among the biggest social problems associated with family breakdown were homeless children and teenage hooligans. Homeless children—orphaned, abandoned by parents, or runaways—formed gangs, living by their wits in towns and railway stations and riding the rails.6

Housing for proletarian orphans became an important issue and the new Soviet government had suggested, in September 1918, accommodating them in the beautiful grand rooms of the Winter Palace, which was then renamed, yet again, the Palace of the Poor. At the time only the small southern wing of the Winter Palace was still used for concerts and exhibitions, all the main halls being allocated for Party meetings. Temporarily, some of these grand rooms were even used as a cinema and a large canteen, which of course was in breach of any conceivable fire regulations.7 5 Foma Railyan, Rol’ intelligentsii v perspektivakh pravitel’stva in ‘Novaya Petrogradskaya Gazeta’, N 89, 8 May 1918, p. 1. 6 S. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 150. 7 See Zhurnaly zasedanii soveta Ermitazha, part 1, pp. 126, 138, 147.

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Based on the hospital which had existed in the Winter Palace during the First World War, a hostel with accommodation and provision for up to 1000 people was opened here in 1919. It provided temporary accommodation for soldiers on their return from captivity in Germany in the spring of 1919. With their brave Commissar representing them, the Council members of the Hermitage were now fighting for the preservation of this most important Russian palace. On 9th October 1919, the Museum of the Revolution was founded in the former Winter Palace. This must have seemed at the time as the least of all evils. It remained there from January 1920 until 1942, but mercifully occupied only one floor of the vast palace. In 1920 the larger part of the original collection of the Hermitage museum was finally exhibited on the two main floors of the Winter Palace. In March 1918, there had been rumours that Petrograd would become a free trade centre, which implied a threat to the return of the treasures from the Hermitage evacuated to Moscow.8 By the end of August 1918, it became dangerous to continue keeping these works of art at the Kremlin, which was under threat of political insurrection. Furthermore, in November 1918 there had been reports of soldiers from the Red Army, who temporarily occupied the Kremlin palace, moving crates with the treasures from the Hermitage around and even tossing them together in a corner, inevitably causing damage to some fragile works.9 The Moscow authorities suggested organising an exhibition of the Hermitage treasures in Moscow, and then using these works to form a new Museum of Western Art, which was about to be opened at the quaintlynamed Academic Museum of Plaster Casts in the centre of the new capital.10 But the Council of the Hermitage kept fighting, suggesting in June 1919 a compromise of giving secondary works from the evacuated crates to the new museum in Moscow and moving all the masterpieces back to the epicentre of European art in Russia—the Hermitage in Petrograd. They also suggested moving here all the most important works from the Summer Palaces.11 Back in August 1918, Commissar Punin suggested bringing the Hermitage treasures from the Kremlin directly to Petrograd for better preservation. Discussions of the best way to transport these works of art started in 1918, 8 Ibid., p. 17. 9 Ibid., p. 226. 10 Ibid., p. 385. 11 Ibid., p. 399.



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but these priceless treasures only arrived back to where they belonged in November 1920. In many ways, it was only due to Punin’s uncompromising determination that the Hermitage Museum became one of the most unique art collections in the world. It was also young 30-year-old Nikolay Punin, who had suggested a new way to display the Museum’s collection based on the art-historical rather than the purely chronological principle. He believed in the new role of State Museums, which had to be turned from ‘storehouses of art into places where artists could interact with the art of the past’.12 Combining the role of the Commissar of the most conservative museum with his fight for the establishment of the new art in Russia, could not have been easy for Punin. His Futurist declaration that all old art should be wiped out and museums closed down, was now being contradicted by his job of Commissar responsible for the affairs of palaces and museums. At the meeting dedicated to the return of the Hermitage collection, Grigory Yatmanov asked Punin about the attitude of the young artists to this historic event, Nikolay Nikolaevich replied: ‘. . . I will take up the gauntlet thrown down to me. Yes, our positions are as strong as before, and we sincerely wish for the young artists to attend the Hermitage as rarely as possible, listening to the internal voice of their creativity instead. We have to reject all the old art in order to build the new bright future’.13 Punin believed that proletarian artists should study the classic works of art, but not copy them or even be directly influenced by them. As has been discussed in the previous chapter, following the same line of thought, back in December 1918, Nikolay Nikolayevich together with Osip Brik had ordered that all the antique plaster casts, which had to be copied by the students of the Academy of Arts since its foundation and which formed the corner stone of the Academic system of education, be removed from the classrooms to the yard of the Academy. New artists did not need to copy old art any longer. Commissar Punin, already unwelcome at the Hermitage, now also strove to promote his beloved Futurism at the Hermitage, as well as doing so later at the Russian Museum. However, one of his most significant undertakings in the few years of his work at the Hermitage was a large 12 K Otkritiiu vystavki proizvedenii iskusstva, in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 7 December 1918, p. 4. 13 N. Punin at the Festive Meeting dedicated to the return of the Hermitage collection, which took place at the Pavilion room of the Winter Palace on 22 November 1920. Quoted in M. O. Dedinkin, p. 50.

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exhibition of contemporary art, which for the first time combined works by the artists from all the artistic movements. It needed nineteen rooms in the Winter Palace (Palace of Arts at the time). Like the rest of Punin’s undertakings in this conservative museum, this project was not supported by the Council, which first declared that the wooden panels, which were used to exhibit paintings, were a fire hazard, and then decided to open their own first exhibition less than ten days after the contemporary Russian art exhibition started. The collection of the works for Punin’s very democratic exhibition (participation was free, as was entrance) was announced on 27th November 1918, and by January 1919, setting up the exhibition had begun. But since this was mid-winter and the rooms in the Winter Palace were very draughty and the heating non-existent (temperatures were often –12C), work on it took more than three months. In spite of all these obstacles, this amazing exhibition was officially opened by N. Punin on 13th April 1919, less than six months before the beautiful rooms of the former Winter Palace could be occupied by the exponents of the Museum of the Revolution. Punin managed to exhibit 1,826 works of art from 359 contributors, from icon painters to Suprematists. The exhibition was advertised in Art of the Commune, and entrance was free. It became Punin’s first contribution to his efforts to educate workers in art. He had proclaimed in 1916 that ‘the Socialistic nature of Futurism, of course, does not mean that art is for every worker, but it does mean that the combination of aesthetic feelings, which is developed by Socialism, is invested in Futurism and expressed by it’.14 The Decree establishing the exhibition stated that the State would only pay for the organisation of this exhibition, but would not participate in selection of the works of art for it. Thus each participant, rather than the State, was responsible for the success of this exhibition.15 Apart from professional artists, workers were especially encouraged to participate in this ‘free exhibition’. An article, published in the first issue of Art of the Commune, announced: ‘The Department of Visual Arts is taking every possible measure to show at the exhibition some paintings by workers. With this in mind the Department decided to get in touch with the Unions of Workers. The Department is also planning to issue an

14 Punin’s letter to A. Arens, 28 July 1916, MSL, p. 100. 15 Decree on the organisation of the art exhibition in Petrograd, in ‘Plamya’, No. 22, 29 September 1918, p. 13.



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appeal to all workers, asking them to bring their paintings to the Winter Palace, where they will be very welcome.’16 Understandably, the conservative (and still rather elitist) authorities of the Hermitage museum could not take such an amateur exhibition seriously. The reports of the meeting of the Museum’s Council make no mention of the success of Punin’s exhibition; instead they remarked on the 750 visitors in the first week to another exhibition, organised at the same time by the Hermitage curators, and suggested keeping it open until 6 pm daily.17 In the meantime, Punin’s exhibition had been attended by nearly 40,000 visitors, and had a mainly positive response in the media. Pavel Filonov, who according to Punin ‘could be a prophet if he believed in anything beside his paintings’, attracted special interest. For the first time the public had a chance to see 22 paintings by this unique master, united by one title Entry into the World Blooming. One critic wrote that the participation of Filonov was the only justification for holding this exhibition. The only artist to raise seriously negative criticism was Ivan Puni. In the newspaper, Northern Commune [Severnaya kommuna], one of the critics wrote about Puni’s plate on a wooden board: The Public is stopping by Puni’s work in bewilderment. And it is really impossible to understand how his plate on a wooden board is related to art. Not a painting, not a drawing of a plate, but an ordinary plate, attached to a wooden board . . .18

Not unexpectedly, Punin was of a different opinion about this new art. Back in April 1918, he wrote in his article ‘Art and the Proletariat’ [‘Iskusstvo I Proletariat’]: Such a wide-spread opinion that only art which illustrates the life and temperament of the proletariat, can be called proletarian art, is seriously wrong. Since art is in understanding of the material used to create it, rather than in using a particular form of art in the class war, it does not contain an obligatory condition to show anything. Art of the proletariat . . . is not only in opposition to church icons and noble portraits, but it is also against any form of illustration or representation.19

16 L. Pumpyansky, Vystavka kartin vsekh napravlenii, in ‘Plamya’, No. 52, 11 May 1919, pp. 9–12. 17 Zhurnaly zasedaniy soveta Ermitazha, part 1, p. 366. 18 Prazdnik iskusstva, in ‘Severnaya kommuna’, No. 82, 14 April 1919, p. 2. 19 N. Punin, Iskusstvo i proletariat, (Petrograd: Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo, No. 1, 1919), p. 24.

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This amazing exhibition became the true expression of Punin’s views of the new, free, proletarian art. On 14th June 1919—the day after it closed— Punin announced his resignation from the Hermitage. He explained that he did not have any more time to spare on the re-organisation of this vast museum. His destiny lay in building the art of the new society. 2. Art of the Commune From now on Punin saw his major role in the development of the new art of Socialist Russia—art which ‘does not ornament, does not agitate, does not delight, does not relieve depression and does not serve as a means of enrichment.’20 He was fighting for art which ‘augments human experience, deepens and broadens knowledge of the world and people in it, as well as relationships between them’.21 He was now declaring that all his faith was in Futurist artists, stating in one of his articles that ‘Communism as a theory of culture cannot exist without Futurism’.22 He believed that after the Revolution, Futurism must take the ‘empty throne of academic art’. In the article, ‘Futurism— the State art’ [‘Futurism—Gosudarstvennoe iskusstvo’] Punin wrote that some people believed that the Academy of Arts was inhibited with ghosts who kill creativity, and that Futurism—‘is not just one of many artistic movements, but the only one which is alive’. He finished his article by proclaiming: ‘Futurism is not the state art but is the only true way in the development of universal art’.23 At the dawn of the new Soviet Russia, the definition of proletarian art was still sufficiently vague, which invited a very free interpretation of this new concept. After the October Revolution Punin, together with the avant-garde artists Malevich, Kandinsky and Tatlin, was placed at the top of the new artistic hierarchy, and was asked to ‘construct and organise all art schools and the entire artistic life of the country’.24 A few years later,

20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 9, Feb 2, 1919, also in W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, p. 258. 23 ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 4, 29.12.1918. 24 Otchet o deyatelnosti Otdela izobrazitelnikh iskusstv, in ‘Vestnik narodnogo prosveshcheniya souza severnoi oblasti’, Nos. 6–8, 1918, p. 87—quoted in V. D. Barooshian The Avant-Garde and the Russian Revolution, Russian Literature Triquarterly, fall 1972, p. 348.



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Lunacharsky said: ‘No other government has responded so well to artists and to art as the present one.’25 At that time Lenin was still supportive of new art, even though in most cases he could not relate to it personally. Although he did not understand it, the leader of the Communist party did not deny it either, reflected in his words to the Romanian Dadaist, Marcu: ‘I do not know how radical you are or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough, but one must always try to be as radical as reality itself ’.26 In their book ‘Constructing Modernity. The Art and Career of Naum Gabo’, Martin Hammer and Christina Lodder explained: During the Civil War, the avant-garde was tolerated by the regime and dominated all the areas of activity. Many of the more conservative artists who had left Russia, were refusing to co-operate with the government or were busy working to preserve works of art. The new political leaders, although clearly preferring more realistic styles themselves as a means of indoctrinating the masses, were too preoccupied with winning the war to supervise artistic affairs very closely or to develop and implement their own artistic policy.27

Despite their significant involvement in the Revolution, the Futurists and indeed Punin himself were seen to be ‘more involved in their own revolution, not Lenin’s—their newspapers, paintings, and street banners for revolutionary holidays were often more avant-garde than Socialist’.28 For them, their new art was a Revolution in its own right. For more than a decade after the October Revolution, Punin continued his efforts to identify the importance of the role of art in the new proletarian culture, saying that ‘when the proletariat reaches the height of its development, everyone will need art’, ‘since the more developed the person is—the more sophisticated is his artistic taste, and the more necessary art is to him’.29 He believed that the proletariat preserved the purity of an understanding of art. Since workers are involved in creating things rather than just admiring them, Punin often stressed that, unlike the members of the bourgeoisie, they have a ‘functional understanding 25 Quoted in V. D. Barooshian, The Avant-Garde and the Russian Revolution, Russian Literature Triquarterly, fall 1972, p. 358. 26 Quoted in R. Motherwell, The Dada Painters and Poets, New York: Wittenborn Schultz, 1951, p. xviii. 27 Martin Hammer and Christina Lodder, Constructing Modernity. The Art and Career of Naum Gabo, (p. 57). 28 R. C. Williams, Artists in Revolution. Portraits of the Russian Avant-garde, 1905–1925’, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, London, p. 11. 29 ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 7, 19.01.1919.

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of objects’.30 He also felt that the proletariat can contribute to the artistic understanding of everyday reality. By the beginning of 1917, Punin had ceased writing for Apollon, now proclaiming it to be the voice of the World of Art movement, with which he could not agree. He was ready to move on to new media, which would express the postulates of the new art. In the summer of 1918, at Lunacharsky’s suggestion, David Shterenberg and Nikolay Punin approached Osip Brik and Vladimir Mayakovsky and invited them to join the Department of Visual Art. In return they promised that Narkompros would support a Futurist publishing enterprise. At the beginning of 1918 Osip Brik had initiated a literary society called Art of the Young [Iskusstvo Molodykh—IMO]. It aimed to promote Left art through exhibitions, artistic and literary meetings, but lacked official support or the funds which would come with it. After joining Narkompros, IMO gained an opportunity to publish books, written by Leftist authors. On 27th July 1918, the Petrograd board of Narkompros announced the establishment of the new IMO publishing enterprise and agreed to finance twelve Futurist publications per year. In the IMO statute Brik declared: The IMO publishing house is an association of Left writers devoted to creating, issuing, and propagandizing books that cannot be produced by any other publishing house because of their revolutionary orientation, their breaking away from all deep-rooted literary traditions.31

For Mayakovsky, Punin’s invitation to join IZO [The Department of Visual Arts] also represented fulfilment of his earlier attempts to promote Futurist poetry. In November 1917, Mayakovsky, together with another Futurist poet, Vasily Kamensky, and the artist David Burlyuk, persuaded a famous baker Filippov, to subsidize a small café for poets in the centre of Moscow. It was located in an old laundry just off Tverskaya Street. It gained the name Poets’ cafe [‘Kafe poetov’] and soon it was frequented by Anarchists and Futurists, who would recite their poetry there, provoking the audience. To reach an even broader audience, on 15th March 1918, Mayakovsky and his two friends published a Futurists’ Newspaper [Gazeta Futuristov], which contained manifestoes, as well as poems and articles, in which Futurism was associated with Socialist anarchists. From the pages of 30 Meeting about art, in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 7.12.19, pp. 3–4. 31 Quoted in Halina Stephan, ‘Lef ’ and the left front of arts, Munchen: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1981, p. 5.



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the first issue of this newspaper Mayakovsky called for the ‘third, bloodless but nonetheless cruel revolution, the revolution of the psyche’, after which the proletarians would join the artists. He also proclaimed: ‘We are the first and the only one in the world Federation of Revolutionary Art’.32 The Futurists’ Newspaper was printed and published by the poets themselves financed by the funds provided by Mayakovsky’s close friend and admirer, Lev Grinkrug. The income from the first issue was supposed to pay for the printing of those to follow. The first issue announced that it was published by ASIS—Association of Socialist Art [Assotsiatsiya Sotsialisticheskogo Iskusstva], which was Mayakovsky’s own publishing house,33 its editorial board was called The Newspaper Collegium of the Futurists’ Federation [Gazetnaya Kollegiya Federatsii Futuristov] and the address of the editorial office was the Poets’ café. However, the first issue of the Futurists’ Newspaper hardly sold at all, so no money was obtained for further issues. Mayakovsky and Grinkrug, unable to talk any union of newspaper sellers into distributing their newspaper, had to go by horse and cart around all the newspaper kiosks, trying to persuade individual sellers to sell their newspaper. Most were terrified by the newspaper’s name alone—Gazeta Futuristov. But even those who agreed to give it a chance had little success. As a result, the income made from the sales of the first issue was hardly enough to pay the cabmen. Most of the copies were given away to Mayakovsky’s friends or to his admirers at his public appearances. By April 1918, Anarchism (although for artists and poets this only meant freedom from government and class domination in the arts) was under attack from the new government, which forced the closure of the Poets’ Café. So after joining the IZO section of Narkompros in the summer of 1918, Brik and Mayakovsky insisted that the IZO should subsidize a new Futurists’ newspaper. Soon they found collaborators for this project, and in December 1918 a new newspaper, which mainly expressed the views of what became formally known as “Left artists”, was launched. It was called Art of the Commune [Iskusstvo Kommuny], and probably drew its name from the Commune des Arts, an avant-garde society, which emerged during the French Revolution. Financed by the Printing Section of Narkompros,

32 ‘Gazeta Futuristov’, N 1, 15 March 1918, p. 1. 33 In February 1918 ASIS published two of Mayakovsky’s poems—‘Chelovek’ and the first edition of ‘Oblako v shtanakh’ using money borrowed from his friends. See Bengt Jangfeldt, Majakovskij and Futurism. 1917–1921, in ‘Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature’, no. 5, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1976, pp. 118–119.

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this new weekly journal was free, and was soon declared to be ‘a haven for the avant-garde’ but then ‘rather than a service to the Revolution’.34 Prior to the appearance of this new medium, during a debate organised by Narkompros on 28th November 1918, Lunacharsky had expressed his support for the idea of a Narkompros journal, which he envisaged as a joint publication of the Theatrical, Musical, Museum and Visual Art Departments. But Mayakovsky and Punin had argued that IZO needed its own newspaper. Their arguments prevailed and Art of the Commune became the new medium for writers, artists and art-critics to express their views and observations on new art and on all the processes in it, as well as to announce all the exhibitions of new artists. Along with Art of the Commune, between January and December 1919, IZO published 8 issues of another newspaper Art [Iskusstvo] in Moscow. It also produced a journal Visual Art [Izobrzitel’noe Iskusstvo], of which only one issue was ever published in early 1920 (although dated 1919). But the most important and influential medium for Left artists was Art of the Commune. Being part of IZO, Art of the Commune mainly focused on fine arts, becoming more and more a propagator of the primarily Futurist visual art aesthetic, though, due to the involvement of Mayakovsky, the newspaper also had a section for literature (though dominated by Futurists as well). When Mayakovsky proclaimed in one of the issues of the journal that ‘the streets are our brushes, the squares our palettes’, by ‘our’ he meant nobody else but Futurists. ‘The publication of Art of the Commune was intended as the first step toward mobilizing the avant-garde forces in the struggle to assure the dominance of Futurists, now also embraced in Left art, in Soviet Cultural Institutions,’—observed Halina Stephan.35 The first issue of Art of the Commune, published on 7th December 1918, contained articles by Osip Brik, Nikolay Punin and Kazimir Malevich, together with Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem ‘Orders for the army of art’ [‘Prikaz po armii iskusstva’]. Later, the Soviet writer Kornel Zyelinsky reflected on this new medium: ‘Its’ format was small, its contents astonishing.’36 At a meeting of IZO on December 5th 1918, Punin had said that the first issue of this journal had been prepared within a week, and 10,000 copies 34 R. C. Williams, Artists in Revolution. Portraits of the Russian Avant-garde, 1905–1925’, p. 139. 35 Halina Stephan, ‘Lef ’ and the left front of arts, p. 7. 36 W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, p. 246.



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would have already been printed by 7th December. He remarked that it had to be published ‘as a matter of urgency’.37 The somewhat sudden appearance of the first issue of Art of the Commune took even the Futurists by surprise. They blamed Punin, Brik and Mayakovsky for not cooperating with the rest of the group. Mayakovsky replied that ‘they decided to face the board [in charge of IZO] with the fact that this newspaper had appeared, with the intention to encourage the entire board to take part in the further editing of the paper’.38 He promised to give all the Futurists a chance to express themselves in the new newspaper, but the editorial board was still made up only of IZO members: Osip Brik, Nathan Altman and Nikolay Punin. Apart from the main editors of the newspaper, Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich and Ivan Puni would publish articles here alongside the official statements of Anatoly Lunacharsky and David Shterenberg. It would also include the agendas for the meetings of the Department of Visual Art, and such organizational issues as new art museums and the placement of unemployed icon painters. However, the main theme, which united all the forthcoming issues of this new medium, was the establishment of the new culture on an avant-garde basis. Several articles by Nikolay Punin, often signed as just ‘N. P.’ would appear in each issue of this progressive newspaper, which many years later, would be seen as the most active testimony of the art of postrevolutionary Russia. Its first issue proclaimed: ‘Our paper is for everyone interested in the creation of the coming (future) art.’ In this issue Punin published his article ‘To the outcome of the October Celebrations’ [‘K itogam Oktyabr’skikh Torzhestv’], which focused on criticism of the first anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution. ‘In our times,— Punin declared—‘there is nothing that is not important—even the smallest movement and the least significant word has historical significance. Now it is unacceptable to do anything just half-way.’39 In his article, Punin wrote that instead of decorating old buildings, the new proletarian artists should build new ones; instead of producing mediocre old-fashioned posters, they had to make avant-garde placards. He remarked that ‘in our time when we do not have enough trousers or skirts, producing such posters is the same as hanging bread on the streets just for fun’. He felt that all the

37 Ibid., p. 245. 38 Quoted in Halina Stephan, ‘Lef ’ and the left front of arts, p. 6. 39 To the outcome of the October celebrations, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 07.12.1918.

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fabric spent on street decorations would have been much better used if it had been divided amongst workers. For him it was just ‘a reflection of the old world’.40 Perhaps anticipating the beliefs of the founders of the German Bauhaus, where art was required to be functional rather than decorative, producing objects for living and working, rather than art for the sake of pure enjoyment, Punin believed that the goal of ‘autonomous proletarian art . . . is not a matter of decoration but of the creation of new artistic objects.’ He wrote: Art for the proletariat is not a sacred temple for lazy contemplation but it is work—a factory, producing artistic objects for everyone.41

In particular, he felt that Vladimir Tatlin—whom he admired more than any other Russian artist—and his use of materials, provided ‘the only creative force free enough to lead art out of the trenches of its old positions.’42 Punin believed that Tatlin was the only artist who could fully understand and carry on the tradition of the Russian icon, in which ‘colour was identified with pigment.’43 In his book ‘Vladimir Tatlin. Against Cubism.’ [‘Vladimir Tatlin. Protiv Cubisma’], Punin proclaimed that, if for Cézanne pigment was ‘no more than colour’, for Tatlin, following the Russian tradition, colour was ‘an attribute of pigment, which was understood as a material’.44 In Art of the Commune Punin wrote: What was Suprematism? Without doubt, it was a creative invention, but it was purely a picturesque invention. . . . Tatlin defined Suprematism simply as a sum of the mistakes of the past. . . . Suprematism sucked all painting out of the history of art. . . . It made the painting abstract, taking away its fleshiness and substance, its raison d’être; that’s why Suprematism is not great art. . . . Suprematism could not offer any form.45

Punin was continuously striving to find new ways of expression in modern art. In his next article ‘Attempts at Restoration’ [‘Popitki restavratsii’], which was published in the same issue of Art of the Commune, he 40 Meeting about art, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 7.12.18, p. 4. 41 Ibid. 42 In H. Gassner, The Constructivists: Modernism on the Way to Modernization in ‘The Great Utopia. The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915–1932’, (The Guggenheim Museum, N. Y., 1992), pp. 305–306. 43 John Milner, Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian avant-garde, p. 195. 44 Ibid., p. 195. 45 N. Punin in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 10, 09.02.1919.



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proclaimed: ‘Revolution does not just break old forms of public and social structure—but it also destroys outmoded culture, old outlooks, old ideology. Since art is the expression of this culture and spiritual values—it needs the Revolution as well.’46 He wrote that ‘for us, the social revolution coincided with the revolution in art’. He went further—‘when the masses get used to the new art, they would also accept the new political theories’.47 Art of the Commune also contained the full report on the big issue: the debate on the role of art in the new proletarian society, and on the nature of this new art. These discussions were held at the former Winter Palace, now the Palace of Arts. It was the first account of these debates ever published in Russia. By then four meetings had taken place—the first three, held at the former Academy of Arts, were aimed mainly at students; but the fourth meeting, which took place on 24th November 1918 in the Armorial Hall of the former Winter Palace, sought to attract ‘the wide working masses’. Its theme was ‘Temple or Factory’ [‘Khram ili Zavod’]. The debate was opened by the editor of Art of the Commune himself, Nikolay Punin, who remarked in his speech: Bourgeois art is for those who can observe it calmly and passively. The bourgeoisie started treating art as a temple, artistic activity became . . . a sacred act. The proletariat . . . does not share such a perception of art. Hungry, it can not just contemplate art.48

In the newspaper report of this meeting, Punin’s passionate speech was followed by Osip Brik’s, who urged the proletariat to take over posts currently occupied by members of bourgeoisie in order to change all aspects of their lives. He suggested that workers should take over the apartments and houses of the bourgeoisie and ‘fill them up with the spirit of the revolution’. These propositions were soon to be realised, and Punin and Brik were to experience their less comfortable impact. The final word in this discussion was given to Mayakovsky, who proclaimed that ‘art should concentrate not in dead temple-museums, but everywhere—on the streets, trams, factories, workshops and workers’ flats.’49

46 Attempts of restoration, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 07.12.1918. 47 Attempts of restoration, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 07.12.1918. 48 Meeting about art, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 07.12.1918, pp. 3–4. 49 Ibid.

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It is hard to see from the report of this meeting published in Art of the Commune whether members of the general public could also express their opinions. But the prime importance of this debate is evident in numerous articles on proletarian art in all the subsequent issues of the newspaper. Another subject, discussed on the pages of Art of the Commune, was the conflict between the leaders of Petrosovet (Petrograd Union)—Grigorii Zinoviev, Ilia Ionov and others—and IZO, the Visual Art Department of Narkompros. In the second issue of the newspaper of 15th December 1918, Osip Brik published a further article on the ‘Artist-proletariat’ [‘Khudozhnik-proletariy’], again asserting that old art is dead, and proclaiming: ‘Art of the future—is proletarian art. Art will be proletarian or it won’t exist at all.’50 Following this bold statement, Brik further stirred the pot by explaining that such organisations as Proletkult wrongly believed that new art should be constructed by members of the proletariat itself, assuming that everything that is produced by workers automatically becomes proletarian art, since talent is universal and is given to everyone. In contrast with this belief, Brik stated that: Proletarian art—is the art created by proletarian artists. The proletarian artist—is the person, who combines both creative gift and proletarian consciousness. His talent belongs to the collective. He creates in order to fulfil his public duty. He does not care about his own benefit, he does not try to ingratiate himself with the crowd; instead he fights with its indolence and leads it along continuously moving path towards art. He always creates new art, fulfilling his public duty.51

At the debate dedicated to Proletariat and Art [Proletariat I Iskusstvo], which took place in December 1918, Mayakovsky announced: To the left—are us, the inventors of the new; to the right—are them, who look at art as a means of acquisition. Workers understand it very well, accepting our speeches with joy. There is no such thing as art without class . . .52

On the cover page of the second issue of Art of the Commune, Mayakovsky published his poem ‘Too early to rejoice’ [‘Rano radovat’sya’], in which the poet criticized people for holding on to old values in the name of 50 O. Brik, Artist-proletarian, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 2, 15.12.1918, p. 2. 51 Ibid. 52 V. Mayakovsky, quoted in Mayakovsky. 1930–1940. Stat’i i materialy, Leningrad: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1940, p. 21.



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art. This poem was followed by Lunacharsky’s comments, which aimed at mellowing Mayakovsky’s Futurist rejection of Pushkin’s poetry, Raphael’s paintings and Rastrelli’s architecture. But the Futurists refused to compromise, and wisely or unwisely, Punin became their loyal ambassador. In the second issue of Art of the Commune, Punin stated that ‘for the healthy and well thought-out Futurist outlook, demolition of the old times is just a method of fighting for existence’. In the same article, however, he stressed that ‘artistic terror’ should not be the only method of fighting for new art. Perhaps in contradiction of his own Futurist stance, Punin also said that new art should re-organise old values and forms, rather than deny them completely.53 The second issue of the newspaper contained an article by the Party bureaucrat, A. Mushtakov, who tried to inspire workers to participate in the disputes about new art and to support Left artists. He wrote: ‘The proletariat needs art born out of the noise of factories, industrial plants, streets; which in its spirit should be the thunderous art of struggle. Such art already exists. It is called Futurism.’54 According to Mushtakov, only the working class could bring Futurism to life, and prove to ‘the rotten intelligentsia’ that it has every right to exist. In the third issue of 22nd December 1918, Nikolay Punin published an article called ‘Left-Right’ [‘Levye-Pravye’] supporting the dictatorship by the creative minority—artists-Bolsheviks—over famous and elitist masters. He proclaimed: ‘Only those artists whose creative forces equal the strength of the working class can remain with the proletariat . . . The ones who create, live, others can die.’55 In a further article in the same edition, ‘Our aims and the professional unions of artists’ [‘Nashi zadachi i professional’nye soiuzy khudozhnikov’], Punin described the artist of this new world as a maker of useful objects, and concluded that the new Communist state should provide such artists with everything they needed. However, the conflict between the left wing of the IZO and the Petrograd Bolshevik party was building, and in the same third issue of Art of the Commune, Osip Brik had to admit that both workers and their proletarian leaders were aesthetically retarded and unable to relate to Left art.56 However, Vladimir Mayakovsky was not ready to give up. He declared in his 53 ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 2, 15.12.1918. 54 A. Mushtakov, October in art, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 2, 15.12.1918, pp. 1–2. 55 N. Punin Left-Right, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 3, 22.12.1918, p. 1. 56 O. Brik, You are right, comrade Mushtakov!, Ibid., p. 3.

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poem, published in the same issue as Brik’s article, that the Futurists are ready to set fire to all old art and use it for street illumination.57 In the same issue of the newspaper, Punin denied that Futurism was trying to take over power in Russia. He declared in Futurism—the state art [Futurism-gosudarstvennoe iskusstvo] that Futurism does not depend upon the state: ‘Futurism has not become the state art, but the hour of the triumph of the new ideas has come.’58 The debate was now heating up still further. Punin’s claims that Futurism was ‘the only right way’ for the development of new art was soon criticised in the Proletkult newspaper Gryadushchee [Future], which castigated Futurists as members of the intelligentsia rather than the working class, and concluded that even on their own terms they could not possibly build the art of the new Russia: ‘We should not allow the Futurists to dress up the body of the working culture into the Futurists’ cloth.’59 Initially supportive of the newspaper, Lunacharsky soon started to criticize the paper’s habit of speaking simultaneously in the name of a particular school (Futurism) and at the same time in the name of the regime. He also criticised the paper’s ‘destructive tendencies in relation to the past’.60 Nikolay Punin remained convinced that they were fighting for a new culture ultimately beyond social class. Addressing a meeting dedicated to new and old art, reported in the fifth issue of Art of the Commune (December 29th 1918), Punin declared: ‘We do not need the state . . . because we are struggling for a Socialist future unknown to the state.’61 Addressing this meeting, Punin explained that ‘young artists are fighting against old art not because it is bad or cannot be used as historic material, but because it is still trying to impose its influence on new art’.62 He appealed to all those who wanted to create the new proletarian culture ‘to renounce the favoured attitude to the monuments of the past and give young artists the chance to create, together with the proletariat, the great artistic culture of the future.’63 He wrote: ‘We want new life and new culture. . . . We are the polar opposite of the whole old world. We came in order not to renew it, but to destroy it, in order to create our new world.’64 57 V. Mayakovsky, To the other side, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 4, 29.12.1918, p. 3. 58 N. Punin Futurism—the state art, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 4, 29.12.1918, p. 2. 59 P. Bessalko Futurism and proletarian culture in ‘Gryadushchee’, no. 10, 1918, pp. 10–12. 60 A. Lunacharsky, Lozhka protivoyadiya, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, Dec. 29, 1918. 61 N. Punin Futurism—the state art, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 4, 29.12.1918, p. 2. 62 ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 5, 05.01.1919. 63 ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 5, 05.01.1919. 64 Ibid.



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Disputes about new art continued at the Palace of Arts, and Art of the Commune covered them all. On the 22nd and 29th December 1918, two more meetings held there debated the relationship between Proletariat and Art, and a full report of these meetings appeared in the fourth (29th December 1918) and fifth (5th January 1919) issues of Art of the Commune. By January 1919, the conflict was intensifying between the Leftist artists under the banner of Futurism, and the Bolshevik authorities. In the sixth issue of the newspaper, Punin published ‘Revolutionary wisdom’ [‘Revolutsionnaya Mudrost’]—an article full of despair: . . . we know that everything that is said at these meetings and conferences, in these books and articles—is so incompetent, so creatively weak. Enough doubts and politicizing! As long as the Revolution is not dead, we won’t be dead as well—we, its children. And if it dies, we may as well die with it!65

Despite feeling that the earth was rapidly disappearing from under their feet, Punin and Brik continued to promote Futurism even though open opposition from the government was clearly growing. In the sixteenth issue of Art of the Commune, of 23rd March 1919, Punin proclaimed: ‘To destroy means to create, since we overcome our past by destroying it.’66 But did he truly believe in the necessity to destroy traditional art? At the same time as he signed this bold proclamation, Punin, who had been curator of the Department of Icons and Church Relics at the Russian Museum before the Revolution, and had written several articles about traditional Russian art, was still trying to support the icon-painters in Mstera, where the whole population was historically involved in painting icons. After the Revolution, all sales and export of icons from the villages in Central Russia were banned and many skilled artists lost their jobs. It was suggested that perhaps these artists could use their skills and techniques to paint wooden toys, but since other villages in different parts of Russia were already specialising in making toys, starting this industry in Mstera meant ‘stealing their bread’. Punin was fighting for their right to continue production of icons as works of art rather than subjects of a religious cult, arguing that there was no decree prohibiting the sale of icons. At the meeting in the Lassal house, which took place in January 1919, and was dedicated to the relationship between old and new art, Lunacharsky pointed out that ‘not all old art is bourgeois and even if it is—not all of it is bad’.67 65 N. Punin Revolutionary wisdom, in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 6, 12.01.1919, p. 2. 66 ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 16, 23 March 1919. 67 ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 5, 05.01.1919.

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He stressed the participation of the working class in creating the eternal monuments in Egypt and Ancient Greece. He also stated his belief that Futurism is not the only alternative to the art of the past. Punin argued that ‘our aim is to revolutionize old art, which does not mean to make it Futurist—it can be anything it wants to be, but it should be alive.’68 In his letter of 4th February 1919, he wrote: ‘The novelty of Tatlin’s relief in comparison with the frescoes of Raphael lies only in the fact that the surface and texture and other elements are distilled by Tatlin to their essence; otherwise it is a continuous tradition. That is why we have nothing more to learn from Raphael’.69 Punin felt that ‘only in front of Tatlin’s reliefs one feels how insignificant the world is.’70 But, as in the case of his speeches at the time when he was a student in the Gymnasium, 31-year old Punin had clearly got carried away in his writing. Soon his brave statements started to worry the intelligent Lunacharsky, who had been raised with traditional values and believed that ‘the new proletarian and Socialist art can be built only on the foundation of all the acquisitions from the past.’71 The only concession he could make was his belief that the ‘proletariat must assimilate the legacy of the old culture not as a pupil, but as a powerful, conscious, and incisive critic.’72 Lenin thought of Anatoly Lunacharsky as a man of ‘French brilliance’ and Gorky considered him ‘lyrically minded but muddle-headed’.73 Despite his criticism of the Russian avant-garde as the ‘fruit of the unhealthy atmosphere of the boulevards of bourgeois Paris and the cafés of bourgeois Munich’, ironically Lunacharsky had lived most of his life before 1917 in Western Europe and described himself as ‘an intellectual among Bolsheviks and a Bolshevik among intellectuals’.74 In an article about Lunacharsky, the famous Russian writer Korney Chukovsky described how many members of the cultural elite considered the Commissar of Enlightenment to be ‘one of them’, despite his being a Bolshevik.75 Chukovsky wrote with admiration about the right-oriented 68 Revolutionary Wisdom, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 6, 12.01.1919. 69 In Moscow, ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 10, 09.02.1919. 70 Diary note of 23 October 1916, MSL, p. 103. 71 A. Lunacharsky and Y. Slavinsky, Theses of the Art Section of Narkompros and the Central Committee of the Union of Art Workers Concerning Basic Policy in the Field of Art, 1920—in J. Bowlt ‘Russian Art of the avant-garde. Theory and criticism’, p. 184. 72 Ibid. 73 Lunacharsky and Proletarian Culture in R. Williams ‘Artists in Revolution’, p. 24. 74 Ibid. 75 K. Chukovsky, Lunacharsky, in ‘Sovremenniki. Portrety I Etudy.’, ‘Zhizn’ zamechatelnykh liudei’, is. 8 (340), (‘Molodaya gvardiya’, Moskva, 1963), pp. 424–425.



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artist, Isaak Brodsky, who painted some of the most famous portraits of Lenin, and blamed Lunacharsky for allowing Leftist painters to destroy the Academy of Arts and for allowing the demagogy of formalism to flourish. He believed that, thanks to the minister’s tolerant attitude towards avant-garde artists, they could carry on with their ‘experiments’, which in turn had damaging consequences for the development of Russian art.76 However, in the early days of the new Soviet state, Lunacharsky continued to provide the most important link between the new government and the artists, even if he could never really understand non-conformist art. In his opus on Lunacharsky and Proletarian Culture, Robert Williams wrote that the People’s Commissar for Public Enlightenment ‘had always preferred the murals and frescoes of Puvis de Chavannes with their groups of happy youths to the newer abstract and geometrically deformed work of cubists, orphists, and Futurists.’77 He described Lunacharsky’s impressions of the exhibition of Italian Futurists, held in February 1912, in Paris, which the future commissar had considered to be ‘purely subjective chaos’. Lunacharsky felt that Boccioni’s paintings and sculptures were ‘nine-tenths artistic hooliganism’, and the works of Marc Chagall were only ‘pretentious posing and a kind of sick taste’.78 According to one of his contemporaries, the Hungarian writer René Fueloep-Miller, the Minister of Enlightenment had ‘never been able to suppress entirely a secret leaning towards the culture of the old world.’79 If Lunacharsky could define the new proletarian culture, it was unlikely that it would have been avant-garde by any definition. Back in 1907–1909, he developed his theory of a ‘proletarian culture’ which would ‘transform Socialism into a religion for the Russian proletariat’. According to this theory, Marxism would become a major religion—a theology without God, and art would be realistic in style and would be created by ‘proletarian artists’.80 These words sound like a prediction of the future decline in the diversity of post-revolutionary Russian art and its reduction to the only acceptable form of proletarian art, Socialist Realism. Even though Lunacharsky died in 1933, perhaps he managed to catch a glimpse of this only ‘acceptable’ form of Soviet art, which was much as he envisioned it in 1907: ‘positive,

76 Ibid., p. 424. 77 Lunacharsky and Proletarian Culture in R. Williams ‘Artists in Revolution’, p. 53. 78 Ibid. 79 R. Fueloep-Miller, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism, in R. Williams, p. 5. 80 Ibid., pp. 45–46.

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optimistic and comprehensible to the masses’.81 But in the 1920s Lunacharsky was acting as a ‘conciliator between two seemingly irreconcilable forces, the Bolshevik revolutionaries and free-thinking intellectuals’.82 He combined a wide knowledge of philosophy and art, ‘relatively superior cultural and literary interests’ with the qualities of ‘a provincial schoolmaster with a dash of a journalist’.83 Lunacharsky had not spent much time in Petrograd before the Revolution as he had returned from a decade as an emigrant only six months before October 1917. He, therefore, had only a slight acquaintance with contemporary Petrograd artistic life. When he became Commissar, probably without realising it himself, he needed Punin as his interpreter of what was new in art. It probably became Lunacharsky’s main motivation in promoting this young and extremely gifted critic to become the head of the Petrograd IZO in 1918. Nikolay Punin was an art-critic of the new era, promoting new art, proclaiming that ‘Our art is the art of form, of shape, because we are proletarian artists, artists of a Communist culture.’84 Punin believed that ‘broken consciousness’, with form as one of its elements, is the measure of ‘truly revolutionary art’, in which 2×2 equals anything but 4.85 In April 1919 he wrote: ‘Our art—is the art of form, since we are— inventors.’86 Form rather than content appealed to Punin, who as early as 1908 had made a note in his diary: . . . Even in Nietzsche, it was always form that interested me much sooner and more deeply. When I read Zarathustra for the first time, I got as much enjoyment as I have ever had out of it even though I didn’t understand a single line.87

The avant-garde artists were creating a new life, a new world with its new forms—new art, which was made unique through the ‘conjunction of the cubist example and the revolutionary possibilities.’88 Several art critics expressed their objection to Punin’s statement about the prerogative 81 Ibid., p. 46. 82 Ibid., p. 49. 83 N. Berdyaev, Dream and Reality, (New York, 1962), p. 125. 84 Quoted in Tugendkhol’d Ia. A., Zhivopis’ revolutsionnogo desyatiletiya (1927) in ‘Iskusstvo oktyabrskoi epokhi’ (Leningrad, 1930), p. 24. 85 N. Punin, Broken consciousness, in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 7, 19 January 1919, p. 2. 86 N. Punin, About form and contents, in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 18, 6.04.1919. 87 Diary note of 21.03.1908—in Diary, p. 20. 88 J. Berger in R. C. Williams, Artists in Revolution. Portraits of the Russian Avant-garde, 1905–1925, p. 7.



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of form in modern art, including Iakov Tugendkhol’d who in his article ‘Painting of the Revolutionary Ten Years’ [‘Zhivopis’ Revolutsionnogo Desyatiletiya’] wrote: ‘For Punin, form is the command given by the age, at once Russian and Western, proletarian and bourgeois.’89 He argued that content matters, not form, and added that Punin ‘did not understand that, since the form of the age is obligatory to all, the difference between proletarian and non-proletarian art consists not in form but in the idea of utilizing it . . .”90 Punin would reply to this remark in one of his lectures, which he gave in Petrograd in the summer of 1919: People say: there is limited content in modern art. How can a painter’s content be limited when he is possessed by the elemental feeling of painting? How can a painter’s content be limited when he has grasped with such fullness and diversity the distinctive characteristics of a certain form in the painterly elements? How can an artist’s content be limited if he has discovered and shown the whole wealth of the painterly element?!91

However, in these lectures Punin had to admit: It is possible that many of you would like to read something more in modern artists’ pictures than they can and should give. That is understandable because there still dwells in you, and probably will dwell for a long time yet, the desire to see in the artist a man of letters, a philosopher, a moralist . . .92

In his book ‘Art and Literature Under the Bolsheviks’, Brandon Taylor remarked that Punin tried to distinguish between the philistine lumpenproletariat and the genuine proletariat, who ‘will immediately identify with the “avant-garde” ’. He quoted Punin, who in 1919 explained that: ‘For the mob, painting as a pure art form, painting as an element, is unintelligible unless it is diluted with literary and other aspects of artistic creation.’93 But for someone like Lunacharsky, this explanation was not enough. Unable to relate to art without obvious content, he wrote in his article ‘The Soviet State and Art’ [‘Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo i Iskusstvo’]:

89 J. A. Tugendkhol’d, Zhivopis’ revolutsionnogo desyatiletiya in ‘Iskusstvo oktyabrskoi epokhi’, Leningrad, 1930, pp. 24–25. 90 Ibid. 91 From Lecture 6 in the ‘Pervyi Tsikl Lektsii’, Petrograd, 1920—in by J. E. Bowlt, Russian art of the avant-garde, pp. 175–176. 92 N. Punin ‘Pervyi Tsikl Lektsii’, Petrograd, 1920, in Brandon Taylor Art and Literature Under the Bolsheviks, vol. 1: ‘The Crisis of Renewal. 1917–1924’, London: Pluto Press, 1991, p. 42. 93 Brandon Taylor, Art and Literature Under the Bolsheviks, vol. 1: ‘The Crisis of Renewal. 1917–1924’, p. 42.

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chapter five . . . ’Left’ artists—as long as they remain themselves—practically can give so little of ideologically revolutionary art, as a dumb person can make a revolutionary speech. They principally deny the ideological and imagery context of paintings, or of statues, for example. They also went so far in the deformation of natural material, that the proletariat and peasants, who, together with the greatest artists of all time demand first of all, clarity in art, just raise their hands in front of this product of the late evening of Western European culture.94

By 1920, Lunacharsky had lost any faith he had held in the Futurists. He wrote that the Futurists had proved ‘unacceptable to the masses, although they showed much initiative during popular festivals, good humour and capacity for work of which the “old artists” would have been absolutely incapable.’95 Two years later he explained to foreign delegates to Comintern: ‘. . . Yes, I extended a hand to the ‘Leftists’, but the proletariat and peasantry did not extend a hand to them . . .’96 Osip Brik argued that as long as artists created their works for the new society, they did not need to simplify their art for ‘unprepared customers’. He believed that ‘a work of art was socially functional if it showed a new way of handling materials or pointed toward functionality.’97 Brik insisted that an artist could fulfil his social role merely ‘through the creation of new forms’.98 Nikolay Punin also believed quite fundamentally that only the art of the Futurists was able to satisfy the demands of the revolutionary movement. He felt that ‘if the proletariat still does not understand the art of the Futurists, it does not mean that it would not be able to relate to them in the future.’ And since all the arguments in Communist Russia had to be supported by Marxism, Punin finished his speech at the Second Artistic Meeting, which took place on 18th October 1918 and was dedicated to The Minority in Art, by saying that in the same way as they do not understand modern art, ‘workers never understood Marx, but now for the proletariat, Marx is the great teacher and leader.’99

94 From the article by A. V. Lunacharsky, Soviet State and Art, in A. V. Lunacharsky ob iskusstve, ed. by I. Saz and A. Ermakov, Moscow, ‘Iskusstvo’, 1982, v. 2, p. 104. 95 Quoted in Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 127. 96 Ibid. 97 Halina Stephan, ‘Lef ’ and the left front of arts, p. 8. 98 Ibid. 99 From the speech by N. Punin at the 2nd Artistic Mass Meeting in the GSHM on 18.10.1918, cited in the article by P. Zhilin Second Artistic Mass Meeting, in ‘Krasnaya Gazeta’, N 201, Evening issue, 21 October 1918, p. 3.



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Continuing to encourage avant-garde artists to be proud of being formalistic, in his Cycle of Lectures Punin proclaimed: . . . Yes, we are proud of this formalism because we are returning mankind to those peerless models of cultural art that we knew in Greece. Isn’t that sculptor of antiquity formal, doesn’t he repeat in countless, diverse forms the same gods who ultimately for him are equally alien, equally remote?100

Punin felt that Greek sculptors strived to realize the great wealth and tension of creative forces in their work. Equally he believed that misunderstanding and criticism should not stop artists in building the new art of the new Russia: . . . We were persecuted and will be persecuted, not because we are antibourgeois, or the other way around, but because we possess the gift of creative art. This is the reason we cannot be tolerated by mediocrity, even by Communist mediocrity. . . . Speaking about Futurism, we always spoke about power. Moreover, we pointed out that Futurism is a correction to Communism because Futurism is not only an artistic movement but a whole system of forms . . . And now we are even ready to declare that Communism as a theory of culture cannot exist without Futurism . . .101

These provocative words effectively signed the death warrant of the popular Art of the Commune. In his book ‘Art of the Avant-garde: 1907–1932’, Alexander Krusanov wrote: The concept was quite good: to join together Communism and Futurism not only ideologically, but in an organized manner, which would have given artists an opportunity to conduct their ideas as if they came from the party—not just from the state, but the party itself. Realisation of these plans promised many benefits and could substantially change the position of Futurism: firstly, it would have fenced the new art from the attacks, since any criticism would have been transferred onto the political level and could have been qualified as contra-revolutionary; secondly it could have given artists a chance of using the organisational structures of RSPb [the Bolshevik party] for carrying out their ideas.102

Futurism did become an official art style in Italy, where its radical anarchism coincided with the rise of Fascism. But young Russian Communists

100 From Lecture 6 in the ‘Pervyi Tsikl Lektsii’, Petrograd, 1920—in J. E. Bowlt, Russian art of the avant-garde, p. 176. 101 N. Punin, Art and Revolution, in W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, p. 258. 102 A. V. Krusanov, Russkiy avant-garde: 1907–1932: Istoricheskii Obzor, V. 2, Book 1, p. 189.

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were inclined to different art, and already in December 1918 at the discussion Proletariat and Art, Iliya Ionov103 argued that ‘Futurists put on their canvases stone instead of bread, demanded by the masses. Different posters, painted by Futurists, cannot raise any sympathy among the workers. Futurists do not contribute anything either to literature, or to visual art. Nobody needs their art. The working class cannot accept such art. The working class does not want an old art, but it does not want Futurist art either.’104 3. Closure of Art of the Commune and the State’s First Limitations of Artistic Freedom Having lost Lunacharsky, one of its most influential supporters, in the spring of 1919 Art of the Commune, the voice of Futurism, was suddenly discontinued. Despite its great popularity and the fact that ‘one had to hunt for every issue’ of it, the attacks from the rightist circles in the government and especially from Proletkult, caused its closure after only nineteen issues. The fears that Art of the Commune ‘proclaims slogans of modern art’ and that ‘Futurism wants to conquer the country’105 resulted in the disappearance of this valiant newspaper. In the first years after the Revolution and indeed later, it was quite common for Bolshevik leaders to discontinue newspapers which expressed views alternative to the ones they shared. In 1918, Lenin had shut down the newspaper New Life [Novaya Zhizn’] after the appearance in it of Maxim Gorky’s article in which the famous writer characterized the Father of the October Revolution as ‘a talented man, who has all the qualities of a ‘leader’, as well as the lack of morals, necessary for this role, and a pure landowner’s ruthless attitude toward the lives of the masses’.106 And in January 1919, the article ‘At last’, written by O. Oleniev, was published in the first issue of the weekly newspaper, Factory Whistle [Gudki].

103 Iliya Ionovich Ionov (born Bernshtein, 1887–1942) was a professional revolutionary and a poet. In 1917, Ionov was appointed head of the State Publishing House in Petrograd, the first publisher in the Soviet Union. He was a hugely influential civil servant and collector of books and engravings. In 1926, Ionov was sent to the USA as a trade representative of the Soviet Union. 104 Quoted in O. Dedinkin, p. 31. 105 V. Shklovsky in W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, p. 247. 106 Maxim Gorky, Nesvoevremennye mysli. Zametki o revolutsii i kul’ture in ‘Untimely thoughts: notes on the Revolution and culture’, Moscow, 1990, p. 151.



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It marked the dawn of the slow strangulation of Left art in Socialist Russia. In this self-righteous newspaper, Oleniev proclaimed: We are convinced that the Great Revolution, while destroying the foundations of the bourgeois system, would have eliminated Futurism, which is an act of the ultimate decomposition of that system, but for the fact that the People’s Commissar for Education [A. Lunacharsky] gathered the rotten straws of Futurist imposition in the first days of the October Revolution and tried to weave from them a life belt of revolutionary art. The Futurists, with a practical sense characteristic of them, used that false step of the Commissar to their advantage and flocked to occupy all responsible positions in the art departments . . . Directing the Department of the Visual Arts, Punin and Tatlin, defining the line of literary tastes of Mayakovsky, Ivnyev, and Marienhof, lead the literary publishing department, swelling their ranks with obviously talentless people and not so obvious cheats. Messrs Futurists exploit the organs of Soviet authority to promote their rotten bourgeois art as proletarian art. There is no room here for ideological discussion. The Futurists, who are mechanically attached to the proletarian Revolution, must just as mechanically be driven away from the warm places they now occupy . . .107

For many, the sudden closure of Art of the Commune became yet further proof of the Futurists’ failure to take the leading position in the establishment of the new proletarian culture. As Halina Stephan wrote: In contradiction to popular belief in the flourishing of the avant-garde in the early Soviet period, it is obvious that the repeated failure of the Futurist attempts to gain access to the public as a group must be seen as a concrete indicator of their position within Soviet culture. In particular, the Futurists persistently attempted, but never managed to establish a printing firm that could serve as a focal point from which the literary avant-garde could disseminate ideas.108

The disappearance of Art of the Commune and the inactivity of IMO [Art of the Young] marked the end of the enthusiastic propagation of Futurism as the base for the new Soviet culture, but the debate had ongoing consequences: in 1919, Lunacharsky was attacked by both Lenin and his wife, Krupskaya, criticising him for cooperation with Futurists. Lunacharsky was also attacked by the Futurists themselves, who were blaming him for withdrawing state support from their group.

107 In W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, p. 259. 108 Halina Stephan, ‘Lef ’ and the left front of arts, pp. xi–xii.

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Lenin’s May 1919 condemnation of Futurism’s programme ran thus: . . . quite often the most nonsensical grimaces have been presented as something new, whereas anything unnatural and foolish has passed for purely proletarian art and proletarian culture.109

The banner of newness in itself could never fool or bribe Lenin, who once said to Clara Zetkin: Why must we bow down to the new, as though to a God whom we must obey simply because he is new? . . . I am unable to consider the productions of expressionism, futurism, cubism, or any other isms, as the highest manifestation of artistic genius. I do not understand them. I experience no joy from them.110

Clearly Lenin could not appreciate that his personal taste in and ignorance about modern art should not have been the only measure to determine the artistic development of the new Russia. On the contrary, in his article ‘A spoonful of Antitoxin’ [‘Lozhka Protivoyadiya’] (which appeared as a result of Lunacharsky’s conversation with Lenin, who proposed to halt all the attacks on classical heritage), the Minister of Education wrote: In discussions of the question of form—the taste of the People’s Commissar and all the state representatives should not be taken into consideration. We should grant the right of free development to all the artists and groups of artists. We should not allow one movement to suppress another, because of their old fame or new fashion.111

In May 1920, Punin had reason to fear for his position of head of the Petrograd IZO: there was an edict from the Communist Party executive committee to clear the department of Futurists.112 Punin’s concerns were legitimate, as the new ‘political-educational sector’ of Narkompros, Glavpolitprosvet [Glavnyi politiko-prosvetitel’nyi komitet] was formed soon after, in July 1920. Responsible for coordinating the political education of workers as well as for propaganda, this organization was also supposed to become the highest authority in the organization of the arts. However, with the exception of P. Voevodin of FOTO-KINO, none of the former heads of the Narkompros arts departments 109 Ibid., p. 16. 110 Quoted in Eastman, Max, Artists in Uniform. A study of literature and bureaucratism, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1934, p. 228. 111 A. Lunacharsky, A Spoonful of Antitoxin, in Lunacharsky, A. V. ‘Stat’i ob iskusstve’, Moscow-Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1941, pp. 466–467. 112 See MSL, diary of 17 May 1920, p. 129.



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moved to Glavpolitprosvet. So it appointed P. Kiselis, a relatively uninspiring ‘revolutionary’ artist, as head of its own IZO. From now on the main purpose of art would be the agitation and education of workers. Not surprisingly, Glavpolitprosvet had the full support of the Central Committee of the Party. Now, even Lunacharsky took the view that ‘the Party should be everywhere like the Biblical spirit of God’.113 In November 1920 he told the meeting of political-education departments that: ‘As long as the proletariat of Russia trusts the Communist Party, only the Party will direct education’.114 On 5th October 1920, the first All-Russian Congress of Proletkult opened in Moscow. According to Lunacharsky’s later recollection, already ‘measures were taken to pull [Proletkult] towards the Party’. Lenin instructed Lunacharsky ‘to go to the congress and say definitely that Proletkult must be under the control of Narkompros [and] must regard itself as an organ of Narkompros’.115 Later Lunacharsky wrote that ‘Vladimir Ilyich was evidently rather afraid that some sort of political heresy was nesting in Proletkult’.116 The resolution, drafted by Lenin on 8th October 1920 stated that: ‘. . . The All-Russian Congress of Proletkult most definitely rejects as theoretically incorrect and practically harmful all attempts to think up its own special culture, to shut itself up in its own isolated organizations, to draw boundaries between the spheres of work of Narkompros and Proletkult inside the institutions of Narkompros . . .’117 The government’s attack on experimental arts reached its peak on December 1st, 1920, when Pravda published a letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party ‘About Proletkult’ [‘O Proletkul’takh]. In this letter, Proletkult was denounced as a ‘petit bourgeois’ organization operating outside of Soviet institutions and a haven for ‘socially-alien elements’.118 In May 1919, Pravda had published an article ‘To the question of Proletkult’ [‘K voprosu o Proletkul’te’] written by a worker who at the time

113 S. Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 183. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid., p. 177. 116 A. Lunacharsky, Lenin and Art. Recollections, (1924), in ‘Sobranie Sochinenii v 8 tomakh’, Ed. I. I. Anisimov, A. I. Ovcharenko, Moscow, 1963–67, vol. 7, p. 405. 117 O Proletkul’takh, letter from ZK RKP in ‘V. I. Lenin i izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo’, Moscow, 1977, p. 358. 118 About Proletkults—letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party, ‘Pravda’, 1 December 1920, p. 3.

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attended the drama studio in Moscow, V. Boyarchenkov. Here this rather agitated worker wrote: Not so long ago, comrade Antonov wrote in Pravda that Narkompros is dealing with serving the petty bourgeoisie. Unfortunately the same can be said about Proletkult, since it is serving the same classes as Narkompros.119

Boyarchenkov complained that since Proletkult had failed to explain to workers the significance of the drama course, mainly members of the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia ‘with whom one cannot create proletarian culture’ were accepted in his drama studio. For the first two years after the October Revolution, Proletkult received financial support from the Bolshevik government, but through 1919 and 1920 the Bolshevik leadership grew increasingly hostile to it. After this letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party appeared in Pravda in December 1920, the president of Proletkult was removed and Bogdanov lost his seat on its Central Committee. He withdrew from the organization completely in 1921 and 1922, and was subsequently arrested and interrogated in 1923. In the same letter of 1st December 1920, the Futurist’s influence in the Proletkult studios was condemned and Narkompros was criticized for supporting Left artists. It called Futurists ‘decadents, supportive of an idealistic philosophy hostile to Marxism’, adding that ‘in the field of visual arts, workers were instilled with absurd, corrupt taste (Futurism)’. This letter was followed by an article, which was probably written by the head of Petrograd City and Regional Government, Grigorii Zinoviev, and ended with rather harsh criticism of people like N. Punin: ‘Those members of intelligentsia, who tried to smuggle their reactionary views under the cover of “proletarian culture”, are now raising noisy agitation against orders of the Central Committee.’120 Punin remained the head of the Petrograd IZO until its liquidation in 1921. The Party meeting on education, which took place between 31st December 1920 and 4th January 1921, and was attended by 134 voting delegates, representing the Unions, Komsomol, as well as the Russian and Ukranian Narkompros.121 It decided to abolish the arts sector of Narkom119 V. Boyarchenkov V. K voprosu o Proletkul’te in ‘Pravda’, N 95, 6 May 1919, p. 1. 120 About Proletkults—letter from the Central Committee of the Communist Party, ‘Pravda’, 1 December 1920, p. 3. 121 See A. Lunacharsky and Y. Slavinsky, Theses of the Art Section of Narkompros and the Central Committee of the Union of Art Workers Concerning Basic Policy in the Field of Art, 1920, in J. Bowlt, ‘Russian art of the avant-garde’, p. 185.



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pros and to transfer the greater part of its work to Glavpolitprosvet, the new ‘political-educational sector’ of Narkompros. From now on, Narkompros was only allowed to keep the Chief Artistic Committee (Glakhkom) to supervise theoretical work in the arts. Glakhkom was a part of the new Academic Centre of Narkompros. Lunacharsky was not a member of it. Its organizer and first president was A. M. Rossky—a worker from the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate [Rabkrin]122 and a learned secretary of the literary department of Narkompros, LITO.123 Deeply disliked by Mayakovsky and Punin, Rossky seemed to be a typical representative of the mediocrity which would soon replace most members of the intelligentsia in all the leading posts.124 In her book ‘Commissariat of Enlightenment’, Sheila Fitzpatrick wrote: ‘Glavpolitprosvet’s arts department suffered from absenteeism, which was partly the result of appointing Communists mainly employed elsewhere, as heads of departments’.125 The former head of IZO in Moscow, David Shterenberg, remained for a time in the academic centre, and then became head of the IZO department of The Collegium of the Chief Committee [Glavprofobr], formed on 12th February 1921 with Lunacharsky as a president. One of the purposes of the reorganization of the arts, following the recommendations stated in the letter from the Central Committee’s letter ‘On the Proletkults’, was to remove Bogdanovists, Futurists and cultural iconoclasts from Narkompros and Proletkult. But, ironically, this purpose was very difficult to accomplish, since it was almost impossible to replace the former leaders of these artistic institutions with persons who were not themselves Bogdanovists or Futurists. Sheila Fitzpatrick concluded that: ‘In fact, both in Narkompros under Lunacharsky, and Proletkult under Lebedev-Polyansky, the former leaders were closer to the Central Committee’s position on the arts than were their subordinates’.126 But the ball kept rolling and soon all the publishing of Narkompros was taken over by the State Publishing Company (Gosizdat). Just a decade

122 Rabkrin, RKI or Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate [Raboche-krest’ianskaya inspecÂ� tsiya] was a governmental establishment in Soviet Russia and the early Soviet Union responsible for scrutinizing the state, local and enterprise administrations during 1920–1934. 123 LITO-literary department, formally constituted on 11 December 1919, to act as a liaison between the government and the literary groups, Narkompros, in 1919–1920. 124 Rossky was, in turn, succeeded in May 1921, by the literary scholar P. S. Kogan, see Central State Archive, 2308/1/21, Instruction no. 49, 25 Jan. 1921. 125 S. Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 237. 126 Ibid., p. 238.

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later, the ‘Freedom of the Word’ disappeared altogether and was replaced by strict control by the state. At the end of 1922, a new journal of the Futurist movement, Lef (Left Front of the Arts) with the stated aim ‘to shape revolutionary art’, was approved for publication. However, it was already edited and controlled by the State Publishing Company. While Lef was trying to justify their experiments with words as the essential work for the construction of the new language of Communist society, Punin became involved in helping to educate the teachers of drawing who would, in turn, influence a new generation of Russian artists. A Futurist critic, Viktor Shklovsky, who could not forgive Punin for turning to Futurism after having written for the elitist Apollon, said about Punin that ‘he tells drawing teachers about cubism with a snobbish and academic calm’.127 Punin’s lectures given in Petrograd in 1919 and published in 1920 aimed to give an overview of West-European art, and to identify the Russian avant-garde with it. The art-critic believed that ‘the major aim of artistic activity was to transform the world through new forms of beauty’.128 In these lectures Punin announced that the October Revolution encouraged the free development of all artistic movements. Perhaps, he also felt that the hopes of the founding fathers of the Russian avant-garde such as Voldemārs Matvejs, who stressed the importance of the ‘free creativity’ in painting, Alexei Kruchenikh, who was hoping for ‘free art’ and free expression in poetry and Nikolay Kulbin, who was looking for the ‘free music’, could finally be realised. Talking about the importance of technical knowledge as the basis of all arts, Punin wanted to see new artists as inventors, who would not be afraid of getting rid of the heavy cloak of academic art. He wrote that one ‘can not take reality as the only and exhaustive material’ for artistic inspiration.129 In his second lecture, the art critic spoke about the noise which resonates from a painting—the impression made by the painting—as one of the major qualities of artist’s work, though he stressed that an artist should not be influenced by the impression that his works of art raised amongst his viewers. As a parable he described a meeting of two artists, 127 V. Shklovsky in W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, p. 247. 128 Barooshian, Russian Cubo-futurism, p. 118. 129 N. Punin, Pervii tsikl lektsii, chitannykh na kratkosrochnykh kursakh dlya uchitelei risovaniya, (Petrograd, 1920), p. 13.



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one of whom was very sad, thinking about death, and the other saying that he should not be afraid of dying since he can recommend him a good funeral parlour.130 Punin’s suggestion that there is a certain noise that is generated by the paintings, follows the thoughts of Matvejs—a critic much admired by Punin. Back in 1910, he had made a considerable impact on the Russian avant-garde by publishing several influential theoretical works. Thus, in his article ‘Principles of the New Art’ (1912), Matvejs wrote: We usually understand under the term factura a certain state of the surface of the painting, in which our eyes and feelings comprehend it. But the factura is the same in sculpture, architecture and all other forms of art, in which a certain noise is made by paints or other means, and which we comprehend through our conscious.131

As an example of correlation of the noises of the real world and the unreal, spiritual world, Matvejs used Russian icons, which he saw as embodiment of the full range of factura or noise, in which the sub-conscious state of the artist’ mind finds expression in the work of art created in different materials. In his thesis ‘Creative Principles of the Plastic Arts: Factura’ (1914) Matvejs wrote: ‘Through the noise of paints, sounds of materials and the set of various facturas, we call people to beauty, to religion, to God.’132 Remember Punin’s ‘beauty, which will transform the world’? In his lectures, Punin also spoke about the role of the frame in European and Oriental art. If, in Europe, we tend to distinguish the canvas of the painting from the wall and all its surroundings by using frames (especially shiny gilded frames), in Japan, artists try to blend their art with the room by surrounding their paintings with silk ribbons and then narrow bamboo sticks which provide a smooth transition between the work of art and the wall on which it is placed. That’s why, said Punin, young artists in Europe often do not frame their paintings, bringing them into more harmonious relationships with the space around them.133

130 Ibid., p. 63. 131 Quoted in D. K. Bernshtein, Tatlin, Punin, Matvej I Factura, in ‘Voldemar Matvejs “Souz Molodezhi”, Moscow: Nauka, 2005, pp. 142–143. 132 Voldemārs Matvejs, Prinzipi Tvorchestva v Plasticheskikh Iskusstvakh: Faktura [Creative Principles of the Plastic Arts: Factura], first published in 1914, re-printed in ‘Voldemar Matvejs. Statii, Katalog Proizvedeniy, Pis’ma, Khronika Deyatel’nosti “Souza Molodezhi”, Neputns, 2002, pp. 43–57, p. 54. 133 N. Punin, Pervii tsikl lektsii, chitannykh na kratkosrochnykh kursakh dlya uchitelei risovaniya, pp. 23–24.

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In these lectures, Punin tried to distinguish which elements make an artist great rather than ordinary. He felt that artists such as Cézanne and Picasso had the power to break free from the accepted rules and laws. In his sixth lecture, the art critic said: ‘Cézanne broke painting from the shackles of subject matter, and got engaged with the development of his artistic skills.’134 Profoundly admiring this unique French artist, Punin felt that ‘nature for him was only an excuse, only the dictionary for perfectly constructed work of art.’135 He believed that what matters for the artist is what he feels rather than what he understands. At the same time, Punin proclaimed in these lectures: ‘First and foremost—we consider science to be a principle of culture.’136 He wanted the new drawing teachers to study and analyze works of art rather than judge them based on their individual taste and first impressions. In the same sixth lecture, Punin explained that: ‘If modern man wants to assimilate fully all the forces affecting the creation of this or that work of art, he must approach the work by studying and analyzing it by means of scientific method.’137 Punin finished his cycle of lectures to the drawing teachers with the words: ‘You will leave now with less prejudice against young artists than when you came.’138 He was hoping that they would be able not to judge but to understand and guide the new artists in the right direction, since ‘art provides powerful means of infecting those around us with ideas, feelings, and moods’.139 In reality, Punin’s enthusiasm for the revolution in art was destined to last only for the first four years after October 1917. Back in 1915 Punin had written in his diary: The whole tragedy of a great person (a genius) consists, perhaps, in the fact that having been born, he awaits his audience, suffering until the hour of its creation and awaiting its arrival in deep loneliness.140

134 Ibid., p. 73. 135 Ibid. p. 74. 136 Quoted in J. Bowlt, Russian art of the avant-garde. Theory and criticism, p. 174. 137 Ibid. 138 N. Punin, Pervii tsikl lektsii, chitannikh na kratkosrochnikh kursakh dlya uchitelei risovaniya, p. 83. 139 Ibid. 140 Diary note of 25 May 1915, Diary, p. 37.



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In 1917, Punin felt probably for once in his life that he had found his audience. Trying to make art accessible and understandable to the public, he argued about anti-elitism in art already in 1910: ‘. . . I feel that the street seller or a servant, who bows down every evening in front of an icon, lit by the pink light of a candle, is already involved in art . . .’141 By becoming an active promoter of Futurism in the new Bolshevik society, Nikolay Punin had made a great impact on the search for the new art in post-revolutionary Russia. In September 1919 he wrote: ‘I am not a unique person, but I do not belong to the common lot either. I surpass my co-workers insofar as it is necessary for me to become the organizer of their ideas.’142 However, already in 1921, hence earlier than most of the avant-garde artists around him, Punin began to see the limitations and threats that the Communist system represented to all the freedoms which it originally promised. In 1921 Lenin once again made his famous denunciation of modern art, which he described as ‘a left-wing infantile disorder’. In the Communist state, where art and politics were inseparable, such a statement meant the gradual elimination of the avant-garde and its supporters. Besides his conservative views about art, Lenin now opposed any deliberate efforts to create a new proletarian culture, considering them a ‘leftist heresy unhealthy for Communist ideology’.143 In his note sent to Lunacharsky during the government meeting on May 6, 1921, Lenin advised him to limit publication of Mayakovsky’s poem ‘150,000,000’ to no more than 1,500 copies ‘for libraries and eccentrics’. He stated that ‘Mayakovsky is hard to understand’ and ended by saying that the Commissar for Public Enlightenment himself ‘should be horse-whipped for Futurism’.144 This harsh line was followed by the first arrests and denunciations. As the government started to turn away from the avant-garde, many artists drifted to the West, often not without encouragement from the government. On 17 July 1922, Lenin wrote to Stalin:

141 Diary note of 1 February 1910, MSL, p. 21. 142 Diary note of 28 September 1919, Diary, p. 58. 143 Halina Stephan, ‘Lef ’ and the left front of arts, p. 16. 144 Quoted in S. Volkov, The Magical Chorus, p. 67.

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chapter five Comrade Stalin! As for the question of expulsion of Mensheviks, People’ Socialists, Kadets and so on from Russia, I wanted to ask a few questions about this operation, which, having started before my departure, is still not finished . . . We should send several hundreds of such ladies and gentlemen abroad ruthlessly. Let’s clear Russia for years to come. It should be done straight a way . . . Several hundreds should be arrested and without any explanations—go away, ladies and gentlemen! All the writers from the “House of Writers”, from the group “Idea” in St. Petersburg . . . Cleansing should be quick . . . Pay special attention to writers in Piter [short for St. Petersburg] (addresses are in the “New Russian Book”, N 4, 1922, p. 37) and to the list of private publishers (p. 29). With communist greetings, Lenin.145

By 1921, many artists and writers had left Russia before they were arrested and thrown out. Thus Wassily Kandinsky, who had returned to Russia from Munich in 1917, and welcomed the Revolution as a vice-president of the Russian Academy of Artistic Studies, went back to Germany in 1921, (this time to stay) and became one of the leaders of the Bauhaus in Dessau. He was followed by Marc Chagall, who moved to Berlin in 1922, and then settled in Paris, the famous constructivist sculptors Naum Gabo, Nathan Pevsner and one of the amazons of the Russian avant-garde, Alexandra Exter. These artists had lived in Russia through the most difficult post-revolutionary years of starvation and poverty, driven by their faith in building the new art of the new nation. Their disillusionment and their emigration signalled the beginning of the end of the Russian avant-garde.

145 Quoted in Benedict Sarnov Stalin i Pisateli, book 2, Moscow: Eksmo, 2009, p. 613.

Chapter Six

GATHERING CLOUDS, BUT HIGH HEART . . . our ideal is a distant star which still shines ahead, but now we must meet what the Revolution demands of us. (D. Shterenberg)1

1. Punin’s First Arrest and First Disillusionments Nikolay Punin had written four books and more than forty articles in the three years after the Revolution and played a leading role in all the major developments in artistic life in post-revolutionary Russia. But now, Punin like many, began to feel frustrated by the limitations of the new system, and increasingly by his limited success in trying to ‘defend the freedom of artistic arts’.2 From 1923, he concentrated mainly on lecturing, writing and museum work. After being excited about all the new possibilities which came with the change from a rather hardhearted imperial regime, already in February 1920, Punin had written in his diary: ‘One quality of the Revolution—life gets to be a risk.’3 This was the time when Alexander Blok, surely one of the greatest Russian poets, who was originally inspired by the Revolution, replied to Korney Chukovsky when he asked him why he did not write any more poetry: ‘All sounds have stopped. Can’t you hear that there are no longer any sounds? . . .’ By 1921, Blok, who had welcomed the Bolshevik Revolution and supported it wholeheartedly, would give speeches with his eyes closed—‘so as not to see those apes’.4 His faith in the Bolshevik Revolution was first shaken by his arrest in 1919. His brief imprisonment on suspicion of conspiracy ruined his faith in the new state and by 1921, Blok was mentally and physically exhausted. He developed inflammations of the inner lining 1 D. Sterenburg, Doklady po nauchno-khudozhestvennym voprosam, ‘Vestnik teatra’, no. 80–81, 1921, p. 9—quoted in Barooshian ‘Russian cubo-futurism’, p. 125. 2 ‘The appeal of the founders’ meeting of the ‘freedom of art’ association’, March 12, 1917 in W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, p. 176. 3 Diary note of 12 February 1920, Diary, p. 62. 4 W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, pp. 290–291.

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of his heart and of his brain. Gorky and Lunacharsky appealed to Lenin to let the poet go to Finland for treatment, but the Politburo first refused to let him go and when they finally changed their mind, it was too late—on August 7 1921, the forty-one year-old Blok died. The jaded Lunacharsky wrote in a secret letter to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party: ‘There will be no doubt and no refutation of the fact that we killed Russia’s most talented poet.’5 It was also a time of disillusionment for the cultural intelligentsia, exacerbated by the Civil War, rooted as this was in the distress caused by way the Bolsheviks had seized power. Together with many famous artists, major writers and poets started heading west: Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin, Konstantin Balmont and many others. In 1922, the most famous Russian opera singer, Feodor Chaliapin, had also left Russia. The Bolsheviks had made him the very first recipient of a new honorary title, People’s Artist, but even this did not prevent him from seeing the reality of the new regime, though like so many others, he had initially welcomed the overthrow of the monarchy. By 1921, he believed that in the Bolshevik state ‘liberty had been turned into tyranny, fraternity into civil war, and equality meant stomping down anyone who dared raise his head above the level of the swamp’.6 Chaliapin never returned to Russia; he spent the rest of his life in Paris, although forty six years after his death his remains were brought back to Russia and re-buried in the Novodevichy Cemetry in Moscow in 1984. However, back in the 1920s, the Civil War was centred initially in Petrograd and in Moscow, where the brutality of the Soviets had been most felt. In 1920, many factories had closed due to a lack of fuel; in Petrograd there were almost no street lights, and the population of the city was reduced from 2 million at the beginning of 1918 to 722,000 in 1920 due to emigration, hunger and sickness. The counter-revolutionary armies (the Whites) had begun organizing in December 1917, but were opposed by Trotsky’s newly-organised Red Army. This comprised mainly troops freed up by the treaty of BrestLitovsk, spurred on by idealism but also by threats of execution for desertion or cowardice. The war lasted for three years in the Caucasus (until the Don Cossaks under General Kornilov, followed by Denikin, were subdued); it lasted until 1920 in the Ukraine, where a puppet German ruler

5 Quoted in S. Volkov, The Magical Chorus, p. 72. 6 Ibid., p. 41.



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had held the region until its collapse. The Poles intervened (Marshal Pilsudski captured Kiev in May 1920), until in turn the Red Army re-captured it in the summer of 1920. In the Baltics there were Nationalist revolts in Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Lithuania, with whom peace was concluded on the principle of their independence. An attack on Petrograd from the West by the White General Yudenich was repulsed in October 1919. In the North, a Franco-British force had landed at Murmansk nominally to protect stores landed under the Entente, which was then still in force, and they seized Archangelsk and held on until October 1919 (legitimising some of the resentment of foreigners which Stalin later exploited). In Siberia, along the Trans-Siberian railway, the war ran until the Japanese invaded Vladivostok, holding on to it until 1922. However, having won the Civil War against the White Army, the Bolsheviks faced yet another counter-revolutionary revolt from within. The Communist free-market economy had left the country in ruins. In March 1921, 20,000 deeply dissatisfied seamen held a naval mutiny at Russia’s largest naval base, Kronstadt, which was put down very brutally. This uprising on the doorstep of Petrograd had many resonances, and resulted in a wave of arrests, from which even Nikolay Punin did not escape. He was arrested on 3rd August 1921—just a few months before the Department of Visual Arts was closed. Later he would say about these events: ‘It was the end of my love-affair with the Revolution.’7 It was also the beginning of the new era, when crime and punishment needed no longer to be connected, and the question ‘why?’ became increasingly pointless. In his book ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ Alexander Solzhenitsyn described this implication of arrest in the Soviet Russia: But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these displacements in our universe, and both the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life’s experience, can gasp out only: “Me? What for?” And this is a question which, though repeated millions and millions of times before, has yet to receive an answer.8

Punin was arrested in connection with ‘The Case of the Petrograd Military Organisation’. Overnight, around two hundred people were imprisoned. Their main crime was that at some point they had met (in some cases without knowing it!) Vladimir Tagantsev. He was a reader in Economic Geography at St. Petersburg University (not quite a “professor”, as the 7 I. Punina, N. N. Punin in ‘Tayni remesla’, p. 276. 8 A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago. 1918–56, pp. 3–4.

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Bolsheviks used to call him). He was incriminated as a leader of the Petrograd Military Organisation, and was accused of terrorism after a former sailor, Vasiliy Orlovsky (also known as Heineman and Vernuhin) blew up a monument to Volodarsky, one of the revolutionary leaders. Even though the monument was a temporary one, Orlovsky was arrested, and soon confessed his intention to blow up all the Bolshevik leaders. Among all the people he knew, he mentioned Tagantsev. This incrimination made by someone who could have been a provocateur or just a lunatic, was enough to arrest Tagantsev and two hundred people who knew someone he knew. Seventy one years later, in 1992, the State Office of the Public Prosecutor made an official statement confirming that the “Petrograd Military Organisation” never existed, but was artificially created by the committee of inquiry out of several groups which were, or might have been, concerned with sending money, jewellery and emigrants abroad.9 At the end of June 1921, Tagantsev was arrested for illegal possession of a large amount of money, and on 1st July, his wife was also arrested. Following a request by his father, a famous academic, Lenin sent a letter to Dzerzhinsky on 17th July, asking him to release Tagantsev. He received a reply which defined Vladimir Tagantsev as being an active member of a terrorist organisation, The Union for the Resurrection of Russia, which was organising the navy in Kronstadt against the Bolsheviks, and had blown up the monument to Volodarsky as an experiment. In this letter, Dzerzhinsky called Tagantsev ‘an uncompromising and dangerous enemy of Soviet rule’, and said that he expected this case to last for a long time.10 Two days later Lenin’s doctor, A. Kadiak, who was also Tagantsev’s aunt, asked Lenin to help her nephew. Lenin did not want to refuse her request outright, and asked his secretary to send her a reply explaining that Tagantsev’s charges were too serious for him to be released. Between 21st and 22nd July, Tagantsev attempted suicide in his cell, but, unfortunately for him, was saved. The next day the interrogators made him talk, and a new Tagantsev case was fabricated. Thereafter, events began to move rapidly. A few other political groups were rounded up at the same time, and soon 60, and then another 34 people were shot without any explanation or investigation. Among them

9 V. Shubinsky, Nikolay Gumilev. Zhizn’ poeta, p. 633. 10 Ibid., p. 635.



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was one of the most talented Russian poets, Nikolay Gumilev, who was arrested a day after Punin. The leader of the Acmeist movement in poetry and an honorary veteran of World War I, Nikolay Gumilev returned from Paris to Petrograd in 1917. Here he participated energetically in various educational events promoting the new regime, but at the same time he used to give public readings of his pro-monarchist poetry, declaring: ‘Bolsheviks won’t dare touch me.’11 If only he had known how wrong he was! Neither Gumilev nor Punin probably ever met Tagantsev, and did not even know who he was or what he looked like. This was one of the first cases of the silent terror under the new regime, when people would be taken away during the night by the black cars of the CHEKA (later the KGB) without any reason or explanation. Often they never came back. Two years later, in 1923, a journalist and a member of the board of the House of Writers, Nikolay Volkovisky (1881–?) would describe his conversation with the head of CHEKA in Petrograd, Semenov, who was in charge of the Tagantsev Case. The person who was about to decide the destiny of Gumilev, Punin and hundreds of other innocent people, looked like a ‘salesman from a textile shop’: ‘He was of average height, with a sallow face, with a small red moustache, cut in the English fashion, and roving cunning eyes.’12 When Volkoviskiy and a few of his friends explained that they came to petition for their friend Nikolay Gumilev, Semenov said that he never heard this name before and kept asking: ‘Who? Gumilevich?’ When they said that he could not possibly be involved in a political case, Semenov suggested that Gumilev’s arrest could also be connected with money laundering or a similar crime. When they finally insisted on an inquiry, he suddenly demanded to see their documents as well, and asked them to call him in a week, saying that ‘nowadays we solve all cases very quickly . . .’ When they later called Semenov, he just said: ‘Read about it in the newspapers the day after tomorrow!’ and hung up. On 1st September, Semenov’s report appeared in the newspapers: ‘Tagantsev plot. Professor Tagantsev, professor Tikhvinsky, professor Lazarevsky, and a famous poet, Gumilev were shot . . .’13

11 Quoted in S. Volkov, The Magical Chorus, p. 72. 12 N. Volkoviskiy, Delo N. S. Gumileva in ‘A. Akhmatova. Desyatie godi’, p. 257. 13 Ibid., pp. 257–260.

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On 13th August 1921, Nikolay Punin wrote to his father-in-law from prison about meeting Gumilev in the prison corridor. They were standing in front of each other ‘like little boys’– rivals more than friends, united for a few moments by the crooked hand of destiny and misfortune. Gumilev had Homer’s ‘Iliad’ in his hand. It was his favourite book. Back in 1910, he had even included it in one of his poems, ‘Modernity’, in which he wrote: “I closed ‘The Iliad’ and sat down by the window. The last word was trembling on my lips.” Gumilev took this book with him when he went to Africa and to war, but this time it was to be immediately taken away from him.14 According to Luknitsky, Nikolay Gumilev never liked Punin, but during one of their brief meetings at the publishing house of the Apollon, he praised Punin’s article about Annensky. Punin was moved by these compliments and immediately suggested writing an article about Gumilev and his mysterious poetry. He started by saying that he ‘loved Gumilev’s wild, audacious courage in his first poems’. He called him ‘a strange poet’ with amazing memories of all his travels, which must have left ‘a bitter, dense and never-disappearing flavour on his lips’.15 This article was never finished. At that point, when the rule of law was still in force, and everything had yet to be taken over by envious workers who had gained power overnight, could Punin have imagined where and how his last meeting with Gumilev would take place? However, by 1921, the reality of everyday life had changed. It was Punin’s first arrest. He spent more than a month in the Deposit prison without being questioned and without any explanation of the cause of his arrest. When the interrogation was finally held, Punin was asked about the ‘short man’ who came to his apartment on 29th July 1921. His father-inlaw, Evgenii Ivanovich, had opened the door.16 What happened later we can only guess, since Punin destroyed the relevant page in his diary, but apparently this stranger told Nikolay that he needed to hide and asked if he could stay with them for a few days. Punin refused, suspecting a provocation. A few days later he discovered that he was right. Anna Arens was six months pregnant at the time of her husband’s arrest. She was in Pskov (200 miles from Petrograd), waiting for Punin to come and join her. When she heard about his arrest, she went immediately to 14 See MSL, p. 142. 15 N. Punin, Poetry of N. Gumilev in ‘Gumilev I Akhmatova’, p. 102. 16 Punin’s wife, Anna Arens, was resting in Pskov at the time, waiting for him to join her.



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Moscow and told Lunacharsky and Osip Brik of her husband’s imprisonment. Lunacharsky wrote a letter to the head of CHEKA in Moscow and sent a copy of it to the head of the Petrograd CHEKA—the aforementioned Semenov. The Minister of Public Education wrote about the critic’s devotion to the Communist party and indeed to himself. Lunacharsky offered to vouch for Punin, saying that even the thought that Punin might be a betrayer was impossible to conceive, and concluded that the arrest of ‘one of the main transmitters of Communism into the Petrograd artistic milieu’ must have been an embarrassing mistake.17 Apparently while in prison, Punin also wrote a declaration in which he protested at the CHEKA’s misuse of its investigative powers.18 He did not know then that such complaints were largely useless, and could, if anything, make things worse. But Lunacharsky’s letter did help. On 6th September 1921, Punin was released. Angered by the injustice which he had to face in the last month, the critic refused to become a member of the Communist party. He also wrote a statement to CHEKA, demanding at least the return of his braces and his book ‘Prisoner’ by Gotfrid Zhoffrua. He soon received a reply from the officer of CHEKA, stating that his braces had been given to someone else by mistake, and the book had been sent to the prison library, and cannot be returned.19 Punin was on his way to learning that any communication with the new authorities was at best pointless, but also increasingly dangerous. The leading publishing house Vsemirnaya literatura [World literature] had also vouched for Gumilev, who was working for it at the time. Possibly on the initiative of the head of Vsemirnaya literatura, Maxim Gorky, a letter to CHEKA was written on 5th August 1921, asking them to release Gumilev and allow him to complete several commissions.20 Gorky even spoke to Lenin about Gumilev, who promised him that the poet will be released, but when he returned from Moscow to Petrograd, the poet had already been shot. According to Vladimir Khodasevich, one of the leading biographers of Maxim Gorky, due to the writer’s long-standing conflict with Grigory

17 See Lunacharsky’s letter in MSL, pp. 142–143. 18 See editor’s note in the ‘Diary’, p. 72. 19 MSL, p. 143. 20 The full letter is published in ‘Anna Akhmatova. Desyatie gody’, p. 255.

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Zinoviev,21 one of the most powerful Bolshevik leaders at the time, Gorky’s friendship with Lenin was not as strong as he thought: . . . By the autumn of 1920, it did not yet quite develop into open war, but Zynoviev tried to harm Gorky in any way he could. Those arrested, whom Gorky bustled about, would often have a worse fate than if he had not interfered. Looking for Lenin’s help, Gorky would often call him on the phone, or write him a letter or would go to Moscow to talk to him in person. One can not deny that Lenin would often try to help him, but it never came so far as restraining Zinoviev, since although Lenin did value Gorky as a writer, he regarded Zynoviev as a proven Bolshevik, who was more useful to him.22

It was not just Punin who was touched by Nikolay Gumilev’s death: shocked by the tragic and unjust death of his friend, the disillusioned Maxim Gorky left Russia in October 1921, and lived in Italy until 1929. Apparently, according to A. Koblanovsky, Lunacharsky’s secretary, the Minister for Education also spoke with Lenin about releasing Gumilev, but the reply from the Father of the Russian Revolution was different from that in Punin’s case. Lenin said: ‘We can not kiss the hand which has been raised against us’, after which he hung up the phone.23 Nikolay Gumilev was less fortunate than Punin (at least then) as he never returned from this imprisonment.24 A year after he was shot, at the end of August 1922, Nikolay Punin received a note from Gumilev’s former wife, Anna Akhmatova: ‘Nikolay Nikolaevich, today I will be at the Sounding Shell. Come.’25

21 Grigorii Zinoviev (1883–1936) was elected to the Central Committee at the VIIth Party Congress on March 8, 1918. He was put in charge of the Petrograd city and regional government. He became a non-voting member of the ruling Politburo when it was created after the VIIIth Congress on March 25, 1919. He also became the Chairman of Comintern when it was created in March 1919. In early 1921, when the Communist Party was split into numerous factions and disagreements were threatening to engulf the Party, Zinoviev supported Lenin’s faction. As a result, Zinoviev was made a full member of the Politburo after the Xth Party Congress on March 16, 1921. 22 V. F. Khodasevich, Gorky, in V. F. Khodasevich, Sobranie sochineniy, (Moscow, 1997), v. 4, p. 353. 23 M. Shubinsky, pp. 635–636. 24 For the full copy of Gumilev’s case see S. Luknizkiy ‘Est mnogo sposobov ubit poeta’, pp. 52–84. 25 Sounding Shell [Zvuchashchaya Rakovina]—poetic studio, directed by N. Gumilev before his death; in 1922, its members used to meet in the apartment of the photographer M. Nippelbaum. See Diary, p. 82.



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2. Anna Akhmatova Married at the time to Vladimir Shileyko,26 after her divorce from Gumilev, Akhmatova was having several affairs at the same time (in the best Soviet fashion). In the 1920s, she was in love with the Futurist composer Arthur Lourie, who wanted to write choral arrangements to turn her poems into an opera. Their affair started in May 1920, when Shileyko was taken to hospital for a month. At the same time, Akhmatova started working as a librarian in the Agricultural Institute, and soon was given a flat, where Shileyko joined her after his return from hospital.27 But, while still living with her husband, she continued to see Lourie, who was Commissar for Music from 1918 to 1920. He organised concerts, established a network of music schools, created a choral academy and an orchestra that eventually became the Leningrad Philharmonic. Like Punin in the visual arts, Lourie was hoping to transform the proletariat through the magical power of music, which in the first years after the Revolution was played in freezing concert halls by starving musicians. In 1921, Lourie became a member of the Petrograd Institute of the History of Art, which Punin joined in 1922. In spite of all his talents, his music proved to be too complicated for an unprepared audience. In January 1921, Punin sent Lourie a letter, in which he called him ‘a terribly lonely man’ who stood out like ‘a gothic spire’ in the surrounding emptiness. He wrote: Profanes do not grant anyone their recognition. They will never accept us, this must be understood. . . . On the other hand, we will never get through to people in the artistic circles. They have agreed to organise a huge sieve around you, and we can only pour into it, while it sifts; they won’t let us pour directly into the people. This sieve is called art. I, as you know, am not sentimental, but I have such a sense of longing, which urges me to run around cafés and houses, and ask everyone: “Does anyone here need us?”28

In this moment of despair, Punin added in this letter that he believed that all the bureaucrats involved in art, apart from the artists themselves, should be shot.29 He advised Lourie to stop talking about the problems of

26 Vladimir Shileyko was an outstanding Assyriologist and translator of ancient oriental poetry. 27 Chernikh, V., Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva Anny Akhmatovoi, p. 19. 28 Letter from Punin to Lourie, Jan. 28, 1921, Diary, p. 78. 29 Ibid., p. 78.

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culture and write music instead. He wrote in his diary: ‘If there was only music left, the rest would follow.’30 But, unable to write music in this most unsupportive environment, Lourie left Russia in 1922. He supposedly went on a business trip to Berlin, but soon moved to Wiesbaden, and finally settled in Paris. In 1941, Lourie moved to the United States, where he lived and died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1966—an unrecognised and misunderstood Russian genius. Three years before his death, the 72 year old Lourie wrote a letter to the woman he always loved—Anna Akhmatova: My dear Annushka, recently I read somewhere that when D’Annunzio [the Italian poet, Gabriele D’Annunzio] met with Duse [the Italian actress, Eleonora Duse] after 20 years of separation, they both knelt down in front of each other and burst into tears. But what can I say to you? My “fame” has been lying in a ditch for 20 years—from the time when I arrived in this country. In the beginning I had moments of great, glamorous success, but here local musicians made sure that I would not get established . . . Here nobody needs anything, and the way for foreigners is blocked. You foresaw it all already 40 years ago, when you wrote: “Foreign bread smells of wormwood” . . . I live in complete emptiness, like a shadow.31

When Lourie left Russia, on the same boat as Boris Pasternak and his wife, on 17th August 1922, another page in Akhmatova’s life came to an end. In the short time that they spent together, she dedicated her most beautiful love poems to him. In December 1921, she wrote: Why do you wander restlessly? Why do you stare breathlessly? Surely you comprehend: our two souls Have been firmly welded into one.32

Nikolay Punin had always been a close friend of Lourie. The night before the composer fled to Germany, they had a private conversation, and there were rumours that the composer entrusted Akhmatova to his womenloving friend.33 One way or another, a few weeks after Lourie’s departure, the love affair, which was to last 16 years, started. It was the most passionate, crazy love, which seems to have been beyond any reason or conscious choice. They both said they felt that they were destined to be together. 30 Diary note of 6 Feb. 1921, Diary, p. 79. 31 Quoted in M. Kralin, Artur I Anna, Tomsk, 2000, p. 12. 32 Quoted in AA, p. 205. 33 M. Kralin, Artur i Anna, p. 28.



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Both Anna and Nikolay had spent the first years of their lives in Pavlovsk, and Akhmatova used to say that they probably first met when they were still in their prams—being pushed down the mysterious, beautiful lanes of Pavlovsk Park. They then were both in their respective Gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, but they met consciously for the first time in 1913, at the office of Apollon. Punin attended several meetings of the Guild of Poets which were held in Gumilev’s house, and in 1914, visited the poetess in Tsarskoe Selo: I was at Akhmatova’s. She was not feeling very well and was lying on the couch. I bragged about my success with women and generally uttered absolute nonsense, mainly because I was shy. Akhmatova was condescending and regal.34

In 1914, the twenty-five year old Akhmatova was already famous, having published three volumes of verse: ‘Evening’, ‘Rosary’ and ‘White Flock’. Punin, by contrast, had just started writing for Apollon. He had also written some poems dedicated to the 6th century mosaics in the church of St. Vitally in Ravenna, which were published in Hyperborean, a somewhat less significant magazine than Apollon. Anna Akhmatova was a year younger than Nikolay, but at the time of their first meeting, she seemed to him to be more like a distant and mysterious star, rather than an attractive young woman. A few months later they met again on the train from Petrograd to Tsarskoe Selo. This time Punin looked at Akhmatova more closely, and recorded a rather unflattering description in his diary: . . . she is strange and slender, thin, pale, immortal and mystical. She has a long face with a well defined chin, thin and sick lips, which fell in a little, like those of an old lady or a dead woman; her cheekbones are well developed and her nose is quite special—with a hump, as if broken, like in a Michelangelo’s statue; grey eyes—quick, but bewildered, stopping every once in a while with a silly expectation or a question. Her hands are thin and elegant, but her figure—is the figure of a hysteric; they say that when she was young, she could bend down so that her head would be between her legs. A strand of black hair escaped from her hat; I was listening to her with admiration, since when she was excited, she shouted her words with intonations that provoked fear and curiosity. She is intelligent, she went through a deep poetical culture, she is content in her world outlook, she is wonderful.

34 Quoted in AA, p. 92.

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chapter six But she is unbearable in her play-acting, and if she did not make faces today, it was probably because I did not give her enough reason for it.35

After their meeting in 1914, Akhmatova recommended that Punin join the board of the Stray Dog Cabaret, one of the most fashionable bohemian meeting places at the time.36 However, for six years after their first meeting Punin did not mention Akhmatova in his diary. In July 1920, he saw her again in the park with her second husband, Shileyko. Nikolay remarked that she ‘carried herself well’, and added that he could now relate to her as to someone more equal and real, but was still too shy to try to see her again.37 So, when in August 1922, Akhmatova invited Punin to come and see her, after the death of Gumiliev, he left everything behind and went to meet her, seemingly unable to refuse her all-too dangerous charm. Punin spent the whole night of 10th August 1922 talking to Anna and his old friend Lourie. On the following night he wrote in his diary: ‘Help, I do not have the strength for all this. How lonely my heart is.’38 And thirteen days later Punin admitted: There are two people inside me . . . And I recall that all my life I have had these two people. One is a disease. In melancholy, you walk around like someone poisoned, near death, close to heaven and at the same time against it, sinful and sinning all the more, and gloomy, irreverent, desperate, enraged, drunken, and ready to get drunk and to dissipate and the other is bright and calm, but first—has no intellect and will, the second—has no soul.39

Akhmatova, described as at once ‘a blessed angel’ and “a sinner”, appealed to both sides of Punin’s character. Nikolay and Anna fell in love, deeply and rapidly, and already by 14th September 1922, Anna had dedicated three poems to the new love of her life, her new victim, the handsome and passionate Nikolay Punin. ‘. . . And they say that we can not converge any closer, can not love more irreparably . . .40—wrote Akhmatova in one of these poems. This day— 14th September—Anna and Nikolay would celebrate as the beginning of their long affair.

35 Diary note of 24 October 1914, MSL, pp. 77–78. 36 See AA, p. 230. 37 See diary note of 18 July 1920, MSL, p. 135. 38 Diary, p. 81. 39 Diary note of 24 August 1922, MSL, p. 155. 40 For full version of this poem see MSL, p. 476.



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On 19th October, Punin admitted in what was his first letter to Akhmatova that his house became very empty after she left. He wrote: ‘I love you, my darling, I love you.’ And two weeks later he made a note in his diary: All this divine tension, it is beyond me to describe.  Is it you, finally, my dark, disturbing joy? Is it true that I am living on the last of my strength?  If it is you, then why is there such a fog, and why do you offer no help, beside fear and lies and disturbances?  To imagine a face, and to search for it, is, of course, the best means to justify all the assignations and betrayals of everything that was.  That dear formula of Blok’s:  How I love you . . .  How pliant you are, like a stem; lips parting, speaking malicious and destructive words. I, a pliant fatality, isn’t that so? Dear hands, hands from which to drink love. You are entirely like that, something from which to drink love.  And I drink, having forgotten everything.41

On the evening of 2nd November, Punin added to this note: “You are the type who walks by and seems to say: ‘Come along with me’—and you walk on past. Why do you need to call, and why did you call me? Where am I to go with you, homeless beggar woman?”42 He felt that their closeness was as fragile ‘as ice’.43 Often Nikolay had a feeling that their happiness could not last long: ‘. . . you are not going my way but are only crossing my road; I thirst for each little feather of your lashes and I fear your closeness as ruin.44 He could not live without her any more, and he confessed to her: ‘No matter who you are and where you lead me, I love you with my troubled heart and half-shaded memory, and you and you . . .’45 In December 1922, Akhmatova tried to persuade Punin to agree to go on a business trip to Berlin, but he did not want to part with her even for a few weeks.46 He also had a loving wife and a small daughter, but by then none of this mattered. He still loved and admired his loyal wife, but he could only see the face of his beloved Anna in everything around him:

41 Letter to Akhmatova of 19 October 1922, MSL, p. 156, and the diary note of 2 November 1922, Diary, p. 83. 42 Diary, p. 83. 43 Diary note of 4 November 1922, Diary, p. 84. 44 Diary note of 9 December 1922, Diary, p. 87. 45 Diary note of 14 November 1922, Diary, p. 85. 46 See Akhmatova’s letter to Punin of Dec. 1922, MSL, p. 161.

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chapter six . . . but the evening is so soft, Petersburg-like and “Akhmatova”-like—features of your delicate face are in the whole city, under every street light your face is breathing at me; I do not want to leave the street as if I am parting with you, gypsy woman, how much do I love in you this inclination to wondering, to complete irresponsibility, like an orthodox Carmen, when you cross yourself at the sight of a church, as if you do live with God, but you are such a sinner. I love you and do not want to be without you, even if I could, quietly consolidated with you.47

Punin felt that their different intellectual needs, understanding of art and of life itself separated him from Akhmatova; he even admitted that he often felt ‘bitter and stifled with her, as if death was embracing and kissing’ him.48 In July 1923, Punin wrote in his diary: She does not love me and never loved me. What’s more she cannot love, she is not able to. And a terrible thought occurred to me: she needs me only as one more display, moreover, a display of a particular kind—Punin—the innovator, the Futurist, the threat to bourgeois philistinism, our number one scandal-maker in the city, the uncompromising.49

At this point, he tried to finish their corrosive affair, but his love of this ‘pure angel in a dark sinful body’ was stronger than his sense of duty and fidelity and his doubts about her love for him. He prayed to God to liberate him from this love for irresistible Anna,50 but his prayers were never answered. Full of love and jealousy, Punin also felt guilty about his wife and daughter. On 8th January 1923 he wrote in his diary: I went (with Galya) to Pavlovsk. My guilt before her could be atoned only by love, but there is no love and it can’t be done. It’s not possible to say that it was only a habit; it was rather a love-attachment, but not love, something like the feeling toward a merry and sweet sister. Out of all of this, the most agonizing is deceiving her, and the most horrible is tormenting her, and I am doing both. An. understands all this and protects me completely. But why? What does she know, what does she foresee?51

Unable to leave Anna, and not strong enough to tell Galya about his infidelity, Punin led a double life for several months. In the beginning of February 1923, he even invited Anna to come to his apartment when Galya was at work and his small daughter, Irina, was asleep. Anna sat in the

47 Letter to Akhmatova of 23 December 1922, MSL, p. 160. 48 Diary note of 30 December 1922, MSL, p. 162. 49 Diary note of 8 July 1923, Diary, p. 110. 50 Diary note of 29 September 1923, MSL, p. 20. 51 Diary note of 8 Jan. 1923, Diary, p. 89.



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armchair by the fire-place and read Nikolay’s diary. He felt that she managed to fill up the whole room with her magic aura—‘as if the winter itself came in, but warm.’52 Did he imagine then that Anna Akhmatova would soon come to live in his apartment? In February 1923, Tatlin invited Punin and Akhmatova for dinner. Probably without thinking, he also invited Galya. Nikolay tried to persuade his wife to stay at home, but she went anyway. It was, of course difficult for everyone, and when they were leaving as a threesome, Punin took Anna by her arm (as he always did when he was walking with her, but never did with his wife). When Nikolay and Galya returned home after seeing Akhmatova off to her flat, Galya started shouting at Punin, blaming him for hiding the nature of his meetings with Anna from her, for ‘deceiving and tormenting her’. The next day Galya stayed in bed, crying. In the evening she told her husband that she had decided to leave him, and that she would move to live with her sister Vera, for a while. Punin wrote in his diary that he was glad to hear about it, since he really wanted to bring Akhmatova to his apartment and to start living with her. On the same evening, he went to Anna and told her about this conversation with his wife. The next day he was supposed to tell Anna that his wife had left, but Galya never did so—not ‘on the next day, or any other day’.53 She asked Punin if he had a physical relationship with Anna, and when he denied it, she decided to stay. Somehow, Galya still loved her dissolute husband. She decided to spend more time with him, and when Akhmatova invited Tatlin and his wife for dinner, Galya did not let Nikolay join them without her. So Punin persuaded Anna to invite his wife, and they both had dinner at Akhmatova’s apartment. A few weeks later Punin wanted to take Anna to Moscow, but Galya decided to join them . . . Forgetting about her pride, Galya was probably unconscious of Punin’s diary note of 26th January 1923, in which he described his ideal woman: In order for a woman to become a man’s friend, the two following conditions are necessary: the woman should be so enduring that she can withstand constant and sacrificing torment, and the man so strong he doesn’t regret tormenting the woman constantly.54

52 Diary note of 3 Feb. 1923, MSL, p. 172. 53 Diary, pp. 98–100. 54 Diary note of 26 Jan. 1923, Diary, p. 95.

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Although deeply in love with Akhmatova, Punin still showed great respect for his wife. He could not leave her, so he stayed with her and with his lover, tormented by the feelings of his betrayal, and by the fear that Akhmatova would not stay with him in this situation for long. In February 1923, Nikolay made a note in his diary: An., I love you nevertheless. I simply love you. I love you like Galya, and you too will be mistress of my house, a little more original than Galya, but therefore also unfaithful . . .55

He felt that although Anna was an angel, sharing his love with his wife would not be enough for her.56 And Akhmatova did enjoy tormenting him, either by following her usual promiscuous nature or seeking revenge for his refusal to sacrifice his family for her. Between 1923 and 1925, Akhmatova had an affair with an administrator of the Petrograd Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, Mikhail Zimmerman. She did not try to hide it from the jealous Nikolay, showing him Zimmerman’s love letters to her. At the same time Punin and Akhmatova started writing ‘Conversation books’, in which she was lovingly calling him Kotik Murr [Little purring cat] after the E. T. A. Hoffmann character Kater Murr; and he called her Olen’ [deer]. In one entry in May, Punin asked Anna to promise him that she would never again go to the Mariinsky to see Zimmerman. But Anna craved love, attention and devotion from her numerous lovers, even those she herself seemed to have no feelings towards. In 1924, when Akhmatova was seeing Punin more and more frequently, yet another man entered her life. It was a young man from an old aristocratic family, called Pavel Luknitsky. He was brave enough to be writing a thesis on Nikolay Gumilev, and came to Anna for help. Soon he became one of Akhmatova’s closest friends. As with many others around her, she developed a dependency on him, and was happy to share all her deepest secrets with him. Seventy years later, the former KGB Chief of CounterIntelligence, Oleg Kalugin, said that Luknitsky was an OGPU (later KGB) agent, and was in charge of the state surveillance of Akhmatova and Punin.57 Dzerzhinsky, who was then the head of the GPU, proclaimed on 5th September 1922, that there should be a case made against every

55 Diary note of 23 Feb. 1923, Diary, p. 104. 56 See Punin’s diary of 21 Feb. 1923, MSL, p. 176. 57 See V. Chernikh, Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva Anny Akhmatovoi, Moscow: URSS, 1998, part 2, p. 4.



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intelligent person, so surveillance of Anna and Nikolay is very likely to have taken place. Understandably, Punin did not like this new person in Akhmatova’s life. According to Luknitsky’s son, despite his good manners, Nikolay often lost his temper in the company of his beloved poetess’ new boyfriend.58 Probably enjoying this confrontation between her lovers, Akhmatova would often persuade Punin to call Luknitskiy and apologise for his harsh words.59 But in his diary, Luknitsky admitted that, in spite of the circumstances which made him dislike Punin, he felt that behind his ‘rough look’, a ‘good nature was hiding’.60 In the early stage of Nikolay’s relationships with Anna, Akhmatova’s friends also refused to accept Punin. Nadezhda Mandelstam found him clever, but rude and unpleasant.61 For many of her friends Anna was still Gumilev’s wife, ignoring the fact that she was married to Shileyko at the time. Others blamed Punin for exploiting her skills, and making her translate French books and articles on art for his lectures instead of letting her write poems. But their love proved stronger than these accusations. Torn between his wife and lover, Punin would soon invite Akhmatova to move in to live with him in the same apartment, where his family resided. 3. Ginkhuk and Tatlin. Punin’s Lectures and Courses Between November 1921 and January 1922, the Petrograd Department of Visual Arts of Narkompros was liquidated.62 Twenty five years later, in June 1946, Punin would admit that at this point in Russian history ‘the very fate of new visual art had been predetermined’.63 Despite his complicated personal life and his first encounter with rejection and with persecution by the state, Punin continued to be in the epicentre of the artistic life of Petrograd. ‘Nothing can happen to me which can crush me. And that’s my destiny,’—wrote Punin to his wife in July 1923.64 58 S. Luknitsky, Est’ mnogo sposobov ubit’ poeta, p. 17. 59 See P. Luknitsky, Vstrechi s A. A., v. I, p. 147. 60 Ibid., p. 148. 61 A. Height, Anna Akhmatova. Poeticheskoe stranstvie, p. 95. 62 See Krusanov, vol. 2, book 2, p. 478. 63 From the speech, given by N. Punin at the meeting, dedicated to the artist N. A. Tirsa, on the 5 June 1946. A stenographic transcript of this speech is kept in Punin’s Archive in St. Petersburg, p. 34. 64 Letter to A. Arens of 12 July 1923, MSL, p. 191.

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On 31st July 1923, he published an article ‘About the right’ [‘O pravom’] in the leading fine-art magazine Life of Art [Zhizn’ Iskusstva], in which he raised once again the controversial subject of proletarian art. Here Punin argued that art should be above any class system and that ‘art, when it is true, does not serve anything or anyone.’ He wrote that there had never been any proletarian art and that often the art of political propaganda was falsely called proletarian. He stated that the very term proletarian art was ‘a pure myth created by the intelligentsia’.65 Such statements in a class-oriented society could not remain unnoticed. In 1923, freedom of speech still existed in the Soviet Union, and Punin’s article was published. However, it was followed by the editor’s note questioning the radical statements of the leader of Left art, and expressing regrets that: ‘Punin was wearing Marxist robes for not very long and that he was rapidly losing his peacock feathers’.66 Punin’s uncompromising nature did not fit in with the new regime. Perhaps unknowingly prescient, when Korney Chukovsky asked Akhmatova during his visit in September 1924 ‘How do you think Punin’s sudden bravura will end?’ she smiled sadly and answered: ‘In Solovki’- the Gulag.67 However, back in the early 1920s Punin and his artist friends still retained most of their optimism. Having invested a lot of energy in the reorganization of the Hermitage Museum, Nikolay Punin felt that it was just too old-fashioned to become a temple of proletarian art.68 New art had to come out of the museums and concentrate on the streets, factories, trams and even flats of the workers. In 1919, Punin wrote that large museums were confronted with the fact that artists did not need them any more, and that they would create their own museum instead.69

65 N. Punin in one of his reviews of the Second State Free Exhibition of Art, which opened at the Academy of Arts in summer 1923, The State Exhibition. About the right, in Life of Art, N 30, 31 July 1923, pp. 6–8. 66 Ibid., p. 8. 67 The Solovki prison camp (later Solovki prison) was located on the Solovetsky Islands, in the White Sea. It was the ‘mother of the GULAG‘ according to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Historically, Solovetsky Islands have been the location of the famous Russian Orthodox Solovetsky Monastery complex. By Lenin’s decree, the monastery buildings were turned into Solovetsky Lager’ Osobogo Naznacheniya (SLON), that is, the ‘Solovky Special Purpose Camp’. It was one of the first ‘corrective labour camps’, a prototype of the Gulag system. Quote from K. Chukovsky, Diary: 1901–1929, (Moscow, 1991), pp. 286–287. 68 Meeting about art, in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 7.12.1919, p. 4. 69 In Moscow, letter of 04.02.1919—in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 10, 09.02.1919.



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The great revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, would proclaim: We need not a dead temple of arts, where the dead works languish, but a live factory of the human spirit.70

The Museum of Artistic Culture was officially opened on 3rd April 1921, in the Myatlev House on St. Isaak’s Square in the centre of Petrograd. The idea of the new museum had been conceived as early as 1918, when Mayakovsky had proclaimed: ‘It’s time for bullets to pepper museums!’71 Already on 10th September 1918, a special committee gathered to discuss the organisation of this proposed museum. Led by the artist Karev, this new committee included all the ‘usual suspects’: Punin, Tatlin, Malevich, Pavel Kuznetsov, Matveev and Altman. At this first meeting the purpose of the new museum was discussed. And once again Punin stressed that they ‘should not reorganise an old museum, but create a new one, where nothing old would be represented.’72 He called the committee to ‘create a museum which will teach people to think about art in a new way (as we want them to), instead of recreating the same old type of museum as existed before.’73 The committee had several meetings through 1918 to 1921, discussing which works of art they should purchase for the new museum, and which artists they should represent. The first purchases were made in October 1918, and included five paintings by Malevich, three by Tatlin and three by Kandinsky. All together 61 paintings were purchased from mainly avantgarde artists, and 215.000 roubles spent74—a huge amount of money in this impoverished country! Researching the experimental nature of avant-garde art, the Museum of Artistic Culture was the only institution of its kind in the world. It developed a new concept of the artist, as ‘a specialist in the creation of new artistic forms, a professional, whose formal experimentation promised to be directly functional in fulfilling the needs of the new society’.75 It

70 Meeting about art, in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 7.12.1919, p. 4. 71 V. Mayakovsky, It’s too early to rejoice, quoted in J. Milner ‘Tatlin’, p. 143. 72 The full report of the committee on the organisation of the Museum of Artistic Culture is published in Malevich o sebe. Sovremenniki o Maleviche, ed. by I. A. Vakar, T. N. Mikhienko, (Moscow: RA, 2004), vol. 1, pp. 397–399. 73 Ibid., p. 399. 74 The full list of paintings purchased for the Museum of Artistic Culture in October 1918, and the amounts of money spent is published in Malevich o sebe. Sovremenniki o Maleviche, pp. 402–403. 75 Halina Stephan, ‘Lef ’ and the left front of arts, p. X.

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represented the new art, striving to explain it to the masses who, as Punin predicted back in 1919, ‘would gladly yawn, or even sleep, in such a specialised museum’.76 The Petrograd Museum of Artistic Culture became the natural successor of the Vitebsk Museum of Contemporary Art, where ‘the members of Unovis could study authentic examples of the newest Russian art, and Malevich could ‘present a diagnosis of works by masters of contemporary art as well as by his students’.77 With the end of Unovis, the Vitebsk museum also ceased to exist and twenty-two paintings from its collection, including two paintings by Malevich himself (‘Cow and Violin’, 1913 and ‘Portrait of I. V. Kliun’, 1913), were brought to the newly-formed Petrograd Museum of Artistic Culture. In 1922, at Filonov’s suggestion and through the determined efforts of Malevich and Nikolay Punin, the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKhUK) was established with the Museum of Artistic Culture as its base. It was a truly unique establishment, where artists explored the laws of visual perception and the formation of art. For Punin this newlyestablished institution represented the fulfilment of all his dreams about educating workers in modern art. On February 2nd 1921, the Petrograd Free Artistic Studios (PEGOSKhUM) had regained the old title, The Academy of Arts. All the avant-garde leaders were thrown out and replaced by more conservative department heads, such as the Neoclassicist architect, V. A. Shchuko. A few months later, numerous petitions were filed to allow such artists as Tatlin and Matyushin to retain their studios at the Academy, but in vain.78 It was GINKhUK which now became the new retreat of the Left artists—their new tool for educating proletariat in the new art. In 1923, Kazimir Malevich, who previously replaced Chagall as the director of the Vitebsk Museum of Contemporary Art, and now moved to Petrograd and (conveniently) lived in the Myatlev house, became the Museum’s director, while Punin became a deputy director and the head of the Department of Common Ideology (replacing Filonov) of GINKhUK. Until 1926, (when the museum was closed) Punin was also a member of the museum’s committee. 76 Iskusstvo kommuni, no. 12, 23.02.1919. 77 Aleksandra Shatskikh, Vitebsk. The Life of Art, trans. By Katherine Foshko Tsan, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 227. 78 Katerina Clark, Petersburg. Crucible of Cultural Revolution, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 154.



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Along with Tatlin, Filonov and Kandinsky, Malevich declared: ‘We alone can be entrusted with the acquisition of contemporary art and the supervision of the artistic education in the country.’79 The newly-established GINKhUK aimed to give even more profound artistic education to the masses, ironically fulfilling Lenin’s words when he said to Clara Zetkin that: ‘Art belongs to the people. Its thickest roots must go down into the midst of the broad toiling masses. It must unite the feelings, thoughts and will of these masses.’80 Punin was convinced that ‘a developed worker, and especially an interested one, does not need to know Raphael at all in order to understand the creative work of his times’.81 Perhaps confusingly, given the arguments he propounded in favour of the Futurists in the Art of the Commune, already in 1919, Nikolay Punin was recorded as being ‘one of the first critics to promote the organised methods of Constructivism instead of the “bomb-throwing” of early Futurism’.82 By the 1920s, he felt that, after the end of the First World War, Futurism, which treated art as a scandal, was no longer appropriate, since the bourgeoisie was already shocked enough by reality itself.83 Talking about the reconciliation of the principles of utility and construction, Punin stated his admiration for Tatlin as ‘the most forceful and clear-sighted master of our age’.84 In GINKhUK, Tatlin ran a Department of Material Culture, which was developing the designs for mass clothing and other areas of the new life of workers. In her book ‘Russian Constructivism’ Christina Lodder quoted the aims of Tatlin’s department, which included ‘the investigation of material as the formative starting point of a culture; the investigation of contemporary everyday life as a known form of material culture, and the synthetic formation [oformlenie] of material and, resulting from such formations, the construction of models for the new everyday life’.85

79 Meeting about art, in ‘Iskusstvo kommuny’, no. 1, 7.12.1919, p. 4. 80 Quoted in P. Reddaway, Literature, the Arts and the Personality of Lenin, pp. 51–52. 81 The report at the museum conference, ‘About the educational role of the museums’, in Iskusstvo kommuny, no. 12, 23.02.1919. 82 The documents of 20th-century art. The tradition of Constructivism, Ed. By Stephen Bann, (Thames and Hudson, London, 1974), p. 14. 83 Punin wrote: ‘. . . Futurist, who has been walking around the globe in the bloodstained jacket of never-ending scandals.’- N. Punin ‘Apartment No 5’, MSL, p. 106. 84 Iskusstvo komunny, March 9, 1919. 85 See Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism, p. 147.

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In 1924, Nikolay Punin wrote an essay ‘Rutina I Tatlin’ [‘Routine and Tatlin’] which remained unpublished during the critic’s lifetime,86 in which he described the construction of the new everyday life [novyi byt] in Russia, which demanded advanced technology. He quoted Tatlin who told him, in relation to his recently constructed wood-burning stove that: The time for ‘Americanised’ stoves in the conditions of our Russian everyday life [byt] has not yet arrived. We need things as simple and primitive as our simple and primitive everyday life.87

In his essay, Punin concluded that Tatlin’s stove became his ultimate answer to the critic’s most fundamental question about the artist’s vision of art in the future, namely being necessary to people. Perhaps, it was also an answer to Roger Fry’s predicament, who wrote back in 1920, about his ideal future state: In a world where the objects of daily use and ornament were made with practical common use, the aesthetic sense would need far less to seek consolation and repose in works of pure art.88

Nikolay Punin commented on Tatlin’s vision of art in the future: Such an answer means above all that the artist’s attention is focused with particular fixity on what is usually called byt and serves as its elevation and decoration, but on its lower levels of daily human needs.89

In her book ‘Imagine no possessions. The socialist objects of Russian Constructivism’, Christina Kiaer explained that by creating the efficient stoves for workers’ apartments and thus paying attention to the ‘low’ of everyday life, Tatlin ‘invented a form of artistic primitivism that risked his avantgarde identity far more radically than other modern art movements that have come under the primitivist label’.90 Like Tatlin, Nikolay Punin was fighting to establish new forms of art, which demanded new ways of expression. He supported the correlation

86 Published in 1994, in the N. Punin ‘O Tatline’, ed. by I. N. Punina and V. I. Rakitin, Moscow: Literaturno-Khudozhestvennoe Agenstvo “RA”, 1994, p. 71; translated into English in Zhadova, Larisa ‘Tatlin’, New York: Rizzoli, 1988. 87 Quoted in Christina Kiaer, Imagine no possessions. The socialist objects of Russian Constructivism, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005, p. 46. 88 Roger Fry, Art and Socialism, in ‘Vision and design’, London: Chatto & Windus, 1920, reprinted in ‘Art History Supplement’, issue 002, June 2011, p. 7. 89 Quoted in Zhadova, Tatlin, p. 405. 90 Christina Kiaer, Imagine no possessions. The socialist objects of Russian Constructivism, p. 53.



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between new art and new everyday life, despite his belief that if Tatlin’s stove could be called artistic at all, then it would be by virtue of being made by Tatlin the artist rather than by virtue of its visual form.91 Back in 1920, Punin had also welcomed Tatlin’s project of a Monument to the Third International (his Tower), as ‘a new type of monumental construction uniting creative and utilitarian forms’.92 Punin felt that it was the answer to the new demands of the post-revolutionary age, when the shape of the human body could not serve as a powerful artistic form any longer. For him it was the true expression of the new age, made of ‘iron, glass and revolution’. In July 1920, Punin, along with the artists Lev Bruni, Yosif Meerson, Sofya Dymshits-Tolstaya, and a student, Tevel Shapiro, helped Tatlin to build a model of his Monument to the Third International, which had been commissioned by the Department of Artistic Work of the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment in 1919. He applied all his enthusiasm to gluing the rods for this symbol of the new Russia, this materialisation of Futuristic passion for revolutionary ideals. He was working alongside his favourite artist, who would occasionally shout whenever the patch on someone’s rod would not work: ‘Modernism! Doesn’t matter, comrades, he got that from the graphic shapes of the World of Art. Work on, you swine, you’ll get better.’93 Punin wished with all his heart for the monument to be completed as soon as possible. To support it even further he wrote a book about it and rather predictably called it ‘The Monument to the III International’ [‘Pamyatnik III Internazionala’]. According to Christina Kiaer, this essay produced for the first time ‘the metaphor of the hammer as an instrument to smash the old material life, in the Russian tradition of transcending byt to achieve a higher bytie [spiritual life].94 In this essay Punin explained the need for Tatlin’s monument: Figurative monuments (Greek and Italian) undoubtedly contradict Modernity. They cultivate individual heroism, confuse (muddle) history: torsos and the heads of heroes do not comply with the modern understanding of history.95

91 Ibid., p. 74. 92 N. Punin, Tatlin’s Tower, (1920) in ‘The doc. Of 20th-century art’, p. 15. 93 Diary note of 17 July 1920, Diary, p. 67. 94 Christina Kiaer, Imagine no possessions. The socialist objects of Russian Constructivism, p. 84. 95 N. Punin, Pamyatnik III Internatsionala, p. 2.

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Punin felt that after the 1917 Revolution there was a need to express ‘the tension of feelings and thoughts of the collective thousands’. At the time when people did not notice individual monuments in the rush of the modern world ‘a monument had to live by the social and public life of the city and the city must have lived in it. It must have been useful and dynamic, then it would be modern.96 In her book ‘Petrograd, Crucible of Cultural Revolution’, Katerina Clark wrote that like the post-revolutionary mass spectacles, Tatlin’s Tower “broke down the boundary separating ‘viewing subject’ from ‘work of art’ so that the subject could penetrate beyond that boundary into a special space (art).”97 Nikolay Punin admired Tatlin’s Monument as a functional but also useful building, which united spiral and triangle in its composition: Like the equilibrium (the balance) of parts—the triangle—the best expression of the Renaissance, but the best way to express our spirit is a spiral . . . The spiral is the ideal expression of liberation . . .98

Inside the tower, in the rotating seven-story spiral building, the supreme bodies of the world government of workers and peasants would be located, while in one of its wide wings, a huge cinema screen was planned to be built. Within the monument, a world-wide radio transmitter had to be installed, as well as a battery of searchlights which would project lit-up letters onto the clouds. It was Punin’s dream to combine ‘creative and utilitarian’ forms. In his book about the monument he declared: ‘Considering myself in a certain way competent in questions of art, I value this project as an international event in the world of art.’99 Punin proclaimed: We confirm that this project is the first revolutionary work of art, which we can send and are sending to Europe . . . We establish (and confirm):—only the power of millions of proletarian minds could come up with the idea of this monument and offer it to the world—its form must be realised by the muscles of this powerful force, since we have here the ideal—alive and classic expression in the pure and creative form—of international union of the workers of the globe.100

96 Ibid., p. 4. 97 Katerina Clark, Petersburg. Crucible of Cultural Revolution, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 141. 98 N. Punin, Pamyatnik III Internatsionala, p. 5. 99 Ibid., p. 3. 100 Ibid., pp. 3, 4.



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Punin believed that Tatlin’s Monument epitomised the ultimate fulfilment of the social role of art, which lay in the establishment of World Socialism, which the International Office of IZO was striving to fulfil, back in 1918. Nikolay Punin was the first art-critic to see the full meaning and significance of Tatlin’s Monument, and his essay became the only article on Constructivism which was included in the progressive German journal Object, published from 1922, in Berlin by the Russian writer, Il’ya Erenburg and artist El Lissitsky.101 In 1921, Punin wrote a further book about Vladimir Tatlin, which he called ‘Vladimir Tatlin (Against cubism)’ [‘Vladimir Tatlin. Protiv kubisma’]. He was the first art-critic to attempt analysing the work of this brave artist at the dawn of his artistic development. In his book ‘Vladimir Tatlin. Retrospective’, Anatolii Strigalev wrote: ‘. . . the only monograph about the artist, which was published in 1921, was demonstratively called “Tatlin (against cubism)” ’.102 Punin dedicated this opus to the students of the Free State Studios in Petrograd, and started it by criticizing French art and its devotion to individualism and depiction of the illusion of life instead of reality itself. The art critic saw in new Russian art the only salvation from the ‘romantic symbolism’ of the Impressionists and cubists. He felt that Russian art, using its long tradition of the great feeling for materials, which comes from icon-painting, was capable of making a great leap forward—beyond cubism itself.103 In this book, Punin suggested that the future belongs to those who are, surprisingly, not capable of beauty (in the sense of Beaux Arts). He admired Tatlin since ‘his abandonment of stylistic priorities in favour of the investigation of surface and materials avoided the errors of cubism’.104 Punin saw him as a cultural pioneer—a champion of the new era when ‘art is starting to become the presentiment and reflection of life—life itself.’105 Punin’s small book, even seventy years later, was regarded as ‘one of the most original and perspicacious assessments of Tatlin’s work’.106 Further, 101 See Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism, p. 228. 102 V. Tatlin. Retrospective, ed. by A. Strigalev, Jurgen Harten, Koln: Du Mont Buchverlag, 1993, p. 20. 103 N. Punin, Tatlin. Protiv kubisma, p. 28. 104 J. Milner, Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian avant-garde, p. 195. 105 N. Punin, Tatlin. Protiv kubisma, p. 22. 106 See J. Bowlt, From Practice to Theory: Vladimir Tatlin and Nikolai Punin, in ‘Literature, Culture and Society in the Modern Age’, p. 50.

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Nikolay Punin was ‘one of the first critics to understand the truly innovative nature of the Russian avant-garde’, propagating, in particular, the artistic systems of Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin through his publications and lectures.107 He criticised Kandinsky for creating ‘individualist’ art, which people find hard to relate to. He felt that this founder of truly abstract painting went off the beaten track not because he ran ahead of humanity, but because he was lonely in his art, because ‘the cosmic feeling killed the painter in him’.108 Punin believed that only ‘international and collectivist art is the art of the future’.109 He expressed his fears of the two-faced Soviet system for the first time in his article ‘Revolution without literature’. It was a reply to Leon Trotsky’s opus ‘Literature in opposition to the October Revolution’ [‘Vneoktyabrskaya literatura’], published in Pravda, in September 1922. Here Punin argued with Trotsky about the direction of revolutionary art, accusing him of a poor knowledge of Russian literature. He questioned the criteria by which new poets were judged when writing about Soviet subjects.110 In his article, Punin was asking Trotsky why some poets are accepted by the new regime, and others are not. He was wondering why Pushkin, with all the bourgeois tendencies in his literature, was widely published by Gosizdat, and Akhmatova, despite all her talent, even recognised by Trotsky himself, is considered to be an anti-revolutionary poetess. However, all Punin’s arguments, however logical, were in vain. On 30th June 1922, Trotsky had sent a note to the Politburo, in which he described the future Communist Party’s approach to the organisation of art and literature in the Soviet Union and stressed the importance of writers’ and poets’ total dependence on the Party. According to Trotsky, the Communist Party had to look after young writers and artists, to have a ‘separate dossier’ on every artist, writer and poet, to have a strict censorship of their work. Trotsky called for the Communist Party to ‘consider each artist individually’ on the basis of loyalty to State policies, and to be

107 Ibid., p. 50. 108 N. Punin, About books. V. Kandinsky. Monograph, In Iskusstvo kommuni, N 9, 2.02.1919, p. 3. 109 N. Punin, Third International, In Iskusstvo kommuni, N 15, 16.03.1919, p.1. 110 N. Punin, Revolutsiya bez literatury, in ‘Tainy Remesla. Akhmatovskie chteniya’, ed. by N. Korolyova & S. Kovalenko, (Moscow: Nasledie, 1992), p. 267.



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‘merciless’ towards bourgeois tendencies in art.111 A year later he developed this thought into a rather stronger statement: ‘It is completely obvious that in the field of art the Party can not, even for a day, hold on to the liberal principle of “laisser faire, laisser passer” (let everything develop in its own way).’112 Trotsky believed that the Communist Party should develop strict policies on the correct nature of poetry, literature and visual art. Perhaps it is no wonder that Stalin, who eventually ordered Trotsky’s execution in 1940, had no books apart from a full collection of Trotsky’s writings in one of his dachas near Moscow. It was Trotsky who formed the Communist approach of strict State censorship to art and art history. His main work on the new Communist aesthetics was called ‘Literature and Revolution’, [Literatura I Revolutsiya], published in 1923. It was not written as a single manuscript, but consisted of his articles from 1907 to 1923. One of the chapters of this book was dedicated to ‘Proletarian Culture and Proletarian Art’ [Proletarskaya Cultura I Proletarskoe Iskusstvo]. Here Trotsky expressed his belief that the proletariat had to create its own culture and its own art, but due to lack of experience, the proletariat had to learn from its enemies—the members of intelligentsia. Trotsky wrote that ‘the problem of a proletariat which has conquered power, consists, first of all, in taking into its own hands the apparatus of culture—the industries, schools, publications, press, theatres, etc.—which did not serve it before, and thus to open up the path of culture for itself.’113 He said that ‘it is impossible to create a class culture behind a class’ back.’114 But how could people, who would be wearing a tool belt without knowing how to spell it, determine the nature of this new art? Like Lenin, Trotsky believed that ‘the essence of the new culture will not be an aristocratic one for a privileged minority, but a mass culture, a universal and popular one.’115 But he also felt that ‘before the proletariat

111 See the full text of Trotsky’s note to Politburo About young writers and artists in AP RF, Fond 3, Op. 34, D. 185, L. 8–10; also published in ‘Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaya intelligentsiya. Dokumenti TsKRKP(b), VCHK-OGPU- NKVD o kulturnoi politike.’ 1917–1953, Moscow: MFD, 2002, p. 36. 112 L. Trotsky Partiinaya politika v Iskusstve’ in ‘Literatura I Revolutsiya’, (Moscow: Poliizdat, 1991), p. 172. 113 Trotsky, L., Proletarskaya kul’tura i proletarskoe iskusstvo’ in ‘Literatura i Revolutsiya’, p. 146. 114 Ibid., p. 174. 115 Ibid., p. 169.

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will have passed out of the stage of cultural apprenticeship, it will have ceased to be a proletariat’.116 Perhaps Trotsky’s conclusion that proletarian art can never be a reality, since the proletariat has to outgrow its proletarian status in order to relate to art or to create it (the view expressed by Punin back in 1918), became one of the reasons why Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution was banned in the Soviet Union, and for many decades kept in locked files. But despite Stalin’s divided attitude to Trotsky and his writing, he did pre-determine the political orientation of Soviet art and literature—something that Punin, who believed that art should be above class or politics, could never agree with. In 1922, Punin was also trying to defend the great talent of another poet, who was not recognised and was thus tortured by the new Soviet regime—Osip Mandelstam. He believed that Mandelstam was one of the finest poets of his generation—‘a being more perfect than people’.117 Punin first met Mandelstam around 1910, in the Apollon headquarters, and he was amazed by the way ‘this small jubilant Jew was as stately as a fugue’: He would listen to the person with whom he was speaking, lowering his long eye-lashes, as if he was not hearing the words, but what was behind them; it was probably the reason why, quite often, his remarks were rather unexpected . . .118

In the 1920s, after Nikolay started his affair with Anna Akhmatova, Mandelstam and his wife became his frequent guests. Several times the poet even stayed in Punin’s flat for a few days, sleeping, like most guests, on the old chest in the corridor. In 1922, Punin wrote an article for the magazine Zhizn’ Iskusstva [Life of Art] about Mandelstam’s anthology of poems ‘Tristia’.119 He praised the poet—this unique and often lonely genius, who was “shaking the ‘unsteady world’ of agitators, tangling the spheres of history”.120 In this article Punin wrote:

116 Ibid., p. 176. 117 From Punin’s unpublished memoirs—in I. Punina, Pri zvukakh omerzitelnogo bala in the magazine ‘Vyshgorod’, Tallin, Estonia, 1–2’99, 1999, p. 168. 118 Ibid., p. 168. 119 Magazine Zhizn’ Iskusstva, 17 October, N 41, 1922, p. 3. 120 N. Punin, Tristia, in the magazine ‘Vyshgorod’, Tallin, Estonia, 1–2’99, 1999, p. 174.



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I do not know for certain where in ‘Tristia’ the old form is coming to an end and the new form begins. But I betray everything: new art, dynamics, old friends etc. in front of this person, who still controls art so profoundly. In front of this person all the strength of my “militant spirit” weakens, forgiving him everything, which I can never accept.121

He remarked that when a form has such strength, it does not matter what it derives from, and, admitted that even though one can study its form, one can never explain poetry or painting. In 1923, Punin was appointed to be a director of the artistic department of the porcelain factory in Petrograd. Keeping the old artists of the factory active, Punin also brought new artists to the factory: Malevich and his pupils Chashnik and Suetin; Bruni, Tatlin, Lapshin and Matveev. In his letter to N. Punin of 8th July 1923, Malevich wrote: I am thinking about the porcelain factory in terms of the creation of shape, and also organisation of the laboratory of form, which certainly depends on you. . . . This project is a useful, big project—and we must do it. Abstraction without a subject must overturn the object itself as utilitarian imagination, since only then will the new technical opportunities be revealed. I am very interested to see what my experiments will look like: the half-cup will probably be a fiasco, but if it happens I already have a new opportunity to use a straight and a curved line, which should help it to stand.122

In the same letter he wrote: ‘Let all the experiments be carried to the end, and even be painted, but if they come out of the fire successfully let them still stay unique and not be multiplied for mass production.’123 Malevich was also asking Punin to increase the wages of his pupils, Suetin and Chashnik, so that they could concentrate on work rather than on survival. He thought that the three of them will be ‘the new foundation of the renewal of the factory’. Malevich suggested that the factory had to be divided into Visual and Suprematistic departments and was hoping that, thanks to Punin, it would not be ‘a pile of mud’ any longer. Malevich wanted to dedicate an inkwell by Suetin to art critics. They will ‘get the ink out of it and will write about the death of Suprematism, about its mystical state . . .’124 Punin himself had spoken several times about Suprematism as a blind alley in the development of visual arts.

121 Ibid., p. 171. 122 Pis’ma Kazimira Malevicha El Lisitskomu i Nikolau Puninu, ‘Pinakoteka’, Moscow, 2000, p. 30. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid., p. 31.

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In his letters of 20th July to 3rd August 1923, Malevich was trying to persuade Punin to influence the porcelain factory in a quick purchase of his Suprematistic drawings (to enable him and his family to come to Petrograd from their dacha in Nemchinovo, near Moscow). Following his first arrest and earlier disillusionments, Nikolay Punin now felt needed once again. ‘The factory, stirring energy, inexhaustible and serious’,—as he wrote in the letter to his wife of 12th July 1923.125 Apart from Malevich and his pupils, Punin also commissioned Olga Sudeikina (one of Akhmatova’s friends) to make porcelain dolls, and he did want to help many more talented artists, but at the time when most people were still living on rations, it was hard to find enough money for art. Nikolay would not give up: I always go to the factory with pleasure: I never thought that this work would be so interesting; it is interesting because there is so little idleness in it, because it is so productive, and almost every deed and every word result in a real and meaningful expression, which never happens in administrative and office work. It is a pity though that the factory has so little money, that nothing bigger and more impressive can be made now.126

Two weeks later, Punin wrote to his wife that the factory was at a standstill for several days due to unpaid electricity bills. He felt that even though they would survive a bit longer, the end of the Petrograd Porcelain Factory was imminent. But, however challenging it was, Punin persevered at the factory for two years, providing commissions for his Futurist friends and making sure that new shapes and designs were introduced to this conservative institution. Combining his work at the factory with equally demanding work at the Museum of Artistic Culture, Punin still managed to find energy and inspiration for giving lectures on the history of artistic forms at the Academy of Arts. Expressing all his sincerity, he taught his students about new art, in which ‘there is not a single element of form that did not exist in the old, but the new art is really a new sense of the world: the form is not new; the content is new.’127 But imposing anything new on the 170-year-old institution was challenging. In his diary of 17th September 1923, Punin wrote about one of his close friends, the Futurist artist Tirsa, who witnessed how, at the Moscow

125 Letter of 12 July 1923, MSL, p. 191. 126 Ibid. 127 Diary note of 25 August 1923, MSL, p. 202.



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conferences, ‘the participants voted by a show of hands for or against space’.128 They were debating the introduction of new form of ‘spatial paintings’—counter-relief—into the programme of the Academy of Arts. In March 1924, Punin submitted an official petition to the governing body of the Academy, in which he complained about several professors who had told him in front of his students that his lectures ‘destroy the whole of academic teaching’. In response to this remark Punin suggested giving a lecture called ‘About the borders between art and science’ to the professors of the Academy. He finished his petition by saying that if the governing body could not organise such an occasion, he will assume that they are satisfied with his lectures, and will not take the professors’ remarks personally.129 The Academy surrendered. Punin continued teaching his course on the history of artistic forms until 1936, combining it with lecturing at the State Institute of the History of Art, where he worked from 1922 to 1930. This Institute was an amazing organisation, entirely dedicated to studying the history of art. It had been founded by a patron of the arts who was himself an art historian, Count Valentin Platonovich Zubov, as early as 1912, when in most countries such a discipline did not even exist. He opened this truly unique Institute in his mansion on St. Isaac’s Square (house no. 5), which Akhmatova (who was also Zubov’s lover before the revolution) used to call ‘a dark house’, since its façade was faced with black marble. In the evenings, Zubov held concerts in the Green Hall of this elegant mansion, which was famous for its malachite fire-place, in front of which Akhmatova used to sit on a white bearskin rug. The Russian poet, Georgy Ivanov, described these evenings in Zubov’s palace: ‘. . . Rustling of silk, smell of perfume, mixed Russo-French chatter. Tall footmen in frock-coats and white stockings serve tea, sherry-brandy, sweets . . .’130 Before the Revolution this splendid house had been an educational centre for the children of noble families, as well as the meeting place of the cultural elite and the aristocracy. From 1912 to 1925, Count Zubov was the first director of the Institute of the History of Art, which in 1916, gained State status.

128 See Diary note of 17 September 1923, Diary, p. 119. 129 See MSL, p. 208. 130 Quoted in S. Volkov Istoriya Russkoi Kultury XX veka. Ot Lva Tolstogo do Alexandra Solzhenitsina, p. 169.

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This well-educated and charming count had a good personal relationship with Lunacharsky, which helped his Institute to remain popular in the new Bolshevik state. By 1923, it had around 1,000 students and more than 100 professors. Katerina Clark explained in her book ‘Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution’ that during The New Economic Policy (NEP) period (1921 to 1928), Petrograd University ‘saw an almost unending series of reorganisations: one day a particular faculty was added to the university, the next it was rehoused elsewhere, then it was amalgamated with other faculties, and finally it was abolished.’131 Following the introduction of the new official policy, which required the university to admit more students of proletarian background, a separate Workers’ Faculty was founded in 1919, as was a Faculty of Material Culture. This policy introduced a strong political emphasis into the more traditional subjects and many academics were forced to transfer into semi-independent institutes, with a smaller and more elitist group of students. Katerina Clark also wrote that ‘the major intellectual debates and theoretical work were in these years largely focused in semi-independent institutes’, in which ‘the leading scholars of the decade tended to hold positions (though many simultaneously held positions at the universities)’.132 Nikolay Punin was one of these academics and the State Institute of the History of Art became their main refuge. Count Zubov had no personal political sympathy for the Bolsheviks, but he knew that he had to cooperate with them in order to keep his Institute going. In his memoirs he admitted: ‘I personally considered that once I had worked with the Provisional Government, nothing hindered me from working with the Bolsheviks.’133 Together with Alexander Benois, another cause Count Zubov was fighting for was the preservation of historic buildings and monuments after the Revolution. They found great support from Lunacharsky, and it did not take long for Zubov to obtain the signature from the Commissar of Education on an order protecting his own building, in which his institute was housed, from confiscation. In fact, it was more difficult for Zubov to persuade the professors who were teaching at his Institute at the time to cooperate with the Bolshevik authorities than to get Lunacharsky’s support and protection. Later he wrote: 131 Katerina Clark, Petersburg. Crucible of Cultural Revolution, p. 149. 132 Ibid. 133 Quoted in Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, p. 128.



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As for myself, I recognised the new government both in my capacity as Director of the Gatchina Palace, and in my capacity as Rector of the Institute. In respect of the latter, I acted on my own initiative. When I called a meeting of professors, among whom there were not only museum workers (who behaved as I did) but other persons, and suggested that we should officially enter into contact with the new power, I met opposition . . . I managed to obtain my colleagues’ agreement that the institute would remain neutral. However, I did not take any notice of this platonic resolution, and continued to act as sole representative of the institute in negotiations with the Commissariat for Education . . .134

However, after the death of Lenin in January 1924, the situation in Russia changed, and in 1925, Count Zubov was arrested and imprisoned. On his release he gave all the priceless portraits of his ancestors to the Russian Museum (as he thought then, on a temporary loan) and went to Paris. He was planning to go there for a few months, but stayed for the rest of his life, leaving his family treasures to the Soviet State. In 1965, the seventysix year old Akhmatova met the eighty-one year old count Zubov in Paris. ‘Here you are, God let us meet once more,’—said the poetess to the old love of her youth. Punin worked at the Zubov’ Institute from 1922, and again from 1925, until the Institute was closed by the government in 1931. Ironically, still seen by many of the professors at the Institute as the Bolsheviks’ agent, Punin gave lectures on the history of 19th century Western European Art. In 1923, Punin was also an associate professor at the Department of Archaeology and History of Art at the State University, from which he had graduated back in 1913. Always improvising, the erudite and artistic Punin soon became the favourite lecturer of young art students. In 1924, the artist Andrei Taran wrote to Punin: ‘I do not need to talk about the interest in your lectures, young people know you and are already trying to find out where and when is your next lecture. Some of them delay their journey home in order to hear you.’135 In August 1924, Punin was invited to give lectures at the Institute of Arts in Kiev. He felt inspired to be in this sunny and romantic city, the city of Akhmatova’s youth. His lectures were well advertised, although Punin was laughing about the wrong information in the local papers, which stated that he started writing in 1909, when he was still a student, and

134 Ibid., p. 129. 135 In MSL, p. 218.

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listed books which he allegedly reviewed, even though they were never published in Russia.136 Nevertheless his lectures proved to be very popular (although he complained about poor attendance—only 300 people, due to the low season), and he was invited to come to Kiev every month for four or five days to give lectures on a more regular basis. On 8th August 1924, Punin returned to Petrograd and decided to cease working at the Porcelain Factory in order to concentrate on lecturing and on continuing his promotion of new art. He had heard rumours that Malevich was thinking of passing the post of a director of the Museum of Artistic Culture to him, but he felt even more inspired about settling at the Russian Museum, where he could start ‘a wider fight’ for contemporary art.137 He was still full of hope when, on the night of 23rd September 1924, a great flood rose and threatened to destroy his beloved city. Like the great flood of 1724, which caused the death of the city’s founder, Peter the Great, the 1924 flood followed the death of Lenin, after whom the city had been renamed Leningrad in the same year. For many, the flood felt like an ominous symbol. Together with the cradle of the October Revolution, it was threatening to wash away all the ideals for which the Futurists had been fighting for all those years. On the night of the flood, Punin and his wife Galya, tried desperately to get to the flat where Akhmatova lived at the time, to check if she was alright. She lived on the Fontanka embankment, which was especially badly flooded. Finally, at 10 am, Punin managed to get to her ‘knee deep in water’. The whole centre of the city was badly damaged. In his diary Punin provided a vivid record of the destructive force of the flood: . . . On the pavements, where there had been planks, they were washed away. The benches had been carried from the Field of Mars and strewn amusingly and surprisingly. In many places on the banks of the Neva huge barges stood on the broken parapets. In various places on the streets you could find boats lying on the pavement or on the tram rails. There was a frightening emptiness in the Summer Garden. Here, a stream of especially strong surge-waters of the hurricane had obviously run. Since it had made a sort of cut-through, all the trees were broken in this place. The roadways were horribly smashed up along Millionaya, where the wooden frames under the wooden paving blocks had been pushed up and carried away. The telephone, electricity,

136 See Punin’s letter to Akhmatova of 1 August 1924, MSL, p. 220. 137 See Punin’s letter to A. Arens of 8 August 1924, MSL, p. 224.



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and drinking water were not working. On the street there were queues for the weakly-running water taps that usually served to wash the streets. There were queues at the kerosene shops.138

However, in addition to the obvious material consequences of this disaster, the flood seems also to have spread a spirit of doubt about the new regime. Although the newspapers somehow managed to blame the flooding on the Tsarist legacy, Punin wrote about some people’s remarks made at the time: ‘Why are you all so happy about the flooding? It won’t wash away the Bolsheviks.’139 Leningrad was ‘empty, dead and dark’, and so was the general mood of its citizens at the time. In January 1925, Punin wrote: No one has ever drunk as much as they do now. Even the most unfortunate person drinks upon receiving 30 roubles. They drink everywhere. You can’t not drink, you become wildly bored when you don’t drink. A desperate time!140

He described how people were so hopelessly bored at the time, that they even welcomed the flood, as a long-awaited change of scene. Faces on the streets of Leningrad were mainly ‘pale and exhausted, old and grey’. Similar feelings were expressed by a famous member of the World of Art movement, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, who observed from his emigrant position in Paris: To “accept” Revolution—is to accept one’s destiny with gritted teeth. There is such a mess, and life absorbs all the absurdities, heinousness and cruelty in the most strange way; everyone’s destiny is inevitable and mysterious at the same time . . . and everything is so littered and filthy; one has to constantly put up with so much pettiness, lies and insults, that only after living under such conditions for so long, one develops a certain crust and learns to live from one day to another.141

And, two years later, Punin wrote: For the past seven years their [the Bolshevik] authority has not acquired a single new partisan. If someone joined them, then someone also left. On average, in the circle which I frequent, the opposition has become more solid, strong, and significantly better based. There is no doubt that

138 Diary note of 24 Sept. 1924, Diary, p. 140. 139 Diary note of 18 January 1925, Diary, p. 148. 140 Diary note of 13 January 1925, Diary, p. 147. 141 M. V. Dobuzhinsky, Letter to unknown person from 24 December 1923, quoted in M. Dedinkin, p. 51.

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Now, in 1925, for the first time since the Revolution, Punin felt hopeless and unable to influence the general degradation which he could see all around him. When many Soviet citizens were still driven by the enthusiasm of the first post-revolutionary years, Punin felt disillusionment and despair: We are not suffering as we suffered, for example in 1918 to 1922 (the suffering of those years was undoubtedly fruitful), but we are suffocating, we are withering and drying up, rotting and writhing in deadly convulsions . . .143

142 Diary note of 18 Jan. 1925, Diary, p. 148. 143 Diary note of 18 February 1925, Diary, p. 152.

Chapter Seven

THE SLOW STRANGULATION OF FREE CULTURE Communism, as it was revealed in the Russian Revolution, rejected freedom, rejected personality, rejected the spirit. It is in this and not in its social system that the demonic evil of Communism can be observed . . . (N. Berdyaev ‘Samopoznaniye’)1 To Every Age its Art, to Art its Freedom. (The slogan of the Viennese Secession group, 1897)

1. The New Rules Emerging When Lenin’s will was read in May 1924, Grigorii Zinoviev declared that the fears that Lenin had expressed about Stalin were ‘groundless’, a point of view he might later come to regret. Trotsky at the time was concerned with his clash with Zinoviev and Kamenev over the question of permanent revolution, and had formed what was to be called The United Opposition (paradoxically including Kamenev and Zinoviev and several other Bolsheviks) which put forward the ‘Declaration of the Thirteen’ which linked Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution with that of the merciless struggle with the kulaks. In July 1926, the Central Committee of the Communist Party rejected this, and was later persuaded to dismiss Trotsky from his post as war commander. Trotsky was too loyal to the Party to deploy the Red Army against the government, and in October 1926, he lost his seat on the Politburo, in 1927, was expelled from the Party, and in 1929, from Russia itself. Zinoviev and Kamenev soon found that they might have rid themselves of Trotsky, but they were hardly in control of events: by 1925, Stalin had recruited new allies in the Politburo (notably Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky), along with the new Commissioner for war, Voroshilov. Zinoviev and Kamenev soon came to suffer the same fate as Trotsky as early as 1926, and Stalin’s “new friends” Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, followed four

1 N. Berdyaev, Samopoznanie, in AA, p. 217.

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years later. By 1930, Stalin was in complete effective control of the USSR, his control exercised through the Party re-organisation, which was heavily purged from 1928 onwards, the secret police and the army. The historian Donald Treadgold summarised the seven objectives of Soviet totalitarianism under Stalin: i) t o preserve and strengthen Communist power and stifle any political opposition, ii) to plan the entire economic system, removing any individual enterprise, iii) to stamp out nationalism in the borderlands, and subject the minorities to Moscow control, iv) to control academic and artistic work and crush it if it ran counter to the currently applied ideological line in the arts and sciences, v) to crush organised religion, or at least to confine its activities, vi) to create a pervading atmosphere of fear which would quell the independence of political non-conformists and vii) to prepare the way for Soviet power abroad whenever the opportunity would arise.2 The expanded secret police, the OGPU, was an essential weapon in this programme. It kept watch over citizens, Party members and the armed forces alike and was armed with its own special troops. In February 1925, several hundred graduates of the famous Imperial Alexander Lycée in Tsarskoe Selo were arrested, and executed. Most of them were officers or lawyers. They were accused of participating in the ‘conspiracy of 19th October’—the day of the foundation of their lycée, the day on which they used to meet for dinner. It was a holy day for all the lycée graduates, including the most famous Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, who graduated from it back in the 19th century and remained loyal to its memory all his life. But 100 years after Pushkin had dedicated one of his poems to this special day, the last graduates of the lycée were interrogated for plotting an anti-Soviet conspiracy, specifically on 19th October, though it is clear that their main crime was the fact that they came from middle class families and had a superior education. In the state run by the Bolsheviks, intelligent people were regarded as suspicious and

2 Donald W. Treadgold and Herbert J. Ellison, Twentieth Century Russia, Westview Press, 1999, p. 317.



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potentially dangerous, and, after the death of Lenin, Stalin, who believed that the ‘best enemy is a dead enemy’, with help of the OGPU accelerated the long process of extermination of the intelligentsia. Back in 1922, the beautiful Solovetskiy archipelago, together with all its monasteries, had been given to the jurisdiction of OGPU, where they founded the Northern Camps of Special Assignment (Severnye lagerya osobogo naznacheniya). They were originally founded to accommodate members of the intelligentsia and ex-officers of the Tsar’s army, and were supposed to be a place of exile rather than of inhuman living conditions and hard labour. However, in 1925, it was collectively renamed the Solovetsk Camp of the Forced Labour of Special Assignment (Solovetskii Lager’ Prinuditelnykh Rabot Osobogo Naznacheniya—SLON), and now became a concentration camp for criminals and political prisoners. If, in 1923, there were 4,000 prisoners in Solovky, by 1927, their number had increased to 20,000 and by the beginning of the 1930s—65,000 people, only 20% of whom could be described as criminals. In this place of unbearable living conditions, poor medical assistance and hard labour, the death rate was very high. In 1929, almost 20,000 prisoners died of typhus alone. One of the early residents of Solovky was the famous Russian academic, Dmitriy Likhachev, who was arrested as a student at Leningrad University when he was only 21 years old. The main reason for his arrest stemmed from a humorous telegram which he and some of his friends had sent from the Pope to the members of the Space Academy of Science, which had been founded at the University in 1927. Likhachev was accused of anti-revolutionary activities and sent to Solovky for five years. A sense of humour was an especially dangerous quality in the increasingly suspicious Communist state. Back in 1924, Trotsky had announced in the speech in which he conceded defeat in the leadership struggle, that ‘The Party is always right’ and ‘One cannot be right against the Party.’3 From 1924 onwards, people had to accept this statement and never doubt any of the increasing flow of fabrications and fantasies emanating from the ruling authorities. In February 1925, Punin described in his diary ‘unheard-of squabbles and intrigues’ in the Institutes, as well as everywhere around him. From this point onwards, professionals were increasingly replaced by Communist Party members, usually with no experience in the relevant field. Knowledge of Marxism became more important than professional skills, 3 See S. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, p. 19.

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and Punin quoted one of his friends, Marr, saying: ‘I want to give birth, I need a midwife, and they tell me to make sure I call a Communist.’4 From then onwards, ‘Party membership and education, preferably combined, were the main routes to advancement in Soviet Russia.’,5 but most often an extensive knowledge of Marxism came to be the main key to power and recognition. In 1925, the independent Academy of Science became part of the Soviet People’s Commissariat, and in January 1928, eight Communist Party members were ‘elected’ into its presidium, despite resistance from all its other members. A year later, out of 1158 members of the Academy, only 16 were Party members, and it was only to be expected that in 1929, its purge would begin. The so called Academic Case was fabricated, and 85 people were arrested. They were blamed for attempting to get rid of the Soviet regime and bring back the monarchy, as well as for their refusal to accept Marxism. A few months later, 128 out of 960 full-time members and 620 out of the 830 part-time members were excluded from the Academy. More arrests and interrogations followed. The same process was happening in art and literature. Even though in 1925, the Central Committee still pronounced itself ‘in favour of free competition between the various groupings and streams’, they already distinguished ‘proletarian writers’ as the ‘future ideological leaders of Soviet Literature’.6 Punin complained about the overwhelming amount of hack work and ‘self-serving speculation on Marxism and Leninism’. In January 1925, he wrote: Making a bust of Lenin or drawing him in his coffin—is the most profitable work. But here, as well, one needs connections and acquaintances. One fairly-known artist said as he was preparing for exile: “Yes, I am leaving because the corpse would not feed me anymore.” [half a page is cut out] . . . not a single work of art of any significance is being produced. . . . So it is throughout Russia. Russia isn’t working.7

On 8th February 1926, Punin wrote: ‘In terms of our political situation, we feel as if we are beyond the end; that the end should have come long ago, but is still to come. Because of this there is emptiness. In terms

4 Diary note of 18 February 1925, Diary, p. 152. 5 Fitzpatrick, p. 16. 6 See G. Hosking, A history of the Soviet Union. Revised edition, (London: Fontana Press, 1990), p. 180. 7 Diary note of 18 January 1925, MSL p. 232–233, Diary, p. 148.



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of our culture, we have been thrown back 50 years. As a result, we are suffocating.’8 Seeking more exciting artistic life, Punin considered going to Moscow, to see his old friends Bruni and Miturich. In 1925, his favourite artist, Tatlin was in Leningrad, working on a new model of his tower, but was in a state of a ‘wild and blunt rage’. Punin felt that at least there was some ‘life’ going on in the new capital. At the same time he was disappointed with his beloved Leningrad: Nothing is “moving” anywhere, everything stands still; a dead body is swaying, there is something sinister in the dead calm of our time; everyone is waiting for something evil to arise from the dead serenity of our time. Everyone is waiting for something and something certainly should happen, and nothing does . . . can it really last for ten years?—this question is terrifying, and people are thrown into despair, and in despair they become corrupt. There has never been greater corruption and greater despair, probably, in the whole of Russia’s history.9

Anna Akhmatova expressed similar feelings in one of her poems, written back in 1921: What had happened to the capital? Who had lowered the sun to the earth? The black eagle on its standard Seemed like a bird in flight. This city of splendid vistas Began to resemble a savage camp, The eyes of the strollers were dazzled By the glint of bayonet and lance.10

In February 1925, Punin went with Akhmatova to Tsarskoe Selo—the most special place for both of them. It had formed them as young people and influenced their whole lives. But they found that the place which they loved so much did not exist anymore: . . . This town, tacked onto the giant palaces on the edge of the park, dead, half ruined, recalls the dwelling of a grave-digger in some kind of immense cemetery.11

8 Diary, p. 150. 9 Diary of 18 February 1925, MSL p. 234. 10 In AA, p. 207. 11 Diary note of 21 February 1925, Diary, p. 153.

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The Romanov family was gone—exiled and shot, and with the Royal Court, the ‘rows of carriages with drivers and lackeys in red livery’ which used to stretch from the palace through the whole town, had disappeared. Aristocrats, ballrooms, butlers and gymnasia students were all gone, and since there was nothing to replace all this splendour, Tsarskoe Selo12 had become a dull suburban town, inhabited by unhappy workers—those who were refused accommodation in Leningrad. ‘That world had died,—and how strange it is that we still remember it!’13—wrote Punin in 1926. Restless and disappointed with the boredom of Soviet reality, Punin was hoping to be sent to Paris by the People’s Commissariat. It was supposed to be a short lecturing trip, but since Punin had never been to Paris, it would have been a life-changing experience for him as an art critic. However, he had no energy or desire to fight for this trip with the ‘rotting and stinking mass of the rapacious and stagnant’ administrative hierarchies.14 As a result some minor bureaucrat was sent to France, and Punin went to Moscow, which, despite his expectations was ‘immersed in everyday life’. It resembled ‘an Asiatic camp settled on “seven hills”’.15 Nobody discussed politics or read the papers, and it felt as if the government itself did not exist. In his diary, Punin remarked that people in Moscow did not even talk about Trotsky, regarding him as a ‘stupid phenomenon, of no practical use.’16 He was very impressed by Favorsky’s works, and said that Bruni and Miturich were drawing beautifully as well. But, in general, Punin felt that Moscow ‘had prepared for a long-term cultural sleep’: . . . They are sitting it out. But no one knows for sure how long they will have to sit.17

After a week, Punin returned to Leningrad, and two months later Tatlin came to see him. He was very depressed because of his material needs, and said: ‘If I croak, I will burn and tear up all my things, I won’t leave anything to them; you know I have become enraged.’18 In Punin’s world, all the art that he so much admired seemed to be disappearing in front

12 At the time Tsarskoe Selo was re-named Detskoe Selo (Children’s village). 13 Diary note of 17 August 1926, MSL, p. 267. 14 See diary note of 18 February 1925, Diary, p. 152. 15 See diary note of 7 March 1925, p. 155. 16 See diary note of 7 March 1925, p. 156. 17 Diary note of 7 March 1925, MSL, p. 237. 18 Diary note of 7 May 1925, Diary, p. 160.



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of his very eyes. In August 1925, he wrote: ‘Not a word about art—from anyone, anywhere; it does not exist . . .’19 2. Keeping the Flame High. Russian Museum Exhibitions In 1925, the Institute of Visual Culture gained State status. However, only a year later—in August 1926, the Institute was closed. Bolshevik Russia was the first country in the world to open museums of modern art, and, sadly, the first to close them down. Apparently, criticism of the museum started when the influential and more importantly, official, art critic, Grigoriy Seriy, came to see an exhibition there, but Tatlin, who did not recognise Seriy, did not want to let him in. The scandal started on the next day, when very negative articles about the museum appeared in all the major newspapers. On 14th July 1926, Malevich wrote to Punin about his fight with The Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia, AKhRR, to keep the museum open.20 He described the new committee which had been organised to make the final decision about the future of the museum, and stated his regret that Lunacharsky was not included in it. He said: ‘We must overthrow AKhRR. . . . But we must be careful—so that this rot doesn’t bring any damage.’21 Malevich felt that AKhRR was drowning the remains of art in its quagmire.22 On 3rd February 1926, nine artists from five groups (‘OST’, ‘Makovets’, ‘4 Iskusstva’ [‘4Arts’], ‘Bitie’ and ‘Obschestvo Molodikh’) sent a letter to Stalin, complaining about the monopoly of AKhRR in Soviet art. They wrote that AKhRR had special support from the state (including the most recent subsidy from the government of 75,000 roubles), which gives it a feeling of moral superiority over other groups of artists.23 David Shterenberg, Lev Bruni and other artists asked Stalin to give ‘a special party directive’ in the field of party policy in art and to make sure that all the financial support of the state is divided equally between all artistic movements in order

19 Diary note of 25 August 1925, MSL, p. 261. 20 MSL, pp. 265–266. 21 Pis’ma Kazimira Malevicha El Lisitskomu i Nikolau Puninu, (‘Pinakoteka’, Moscow, 2000), p. 34. 22 See MSL, p. 266. 23 Letter from the group of artists to I. O. Stalin, in the archive RCKhIDNI, fond 17, opis 60, delo 805, L. 56–66.

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to ‘prevent a single group of artists [i.e. AKhRR] using the Revolutionary “label” in all fields of art’.24 In March 1926, Punin complained in his diary that the same process was going on in literature. He heard that Pasternak, Brik and some other writers had gone to Trotsky to tell him that they could not get their work published anywhere, since only ‘mass literature’ was accepted, and nobody wanted to experiment anymore.25 It was in these early years of the destruction of all freedom in every sphere of life, that Punin wrote: ‘They created a good prison, for everyone all at once, and without bars.’26 However, Punin still believed that one of the most important tasks of art critics and museum curators was the recognition and acquisition of new works by leading contemporary artists. In 1926, he went to great lengths to ensure that the collection of modern art of the Institute of Visual Culture, Ginkhuk, was not broken up or lost, but transferred to the Russian Museum. These paintings formed the core works of the collection of the Department of Newest Trends, which opened in 1926, thanks to Punin’s efforts, and was directed by him (he was also the only employee of this department) until its closure in 1931, when it was replaced by the Department of Soviet Painting, when Punin became the head of the Department of Drawings. The Department of Newest Trends was not re-opened until the 1990s. During its short life, Punin’s truly unique department aimed to observe the development of contemporary art, to organise exhibitions of the latest movements in Russian art and propagate the achievements of established and emerging artists. In the report of the work of the Russian Museum of 1926–1927, Nikolay Punin declared: From the institution which passively studies art, the museum should be transferred into an establishment which would be actively involved in artistic life and would become a filter, through which the whole variety of contemporary artistic life will be refined.27

With all his enthusiasm for the avant-garde art, Punin strived to fulfil his vision of the new role for the Museum. Apart from persuading the conservative Russian Museum to inherit works from Ginkhuk, Punin was behind

24 Ibid., L. 65. 25 See diary note of 19 February 1926, MSL, p. 263. 26 Diary note of 18 February 1926, MSL, p. 263. 27 Otchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo Muzeya za 1926–1927 godi, Leningrad, 1929, p. 43.



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quite a few acquisitions from unknown young artists. Among them was Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin, who wrote to Punin in 1920: ‘I regard you as the only cultured, clever and acute critic, a genuine contributor to avantgarde creativity.’28 A year later he had sent another letter to the art critic, in which he admitted: I see and know that you are essential to both artists and the general public, but you are even more necessary to art itself. Even though I do not agree with any of your articles, I still consider you (out of everyone who writes) to be the most essential person, the most sensitive and intelligent.29

It was his last letter to Punin. On 3 June 1922, Chekrygin died after being run over by a train, at the age of 25. A year before he died, Chekrygin wrote: ‘After my death, art critics will be trying hard to classify my art, and will conclude that I was eclectic.’30 Already in 1923, the art-critic Anatolii Bakushinsky, in his article for the catalogue of Chekrygin’s exhibition, called Chekrygin’s art ‘a sudden and unique phenomenon’.31 Another famous art-critic, Iakov Tugendkhol’d, compared Chekrygin with the ‘lonely flash of a meteor’.32 When, in 1925, Kazimir Malevich was asked by Ginkhuk to make a list which would classify contemporary Russian artists into categories, he ascribed Chekrygin, together with Filonov, to a separate section of ‘individual problems’.33 In 1927, Punin, who always encouraged individuality in artists, had purchased works by Mikhail Larionov together with several drawings and a painting called Fate by Chekrygin from the artist’s former fellow student and friend, Lev Zhegin. In 1928, Zhegin wrote to Punin: . . . He [Chekrygin] was disliked by most, in particular for his ‘spirituality’ in art; he was ‘on the side of the angels’ and spoke about ‘image’ in the very thick of shifts and isms, when the very word was regarded as outdated.34

In his letter, the collector admitted that by buying Fate, the art critic ‘had made an enormous contribution to culture’.

28 I. Punina, N. Punin and the Oeuvre of V. Chekrygin, p. 167. 29 Letter from Chekrygin to Punin of 29 December 1921, MSL, p. 145. 30 Quoted in Elena Murina, Vasiliy Rakitin, Vasiliy Nikolaevich Chekrigyn, Moscow: RA, 2005, p. 8. 31 A. Bakushinsky, Vystavka proizvedenii Chekrygina, in ‘Russkoe iskusstvo’, No. 2–3, 1923, p. 15. 32 Quoted in Murina, Elena, p. 9. 33 Ibid. 34 I. Punina, N. Punin and the Oeuvre of V. Chekrygin, p. 168.

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In 1929, the artist’s widow, Vera Kotova, had lost her job, and asked Punin to persuade the Russian Museum to buy another painting and a series of drawings by her late husband. Although there are no surviving documents which could prove this acquisition, the Russian Museum does have another painting by this much underestimated artist, and recently a series of his drawings was discovered in one of the many forgotten cupboards in the Museum. In 1944, when Nikolay Punin was on his way back from evacuation with the Academy of Arts and was passing through Zagorsk (70 km. from Moscow), he again saw Chekrygin’s drawings in the collection of his old friend, the artist Lev Bruni. And again he was so impressed by this unique artist that he wrote in his diary: I saw Chekrygin. This is very powerful art. I can almost hear it. It contrasts with life. When you stop looking at his paintings, the feeling evoked gradually increases. It then becomes clear that art and life are two different things; art does not seem to be something flowing out of life, although it is always placed above life, in the same way that a shadow falls.35

This later encounter with Chekrygin’s drawings inspired Punin to write an article about the artist. He proposed it to Georgy Lebedev, the director of the Russian Museum at the time, but in this era of Socialist Realism, an article about any alternative art was doomed to be rejected. As a result, this article was never written. But, back in August 1926, Punin somehow still managed to remain enthusiastic, at least about art. He wanted to open Tatlin’s room at the Russian Museum. He was still full of ambitious plans for promoting the avant-garde in the Soviet Union. In 1927, he organised an exhibition of avant-garde artists at the Russian Museum. Works of those who had already emigrated—Marc Chagall, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov and Wasiliy Kandinskiy, were exhibited alongside artists who remained in Russia—Vladimir Tatlin, Kazimir Malevich, Petr Konchalovsky and Pavel Filonov. Then, a change of scene. In February 1927, Punin was delegated by the Russian Museum to organise an exhibition of contemporary Russian art in Japan. Several hundred paintings were brought to Moscow, where they had to be packed and prepared for the long train journey to Tokyo. Punin accompanied the paintings, and persuaded Lunacharsky to leave 110 of the selected works of the state-sponsored AKhRR members behind. The

35 Diary note of 24 February 1944, MSL, p. 374.



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Minister of People’s Enlightenment still seems to have had great respect for his loyal interpreter of modern art, and on 9th March 1927, Punin wrote to his wife: . . . I am surprised with myself: this exhibition was so easy for me, I did everything in jest,—and in Petersburg I found it difficult to get over the border of the Museum’s power.36

The paintings which were chosen to represent Soviet art in Japan, were still predominantly realistic, but thanks to Punin two cubist compositions by Nathan Altman and Vladimir Lebedev were included, as well as three primitive still-lives by David Shterenberg, three symbolic paintings by Alexander Tishler and two rather impressionistic nudes by Nikolay Tirsa. There was also a beautiful cityscape by Falk called ‘A Street in Ruza’, and two portraits by Petrov-Vodkin—one of Anna Akhmatova, and one of the artist’s wife. The rest of the paintings and engravings were ‘rather juicy’ Russian landscapes, still-lives and portraits of happy peasants, which, no doubt, was exactly what the Japanese expected from a Russian or maybe a Soviet exhibition. By 15th March, 86 paintings, several drawings and engravings for the exhibition were packed in crates and loaded onto the train to Vladivostok. The train journey lasted three weeks, and all the paintings miraculously survived when the train was derailed in Siberia. Punin fell over during the crash and hurt his head, but was transferred to first class as a result of this incident, which raised his spirits. On 5th April, the paintings, Punin and another art critic from Moscow, David Arkin, as well as a Japanese artist, Tomoe Yabe, boarded the ferry to Japan. They arrived in Tokyo a few days later and were placed in the Imperial Hotel, which Punin immediately disliked. He wrote in his diary that they were met politely with many bows and compliments, but without any sincerity. Everything in Tokyo was expensive, and Punin felt guilty drinking hot chocolate in a street café knowing how scanty his wife’s and daughter’s diet was back in Leningrad. He also complained that, although the members of the Japanese-Soviet artistic society seemed to be quite interested in Russian culture, everything in their heads was mixed up: ‘Mayakovsky, Revolution, America, Proletarian culture, AKhRR, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Pil’nyak, Verbitskaya’. Punin wrote in his diary that they had never heard of Khlebnikov, and would not believe that Mayakovsky was

36 MSL p. 271.

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his pupil and follower, and not the other way around.37 In one of the letters to his wife he described Tokyo: Tokyo!—what is Tokyo,—it is impossible to describe, one can only see it. A vast village, village-sea; nobody knows how many streets there are— not even the Japanese; there aren’t any numbers or street names. Here is an approximate postal address: Ginza quarter near the Buzu bridge, second street, house next to the neglected plot of land, opposite the office of Uura, citizen Savo. Most streets are narrow, so that cars can hardly get past each other, there are also streets on which it is impossible to drive at all; houses are predominantly made of wood and have one storey; “many, many houses”. Street lights are on during day and night—an ocean of street lights in the evening; streets are wearing matt-yellow necklaces; all the lights are very close together.38

Punin was invited to a dinner with geishas, and even though he could not communicate with them, he decided that they represented all the highest values of Japanese culture. While in Japan, Punin wrote several letters to his wife, but he was also missing Akhmatova: Everything is full of shadows, fog, unconnected snatches—only you are the beginning and the end, some sort of completeness and form. Strange, but a very distinctive feeling—as if I am alive only because I remember you.39

When they were unpacking the paintings, suddenly Punin saw Akhmatova’s face on the portrait by Petrov-Vodkin. ‘I kiss the tips of your wings’ she wrote to her now-beloved Nikolay in reply to his letter. Now, the exhibition was about to be opened, and Punin wrote an article for the catalogue. He was not sure if it would sound right in Japanese, but he was quite pleased with the outcome. The exhibition was organized by the ‘Asahi Shimbun’ newspaper, but since they did not expect to sell many paintings, the special patron’s committee was organized with many famous people in it, including the Japanese prime minister, who became president of the committee. Many articles about Russian art appeared in all the newspapers, and on 18th May 1927, the exhibition was finally officially opened. It was raining very hard, but 1,000 people attended the private view of this long-awaited display of Soviet art. The Japanese censors excluded two paintings from the exhibition: ‘Massacre’ by Tishler and ‘Nude’ by Lebedev (too much was exposed for their

37 See MSL, p. 276. 38 Letter to Anna Arens-Punina of 13 April 1927, MSL, p. 277. 39 Letter to Akhmatova of 15 April 1927, MSL, p. 277.



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puritan tastes) but the remaining works were well hung, and at least in the beginning, the exhibition was a success. Punin travelled around Japan, but after a month in this mysterious country he felt that ‘the more you listen and look around Japan, more confusing it feels—a naive and dark country.40 He disliked busy Tokyo, but fell in love with the ancient capital of Japan, until AD 791—Nara. Punin compared this city with Purgatory, which precedes the other world. He stayed here on his own, walking around the magic forest and enjoying peace away from Japanese society—‘heavy, complicated, slow-witted quiet thinkers’.41 Often Punin was guided around Japan by the Russian artist, Varvara Bubnova, who had emigrated here from Russia in 1923, and was married to Voldemars Matvejs. Nikolay also sent a letter from Tokyo to Natalia Goncharova, who had lived in Paris since 1915. He asked her questions which could never be included in a letter sent from the Soviet Union. He heard that she had painted a portrait of Nikolay Gumilev when he was in Paris, and following Akhmatova’s request, he wanted to ask Goncharova to send them a photograph of it, as well as explain the significance of the ‘Blue Star’ to which (or to whom) Gumilev’s poems written in Paris were dedicated, and tell them anything else she knew about this great poet. As he had been shot by the Bolsheviks in 1921, mention of his name was prohibited in Soviet Russia. Punin warned Goncharova not to mention Gumilev’s name in her letters sent to Leningrad, but just refer to him as ‘N. S.’ (Nikolay Stepanovich). Punin also asked in his letter, about Mikhail Larionov, Goncharova’s husband, another Russian artist who had emigrated to Paris at the time of the Revolution. He said that he felt that ‘in the last 20 years there has been nothing better in Russian art than Larionov’s paintings’.42 He wanted to organize an exhibition of Larionov in the Russian Museum, and to purchase some of his works from Lev Zhegin for his Department of Newest Trends. In this letter, Punin described the Russian exhibition in Tokyo as quite mediocre, but admitted that it was very important for Japan, where artists would only copy French Impressionists but admired Russian art for

40 Letter to Akhmatova of 11 May 1927, MSL, p. 185. 41 Letter to Arens-Punina of 22 June 1927, MSL, p. 290. 42 Letter to Goncharova from 7 July 1927, MSL, pp. 292–293.

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its unique nature and strong emotions. As Punin was sending this letter from Tokyo, he could write to Goncharova about the poor state of art in the Soviet Union, where ‘there are almost no new forces, and old ones are being ignored’.43 Repeating his earlier diary notes, he concluded that nobody in Russia cares about art anymore. Punin’s letter would remain unanswered until July 1930, when Larionov sent him a brief reply mainly to thank him for writing a short article ‘The Impressionistic period in the work of M. F. Larionov’, which was published in 1928, in the Russian Museum almanac Materials in Russian art.44 Here Punin was praising Larionov as one of the most important Russian artists, who ‘revived traditions, forgotten by Russian artists, and paved the new path for art—simple, full of life and at the same time deeply professional’.45 Larionov was very pleased with Punin’s article, which the Russian Museum had sent to him in Paris, and wrote in his letter that these were some of the best words ever written about this period of his art and about him generally.46 In the summer of 1927, after staying in Japan for more than three months, Punin headed back to Russia. There, in Leningrad and Moscow, artists had come to rely on him and his Department of Newest Trends as the only opportunity to exhibit their work in the country, which was getting more and more obsessed with Socialist Realism. They admired him for ‘making a new path in the organization of foreign exhibitions’.47 He was needed in Russia, and he was happy to be back. Only the Japanese ‘remembrance lantern’ brought back from Japan by Punin, and hung in his study, would remind him now of this most exotic country among the increasingly cruel realities of the Soviet Union. One of the highlights of the exhibitions organized by Punin between 1928 and 1932, was a major retrospective of the work of one of his favourite artists and an old friend, Vladimir Lebedev. It was followed by the 1928 exhibition of the Moscow artists Nadezhda Udaltsova and her husband Alexander Drevin, the 1929 exhibition of the paintings by Petr Konchalovsky and the largest display of work of Pavel Filonov. The latter was by far the most controversial exhibition, and even though the workers’ representatives who were invited to the Private View were very 43 Ibid., p. 293. 44 Materiali po Russkomu iskusstvu, Leningrad: Russian Museum, V. 1, pp. 287–291; also in RSI, pp. 132–135. 45 RSI, p. 132. 46 See Larionov’s letter to Punin of 4 July 1930, MSL, p. 311. 47 Letter from N. Udalzova to Punin of 25 September 1927, MSL, p. 294.



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impressed by Filonov’s paintings, it never opened to the public. After the preview, the doors of the rooms where his work was exhibited remained shut for several years. Unable to review Filonov’s prohibited exhibition, Punin wrote an essay about Lebedev. His 35 page essay was published by the Academy of the History of Materialistic Culture in 1928. Here, apart from reviewing Lebedev’s work, the critic expressed his views on the history of art in general: Art, despite all the theories and thoughts of critics, can be called art because the agitation which it originates can not be expressed in any other language . . .48

Punin admitted that ‘the longer one lives, the more one wants to stay silent in front of works of art.’49 After his earlier opuses on the relationship between form and content in works of art, he came to the conclusion that they are inseparable. He compared Picasso to Matisse and concluded that the first artist ‘looks at the world through art’, and his paintings are ‘cold, like the landscape of the moon’, while the latter is ‘spontaneous and full of life’ in all his work. Punin felt that Picasso was ‘frozen among his own ideas’.50 He compared Lebedev to Matisse, for the richness of emotional expression even in his cubist paintings and posters: . . . Everything which is painted by the artist [Lebedev] is so truthful, so spontaneously pulled from the innermost depth of life itself, that no one can possibly deny the role of lively perception in the formation of these works.51

These words were written at the time when Lebedev’s art had been defined as ‘practically lifeless’, and just before the time, in the 1930s, when the artist would be accused of ‘slandering the best workers’, his paintings would be called ‘dirt instead of art’ and he would be referred to as ‘a poor painter’.52 But in spite of this ‘popular’ opinion, Punin believed that the feelings in Lebedev’s paintings and drawings were more intense, more refined, than in the most beautiful works by the French Impressionist, Seurat.53 He admitted that due to all the weaknesses and instability of Russian culture, 48 N. Punin, V. V. Lebedev, in RSI, pp. 220–236. 49 Ibid., p. 220. 50 Ibid., p. 221. 51 Ibid., p. 226. 52 See V. V. Lebedev, exhibition catalogue, chief editor Petrova E., (St. Petersburg: Russian Museum, Palace Editions, 1994), p. 5. 53 N. Punin, V. V. Lebedev, in RSI, pp. 232–233.

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French influence on Russian artists is nonetheless quite high; that nobody can deny the vanguard role of the most powerful Parisian school of art in 20th century Europe. But he also felt that ‘as much as we feel our role as pupils of Paris, nevertheless we are doomed to be independent.’54 In hindsight, perhaps predictably, this essay was among Punin’s last articles on contemporary Russian art to be published in the Soviet Union. In the same year, his article on the meaning of cubism in the work of Lebedev appeared in a book dedicated to the artist, and in 1930, his 30 page essay on ‘The Art of Primitive and Contemporary Drawing’ was published by the Russian Museum.55 Until 1931, Punin was still giving lectures on the history of 19th and 20th century West European Art at the State Institute of the History of Art, but already in August 1928, he had complained in a letter to his wife that his students were becoming very pragmatic: A few days ago I was looking through “Zaratustra”; how much I got from it, and it is sitting somewhere inside me; I asked my pupils about it but nobody had read Nietzsche. What do they live by nowadays? What feeds their life? I do not understand. The most typical characteristic of this new generation is probably the lack of “ideals”, or generalisations, or goals, if one does not take Marxism into account, in which they do not believe anyway. Compared with us, they are all very modest—no claims to resolve “world problems”, some sort of participants in life, but not its creators.56

The times were now beginning to change rapidly. A new era of terror, and rejection of any individual goals and ambitions, was emerging. Very soon, Punin himself would become a participant rather than a mentor, a victim rather than a leader. 3. Events on the Home Front. Life in the Fountain House As discussed earlier, drawing on Marx, the Bolsheviks saw the family as the biggest obstacle to the socialization of children, and thus the creation of a Socialist state. Bolshevik theorists agreed on the need to replace ‘egoistical love’ with the ‘rational love’ of a broader ‘social family’. In parallel, 54 Ibid., p. 227. 55 In the book Iskusstvo narodnostei Sibiri, Leningrad: State Russian Museum, 1930, pp. 3–34. 56 Letter to Anna Arens of 2 August, 1928, MSL, p. 297.



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the Bolsheviks adopted various strategies—such as the transformation of domestic space, itself intended to accelerate the disintegration of the family. To tackle the housing shortages in the overcrowded cities, the Bolsheviks compelled wealthy families to share their properties with the urban poor, a policy known as “condensation” [uplotnenie]. All large apartments and houses were ‘packed up’. Workers were crowded into the flats of the aristocracy and the middle class and hopeless alcoholics were moved into the formerly well-run houses of hard-working peasants. From now on, everyone had to be equally poor. During the 1920s the most common type of communal apartment (kommunalka) was one in which the original inhabitants occupied the main rooms on the “parade side”, while the back rooms were filled by other families. In the early period, it was still possible for the former owners to select their co-inhabitants, provided they fulfilled the ‘sanitary norm’ (a per capita allowance which fell from 13.5 square metres in 1926 to just nine square metres in 1931). Many families brought in servants or acquaintances to prevent strangers being moved in to fill up the surplus living space. By forcing people to share communal apartments, the Bolshevik theorists believed that they could make them Communist in their way of thinking and behaviour. It was also easier to control people in this form of domestic life, encouraging them to spy on their neighbours. Private space and property would disappear, the individual (“bourgeois”) family would be replaced by communistic fraternity and organization, and the life of the individual would become immersed in that of the community. The new regime first took over the state, and then moved into people’s homes and lives. Nothing could any longer be private; everything had to be shared, regardless of personal belongings and property titles. Thus, Boris Pasternak, by then an already famous Russian writer and poet, had to share the large apartment which he had inherited from his father, who had emigrated to Germany after the Revolution, with no less than six other families. He first tried to cope with these almost unbearable living conditions, including a cold room separated from the unheated corridor, by erecting a thin partition. But by 1928, he could not stand such humiliation any longer. He applied to the All-Russian Union of Writers for a separate apartment. When he was asked about his current living conditions, he replied: Very poor. My father’s tired old flat is extremely crowded. 20 people (six families) are permanently domiciled. To this one needs to add frequent

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chapter seven visits by relatives and friends proceeding along the six main independent access routes. A comparatively large studio (5 m2 × 8, 7 m2), formerly my father’s, devoted to me as result of space re-allocations, is divided by a partition. Because of the location of stoves etc., the room does not lend itself readily to being divided up: the positioning of the partition results in two narrow corridor-like rooms. The dining room is located in the room where I work, full of noise and commotion all day long. Partitions have not been plastered, so each year the stay in the present conditions is regarded as temporary: circumstances and earnings have not permitted a move out of these conditions . . . Hemmed in on all sides by noise, I can only concentrate for periods at times, by dint of extreme sublimated desperation, akin to selfoblivion. I urgently need change of flat . . .57

A few months later, Pasternak’s request was marked with a brief verdict: ‘To be refused’. So the writer had to continue writing at night—the only time when the flat was quiet—with the encouragement of numerous cigarettes and hot tea. In August 1922, in his role of deputy director of Ginkhuk, Nikolay Punin was given an apartment by the government in the so-called Fountain House [Fontannyi Dom]. It was named after the ‘Fountain Grotto’ which was in the garden of the Sheremetev Palace until it was ruined in 1910. It occupied the southern wing of one of the grandest palaces in St. Petersburg, which as its name suggests, used to belong to Count Sergey Sheremetev. For several centuries, the Sheremetev family was the wealthiest in Russia, which gave rise to the expression ‘rich as a Sheremetev’. The last Count Sheremetev before the October Revolution—Sergey—was a highly intelligent and truly patriotic person. After serving in the Cavalry Guards during the Russo-Turkish Wars of 1877–8, he retired from military service and dedicated himself to history. He soon became a curator of his family’s and his nation’s past, published historical journals, established learned societies and museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg and was made an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. As Rachel Polonsky explained: In his writings and civic activities the Count [Sheremetev] found a new role for the Russian aristocrat, no longer surveying his limitless material demesnes in the present, but turning over salvaged fragments of memory as a curator, a melancholy nostalgic researching lost time, a collector assembling and reassembling objects from the past for display. He made public 57 Evgeny Pasternak, Boris Pasternak. The tragic years 1930–60, trans. by Michael Duncan London: Collins Harvill, 1990), p. 12.



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the private, domestic history of the aristocracy, as though preparing for the catastrophic loss of property that, even in his quiet defiance, he seemed to perceive on the near horizon.58

In 1918, according to his son, who was also a historian and museum curator, Count Sergey Sheremetev ‘willingly and almost joyfully handed over to the new Russia all his palaces and estates, and thanked Lenin, without irony, for freeing him of the burden of property.’59 He died the same year. His grand palace on the Fontanka River in St. Petersburg was a real jewel in the Sheremetevs’ large property portfolio, and he handed it over to the Bolsheviks in order to save it from imminent plunder. The Bolsheviks soon turned this beautiful palace into the Museum of the Life of the Nobility. Its southern garden wing (originally called the New Kitchen Wing) had been built by the Italian architect I. Korsini in 1845. It was a two-storey building until Sergey Sheremetev commissioned the Russian architect M. Krasovsky to add a third floor to it in 1911, completed in 1914. In it was an apartment, given as a wedding present to the count’s daughter, Maria Sergeevna, who married Count A. V. Gudovich. Originally this apartment had six rooms—all interconnected. Since there were two separate entrances to the flat, it was divided into two apartments. Punin’s family were given four rooms, and another family moved into the other two. At first, the two new apartments were separated only by a wall made of baskets piled on top of each other, but soon a proper wall was built. Up to 1924, Nikolay, his wife, Anna Arens, their daughter Irina and Nikolay’s step-mother, Elizaveta Antonovna inhabited the flat. However, it was soon clear that their living conditions were too luxurious, and fearing another family moving into their apartment, they invited their old house maid, Anna Smirnova to move in to live with them. In 1925, her grown-up son, Zhenya, also moved in. Thus Punin’s housemaid became a legitimate flatmate of her former employers. Now, she and her son were officially registered here, and had the same rights as Punin and his wife. Later the son got married, and his wife moved in as well; soon they had a child. Furthermore, after Shileyko, Akhmatova’s second husband, had moved to Moscow, the Punins inherited his dog—a large St. Bernard called Tap.

58 Rachel Polonsky, Molotov’s Magic Lantern. Uncovering Russia’s Secret History, Faber and Faber, 2010, p. 31. 59 Ibid., p. 36.

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But just as the apartment in the Fountain House was getting more and more crowded by the above movements, Nikolay’s lover Anna Akhmatova also came to live here in 1926, after her registration at her husband’s (Shileiko’s) apartment was officially cancelled. Her friend, Luknitsky, had advised her to rent a room of her own, but since she was considered to be self-employed and had a very small income, it was difficult for her to get a room at the government’s Department for Lodging. In her book ‘Anna Akhmatova. Poet and Prophet’, Roberta Reeder described the numerous attempts of Anna’s friends to find her a place to live.60 But Akhmatova never liked living on her own. So, she decided to swallow her pride and accept Punin’s offer to come and live with him and his family. Her friend Nadezhda Mandelstam attributed her move to Punin’s apartment to her ‘destitution and helplessness’.61 In her book ‘Hope Abandoned’ she described this strange arrangement: Akhmatova was speaking of herself in the splendid lines: ‘Most faithful mate of other women’s husbands / and of many the sorrowing widow.’ The only bad thing was living all together ‘under the roof of the House on the Fontanka’. This idyllic setup was devised by Punin to spare Akhmatova the need to keep house, and himself the strain of earning enough to support two different establishments. Apart from this, the desperate housing shortage inevitably complicated any divorce or love affair.62

Back in 1918 and to 1920, Anna Akhmatova had lived with Shileyko—a poet and orientalist, who tutored the children of Count Sheremetev, in the northern servant’s wing of the Fountain House. A few months after Akhmatova moved in to live with Shileyko, he went to a notary and registered their marriage. Anna was not even present when their union was registered. When Punin was arrested for the third time in 1949, during his interrogation, he said that he had married Akhmatova in 1924. But apart from him being still married to Anna Arens at that time, Akhmatova had only divorced Shileyko in 1926, after he had married again and moved to Moscow. However, lover or wife, Akhmatova returned to the Sheremetev Palace in 1926. Punin’s granddaughter, Anna Kaminskaya, described this strange decision of the poetess:

60 See R. Reeder, p. 243. 61 Mandelstam, II, p. 258. 62 Mandelstam, II, p. 408.



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Akhmatova loved beautiful homes. When she came to visit Punin perhaps she was attracted to it from the very beginning. May be she originally had come for just a year or two, but stayed forever.63

Back in 1923, when Akhmatova had first moved into Punin’s flat, his wife became so upset about Nikolay’s affair that she moved out to stay with her brother in the small town of Lipetsk. However, she soon returned to her husband, and Akhmatova moved out. Three years later the poetess came back and never moved out again, even after she split up with Punin in 1938. She moved into what was known as the Pink Room, which was then Punin’s study, and soon even the critic himself referred to it as Anna’s room. Here she was teaching his daughter French, and was translating books on Ingres and David, as well as a biography of Cézanne for his lectures. She often referred to her favourite French-Russian dictionary, edited by Makarov, which she used to call Makarich and which she kept under her pillow. The motto of Count Sheremetev, which can still be seen in the escutcheon on the northern gates of the palace, was Deus conservat omnia (God preserves everything). It did not save Punin from death in the GULAG, but became the motto of Akhmatova’s life, and the epigraph to her famous ‘Poem without a hero’. However, even though it became ‘normal’ for several families to live together, due to the shortage of apartments and houses in hungry Moscow and Leningrad, and to the rather strange (and usually state-approved) moral codes at the time,64 it could not have been easy for either Akhmatova or for Punin’s wife to adjust to this difficult situation. ‘Like an alcoholic, I am trying to suppress everything in me: in winter— through work, in summer—through rest; but as soon as some memory arises—everything starts to boil in me,’—wrote Anna Arens in her letter to Punin in August 1932.65 But she loved her Nikolay and cared too strongly for him and their small daughter. With extraordinary candour, she wrote: ‘. . . All my life I succumbed to you, took care of you, humiliating myself,— that is how it looked like to you and others, but not to me—I never felt

63 See AA, pp. 243–244. 64 The Briks shared their apartment in Polyuektovyi Alley in Moscow with David Shterenberg and often Mayakovsky; Maxim Gorky lived in his large apartment in Petrograd with his ex-wife, her boyfriend and his new wife. 65 Letter from Anna Arens-Punina of 9 August 1932, MSL, p. 317.

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chapter seven humiliated, since my love is too strong,’—she wrote to her husband in August 1929.66

Often her pride took over her feelings, and she felt that she could not persevere any longer. She tried to leave her husband several times, but each time she would feel sorry for him and come back. ‘You called me back, and like an alcoholic I started a drinking bout once again,’67—she admitted in one of her letters to Punin. She clearly loved her husband with that highest form of love, which goes beyond any logic or any explanation, beyond people’s contempt or personal pride and self-respect. She did not seem even to expect any love in return—all she wanted was the knowledge that he would never leave her.68 As painful as it must have been, Anna Arens also had a very special relationship with her husband’s lover. In his memoirs, Luknitskiy wrote that Akhmatova always recited extracts from Punin’s letters to his wife.69 Was it a form of torture, or a strange expression of friendship and admiration? Anna Arens was also helping Akhmatova as a doctor by looking after her when she was ill and prescribing her the necessary medication. Since the poetess was never really able to look after herself, and from 1925, could not publish her poems any more, Punin’s wife was cooking for Akhmatova as well as earning money to buy food for their small daughter and her husband’s lover. In 1940, two years after her separation from Nikolay, Akhmatova said: N. N. has now discovered a new reason for taking umbrage at me: why didn’t I write when we lived together, when I write so much now? I couldn’t write for six years.70 The whole atmosphere weighed so heavily on me, more heavily even than grief. Now at last I have understood: for N. N., Anna Evgenievna was always the model wife: she works, earns 400 roubles a month and is an excellent housekeeper. He constantly tried to force me onto that Procrustean bed too, but I am neither a housekeeper nor an income earner . . .71

Anna Arens was the most solid foundation rock in Punin’s life—patient and loving—‘sweet, troubled angel’, as Nikolay would call her in his diary:

66 Letter from Arens-Punina of 10 August 1929, MSL, p. 305. 67 Letter from Anna Arens-Punina of 9 August 1932, MSL, p. 317. 68 See Ibid., p. 318. 69 See Chernikh, p. 110. 70 It is worth noting that, during her marriage to Punin, Akhmatova wrote approximately 30 poems. 71 Chukovskaya, Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi, V. I, p. 69.



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‘Good bye, my sweetheart, the most beautiful of all the hearts that I have ever known; your concerns, your worries are as endless, as my happiness”— wrote Punin to his wife in 1929.72

In 1929, the situation at the Fountain House became even more intense, when Akhmatova’s son Lev, who had lived with his grandmother (Gumilev’s mother) and aunt in Bezhetsk since his birth on October 1st, 1912, came to live in Leningrad with his mother and thereby with Punin’s family. Even though Akhmatova was already 23 years old when he was born, Lev was taken away from her by his grandmother, who said: ‘Anechka, you are young and pretty. What do you need a boy for?’73 Apparently, the poetess first protested strongly against separation from her only child, but soon got used to this situation, and seemed to enjoy her freedom to the full. Punin’s granddaughter, Anna Kaminskaya, went so far as to suggest that Akhmatova loved other people’s children more than her own, since she did not have to be responsible for them. The poetess often looked after Punin’s daughter, Irina, when everyone else was at work. In 1939, Akhmatova described this side of her life in the Fountain House: I would not understand many things about Nikolay Nikolaevich to this day if not for Freud. Nikolay Nikolaevich always tried to reproduce the very same sexual set-up as in his childhood: a stepmother oppressing a child. I should have oppressed Ira. But I did not oppress her. I taught her French. Everything was wrong—she had an adoring mother, altogether, everything was wrong. But he suggested that I oppressed her. ‘You didn’t go anywhere with her.’ But I myself didn’t go anywhere . . . What tender letters that girl wrote me!74

As said, in 1929, the sixteen year old Lev Gumilev arrived in this already dysfunctional household. At the end of the dark corridor, lit by occasional rays of sunlight through a little window high up by the ceiling, his bed was arranged on a large old chest. On the other side of the corridor his desk was placed. Since Lev was the son of a ‘people’s enemy’, the counter-revolutionary poet Nikolay Gumilev, schools refused to accept him. So Punin asked his brother, Alexander, who was a director of one of the best schools in Leningrad, to bend the rules and find a place for his lover’s

72 Letter to Arens-Punina of 23 September 1929, MSL, p. 310. 73 See AA, p. 87. 74 Chukovskaya, Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi, V. I , p. 28.

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son. Nikolay Nikolaevich also helped Lev with his homework in maths and German. Now, although the Fountain House was already crowded enough, in 1929, Anna Arens’ father, Evgeniy Arens, moved in. He stayed with his granddaughter in the nursery until his death in 1931. The hospitable Punins also used to invite friends and members of the family to stay overnight.75 In times of trouble they also gave refuge to relatives and friends. Thus in the mid-1920s Nikolay’s brother, Alexander, lived here with his wife and daughter, and in 1935, Anna Arens’ nephew, Igor and his family’s dog, moved in after his father, Lev Arens, was sent to a labour camp and his mother was exiled to Astrakhan. Igor stayed in Leningrad until he died during the blockade in April 1942.76 In the beginning of the 1930s, the Punins’ maid’s son, Evgeniy, got married to a factory worker, Tatiana, and they both moved into Nikolay’s now very cramped apartment. They occupied the former dining room next to the kitchen, and sent the Punins’ trusty old maid, Annushka, to an old peoples’ home. They got rid of the old woman’s ornaments, placed their table in the kitchen and replaced porcelain plates with aluminium bowls. Only the old redwood buffet, which had probably been brought from the Admiralty in Tsarskoe Selo remained here as a silent reminder of the old days when professors had separate apartments, and maids were only maids . . . By now the crowded apartment felt like a proper Soviet communal flat instead of a family home. ‘Our flat became cold, communal, with all the doors opening not into each other anymore, but out into the corridor. The corridor became cold, and Anna Andreevna [Akhmatova] would put on a fur coat when she was coming out here to answer the phone,’ remembered Punin’s daughter, Irina.77 In 1932, Valya, the first son of Punin’s maid’s son Evgeniy and his wife Tatiana, was born and in 1938, their second son, Vova, arrived. In the winter of 1938–1939, there were ten people living in Punin’s four-room apartment. The staircase, with its beautiful big window overlooking the garden, became a kind of border between the old splendour of the Sheremetiev palace, and the Soviet reality of the communal flat.

75 The famous Russian poet, Osip Mandelshtam used to sleep on the famous chest in the corridor on several occasions. 76 From the interview with A. G. Kaminskaya, February 2009. 77 Irina Punina, Under the roof of the Fountain house, in N. Popova, O. Rubenchik ‘Anna Akhmatova and the Fountain house’ (St. Petersburg: Nevskii Dialekt, 2006) pp. 143–144.



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So, it was in these challenging conditions that one of the most talented Russian art-critics had to live and work. Emma Gerstein, Lev Gumilev’s girlfriend at the time, who visited the Fountain House on several occasions, wrote in her memoirs: With his tic and his domestic drama, the effusive Nikolay Punin was like noone else I knew. Often he sat at the table for hours in a red dressing gown, playing patience. At other times, he shut himself up in his study, coming out to gulp down a cup of tea and comment under his breath: “How well the work’s going, I’ve already turned out a whole 25 pages!”78

She also recalled how Punin, his wife, their daughter, Akhmatova and her son, used to eat together, which obviously created lots of tension. At one occasion Anna Arens suddenly announced at the table: ‘Who are the hangers-on here, I don’t know.’ Akhmatova and Lev stiffened at once.79 On another occasion, which was often described by the poetess herself, Punin said at the table: ‘The butter is only for Ira [his daughter].’ Akhmatova could never forgive him for saying it in front of her poor little boy, Lev. She used this story to describe how stingy her lover was. However, she failed to mention that at the time when this incident happened, her son was already 18, and Punin’s daughter just nine. Besides, in 1929, Ira had measles with complications, and after a difficult operation, was required to have a special diet. Food was still rationed, and all the rare delicates that Punin and his wife could get, they kept for her. Akhmatova often emerges as a spoiled and rather jealous person, who was used to being the centre of attention and admiration. Not surprisingly, she found it hard to accept the position of a hanger-on, but Punin and his family loved her despite all the difficulties of their bizarre collective living, and she never left their warm family. Life had to go on, and Punin’s strange domestic life reflected in many ways the whole situation in Leningrad—an overcrowded city, full of angry and hungry people, hanging on in constant fear and growing frustration.

78 Emma Gerstein, Moscow Memoirs (London: The Harvill Press, 2004) p. 219. 79 Ibid., p. 218.

Chapter Eight

THE VICTORY OF SOCIALIST REALISM Art cannot be modern, art is primordially eternal. (E. Schiele)1 How we were all ruined, will it ever be understood? (N. Punin)2

At the end of the 1920s, Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan and Collectivization replaced the relatively moderate New Economic Policy (NEP), which had been launched in 1921, as a replacement for the War Communism that had been set up during the Civil War. Stalin believed that, left to themselves, people would—as Bukharin crisply put it—‘creep at a snail’s pace’ towards Socialism, so for the realisation of its goals, drastic action was required. Stalin also believed that the modernisation of the economy was essential to fulfil his vision of Russia as a great power—as great and powerful as in the age of Ivan the Terrible. After getting rid of all the opposition within government, the Party’s undisputed leader launched the first 5-Year Plan in 1928, in which industrial production was to be increased by 250% and agricultural production by 130%. Both of these required every worker to work for a state enterprise, which made him a controllable entity. In the towns, all private businesses were closed down. From now on, all distribution would be controlled by centralised state economic planning. The latter also involved the wresting of land ownership from the peasantry, especially from the kulaks, about whom Stalin had a major obsession. At the start of the programme, some 96% of all land was owned by the peasantry. As might be expected, the collectivisation programme was resisted strongly, especially in the Ukraine, but was enforced by OGPU and then NKVD agents and troops. This subsequently led to entire villages being wiped out, and many emptied also by transportation. By 1940, the 25 million 1 Translation from German: Kunst kann nicht modern sein; Kunst ist urewig. E. Schiele, title of Watercolour with Chairs, 22/4/12, Albertina, Vienna. 2 Diary note of 7 May 1925, MSL, p. 241.

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peasant holdings had been replaced by 250,000 collective farms, on which 75 million people worked, thus about 300 people per farm. The loss of skills, loss of livestock and three bad harvests led to a series of catastrophic famines, in which over 5 million people died. Due to famine in the villages, the flood of migrants to the cities grew unmanageable. The State introduced internal passports and urban residence permits, which survive to the present day, both inventions administered by first OGPU and then by the NKVD. They made control over people’s movements and their private lives in general easier, at least for the authorities. Dating from the celebration of Stalin’s 50th birthday in 1929, the cult of Stalin began. From now on, nobody could say or do anything against his decisions and orders. At one point, even Moscow was proposed to be renamed Stalinodar, but thankfully Stalin rejected this flattering suggestion. In his book ‘The Whisperers’ Orlando Figes wrote: From the mid 1930s the Stalinist regime increasingly portrayed itself through metaphors and symbols of the family . . . the cult of Stalinism, which took off in these years, portrayed the leader as the “father of the Soviet people” . . .3

At the same time, in the beginning of the 1930s, a so-called Cultural Revolution started, involving members of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia being replaced by a new workers’ and peasants’ intelligentsia. In her book ‘Everyday Stalinism’ Sheila Fitzpatrick wrote: By the 1930s, as the old concept of revolutionary mission was increasingly acquiring overtones of a civilizing mission, the party came to see itself not only as a political vanguard but also as a cultural one. This, of course, was not very convincing to the old Russian intelligentsia, many of whom regarded the Bolsheviks as unschooled barbarians; but the party’s claim to cultural superiority seems to have been accepted as reasonable by much of the rest of the population.4

Soon, the new Soviet cultural elite would be formed of Communist administrators and other loyal devotees of the Marxist-Leninist ideology, with the aim of replacing entirely the old bourgeois intelligentsia with a new elite who would become the true vanguard of society, leading the masses to Socialism.

3 Orlando Figes, The Whisperers, p. 162. 4 S. Fitzpatrick, The Party is Always Right, in ‘Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s’ (NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 15–16.



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In 1929, Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Minister of Culture and Director of People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment, Narkompros, was dismissed, an early victim of this process. His forced retirement signalled the transition to the new era in the history of the Soviet State; now, the authorities felt that it was no longer necessary even to pretend to defer to the members of the established intelligentsia or attract them to their side. Now the intelligentsia had to bend to the values of the Communist Party and prove its loyalty to the regime in order to survive. One of the founders of the Proletkult movement, which was striving to determine the state’s cultural policies irrespective of the personal tastes of the Communist leaders, Lunacharsky was now perceived as a representative of the old, bourgeois intelligentsia. Together with him, all the Narkompros leaders were dismissed. Even Lenin himself, despite his own middle-class origins, had never liked the Russian intelligentsia and indeed was often quite afraid of it. In his letter to Gorky dated September 15th, 1919, Lenin wrote: The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing stronger in the struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie and its helpers, the petty intellectuals, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact, they’re not the brains, they’re shit.5

Stalin would happily have signed this letter as well. After his 50th birthday in 1929, he not only wanted to get rid of most members of the intelligentsia but to manage Soviet culture by himself, with a little help from his loyal Communist supporters. By 1930, Lunacharsky had lost all his important positions in the government. Joseph Stalin, who never liked very intelligent and ‘over-educated’ people, first made the former People’s Commissar the representative of the Soviet Union at the League of Nations, and in 1933, in order to get rid of him for good, he appointed him as the ambassador of the Soviet Union to Spain. Lunacharsky died, mysteriously, in Menton, France, en route to Spain. Back in July 1929, Punin wrote to his wife, that the first issue of the magazine Iskusstvo [Art] had been banned and taken out of all newsagents because it contained one of Lunacharsky’s articles.6 And after the next issue was published, the magazine was closed down altogether. 5 See slightly altered translation of this letter in Lenin and Gorky: Letters. Reminiscences. Articles, University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2003, p. 150. 6 Letter from Punin to A. Arens-Punina of 22 July 1929, MSL, p. 304.

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After Lunacharsky was dismissed, Andrei Bubnov, the head of the Politburo of the Communist Party, became the new Narkom [Peoples’ Commissar] of Enlightenment. Without any experience in the sphere of education or indeed any finished degree, Bubnov was a typical new leader: a loyal fanatic, eager to fulfil all the orders of his master regardless of any beliefs or principles of his own. Under the new Commissar, the upper forms of middle schools were reclassified as tekhnikumy [vocational training colleges], and by 1930, all schools had to be attached to some form of enterprise, where pupils could acquire basic knowledge of some productive process. Now, political education and technical skill pretty much replaced general knowledge. Thus, in one school in Orel, all the pupils in the upper forms were trained to become ‘poultry-breeding technicians’.7 Most of the teachers who were not members of the Communist party were now replaced by the specialists in Marxism-Leninism, ‘leaving the schools with a heavily politicized atmosphere’.8 Any specialists judged to be bourgeois were replaced by the new Red specialists. Even the celebrations for New Year 1930 were officially cancelled on the grounds that this was an old-fashioned bourgeois holiday (Christmas had been cancelled back in 1917, as a religious holiday). Presciently, in September 1929, Punin wrote to his wife: ‘. . . There is nothing good ahead of us, only darkness and hopelessness.’9 Ten days later he wrote ‘. . . the times will be cruel, menacing, with many deaths’. He added that he felt that his destiny was being taken away from him—that he was ‘beyond life, hungry for it, with a pocket full of its bills of exchange; bankrupt since nobody wanted to pay him anymore, and still more and more accepting the present conditions’.10 In the same spirit, Boris Pasternak, yet to write ‘Doctor Zhivago’, wrote to his cousin in June 1927: . . . There is nothing seriously wrong with me and there is nothing directly threatening me. But I am ever more frequently haunted by a sense of the end, evoked in my case by the most decisive factor: contemplation of my own work. It has foundered in the past and I am powerless to shift it: I took no part in the creation of the present and I bear it no love.11

7,8 See Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union, p. 176. 9 Letter from Punin to Anna Arens-Punina of 13 September 1929, MSL, p. 306. 10 Letter from Punin to Anna Arens-Punina of 23 September 1929, MSL, p. 309. 11 Quoted in Evgeny Pasternak, Boris Pasternak. The tragic years 1930–60, p. 4.



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Like most representatives of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia, both Punin and Pasternak, disillusioned with the new Soviet reality, felt more and more like outcasts. In September 1930, Boris Pasternak wrote to the former Futurist poet Sergei Spassky: ‘Present-day life has nothing to suggest to the lyric poet—neither a common language nor anything else. It merely suffers him: he is an extra-territorial element.’12 Perhaps it was this feeling of complete disillusionment and uselessness which inspired Vladimir Mayakovsky, surely one of the greatest Russian poets, to shoot himself in 1930. Devastated by his death, Pasternak wrote ‘An Essay in Autobiography’, dedicated to this unique poet, who ‘dreamed of revolution before it even happened’.13 Describing the last years of Mayakovsky’s life, he wrote: . . . when there was no more poetry, neither his own nor anyone else’s, when Esenin,14 hanged himself, when, to put it quite simply, literature ceased to exist . . .15

Later Pasterknak wrote in his poem ‘Extract’ about the death of Mayakovsky: Mount Etna to the smaller hills: The sound of your shot to the cowards.16

1. Punin’s Last Articles and Exhibitions. From Avant-Garde to Socialist Realism At the beginning of the 1930s, Punin’s articles were increasingly being banned from being published. Between 1930 and 1932 Punin was working on his book ‘Art and Revolution’, commissioned by Izogiz [Visual Arts Publications] in Moscow. In the introduction to this book he stated his intention to describe Russian art of the period between 1916 and 1925, but he was not allowed to publish even the first chapter of the book, which was dedicated to art before 1917. Izogiz informed Punin that they do not

12 Ibid., p. 5. 13 Ibid., p. 34. 14 Sergei Esenin was the famous and much loved Russian poet, who hanged himself in 1925 at the age of 30 in his room at the ‘Astoria’ hotel in Leningrad, having become disillusioned with the Soviet regime. 15 Ibid., p. 5. 16 Ibid., p. 23.

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intend to publish his book and he lost the main stimulus to finish this most valuable review of Russian art of the beginning of the 20th century. Nevertheless, Punin had completed almost all twelve chapters of the book, one of which (chapter VI) is called ‘Everyone remembers that winter’. This contains an invaluable recollection of Punin’s experiences in Petrograd before and after the Revolution of 1917, quoted in the fifth chapter of this book. Punin finished this chapter of his never-to-be published book by saying that by then, life itself appointed him to be at the centre of the Revolution, participation in which became inevitable. Some important changes had also taken place at the Russian Museum in 1929 and 1930. First, Pyotr Neradovsky, a highly cultivated person with extensive experience, who had worked in the Russian Museum for over 20 years and who had offered Punin his first job there back in 1913, left his post of the head of the IZO, the Visual Art Department of Narkompros. A year later Ivan Ostretsov, a ‘professional Communist Party worker’, was appointed a director of the Museum. A decline in acquisition of new works of art, as well as their inventory and registration, followed these dramatic and artistically unproductive changes. From now on ‘conscious vulgarity’ would gradually replace common sense and experience. In his letter of 2nd May 1930, Malevich suggested that ‘now without any delay we need lots of letters from artists, pointing the wrong way in the politics of art, which leads art down a line of death, in spite of the Party’s decree to give all movements the right to develop.’17 He also wrote: ‘People must know that the new Communist Director of the Department of Visual Art is so far separated from the life of visual arts, that it is even hard to imagine.’18 He was worried about the possibility of closure of the Museum of European Art in Moscow and its possible amalgamation with the Tretyakov Gallery, and he was still convinced that writing letters to the director of IZO could change the artistic direction of Russia in the early 1930s. Punin tried to remain optimistic: he continued his work at the Russian Museum, organising several exhibitions of new artists, such as Niko Pirosmanishvili. In his letter to Punin of 29th December 1930, Malevich shared his views on this exhibition. Pirosmanishvili, according to Malevich could never have dreamed about exhibiting his paintings in such a holy place. He called him ‘an artist of signboards’, whom nobody noticed before and 17 Pis’ma Malevicha Lisitskomu i Puninu, p. 35. 18 Ibid.



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who cannot even be compared with ‘the profile and face of Titian and Rubens, or with ‘the Wanderers’, the Impressionists, Cubists, Futurists and Suprematists’.19 But Malevich conceded that the art of Pirosmanishvili and some other artists like him, such as Larionov and Goncharova, had led the way into a new realm of art for him back in 1907 and 1909. He even said that ‘signboard artists’ had given him an opportunity to enter cubism and advanced his artistic development. Malevich was hoping that this exhibition would influence young artists in the same way as it had influenced him, and would show them new ways in art. Malevich suggested that the ideal museum exhibition of new art should have several parts, such as ‘Painting as such’ with Cézanne in the centre of it and ‘Art of signboards’ with Pirosmanishvili at its centre.20 He wrote to Punin: ‘The Russian Museum, together with you, is trying to hit the target and can’t quite do it. You are choosing the target, but people can’t hit it.’21 Nikolay Nikolaevich did indeed persist in trying to persuade the stubborn authorities of the Russian Museum to exhibit the avant-garde artists he admired, despite the growing dominion of Socialist Realism. In November 1932, his perseverance paid off. The most influential retrospective exhibition of post-revolutionary art, ‘Artists of RSFSR in the last 15 years’ was opened in 100 rooms of the Russian Museum. It included paintings of Russian artists from all the movements active in Russia between 1917 and 1932. Punin, who was in charge of the display of the latest trends in Russian art, dedicated a whole room to Malevich at this ground-breaking exhibition. The already-persecuted Pavel Filonov and his pupils also received a separate room for their often misunderstood paintings. It was the last exhibition where Leftist artists were fully represented. Punin wrote an introduction to the exhibition catalogue, in which he remarked: Modern Western Art and the Russian Wanderers are two extreme points, between which different [Russian] artistic movements and various contemporary artists are consecutively placed.22

19 Ibid., p. 37. 20 Ibid., p. 35. 21 Ibid., p. 35. 22 N. Punin, Khudozhniki RSFSR za 15 let. Katalog iubileinoi vystavki. Zhivopis’, grafika I skulptura (Leningrad: State Russian Museum, 1932) p. 15.

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In his article, the critic gave the brief characteristics of each of the eight movements represented at the exhibition, and finished with the obligatory proclamation: Now Soviet artists have to fulfil their duty: to live up to the Party’s expectations, and, united around its main goals, give Soviet art to the Soviet nation.23

In 1933, this exhibition moved to Moscow. It had to take place in several museums at once as it included 3,500 works of art. However, as a clear sign of the coming times, only half of the paintings which had been exhibited in Leningrad, were actually shown in Moscow. Malevich, Miturich, Suetin and Tirsa were mysteriously excluded from the Moscow exhibition, and only five out of the 73 paintings by Filonov exhibited in Leningrad came to Moscow. Only one poster, instead of 77 paintings, by one of Punin’s favourite artists, V. Lebedev, was included in 1933 exhibition. Unlike Punin, the curators of the Tretyakov Gallery did not want to risk their precious jobs for the sake of exhibiting alternative art—Socialist Realism was already knocking at the door; indeed it had a large section of the Leningrad exhibition dedicated to it. The Moscow exhibition still had the same title ‘Artists of the RSFSR— the first 15 years’, but was presented as a ‘Review of Soviet Art’. The chairman was the new Minister of Enlightenment, the aforementioned Andrei Bubnov. Now, the majority of the paintings shown there reflected the Socialist Realism, the Party’s new policy in art. In his speech at the opening of the Moscow exhibition, Bubnov said that the Moscow exhibition ‘witnesses the turn of the majority of our artists to the positions of the working class’.24 An article in the catalogue of the Moscow exhibition was written by M. Arkadiev. He proclaimed: ‘The Style of our era—is Socialist Realism.’ He criticized the Leningrad exhibition for failing to show the whole ‘dynamics of the development of Soviet art’ and ‘the right forms of visual art, which are necessary for the proletariat in its fight for the victory of Socialism.’25 Less than a year after the Leningrad exhibition, all its catalogues were taken out of all libraries and all bookshops. Even today, only the catalogue

23 Ibid., p. 21. 24 A. Bubnov, O vystavke sovetskikh khudozhnikov za 15 let oktyabrskoi revolutsii, in the catalogue of the Moscow exhibition ‘Khudozhniki RSFSR za 15 let’, Moscow, 1933, p. VII. 25 M. Arkadiev, Ibid., p. IX.



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of the Moscow exhibition ‘Artists of the RSFSR—the first 15 years’ is available in Russian libraries.26 The precise timing of the two halves of this event holds the evidence. In the speech of the Moscow exhibition committee to the delegates of the XVII Congress of the Bolshevik Party, Stalin’s decree of 23rd April 1932 (‘On the Reconstruction of Literary and Art Organizations’, the one which proclaimed the victory of Socialist Realism in all spheres of Soviet culture) was adopted as the absolute dogma for the organisation of the latter exhibition. ‘Socialist Realism—is an artistic style of the époque of the proletarian revolution. Artists are working at it, fighting for it, striving towards it,’ they proclaimed.27 From now on the avant-garde had to be forgotten. From April 1932, onwards, any individual creativity was prohibited in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in 1933, the irrepressible Punin managed to organise one more exhibition of his favourite artists, but its title—‘Art of the Age of Imperialism’—had inescapable negative overtones. About to become locked in the cellars of the Russian Museum, paintings by Malevich, Filonov, Tatlin and other avant-garde artists, were now seen as bad antiSoviet art, which had to be avoided. Punin admitted that people came to this exhibition to bid farewell to the avant-garde. So, after Stalin’s April 1932 decree, there was only one officially approved type of art permitted in the Soviet Union. The Union of Writers was founded to control the output of authors, and the Union of Artists played the same role among painters and sculptors. Any deviation from Socialist Realism meant total oblivion and often imprisonment. At the congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, the basics for Socialist Realism were defined. The new style demanded of the artist a truthful representation of reality in its Revolutionary development, its purpose being to elevate the spirit of the common worker and encourage him to work even harder for a better future. So, “the future” is now to play a key role, as is “the proletariat”, but in a context rather different from that originally envisaged by Nikolay Punin. Ironically, the Italian Fascists had adopted Futurism to become the country’s official art, and through the 1930s, it became the main tool for advertising the aims and theories of Fascism. For the Bolsheviks, the role of art 26 The only copy of the catalogue of the Leningrad exhibition can be found in the library of the Russian Museum, which is closed to the general public. 27 O vystavke ‘Khudozhniki RSFSR za 15 let. Delegatam XVII s’ezda VKP (b), (Moscow: Vsekohudozhnik, 1934) p. 3.

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in the 1930s was also to be propaganda, but unlike the Italians, Russian officials chose more understandable and potentially populist forms of artistic expression. Socialist Realism was supposed to show an idealistic vision of the future rather than everyday reality: . . . Socialist Realism was a Stalinist mentalité, not just an artistic style. Ordinary citizens also developed the ability to see things as they were becoming and ought to be, rather than as they were. An empty ditch was a canal in the making; a vacant lot where old houses or a church had been torn down, littered with rubbish and weeds, was a future park.28

The present was seen as a temporary stage in building this bright future. And since the proletariat was at the centre of the Communist ideal, it was its life—real or idealised—that had to become the main focus of all artists and writers. Even during the periods of famine, painters would depict happy muscular peasants in well-equipped prosperous farms. Joyfully driving tractors during the day, they would be singing around the table in the evening. Industrial and agricultural landscapes, glorifying the (possibly yet-to-be achieved) achievements of the Soviet economy, as well as numerous portraits of Stalin and Communist Party leaders, proved very popular. Novelists were to produce uplifting novels, consistent with Marxist doctrine, and composers had to write inspiring songs and music in order to assist the proletariat in building the future Communist society. More darkly, not only had a new stage in the ideological war in Soviet art begun in 1932, but another also opened a new stage in its life at this point—terror. In 1931, Boris Pasternak wrote a poem to the future Chairman of the Board of the Union of Soviet Writers, Boris Pilnyak, which ended with the following four lines: Crassly, in the great Soviet era, When passionate conviction commands its place, The poet’s position has been left unfilled: Filled, the place is fraught with danger.29

From the original active participants in the development of new Russian art, the majority of artists, writers and art-critics in the 1930s, now turned

28 S. Fitzpatrick, p. 9; (the original of the Decree of Politburo ‘O Perestroike Literaturnokhudozhestvennykh organizatsii’ is in RCKhIDNI, Fond 17, opis 3, delo 881, L. 6–22). 29 In E. Pasternak, p. 33.



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to be passive executors of the directions of the Communist Party, if only to keep being able to eat. The perception of art as ideology, a ‘weapon in the class struggle’, formalised by the Russian Association of Proletarian Artists in 1931, now flourished, and by 1934, Socialist Realism had become firmly installed as the exclusive form of expression for all forms of Soviet art. In the early 1930s, while any avant-garde art was being openly criticised, the famous writer and critic, Yuri Tynianov, who had been a member of the Russian Formalist School in the 1920s, had said: ‘It’s OK. We have had breakfast, lunch and supper already.’ He felt that by then, the Russian avant-garde, which for the first time in the history of art went beyond subjective matter, had become so firmly established that nothing could destroy it completely. Little did he know then how soon the mighty, unstoppable and increasingly cruel Communist machine would use the blood and sweat of the very people whom it promised to make happy, to drive over their flesh and bones. Nevertheless, despite all the attacks on their principles and the strangulation of their art, avant-garde artists in Leningrad obstinately preferred to retain their independent and unpopular artistic views, rather than gain (perhaps momentary) success and respect from the authorities, as by now had most of their colleagues in Moscow. Back in 1920, in his ‘Cycle of Lectures’, Punin wrote: ‘The closer the link between material and creative consciousness, the more lasting the work of art, the more beautiful it is—and the less popular’.30 But at what price could one make this lifethreatening choice of following one’s beliefs in art instead of marching hand-in-hand with the authorities? Back in 1923, Trotsky had written in ‘Literature and Revolution’: In the sphere of art it is not the party’s business to command. It can and should protect, encourage and merely offer indirect guidance.31

But by the 1930s, Stalin was not satisfied any longer with ‘indirect guidance’. He needed total control over all spheres of Soviet reality. Thus, Socialist Realism became the only permitted style in art—art for the proletariat, but not in the way that Proletkult had ever envisaged. At a conference in Moscow in 1935, brave David Shterenberg risked his life by demanding that freedom of expression should be returned to all artistic movements. The monopoly of MOSKh [Moscow Union of Artists, 30 From lecture 5 in Tsikl Lektsii, Petrograd 1920, quoted in ‘Theory and Criticism. 1902– 1934’, ed. and translated by J. E. Bowlt, (The Viking Press, New York, 1976) p. 173. 31 G. Hosking, p. 180.

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the former AKhRR], which dictated tastes and principles to all artists— who were threatened with dying of hunger if they refused to follow the Communist Party’s and MOSKh’s policy—should be stopped. This brave speech was immediately recorded by the head of the ‘Secret Political Department’ of the NKVD, G. Molchanov, and sent to the Party’s Central Committee. In the same letter, Molchanov mentioned suicidal moods among artists, who are underpaid and starving.32 Later, in 1943, Alexander Rodchenko, one of the founders of Constructivism and a former active participant in Proletkult, wrote in his diary: Art should serve people, but people are led in all directions. But I would like to lead people towards art instead of leading them through art somewhere. Was I born too early or too late? We must separate art from politics . . .33

Seeing the writing that was on the wall, Punin had written back in 1930 to the artist Udaltsova: ‘AKhRR [the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia, which was at the heart of the transformation to Socialist Realism] has won everywhere.’34 Punin was open in his opposition to Socialist Realism, mocking and criticising it openly. As a result, on 1st February 1931, even before the official Party decree had been issued, Punin was dismissed from Zubov’s Institute of the History of Art, which was soon to be closed alltogether.35 It was not all bad news. In September 1932, Punin was invited to give lectures at the Academy of Arts.36 However, any mention of Russian icons, old Russian art, or 20th century art, was already prohibited. In his lectures, this great supporter of avant-garde art and specialist in Byzantine art and Russian icons had to concentrate on Renaissance art, as well as the Academic art of the 18th and 19th centuries. As one of the founders of the faculty of the History of Art, Punin was appointed as head of the department of Western European Art at the Academy. However, after the “bourgeois art” and all the forms of experimentalism or formalism that he had supported were denounced as decadent, degenerate and anti-Communist, especially the paintings of Malevich, in 1931, Punin also lost his job as the head of an already non-existent Department of Newest Trends, and was ordered to re-hang the exhibition of 20th century Russian art at the

32 10 factov ob Alexandre Rodchenko, in ‘Puls UK’, 7 Feb. 2008, pp. 20–21. 33 See the full document in the archive AP RF, fond 3, opis’ 35, delo 43, l. 2–4. 34 Letter from Punin to N. Udaltsova of 20 November 1930, MSL, p. 312. 35 See MSL, p. 312. 36 Ibid., p. 318.



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Russian Museum in two weeks.37 In addition, Punin somehow continued until 1938, to work as director of the Drawings Department, and remained a member of the artistic committee of the Museum. Even when the flame of Revolution had lost its heat, Punin still remained a great fighter for the Russian avant-garde—it was his brave choice, the price of which was first his career and then his life. After visiting the Rembrandt exhibition in May 1937, Punin wrote to Akhmatova: The worst of all is to be talented, better to be lacking talent. . . . Only a genius and a person with no talent are free, for a talented person there is no freedom; a genius and incompetent person can both do whatever they like (first would succeed anyway, and the latter would not), only the talented one can not do what he wants to and how he wants to do it. Terrible.38

But as the 1930s progressed, the reality was that this talented and well established art critic found he could apply his beliefs in art only to a decreasing degree. Back in 1919, in one of his articles in Art of the Commune, Punin had written: ‘We were persecuted and will be persecuted, not because we are anti-bourgeois, or the other way around, but because we possess the gift of creative art. This is the reason we cannot be tolerated by mediocrity, even by Communist mediocrity.’39 Despite such early prescience, could Punin even anticipate the full extent of the persecution under the Soviet regime? Between 1933 and 1936, Nikolay Punin did not write his diary at all, and all his notes made between 1926 and 1941, were destroyed. Nikolay Nikolaevich now felt that the best part of his life was over. He wrote to his wife: ‘I feel myself as an old man of the past.40 He was still only 40 years old. In the 1930s he still wanted to write; it was, after all, his profession. But after his article for the catalogue of the 1932 exhibition and before the publication of his textbook on Western European art in 1940, his only published articles were the review of the literature on visual art in the magazine Zvezda [Star]41 in September 1933, and a short article on the Petrov-Vodkin exhibition entitled ‘Optimistic Art’ in the third issue of the Arkhitecturnaya gazeta [Architectural newspaper] of 1937. Two short 37 See MSL, pp. 319–320. 38 Letter from Punin to Akhmatova from 24 May 1937, MSL, p. 337. 39 Iskusstvo kommuny, no. 9, 2 Feb., 1919, quoted in W. Woroszylski, The Life of Mayakovsky, p. 258. 40 MSL, p. 320. 41 In Zvezda, N 9, 1933, pp. 187–192.

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reviews in eight years! How can it be compared to the twenty five articles written by Punin in 1919 alone? In his letters to Anna Arens from July and August 1933, he refers to writing six or seven book reviews for the magazine Zvezda. His eye-sight was getting worse, and the money was running out, and everything he wrote was being rejected. In one of his letters, Punin mentioned that Akhmatova said after reading one of his articles that the tone of it is too independent and it is unlikely that it will be published.42 She was right. Punin’s book on another extraordinary Russian artist, Pavel Kuznetsov, and his article about Petrov-Vodkin, both written between 1932 and 1936, remained unpublished.43 In his article about Kuznetsov the critic expressed his belief that paintings should be judged by the artist’s skill rather than just their subjects.44 This was as close to the opposite of the aims of Socialist Realism as could be, when it was of course the subject rather than anything else which determined the destiny of the work of art. In 1932, Punin strayed again, consciously or unconsciously, into dangerous territory when he wrote an article about the Armenian artist Martiros Sarian, in which he discussed the meaning of the term realism. He argued that realism is not just a ‘photographic copying of a reality’, that it has a wider meaning. The critic believed that all ‘big art’ is realistic in its essence. He wrote in this article that ‘realism is not a trend in art, but the main creative method, which dominates every progressive creative work.’45 He argued that the realism of Sarian is not rational, which makes it more difficult for people to relate to his works. It is little wonder that this article was also never published. Now any other form of realism in art, not to mention any other form of art itself, was prohibited and doomed not to exist, however real they might be. Whatever arguments Punin or anyone else provided in their defence, they would not prevail. Trotsky’s ‘The Party is always right’ had become the realism of the time.

42 Letter from Punin to Anna Arens-Punina of 4 August 1933, MSL, p. 321. 43 Published in 1976 in RSI, pp. 166–196 and pp. 211–219. 44 See N. Punin, Pavel Kuznetsov, in RSI, p. 167. 45 N. Punin, M. S. Sarian, in RSI, pp. 191–196.

Figure 36. N. Punin at the meeting of the Council of the Hermitage Museum, c. 1918.

Figure 37. The Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg. Photograph by the author, 2011.

Figure 38. The view from the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, much loved by Nikolay Punin. Photograph by the author, 2011.

Figure 39. Meeting at the Academy of Arts, 1917. Seated in the first row from right to left: fourth—Sergey Chekhonin, fifth—Nikolay Punin, seventh—Nathan Altman.

Figure 40. The first exhibition of the Petrograd Free Artistic Studios (PEGOSKhUM), 1918.

Figure 41. Members of the Narkompros’ collegium. Left to right: Karev, unknown lady, Shkol’nik, Chekhonin, Il’in, Shterenberg, Punin, Vaulin, Levin and BaranovRossine, 1918.

Figure 42. The Cover of Nikolay Punin’s book, The Monument to the Third International, published by the Department of Visual Arts of Narkompros, 1920.

Figure 43. Vladimir Tatlin in front of his model of the Monument to the Third International, taken by Nikolay Punin, c. 1920.

Figure 44. Vladimir Tatlin with assistants (I. A. Meerzon and T. M. Shapiro) constructing a model of the Monument to the Third International, taken by Nikolay Punin, c. 1920.

Figure 45. P. I. L’vov, Nevskiy Prospect, c. 1920, pencil on paper.

Figure 46. Vasily Chekrygin, Untitled study from the collection of Nikolay Punin, c. 1918.

Figure 47. The house in which GINKhUK and The Museum of Artistic Culture operated, St. Petersburg. Photograph by the author, 2010.

Figure 48. Kazimir Malevich, c. 1922.

Figure 49. GINKhUK (The State Institute of Artistic Culture), c. 1924.

Figure 50. Nikolay Punin, Kazimir Malevich and Mikhail Matyushin at GINKhUK, 1925.

Figure 51. Members of GINKhUK. 1925. From left to right in the first row: N. Punin, V. Ermolaeva, K. Ender, M. Matyushin, M. Ender, K. Malevich; in the second row from right to left: P. Pozemsky, B. Ender, N. Kogan, A. Leporskaya, L. Yudin, K. Rozhdestvensky and others.

Figure 52. Savelii Sorin, Portrait of Arthur Lourie, c. 1910, pencil on paper.

Figure 53. Anna Akhmatova in N. Punin’s study, 1926, taken by N. Punin.

Figure 54. The Sheremetiev Palace, St. Petersburg. Photograph by the author, 2010.

Figure 55. Anna Akhmatova by the northern gates of the Fountain House, 1925, taken by Nikolay Punin.

Figure 56. Door to Punin’s apartment at the Fountain House (now the Akhmatova museum).

Figure 57. The kitchen in Nikolay Punin’s apartment.

Figure 58. Corridor in Punin’s apartment with a replica of the chest, on top of which several of Nikolay Punin’s friends (including Osip Mandelstam) and family members used to sleep.

Figure 59. Punin’s study in his apartment in the Fountain House.

Figure 60. Nikolay Punin in his study. C. 1926.

Figure 61. The dining room in Punin’s apartment.

Figure 62. Around the table at the Fountain House. From left to right: Lev Arens (Punin’s brother-in-law), Nikolay Punin, Anna (Galya) Arens, Anna Akhmatova, Punin’s daughter Irina, Lev Arens’ wife, Sara, and their two sons, Igor and Evgeny. C. 1925.

Figure 63. Nikolay Punin and Anna Akhmatova. Taken by Pavel Luknitsky, 1925.

Figure 64. Anna Akhmatova with her son Lev and her mother-in-law, Anna Ivanovna Gumileva, 1927.

Figure 65. Anna (Galya) Arens with fellow doctors. C. 1926.

Figure 66. Anna Akhmatova in Nikolay Punin’s study, 1926, taken by N. Punin.

Figure 67. Anna Akhmatova with Irina Punina, 1927. Taken by Pavel Luknitsky.

Figure 68. Irina Punina with her mother, Anna Arens, 1927.

Figure 69. Portrait   of N. Punin, c. 1927, Artist unknown; pencil on paper.

Figure 70. The Zubov Institute of the History of Art, where Nikolay Punin worked from 1922 to 1930. Photograph by the author, 2010.

Figure 71. Committee for the organization of the exhibition of Russian art in Tokyo. Seated at the centre, the head of the committee, O. D. Kameneva (sister of Trotsky), seated next to her Anatoly Lunacharsky. Nikolay Punin and Arkin are standing above them. To the left of Kameneva is the first ambassador of Japan to the Soviet Union, Tanaka Tokitsi, 1926.

Figure 72. Nikolay Punin on his way to Japan following the train crash. In the train carriage in Vladivostok. March 1927.

Figure 73. The exhibition of Russian art in Tokyo, 1927.

Figure 74. Postcard and the breakfast menu from the hotel in Nara, where Nikolay Punin stayed in June 1927.

Figure 75. Anna Akhmatova wearing a pearl necklace, brought to her by Nikolay Punin from Japan, 1927.

Figure 76. Presents brought from Japan by Nikolay Punin to his wife, Anna Arens, and his daughter Irina, 1927. Photographed by the author, 2011.

Figure 77. Punin’s great-great-granddaughter, Varvara, wearing a kimono brought by Nikolay Punin for his daughter in 1927. Photograph by the author, 2011.

Figure 78. Visit of the Japanese delegation to Nikolay Punin in January 1928. On the left is Punin’s ex maid, A. B. Smirnova, next to her is Anna (Galya) Arens. In the centre is Irina Punina in her kimono. First on the right is Anna Akhmatova with Vladimir Lebedev and Kenzo Midzutani. Standing behind is Evgeny Smirnov (Punin’s new neighbour). Taken by Nikolay Punin.

Figure 79. Gifu paper lantern—a replica of the original one given to Nikolay Punin by Kenzo Midzutani in January 1928.

Figure 80. Nikolay Punin, wearing a dressing gown from Japan, at a Black Sea resort, summer 1928.

Figure 81. Vladimir Lebedev, c. 1928.

Figure 82. Vladimir Lebedev, Portrait of N. S. Nadezhdina, 1927, oil on canvas, 65×50 cm., State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Figure 83. Nikolay Punin at the Russian Museum, c. 1930s.

Figure 84. At the exhibition of Vladimir Lebedev, organised by Punin at the Russian Museum in 1928. From left to right: Nikolay Punin, V. N. Anikieva, the director of the Russian Museum P. I. Neradovsky and Vladimir Lebedev.

Figure 85. Nikolay Punin with artists in the 1930s.

Figure 86. Irina Punina, Petr Neradovsky and Kazimir Malevich at the hanging of the exhibition ‘Artists of the RSFSR in 15 years’, The Russian Museum, 1932.

Figure 87. Nikolay Punin with Vladimir Lebedev and Nadezhda Dobychina (ex owner of the gallery, where Malevich’s Black Square was first exhibited in 1915), at the Russian Museum, 1930s.

Figure 88. Irina Punina after her operation following complications with measles, 1929.

Figure 89. Nikolay Punin with his daughter, Irina, in the garden of the Fountain House, 1930’s.

Figure 90. Arrest papers of Nikolay Punin in 1935. Among the confiscated items are a Portrait of Nietzsche, Punin’s diary (24 note books), ‘The other side of good and evil’ by Nietzsche, 4 issues of newspapers, 2 note books, 4 manuscripts and 3 books by Mandelstam.

Chapter Nine

TIME OF TERROR It will still be a long time before we are able to add up what this mistaken theory cost us, and hence to determine whether there was any truth in the line ‘the earth was worth ten heavens to us’. But, having paid the price of ten heavens, did we really inherit the earth? (N. Mandelstam)1 And even my own shadow All distorted by fear.

(A. Akhmatova ‘Heiress’)2

1. Hard Times. Attack on Principles and Individuals On his accession to power, Stalin’s first target was the Church, which he subjected to every possible kind of pressure including liquidation of clergy in the purges. Any religion had to be condemned as a form of superstition. However, despite the displacement of the Church, many people found it difficult to give up their religion. The 1927 census had contained a question about religious belief, to which 40% had answered positively; the census results were not published. Ten years later, in September 1937 Punin remarked: ‘Out of a hundred million—a million are Party members. Why not everyone?’3 With the transition to a centrally planned economy in the 1930s, goods shortages became endemic in the Soviet Union. The Communist government used to explain long bread queues, which became an everyday reality in Stalin’s Russia, as being due to ‘hoarding’ by kulaks, an act of anti-Soviet sabotage. But with the beginning of collectivization and the establishment of the largely dysfunctional collective kolkhoz, the urban population increased by 60 percent in just the seven years between 1926 and 1933. To add to this, the famine of 1932–33, took almost four million

1 N. Mandelstam, Hope against hope, vol. I, p. 194. 2 A. Akhmatova, Heiress, 1959, in ‘Under the roof of the Fountain House’. 3 MSL, p. 339.

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lives and accelerated the movement of peasants to the already overcrowded towns. Even those who still stayed in the countryside were often forced to come into towns to buy bread because there was no grain in the villages.4 Short of money, Punin and his family were forced to speculate on bread, after queuing for hours to buy it, and to sell empty bottles. In 1933, Akhmatova had to sell her library. Later she would blame Punin for making her sell her precious books, many with inscriptions to her, but at the time of hunger and poverty, there was little choice left. Unable to organize exhibitions of his admired avant-garde artists or to publish any of his writing, in the mid-1930s, Punin was condemned to waste his talent on dealing with material needs. In September 1933, he wrote: ‘I haven’t started working yet—since there is not an hour free from the worries on the home front: . . . money, bottles etc.’5 He added that all his winter trousers were torn, but since there is no money to buy new ones, he was wearing his white summer breeches. It was, thank God, a warm September, but nobody knew what was going to happen in winter . . . Life became a matter of survival, and days were filled with attempts to get food, and to kill fleas. But, especially after 1935, even worse than any material shortages, were the arrests and mysterious disappearance of thousands of people, which marked the start of this terrible time. Nobody could trust anyone else any longer, and every acquaintance was a suspected police informer. Students were instructed to spy on their professors, children—on their parents, neighbours—on neighbours. ‘We lived among people who vanished into exile, labour camps or the other world, and also among those who sent them there’,6—Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote about this awful time in her memoirs. Her husband was arrested, exiled and eventually (in 1938) sent to a labour camp to meet his death. Never losing his sense of humour, Osip Mandelstam used to say: ‘Why do you complain? Poetry is respected only in this country—people are killed for it. There’s no place where more people are killed for it.’7 And one of his friends even said: ‘People are shot everywhere. More so here, you think? Well, that’s progress.’8

4 See Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, p. 43. 5 Letter from Punin to Anna Arens-Punina of 6 September 1933, MSL, p. 322. 6 Mandelstam I, p. 42. 7 Ibid., p. 190. 8 Ibid., p. 50.



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At this time of helplessness and desperation, nobody was completely safe. Every family would be going over its circle of acquaintances, testing for provocateurs and informers. Having any kind of enemies could lead to imprisonment. An old Jewish grandmother, who was raising three grandsons by herself, was reported by some ill-wisher to be a prostitute, and was immediately arrested. At this dangerous time the NKVD followed the saying: ‘Give us a man, and we’ll make a case’: People were picked up wholesale according to category (and sometimes age group)—churchmen, mystics, idealists, philosophers, humorists, people who talked too much, people who talked too little, people with their own ideas about law, government and economics; and—once the concept of ‘sabotage’ had been introduced to explain all failures or blunders—engineers, technicians and agricultural specialists.9

The regime was still winning supporters, who ‘were not only sure of their own triumph, they also thought they were bringing happiness to the rest of mankind as well.’10 In his book ‘The Whisperers’ Orlando Figes wrote: First the enthusiasts would outline the plan on paper. Then they would tear down the old (“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”). Then they would clear the rubble, and in the space that had been cleared they would erect the edifice of the Socialist dream.11

Believing in the ‘march towards Communism’ seemed to require an acceptance of its human cost. Like the secret police of 16th century Russia, the so-called opritchniki of Ivan the Terrible, the NKVD ‘s aim was to destroy any kind of opposition to their leader. The opritchniki were violent in the name of God and the Soviet secret police tortured people in the name of Stalin. Society was divided into us and them, but even being in the right camp could not guarantee you safety. The start of the purges—those beyond the earlier removal of his principal opponents—seemed to coincide with Stalin’s second wife’s protest against the misery Russia was now suffering; later, on the same day as she courageously expressed her opinion, she died, apparently by suicide. This happened in 1932, but the murder in December 1934, of Sergey Kirov, Communist Party chief in Leningrad, member of the Politburo, but known

9 Ibid., p. 12. 10 Ibid., p. 193. 11 Figes, p. 189.

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opponent of Stalin’s repressive policies, set off a wave of purges in the Party against any opposition, real or imagined.12 Almost certainly missing the chief culprit, Kirov’s ‘murderers’ were punished, but many trials then followed, starting with 16 old Bolsheviks, including Kamenev and Zinoviev (all executed on 24th August 1936) followed by the arrest of 21 leaders of the Right wing, among which Tomsky committed suicide, but both Bukharin and Rykov were liquidated. Many of these trials involved torture, and extraction or public confessions: the OGPU had to prove its worth. When the famous Russian Orthodox theologian and philosopher, Pavel Florensky, was arrested in 1933, he described such forced confessions as ‘Aesopian language of the OGPU’: . . . All of this meant that what they needed from me, when they said selfdisarmament, was not the truth but something that had the appearance of the truth. As a specialist in the history of judicial procedure I could discern in all this a peculiar form of trial by confession. In the early Middle Ages this was termed the purgatio vulgaris and later, the purgatio canonica . . . The suspect, in the medieval trial by confession, we should explain, was not considered innocent even when there was no evidence against him. He himself had to prove his innocence by performing acts that would re-establish his good reputation.13

In Stalin’s Russia, mirroring the early Middle Ages, one of the main principles of jurisdiction—‘innocent until proven guilty’—had been reversed. One had to prove innocence even when there was no proof, or indeed probability, of one’s guilt. In 1933, Florensky ‘confessed’ to being ‘an ideologist to a monarchist-fascist conspiracy’. But even accepting such nonsense did not save him from being sentenced to ten years’ hard labour in the Gulag, where he was shot in 1937. Between 1937 and 1938, Stalin set about purging the army. Three out of five first Marshals, including the Commander-In-Chief, Tukhachevsky, all the twelve lieutenant-generals, sixty out of sixty-seven corps commanders and 136 out of the 199 divisional commanders were all shot. Similarly, even more severe purges of the navy took place. In all, about 8 million people were arrested in these purges. They served to confirm Stalin’s absolute power, though Stalin ensured that the trials were fronted by Yezhov, head of the secret police, rather than himself. 12 In 1956, Khrushchev stated that Stalin had orchestrated Kirov’s murder himself, as Kirov was becoming too popular. 13 Quoted in Avril Pyman Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius. The tragic and extraordinary life of Russia’s unknown Da Vinci, (New York, London: Continuum, 2010), p. 155.



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To keep his associates under control, Stalin also used to threaten their family members. Thus, the brother of one of the most prominent Politburo members, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, was arrested in 1936, on suspicion of anti-Soviet activities, and the wife of the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Mikhail Kalinin, was arrested as an enemy of the people; the same happened after the war to the wife of Stalin’s number two, Viacheslav Molotov.14 Like the representatives of the old intelligentsia before them, members of the Communist elite and their relatives now found themselves charged under article 58 of the Criminal Code, which was applied to ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ and ‘counter-revolutionary activity’. From the middle of the 1930s, it is fair to say that every family lived in fear of the black car (the so called ‘black raven’) of the NKVD stopping by their door in the middle of the night. Any knock at the door or a ringing door bell could mean an imminent arrest and often immediate departure to the ‘land of no return’. Trying not to lose their sense of humour at a time when nothing else was left, Russians made a joke about it: ‘1937. Night. A ring at the door. The husband goes to answer. He returns and says: “Don’t worry, dear, it’s bandits who have come to rob us.” ’15 At the time of arrests on a previously unseen scale, burglary seemed a relief. Night arrests were the most common, but since one could be arrested even on the street during the day, Mandelstam always used to carry his favourite book, Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ in his pocket just in case he was arrested and was not allowed to return home.16 In ‘Doctor Zhivago’, Boris Pasternak wrote: . . . One day Lara went out and did not come back. She must have been arrested in the street, as so often happened in these days, and she died or vanished somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list which later was mislaid; in one of the innumerable mixed or women’s concentration camps in the north.17

In 1935, Stalin announced that: ‘Life has become better, life has become more cheerful.’ His new constitution of 1936, promised many civil rights to Soviet citizens, including freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Nonetheless, all meetings of writers, composers, artists, scientists and 14 See Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, p. 25. 15 Ibid., p. 185. 16 See Mandelstam I, p. 273. 17 Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, (London: Vintage books, 2002) p. 449.

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professors, as well as their conversations in the corridor and at home around the kitchen tables, were recorded or reported to the NKVD by their numerous informers. People were afraid to get together or talk, and even when whispering at home, they would always close all the windows and doors: . . . The rest, who no doubt outnumbered the true believers, just sighed and whispered among themselves. Their voices went unheard because nobody had any need of them. The line ‘ten steps away no one hears our speeches’ precisely defines the situation in those days. The ‘speeches’ in question were regarded as something old and outmoded, echoes of a past that would never return.18

Back in 1930, Boris Pasternak wrote in his novel ‘Safe Conduct’: All around there are lion’s muzzles—one visualizes them here, there and everywhere, noising into one’s vitals, sniffing it all out: lions’ jaws, gnawing their way through one life after another in the secrecy of their den. From all around comes the lion’s roar with its spurious assertion of immortality: the claim is entertained without fear of ridicule only because the lion is master of all that is immortal and has it securely tethered to its leonine leash. Everyone senses this; everyone puts up with it.19

Banned by the censor and deleted from the printed version of the novel, these words expressed the feeling of doom and fatalism which spread in Russia in the middle of the 1930s. ‘From the second half of the twenties the “whisper of public opinion” became fainter and fainter until it ceased to be the prelude to action of any kind,’20—wrote Nadezhda Mandelstam in her book ‘Hope against hope’. In the face of terror people were paralyzed by fear: The people in the towns were as helpless as children in the face of the unknown—of that unknown which swept every known usage aside and left nothing but desolation in its wake—although it was the offspring and creation of the towns. People were still talking and deceiving themselves as their daily life struggled on, limping and shuffling to its unknown destination. . . . Ordeals were ahead, perhaps death. Their days were counted, and these days were running out before their eyes.21

18 Mandelstam I, p. 193. 19 Quoted in E. Pasternak, p. 3. 20 Mandelstam I, p. 27. 21 Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, p. 168.



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Nevertheless, life had to go on, and in January 1935, Punin returned to Kiev to give lectures on the history of art. Since 1908, Kiev had become the centre of the avant-garde in the Ukraine. Its electric trams (the first in the Russian Empire) inspired Futurist adoration of the machine, and by 1922, Constructivism had matured in Ukrainian painting and theatre design. It was here—in the Ukrainian Academy of Arts (later the Kiev Art Institute)—that Punin’s all-time favourite artist, Vladimir Tatlin, had become the head of the Theatre, Cinema and Photography Faculty ten years earlier. Punin was very inspired by this trip, by this mysterious city. He wrote several letters to Anna Akhmatova from Kiev—the city, where he felt her youth was wondering around the streets.22 He gave two lectures every day—one in the morning, one in the evening. They were very well received, and Punin felt relative freedom in expressing his views on art, despite the tense atmosphere with the directors attending every lecture, fearing emergence of ‘formalism’, by which they understood ‘western-inspired modernism’.23 In a letter to his wife and daughter, Punin said that even though Party members attended his first lecture, they left him alone after ‘observing his Marxist views’.24 Punin liked Kiev so much, that for a moment even considered moving there, which would fulfil his dream of ‘moving somewhere South in the end of life’ (he was still only 45 years old).25 He could not have known then that he would spend the last four years of his life beyond the Arctic Circle, instead of in sunny Kiev. A few months after his return to Leningrad, the cruel reality of Stalin’s regime would touch Punin with its iron glove. 2. The Second Arrest of Nikolay Punin In 1935, after Kirov’s murder, Leningraders—particularly members of the old privileged classes—suffered. Many avant-garde artists, such as Vera Ermolaeva26 and Vladimir Sterligov along with three of their students, were arrested. 22 MSL, pp. 326–327. 23 Ibid., p. 326. 24 Letter from Punin to Arens-Punina and Irina Punina of 27 January 1935, MSL, p. 328. 25 Ibid., p. 327. 26 Vera Ermolaeva was responsible for replacing Mark Chagall with Kazimir Malevich at the art school in Vitebsk.

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Punin’s friends and former colleagues at the Russian Museum, Neradovsky and Sichev were also arrested and interrogated. Both were respected art-historians and specialists in Russian icons, now out of fashion in Soviet times. Neradovsky was fired from the Russian Museum in 1932, and immediately arrested. He came out of prison in 1935, but was arrested again in 1938, and sentenced to five years in a labour camp. Sichev was arrested in 1935, and was also sentenced to five years in a labour camp. He sent a letter to Punin from the camp, in which he wrote that his only delight in his imprisonment was painting, without which he would have committed suicide. Completely unable to understand why he was arrested, Sichev was losing his faith in people and meaning of life: Really, how could they disgrace an innocent person so much, to mark him with the shameful name of contra-revolutionary, blame him for God knows what, torture him, humiliate him completely, is there any point in living after all of this?27

In 1935, Punin’s brother-in-law, the botanist Lev Arens was sentenced to five years in a labour camp on account of his ‘parentage’—being the son of a general-lieutenant of the Tsar’s army was a crime in its own right. When the interrogator asked him: ‘How is it that an enlightened man like you believes in God?’, Lev Arens replied: ‘It is because I am an enlightened man that I believe.’28 Lev Arens’ wife, Sara, and their younger son were exiled to Astrakhan and their older son, Igor, came to live with Punin’s family. His uncle Nikolay received him as his own son, and signed an agreement with him that for any ‘excellent’ grade at school he would pay him five roubles, for a ‘good’ grade—two roubles, for a ‘so-so’ grade Igor had to pay him back 50 kopecks (half a rouble), and for a ‘poor’ grade—Punin would take half of the money earned by Igor during the week back. For a ‘very poor’ grade all his money had to be liquidated.29 About to be arrested himself, Nikolay Nikolaevich still found the strength to look after his nephew’s education. In 1934, Osip Mandelstam was first exiled and then arrested again in 1938, and shot. The most prominent Soviet writer, Maxim Gorky, who in the middle of 1930s was trying to organise together with Bukharin the ‘Party of non-Party members’ or ‘union of intellectuals’, was soon placed

27 Letter from Sichev to Punin of 4 August 1935, MSL p. 329. 28 Quoted in AA, p. 646. 29 In the Diary, p. 180.



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under unannounced house arrest in Moscow. On 18th June 1936, the sixtyeight year-old Gorky suddenly died, just a year after the sudden death of his son. Both are now believed to have been poisoned by NKVD agents. It went further: in 1938 and 1939, other Soviet intellectuals, who, like Gorky, used to advise Stalin on cultural affairs—Koltsov, Babel and Meyerkhold—were arrested on Stalin’s personal orders and then shot at the beginning of 1940. Although their execution was not reported in the press at the time, it poisoned what small relationship there remained between Stalin and the intelligentsia. It also showed that neither one’s achievements on behalf of the Soviet regime, nor one’s personal loyalty to Stalin (Koltsov for example, was the editor-in-chief of Pravda and for a long time Stalin’s favourite) could save one from the dictator’s sword. At least 600 published authors (almost a third of the members of the Union of Soviet Writers) were arrested during the Great Purges. No doubt if Mayakovsky or Malevich had still been alive in 1936, they would have been arrested and shot as well; even Lunacharsky’s successor, the loyal but narrow-minded Commissar of People’s Enlightenment, Andrei Bubnov, was arrested in 1937, together with all the directors of his Commissariat, and shot on 1st August 1938, after being tortured for several months. Akhmatova had been under suspicion since 1927—first as a Trotskyite, and then as an American spy. The former KGB Chief of CounterIntelligence, Oleg Kalugin, wrote that her file was ‘full of nasty reports from the legions of rumours and innuendo spread about her, one woman even alleging that Akhmatova was a lesbian and had fondled the informer’s breasts.’30 For decades, Anna’s every step had been monitored first by the NKVD and then by the KGB. Andrei Zhdanov, the Party leader in Leningrad after Kirov’s assassination in 1934, labelled her ‘part nun, part whore’. In 1934, when Akhmatova was preparing to go to Moscow (where she stayed with Osip Mandelstam and his wife—it was during her stay that Osip was arrested), she stopped for a while by the window of the Fountain House, when Punin suddenly asked her: ‘Are you praying for this cup to go past you?’31

30 O. Kalugin, Spy Master, p. 319. 31 These words refer to Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane before he was crucified: ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken away from me.’ (Matthew 26:63). See Punin’s quote in ‘Vospominaniya Nadezhdy Mandelstam in ‘O. Mandelstam i ego vremya’, ed. By V. Necheporuk and V. Kreid (Moscow, L’Age d’Homme-Nash Dom, 1995) p. 315.

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Once, walking through the Tretyakov gallery with Akhmatova, Punin suddenly said to Anna Andreevna: ‘And now let’s go to look how we will be taken to our execution.’32 His reference was to the famous painting by Surikov, ‘Boyarinya Morozova’, in which a noblewoman is taken to submit to her penalty of death. In reply to Punin’s remark Akhmatova wrote a poem, which included a line: ‘Which mad Surikov will paint my last journey?’ Punin used to say that they (the NKVD) are keeping Akhmatova for last,33 but unlike Nikolay Nikolaevich, she herself was never even arrested. In 1935, instead of arresting Akhmatova, the almighty NKVD interrogated her through the numerous arrests of her son, Lev, and then through her lover Nikolay Punin (whom Akhmatova usually referred to as her husband). According to R. Timenchik, the head of the NKVD, Zakovsky, who was responsible for this arrest, tried to persuade the People’s Commissar Yagoda, to arrest Akhmatova ‘without any delay’.34 But the ruthless head of the NKVD decided that arresting her loved ones would exert enough pressure. On the cold and windy night of 22nd October 1935, Lev Gumilev and Nikolay Punin were both arrested. In his book ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote that the night arrests like Punin’s were especially favoured by the secret police. They had several important advantages over the daytime arrests: Everyone living in the apartment is thrown into a state of terror by the first knock at the door. The arrested person is torn from the warmth of his bed. He is in a daze, half-asleep, helpless, and his judgement is befogged.35

On the night of Punin’s arrest several agents, with a couple of witnesses, came to the crowded apartment in the Fountain House with search and arrest warrants. From Nikolay Nikolaevich’s study they took a portrait of Friedrich Nietzche, Nietzshe’s book ‘On the other side of good and evil’, Punin’s diary (24 note books), four issues of Art of the Commune, four manuscripts, two note-books, three books of Mandelstam’s poems, letters. In his memories of conversations with Akhmatova, Anatoly Neyman recalled one of her stories of how after this sudden arrest, the poetess, together with Punin’s wife, Anna Arens, anticipating an imminent raid,

32 Ibid., p. 315. 33 Ibid. 34 Timenchik, A. Akhmatova v 1960e godi, p. 23. 35 Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p. 5.



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burned every remaining document which could be compromising in the stove. At dawn, as they finally sat down, exhausted and covered in soot, a photograph of General Arens (Punin’s father-in-law) reporting to Nicholas II on board a warship, floated down to the floor—a silent reminder of a world which was gone forever . . .36 At this time ‘the yellow smoke of family archives became the air of Leningrad’.37 Solzhenitsyn wrote: ‘The traditional image of arrest is also what happens afterwards, when the poor victim has been taken away. It is an alien, brutal, and crushing force totally dominating the apartment for hours on end, a breaking, ripping open, pulling from the walls, emptying things from wardrobes and desks onto the floor, shaking, dumping out, and ripping apart—piling up mountains of litter on the floor—and the crunch of things being trampled beneath jackboots. And nothing is sacred in a search! For those left behind after the arrest there is the long tail end of a wrecked and devastated life.’38 Luckily, in 1933, anticipating an arrest he felt was imminent, Nikolay Nikolaevich had asked his younger brother, Alexander, to hide the larger part of his diary and some articles in a small alcove under the window in his flat. Thanks to this amazing act of courage, these invaluable manuscripts have survived to the present day. His diary notes from 1926 to 1936, which were taken away at the time of his second arrest, were destroyed by the NKVD. It was a time when it became too dangerous to have a diary. Like Georges Nivat observed in his article ‘Le journal intime en Russie’: ‘Neither the revolution nor the terror is favourable to it [the diary] . . . The new man has no more intimacy. A private diary? He does not know what it means.’39 Just as George Orwell wrote in ‘1984’: ‘. . . a personal diary—a fact of daily life in the bygone liberal age—has no place in a totalitarian state.’40 The accusations made of Punin and Lev Gumilev were pretty standard at the time—participation in contra-revolutionary activities. Punin was accused of holding in his flat meetings of a terrorist student group, which was engaged in anti-revolutionary activities. When Punin was asked about

36 See A. Nayman, pp. 70–71. 37 See Under the roof of the Fountain house. 38 Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p. 5. 39 George Nivat, Russie-Europe: la fin du schisme. Etudes litteraires et politiques, in Hellbeck, Jochen ‘Writing a diary under Stalin’, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006) p. 366. 40 George Orwell, 1984, quoted in Hellbeck, Jochen, p. 3.

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these activities, he denied their very existence and said that he owed everything he had to the Soviet regime. He also said that Gumilev had always supported all the principles of Marxism. However, when the interrogator asked Punin about his terrorist plans, the art critic denied having one, but admitted that he ‘has developed a negative attitude to the leadership of the Communist Party, represented by Stalin, on several issues’.41 He also told the interrogator—though why he did so cannot be known—how once he had been showing Akhmatova, Gumilev and a few friends an automatic shutter release on his camera. In admiration of this great invention, he said that it would be good if one could point the camera at Stalin, press the shutter release and blow him up. Rather inspired by his joke, Nikolay Nikolaevich said: ‘And our unsuspecting Joseph (Stalin) would have flown off the face of the Earth straight to all the devils!’42 When one of the friends had naively asked if it is really possible, Punin confirmed that it is. He also confirmed that Akhmatova had been reciting Mandelstam’s contra-revolutionary poems at their gatherings at home. This confession on its own was enough to have Punin arrested, and even shot. Lev Gumilev was arrested on several charges, including the one that his mother had allegedly incited him to murder Zhdanov in order to revenge the death of his father, Nikolay Gumilev. Later, Punin’s daughter Irina said that they were arrested on the testimony of one Arkadii—one of Lev’s friends from the University, who was a regular guest at their apartment. Fourteen year-old Irina later said that after the night of Punin’s arrest she became an adult, having to look after her father’s complicated family.43 Akhmatova dedicated one section of perhaps her most famous poem, ‘Requiem’, to the arrest of Nikolay Nikolaevich: They led you away at dawn I followed you like a mourner, In the dark front room the children were crying, On your lips was the icon’s chill. The deathly sweat on your brow . . . Unforgettable!— I will be like the wives of the Streltsy, Howling under the Kremlin towers.44

41 Manuscript of Punin’s interrogation in his family’s archive in St. Petersburg. 42 Manuscript of Punin’s interrogation in his family’s archive in St. Petersburg. 43 Irina Punina, Pod krovlei Fontannogo Doma . . . in ‘Anna Akhmatova I Fontanniy Dom’, p. 145. 44 A. Akhmatova, Requiem, 1935, Quoted in Gerstein, p. 320.



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Punin’s daughter Irina later confirmed that when her father was taken away, her cousin Igor was crying.45 He was still very young, but he knew exactly what such night visits meant, since his father had already been arrested, and his mother sent to exile. Nikolay Nikolaevich just kissed the icon before he was taken away. After Punin’s arrest, Anna Akhmatova went immediately to Moscow— ‘to howl under the Kremlin towers’. Unable to wait, reminded of the sudden execution of her first husband, Akhmatova decided to write to Stalin himself. At the time, the Soviet leader still seemed to be flirting with some members of the intelligentsia. Back in 1930, he had telephoned the author of ‘The Master and Margarita’, Mikhail Bulgakov, in response to his letter complaining of mistreatment by theatre and censorship officials. Stalin offered his support to Bulgakov, which for a little while made some members of intelligentsia believe that ‘it was not Stalin who harassed them but only lower-level officials and militants who did not understand Stalin’s policy.”46 Interestingly enough, the GPU (predecessor of the NKVD) meticulously monitored the effectiveness of this call to Bulgakov, and reported to Stalin that the artistic and literary circles were truly impressed, and that they were made to believe that: He [Stalin] follows the right line, but around him are scoundrels. These scoundrels persecuted Bulgakov, one of the most talented Soviet writers. Various literary rascals were making a career out of the persecution of Bulgakov, and now Stalin has given them a slap in the face.47

Many started speaking about Stalin’s ‘simplicity and accessibility’. For a short time he was seen as ‘a good Tsar’. When Osip Mandelstam was arrested in 1934, Stalin called Boris Pasternak, claiming to have told Bukharin that he was against Mandelstam’s interrogations. Stalin told Pasternak that Osip’s case had been reviewed, and that everything would be fine now. He also asked Boris why he had not approached him directly to vouch for his friend. When Pasternak tried to deny his strong friendship with Mandelstam, the Communist Party leader suddenly asked him: ‘But he’s a genius, he’s a genius, isn’t he?’ Boris replied: ‘But that’s not the

45 Irina Punina, Pod krovley Fontannogo Doma . . ., p. 145. 46 Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, p. 28. 47 Vitaly Shentalinski, Raby svobody. V literaturnykh arkhivakh KGB, quoted in Fitzpatrick, p. 28.

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point.’ ‘What is it, then?’,—asked Stalin. Pasternak suggested meeting him to talk about it, but Stalin just said: ‘Talk about what?’, ‘About life and death’,—replied Pasternak. At this point, Stalin hung up . . .48 After these telephone conversations, both Bulgakov and Pasternak were marked in literary circles as Stalin’s confidants. So, on 30th October 1935, eight days after the arrests of Punin and Lev Gumilev, Anna Akhmatova knocked at the door of the Moscow apartment of Mikhail Bulgakov. His wife, Yelena, described this unexpected visit in her diary: I went out—it was Akhmatova—with a terrible look on her face and so thin that neither I nor Misha [Mikhail Bulgakov] could recognize her. It turned out they arrested both her husband [Punin] and her son. She had come to deliver a letter to [Stalin]. She was totally distracted, mumbling something to herself.49

The next day, Akhmatova called her son’s girlfriend, Emma Gerstein, and they went together to see another writer, Lydia Seifullina, who had useful contacts in the Communist Party. Anna was still very disturbed and kept shouting ‘Kolya [Nikolay] . . . Kolya . . . blood.’50 Seifullina was told that Akhmatova should deliver her letter at the Kutafya Tower of the Kremlin, and that Stalin’s secretary, Poskryobyshev, would deliver it to the dictator himself. Too scared to face the Kremlin officials, Anna asked her friend, the writer Boris Pilnyak, to hand over her letter. In her letter to Stalin, Akhmatova wrote that both Punin and her son were completely innocent: ‘. . . I do not know what they are sentenced for, but I can give you my word that they are not fascists, nor spies, nor members of any contra-revolutionary movement.’51 She asked the dictator to give her loved ones back to her, and ended the letter by saying: The arrest of the only two people close to me has been such a blow to me, that I cannot take it any more. I ask you, Iosif Vissarionovich, to give me back my husband and son, and I am confident that no one will ever regret it.52

Boris Pasternak also wrote a letter to Stalin, and on 4th November 1935, both Punin and Lev Gumilev were released on the direct order of Stalin. Akhmatova had been staying with Pasternak and his wife when she 48 See Mandelstam I, p. 174. 49 Y. S. Bulgakova, Iz dnevnika, quoted in AA, p. 272. 50 Ibid. 51 See the whole letter in Under the roof of the Fountain house. 52 Ibid.



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received a telegram from Nikolay and Lev, who were already back home. Pasternak wrote Stalin a further letter, in which he thanked him for the release of Gumilev and Punin. He started his letter by saying: Dear Iosif Vissarionovich! It vexes me that I did not then follow my first wish to thank you for the miraculous and instantaneous release of Akhmatova’s family.53

He finished his letter in the manner of Christian prayer, but instead of saying ‘In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit’, Pasternak wrote to Stalin: ‘In the name of that mystery, I remain your warmly affectionate and devoted, B. Pasternak’.54 For a brief while, the sudden return of Akhmatova’s loved ones led Pasternak to believe that it was a sign of a ‘lessening of terror’, as well as Stalin’s understanding and apparent desire to participate in people’s lives.55 The release was so unexpected that when the guards roused Punin in the middle of the night, he first thought that it was just for another interrogation. However, when they announced that he could go, he said that since the trams had already stopped running, could not he stay overnight? The answer was: ‘This is not a hotel!’56 In September 1936, Punin made an entry in his diary: ‘How was it in prison: one minute excessive suffering, another—unsound hopes.’57 The effect of Akhmatova’s letter was unprecedented, and in 1938, Lydia, the daughter of the famous children’s writer, Korney Chukovsky, came to see Anna in order to find out what she wrote in this magic letter. In February 1938, Lydia Chukovskaya’s husband, Matvei Bronshteyn, was arrested and the only thing that she could find out from the Military Prosecutor was that he was sentenced to ten years without right of correspondence and confiscation of property. She did not know then that this sentence wording meant that he had been shot, so she still cherished the hope to save him. When Chukovskaya asked Anna about her letter to Stalin, she first thought that she would look for a rough draft or copy. Instead Akhmatova ‘in an even voice, looking lucidly and directly at Lydia’, recited it all by

53 In Gerstein, p. 347. 54 Ibid., p. 348. The origial letter from B. Pasternak to I. Stalin of 5 December 1935 in AP RF, Fond 5, Opis 1, Delo 788, L. 107–110; also quoted in ‘Vlast’ i Khudozhestvennaya Intelligentsia’, p. 275. 55 See comment in E. Pasternak, p. 73. 56 See A. Neyman, p. 71. 57 Diary note of 1 September 1936, MSL, p. 335.

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heart. In her diary, Chukovskaya quotes one phrase from this letter: ‘We all live for the future, and I do not want to be left with such a filthy stain.’58 But in the 1937 and 1938 period, even personal letters to Stalin stopped working. In 1937, Akhmatova’s messenger, Pilnyak, who was madly in love with her and even asked her to marry him back in 1924, was also arrested and accused of collaborating with the Japanese, and of supporting Trotsky. No one knows what happened to him, but there were rumours that he was executed in 1938.59 In 1937, Lev was arrested again. This time he was released only in 1941, and sent to serve at the front. While he was being interrogated, his mother spent countless days queuing in front of the most terrifying pre-trial prison in Leningrad, known as Kresty [Crosses], waiting for a chance to give a small parcel to her beloved. Forty years after Akhmatova’s death, in December 2006, a new monument to the poetess was unveiled in the place where she requested it in the second epilogue to her poem ‘Requiem’, across the river Neva from the prison: . . . And if someday in this country They decide to erect a monument to me, I agree to this honour But only on the condition that it stands Not by the sea, where I was born: I have broken all ties with the sea, Not in the tsar’s garden, near my cherished stump, Where the inconsolable shade seeks me out, But here, where I stood for 300 hours And where they never unbarred the door for me . . .60

But at the end of the 1930s, a different monument was erected in the middle of the central alee of the beautiful Sheremetiev garden. It was a monument to Stalin, and for many years Akhmatova, Gumilev, Punin, his wife and his daughter had to look from the windows of their apartment in the Fountain House at the very tyrant who caused them so much suffering. A cruel everyday reminder of everything they hated and feared.

58 Later Lydia discovered that this phrase and the whole letter quoted by Akhmatova was not the legendary one of 1935, but her second letter to Stalin of 1938. See L. Chukovskaya, v. I, p. 10. 59 See AA, p. 274. 60 Anna Akhmatova, Requiem and Poem Without a Hero, trans. by D. M. Thomas (London: Paul Elek, 1976).



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3. Life and Work After the Arrest. Separation from Akhmatova. The Arrival of Martha Golubeva After his magic release, Nikolay Punin went back to lecturing. He was always spontaneous and extremely knowledgeable, and his lectures never failed to gather a full auditorium. In the 1930s, he was only allowed to talk about Renaissance art, but he continued to give lectures to students of the Academy of Arts, and to future architects at the Institute of Communal Construction, as well as to Intourist workers and members of the general public in the City Open Courses. The only way to survive in this, the most frightening of times, was to forget about politics and the danger of being arrested at any moment, and carry on as normal. Nadezhda Mandelstam described it in her memoirs: The whole of our apartment with its bookcase—indeed, our life in general— was an illusion of normal existence. Burying our heads in our pillows, we tried to believe that we were peacefully asleep.61

But there was no peace in Punin’s home either. After their arrest, the relationship between Nikolay Punin and Lev Gumilev became very tense. Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote that even before 1935, ‘Punin could not stand Lev and at the mere sight of him always began a ‘Punic war’ against him.’62 Now, he was also holding Gumilev responsible for his arrest, since it was one of the University friends he used to bring to Punin’s apartment who had turned out to be an NKVD informer, and had betrayed them. Inevitably this tension in the relationship between Nikolay Nikolaevich and Lev soon led to a break down between Punin and Akhmatova, who would later tell Neyman that she ‘thought she spent several years more than necessary with Punin.’63 On July 29th, 1936, after a silence of three years, Punin made another note in his diary: An. [Akhmatova] is not here. At the end of June she left to stay near Moscow at the Shervinskys’ house64—and since then I haven’t heard anything about her.

61 Mandelstam I, p. 269. 62 Mandelstam II, p. 469. 63 Nayman, p. 72. 64 Family of poet and translator Sergey Shervinsky; Akhmatova stayed in their dacha in Starki, near Moscow.

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chapter nine I was in prison. An. wrote to Stalin; Stalin ordered me released. That was in the autumn. Love has abated, became dull, but hasn’t gone. Lately I miss An. with the same familiar sense of pain. I convinced myself it was not out of love, but from spite. I lied. It is her, still the same. I looked over her photos again—no, they don’t look like her. She’s not here, she’s not here with me.65

The next day Punin realised that Anna Akhmatova had taken with her all the letters and telegrams she had written to Punin over the last 15 years. He also discovered that Lev had taken the notebook with Akhmatova’s poems from Nikolay’s wardrobe, and delivered it to her in Moscow. Punin finished this diary entry by saying: ‘I want to tear out all my ribs from the pain. An. has won this fifteen year war.66 Back in 1931, Punin wrote in his letter to Akhmatova: ‘Between us is exactly what I never had, and out of pride never wanted to have, friendship and help.’67 However, in 1936, Punin came to realise again that he still loved her as passionately as ever. On 1st August, he planned to go and find her in Moscow, but just before he left, Akhmatova returned to Leningrad, and they went to stay at a dacha in Razliv.68 But their reunion was not to last for very long. In February 1937, while she was in hospital, Anna met a professor of medicine, Vladimir Garshin. He was a pathologist and a colleague of Nikolay’s wife, Anna Arens, who was possibly behind this meeting of her husband’s lover and her work colleague. Like Punin, Garshin was married, but this was never a problem for Akhmatova. Nikolay was still writing in his diary about Akhmatova: ‘Anya! ‘Cult of the week.’ I Love you.69 But he felt that she did not want to see him, as he was sending her food and clothes via Lev. On 14th February, he wrote to her that he walked past the hospital where Garshin worked, four times, but failed to come in.70 Nadezhda Mandelstam said that it was Akhmatova’s affair with Garshin that brought on her final break with Punin.71 She was still staying in Punin’s apartment, but Garshin used to visit her from time to time. On 20th September 1937, Punin wrote in his diary: 65 MSL, p. 334; Diary, pp. 177–178. 66 Diary note of 30 July 1936, Diary, p. 178. 67 Diary note of 30 July 1931, MSL, p. 314. 68 By the Finland gulf, near Leningrad. 69 Diary note of 16 February 1937, Diary, p. 179. 70 See Punin’s letter to Akhmatova of 14 February 1937, MSL, p. 336. 71 Mandelstam I, p. 263.



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As soon as I arrived home, I learned that Professor Garshin had been to see Anna. A while later Anya tells me a not completely decent anecdote. I say suspiciously: ‘Did Garshin tell you that?’ Anya, quick-wittedly: ‘No, a stranger on the tram.’72

But Garshin was much more faithful to his wife than Punin had been to Galya, and only proposed to Akhmatova after his wife died later, during the Second World War. Nadezhda Mandelstam described how, when she was evacuated with Anna to Tashkent, Garshin wrote to Akhmatova with a formal proposal of marriage. But he made it conditional on Anna taking his surname, and the famous poetess never accepted his offer.73 Originally Anna Gorenko, Akhmatova never changed her professional name, and even though the prospect of becoming a respected professor’s wife seemed to be quite flattering for her for some time, she refused. Garshin was not upset for too long. When Anna returned to Leningrad in 1944, she discovered that Garshin had decided to marry someone else. However, by late 1938, the separation of Punin and Akhmatova had become inevitable. Perhaps anticipating this, she had dedicated a poem to Nikolay in 1936, which started with the words: From you I hid my heart, As though I’d hurled it in the Neva . . . Wingless and quite tamed I am living in your home.74

Punin and Akhmatova separated completely on 19th September 1938. When Chukovskaya came to see Anna in November 1938, the poetess told her: ‘On 19th September, I left Nikolay Nikolaevich. We lived together for 16 years. But I didn’t even notice against this background [the Fountain House].’ She then added: ‘One good thing: I am so ill that I’ll probably die soon.’75 At this terrifying time, death was often seen as salvation, as frightening as it was. But in October 1936, Punin had also written in his diary that ‘nobody is friendly with life; and nothing has come of it for me. So the result is approaching fast. Death is terrifying.’76

72 Diary, p. 180. 73 See Mandelstam II, p. 505. 74 Chukovskaya, v. 1, p. 216. 75 Ibid., p. 10. 76 Diary note of 6 October 1936, MSL, p. 335.

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Akhmatova’s life with Punin had never been easy. She had wanted to leave him in 1930, but when she asked her friend Vyacheslav Sreznevsky to get her a room, Nikolay begged him not to do so, explaining that for him Anna’s leaving was a matter of life and death.77 So, she had stayed then, and indeed she stayed after their final separation. In 1938, she proposed that she and Anna Arens, Punin’s first wife, should simply exchange rooms. They did, and only when they were alone for a minute, Punin said: ‘You could have stayed with me for just one year.’ He then recited the last line of Lermontov’s poem ‘The Sea Princess’ (which was one of Punin’s nicknames for Anna, who was a very good swimmer): ‘He shall not forget the King’s daughter’. Then he left the room.78 It is widely known that Akhmatova had always been dependent on others looking after her. Before moving in with Punin, when she lived with Olga Sudeikina and Arthur Lourie, there was a maid, and she had another maid Manya when she lived with her second husband, Shileyko in his flat in the Marble Palace. When Punin’s maid left, she was looked after first by Nikolay’s wife, Anna Arens, and then by her sister-in-law, Sara Arens, who used to wash Akhmatova’s clothes and cook for her. Anna was famous for not being able to boil an egg and it was little wonder that, when in 1940, Zoshchenko went to the official city council to ask for an apartment for Akhmatova, she did not even want to discuss it. She used to say: ‘A known communal apartment is better than an unknown one. I’ve grown used to everything here. And when Lyova [her son, Lev] returns, he will have a room. And he will return one day.’79 Later, Akhmatova said that she stayed under the same roof with the Punins after separation from Nikolay Nikolaevich because she was too depressed to leave. In her ‘Akhmatova journals’, L. Chukovskaya, described the Fountain house in 1938: I walked through the House of Entertaining Science (the name of the Sheremetiev Palace in 1930s) (what a stupid name!) into the garden. The branches of the trees seemed to grow out of her [Akhmatova’s] poems or Pushkin’s. I climbed the tricky back staircase that belonged to another century, each step as deep as three. There was still some connection between this staircase and her [Akhmatova], but then! When I rang the bell a woman opened the door, wiping soapsuds from her hands. Those suds and the shabby entrance hall, with its scraps of peeling wallpaper, were somehow

77 Chukovskaya, v. 1, p. 148. 78 Ibid., p. 149. 79 Quoted in AA, p. 309.



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quite unexpected. The woman walked ahead of me. The kitchen; washing on lines, its wetness slapping one’s face. The wet washing was just like an ending of a nasty story, like something out of Dostoevsky, perhaps. Beyond the kitchen, a little corridor, and to the left, a door leading to her room. . . . The general appearance of the room was one of neglect, chaos. . . . The only thing that was genuinely beautiful was the window onto the garden, and the tree gazing right in at the window. Black branches. And, of course, she herself.80

Akhmatova loved the Fountain House, but since her separation from Punin her role in this over-crowded place became even more confusing. In May 1939, she complained to Chukovskaya: ‘It is noisy at our place. The Punins have parties, the gramophone is on till all hours . . . Nikolay Nikolaevich keeps insisting that I should move.’81 At that time they were neighbours more than friends—with separate kettles and separate lives. Often she referred to their life at the time as ‘bedlam’.82 To add to this bedlam, on November 30th 1938, during celebrations of his 50th birthday at the Academy of Arts, Nikolay Nikolaevich met a young art-historian, Martha Golubeva. She was 18 years his junior, married with a two-year old daughter, but he fell in love with her. Unlike Akhmatova, Martha never moved in to live with Punin, perhaps just as well, since when he met her he still lived with his wife, Anna Arens, their daughter and his former lover, Akhmatova. However, she visited his apartment very often and soon became his assistant on his optional lecture course ‘The Analysis of Works of Art’ at the Academy. They showed students slides with different paintings and sculptures and asked them to describe what they saw. Their professional liaison probably made their relationships stronger, and Nikolay’s affair with his little ‘Tika’ (his nickname for Martha) lasted for the rest of his life. It outlived Punin’s wife, and Martha’s husband, who died during the war. In 1942, Akhmatova, still feeling bitter about her separation from Punin, dedicated a verse in her ‘Second Elegy’ to Punin: Fifteen years ago, with what rejoicing You greeted this day, you begged the heavens And the choirs of stars and the choirs of oceans To salute the glorious meeting With the one you left today . . .83

80 Chukovskaya, v. 1, p. 10. 81 Ibid., p. 17. 82 Ibid., p. 146. 83 Quoted in AA, p. 628.

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Again, in 1963, she dedicated part of her ‘Midnight Verses’ to Nikolay’s lover, Martha: She’s very young, this beauty, But not from our century We’re never alone together—she, the third, Won’t leave us, ever. You move an armchair for her, I generously share my flowers with her . . . What we are doing—we ourselves don’t know, But every moment is more frightful.84

Unlike Punin and Akhmatova, Martha was born in the 20th century—she was young. Predictably, this did not prevent the poetess from not forgiving her for ‘stealing’ her lover, whom she had already left. Surrounded by jealous and frustrated women, Punin still managed to prepare his lectures and to write. In November 1936, he started writing ‘The History of the Academy of Arts in the last 20 years’.85 He was invited to give lectures in Moscow, and was writing the programme for his course.86 During the late 1930s, Punin had also started working on the last serious work of his life—a text-book on the history of Western European Art of the 3rd to 20th centuries, of which he was the main author and editor. It was 494 pages long, and it was written in three months in the spring of 1939. After putting lots of pressure on Punin and the four other authors (all professors at the Academy of Art) to finish this book quickly, the publishers then sat on it for a year, reducing chapters dedicated to the art of the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of 20th century to 35 pages (less than 10% of the whole text-book). The text-book was then reviewed by the famous Moscow-based art-historians, Lazarev and Alpatov. In the introduction, Punin described the importance of such a textbook, since all art students had to study the history of Western European Art, but there were only books on some periods in the history of art, and nothing summarised all the movements and styles.87 This text-book was

84 Quoted in AA, p. 624. 85 It was never published, the manuscript did not survive, ref. in Diary note of 30 November 1936, MSL, p. 335. 86 See Punin’s letter to Akhmatova of 16 February 1937, MSL, p. 336. 87 See Istoriya zapadno-evropeiskogo iskusstva (III–XX vv.), ed. by Punin (Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1940), p. 3.



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started as a study aid for high school students, but ended up being the major reference source for art students for many years to come. Originally, the chapter on the ‘Art of Imperialism’ [‘Impressionism’] was written by another art-historian, Valentin Brodsky. But in 1940, he had already been mobilized to the front, so Punin decided to re-write this controversial chapter.88 He started it by explaining that the ‘art of imperialism’ did not deny traditional art—instead modern artists studied and criticised it, and finally created new art in accordance with the tastes and ideas of their time. That’s why, wrote Punin, throughout their art they strived to be modern and to express life surrounding them through their art.89 He added that although their way of expressing themselves was not always realistic, the social conflicts around them often inspired them to adopt a rather abstract style. Punin briefly wrote about Edouard Manet and Whistler, and his alltime heroes, Cézanne and Van Gogh. He remarked: Cézanne—is one of the most intense artists ever known in the history of Western-European art. As if carrying on the very element of painting, as well as the whole richness of the painting tradition of his predecessors, denying any romantic or idealistic associations, he saw the expression of painting in everything around him . . .90

Punin added that since Cézanne disliked the social reality surrounding him, he mainly painted landscapes and still-lives, but everything that he created was filled with ‘deep thought, manly beauty, a sense of the grandeur of nature, which Cézanne always experienced as one piece, and it is this complicity and richness of vision which is specific to Cézanne’s talent.’91 He felt that Cézanne brought back the classic traditions of French art, which were denied by the Impressionists, and that his followers, rather than Cézanne himself, made his inventions look formal.92 Punin always adored Cézanne. In 1915, he had written to Anna Arens: ‘Will I, like my contemporaries, leave the content [of the painting] behind, and for another year will be hating Gauguin and loving Cézanne?’93 88 See Punin’s letter to Lazarev of 11 April 1940, MSL, p. 340. 89 See Istoriya zapadno-evropeiskogo iskusstva (III–XX vv.), p. 427. 90 Ibid., p. 444. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid., p. 445. 93 Letter from Punin to Anna Arens of 15 July 1915, MSL, p. 93.

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Punin never betrayed his love for Cézanne. In 1940, Lazarev was writing to him how all the professors of the history of art at the Moscow State University were against his chapter on the ‘Art of Imperialism’. At the time Lazarev was still on Punin’s side, saying that the ones who criticized him the most would never be able to write like him. He wrote that he really liked this chapter, but advised Punin to make some characteristics smoother and milder in order to minimize criticism.94 But nevertheless, Punin’s chapter remained untouched and the textbook was published. In the bizarre circumstances of the day, this was because the Vyacheslav Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and Stalin’s right hand man, apparently liked it.95 Perhaps he could have anticipated that in nine years’ time, Punin’s textbook would be heavily criticised in an article by one Gyakov called ‘Formalists and aesthetes in the role of critics’. He declared that Nikolay Punin ‘openly advertised decadent, corrupt western art and such representatives of it as Cézanne and Van Gogh’. He complained that Punin dared to call these ‘formalist artists’ geniuses.96 Jumping ahead a bit, soon after this article was published, in 1946, Punin was fired from the State Leningrad University and Academy of Arts for ‘not succeeding in providing the ideological and political education of his students’.97 In August 1949, he was sent to the GULAG for ‘preaching Cézannism’. All copies of his text-book were removed from all universities and libraries. Most of them were burned, and only a few survived to modern day. It took the Second World War to ease the pressure of Stalin’s terrorism, at least for five years. Terrible and deadly, the war proved something of a liberation for many free-thinking intelligentsia and for all those political prisoners who were released from the GULAG, and even those who were sent to die in the war.

94 See letter from Lazarev to Punin of 30 April 1940, MSL, p. 340. 95 See letter from Punin to Irina Punina of 10 April 1941, MSL, p. 342. 96 K. Gyakov, Formalisty i estety v roli kritikov, in ‘Leningradskaya Pravda’, N 48, 1949, quoted in MSL, pp. 414–415. 97 See MSL, p. 415.

Chapter Ten

THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR And here, in defiance of the fact That death is staring me in the eye— Because of your words I am voting for: For a door to become a door, A lock—a lock once more, For this morose beast within my breast To become a heart. But the thing is, That we are all fated to learn What it means not to sleep for three years, What it means to find out in the morning About those who have died in the night. (Anna Akhmatova)1

1. Beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Leningrad under Siege In his foreign policy, Stalin had initially followed Lenin’s principle of supporting any anti-western movement, largely to ensure that the prospect of revolution was fomented on a worldwide basis. The Soviet Union’s interests could also be protected by sponsoring disputes between the capitalist powers. The Comintern remained an instrument of state, and rules were set out for foreign Communist parties to follow. The Treaty of Rapallo in 1920 had not only ended Russia’s isolation, but it is less well-known that a secret agreement was also formed to ensure that Germany could re-build its army while Russia could learn about modern warfare from them. However, in the same period, Russia did not succeed either in starting a revolution in Germany, or in stopping Germany’s rapprochement with the West in the negotiation of the Treaty of Locarno. Russia initially boycotted the League of Nations, but when Stalin took command, the interest in fomenting world-wide revolution was reduced in favour of developing 1 Quoted in T. Pozdnyakova, N. Popova, Under the roof of the Fountain House.

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national Communist parties into agents of the expansion of Soviet power. For instance, Stalin provided funds for the General Strike in Britain in 1926, though after its discovery, diplomatic relations were broken off, albeit temporarily. Nonetheless, Stalin relished the collapse of the German economy and the resulting unemployment. He saw the Socialist party as the only block to true revolution in Germany, so he ordered the Communist party to avoid collaboration with them. What an irony—this contributed to the collapse of the left, and made Hitler’s path to power much easier. Ever the pragmatist, Stalin recognized that he would have to deal with the capitalist nations, and brought Russia into the League of Nations in 1934; in 1933, relations had been established with the USA, and in 1935, a Treaty of mutual assistance was signed with France: Communist parties in Europe were now instructed to support them in a Popular Front against Fascism. Stalin supplied troops, materiel and ‘advisors’ in the Spanish Civil War when it broke out in 1936, a war which had been started in large part by a very active Communist organization in Spain. However, the Republican cause was undermined by internal fraction, perhaps not surprisingly as it comprised liberals, Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, Bolsheviks, and Trotskyites. Stalin was concerned that this involvement, if it succeeded, might strengthen the appeal of Trotsky, by proving that revolution could indeed be ‘exported’. But the cause was finally destroyed; once Stalin saw no hope of military victory, he withdrew support, an event which led to the loss of much of the ‘soft’ support for Communism in Western Europe. What was not revealed was that the Republicans had to hand over half of Spain’s gold reserves to pay the USSR for the support they gave. Hitler had made no secret that he believed Germany’s destiny lay in taking over large areas of the East, having declared so in 1925, in ‘Mein Kampf ’. To nurture the historic destiny of the German people, Lebensraum was needed and that “the future of Germany has to lie in the acquisition of land in the East at the expense of Russia”. He also knew the lesson of the Great War, namely that Germany must avoid fighting on two fronts at once. His initial plan was to neutralize the British by charm. In sending von Ribbentrop to do this, he made a very poor choice: ‘Arrogant, vain, humourless and spiteful’ as Alan Bullock described him. The French he saw as too weak to be a worry, or they would be squabbling with the Italians, so he could devote all his attention to the East. Hitler also regarded the Red Army as little threat, given the massive purges that had recently taken place; more recently, the poor performance against the Finns in the winter of 1939, seemed to confirm this view. Indeed, the lack of



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direct resistance to his plans encouraged him further. He had reoccupied the Rhineland, and in March 1938, took over Austria via the Anschluss, which also went unopposed, as did the occupation of the Sudetenland in September 1938, following the Munich Conference between Hitler and Chamberlain. Leaving aside Stalin’s ability to believe what he wanted to believe, he had to recognise that by 1939, Hitler could pose a massive threat to the USSR. Stalin’s response, based in part on his certainty that France and Britain would be weak or unreliable, or both, was to ensure that his Foreign Minister Molotov met Ribbentrop in Moscow and signed a non-aggression pact (in fact a pact to remain neutral if either was at war), which also gave Germany a free hand in Lithuania, and to Russia the same in Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Bessarabia and Eastern Poland. It was signed on August 23rd 1939, followed by a further pact adding Lithuania to the Soviet basket and more of Poland to Germany. There was also a less well-known agreement for Russia to supply strategic materials. This pact, in itself, encouraged Hitler to invade Poland (one week later) and go to war with Britain and France on 3rd September, 1939. Stalin signed this pact to buy time, but more seriously because he took Munich at face value; furthermore, the British and French had not succeeded in concluding a pact with the USSR, for a complex of mostly trivial reasons. Perhaps Stalin was hoping that the war between Germany and the West would eventually destroy them both; after all, a war between imperialist camps always was Soviet strategy. The treaty did not deter Hitler from his first aim, namely attacking Russia—the need for Lebensraum had not changed, and ownership of Western Russia played a vital part in the idea of a 1,000-year Reich. He was, in any event, becoming annoyed at Russia’s behaviour in Finland and their obstruction of Germany’s plans in the Balkans via diplomatic pressure on Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. Operation Barbarossa was supposed to launch on May 15th 1941, but was delayed by a critical seven weeks, in major part by the British not being either defeated or invaded. Stalin had been, for some time, supplied with accurate Enigma information on the German plans and dispositions, but dismissed them as provocative foreign trickery, so when the Germans struck on 22nd June 1941, it came as a complete surprise, at least to him. It was the largest military operation in history, for which the Soviet Union was simply not prepared. By the end of June 1941, 4 million German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian and Finnish soldiers were in the USSR, sweeping rapidly through Western Russia and by mid-July 1941, were within

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reach of Leningrad and Moscow, having captured a million prisoners. Kiev fell in September 1941, so the drive shifted towards Moscow. Stalin could not avoid responsibility for these disasters. He had gone on believing that Hitler would only attack when Britain was defeated, and rejected British intelligence, claiming that it was nothing but their means of provoking him into attacking first, to save their skins. Between April and June 1941, Churchill had informed Stalin several times about the massing of German troops, and in May, Soviet military attachés in Berlin sent the same information to Moscow.2 Stalin continued to ignore this inconvenient truth, behaving as if nothing was threatening Russia. He had time to take on the role of Prime Minister in May 1941, having previously operated by indirect political control. On June 22nd 1941, the day the invasion had finally started, Andrey Zhdanov, in charge of Leningrad at the time, was on vacation in the Crimea, and Stalin was absent from Moscow. So, initially the Soviet troops, already lacking commanders due to the purges of the main officer corps, were unable to act at all without orders from Stalin or Zhdanov. When Stalin returned to Moscow, he locked himself in his room for several days in a state of nervous collapse.3 In the meantime, while Stalin was in this hysterical state, Soviet troops were being battered. By the end of the year, 3.5 million out of 4.5 million Russian soldiers had been killed. Stalin ordered the release of some political prisoners and some of the previously exiled military commanders. Akhmatova was appalled by this cruel mercy of the Kremlin monster. She dedicated a poem to all those who were sent from torture and humiliation in the Gulag to meet their death on the battlefields (after all, one of them was her son, Lev): . . . What kind of fate has he For those beyond the torture chamber? They have gone to the fields to die. Shine on them, heavenly stars! Earthly bread, beloved eyes, Are no longer theirs to see.4

Nikolay Punin at the time was also trying hard not to give way to despair. He became a member of the people’s militia, and continued to give lectures

2 See AA, p. 357. 3 Ibid., p. 358. 4 A. Akhmatova in AA, p. 352.



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at the Academy of Arts. On 26th August 1941, encouraged by his new lover, Martha Golubeva (‘Tika’), he started writing his diary again: ‘Write’,—she [Martha] said, ‘even mediocre notes will be justified by time. What is happening is so majestic that trying to be above it all does not make sense and is even impossible . . .’5

Thanks to Martha’s words of wisdom, Punin started to record all the torments of this cruel time, hiding in the deadly silence of his apartment where all the windows were pasted with black paper against air raids, unable to go out after 10 pm. He still tried to see beauty even in the paper crosses pasted to the windows of the houses in Leningrad, feeling that the old and heavy apartment blocks looked lighter and more decorative with these paper crosses, as if ‘the whole city was built of trellises.’6 Punin described the world outside his apartment as the ‘scorching nonsense’—hysterical survival, in which people calculate five times a day how much food they can get according to their rations. In his diary Punin criticized this mercantilism: . . . but what are these rationed macaroni and meat to us, who went through the hunger of revolution, through the starvation of collectivization, through starvation in the villages? Today one man justly said: ‘In reality we have been invited to die quickly for the last twenty five years.’ Many had died already; death came to us as close as it possibly could. But why should we think about it [death], if it is already thinking about us so zealously?7

Punin admitted that although he was not interested in war as a subject, it was impossible to ignore it, since like the world around him, it was turning him ‘inside out’. Once again the old world was disappearing, and even a few remaining comforts were about to be removed. In 1940, Akhmatova wrote a poem ‘The Way of All Earth’ in which she described her longing for the Old Europe, of which ‘only scrap remains’—the world of beauty instead of the merely grotesque.8 During the war, no one knew if they would be lucky enough to survive, but ironically the expectation that one might be killed at any moment was not new for Punin and many around him. They had already experienced this feeling at the time of purges, when all their hopes and plans could end over-night, after just one knock at the door. 5 Diary note of 26 August 1941, MSL, p. 343. 6 See Diary note of 28 August 1941, MSL, p. 345. 7 Ibid. 8 See AA, p. 355.

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Punin was invited to go to the sunny city of Samarkand when the Academy of Arts was evacuated there, but chose to stay in his cold and hungry city, feeling that travelling through the fields of war means participating in war itself, which he was trying to avoid. In August 1941, he still chose the quiet and familiar world of his apartment in preference to the unknown, however promising. With his usual sarcasm he noted in his diary: “But, without any doubt, evacuation is a ‘scorching nonsense’. Why did not anyone evacuate in the ‘days of Ezhovshchina’? It was just as frightening then.”9 The Ezhovshchina was the period between 1936 and 1938, the years of the worst purges, named after Nikolay Ezhov, who succeeded Genrich Yagoda as the Commissar of the NKVD. In 1938, he was replaced by yet another monster, Lavrentii Beria. However, by September 1941, German and Finnish troops had surrounded Leningrad. The blockade of the city began on September 8th 1941, and was to last until January 27th 1944, relived only after the re-equipment, re-grouping and re-generaling of the newly victorious Soviet armed forces. As was the case of the Soviet Union as a whole before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Leningrad was also completely unprepared for nine months of bombardment and 900 days of starvation. There were almost no air-raid shelters; people had to hide in cellars, risking being buried alive if the building above them collapsed. Once, Akhmatova, running to hide from an air attack, stumbled down an old staircase into the Stray Dog café. An important place in her romantic youth, it turned into an accidental air-raid shelter for her on this cold autumn afternoon. By the end of August 1941, the Leningrad Radio Committee had already received an order from Moscow to begin transmissions dedicated to the siege. They asked Akhmatova, whose poems had been banned from being published for many years, but whose name was nonetheless known to most Russians, to appeal to her brave fellow citizens. She agreed, and finished her encouraging speech by saying: We, the women of Leningrad, are living through difficult days, but we know that the whole of our country, all its people, are behind us. We feel their alarm for our sakes, their love and help. We thank them and we promise them that we will be ever stoic and brave.10

Dmitry Shostakovich also spoke in a September radio transmission. On September, 16, 1941 he said: 9 MSL, p. 344. 10 Quoted in AA, p. 362.



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An hour ago I finished the second part of my new symphony. If I am able to finish it, it will be called the Seventh Symphony . . . I am telling you this, because you should know that life in our city is going on as normal. We are all carrying on.11

They all tried to carry on as normal. However, on 28th September, 1941, Akhmatova went to Moscow, and then on to Tashkent. When she visited her friend Nadezhda Chulkova in her warm and comfortable flat in Moscow, enjoying an omelette, coffee and cream, Akhmatova admitted: We should have left a long time ago. We Leningraders were not thinking when we refused to be evacuated. But at the time it was so warm, everything was fine; there were many flowers and no one believed in the possibility of this horror that everyone is now going through.12

But, proud and courageous, many citizens of Leningrad remained in their much-loved and still-beautiful city. Punin also tried to carry on as normal. Two days before the blockade formally began, he started giving lectures at the Academy of Arts to all those who had not evacuated. The large auditoria of the Academy were turned into army barracks, and lectures were given on bunk beds.13 It is an ill wind that blows nobody some good: on 8th September the house where Tika lived was destroyed by a bomb. Much to Punin’s delight, she agreed to move her belongings to the Fountain house, which in September was a bit emptier than usual. Akhmatova had moved to stay with her friend, the famous Pushkin scholar Boris Tomashevsky and his wife, before going to Tashkent. Anna Akhmatova’s move was probably encouraged by her desire to see her new lover, Vladimir Garshin, more often. The Tomashevskys did not ask about their relationship, and he visited Akhmatova almost every day. Just before she evacuated, Garshin came to Punin to tell him about her leaving. He put his hand on Nikolay’s shoulder and began to weep, saying: ‘Well, so yet another period of our life is ending.’ Avoiding showing any emotion, Punin sent a note to Akhmatova: ‘Hello, Anya, will we see each other again or not? Forgive me and just be calm.—the former K. M. [Kotik Murr].’14 He was wondering why Akhmatova was so afraid of death,

11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., p. 364. 13 See diary note of 6 September 1941, MSL, p. 345. 14 See AA, p. 363.

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having said so often that she wanted to die. And now, when death was so close, she was running away. But he did not blame her any more. He just wrote in his diary: ‘Suddenly and quickly all that existed before the war is coming to an end.’15 Punin’s life was taking another turn. His little Tika moved her things to his apartment, and even though she never came to live with him, he felt that he inherited part of her past.16 Two days before this move, Nikolay wrote in his diary about Tika: ‘She loves with some sort of despair.’17 Among the living hell of war, Punin’s new love gave him some hope for the future. In October 1941, however, the bombing became even more intense. Afraid of the evening raids, Punin at first hid in the ‘trench’ in the garden in front of his house, but soon he would be running to the bomb shelter at the Hermitage museum. There he could get some sleep, although he realized that no one knew whether ‘the Rastrelli arches’18 would withstand the bombing.19 He also made passes for Tika, his daughter and his 2-year old granddaughter, Anechka, to hide in this bomb shelter. His wife, Galya, worked in the ambulance service on most nights. By December 1941, Leningrad was without fuel and rations were growing short. It was the most severe winter for many years with temperatures reaching minus 40°C. Pasternak’s cousin, Olga Freidenberg, wrote about this very long winter: Trams stopped running, and people walked in silence for miles, over bridges, over frozen rivers, pulling sleds behind them piled high with boards, logs— anything that could be used for fuel.20

Hitler did not expect the citizens of this city to resist or to survive for very long in such conditions. He was making plans to celebrate the New Year on 1st January 1942, in the Astoria, one of Leningrad’s central hotels. The Nazis were also committing serial atrocities: these were after all Untermenschen, and this was ‘a war of extermination’ as Hitler had declared (the Reich required the destruction of 30 million Slavs to provide room for German settlers). Like most Germans, Goebbels described Russians as ‘not a people but a conglomeration of animals’. These atrocities and 15 Diary note of 25 September 1941, MSL, p. 348. 16 Diary note of 12 September 1941, MSL, p. 346. 17 Diary note of 6 September 1941, MSL, p. 345. 18 Rastrelli was the architect of the Winter Palace—part of the Hermitage museum. 19 Diary note of 11 October 1941, MSL, p. 349. 20 Quoted in AA, p. 359.



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Hitler’s pretentious plans paradoxically strengthened the Russian nerve and united its people. Akhmatova wrote in her cycle of poems ‘The wind of War’: And she who is parting with her sweetheart today— Let her forge her pain into strength. By the children we swear, we swear by the graves, That no one will force us to submit!21

Proud and still resisting defeat, the citizens of Leningrad were dying on the streets of their city, but no epidemic or bombs could have killed as many people as did starvation and cold: They fell while walking collapsed while standing in line, the streets were strewn with corpses, and the yardmen gathered them up each morning like trash. It is said that three and a half million people perished that winter in Leningrad. . . . It was forbidden to talk, complain or appeal for help.22

Those who survived the purges were now dying of hunger. Having lost their religion and now their faith in Communism, people were just trying to live another day, still hoping for a brighter future. In September 1941, Punin wrote: I just thought: if the churches were open, and thousands prayed, most likely, with tears, in the twinkling twilight, how much less palpable this cold iron matter in which we live would be.23

At the end of September, Punin described a long queue for coffins after the night’s bombing had killed thousands of people. They were queuing over night, calling out numbers ‘like at the ticket counters during the holiday season.’24 But less than two months later, Punin described thousands of dead torn-up bodies lying around waiting to be buried for as much as 8 days. Coffins were no longer even mentioned. Bread was demanded even for digging the graves—200–400 grams, when the 1st category ration was 250 grams of bread a day, and 2nd category—125 grams.25 Punin still had the privilege of eating at the ‘House of Scholars’; oat soup and cabbage seemed luxurious in those days. His wife was eating at the hospital, but his daughter and small granddaughter were left hungry

21 Quoted in AA, p. 361. 22 Olga Freidenberg, quoted in AA, p. 359. 23 Diary note of 16 September 1941, Diary, p. 186. 24 Diary note of 25 September 1941, MSL, p. 347. 25 See Diary note of 20 November 1941, MSL, p. 351.

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most of the time. In his diary of 20th November, he described his daughter, Irina, who was desperately trying to get some food, queuing the whole day, despite the constant shooting above her head. Often she would return home with nothing, saying: ‘Papa, it did not work out, there is nothing.’ Punin used to comfort her, saying: ‘It’s OK, we’ll make it somehow.’26 But even he did not really know how he would get through this horrible time, when death rather than life became to be expected. His vision was poor, and his body was weakening. He was still giving lectures, but due to malnutrition, he was already forgetting ‘names and most well-known facts.’27 He lasted until 26th November, when he stopped giving lectures. He wrote in his diary: ‘There could be some trouble as a result [of not giving lectures any more], but I can’t.’28 Instead, he was queuing for seven hours to get some pastries for his little granddaughter, who was only two, and badly needed some energy. Punin wrote: ‘They [the pastries] are not very sweet, but all the same they have flour, jam, cream, and, probably, eggs. Generally we aren’t able to get what they give for ration cards, there isn’t enough time in the day.’29 Later, he noted in his diary that those who have families die first, and that it is easier to survive if you are on your own. But he had to look after his family, and now he felt his only hope was surrender: ‘How many should have to die for the city to capitulate?’30 In the darkness of his apartment, in which all the glass in the windows was now replaced with plywood after a bomb fell on the theatre across the street, on 13th December, Punin was praying to God: For a long time I have wanted to write De profundis31—tonight, starving, I thought about this topic. De profundis clamavi: Lord, save us . . . We are perishing. But His Greatness is as implacable as Soviet power is unbending. It is not so important to it, having 150 million [people], to lose three of them. His Greatness, resting in the heavens, does not value earthly life as we do. We are perishing. I am writing with a cold numb hand. Some ten days ago, in the morning, I felt coldness in my body; it wasn’t that my body was cold, because it was still warm in the room. It was the first touch of death. We are living in the

26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Diary note of 26 November 1941, Diary, p. 190. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 De profundis clamavi—‘I called from the abyss’—the Latin title of Psalm 130 and first words of a Catholic prayer from a Requiem mass.



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frozen and starving city, ourselves abandoned and starving. I can’t recall the snow ever falling in such abundance. The whole city is completely covered in snowdrifts like a shroud. It is pure, because the factories aren’t operating, and it is rare that smoke rises from the chimneys over the houses. The days are clear, and travel might be easy, but the city is buried like the provinces, white and crackling. The trams haven’t run for five days. In the large majority of the city there is no electricity. In many buildings the plumbing has frozen. They carry the bodies in plain caskets on sleighs and bury them in mass graves. The courtyards of the hospitals are heaped with bodies, and there’s no one to bury them. It has been over a week since there was an air raid, but there are gaping holes in every building on every street—a reminder of the most terrible events. For a long time there hung an arm, up to the elbow, attached by someone to the fence of the garden of one of the destroyed buildings. Dark crowds of people walk past with faces swollen and the colour of earth. And everything is simple, no one says anything particular. They don’t talk about anything besides ration cards, and also about how they are being evacuated. They simply suffer and probably think like I do: maybe it’s not my turn yet. At night I feel the loneliness most of all and the senselessness of petitions and prayers, and sometimes I cry quietly. I think that each of us quietly cries if only once every twenty-four hours; some at night, like me, others, perhaps, during the day. And there is no salvation. And it can’t even be imagined, unless you give in to daydreams. ‘We turned our backs on Him,’ I think, ‘and He on us.’ And I know that this means to give in to dreams. ‘Miserere’, I mumble, and add—there it is, ‘dies irae’.32 Lord, save us.33

In that winter of 1941–42, every family in Leningrad lost at least one of its members. On 8th February 1942, Nikolay’s brother, Alexander Punin, died of starvation. This diary note was the last one made by Nikolay Nikolaevich, who might quite easily have died at this point, before he was evacuated to Samarkand on 19th February 1942, where most of the rest of the Academy staff, of which Punin was of course still a member, had been evacuated earlier in 1941. In the last two months he did not write his diary—‘a starving dystrophic’, as he would call himself recalling his last months in Leningrad, he could ‘barely move from the chair to the bed, and the ink had frozen’.34

32 Miserere—Latin for ‘have mercy on us’; dies irae—Latin for ‘Day of Anger’; the first words of a Catholic prayer from a Requiem mass. 33 Diary note of 13 December 1941, Diary, pp. 190–191, MSL, pp. 352–353. 34 Diary note of 23 September 1942, MSL, p. 359.

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In January 1942, Punin, his daughter and his two year-old granddaughter, Anya, who was so starved that she could not walk any longer, were taken to the House of Stage Veterans, where Martha Golubeva’s family lived after their flat was destroyed by a bomb. Tika’s father, Andrey Andreevich Golubev, was director of this retreat for old actors, where they could still heat the rooms and provide a little bit of food. In April 1942, in his letter to Akhmatova, Punin explained that he moved to stay there for his last weeks in Leningrad because they had ‘the only warm room in Leningrad’, and he decided that he could at least die in warmth.35 On the day before his evacuation, Nikolay Nikolaevich stood for a long time in front of the Academy of Arts, bidding farewell to his beloved, frozen river Neva and the cupola of St. Isaac’s cathedral, by then painted grey in order to hide its shiny gold from the German guns. A few months later, he wrote in his diary: I don’t remember Leningrad ever being as beautiful as during that fatal winter and that spring. It was silver-white, silent under the green sky, really like under a shroud. And the dead, most often wrapped (probably by their loved ones) in sheets, lay on the streets, and the soldiers of the air defence took them away on sheets of plywood. They hadn’t buried anyone in graves or in cemeteries since November. The deceased were light and seemed like little children; the soldiers easily lifted them from the snow and placed them on the plywood, and they didn’t bend, because they were frozen. They lay everywhere, especially in the morning. Probably people brought them out from their apartments at night, and put them wherever possible.36

Abandoned by God and by Stalin, the latter never having really liked intellectual Leningrad and appearing not to mind sacrificing it, people were dying on the still-beautiful streets of their frozen and hungry city. If Punin had not been evacuated, his dead body would also soon have been left on the street, perhaps also wrapped in a white street. But, barely alive, he was driven across the lower part of the frozen Lake Ladoga—the thin and only link between death and life. With his wife, daughter and granddaughter, Punin started the long journey from the living hell of the frozen Leningrad to the blossoming gardens of Asia.

35 See Punin’s letter to Akhmatova of 14 April 1942, MSL, p. 354. 36 Diary note of 23 September 1942, Diary, p. 195.



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2. Evacuation to Samarkand Their one-month long journey to Paradise started at the Finland station in Leningrad on 19th February 1942. Carriage No. 11, in which Punin and his family were supposed to go, was missing. They boarded another carriage and had to stand the whole night on the approach to Lake Ladoga. They were taken across the frozen lake by buses, and given some bread. The starving Punin greedily ate several pieces, which made him very sick, since he had not been eating for quite some time. On the other side of the lake their bus broke down, and they had to walk for five kilometres to the village Zhikharevka, where the intention was that they spend a night in the barracks, but bombing started and the barracks caught fire. Punin was looking after his little granddaughter Anya, whom he used to call Malaechka (malenkaya meaning “little” in Russian). Her small fur-coat caught fire twice, she was crying and her dying grandfather, who was barely aware of what was happening, was covering her head with his hand during the air-raid, feeling happy that if necessary he could cover her little body with his.37 After losing some people in the fire and leaving most of their luggage behind, they finally boarded a train to Samarkand in the morning and started their one-month journey into the land of blossoming trees. Punin’s daughter Irina later described how after Novosibirsk (Siberia) their train turned to the south, and all of a sudden they saw the most beautiful steppes full of blossoming tulips. She wrote that ‘it seemed like a magic, fantastic dream and a true life’.38 Tulips symbolised the spring of a new life and resurrection to these starving people. Punin slept most of the way. He was very ill—apart from dystrophy, he had hurt his hand very badly, and needed an operation to avoid blood poisoning. They finally reached Uzbekistan and their first long stop was in its capital, Tashkent. Punin knew that they would spend several hours there, and had sent a postcard to Akhmatova a few days before their arrival in this old Uzbek city, where she had lived since October 1941. He wrote to her that he may die before reaching Tashkent, and begged her to meet the train and help his family. 37 Diary note of 23 September 1942, MSL, p. 360. 38 Irina Punina, V godi voiny (1942–1944). Fragmenty neopublikovannoi knigi, in ‘Ya vsem proshchenie dariu . . .’, Akhmatovskii Sbornik, ed. by D. Makfadieva, N. Kraineva (MoscowSt. Petersburg: ‘Al’yans-Archeo, 2006), p. 9.

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She came into Punin’s compartment on the train with a small bouquet of red carnations. She did not expect to find him in such a bad state. Later she wrote to her friend Nikolay Kharszhiev about this meeting: ‘Punin came through Tashkent on the way to Samarkand. He is in bad shape and it is impossible to recognise him.’39 In his diary Punin wrote about Akhmatova’s visit: She was kind and tender, as she never had been before, and I remember how I was drawn to her and thought a lot about her, and I forgave everything, and confessed everything, and how all this was connected to that feeling of immortality, which came and stayed with me when I was dying of starvation.40

Akhmatova persuaded Nikolay’s wife and daughter to visit her before their train left. They came to her the next day, being told that the train would be staying in Tashkent for at least two days, since it did not have a locomotive, and needed fresh water. However, when they returned to the station a few hours later, their train had already left for Samarkand. Galya Arens and Irina had left their passports and tickets in their compartment, but worse still was the fact that on that train remained the very sick and almost unconscious Punin with his granddaughter. Thanks to almost unimaginable efforts of Akhmatova’s friend Lydia Chukovskaya, they managed to get tickets for the next train to Samarkand (at the time it seemed so magic that Irina Punina kept these train tickets until the end of her life as the most precious relics), and saw Nikolay and little Anya sitting on the steps of the train in Samarkand, anxiously waiting for them. Punin could not walk, and needed an urgent operation. When his wife and daughter arrived, he was immediately taken to the hospital by horse carriage. The Leningrad Military-Medical Academy had also been evacuated to Samarkand, and Nikolay Nikolaevich received very special care from the best doctors, who used to be his fellow citizens. His arm was operated on, and soon his dystrophy, which at the time of his arrival at the hospital had seemed to be irreversible, was left behind as one of the many horrible memories of the cruel blockade. On 14th April 1942, after three weeks at the hospital, Punin wrote a letter to Akhmatova, which she carried with her until the end of her life. He was happy and content by the very realisation that he was still alive: ‘The

39 Anna Akhmatova, Pis’ma, in AA, p. 370. 40 Diary note of 23 September 1942, Diary, p. 194.



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recognition of the fact that I am still alive makes me very excited, and I call it—the feeling of happiness.’41 He wrote to Anna that when he felt that he was dying, he was thinking of her as the perfect expression of the ‘peaceful happiness of glory’. He believed that Akhmatova’s life was truly complete and perfect, and she seemed to him to be ‘the highest expression of that which is immortal’. He wanted to come and see her in Tashkent, but even though Samarkand was only a short distance away,42 they did not meet again until August 1943, when Punin finally managed to save some money and come to stay with Akhmatova there for eight days. But back in May 1942, Punin came out of the hospital into noisy and sunny Samarkand. The second largest city in Uzbekistan, it was most known for its central position on the Silk Road between China and the West. An ancient Islamic centre, founded around 700 BC at the crossroads of ancient cultures, Samarkand was full of legends and beautiful Islamic architecture. Compared with Leningrad and Moscow, it felt several centuries behind, but it was warm and safe, and that was all that mattered to Punin and his family then. The only other thing that concerned Nikolay was the absence of Tika. Unlike Akhmatova, Martha did not want to share Punin with his wife, and chose to stay in Leningrad with her husband. She remained in that other world ‘with the snow and the dead’.43 On 26th September 1942, Punin wrote in his diary: If she [Tika] died or if she is about to die, there is actually nothing left for me to do on this earth; ‘nothing’ from a selfish point of view. Selfish, taking into account only my own happiness, and perhaps even enjoyment. With her, and her again, and only her . . . And it is not at all a ‘crazy love’, it is not love at all. To be on earth next to her; and if the world is on one side, and she is on another, I would like to be with her against the whole world and all people.44

On 27th September 1942, she sent a telegram to Punin, saying that she was leaving Leningrad and would come to Samarkand shortly. But a month later she still had not arrived. Punin was still anxiously waiting for her,

41 Letter from Punin to Akhmatova of 14 April 1942, in Punina I. ‘V godi voini (1942– 1944)’, p. 12, also in ‘Anna Akhmatova. Stikhi, perepiska, vospominaniya, ikonografiya’, compiled by E. Proffer, Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1977, p. 78. 42 Nowadays the train journey between Tashkent and Samarkand is under 4 hours. 43 Diary note of 23 September 1942, MSL, p. 360. 44 Diary note of 26 September 1942, MSL, p. 361.

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but he was already thinking that he might not even have enough money to feed her, since his monthly salary equalled only two litres of kerosene, which was essential for light and cooking. Still, after their life in Leningrad under siege, they could cope with anything. To buy food, they sold pretty much everything that they brought with them: table cloths, winter coats, suits, dresses, anything saleable. Punin was about to start giving lectures again at the evacuated Academy of Arts, but in October, while the students were collecting cotton in the fields, their professor was selling vegetables at the market. Left without warm coats or sufficient food and fuel, Punin and his family were badly prepared for the coming winter. At the end of November, Martha Golubeva had finally arrived from the frozen and hungry Leningrad to stay with them in Samarkand. Even though Nikolay had been waiting for her arrival for a long time, he now—maddeningly predictably—started questioning his love for her. He felt that everything that he imagined a few months ago were only illusory feelings; he also felt that she was blaming him for the death of her husband, who had died of dystrophy during the blockade, when Punin was already in his eastern paradise. Eastern yes, but paradise, not at that point. Despite the mild Uzbek climate, the winter of 1942–43 was very severe in Samarkand. In March 1943, all the ‘ariks’—streams going down the city streets, which provided all the water—were still frozen, and Nikolay Nikolaevich was describing their life as ‘despondency, which feels like the end of the world’.45 Having sold most of his warm clothes, Punin spent most of his time at the Academy. His daughter Irina was also there, studying history of art. In 1940, her husband, Genrikh Kaminsky had gone to war. Although he had been declared ‘missing’ already in 1941, she did not know the truth of his destiny until the spring of 1945. Irina had to try very hard to study and to bring up their small daughter. Punin complained that she was very shy and stubborn, but could she really be blamed for her ‘gloomy personality’?46 But once again art came to his rescue, his main source of hope and inspiration, together with his lectures at the Academy. He was thinking once again about the role of art in people’s lives: Life as applied to the soul implies creativity; for it to live means to create. The greater the capacity of matter (body or a human being) to create, the

45 See letter from Punin to his niece, Marina Punina, of 28 March 1943, MSL, p. 364. 46 Ibid.



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more soul there exists in it and the more concentrated the solution of the soul in this piece of matter. By creating, the soul perfects matter. And thus the universe is perfected . . .47

In this diary note, Punin came to a conclusion that the most ordinary people, driven by ‘the sense of perfection’, always treat geniuses with admiration. He thought that artists, rather than priests, occupy the highest gradation in the universe, and the closest place to God due to their ability to create.48 Soon spring came, and then the Samarkand summer; fruit and vegetables in the garden brought new inspiration, even if not for long. On 18th August, Punin finally managed to go to Tashkent to stay with Akhmatova. Disappointed by his confused feelings for Martha, he was longing to stay with the woman he had loved so much twenty years ago. Anna was happy to see him—she was ‘very affectionate and considerate’, and they spent ‘eight days in peace’.49 But, when he returned to Samarkand, a new crisis entered his life. His ever-faithful and patient wife Galya fell ill. In his letter to his niece Marina, Punin wrote that his wife’s heart was ‘exhausted by night duties, caffeine and the hard weight of the Samarkand work-load’.50 Nikolay wrote that ‘lately, in spite of being very active, she gave an impression of someone who was very tired of life and who was finalising all her accounts with it.’ She was thinking a lot about her nephew, Igor, who had died of starvation in Leningrad in April 1942, and in her dream she saw him coming to her room. In one month she became ‘as thin as death itself ’, and on 28th August 1943—the day of the Assumption—she stopped breathing, closed her eyes and died. Punin spent the last two nights of her life next to his dying wife. He had lost his most loyal friend—the most selfless woman who had always tolerated and probably had always loved him, and seemed to forgive him all his infidelities and shortcomings. No one expected Galya to die so quickly, and they felt that if they had been in Leningrad, she could have been saved. But she was gone forever, and they buried her at the local cemetery above the ancient river Syab. Their little granddaughter Anechka believed that ‘Galya is sleeping until the prince wakes her’. She made a cross out of small stones on Galya’s grave, and kept singing ‘Gospodi pomilui’ [‘Lord have mercy’]. 47 Diary note of 1943, Diary, p. 199, MSL p. 367. 48 Ibid., pp. 367–368. 49 See letter from Punin to M. Punina of 6 October 1943, MSL, p. 370. 50 Ibid.

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As the siege of Leningrad was in sight of being relieved, on 21st January 1944, Punin, now with his two girls, had to leave Galya behind, and start their long journey back to the North. They took with them everything they possibly could—two tables, stools, Punin’s favourite wicker chair, self-made winter clothes. But they had to leave behind perhaps the most precious person, in this eastern paradise, full of mystery and now of bitter memories. Tika travelled on the same train as Nikolay and his girls, but she refused even here to move into Punin’s compartment. Confused by this strange arrangement, the director of the Academy of Arts, who was in charge of the train accommodation, said to Nikolay Nikolaevich: ‘I though that she was your . . .’ Punin interrupted him: ‘My wife? That is all left in the Leningrad past.’51 When the train stopped in Tashkent, Akhmatova came to see them, but kept talking about Garshin, referring to him as her husband. Life was turning its back on Punin—he felt unloved and ‘it was in pain that he returned to the snow.’52 3. Return to the North On their long journey from Samarkand, Punin and his family read that their beloved Pavlovsk and Tsarskoe Selo (then known as Detskoye Selo) on the hills above Leningrad, had been freed from German occupation. On 27th January 1944, the complete blockade of Leningrad was finally broken, and now they were hoping that they could safely return home. However, following their original plan, the Academy of Arts with all its staff and students was moved to the Trinity-Sergiev Monastery in the town of Zagorsk, some 70 km east of Moscow, where they finally arrived on 31st January. Before the revolution, Zagorsk [then Sergiev Posad]53 was one of the main centres of the Russian Orthodox Church. But in spring 1928, the OGPU began to build up a case against this spiritual centre, accusing it

51 Diary note of 24 February 1944, MSL, p. 373. 52 Ibid. 53 The town Sergiev Posad was founded in 1782, 70 km from Moscow. It was originally named after the Troitse-Sergieva Lavra—the monastery, which was situated in the middle of the town. After the revolution it was re-named Sergiev, and in 1930—into Zagorsk, after V. M. Zagorsky, who was the first secretary of the Moscow Communist party committee, and was killed in 1919, when the committee building was blown up. In 1991, Zagorsk regained its original name of Sergiev Posad.



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of counter-revolutionary activities. On 12th May 1928, a letter had been published in the Rabochaya Gazeta [Workers Newspaper]. In it a certain A. Lyass wrote: ‘All kinds of “people of the past”—but mainly Grand Dukes, ladies-in-waiting, priests and monks—have built themselves a hive at the so-called Trinity St. Sergey monastery. If formerly the Grand Dukes protected the priests, now the priests are protecting the Grand Dukes . . .’54 He concluded his letter by saying that ‘this hive of the Black Hundreds must be destroyed’. A week later, OGPU carried out an extensive raid on the monastery and arrested a large group of priests and lay members of the church. It was the beginning of an unofficial war against the church. Among those arrested was the priest, writer and a former professor of the Spiritual Academy at the Troitse-Sergieva Lavra—Pavel Florensky (briefly mentioned in the previous chapter), who today is referred to as the Russian Leonardo da Vinci. Father Pavel, who was a mathematician, physicist, inventor, engineer, writer and priest, was brutally interrogated by the Soviet secret police, kept in a cell in the Lubyanka and then sent to the Solovki camp. Up to now there have been many legends about the end of his life, and even his children and grandchildren did not know for sure when and where he died. Only in the 1990s, Vitaly Shentalinsky found a narrow strip of paper in the KGB archives. On one side was typed ‘Florensky, Pavel Alexandrovich’; on the other, ‘To be shot, Florensky Pavel Alexandrovich’ and a tick marked with a thick red pencil.55 The Russian spiritual leader, recently sanctified, was shot on 8th December 1937, in Solovki, which ironically was once a monastery in its own right. In one of his letters from Solovki he wrote: The universe is so organized that only at the price of suffering and persecution can the world be given anything. The more selfless the gift, the harsher the persecution and the more severe the suffering. That is the law of life, its fundamental axiom . . . Greatness must pay for its gift in blood . . .56

Punin had perhaps already started paying for his particular form of ‘greatness’, although he was at least still a free man. He was longing for Samarkand, where he ‘did not feel the past so much.’57 But already in March 1944,

54 See Vitaly Shentalinsky, The KGB’s literary archive, trans. from the Russian by J. Conquest (London: The Harvill Press, 1995), p. 102. 55 Ibid., p. 122. 56 Ibid., p. 123. 57 Diary note of 24 February 1944, MSL, p. 373.

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he wrote in his diary that ‘there was something miraculous’ in the destiny that brought him to Zagorsk.58 His daughter, Irina, was also happy to stay in this beautiful monastery, where ‘everything looked very Russian and exceptionally cosy.’59 Zagorsk was also close enough to Moscow for Punin to make frequent visits to his friends. They were also visited by his beloved niece Marina, and by many friends and relatives. ‘We felt unheard of excitement about the war coming to an end,’—wrote Irina Punina about their time in Zagorsk.60 In February 1944, Nikolay Nikolaevich went to Moscow to see his old friend from Apartment No. 5, Lev Bruni, and to visit Boris Pasternak. They spoke about art in the Soviet Union and its future. At the end of February, Punin wrote in his diary: ‘I do not expect anything from life, but I do want to see good art.’61 In Soviet culture, dominated by Socialist Realism, Punin struggled to find this ‘good art’: Today our “realism” (if I can use this term to describe it)—is just the rags of some old worn dress. It smells of decay and mould. Soviet Realism, like an army retreating from the enemy, has to tear itself away from reality, and then we shall see: – One should stop moaning and start suffering; – Stop clinging and start walking; – Stop being too enthusiastic and be contented instead. Perhaps, peace and quiet are most important, like on Chekrygin’s drawings, but even quieter, more peaceful and confident. Completely calm!62

Punin believed that art should not be ‘overloaded with heavy reality’.63 In April 1944, he wrote in his diary that it is important to understand the true aim of art: In our contemporary art, so called realism has become the goal; method has been elevated to the level of a principle and has been substituted for the goal itself. Nothing, except the death of art, could come from it. Make good art using any means you like, but just make good art.64

58 See Diary note of 7 March 1944, MSL, p. 377. 59 Irina Punina, V gody voiny (1942–1944), p. 16. 60 Ibid. 61 Diary note of 26 February 1944, MSL, p. 375. 62 Ibid. 63 Diary note of 28 February 1944, MSL, p. 376. 64 Diary note of 8 April 1944, MSL, p. 380.



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In Moscow, Punin also met one of his favourite artists, Vladimir Favorsky. And once again, they discussed Soviet art and its future. Favorsky told Nikolay Nikolaevich how he once confronted one of the most renowned representatives of Socialist Realism, Sergei Gerasimov, by telling him that in his paintings the elements of composition are not assembled very well. Gerasimov replied: ‘It’s OK. The frame can organize everything.’65 Now having little faith in the state of Soviet art, Punin spent a lot of time lying in bed in a state of ‘anger and complete apathy’, giving lectures every once in a while ‘with disgust’.66 On 2nd April, he wrote: ‘. . . and now the despondency of earth and death are buzzing on the important academic mattress.’67 A few days later, he came to the conclusion that ‘it is very hard to be honest’. And a month later he wrote: ‘Even though I am essentially an ordinary person, I always find myself to be an exception. I want the impossible: to be a person without pretensions.’68 In May 1944, Akhmatova came back to Moscow from Tashkent. She stayed with her friend, the actress Nina Olshevskaya and her three children. Punin, his daughter and granddaughter visited Anna there, and while she joked and played with little Anya, she discussed serious questions about art and life with Nikolay. Although they still remained friends, Punin quite irrationally could not quite forgive Akhmatova for the new love of her life, Garshin, whom she was planning to marry after her return to Leningrad. On 18th June 1944, he wrote in his diary: ‘Anya, frankly speaking, had never loved. All the little things: separations, sorrows, grief, insults, sometimes demonism. She does not even suspect what love is.’69 Akhmatova at this time was very happy and excited about seeing Garshin, who had spent the whole blockade in Leningrad, working as the chief coroner of the city. She told all her friends in Moscow that she was going to marry him as soon as she got back. She was also supposed to live in his apartment, but when he met her at the station in Leningrad on June 1st 1944, he suddenly announced to her that she could not live with him and that he had arranged for her to stay with some friends, the Rybakovs.

65 See diary note of 7 March 1944, MSL, p. 377. 66 Diary note of 24 March 1944, MSL, p. 378. 67 Diary note of 2 April 1944, MSL, p. 379. 68 Diary note of 21 May 1944, MSL, p. 383. 69 Diary note of 18 June 1944, MSL, p. 384.

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Garshin’s wife had collapsed on the street in hungry Leningrad in October 1942, and died. While Akhmatova was away, he felt that he could forget about his wife, whom he had not even loved very much over the last few years of their marriage, and move on. He sent telegrams to Akhmatova every day, begging her to come back to him, but when she arrived he started feeling guilty and soon refused even to see her. In August, she wrote to her friend Nina Olshevskaya: ‘Garshin is mentally ill. Separated from me. I’m telling only you. Anna.’70 But Garshin was not ill, even though he did go through something of a psychological crisis after he had been required to identify his dead wife, whose face had been eaten away by rats. However, the main reason for his separation with Akhmatova was actually his decision to marry somebody else, namely his colleague and old friend, Kapitolina Volkova. Garshin’s wife had told him before she died that if he decided to marry again, Kapitolina would make him a good wife.71 At the time when he was still blaming himself for his wife’s death, fulfilling her last wish seemed to be the right thing to do. Anna Akhmatova felt betrayed and devastated. In 1945, she dedicated a poem to Garshin: . . . And the man who means Nothing to me now, but was my concern And comfort in the bitterest years— Wanders like a ghost on the outskirts, The back streets and the back yards of life, Heavy, typified by insanity, With a wolfish grin . . .72

On 19th July 1944, Punin and his girls at last reached Leningrad again. Irina described how they decided not to wait for their baggage to be unloaded from the train. They just took ‘the most precious things’ with them—a sooty old kettle without a lid, an oil lamp and a kitten, which they had brought from Zagorsk assuming that all the cats in Leningrad had been eaten during the blockade, and walked down Nevsky prospect to their beloved Fountain House.73 When they came to the gates of the Sheremetyev Palace, they saw Akhmatova, waiting there for them. She gave little Anechka a small bouquet 70 Quoted in AA, p. 393. 71 Ibid., p. 395. 72 Ibid., p. 396. 73 Irina Punina, V gody voiny (1942–1944), p. 17.



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of flowers, and said: ‘I am here by accident, I live with the Rybakovs, and I will never live in your house again.’74 With these bitter words she walked off, leaving Nikolay Nikolaevich, Irina and Anya somewhat stunned by this reception. But even this bitterness could not spoil the joy of returning home for them. When they first arrived, the front door of their flat was sealed up. When the seals were lifted, they could finally enter, though two of the rooms had to remain sealed up until the belongings of the accountant of the Arctic Institute (which had moved into the Sheremetev Palace during the war) who had lived and died there during the blockade, were removed by his widow. They were happy to be back in their ‘empty, deserted house’,75 even though the roof was leaking, all the glass in the windows was missing, and there was no electricity or water supply. Tired, sad Punin sat smoking on the sofa in his study for a long time. He kept saying: ‘I am here by accident’, how could she be there accidentally with a bouquet of flowers . . . ‘by accident’. . .‘I won’t live here’.76 But what probably motivated Akhmatova to live with her friends the Rybakovs, rather than Punin and his family, had little to do with her pride. She always disliked discomfort, and was waiting for Punin to do all the redecorating and repairs before she could move in. The proof of this would follow soon. In her friends’ apartment, Akhmatova lived in a comfortable warm room with beautiful antique furniture. She even tried to register there, but her application was refused due to her prior registration in the Fountain House.77 On 9th August, Akhmatova wrote to her friend, Olshevskaya: ‘I am still not at the Fontanka apartment—there is no water, light or glass in the windows. And nobody knows when these things will appear’.78 On 24th July, Punin wrote in his diary: The more one looks at Leningrad, the more terrifying it feels. Holes instead of windows, plywood. Quite empty, but they say that a month ago it was completely empty. In the apartment many things remained as they were when we left,— traces of our numb, dying hands. This string was tied around the stove by

74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., p. 18. 76 Ibid. 77 See copies of documents in I. Punina, pp. 22–23. 78 Ibid., p. 19.

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chapter ten Galya, to dry her stockings. Her death lies on many things. Many can not see all of these . . . Between those who stayed behind and those who just returned, there are conversations like this: ‘So you have been waiting in the rear?’—Others answer: ‘And you were waiting for Germans to come?’ Almost every day Anya [Akhmatova] comes to see us. She said about Garshin: ‘He has his own course in life.’79

At the end of August 1944, when living conditions in Punin’s flat became more comfortable, Akhmatova moved back in, now living in the former nursery. Punin’s sister-in-law, Vera Arens, had lost her husband, sister and nephew during the blockade, and had miraculously survived herself. She came to stay in the Fountain house quite often. The most beautiful of the three Arens sisters, she was now an old lady, lonely but not defeated by her hard and rather unfair destiny. In her diary of 12th November 1944, she described her visit to Punin’s family: ‘Recently I have been seeing Anna Andreevna Akhmatova quite often. She looks better, very active, often receiving guests. She is very sweet at home, being fed by Irochka Punina.’80 Their apartment was as busy as ever. Apart from Irinia, little Anechka, Anna Akhmatova and Vera Arens, the widow of the artist Petr Lvov, Punin’s friend, also lived there for several months while waiting for a flat from the government, with her daughter and grandson. On 7th November 1944, Nikolay Nikolaevich wrote to his niece, Marina: I can not say that we are all settled now. Ira and I live in one room, like in 1941. A.A. [Anna Akhmatova] lives in her room, and she was also given another room which was occupied by the Smirnovs (just before the war, they were given another flat). The windows in the hall, the Smirnovs’ room and my study still don’t have glass; only today I stuffed the window in the hall with pillows and a blanket; the other windows are glazed already; it was always +8C here; now we managed to get some logs and it is a bit warmer. They keep promising to connect the telephone again. For four months, Lvov’s family is staying with us—three of them: Avgusta Ivanovna, Ira and her boy; lots of noise and a very crowded flat . . .81

In 1944, Akhmatova and Punin for the first time finally lived under one roof without Nikolay’s wife, but their love for each other had died down back in 1936, and now they were just friends and neighbours. Now Nikolay

79 Diary note of 24 July 1944, MSL, p. 385. 80 Irina Punina, V gody voiny (1942–1944), p. 20. 81 Letter from Punin to M. Punina of 7 November 1944, MSL pp. 388–389.



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was longing for his Tika, but she would not move in to live with him. In September 1944, he wrote: Under the external surface of my life there is eternal longing. I feel as if I want to work a lot, but it is too late. I find it hard to work without Tika—like driving without a steering wheel. Yesterday on the Neva was so quiet and sad, that I thought that it would help if everyone came out to the railings of the embankment and started crying. The city had filled up since we came, but still it feels like someone is missing.82

And on 14th October, Punin made another note in his diary: . . . It feels as if the dead are still walking around our houses. ‘The souls of the dystrophics,—Tika said once,—got stuck in the leaves of the trees.’ I think of Galya often: without her this old house—is not home, but just a place where we live,—and I always think of her crossing the Neva. She would not see this grand beauty, this mighty space ever again, and Sasha’s [Punin’s brother, Alexander, who died during the blockade] eyes are closed. And I thought: how long will it take for us to forget that the broken walls of the houses were plastered by the living and the dead.83

Left without his trusty wife—‘the only one who had not betrayed or abandoned’ him,84 Punin was struggling to find inspiration for his work: I heat the stove, bring water from the street [in the winter of 1944, all the pipes in Punin’s flat were frozen, and his family had to bring water from a tap on the Fontanka embankment], cook dinner, and do not see Tika; the eyes of my heart are looking at her with entreaty. It is a pity that I do not work; we argue with Anya [Akhmatova] on the issues of everyday life: she is a difficult person; I am not able to look after a grown-up person like a child—a child with a modernized character.85

Even such difficult living conditions still seemed quite luxurious compared with 1941 and 1942. On 1st January 1945, Punin even managed to organise a New Year’s party for his precious little granddaughter with a real Christmas tree and a Father Frost [the Russian equivalent to Santa], played by his friend, the artist Oreshnikov. Punin made colourful toys for the Christmas tree and they had a jolly evening, playing charades and drinking hot chocolate. But the party finished, and the absence of peace

82 Diary note of 22 September 1944, MSL, p. 387. 83 Diary note of 14 October 1944, MSL, p. 387. 84 Diary note of 24 February 1944, MSL, p. 393. 85 Diary note of 3 February 1945, MSL, p. 393.

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and love, which descended on Punin afterwards, discouraged him from writing. In the spring of 1945, two months before the end of the war, Punin’s daughter Irina, who was still waiting for her husband’s return from the front, was informed that he had disappeared back in 1941, during the battle near Tula in central Russia. It was only in 1991, that their daughter, Anna Kaminskaya found out that in reality, her father had been arrested back in 1941, after a false accusation, and had been sent to a camp. He had died of starvation and exhaustion in 1943, at the age of 23. By 1945, she had started calling Nikolay Nikolaevich her father rather than grandfather. He now had two daughters and no wife. Missing his wife, parents and his youth, he started to write his memoirs.86 Back in November 1944, life in Leningrad was getting back to normal— the city’s streets were lit again, and the Philharmonic Hall was re-opened.87 Punin still had no suit to wear, but since it was very cold at the Academy of Arts and at the University, he could give lectures in his winter coat. Full of wisdom and improvisation, his lectures always inspired students. But, already in the early 1940s, students had been warned about the corrupting influence of Impressionism. One of Punin’s favourite students, Tsitsiliya Genrikhovna Nissel’shtraus, remembered how the leading proponent of Socialist Realism, now the head of the Academy of Arts, Alexander Gerasimov, made all the students read books about the bad influence of Impressionism, and regularly checked their library cards to make sure that they did so.88 When Nissel’shtraus became Punin’s PhD student in 1945, she first wanted to write her dissertation on Van Gogh, but even though her professor was still talking about this great artist with great admiration, she soon realized that she would not even be allowed to mention Van Gogh in her thesis, let alone write about him. So, she had to change her tutor and write about the much safer subject of medieval art.89 In April 1945, Punin spoke at the Leningrad Union of Artists on the subject of ‘Impressionism and Painting’. Rather innocently he discussed the 86 Mainly dedicated to Punin’s childhood and youth, these memoirs were never published and remain as a manuscript in his family, See MSL, pp. 391, 501. 87 In his letter to Marina Punina of 7 November 1944, Nikolay Nikolaevich wrote that it is as hard to get tickets to the concerts at the Philharmonic Hall as it was to return to Leningrad—see MSL, p. 389. 88 From the interview with the late C. G. Nissel’shtraus, taken by N. Murray in her flat in St. Petersburg in August 2006. 89 C. G. Nissel’shtraus became a professor of medieval art at the Academy of Arts.



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main principles of the paintings of Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and compared them with the artistic perceptions and the world outlook of such colossi of the Renaissance as Titian, Giorgione and Velázquez. Using all his experience and professionalism, Punin described in this amazing lecture how Degas and Velázquez treated empty spaces in their paintings in different ways: the first made emptiness an active and important part of his compositions and the latter, skilfully incorporating empty spaces into his compositions, never even considered their significance for the finished work. Punin also stated that the tension in Manet’s paintings is much stronger than in Titian’s works. Several times in his lecture Punin stressed how modern the art of Impressionists was: It was a union of people, who were not connected with each other by any programme, or tradition or subject matter, but mainly by the same feeling of modernity, same desire to be sincere and talk to their contemporaries in a modern language.90

Punin argued that the Impressionists were first of all striving to convey modern perceptions and feelings; that the main motif which united the works of Manet and Monet was their desire to create modern paintings. He talked about the Degas’ methods of composing his paintings using photographic principles. Punin felt that like a photographer, Degas is not passively observing life, but ‘spying on life’, looking at various events from around the corner.91 Nikolay Nikolaevich concluded his inspirational talk by saying: Nobody can use historic experiences, even classical ones, to perceive modern days. Any progressive movement is the movement first of all towards modernity. To be themselves, to be modern—that is what the Impressionists wanted to achieve.92

In the post-script to his talk, Punin suggested a follow-up lecture on the subject of ‘Impressionism and Modernity’. He felt that Soviet artists, instead of denying Impressionism and calling it ‘corrupting capitalist art’, should learn from it and ‘follow the path, opened up by the Impressionists.’ ‘I do not want to make Impressionism responsible for the crisis of capitalism, and for all those tragedies that occurred in front of their 90 N. Punin, Impressionism I Problema Kartiny, stenographic transcript of Punin’s lecture given at the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists on 13 April 1945, p. 16. 91 Ibid., p. 14. 92 Ibid., p. 22.

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eyes,’—announced Punin in his speech.93 He said that the Impressionists presented us with a new understanding of painting, which would be silly to deny, and added that he could not understand numerous accusations of the Impressionists in formalism: In our country, people love putting forward the rather murky problem of formalism, in order to fish something out of these muddy waters! I personally can not see any formalism in Cubism or Futurism, or in the art of Picasso. They were all inventors, who strived to create a new form in art, and they created new forms in order to express their new feelings.94

Understandably, this lecture was never published, and its stenographic transcript formed part of Punin’s accusation when he was arrested four years later. His words about formalism, quoted above, were especially underlined by the prosecutor. Punin finished his talk by saying that: ‘ a new painting should be born out of picturesque sensation—a picturesque element, which should stimulate the modern feeling of art, without which the very life in the modern world can not exist.’95 He bravely went on to say that there is no modern art in the Soviet Union, and criticised the future president of the Union of Artists, Vladimir Serov (pseudonym of V. Rapoport), for declaring that any art which illustrates contemporary life is modern. Punin even admitted that ‘nobody can say that we have progressive art’.96 And he added that Serov is trying to erase the very idea of progress—something for which Serov would never forgive Punin. Soon he would use all his power to make sure that Nikolay Nikolaevich was arrested and removed to the GULAG. Praising his beloved Van Gogh and Cézanne, Punin voted against Vladimir Serov—the great propagator of Socialist Realism, who was standing to be re-elected as the head of the Leningrad Union of Artists. Everyone else voted for Serov, who thereby became Punin’s enemy no. 1. It was Serov who gave evidence against him when he was arrested in 1949. On 20th April 1945, Punin wrote in his diary about these elections: ‘I never had such a defeat in my entire life. I am still thinking about this day with agonizing annoyance. V. Serov has been re-elected as president. Now 93 N. Punin, Afterword to his lecture Impressionism I Problema Kartiny, stenographic transcript from the investigatory KGB file (No. 120), now in Punin’s archive in St. Petersburg, p. 1. 94 Ibid., p. 4. 95 Ibid., p. 5. 96 Ibid., p. 2.



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he will be there for a long time. Completely hopeless case—all the ways for art in the near future are now closed.’97 And two weeks later he wrote: ‘The war is about to end, but nothing is finishing with it.’98 The victory over the Germans and the liberation of the Soviet Union brought with it an anticipation of long-awaited and hard-earned freedom. This hope was very soon dashed, first by the removal of those freedoms which had been given back to the Russian people during the war, and then by yet another wave of relentless terror.

97 Diary note of 20 April 1945, MSL, p. 394. 98 Diary note of 3 May 1945, MSL, p. 395.

Chapter Eleven

THE BROKEN POST-WAR DREAMS But in the room of the banished poet Fear and the Muse stand watch by turn, And the night falls, Without the hope of dawn. (A. Akhmatova ‘Voronezh’)1

1. The Post-War Cultural Scene The Second World War had cost the lives of over 30 million people, half of which were Russians. On opposite sides of the world, the USA (‘the arsenal of democracy’) had developed into a formidably powerful economy, and so had Russia; meanwhile, Europe lay in ruins, heroic Britain was bankrupt and its empire well on its way to dissolution. So, the scene was set for the new pattern of conflict between these two new super-powers. Despite the creation of the United Nations, by the end of 1946, the Cold War was well on its way. On March 5th, 1946, Churchill delivered his famous speech at Westminster College, Missouri, in which he announced the appearance of the iron curtain: An iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe . . . I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today, while time remains, is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries.2

The emergent United Nations Organisation had its roots in the dialogue between Churchill and Roosevelt from 1941 onwards, and they soon agreed that a new organisation, rather than an extended League of Nations, would

1 A. Akhmatova, Voronezh—this poem was written after Akhmatova’s visit to Mandelstam in Voronezh in 1936; these lines have been omitted in the Soviet edition of Akhmatova’s verse—quoted in Mandelstam I, p. 262. 2 Quoted in AA, p. 401.

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be needed. Stalin was included in the Teheran conference in 1943, and the debate continued, but it was in August 1944 that, at Dumbarton Oaks, the United Nations was formally launched. The Russians at this point had declared their demand that they had a veto on the (‘major nations’) Security Council, which from the start threatened to ensure that it had no real power over any of its major members. At the time, Stalin also demanded that all 16 Soviet republics should have a seat in the UN, which was thankfully later dropped. The USSR used the veto 100 times between 1945 and 1963. Inside Russia, there were, of course, many obstacles to be overcome, including that of the loss of manpower—almost ¾ of the Soviet deaths had been of men. At the end of the war, there were 96.2 million women and only 74.4 million men. It is also worth remembering that Stalin had deported eight entire nations (the Crimean Tartars, the Kalmyks, the Chechens, the Ingushi, the Karachai, the Balkars and the Meshketian Turks), and many Russians did not return to the USSR at the end of the war, but stayed in the West. Over the immediate post-war period, the Soviet economy was still expanding, and a 4th Five Year Plan was agreed in March 1946, though military production still dominated. It was an era of great scientific advancement, including developing the Soviet jet engine and nuclear weapons. By contrast, on the cultural scene after the war, Russia had gone backwards rather than forwards. At the beginning of the war, many writers experienced more freedom than before, but already in 1945, the new era, which later gained the name of ‘High Stalinism’, had started. Now the grip that Stalin had forged before the war fused with his heroic stature promoted during it. Given that the war had been fought in the name of Mother Russia (as opposed to the USSR or the Communist Party), and therefore they had all won it, there was an expectation that the repressive pre-war environment would not be repeated. After all, during the war, even poets such as Akhmatova had been allowed to publish, and Shostakovich to compose. Expecting a free and productive post-war existence, Boris Pasternak started writing his most famous novel, ‘Doctor Zhivago’ in the winter of 1945–46. Many members of the intelligentsia, including Korney Chukovsky, believed that after the war the Allies who helped Russia to win the war would impose freedom and democracy on Russia, and ‘a new, rational era will begin’. Also, the multimillion-man Soviet army, which crossed Europe in 1944–1945, had now seen the reality of the economically advanced life in the West, and would find it harder to believe in Soviet propaganda. Stalin had to re-gain his ideological control. Very soon members both of the intelligentsia and soldiers came to discover that central control



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was actually intensified, propaganda became even more active (this was the period when the USSR ‘invented’ everything, from the bicycle to the electronic computer), and anti-foreign and anti-Jewish propaganda campaigns, were mounted. For the Soviet dictator himself, it was a period when his obsessive and suspicious nature became more pronounced; to the horror of many, the regime relaxed none of its internal controls. Although Stalin was a working, hands-on dictator, the vast task of running this complex state required him to rely on others to run elements of it, which in turn seems to have increased his jealousy, mistrust and eventually, paranoia. He understood the principle of the stick (threat) and the carrot (special rewards), though very often the carrot only comprised avoidance of the immediate application of the stick. Stalin achieved one remarkable feat: from the outside, he was identified as a tyrant, obsessively removing any opposition to his position or his will, and later on, reacting to the imagined threats his paranoia produced. From the inside, he was responsible for the industrialisation of Russia, indeed the creation of the modern USSR; his iron will certainly contributed to the winning of the war, though the opportunism reflected in the Nazi-Soviet Pact undermined any claims to ideological purity. But were the threats to his leadership so real that the Purges could possibly be justified, did the industrialisation require such sacrifice, and did so many Soviet citizens have to die at the hands of their own leaders, especially those captured in the first catastrophic months of the war (entirely due to Stalin’s inability to trust anybody) and shot or Gulag-d on their return? After the Victory in the Second World War, Stalin was seen by many Soviet citizens as a great, almost holy leader, the father of the people, guiding them to a nirvana where they were the most successful nation economically, politically and militarily in the world. It is an irony that Khrushchev’s bitter denunciation of Stalin in 1956, (which led to his body being removed from the Lenin Mausoleum) was known outside the USSR for twenty years before it was made public in Russia itself. One of the principal fields of increasing central control was in culture, where uniformity had to be re-re-enforced. In 1946, the Central Committee secretary and Leningrad Communist Party leader, Andrei Zhdanov was put in charge of Soviet cultural policy.3 He proposed that the world

3 It gained the name ‘The Zhdanov Doctrine’, also known as ‘zhdanovism’ and ‘zhdanovshchina’.

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was divided into two conflicting camps—the Imperialistic, headed by the United States, and the Democratic, headed by the Soviet Union.4 He proclaimed that in Soviet culture the only conflict that is possible is the one between ‘the good and the best’. On Stalin’s orders, Zhdanov launched a violent campaign against Western influences in Soviet Culture. For Stalin, the starting-point was Leningrad, the European city he had never liked, whose independence from Moscow had ironically been greatly strengthened by the war. From now on, all artists, writers, composers and other members of the intelligentsia had to conform to the Party line in all their work. As in the 1930s, those who did not comply with the new Soviet policy on culture were to be persecuted. The first victims of Zhdanov’s new policy became the satirical writer Mikhail Zoshchenko, and Anna Akhmatova, who immediately after the war had been elected as a member of the board of the Leningrad section of the Union of Writers, and had her poems published in several journals in Moscow and Leningrad. But the 1946 resolution of the Central Committee was directed against two of these journals, Zvezda and Leningrad, which were censured for publishing articles by Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko, the former being accused of being a reactionary and an individualist. In his book ‘The Whisperers’ Orlando Figes wrote that Zoshchenko believed that the Central Committee decree had been passed after Stalin heard about a poetry reading by Akhmatova before a packed house at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow. After Akhmatova finished reading, the audience erupted in applause. ‘Who organised this standing ovation?’ Stalin asked.5 In her memoirs Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote that the ‘first sign of disfavour’ of Akhmatova was ‘the sudden appearance near the gate of the Sheremetiev house on the Fontanka of two young men with ugly mugs’.6 From now on all Akhmatova’s movements had to be recorded and reported, now again as once before. Soon the Union of Writers withdrew Akhmatova’s and Zoshchenko’s membership (at Zhdanov’s request), and thereby their income. In singling

4 Contemporary Russia also calls its regime a ‘democracy’ despite absence of the rule of law and unjust presidential elections. Vladimir Putin explained this contradiction by proclaiming that Russia has ‘its own democracy’, which is different from the rest of the world. 5 Orlando Figes, The Whisperers, p. 489. 6 See Mandelstam II, p. 416.



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out these writers for attack, the Kremlin aimed to demonstrate (or perhaps to re-state) to the Leningrad intelligentsia its subordination to the Soviet regime. As a leading member of the Writer’s Union, Konstantin Simonov had little choice but to go along with this campaign. In his first issue as editor of the popular literary journal, Novyi Mir, he published the decree of the Central Committee alongside a transcript of a speech by Zhdanov which described Akhmatova as ‘one of the standard-bearers of a hollow, empty, aristocratic salon poetry which is absolutely foreign to Soviet literature’ and (in a phrase already in use) as a ‘half-nun, half harlot or rather harlot-nun whose sin is mixed with prayer.’7 When Punin saw this horrible speech in the newspaper, he noted in his diary: ‘I thought that it would finish badly, but I did not expect this.’8 Simonov later confessed he had supported this campaign because he believed that ‘something really needed to be done to counteract the atmosphere of ideological relaxation’ that had taken hold of the intelligentsia. This contempt for intellectuals who shied away from engaging in the ‘struggle’, a long–standing view of Simonov’s, explains his hostility to Zoshchenko in particular. With Akhmatova, his attitude was different. He felt that ‘nobody should speak in such a way about a person who had suffered with the people as Akhmatova had during the war’.9 When the leading newspaper, Pravda asked him to write condemning the two (Zoshchenko and Akhmatova) Simonov replied that he would only speak against Zoshchenko. Later, he learned that Zoshchenko had fought with honour in the First World War, and set about repairing his reputation. Both Stalin and Zhdanov then began the war against writers, artists and composers whom they saw as demonstrating servility to the West, or glorifying Western achievements. From then on, all the members of the cultural intelligentsia had to show reverence for the Motherland in literature, art, and music. Most artists and composers active at the time, other than those who contributed to Socialist Realism, came to be censured; meanwhile, the architectural ‘Wedding Cake’ structures began to rise above the Moscow skyline. The decree of 10th February 1948, formally aimed at Vano Muradeli’s opera ‘The Great Friendship’, started a sustained campaign of criticism

7 Orlando Figes, The Whisperers, p. 490. 8 Diary note of 28 August 1946, MSL, p. 404. 9 Orlando Figes, The Whisperers, p. 489.

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and persecution against many of the Soviet composers, especially Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergey Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian. This decree was followed in April by a special congress of the Composers’ Union, where those composers who had been attacked were forced to repent publicly. Being extraordinarily talented, and thus different from others, resulted in humiliation and often imprisonment at this increasingly brutal time. The same process as in literature and music was going on in the field of visual arts and art history. In August 1947, the Academy of Arts of the USSR became a vehicle for delivery of the Party’s prescriptions, reporting as it did to the Committee for Artistic Affairs. Earlier, in May 1936, the Politburo had ruled that modern paintings of ‘a formalist and crudely naturalist character’ should be removed from the exhibition halls of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Russian Museum in Leningrad, recommending at the same time that a special exhibition of realist artists (such as Repin, Surikov and Rembrandt) should be mounted.10 All modern, western-inspired Russian art was seen as formalism, and Punin, who had announced in 1920: ‘We are formal. Yes, we’re proud of this formalism’,11 was soon declared to be its major agitator. Presciently, Punin had written in his diary in 1944, that it is ‘very, very hard to be honest’.12 And in 1946, at the time when being honest led to persecution and public rejection, Punin continued to teach his students about Impressionism and Cubism, Fauvism and Post-Impressionism. At the time when nobody even mentioned these artistic movements any more, Punin stubbornly followed his belief that his students could not be qualified art-historians without knowing about all the great French masters, who since the 1930s, had been viewed in the Soviet Union as a corrupting influence on young Communists. In the 1930s, 20th century French paintings were still exhibited in Moscow and Leningrad, but were presented as examples of the bourgeois decadence of the West. In 1941, the State Museum of Modern Western Art, which was founded in Moscow after the Revolution in the mansion of the great collector Morozov, was closed down, and the paintings sent to Siberia. Like most people who still believed in 20th century West European Art, they too were exiled to the land of cold winters and long nights.

10 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, p. 168. 11 N. Punin, Tsikl lektsii, p. 63. 12 Diary note of 13 April 1944, MSL, p. 381.



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In 1948, these paintings were divided between the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Since the Pushkin Museum suffered badly during the war and did not have enough wall space, the biggest paintings were sent to Leningrad. Marshall Kliment Voroshilov, entrusted by Stalin to purge Soviet culture after the war, may have been a good General, but he found it difficult to relate to any art beyond Socialist Realism, with its tinted and lacquered paintings representing party leaders and workers. Some senior curators still remember how Voroshilov laughed when Matisse’s ‘Dance’ and ‘Music’ were unrolled on the floor of the disused Museum of Modern Western Art for his inspection. These paintings, with their extreme simplification of forms and bright colours, were very radical even at the time when they were commissioned by Shchukin in 1909. They were widely criticized when they were shown at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1910, and even Shchukin himself was first rather concerned about the effect these works would have on Moscow high society and indeed on his young daughters. He even initially cancelled his order for these paintings, but in the end, was brave enough to follow his intuition, changed his mind and bought these amazing works after a few days of hesitation. These paintings had a great impact on several generations of artists in Russia and Europe. However, at the end of the 1940s, these timeless Matisse masterpieces were almost destroyed by this culturally ignorant and highly conventional Soviet cultural leader. Miraculously they survived, largely due to the efforts of art-critics and museum curators, who continued fighting for these works at a time when keeping them was more nerve-wracking than painting them in the first place. In February 1946, Punin once again wrote in his diary: ‘Recently I was not able to write at all’.13 One of his students, Mikhail Flegel, had returned from Vienna, where he was posted as a soldier, and brought back with him some beautiful reproductions of French Impressionists. Punin and his student Ciciliya Nissel’shtraus went to Flegel’s house to see these photos, which Nikolay Nikolaevich would later use in his lectures. He admired all the freedom of expression and sincerity of these paintings, which were of course classified as a bad influence on the young builders of Communism in the Soviet Union. 13 Diary note of 2 February 1946, MSL, p. 400.

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In March of the same year, Punin could not resist writing again about his beloved patriarch of Modernism, Paul Cézanne: Cézanne’s feat is not just in the fact that he was a true painter, as everyone thinks of him, but in the way in which he stood in front of the world with such an opened heart, cleared from all the additives not related to art— such an opened heart, that no other artist ever had before, including Rafael, Titian and Velasquez. Cézanne is the main representative of visual art, its fullest impersonation. That is the main goal and idea of Cézanne’s art. For everyone who can relate to it, his paintings are like the house, in which the soul has a beautiful life, because his art—is the house, built in painting materials.14

Punin also came to the conclusion that there should always be a strong connection between ‘people in paintings’ and ‘people in real life’. He wrote in his diary that in the Hermitage, people moved in ‘a more natural way’ in the rooms with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, and looked rather ‘awkward’ in the room with Renaissance art—‘walking like spirits surrounded by the immortal’.15 And again he criticized Vladimir Serov for being unable to ‘come into the event he is painting, especially inside the people he is depicting in his art—to strike their pose, relive their movements, their facial expressions.’16 Now, in April 1946, Punin was writing to his old friend, the artist Lev Bruni, that ‘art did not prove worthwhile’ and that ‘Cézanne and Van Gogh are its fruitless victims’. Bruni replied that Punin should not despair, and that no one can be greater than Cézanne, who was ‘the first artist, apart from Delacroix, to show people the way to Painting.’17 2. Punin’s Dismissal and Criticism However, after Punin’s lecture at the Union of Artists on Impressionism, given in April 1945, criticism of his views on Cézanne and Van Gogh was getting stronger. In February 1946, he wrote in his diary: ‘Life is difficult, and I am tired.’18 A month later, Punin gave a report at the meeting to discuss the student artists’ diploma works. He used this annual event as an opportunity 14 Diary note of 24 March 1946, MSL, p. 402. 15 Diary note of 10 March 1946, MSL, p. 401. 16 Diary note of 12 March 1946, MSL, p. 401. 17 See letter from L. Bruni to N. Punin in MSL, pp. 403–404. 18 Diary note of 2 February 1946, MSL, p. 400.



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to express his opinion about the Academic system of education and all its limitations. He criticized all the restrictions which the Academy imposes on artists, disallowing any freedom of artistic expression: We start talking about liberating our institute, and once again we get rid of the most contrary, obstinate students, while we should be throwing out those who are mediocre—neither here, nor there.19

In his report, Punin said that students of the Academy should produce modern paintings, in which spectators can feel the contemporary spirit of the ‘epic, heroic and sad years’ in Soviet history. Such a controversial suggestion became the last drop in the cup of Punin’s free thought. In the outline of his last academic report, Punin wrote ‘for this speech I was fired from the Academy in the autumn of 1946.’20 Nikolay Nikolaevich was too rebellious for this conservative institution. He was thrown out of the Academy of Arts for not complying with the Party’s views on Soviet art, and continuing to teach students about corrupting modern western art. Dismissals of the most respected professors for their views and beliefs were quite common in Russia even before the Communists took power. Freedom of faith or speech had never developed in Russia either before or after the Bolshevik revolution. The only difference between Punin’s dismissal from the Academy in 1946, and that of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the most famous Russian composers and an esteemed professor of music, from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1905 (for his political views, which had taken a ‘bright-red shade’ following Bloody Sunday), was the public resonance. The firing of Rimsky-Korsakov was followed by a newspaper scandal, followed by public outrage. On March 27th, 1905, one of the most influential St. Petersburg newspapers, Novosti, proclaimed: ‘We drove Pushkin to a suicidal duel. We sent Lermontov to face bullets. We sentenced Dostoevsky to hard labour. We buried Chernyshevsky alive in a polar grave. We exiled one of our greatest minds, Hertsen. We expatriated Turgenev. We excommunicated and denounced Tolstoy. We expelled Rimsky-Korsakov from the Conservatory.’21 19 N. Punin, O diplomnykh rabotakh Akademii Khudozhestv. O zhivopisi, stenographic transcript, 1946, in Punin’s archive, St. Petersburg, p. 1. 20 This note was written by N. Punin on top of his handwritten notes for the report on the artists’ diploma works at the Academy of Arts, now kept in his archive in St. Petersburg. 21 Quoted in Solomon Volkov, The Magical Chorus. A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn, translated fr. Russian by A. Bouis, (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), p. 23.

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By contrast, in Stalin’s Russia, people were fired and killed quietly without any overt public indignation (most people understandably feared for their lives and careers first). When Punin’s destiny was discussed at the meeting at the Academy of Arts, one of his favourite students, Tsitsiliya Nissel’shtraus, was asked three times to provide arguments in her professor’s defence, and three times she refused. She was not a member of the Communist Party, had German origins and could not help being concerned about her own future. However, when she walked with Punin back to the Fountain House, he told her: ‘Like Jesus’ disciple, Peter, who disowned him three times before the cock crowed, you denied me today thrice.’22 After Punin’s dismissal another of his students, Elena Maslova bravely wrote a letter to him: Especially now I would like to express my gratitude for your amazing lectures, always very interesting, always so deeply moving, always so full of rich thoughts and feelings! They will never disappear from our memory, and recollections of them will always illuminate and warm up our souls in the darkest time of our lives. I have no doubts that very soon all the wealth and preciousness of your words will be once again recognized by all.23

She finished her letter by asking Nikolay Nikolaevich ‘not to forget how much his students love him and how much they will always love him.’24 Not willing to be defeated, Nikolay Punin continued to give lectures at the State University, and most of his former students from the Academy would now come to his lectures there. His lectures were always completely full, and even artists whose works he criticized, would come to listen to his words of wisdom. When Punin left the Academy on 9th October 1946, his 7-year old granddaughter asked: ‘Why did you leave the Academy but not the University?’ Nikolay Nikolaevich calmly replied: ‘At the Academy there is only one heavy door, which I slammed with all my strength, so that everyone could hear the bang. At the University there are many doors, and whether you slam them or not—nobody would notice.’ Little Anya could

22 From the interview with C. G. Nisselshtraus by N. Murray. Reference to the New Testament, Matthew 26:33–34: ‘Peter replied, ‘Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.’ ‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘this very night, before the cock crows, you will disown me three times.’ 23 Letter from E. Maslova to N. Punin from 12 October 1946, MSL, p. 405. 24 Ibid.



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not understand the meaning of these rather sarcastic words then, but she remembered them all her life. Towards the end of 1946, Punin also started writing what was to be his most profound book, which was also supposed to become his doctor’s thesis, on the life and work of the Russian artist Alexander Ivanov (1806–1858). Like Punin himself, neither Alexander Ivanov, nor his father, the academic painter Andrei Ivanov (1775–1848), were fully understood and accepted in their lifetimes. In the manuscript of his book, Nikolay Nikolaevich paid special attention to the dismissal of Andrei Ivanov from the Academy of Arts in 1831. Andrei was told that Tsar Nicholas I did not like his painting ‘Death of Kulnev’ and that he could not stay in the Academy any longer. Seeing parallels with his own destiny, Punin wrote about this ridiculous affair: It is perfectly obvious that Nicholas I was trying to draw the Academy into the system of those institutions which were meant to glorify his monarchic despotism; Andrei Ivanov was not the right person for this; in his art there were too many elements, which connected him with old icon painting, and through it with the true traditions of Russian folk art.25

In this book, which, had it been finished, would have become the first serious study of Ivanov’s inheritance, Punin provided the most profound description of Russian art and its influence on both Andrei and Alexander Ivanov. He quoted a line from the letter of Alexander to his father, written in 1836: The artist must be completely free, never subjugated to anything; his independence must be limitless.26

But, as in the first half of the 19th century, artists in Russia from the mid 1930s enjoyed no freedom of expression for several decades. In his book, Punin shared his suspicion that Andrei Ivanov was not dismissed from the Academy for just one painting, but for his views on art and on the general situation at the Academy, which in the 1830s ‘decent people were afraid to enter’.27 Nikolay Nikolayevich felt that the fact that the professor of painting spoke his mind and did not want to keep quiet about his views, which of course had been reported to the head of the Academy,

25 N. Punin, Alexander Ivanov, in RSI, p. 75. 26 Ibid., p. 79. 27 Ibid., p. 58.

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became the real reason for the discharge of Andrei Ivanov, whom ‘everyone respected, paying justice to his high moral virtues.’28 As a well-respected and much loved professor of the History of Art, Punin also did not want to compromise his views on art. In the autumn of 1946, he visited an exhibition of the members of the Leningrad section of the Union of Artists. Surrounded by his students, he was talking about the artists at the exhibition and their paintings. Suddenly his main opponent, Vladimir Serov, approached him: ‘You have spoken about all the paintings here apart from my works. Why?’ Punin looked at him with his sharp eyes and said: ‘Because I was talking about art . . .’ Perhaps not surprisingly, Serov would never forgive this slight. Later on, in discussing this exhibition, Punin said: ‘Whether or not our government likes it, our art will have to take modern Western European art into account.’29 After Punin’s arrest in 1949, Vladimir Serov told the prosecutor about this bold phrase from Nikolay Nikolayevich’s speech, and added that when the stenographer gave Punin his speech for correction, he did not want to change it. Even when he was told that it was inappropriate to leave such a phrase in the stenographic copy, he crossed out the word ‘government’ and wrote ‘governing board’. Now it looked as if he was holding the board of the Union of Artists, rather than the whole Soviet government, accountable for bad Soviet art. At his questioning in connection with Punin’s case, Serov also quoted Punin’s other phrase from his earlier speech ‘Impressionism and Paintings’: Soviet art is a backward art, while contemporary Western European art, such as art of Picasso, and also the art of Western Europe of the beginning of the 20th century, such as art of Cézanne and Van Gogh, are the highest achievements of contemporary culture.30

When in 1947, Punin’s students from the University asked him to correct their speeches which they had written for a conference at the Jubilee exhibition organised by the Union of Artists, he refused to look at their papers, saying that he did not want to ruin their future by imposing his views on them. He added that he did not want to see this exhibition either, since such art could disqualify him as an art-historian.31 28 Ibid. 29 From the interrogation of V. Serov in connection with Punin’s case from 21 November 1949, Punin’s family archive; also in Diary, p. 218. 30 Ibid., p. 219. 31 Boris Bernshtein, O Punine, in the journal ‘Vyshgorod’, (Tallinn: Institute ‘Otkrytoe obshchestvo’, 1998), p. 208.



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In February 1947, Punin wrote a declaration to the board of the Leningrad Section of the Union of Soviet Artists (LOSKh), in which he asked them to exclude him from membership of the Union. Talking about the accusations against him, Punin called them ‘unfounded in the majority or cases’ or ‘evoked by a tendentious desire not to understand him’. He also blamed Serov for misinterpretation of his thoughts and words. In this declaration Punin stated: I do not consider artists, even if they are members of LOSKh, infallible gods, who cannot be touched and if I defined some works as fit for the drawing room and others as an encroachment on art, then I have my bases for that, and I am prepared to defend my opinion before any competent arbitration.32

Punin admitted that he did not talk about the ideological level of the paintings exhibited at LOSKh because their quality was too low even to mention their content. He also complained about Serov’s rude tone in his speeches against Punin, ‘close to that in which hawkers at the market converse’. He finished his declaration by saying: No matter what I have said, or how mistaken my judgments may have been at times, I never gave anyone cause to think that any interests other than the interests of art were directing me. Therefore, I do not want to and should not endure rude insults or any kinds of tendentious fabrications directed at me any longer.33

Punin handed this declaration to the LOSKh official Anna Zhirnovaya, who decided to hold on to this document and later persuaded Nikolay Nikolayevich to change his mind and retain his LOSKh membership. In the Soviet Union one had to be a member of at least one official organization in order to keep a flat, get paid and simply survive. However, whether he was a member of the Artists Union or not, from 1947 onwards, Punin was banished from any meetings or discussions about LOSKh exhibitions. He was still giving lectures at the State University, leading a course titled ‘Introduction to the studies of art’, teaching his students about composition, lines and colours in painting. In his course Punin was using the book ‘The main definition of the history of art’ by Heinrich Wölfflin, which was strictly banned in the Soviet Union and was called by students the ‘under-table book of every art historian’.

32 Diary, p. 211. 33 Ibid., p. 212.

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The students adored Punin, and many years later one of his students, Boris Bernshtein, recalled: In our eyes, Punin was a prophet, a consecrated pagan priest of Art—not through his position, not because of his extensive knowledge, but by the special revelation and blessing given to him. We were listening to his speeches, wherever he was making them, whomever he was talking to, whether it was a lecture, or a seminar or anything else—we ran to the sound of Punin’s voice. And we were right—his voice was broken in the middle of the sentence.34

Vladimir Serov, essentially a jealous sycophant who ruined many a progressive artist and art critic, could not allow his main rival to influence the views of “his” students. In 1948, he wrote an article in the newspaper Smena, in which he wrote about Punin’s formalist and cosmopolitan35 impositions on the young generation. This article was followed by many letters to Punin from his braver students. In one of them his second year students wrote: You are our teacher and we need you more than anyone else. You teach us to see and to feel. You reveal all the richness of your delicate and deep soul to us, you help us to understand all that which is beautiful, and we are enormously grateful to you for it. Why should we care whether you made mistakes in your views 30 years ago or not?! Why should we care if someone, full of malice, is trying to find in your words non-existent harm and slander?! You are teaching us now, and your words are opening the great context of art and power of art to us.36

They wrote to Punin that nothing will change their respect for him, and that, despite all the ‘rancour of people’ who are ‘much lower’ than him, Nikolay Nikolayevich will always remain their beloved teacher. Another letter from his third-year students stated that Punin awoke in them ‘thought and aspiration to feel, understand and love art even more strongly’. They

34 Boris Bernshtein, O Punine, pp. 210–211. 35 Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community. This is contrasted with communitarian theories, in particular the ideologies of patriotism and nationalism. ‘Acknowledging the otherness of those who are culturally different’—is also the core principle of cosmopolitanism and in the Soviet Union it was against the communist ideology. 36 In MSL, pp. 410–411.



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added that if they achieve anything in the history of art, it will only be thanks to Punin.37 But despite all the love and devotion of his students, on 15th April 1949, Nikolay Nikolayevich was now also fired from the State University ‘as someone who could not ensure the ideological-political education of the student body.’38 Punin’s dismissal was preceded by an article written by a journalist called Dzhakov, one of Serov’s friends, and published in the Leningradskaya Pravda. It was called ‘Formalists and aesthetes in the role of critics’. Here Punin was called ‘an ideological leader’ of those critics, who “propagandize the ‘achievements’ of formalist bourgeois art and reject the leading role of Soviet art, and of the great significance of the inheritance of democratic Russian artists of the 19th century.”39 Dzhakov blamed Punin for ‘spoiling the consciousness of young people through his propaganda of the bourgeois aesthetics and cosmopolitism’.40 Cosmopolitism—that frightening word was used here once again. And soon Serov developed this view in his article in another newspaper, Vechernii Leningrad ‘To the future blossoming of art’, by calling Punin ‘a preacher of the reactionary idea of art for the sake of art’.41 After such criticism from the head of the Union of Artists and the sycophantic media, Punin’s dismissal from the University was inevitable: The point of ‘criticism and self-criticism’, Great Purges style, was collective discovery of a hidden enemy within the ranks, usually one of the leaders of the institution. The outcome was not generally predetermined; the implicit requirement was only that a scapegoat should be found, and that he should not be an insignificant person whom the institution could easily sacrifice.42

Together with Punin, the Leningrad State University ‘sacrificed’ its rector. He was the brother of Nikolay Voznesenky, a Deputy Premier and protégé of Andrei Zhdanov. After the war, Voznesensky’s ideas on managing Soviet economic activity had become at odds with Stalin’s views,

37 Ibid., p. 411. 38 See translation of the Order of the Main Administration of Universities of the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR in the Diary, p. 212. 39 K. Dzhakov, Formalists and aesthetes in the role of critics, ‘Leningradskaya pravda’, No. 48, 1949 in MSL, pp. 414–415. 40 Ibid., p. 415. 41 In MSL, p. 423. 42 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary life in extraordinary times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, p. 200.

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and he fell under persecution during the so-called Leningrad Affair.43 He was declared guilty of treason and sentenced to death after his rivals and colleagues condemned him at a show trial. The dismissal of his brother from a leading position at the University was inevitable. But one scapegoat was not enough for the ideologists of the Communist religion, and several leading professors, including Punin, were also dismissed. In her diary, Pasternak’s cousin, Olga Freidenberg wrote that in 1949, the best professors had been dismissed, and the ones who managed to survive were dying of strokes and heart attacks: The lives of scientists and scholars were poisoned. . . . A meeting of the Philology Department was called to ‘discuss’ persecution. A similar meeting had been held at the Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Literature. All the professors were put to shame. . . . Any reference to works by foreign scholars was dubbed ‘cosmopolitanism’, a term fraught with dire political consequences.44

Nikolay Nikolayevich was left without any means of subsistence, and at the beginning of July, applied for a state pension.45 In July, his daughter and granddaughter went to stay with his brother’s family in Pumpuri, and Punin was left to work on his dissertation in the company of Akhmatova and his cat, Andromeda. He was trying not to fall into despair, but in the beginning of August his beloved cat, brought back from evacuation in 1944, died, and that seemed to be his main concern for some time. He wrote in the letter to his girls, Irina and Anechka: ‘I am in grief and even from time to time I want to cry. For such a short time she [the cat] shared her beauty with this world.’46 Of course, apart from missing his cat, Punin could not help noticing all the black clouds on his own horizon. Somehow still feeling optimistic, he tried to write letters to officials, asking them to re-instate him at the

43 The Leningrad Affair, or Leningrad case (‘Ленинградское дело’ in Russian, or Leningradskoye delo), was a series of ‘criminal’ cases fabricated in the late 1940s–early 1950s, in order to accuse a number of prominent members of the Communist Party of ‘treason’ and ‘intention’ to create an anti-Soviet organization out of the Leningrad Party cell. As a result of these purges, about 2,000 of Leningrad’s public figures were removed from leadership and over 200 of them were repressed together with their relatives. In 1950, six Leningrad party leaders (N. Voznesensky, M. Rodionov, A. Kuznetsov, P. Popkov, Y. Kapustin, P. Lazutin) were executed by shooting, for which purpose Stalin’s government reinstated the death penalty in the Soviet Union. 44 Olga Freidenberg, quoted in AA, p. 430. 45 See MSL, p. 416. 46 Letter of 2 August 1949, MSL, p. 417.



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Academy of Arts and at the University. Someone recommended him to give a bribe but he refused, fearing provocation. On 25th August 1949, awaiting the return of his beloved daughter and granddaughter, Punin asked them in a letter if they would like him to meet them at the station and what should he cook for their arrival.47 But he never saw them again. One day later, on 26th August 1949, Nikolay Nikolaevich Punin was arrested. This arrest could not have been unexpected by him, since by then, 18 of his colleagues from the University had already been arrested. However he tried to remain calm and optimistic. He wrote a note to Irina, Anya and Tika: ‘I kiss you, I kiss all three of you. I am not losing hope. Papa.’48

With a small, brown, leather ‘doctor’s bag’, Punin walked out of his apartment to proceed on a journey into the land of no return. Akhmatova, who was at home at the time of his arrest, dedicated a ‘Lullaby’ to him: Over this cradle I am bending like a black fir. Bai, bai, bai, bai, Ai, ai, ai, ai . . . I don’t spy a falcon Neither far nor near. Bai, bai, bai, bai! Ai, ai, ai, ai.49

Up until Punin’s birthday in November that year, everyone was trying to keep his arrest as a secret from the young pioneer, the inquisitive but vulnerable Anechka. She was told that her beloved ‘papa’ had gone on a business trip and would be back soon, but when she started preparing a secret birthday party for him, her mother had to tell her the bitter truth. Even talking about these terrifying events now, Anna Genrichovna has tears in her eyes. Only 10 years old at the time of Punin’s arrest, she found it hard to comprehend why her most righteous and truthful ‘papa’ was arrested. She kept saying: ‘It can’t be right—only burglars and murderers go to prison!’ Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote about Punin’s fall into the disfavour of the officials:

47 See Punin’s letter of 25 August 1949 in MSL, p. 418. 48 MSL, p. 418. 49 In AA, p. 431.

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chapter eleven According to my information, Punin’s downfall was brought about by mediocre artists who looked askance not so much at his understanding of contemporary art as at his views on the history of painting.50

In Stalin’s Russia, people were frequently arrested and shot as a result of a personal vendetta. Punin’s criticism of Vladimir Serov, then the president of LOSKh and from 1963, president of the Academy of Arts, became a good enough reason for his dismissal from all positions, his arrest and eventual sentence to ten years in a labour camp. Not for the first, nor the last time in the history of humanity, a genius was destroyed by mediocrity: Eternal and not manufactured, Renowned not according to plan, Outside schools and systems, he has not Been foisted upon us by man.51

50 Mandelstam II, p. 453. 51 Boris Pasternak, The Wind (Four fragments on Blok), 1956, trans. by Lydia Pasternak Slater, in ‘Boris Pasternak. Poems’, (Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1990), p. 277.

Chapter Twelve

BITTER END You can pray freely But just so God alone can hear.1 When horses die, they exhale When grasses die, they dry up When suns die, they burn out When people die, they sing songs. (V. Khlebnikov)2

1. The Final Arrest and Interrogations Punin was right to expect the political situation after the Second World War might get worse rather than better—at the end of the 1940s, Stalin suggested that ‘it was necessary in the wake of the victory over fascism to jail more people more energetically than ever before’.3 The Gulag—an acronym for Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitelno-Trudovikh Lagerei—The Main Administration of Corrective-Labour Camps—was created in 1930, as an administrative department within the Soviet secret police. However, this acronym soon became synonymous with the forced labour camps themselves which were scattered throughout Russia— ‘they crisscrossed and patterned that other country within which it was located, like a gigantic patchwork, cutting into its cities, hovering over its streets.’4 By 1950, the Gulag formed an invisible country within the Soviet Union—a separate republic, any mention of which was strictly prohibited. It incorporated over 476 separate camp complexes, containing numerous smaller units.5

1 This verse was written by T. Khodkevich, who received a ten-year sentence for it. Quoted in Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p. 23. 2 Quoted in Punin’s diary of 28 August 1919, p. 57. 3 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p. 36. 4 Ibid., p. xvi. 5 See list of names of 476 camps and complexes in Kokurin A. I., Petrov N. V. eds., GULAG, 1917–1960: Documenty, (Moscow, 2000).

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In her book ‘The Unknown Gulag’, Professor Lynne Viola estimates that the Gulag population reached its largest numbers in the early 1950s with roughly 2.5 million inmates. Overall, as many as 12 to 14 million people passed in and out of the Gulags between 1934 and 1944, and no less than 1.5 million people died in them in the years between 1930 and 1956.6 The social profile of Gulag inmates varied from the most distinguished philosophers and scientists, to those peasants who did not want to conform. Alexander Solzhenitsyn defined the profile of prisoners who were arrested between 1948 and 1950: • Alleged spies (ten years earlier they had been German and Japanese, now they were Anglo-American). • Believers (this wave, non-Orthodox for the most part). • Those geneticists and plant breeders, disciples of the late Vavilov and of Mendel, who had not previously been arrested. • Just plain ordinary thinking people (and students with particular severity) who had not been sufficiently scared away from the West. It was fashionable to charge them with: : VAT—Praise of American Technology; : VAD—Praise of American Democracy; and : PZ—Toadyism toward the West.7

Punin had obviously fallen into the last category, being sentenced for ‘bowing down before the bourgeois art of the West’, and announcing that ‘Russian, even more so, Soviet fine art is only a pitiful reflection of the art of European countries’.8 Following his August 1949 arrest, Nikolay Nikolaevich denied these accusations, saying that he believed that a true artist should not bow down before anything. At his interrogation of 14th September 1949, Punin said: I have not rejected the role of the great Russian heritage and of Russian realistic art as a whole; and I have always highly valued and talked about the work of Surikov, about F. Vasiliev, about most of Repin’s work, and about the Russian Wanderers in my lectures. I also highly valued realists such as P. Sokolov, Fedotov, and others. I was also especially taken with the study of the brilliant Russian artist Aleksandr Ivanov. I worked in the

6 L. Viola, The Unknown Gulag, p. 3. 7 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, pp. 36–37. 8 From the Decree of Punin’s arrest of 11 August 1949, in Diary, p. 216.



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Russian Museum for 19 years and could not fail to appreciate the heritage of Russian realistic art, and I also reject the statement that I worship the formalistic art of the contemporary West. In principle, I think that an artist should not blindly worship anything, but should go his own way, studying the masters who can teach him to make good paintings.9

“Go his own way”—what Punin seemed still not to have grasped—or more likely had given up caring about—was the fact that at that time, in the Communist system, under which personality (other than that of the leader) was condemned, being different and—above all—an independent individual—was a crime in its own right. In ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ Alexander Solzhenitsyn described a district Party conference in the Moscow Province, where after a tribute to Comrade Stalin was announced, people were too afraid to stop clapping. They clapped for more than 10 minutes, since no one dared to be the first to stop. NKVD men were standing in the back of the room, waiting for their victim. When clapping became too painful and completely insane, the most strong-minded man, the director of the paper factory, sat down. Immediately all the enthusiasm had burnt out, the ovations stopped and all attending the meeting sat down in relief. However, for the NKVD it became clear who in the crowd was the most independent, and that same night the director of the paper factory was arrested and sentenced to ten years in a labour camp. Before he was sent off, the interrogator reminded him: ‘Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!’10 Back in the summer of 1940, Nikolay Punin had written: Just as well I do not have any complaints left either about modern life, or things in general, and I can walk down ‘my own path’. On my own. Do you know that ‘on one’s own’—is one of the most severe arguments used by ‘the modern man’ in order to clear some space for himself? Take it a bit further, and such person would sound like ‘an enemy of the people’. Here my account with modern life starts.11

So, nine years after writing these prophetic words, Nikolay Punin was arrested. In a ‘blinding flash which shifts the present into the past and the impossible into omnipotent actuality’,12 he was taken away first to the investigatory prison in Leningrad, and then transferred in January 1950, 9 Originals of the materials of interrogations are held in Punin’s family, trans. in the Diary, p. 217. 10 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, pp. 27–28. 11 Punin, Letters to Martha Golubeva, in MSL, p. 433. 12 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p. 4.

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to the notorious NKVD headquarters with the interrogation cells in its cellars—the Lubyanka, in Moscow. Nadezhda Mandelstam described the shocking change in one’s life caused by arrest, in her book ‘Hope Abandoned’: All intermediate social links, such as family, one’s circle of friends, class, society itself—each abruptly disappeared, leaving every one of us to stand alone before the mysterious force embodied in the State, with its powers of life and death. In ordinary parlance, this was summed up in the word ‘Lubyanka’.13

In the ‘bare, garishly lit ‘boxes’ and cells of the Lubyanka’, ‘the thin barley and oatmeal porridge without a single drop of milk’ was eaten like a ‘sacrament’ or ‘Holy Communion’—slowly, with the tip of a wooden spoon— it spread through one’s body like a ‘nectar’.14 One of Lubyanka’s numerous prisoners, the Futurist poet Nikolay Zabolotsky, who dared to doubt such a ‘masterpiece’ of the Communist regime as the Kolkhoz, was promptly arrested in March 1938. He described the effect of his interrogations: Without food or sleep, under an endless barrage of threats and humiliation, on the fourth day I lost clarity of thought, forgot my name, stopped understanding what was going on around me, and gradually reached the state of numbness when a man cannot be responsible for his actions. I remember that I gathered my remaining spiritual strength to keep from signing lies about myself and others.15

Once arrested, people were humiliated and beaten up, usually without any explanation, let alone any trial. In the summer of 1952, Punin wrote to his daughter Irina from the labour camp: I was sentenced not by a tribunal, but by a special meeting, since there was not enough evidence for a court case; my case is based on the arrest [in 1935], and on cosmopolitanism. For a long time they did not know how to deal with my release in 1935, so they disregarded it. Gumilev damaged me without wanting to; they connected me to his case, although obviously he did not contribute to this. He, himself, was arrested on the basis of a former case. Akuma [Akhmatova] hung by a thread. Probably her poems in ‘Ogonek’ saved her.16

13 Mandelstam II, p. 19. 14 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The first circle, p. 45, p. 38. 15 Quoted in Solomon Volkov, The Magical Chorus, p. 85. 16 Punin’s letter to I. Punina of summer 1952, in MSL, p. 429. In 1950, Akhmatova published a series of poems praising Stalin in the popular magazine ‘Ogonek’. She wrote them



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What distorted logic—‘sentenced not by a tribunal due to a lack of evidence’! Punin was originally condemned only for ideological crimes—his views on contemporary art and his alleged preference for Western European over Russian art. At the Academy of Arts and the University, his former students and remaining colleagues were told that Nikolay Nikolaevich was arrested for making the best Russian artists such as Konstantin Korovin and Marc Chagall emigrate at the time when he was the head of the Petrograd branch of the Department of Visual Arts, after the October Revolution. Punin’s original accusation fell under the almighty Article No. 58. Solzhenitsyn wrote that ‘there is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58 . . .’17 He added that ‘every act of the all-penetrating, eternally wakeful Organs, over a span of many years, was based solely on one Article of the 140 Articles of the non-general division of the Criminal Code of 1926.’18 The Code of Soviet Law had an invisible existence altogether, being unavailable in any library or bookshop. Only devoted, specially ordained priests of the Communist cult were allowed to read it, since none of them wanted the general public to know about such Articles as no. 136, which said: ‘The interrogator does not have the right to extract testimony or a confession from an accused by means of compulsion or threats.’19 However, by 1950, most citizens of the Soviet Union knew about Article 58:10, which said: ‘Propaganda or agitation, containing an appeal for the overthrow, subverting, or weakening of Soviet power . . . and, equally, the dissemination or preparation or possession of literary materials of similar content.’20 Virtually any activity could fall under the sharp axe of this article of law, and most political prisoners in Stalin’s time were spending their lives in prisons and labour camps under this very Article, no. 58. And it was not by accident that for this particular Article only a minimum penalty was set. The upper limit was left to the mercy of the judge. So, although Punin’s main accusations were based on Article 58:10, the vice-prosecutor, Lieutenant Kovalev, suggested that Nikolay Nikolayevich

in an attempt to save her son, who was in a labour camp for the second time after his arrest in 1949. 17 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p. 27. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., p. 57. 20 Ibid., p. 27.

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be sentenced to 25 years.21 At the time, Punin was already 61 years old, but who was worried about such a detail as someone’s age? At the end of November 1949, Nikolay Nikolayevich Punin was now additionally accused of being a member of a terrorist group, which used to have regular meetings in his flat. They were using the testimony of Lev Gumilev, who had also been under arrest since November 6th, 1949. He was accused of ‘terrorist attempts’ against Stalin. This was much more serious than Punin’s original ‘cosmopolitanism’ and it probably became the main reason for Punin’s transfer to Moscow, where Lev was held in the infamous Lefortovo Prison. Nikolay Punin was held for almost nine months in the NKVD’s imposing yellow stone headquarters in central Moscow, ironically named Lubyanka after the pre-revolutionary name of the street on which it stood. Notwithstanding the polished marble and granite inside it and the parquet floors and spotless red runners, the basement of the Lubyanka was formed of a labyrinth of cells and torture chambers, mainly used for political prisoners during the Stalin years. In the few months after Punin’s arrival at this most secret and dangerous address, his testimonies suddenly changed dramatically in tone. In the interrogation of 19th May 1950, it was recorded in the protocol that Punin apparently said that ‘coming from a noble family, Akhmatova and Gumilev perceived the Soviet regime with hostility and for many years to follow were involved in the activities against the Soviet state.’ According to this protocol, the interrogator even quoted Akhmatova’s poems, in which she called Bolsheviks ‘enemies, tearing the earth to pieces’, implying that she was not going in the same direction as the Soviet regime. The protocol also stated that Punin admitted discussing with Akhmatova all his hatred of the Soviet state, as well as holding anti-Soviet meetings in their flat.22 Apparently, Lev Gumilev had also said that both his mother and Punin had often criticized the Soviet government and that in May 1934, Punin was discussing in Akhmatova’s presence his plans to proceed with a terrorist attack on the Head of Soviet people.23 On 14th July 1950, the minister of State Security, V. Abakumov, sent Stalin a letter about the necessity of the urgent arrest of Akhmatova. He used Punin’s and Lev’s witness statements at the interrogations in the 21 See the Bill of Indictment of 26 November 1949. The document is held in Punin’s family archive. 22 Protocol of Punin’s interrogations of 19 May 1950, held in Punin’s family archive. 23 Roman Timenchik, Anna Akhmatova v 1960e godi, p. 303.



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Lubyanka as the main argument for poetess’s immediate arrest.24 However, Stalin had obviously decided that the interrogation and arrest of her son and lover was a strong enough punishment for the sentimental poetess, and did not sanction her arrest. The former Estonian minister of agriculture, Lembit Lüüs, arrested in 1949, on suspicion of “bourgeois nationalism”, was put in Punin’s cell in the Lubyanka in 1950. Somehow managing to survive all his interrogations, he recorded in 1988 that, although the interrogator demanded that Punin sign evidence against Akhmatova, he had refused to say anything.25 The protocol of Punin’s interrogation of 19th May 1950, was typed up, and each page was signed by Punin. So one cannot help wondering at what cost he agreed to sign these horrible documents. Was he bidden to sign these witness reports, or had he already learned by then that the NKVD would always get what it wanted out of their prisoners, and compliance could at least save his life? Remember Article no. 136—‘The interrogator does not have the right to extract testimony or a confession from an accused by means of compulsion and threats.’ This information clearly had to remain secret. Solzhenitsyn wrote that ‘persuasion in a sincere tone’ was the most effective and simple method for getting the ‘evidence’ which was necessary. After the prisoner had seen what happened to those who resisted complying, the interrogator only had to tell him ‘in a lazily friendly way’: Look, you’re going to get a prison term whatever happens. But if you resist, you’ll croak right here in prison, you’ll lose your health. But if you go to the camp, you’ll have fresh air and sunlight. . . . So why not sign right now?26

One way or another, soon after Punin’s fabricated evidence was signed, his sentence was reduced from 25 to 10 years in the labour camp, with the right of correspondence. More than that, due to his age and after a medical examination of his heart (these original documents are in Punin’s family), he was sent to a special camp for disabled people, which was in Northern European Russia rather than Siberia, and was a bit less severe than other camps. Punin was also classified under the ‘category 4’—and was excused from all work.

24 Full text of Abakumov’s letter to Stalin is published in B. Sarnov Stalin i pisateli, book 2, pp. 628–630. 25 In Boris Bernshtein, O Punine, p. 205. 26 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p. 45.

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The fate of many members of intelligentsia was decided by Stalin personally: when he put two vertical lines next to the name of the accused, it meant a ten-year sentence; one line meant execution. Unlike Meyerkhold’s file, Punin’s papers had two lines . . . 2. Life and Death in the Gulag At the beginning of September 1950, Punin was put on one of the freight trains used for carrying prisoners across Russia, heading northwards. On 4th September, he was in tears as they went passed Zagorsk, over Tika Golubeva’s ‘unrealized life’ and the many happy months which they had spent here in the evacuation. Three days later, going through Vologda, he wrote a letter to his beloved Tika: I can’t tell you anything definite now. I have persevered this year because of your love and my love for you. And I am still holding on because of it. That’s all. My health is good. My treatment was impeccable. The most difficult stage is now.27

On 15th September 1950, Nikolay Nikolayevich Punin had reached his final destination—a tiny dot on the Arctic Circle, where the railway ended— the settlement of Abez in the Komi Republic. This camp was built for those prisoners, who, due to old age or bad health could not work in the coal mines at nearby Inti. By 1950, it was already pretty full, but more and more trains with newly-sentenced invalids were arriving, which soon created a shortage of living quarters. Now the most influential prisoners in greatest demand became the head builder and the chief engineer. They were redeveloping a large old barn, which remained from the village and had been in Abez before the secret police originally arrived. Stuck in the middle of endless, monotonous tundra, this camp was shaped like an extended triangle with a number of barracks along its sides, and the big barn in the middle. The whole territory of Abez was crisscrossed by black pipes, supported on poles, which ran from a steam engine sunk in the earth, which carried steam to heat the prisoners’ barracks. In the eastern part of the camp, there was also a special barrack—‘a prison inside the prison’, surrounded by another layer of barbed wire. Unlike some other camps, which were filled with criminals, Abez was built for political prisoners, disabled but nevertheless very dangerous 27 Letter from Punin to M. Golubeva, 7 September 1950, Diary, p. 220.



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‘enemies of the state’. In defiance of all logic, or perhaps a measure of it, the security here was even tighter than in criminal camps. Instead of the high wooden fence, common for most labour camps, Abez was surrounded by several rows of barbed wire; all the barracks had thick iron rods in every window; all the doors were locked every night with large locks from outside, and all the prisoners had numbers stitched to the back of their coats and shirts. When Punin first arrived here, he wrote: ‘If I was asked what hell is like, I would describe this place.’ Initially the newcomers were put in a special section of one of the barracks, which was divided from its other part by a layer of barbed wire. Two days after his arrival in this terrifying place, Nikolay Nikolaevich wrote to Tika: . . . I won’t write you about my case, there’s nothing you don’t already know. My address is: Komi ASSR. Kozhvinsky region, town of Abez, post box 388/16-g. Don’t expect any letters from me in the near future. [Prisoners were allowed to send no more than one letter in six months]. You can write to me in unlimited quantity; so write as much as you can. I can also receive ‘printed matter’, so send me the most interesting papers (the newspaper Socialist Realism, too) and books you think are worth it. I have the right to receive 100 roubles a month . . .28

Punin was freed from all work, and soon he started wondering what to do with all the spare time, a luxury that he never had before. He was hoping to receive books and paints from Leningrad in the near future. But the first month and a half he had to spend in the camp’s hospital, the staff of which consisted of one surgeon, a doctor from Lithuania and a medical student. Nikolay Nikolaevich found this little hospital quite relaxing. Even though it was still part of the labour camp, the intelligent doctors treated their patients like normal human beings rather than numbers, and white walls separated this little world filled with medical smells and noises from the hell surrounding it. Here Punin met Anatoly Vaneev, who had been arrested a few years before him for ‘suspicious poetry’, and forty years later would write a book about life in Abez, and a famous prisoner—the philosopher and metaphysicist, Lev Karsavin. He had been arrested for his religious views when Lithuania, where he lived and taught at the University, became part of the Soviet Union.

28 Letter from Punin to M. Golubeva, 15 September 1950, Diary, p. 220.

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In his book ‘Two years in Abez’, Vaneev described his first impressions of Punin: One day, when the hour of after-lunch rest was already over but when most patients were still in bed, my attention was drawn to a man, who was walking around the wards. He was quite tall. The ordinary patient garb looked on him like the clothes of an elegant dandy: his shirt was buttoned up and neatly tucked into his long underpants, his pants legs were tucked into his socks. In his face the heavy Roman features were combined with an older person’s rounded softness. He suffered from a nervous tic: his eyebrows shook every once in a while, as if he wanted to scare a fly off his face.29

Punin would walk slowly around the ward without looking at anyone, singing to himself in Latin ‘et in saecula saeculorum’, apparently without a care in the world. Vaneev was told that it was an art-historian from Leningrad, who had been accused of being a formalist and cosmopolitan, and soon they became friends. Punin would have daily philosophical and religious discussions with Karsavin, with whom he shared a passion for good strong tea. Vaneev wrote that although Punin was not very religious, he quite liked talking about Christianity, in the manner in which religious books are written. Once he said to Karsavin: ‘We must have sinned quite a lot to be given such a long time for repentance.’30 Like at the time of his childhood, in Abez, Punin took to crossing himself before going to sleep under his blanket, and when one of the prisoners said that talking about religion is old-fashioned and that he had understood when he was sixteen that God did not exist and had never thought about it since, Punin replied: ‘You should not brag about the fact that your development stopped when you were sixteen.’31 But after religious discussions and long hours of rest, the day came when Punin had to leave the protected space of the hospital and step into the reality of the labour camp. He was moved into the so-called ‘barrack with veranda’ which was opposite the hospital, but it took a while before his friends managed to find him there. In a large dark room, filled with the smell of old foot-cloths, 200 people lived side-by-side, sleeping on hard bunk-beds and working during the day. Thanks to regular parcels from Tika, Punin had sufficient supplies

29 Anatoly Vaneev, Dva goda v Abezi. V pamyat’ o L. Karsavine, pp. 17–18. 30 Ibid., p. 27. 31 Ibid., p. 42.



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and enough money to bribe the guards, who made a special separate bed for him. He was even given three mattresses, three pillows and three blankets, since he had inadvertently paid twice for these luxuries before the usual tariff was explained to him. Never losing his sense of humour, he called his special bed ‘Cleopatra’s couch’. He also had enough provisions from home to stay away from the prisoners’ smelly canteen. He used to say that everyone thought that he was Jewish, because he received so many parcels from home. Discussing his sentence with fellow prisoners, Punin said that the real reason for his arrest was not accusations of formalism, but his ‘un-careful use of words’. He recalled saying in one of his lectures at the University: ‘It’s OK—we survived the Tartar’s invasion, and we will outlive this.’32 In the camp he found the fact that he could say what he thought quite liberating. He remembered his discussions with Karsavin at the hospital being like ‘a feast of thoughts’—‘an oasis among the dried cactuses’.33 In the meantime, back in Leningrad, the newspaper Za Sotsialisticheskii Realism [For Socialist Realism], which had been published by the Academy of Arts since 1934, was celebrating the fact that ‘the most vicious enemy of socialist art’, N. Punin, was finally unmasked.34 In the article ‘Harmful formalist book’, a journalist called B. Souris, wrote about the need to immediately ban the text-book ‘History of Western European Art’, edited by Punin in 1940. He criticised Nikolay Nikolayevich for not showing the place of each artist in the class struggle, and for leading students away from the only true way of Socialist Realism. He called Punin’s textbook ‘perverted in its very essence’, and accused him of cosmopolitanism, which apparently was expressed in his ‘rehabilitation’ of Impressionism and his refusal to write about Russian art [was it not supposed to be history of European rather than Russian art?!]. Further, in December 1950, in an article called ‘A programme full of mistakes’, which followed the first page spread under the heading ‘Stalin—is the torch of peace, happiness and freedom’, Punin’s former colleagues, including his student Nissel’shtraus, criticised Punin’s text-book for not mentioning the works of Friedrich Engels, Lenin and Stalin in the chapters on ancient Greek and Roman art. Apparently the editors of the book

32 Ibid., p. 36. 33 Ibid. 34 B. Souris, Vrednaya, formalisticheskaya kniga. Nuzhen novii uchebnik istorii zapadnoevropeiskogo iskusstva, in the newspaper ‘Za sotsialisticheskii realism’, No. 2 (289), 3 January 1950, p. 3.

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forgot to mention Stalin’s words about the role of barbarians and the revolution of slaves in the degeneration of the antique world.35 One just has to hope that Punin at least was spared reading these absurd articles. Despite all the hardships of life in the Gulag, Punin tried to keep his spirits up. He used to say that ‘horror stops being horror when one gets used to it’ and that ‘one should not fall into despair at least to survive’.36 In his second letter to Tika, he wrote: Tika, my dove, my quiet light and comfort. Probably all this is vengeance for the pain I caused you. But in any case, you are always in my heart and I am never and nowhere without you. So, if it is fated for me to die here, I will not die alone. Only it’s strange that I cannot see you or hear you or touch your hand. All the rest is just a hardship that is more or less trivial.37

In this letter, Punin asked Tika to send his daughter his love, and he wrote to his precious granddaughter, Anechka, that he would kiss her for each of the numerous C marks that she had got at school. He used to call Martha Golubeva his ‘saviour’ for sending him books, food and money. He asked her to send him only Shakespeare, Goethe and Dante, since he did not feel like reading anything more contemporary.38 He was also reading Delacroix, and asked her to send him a box of pastels, paper and coloured reproductions of still-lives and landscapes, so that he could paint some pictures for the cafeteria and club. He did not want to read the ever-popular Lev Tolstoy in Abez, saying that ‘his beard sticks out of all his books’, and that how to say something is often more important than what to say.39 Karsavin used to say that Punin was ‘thinking in exclamations’. During one of their numerous discussions about art, Nikolay Nikolayevich said: A work of art should not be just ‘a little bit’ different from the reality. It may portray absolutely nothing. The true purpose of art—is not in reproduction of reality, but in the creation of its own aesthetic reality. Art does not ‘improve’ anything; if so, it would mean that some artist could improve Christ in his work.40 35 Professor N. Fletcher, Associate professors V. Levinson-Lessing, A. Chubova and V. Brodsky, Doctor C. Nisselshtraus, Programma, polnaya oshibok, in the newspaper ‘Za sotsialisticheskii realism’, No. 19 (306), 7 December 1950, p. 4. 36 Anatoly Vaneev, Dva goda v Abezi. V pamyat’ o L. Karsavine, p. 57. 37 Letter from Punin to M. Golubeva, 17 November 1950, Diary, p. 221. 38 See Punin’s letter to A. Kaminskaya, 17 April 1952, Diary, p. 225. 39 Vaneev, p. 79. 40 Ibid., p. 116.



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In the winter of 1951, Tika sent Punin a very precious and hard-to-get second volume of ‘The History of Art’ by Alpatov. Forty years later, Vaneev described how this book, with its beautiful illustrations, printed on good quality paper in Leipzig,41 looked completely out of place next to the old unpainted bunk beds, covered with mattresses filled with wood shavings. Vaneev felt as if this book had arrived here by mistake from another planet. Viktor Vasilenko, a historian and specialist in decorative applied arts who had recently arrived in Abez and was rather depressed by his 25-year sentence,42 looked through this book with envy. Noticing this envious look on his friend’s face, Punin gave the book to him and wrote a short dedication on the title page: ‘To dear Viktor Michailovich Vasilenko in atonement for mutual insults, and for blessed memory.’ After Punin’s death and Viktor Vasilenko’s release from Abez in 1956, he came to see Akhmatova in Leningrad. He brought back the Alpatov’ book with him and returned it to Punin’s daughter, Irina. This amazing book outlived its owner, made the journey back to Leningrad, and is still kept by Punin’s family. However, reading in the over-crowded barracks was not easy. In April 1952, Punin wrote to his granddaughter: Now I can read a little, but during the winter I couldn’t: we had one lamp for 200 people. And it hung from the ceiling at a height of 7 metres. And you know that the moon here sometimes does not rise at all in the winter; it circles the sky, and there’s a lot of sky. There aren’t any houses or towns, and it circles around.43

Unable to read, Punin played chess and, when he was in a good mood, spoke with his inmates about the Bible, art and poetry: When speaking, Punin sat in a grand manner, holding his hands on his walking stick, looking with an unseeing gaze past his conversation partner, but when he was inspired, he could create a vivid picture of what he was talking about.44

During the day both Punin and Karsavin would give lectures to their fellow prisoners about the meaning and significance of the icon of the

41 Punin said that he even envied Alpatov for printing his book in Leipzig, and that he wished he could publish such a book—in Vaneev, p. 58. 42 Punin used to say to him: ‘I can imagine how much black paint will be used for your memoirs.’—in Vaneev, p. 66. 43 Letter from Punin to A. Kaminskaya, 17 April 1952, Diary p. 224. 44 Vaneev, p. 40.

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Virgin Mary of Vladimir, and about the modern icon—Malevich’s ‘Black Square’. At night, though, the grim reality would descend upon them. The guards would regularly wake them up in the middle of the night, line them up and march them to a big pit in the ground, where they used to threaten to throw them once they had been shot. Once they were satisfied by their prisoners’ fear and their own superiority and power over the intelligentsia, the guards would take them back to the barracks. Because of all the hardships and torments that he had to go through, Nikolay Nikolayevich’s eyesight became much worse, and he needed a walking stick not because he had problems with his legs, but because he could not see where he was going. After he asked to be transferred to a less privileged barrack, because it was always empty and quiet during the day, he was bitten in the face for not giving his special handkerchief, which he used for wiping his glasses, to one of the less-privileged prisoners. Having smacked Punin, the attacker took the handkerchief and was about to run away, but after Nikolay Nikolaevich came face-to-face with him (not for confrontation, but just in order to see his face), he was so surprised that he returned the handkerchief, and walked out of the room.45 Even among thieves and criminals, Punin managed to keep his dignity (presumably his life in Petrograd in the first years after the Revolution, helped). Feeling optimistic, he used to say: Life has its own Suprematism. It feels monotonous, but it always brings with it something unexpected. The most important thing is that, when you look into this suddenness, you understand that it was exactly what you were missing all along, that it gave the whole situation the internal harmony and completion.46

He tried to occupy himself by working in the canteen. He sat very straight by the entrance, watching the prisoners taking the clean aluminium spoons from one box and putting the dirty ones into another. When his friend Vaneev asked him why he wanted to do such a tedious job, Punin said that he did not want to be looked on as a nobleman, since they are known for spending days on end doing nothing. However, he soon organised a restaurant, where cooks used to prepare special food using ingredients which were sent to prisoners from home. It was small, but

45 Ibid., pp. 78–79. 46 Ibid., p. 127.



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very tidy and cosy. Punin, who had a special table here, proudly used to invite his friends for dinners in this oasis of civilisation. But every once in a while Punin used to say: ‘Today I lost all sense of proportion’. On these days he would sit quietly, looking into the opened door, smiling at his own thoughts. He was especially missing the trees in his garden at the Fountain House and the columns of the Sheremetev palace. In his letter to young Anya of 11th May 1953, he wrote: ‘I wish I could just touch them with my own hands.’47 Little did he know that after his arrest, the administration of the Arctic Institute, which had moved into the Sheremetiev palace, had tried to evict Akhmatova, Punin’s daughter and granddaughter from the Fountain House. Brave and determined, they held on for more than two years, but in February 1952, the family of the ‘enemy of the people’ had to move out to a communal apartment on Krasnaya Konnitsa Street. On July 1st, 1953, Akhmatova wrote to her son, Lev: . . . Like you, it’s difficult for me to imagine my life in Leningrad since my life in the House on the Fontanka is over. However, the Neva flows on, the Hermitage is standing in its place, the White Nights wander the street and peep into the windows.48

On 6th March 1953, Stalin died. The country came to a standstill. For some people it was the death of God the Father, for others it was the end of a Devil. A month after the demise of Stalin, the Ministry of State Security announced that the secret police had tortured a group of Jewish doctors following false accusations of a plot to murder senior government officials. It became known as the ‘Doctor’s Plot’, and some high-ranking secret police officers were arrested. Soon after this famous case, Lavrentii Beria, the chief of Stalin’s secret police, was also arrested and executed for allegedly being an agent of the Western intelligence services.49 But it would take a while for any change in the Soviet cultural rules to occur, still dominated as it was by Socialist Realism. On 29th June 1953, Punin wrote to Tika:

47 Letter from Punin to A. Kaminskaya, 11 May 1953, MSL, p. 430. 48 Quoted in AA, p. 445. 49 See O. Kalugin, Spy master. My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West, (Smith Gryphon Publishers, London, 1994), p. 16.

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Punin still did not know then that his favourite artist, Vladimir Tatlin, was already dead. He died on 31st May 1953, just under three months after Stalin. He joined several other members of the original group; Malevich had died of prostate cancer in 1935. In December 1941, Filonov had died of starvation in the blockade. He had never sold any of his paintings. The rejected avant-garde, and its heroes, were disappearing into the abyss. Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’ began, and soon most political prisoners were released. But not all of them were lucky enough to survive until this longwished-for moment. On 21st August 1953, at 11.45 am Nikolay Punin died of a sudden heart attack, and was buried in the camp cemetery. He was just one of 1.5 million people who died in the Gulag between 1930 and 1956, and his grave did not even bear his name, but only his number, H 11. Until 1952, all dead prisoners were buried in common graves—50 in each trench. When Punin died, he was buried in a separate grave, but even though a small post with his grave number has miraculously survived, his body was never found, since it was buried in the permafrost, which is recognised to move around. When his granddaughter visited Abez almost forty years after his death, she could only bring back a small stone from the camp, which she placed on Punin’s family grave in Pavlovsk, Nikolay’s true Motherland. One of Punin’s fellow inmates, a simple, uneducated man named Gorbatenko, sent Tika a letter, with numerous grammatical mistakes, telling her about the death of someone who had become his friend, one Nikolay Nikolayevich Punin. When Akhmatova learned about the death of her once-beloved, she wrote a short poem, dedicated to ‘N.P.’: And that heart no longer responds To my voice, exulting and grieving. Everything is over . . . And my song drifts Into the empty night, where you no longer exist.51

50 Letter from Punin to M. Golubeva, 29 June 1953, MSL, p. 431. 51 A. Akhmatova in AA, p. 434.



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Nikolay Punin was only 64 years old when he died. He had managed to fit several lives into this relatively short time, a colourful life in Imperial Russia, Revolution, three arrests, two World wars, the siege of Leningrad, evacuation and the Gulag. Back in 1940, he had written: It is such a happiness to be still alive; I did not expect this; I never thought that I would live for so long. Levushka (the pet-name for Lev) Bruni said to me a long time ago: ‘What an amazing Guardian Angel you have.’ Art does not want to part with me. It still needs me for preaching it in front of the mad people, who have lost it.52

In 1953—the year when both Stalin and Punin died—36 Picassos they held were released by the Soviet museums for exhibition in Italy, and then in Paris. In December 1954, an exhibition of 19th century Dutch and Belgian Art was opened at the Hermitage. For the first time the timeless paintings by Van Gogh, so beloved by Punin, were exhibited. But the real breakthrough happened three years later when first at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and then at the Hermitage museum in Leningrad, the first and the largest exhibition of 19th and 20th century French masters was opened. At the Hermitage this historic exhibition occupied 54 rooms of the Winter Palace, and included more than two thousand works of art, from David to Cézanne. By the cruel irony of his life, Punin did not live to see this ground-breaking exhibition. But one of his students, Anna Izergina (who became a curator there of French paintings of the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries), spoke at its opening. Jealous and greedy Soviet officials may have managed to get rid of Punin, but his followers, his students, continued his mission of educating people in true art. In one of his letters to Tika back in 1951, Punin recounted a novella: . . . When Raphael was finishing his self-portrait, death came for his soul, but since the portrait looked so much like him, death could not tell which was the real Raphael and was about to take the soul from his portrait. ‘Signora,’ Raphael said, ‘take my soul; that one is immortal’.53

Like Raphael in his story, Punin sacrificed his life and his soul for the sake of the art which he loved so much, and which he knew to be immortal. ‘Do not try to do everything you can, I say, but do only the most necessary—the

52 Punin’s letters to M. Golubeva, approx. 1940, in MSL, p. 445. 53 Letter from Punin to M. Golubeva, 19 February 1951, Diary, p. 222.

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only thing that no one else but you can do,’54—he wrote in 1940. For Punin the one and only thing, for the sake of which he lived and died, was art: I am—the eternity and the destiny, something basic, everlasting and enduring, like art itself. I just do not want any system, no system at all, if possible. To be equal with life, to be part of it—a slice of it, made in art.55

In 1957, after the Twentieth Party Congress, following the special request of his relatives, Punin was rehabilitated, but publication of his books and articles was still not permitted for a long time. Even when some of Punin’s articles were finally published in 1976, in Moscow, they were heavily criticised by ‘those with authority’—‘people in the system’, as Punin used to call them—and nothing was available for a further ten years. For fifty years the ‘most respected voice of Russian Futurism’, the man of principles, principles which he never compromised, had been deliberately forgotten. But history likes justice and remembers its true heroes. In 1940, Punin wrote: Art—is a very personal thing—the most personal out of everything that is given to man in life. That is why the love of art is full of passion; it feels like the love of a woman: both have a great desire for eternity. To transform present into the future—is the true purpose of art.56

Nikolay Nikolayevich Punin fulfilled this purpose of art by handing on his understanding of the Russian avant-garde to future generations. Not only did he influence the development of post-revolutionary Russian art, but sacrificed his life in order to pass on the message at the heart of art, especially the avant-garde art, he treasured so much. The main characteristic of Punin’s legacy is that even though he often opposed the cruel reality of the Soviet state which surrounded him, he never let it defeat him.

54 Punin’s letters to M. Golubeva, approx. 1940, in MSL, p. 437. 55 Ibid., p. 436. 56 Ibid., p. 438.

Figure 91. Anna Akhmatova. C. 1938.

Figure 92. Martha Golubeva (Tika), 1930s.

Figure 93. Photograph of Nikolay Punin given by him to Tika, c. 1938.

Figure 94. Nikolay Punin with his students after the trip to the Russian Museum, 1939.

Figure 95. The Passes of the inhabitants of Punin’s apartment in the Fountain House—Irina Punina, Ana Akhmatova and Nikolay Punin, c. 1946–1947.

Figure 96. Nikolay Punin with students and academics of the State University in Leningrad, c. 1946.

Figure 97. Nikolay Punin with Sergey Konstantinovich Isakov, step father of Lev Bruni and the owner of Apartment No. 5, c. 1946.

Figure 98. Nikolay Punin at a meeting of the Union of Artists, c. 1947.

Figure 99. The staircase at the Fountain House, which bid farewell to Nikolay Punin in August 1949.

Figure 100. Nikolay Punin after his final arrest in 1949. Photographs from his KGB file. c. 1950.

Figure 101. The NKVD (later renamed the KGB and now FSB) headquarters in Moscow, known as the ‘Lubyanka’.

Figure 102. Proof of receipt of a parcel, signed by Nikolay Punin on 6th November 1952.

Figure 103. List of the items sent to Nikolay Punin in one of many parcels from Leningrad.

Figure 104. Letter from Nikolay Punin, sent from Abez to Tika, “corrected” by the censor, 8th November 1950.

Figure 105. Nikolay Punin’s fellow prisoner, the philosopher Lev Karsavin (1882–1952).

Figure 106. Nikolay Punin’s fellow prisoner, the Physicist, A. A. Vaneev, author of the book ‘Two years in Abez’.

Figure 107. The cemetery in Abez, where Nikolay Punin was buried, c. 1956. Photo by V. Shimkunas.

Figure 108. Remains of the prison cemetery in Abez, 2007, Courtesy of the centre ‘Memorial’, St. Petersburg.

Figure 109. Memorial cemetery in Abez, 2007, Courtesy of the centre ‘Memorial’, St. Petersburg.

Figure 110. Memorial at the place of Nikolay Punin’s burial with the original metal number plate “X-11” which marked his grave after his death in 1953, 2007, Courtesy of the centre ‘Memorial’, St. Petersburg.

Figure 111. Final testament of Vladimir Serov against Nikolay Punin, in which he blames Punin for being an ideologist of ‘left art’, and a preacher of the reactionary idea of ‘art for art’s sake alone’, 21st November 1949.

Figure 112. A stone brought by Nikolay Punin’s family from Abez to his family grave in Pavlovsk.

Figure 113. The second volume of the text book on history of art with the inscription by Nikolay Punin: ‘To dear Viktor Mikhailovich Vasilenko in atonement for all the resentment of Abez. In blessed memory. May 1951, Nikolay Punin, Abez’. It was returned to Punin’s daughter after his death.

Bibliography of Published Writings of N. Punin 1913 ‘K probleme vizantiiskogo iskusstva’ [‘The problem of Byzantine Art’], Apollon, 1913, No. 3, pp. 17–25. ‘Vizantiiskaya vystavka rabot’ [‘Exhibition of Byzantine Works’], Apollon, 1913, No. 4, pp. 42–43. ‘K risunkam M. A. Vrubelya’ [‘The drawings of M. A. Vrubel’], Apollon, 1913, No. 5, pp. 5–14 (also published as V. Dmitriev, N. Punin ‘Risunki Vrubelya’, St. Petersburg: Publishing House of Apollon, 1913, pp. 1–14). ‘Vystavka drevnerusskogo iskusstva (ustroennaya Moskovskim arkheologicheskim institutom)’ [‘Exhibition of old Russian art (organised by the Moscow archaeological institute)’], Apollon, 1913, No. 5, pp. 39–42. ‘Novye priobreteniya Muzeya Imperatora Alexandra III’ [‘New acquisitions of the Museum of the Emperor Alexander III’], Apollon, 1913, No. 6, pp. 52–53 (signed N. P.). ‘Puti sovremennogo iskusstva (po povodu “Stranits khudozhestvennoi kritiki” Sergeya Makovskogo) [‘Ways of Modern Art (about “Pages of art criticism” by Serhey Makovskiy)’], Apollon, 1913, No. 9, pp. 52–61. ‘Puti sovremennogo iskusstva i russkaya ikonopis’’ [‘The paths of modern art and Russian icons’], Apollon, 1913, No. 10, pp. 44–50. ‘Ee Imperatorskomu Velichestvu Feodore, imreratriitse Romeiskoi (Stikhi o mozaike VI veka tserkvi sv. Vitaliya v Ravenne)’ [‘To her Imperial Highness Feodora, the Empress of Rome (Poem about the mosaics in the VI c. church of St. Vitaliy in Ravenna)’], Giperborei, St. Petersburg, 1913, No. IX–X, pp. 37–38. Review: article by A. P. Ivanov ‘Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel. Opyt biografii. Akademiya i Kievskii period’ [‘M. A. Vrubel. Experience of biography. Academy and Kiev period’] (Publishing house of the mag. Iskusstvo, 1912), Apollon, 1913, No. 4, pp. 69–70. 1914 ‘Zametki ob ikonakh iz sobraniya N. P. Likhacheva’ [‘Notes on the icons in the collection of N. P. Likhachev’], in the book Russkaya ikona, sbornik 1, Petrograd: t-vo R.Golike i A.Vilborg, 1914, pp. 21–47. ‘Ellinism i vostok v ikonopisi. Po povodu sobraniya ikon I. S. Ostroukhova I S. P. Ryabushinskogo’ [‘Hellenism and the East in icon-painting. About the collection of icons of I. S. Ostroukhov and S. P. Ryabushinsky’], in the book Russkaya ikona, sbornik 3, Petrograd: t-vo R.Golike i A.Vilborg, 1914, pp. 181–197. ‘V. A. Serov (Po povodu posmertnoi vystavki ego proizvedenii) [‘V. A. Serov (About the late exhibition of his works)’], Severnye zapiski, 1914, January, pp. 104–111. ‘Pamyati grafa Vasiliya Alekseevicha Komarovskogo (Nekrolog)’ [‘To the memory of count Vasilii Alekseevich Komarovskii (Obituary)’], Apollon, 1914, No. 6–7, pp. 86–89. ‘Problema zhizni v poezii I. Annenskogo’ [‘The poblem of life in the poetry of I. Annensky’], Apollon, 1914, No. 10, pp. 47–50. Review: ‘Sofiya. Zhurnal iskusstva i literatury’ [‘Sofiya. Journal of art and literature’], 1914, January, No. 1, Severnye zapiski, 1914, January, pp. 214–216. Review: Eugene Fromanten, ‘Starye mastera. Bel’giya-Gollandiya’ [‘Old masters. BelgiumHolland’], transl. by N. Sobolevsky (Moscow: Problemi estetiki, 1914); Fromanten, ‘Starinnye mastera’ [‘Old masters’], transl. by G. Kepinov (St. Petersburg: Gryadushiy den’, 1914), Severnye zapiski, 1914, January, pp. 217–218.

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Review: Igor Grabar, ‘Russkie khudozhniki. Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo’ [‘Russian artists. V. A. Serov. Life and work’] (Moscow: I. Knebel’); N. E. Radlov ‘Serov’ (St. Petersburg: N. I. Butkovskaya), Severnye Zapiski, 1914, February, pp. 188–189. Review: German Grimm, ‘Michelangelo Buonarroti’, transl. by V. G. Malachieva-Mirovich, vip. 1–2 (St. Petersburg: Gryadushiy Den’, 1913), Severnye Zapiski, 1914, February, pp. 189–190. Review: G. Vel’flin, ‘Renessans i barokko’ [‘Renaissance and baroque’], transl. by E. Lundberg, (St. Petersburg: Gryadushiy Den’, 1913), Severnye Zapiski, 1914, February, pp. 190–191. Review: ‘Sofiya. Zhurnal iskusstva i literatury’, [‘Sophiya. Journal of art and literature’], 1914, February, No. 2, Severnye Zapiski, 1914, March, pp. 192–193. Review: G. K. Solomon ‘Giotto di Bondone. Epokha rannego Renessansa’ [‘Giotto di Bondone. Époque of Early Renaissance’], (St. Petersburg: Gryadushiy Den’, 1914), Severnye Zapiski, 1914, June, pp. 195–196. Review: ‘Sovremennii Rim’ [‘Modern Rome’], sbornik statei (Moscow, 1914), part two ‘Arkheologiya i Iskusstvo’, Severnye Zapiski, June, p. 197. Review: German Grimm, ‘Michelangelo Buonarroti’, transl. by V. G. Malachieva-Mirovich, vip. 3–4 (St. Petersburg: Gryadushchii Den’, 1914), Severnye Zapiski, 1914, August– September, pp. 251–252. Review: Lui Gurtik ‘Frantsiya’ [‘Fantasy’], transl. by N. Sobolevskii, ed. By A. M. Afros (Moscow: Problemi Estetiki, 1914), Severnye Zapiski, 1914, August–September, p. 252. Review: Ippolit Ten ‘Puteshestvie po Italii’ [‘Journey around Italy’], v.1 ‘Neapol’ i Rim’ [‘Naples and Rome’], transl. by P. P. Perzov (Moscow: Nauka, 1913), Severnye Zapiski, 1914, October–November, pp. 323–324. Review: ‘Michelangelo Buonarroti. Perepiska I Zhizn’ Mastera, napisannaya evo uchenikom Askanio Kondivi’ [‘Michelangelo Buonarroti. Correspondence and life of the master, written by his pupil Askanio Kondivi’], transl. by M. Pavlinova (Petrograd: Shipovnik, 1914), Severnye Zapiski, 1914, October–November, pp. 324–325. Review: P. Muratov ‘Drevnerusskaya ikonopis’ v sobranii I. S. Ostroukhova’ [‘Old Russian icons in the collection of I. S. Istroukhov’], (Moscow: K. F. Nekrasov, 1914), Severnye Zapiski, 1914, October–November, pp. 325–326. Review: ‘Sofiya. Zhurnal iskusstva i literatury’, [‘Sofiya. Journal of art and literature’], 1914, June, No. 6, Severnye Zapiski, 1914, December, pp. 175–176. 1915 ‘Yaponskaya gravura’ [‘Japanese engravings’], Petrograd: Publishing House of Apollon, 1915 (also published in the magazine Apollon, 1915, No. 6–7, pp. 1–35). ‘Andrei Rublev’, Apollon, 1915, No. 2, pp. 1–23. ‘Vystavka V. I. Denisova’ [‘Exhibition of V. I. Denisov’], Apollon, 1915, No. 3, p. 58. ‘Vystavka tserkovnoi stariny v muzee Shtiglitsa’ [‘Exhibition of church antiques in the Shtiglits museum’], Apollon, 1915, No. 4–5, pp. 93–94. ‘Po Vystavkam (Obzor sovremennoi russkoi zhivopisi)’ [‘Around the exhibitions (Review of the contemporary Russian painting)’], Severnye Zapiski, 1915, May–June, pp. 147–155. ‘Tri khudozhnika. 1. Risunki Borisa Grigorieva; 2. N. Sapunov; 3. Poslednie proizvedeniya N. Krimova’ [‘Three artists. 1. Drawings by Boris Grigoriev; 2. N. Sapunov; 3. Last works by N. Krimov’], Apollon, 1915, No. 8–9, pp. 1–14. ‘Pis’mo v redaktsiu (Po povodu stat’i o yaponskoi gravure)’ [‘Letter to the publishers (about the article on the Japanese engravings’], Apollon, 1915, No. 8–9, p. 127. ‘P. A. Fedotov (1815–1915)’, Severnye Zapiski, 1915, September, pp. 94–99. ‘Remi de Gurmon (Nekrolog)’ [‘Remi de Gurmon (Obituary)’], Severnye Zapiski, 1915, October, pp. 223–224. ‘Mir Iskusstva (Obzor vystavki)’ [‘World of Art (Review of the exhibition)’], Severnye Zapiski, 1915, November–December, pp. 211–216.



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Review: Mokler ‘Impressionism, ego istoriya, ego estetika, ego mastera’ [‘Impressionism. Its history, its aesthetics, its masters’], transl. by F. I. Rerberg, 2nd edition (Moscow: Yu. I. Lepkovskiy), Severnye Zapiski, 1915, February, pp. 224–225. Review: Sh. Dil’ ‘Po beregam Severnogo morya’ [‘On the shores of the Northern Sea’], transl. by O. Annenkova (Moscow: M. and S. Sabashnikovi, 1915), Severnye Zapiski, 1915, February, pp. 225–226. Review: ‘Leonardo da Vinci. Florentiiskie chteniya’ [‘Leonardo da Vinci. Florentine readings’], transl. by I. A. Maevskiy (Moscow: I. A. Maevskiy, 1914), Severnye Zapiski, 1915, March, pp. 182–183. Review: Vernon Li ‘Italiya. Izbrannie stranitsy’ [Italy. Selected pages’], transl. by E. Urenius, ed. By P. Muratov (Moscow: M. and S. Sabashnikovi, 1914), Severnye Zapiski, 1915, March, pp. 183–184. Review: Viktor Nikol’skii ‘Istoriya Russkogo Iskusstva’ [‘History of Russian Art’], v. 1 (Moscow: I. D. Sitin, 1915), Severnye Zapiski, 1915, October, pp. 227–229. Review: A. Gidoni ‘N. K. Roerich’ (Petrograd: Apollon, 1915), Severnye Zapiski, 1915, October, p. 229. Review: Ya. Tugendkhol’d ‘Problemy i kharakteristiki. Sbornik khudozhestvennokriticheskikh statei’ [‘Problems and characteristics. Anthology of articles on art criticism’], (Petrograd: Apollon, 1915), Severnye Zapiski, 1915, October, pp. 229–230. Review: Romen Rollan ‘Michelangelo’, transl. by A. Zarzhevskaya, ed. By P. Yushkevich (Petrograd: M. Yu. Semenov, 1915), Apollon, 1915, No. 10, pp. 74–75. 1916 ‘Andrei Rublev’, Petrograd: publishing house of Apollon, 1916 (24 pages). ‘N. Sapunov (khudeozhestvenno-kriticheskaya kharakteristika)’ [‘N. Sapunov (artistic and critical characteristic)’], in the book ‘N. N. Sapunov’, Petrograd: publishing house of Apollon, 1916, pp. 17–20. ‘Otkritoe pis’mo A. N. Benois (kritika khudozhestvennogo napravleniya Mira Iskusstva)’ [‘Open letter to A. N. Benois (criticism of the artistic direction of the World of Art’], Rech’, Petrograd, 1916, 11 March, No. 69, p. 5 (columns 5–7). ‘Po vystavkam (Souz Russkikh Khudozhnikov i Mir Iskusstva)’ [‘Around the exhibitions (Union of Russian Artists and World of Art’], Severnye Zapiski, 1916, March, pp. 110–117. ‘Risunki neskol’kikh “molodykh” ’ [‘Drawings of several “youngsters” ’] (N. A. Altman, P. I. L’vov, P. V. Miturich, N. A. Tirsa, l. A. Bruni, M. K. Sokolov), Apollon, 1916, No. 4–5, pp. 1–20. ‘V. I. Surikov (Nekrolog)’ [‘V. I. Surikov (Obituary)], Severnye Zapiski, 1916, June, pp. 216– 217. ‘Vystavka sovremennoi russkoi zhivopisi. (Obzor)’ [‘Exhibition of contemporary Russian painting. (Review)’], Severnye Zapiski, 1916, December, pp. 24–26. Review: Alexander Benois ‘Istoriya zhivopisi vsekh vremen i narodov’ [‘History of painting of all times and peoples’], part I ‘Peizazhnaya zhivopis’. Peizazh do chinkvechento’ [‘Landscape painting. Landscape before cinquecentro’], V. 1 (Petrograd: Shipovnik, 1916), Severnye Zapiski, 1916, January, pp. 287–290. Review: ‘Tablitsa i ukazatel’ glavnikh zhivopistsev Evropi s 1200 po 1800 godi’ [‘Tables and guide of the major European painters from 1200 to 1800’], compiled by Count Vasiliy Komarovsky, Apollon, 1916, No. 4–5, p. 87. Review: Kon-Viner ‘Istoriya stilei izyashchnykh iskusstv’ [‘History of styles in Fine Arts’], 2nd edition, transl. by M. S. Sergeev (Moscow: Kosmos, 1916), Severnye Zapiski, 1916, July–August, pp. 243–244. Review: G. Maspero ‘Egipet’ [‘Egypt’], transl. by N. D. Gal’perin (Moscow: Problemi estetiki, 1915), Severnye Zapiski, 1916, July–August, pp. 244–245. Review: P. N. Stolpyanskii ‘Dom knyagini M. A. Shakhovskoi’ [‘House of Duchess M. A. Shakhovskaya’], (1916), Severnye Zapiski, 1916, October, p. 181.

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Review: Sharl’ Dil ‘Vizantiiskie portrety’ [‘Byzantium portraits’], vol. 2, issue 2, transl. by O. Rumer (Petrograd: Univesal’naya biblioteka), Severnye Zapiski, 1916, October, pp. 183–184. 1917 ‘V zashchitu zhivopisi (k “Vistavke sovremennoi russkoi zhivopisi”)’ [In the defence of painting (to “The Exhibition of contemporary Russian painting”)’], Apollon, 1917, No. 1, pp. 61–64. 1918 ‘Protiv tsivilizatsii’ [‘Against civilization’], written with E. Poletaev; introduction by A. V. Lunacharsky, Petrograd, 1918, (138 pages). ‘V zashchitu svobody iskusstva’ [‘In the defence of the freedom of art’], Petrogradskaya Pravda, 1918, 16 June, No. 125, pp. 3–4. ‘K voprosu o vospitatel’nom znachenii istoricheskogo materiala’ [‘On the question of the educational importance of historical material’], Vestnik narodnogo prosveshcheniya Souza komunn Secernoi oblasti, Petrograd, 1918, August, No. 1, pp. 29–33. ‘Vmesto predisloviya’ [‘Instead of the introduction’], in the book ‘Lunacharsky ob iskusstve’—a speech made at the ceremony, dedicated to the opening of the Petrograd Free Artistic Studios (PEGOSKhUM) on 10 October 1918, Petrograd: Publishing House of IZO Narkompross, pp. 3–7. ‘K itogam oktyabr’skikh torzhestv. (Ob oformlenii massovikh prazdnestv)’ [‘To the outcomes of October festivities. (About the decorations of the mass celebrations)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1918, 7 December, No. 1, p. 2. Signed ‘N. P.’ ‘Popytki restavratsii otzhivshei kul’tury khudozhestvennoi reakziei’ [‘Attempts of restoration of the dead culture through the artistic reaction’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1918, 7 December, No. 1, p. 3. ‘O “Misterii Buff ” V. Mayakovskogo’ [‘About the “Mystery Buff ” By V. Mayakovsky’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1918, 15 December, No. 2, pp. 2–3. ‘Bombometanie i organizatsiya. (O “Futurisme” i ob organizovannom khudozhestvennom stroitel’stve)’ [‘Bomb throwing and organisation. (About “Futurism” and creating organised art’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1918, 15 December, No. 2, p. 3. Signed ‘N. P.’ This article was also published in the book ‘Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let. Materialy i dokumenty’, ed. by I. Mats, Moscow-Leningrad: Ogiz-Izogiz, 1933, pp. 166–167. ‘Levye-pravye’ [‘Left-right’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1918, 22 December, No. 3, p. 1. ‘Nashi zadachi i professional’nye souzy khudozhnikov’ [‘Our tasks and the professional unions of artists’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1918, 22 December, No. 3, p. 2. Signed ‘N. P.’ ‘Futurism-gosudarstvennoe iskusstvo. (K voprosu o gruppirovkakh i rukovodstve khudozhestvennim stroitel’stvom)’ [‘Futurism—the state art. (On the question of groups [of artists] and management of the building of art’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1918, 29 December, No. 4, p. 2. 1919 ‘Vmesto predisloviya’ [‘Instead of the introduction’], in the book ‘Dnevnik Eugène Delacroix’, Vip.1 (1822–1832), Petrograd: Publishing House of IZO Narkompross, 1919, pp. III– VII. ‘Iskusstvo i Proletariat’ [‘Art and Proletariat’], Petrograd, Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo, 1919, No. 1, pp. 8–24. ‘Ot redaktsii’ [‘From the editorial board’], Petrograd, Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo, 1919, No. 1, pp. 5–6. Not signed. ‘Declaratsiya Petrogradskoi kollegii po delam iskusstva i khudozhestvennoi promyshlennosti pri Otdele izobrazitel’nykh iskusstv Komissariata prosveshcheniya po voprosu o Petrogradskoi Akademii Khudozhestv’ [‘Declaration of the Petrograd Collegium of



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artistic affairs and artistic industry, part of the IZO Narkompross, on the question of the Petrograd Academy of Arts’], Petrograd, Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo, 1919, No. 1, pp. 82–84. Signed by N. Punin, G. Yatmanov, S. Chekhonin, P. Vaulin, A. Matveev, D. Shterenberg, A. Karev and N. Altman. Also published in the book ‘Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let. Materialy i dokumenty’, ed. by I. Mats, Moscow-Leningrad: Ogiz-Izogiz, 1933, pp. 144–148. ‘Novoe i noven’koe (v khudozhestvennoi kul’ture)’ [‘New and brand-new (in artistic culture)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 5 January, No. 5, p. 1. ‘Staroe i novoe iskusstvo (miting v Dome Lassalya)’ [‘Old and new art (meeting in the House of Lassal)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 5 January, No. 5, pp. 2–3, Signed ‘N.’ ‘Revolutsionnaya mudrost’ [‘Revolutionary Wisdom’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 12 January, No. 6, p. 2. ‘Razorvannoe soznanie. (Dlya khudozhnikov)’ [‘Broken conscience. (For the artists)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 19 January, No. 7, p. 2. ‘Razorvannoe soznanie. (Dlya khudozhnikov)’ [‘Broken conscience. (For the artists)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 26 January, No. 8, p. 2. ‘Mera iskusstva. (Dlya khudozhnikov)’ [‘Measure of art. (For the artists)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 2 February, No. 9, p. 2. ‘O knigakh (recenziya V. V. Kandinsky (Monographiya), tekst khudozhnika, M: IZO Narkompross, 1918)’ [‘About books (review of V.V. Kandinsky’s ‘Monograph’, text by the artist, M: OZO Narkompross, 1918)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 2 February, No. 9, p. 3. ‘Balans. (K godovshchine Otdela izobrazitel’nykh Iskusstv Komissariata Narodnogo Prosveshcheniya)’ [‘Balance. (To the anniversary of IZO Narkompross)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 9 February, No. 10, p. 1. ‘V Moskve. (Pis’mo) {O muzeinykh deyatelyakh i o novykh khudozhestvennykh gruppirovkakh}’ [‘In Moscow. (Letter) {About museum personnel and new artistic groups}’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 9 February, No. 10, p. 2. ‘Vpechatleniya. (O Vserossiyskoi muzeinoi konferentsii)’ [‘Impressions. (About the AllRussian museum conference)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 16 February, No. 11, p. 1. ‘Ob otnoshenii khudozhnika k muzeinoi deyatel’nosti. Tezisi doklada, prochitannovo 11 Fevralya 1919 goda na Vserossiyskoi muzeinoi konferentsii v Petrograde’ [‘About the artist’s attitude to museums’ activities. Thesis of the paper, presented on 11 February 1919 at the All-Russian museum conference’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 16 February, No. 11, p. 4. Also published in Izobrazitel’noe iskusstvo, Petrograd, 1919, No. 1, p. 86, and in the book ‘Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let. Materialy i dokumenty’, ed. by I. Mats, MoscowLeningrad: Ogiz-Izogiz, 1933, p. 82. ‘K itogam muzeinoi konferentsii. (O vospitatel’noi roli muzeev)’ [‘On the results of the museum conference. (On the educational role of museums)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 23 February, No. 12, p. 1. ‘V zashchitu nauki’ [‘In defence of science’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 2 March, No. 13, p. 1. ‘Goneniya (na t.n. futurism)’ [Persecution (of so called Futurism)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 9 March, No. 14, p. 2. Signed ‘N. P.’ ‘O pamyatnikakh’ [‘About monuments’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 9 March, No. 14, pp. 2–3. ‘Tretii Internatsional’ [‘The Third International’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 16 March, No. 15, p. 1. ‘Den’, kotoryi my khotim khranit’ v pamyati. (O Parizhskoi Kommune)’ [‘The Day, which we want to remember. (About the Paris Commune)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 23 March, No. 16, p. 1. ‘Protivnikam (Otdela izobrazitel’nykh Iskusstv Kom. Nar. Prosveshcheniya)’ [‘On the opposition (of the IZO Narkompross), Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 23 March, No. 16, p. 2. Signed ‘N. N.’ ‘Kommunism I Futurism. (Otvet na stat’iu V. B. Shklovskogo “Ob iskusstve i revolutsii”) [‘Communism and Futurism. (Reply to the article by V. B. Shklovskii “On art and revolution”)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 30 March, No. 17, pp. 2–3.

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‘O forme i soderzhanii (novogo iskusstva)’ [‘On form and contents (of new art)’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 6 April, No. 18, p. 1. Signed ‘N. P.’ ‘Protiv “velikikh ludei” ’ [‘Against the “great people” ’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 6 April, No. 18, p. 2. ‘Proletarskoe iskusstvo’ [‘Proletarian art’], Iskusstvo Kommuny, 1919, 13 April, No. 19, p. 1. Also published in the book ‘Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let. Materialy i dokumenty’, ed. by I. Mats, Moscow-Leningrad: Ogiz-Izogiz, 1933, pp. 171–173. ‘K novomu iskusstvu. (Obzor pervoi vystavki rabot studentov Petrogradskikh Gos. Svobodnykh masterskikh)’ [‘To new art. (Review of the first exhibition of the works by the students of the Petrograd Free Artistic Studios)’], Krasnaya gazeta, 1919, 4 December, No. 278, p. 4. 1920 ‘Pervyi tsikl lektsii, chitannykh na kratkosrochnykh kursakh dlya uchitelei risovaniya. Sovremennoe iskusstvo.’ [‘The first cycle of lectures given at the short courses for the teachers of drawing. Contemporary art.’], Petrograd, 1920, (84 pages). On the cover: ‘Tsikl lektsii N. N. Punina’. ‘Pamyatnik III Internatsionala.’ [‘The Monument to the Third International’], Petrograd: Publishing House of IZO Narkompross, 1920, (4 pages). ‘Proekt pamyatnika Tret’ego Internatsionala. (K otkritiiu vystavki modelei byvshei Akademii Khudozhestv)’ [‘The project of a Monument to the Third International. (For the opening of the exhibition of the models from the old Academy of Arts)’], Krasnaya Gazeta, 1920, 7 November, No. 251, p. 8. 1921 ‘Tatlin. (Protiv kubizma)’ [Tatlin. (Against cubism)], Petrograd: Gosizdat, 1921, (25 pages). ‘V dni Krasnogo Oktyabrya. (Otryvki vospominanii)’ [‘In the days of Red October. (Reminiscences)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1921, 8 November, No. 816, p. 1. 1922 ‘Russkii plakat. 1917–1922. Vip. I. V. V. Lebedev’ [‘Russian posters. 1917–1922. Issue I. V. V. Lebedev’], Petrograd: Strelets, 1922, (36 pages). ‘Predislovie’ [Introduction], in the book ‘Vystavka eskizov teatral’nykh dekoratsii i rabot masterskikh [Dekorativnogo] instituta za 1918–1922 gg.’, catalogue with articles by L. Zheverzheev, N. Punin and G. Stebnitskii, Petrograd: N. K. P. Akademicheskii Tsentr. Dekorativniy institute, 1922, pp. 3–7. ‘Tatlinova bashnya’ [‘Tatlin’s tower’], Veshch, Berlin, 1922, March–April, No. 1, p. 22. Also published in the book ‘Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let. Materialy i dokumenty’, ed. by I. Mats, Moscow-Leningrad: Ogiz-Izogiz, 1933, p. 44. ‘Slonenok. (O risunkakh V. V. Lebedeva k skazke R. Kiplinga)’ [‘Baby Elephant. (About the drawings of V. V. Lebedev for the fairy tale by R. Kipling)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1922, 11 April, No. 15, p. 5. ‘Vystavka “Mir Iskusstva” ’ [‘Exhibition of the “World of Art” ’], Zhizn’ Iskusstva, 1922, 7 June, No. 22, p. 1; 13 June, No. 23, p. 1. ‘Novoe iskusstvo i ego “kritiki”. (V poryadke diskussii)’ [‘New art and its “critics”. (Discussion)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1922, 25 July, No. 29, p. 2. ‘TRISTIA. (O stikhakh O. E. Mandelshtama)’ [‘TRISTIA. (About poems of O. E. Mandelstam)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1922, 17 October, No. 41, p. 3. 1923 ‘O masterstve S. V. Chekhonina’ [‘On the craftsmanship of S. V. Chekhonin’], in the book by Abram Efros and Nikolay Punin ‘S. Chekhonin’, Moscow-Petrograd: Gosizdat, pp. 25–40.



bibliography of published writings of n. punin

303

‘Obzor novykh techenii v iskusstve Peterburga’ [‘Review of the new trends in the art of St. Petersburg’], Russkoe iskusstvo, 1923, No. 1, pp. 17–28. ‘Ot svyashchennykh mogil ruki proch’! (Protest protiv naznacheniya L. Il’ina, V. Schuko, A. Schuseva, A. Benois chlenami zhuri konkursa proektov pamyatnika na Marsovom pole)’ [‘Hands off the sacred graves! (Protest against the appointment of L. Il’in, V. Schuko, A. Schusev and A. Benois as members of the jury in the competition for the project of a monument on the Field of Mars)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1923, No. 12, p. 8. ‘Komu oni meshaut? (O muzeyakh khudozhestvennoi kul’tury)’ [‘In whose way are they? (About museums of artistic culture)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1923, No. 19, pp. 15–16. ‘Zangezi. (O postanovke V. E. Tatlinym poemy V. V. Khlebnikova “Zangezi”) [‘Zangezi. (About Tatlin’s production of Khlebnikov’s poem “Zangezi”)’], Zhezn’ iskusstva, 1923, No. 20, pp. 10–12. ‘Gosudarstvennaya vystavka (rabot petrogradskikh khudozhnikov vsekh napravlenii). Obzor’ [The State Exhibition (of the works of Petrograd artists from all the artistic movements). Review’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1923, No. 21, pp. 14–15; No. 22, pp. 5–6 (o “levikh”) [about the “left”]; No. 25, pp. 16–17; No. 27, pp. 18–19 (o “tsentre”) [about the “centre”]; No. 30, pp. 6–8 (o “pravykh”) [about the “right”]. ‘Vystavka pamyati Khlebnikova. (Ymer 28 iunya 1922 g.)’, [‘Exhibition in memory of Khlebnikov. (Died on 28 June 1922)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1923, No. 26, p. 14. Signed ‘N. P.’ Review: S. Makovskii ‘Poslednie itogi zhivopisi’ [‘Final results of painting’], (Berlin: Russkoe Universal’noe Izdatel’stvo, 1922), in Russkoe iskusstvo, 1923, No. 2–3, pp. 116–117. 1924 ‘Pervaya vystavka AKhRR v Leningrade’ [The first exhibition of AKhRR in Leningrad’], Russkii sovremennik, 1924, kniga 1, pp. 312–314. ‘Voskresshie mertvetsy. (Ob AKhRR I zadachakh khudozhnikov)’ [‘Resurrected from the dead. (About AKhRR and aims of artists)’], Zhizn’ iskuustva, 1924, No. 4, pp. 16–17. ‘Otvet frantsuzskim khudozhnikam (na pis’mo v redaktsiu “Zhizni iskusstva”)’ [‘Reply to French artists (to the letter sent to the editors of “Zhizn’ iskusstva”)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1924, No. 26, p. 8. ‘SSSR i frantsuzskie khudozhniki. (Otvet na kritiku stat’i N. N. Punina “Otvet frantsuzskim khudozhnikam”)’ [USSR and French artists. (In response to the criticism of the article by N. N. Punin “Reply to French Artists”)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1924, No. 27, pp. 3–5. Review: Nikolay Taraburkin ‘Opyt teorii zhivopisi’ [‘Experience of painting’ theory’], (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Vserossiyskogo Proletkul’ta, 1923), in Russkii sovremennik, 1924, kniga 1, p. 335. Review: T. Deibler i A. Glez ‘V bor’be za novoe iskusstvo’ [‘Fighting for the new art’], (Petrograd: izdatel’stvo Petrograd, 1923) in Russkii sovremennik, 1924, kniga 1, pp. 335–336. Review: G. Martsinskiy ‘Metod ‘expressionism’ v zhivopisi’ [‘Method of expressionism in painting’], (Petrograd: Academia, 1923) in Russkii sovremennik, 1924, kniga 1, p. 336. Review: ‘Iskusstvo i promyshlennost’ [‘Art and industry’], (1924, February–March, No. 2) in Russkii sovremennik, 1924, kniga 2, pp. 304–305. Review: Nikolay Taraburkin ‘Ot mol’berta k mashine’ [‘From easel to machine’], (Moscow: Rabotnik prosvescheniya, 1923) in Russkii sovremennik, 1924, kniga 3, pp. 276–277. 1925 ‘Russkaya zhivopis’ za poslednie vosem’ let’ [‘Russian painting in the last eight years’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1925, No. 45, p. 13. ‘Konkursnaya vystavka v Akademii Khudozhestv’ [‘Contest-exhibition at the Academy of Arts’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1925, No. 48, p. 11.

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1926 ‘Louis David kak politicheskii deyatel’ [‘Louis David as a political figure’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1926, No. 3, pp. 3–4. ‘I. S. Shkol’nik (nekrolog)’ [‘I. S. Shkol’nik (obituary)’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1926, No. 36, p. 19. 1927 ‘Noveishie techeniya v russkom iskusstve. I. Traditsii noveishego russkogo iskusstva.’ [‘Newest trends in Russian art. I. Traditions of the contemporary Russian art’], Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Gos. Russkogo Muzeya, 1927, (14 pages). ‘A. E. Karev’—in the book ‘A. E. Karev’, Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Gos. Russkogo Muzeya, 1927, pp. 10–29. ‘Vystavka kartin sovetskikh khudozhnikov v Yaponii’ [‘Exhibition of the paintings of Soviet artists in Japan’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1927, No. 34, p. 10. ‘Zhivopis’ sovremennoi Yaponii’ [‘Painting of modern Japan’], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1927, No. 36, pp. 6–7. 1928 ‘Noveishie techeniya v russkom iskusstve. II. Predmet i kul’tura.’ [‘Newest trends in Russian art. II. Object and culture’], Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Gos. Russkogo Muzeya, 1928, (16 pages). ‘Vladimir Vasil’evich Lebedev’, Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Komiteta populyarizatsii khudozhestvennykh izd. Pri Gos. Akademii istorii material’noy kul’turi, 1928, (35 pages). ‘Znachenie kubizma v tvorchestve V. Lebedeva’ [‘The importance of cubism in the work of V. Lebedev’] in the book ‘V. Lebedev’, Leningrad: Izd. Gos. Russkogo muzeya, 1928, pp. 25–47. ‘Vystavka samodeyatel’nykh IZO kruzhkov Leningrada’ [‘Exhibition of the amateur art clubs of Leningrad’], in the book ‘Iskusstvo rabochikh’, Leningrad: Izd. Gos. Russkogo muzeya, 1928, pp. 5–15. ‘Impressionisticheskii period v tvorchestve M. F. Larionova’ [‘Impressionistic period in the work of M. F. Larionov’], in the book ‘Materialy po russkomu iskusstvu’, t. 1, Leningrad: Izd. Gos. Russkogo muzeya, 1928, pp. 287–291. ‘Nashi risoval’shchiki. N. A. Tirsa’ [‘Our draftsmen. N. A. Tirsa’], Krasnaya niva, 1928, No. 47, p. 7. ‘V. V. Lebedev (po povodu vystavki ego proizvedenii)’ [‘V. V. Lebedev (on the exhibition of his work)’], Krasnaya gazeta, vechernii vypusk, 1928, 13 June, No. 161, p. 4. 1929 ‘Otdelenie noveishikh techenii v iskusstve. Ego obrazovanie i zadachi.’ [‘Department of the Newest Trends. Its establishment and tasks’], in the book ‘Otchet Gosudarstvennogo Russkogo Muzeya za 1926 i 1927 gg.’, Leningrad, 1929, pp. 39–50. 1930 ‘Iskusstvo primitiva i sovremennyi risunok’ [‘Primitive art and contemporary drawing’], in the book ‘Iskusstvo narodnostei Sibiri’, Leningrad: Gosudarstvenniy Russkii Muzei, 1930, pp. 3–34. ‘Niko Pirosmanishvili’, Leningrad: Izd. Gos. Russkogo muzeya, 1930, (3 pages). 1932 ‘Obshchii kharakter vystavki (khudozhnikov RSFSR za 15 let)’ [‘General overview of the exhibition (of the artists of RSFSR in 15 years’], in the book ‘Khudozhniki RSFSR za 15 let. Katalog iubileynoi vystavki. Zhivopis’, grafika, skul’ptura’, Leningrad: Gos. Russkii Muzei, 1932, pp. 14–21.



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1933 ‘Obzor literatury po izoiskusstvu za 1932–1933 gg’ [‘Review of literature on visual art. 1932– 1933’], Zvezda, 1933, No. 9, pp. 187–192. 1936 ‘Istoriya iskusstv v khudozhestvennoi shkole’ [‘History of art in the art school’], Za sots. realism, Leningrad, 1936, 20 October, No. 22, p. 4. ‘Istoriya iskusstv v khudozhestvennoi shkole’ [‘History of art in the art school’], Architekturnaya gazeta, 1936, 23 October, No. 59, p. 2. 1937 ‘Optimisticheskoe iskusstvo. K vystavke kartin K. S. Petrova-Vodkina’ [‘Optimistic art. On the exhibition of paintings by K. S. Petrov-Vodkin’], Arkhitekturnaya gazeta, 1937, 12 January, No. 3, p. 4. 1938 ‘Istoriya zapadnoevropeiskogo iskusstva (zhivopisi i skul’ptury). Konspekt lektsii.’ [‘History of Western European Art (painting and sculpture). Lectures notes.’], Leningrad: Architekturnyi fond Souza sovetskikh architektorov. Leningradskoe otdelenie, 1938, (69 pages). Limited edition manuscript. 1940 ‘Istoriya zapadnoevropeyskogo iskusstva. (III–XX vv.)’ [‘History of Western European Art (III–XX centuries)’]: ‘Introduction’ by N. Punin and A. S. Gushchin (pp. 3–4); ch. 2 ‘Iskusstvo epokhi Vozrozhdeniya (Renessans)’ [‘Renaissance Art’]—pp. 70–232; ch. 3 ‘Iskusstvo epokhi barokko’ [‘Baroque art’] By N. Punin, M. V. Dobroklonskii and V. F. Belyavskaya; ch. 4 ‘Iskusstvo novogo I noveishego vremeni’ [‘Early Modern and Modern Art’]—pp. 360–461., Leningrad-Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1940, (496 pages). 1942 ‘Iskusstvo M. P. Bobyshova’ [‘Art of M. P. Bobyshov’] in the book ‘Mikhail Bobyshov. Katalog vystavki rabot. (1907–1942)’, Samarkand, 1942, pp. 3–9. 1945 ‘Problemy kompozitsii’ [‘Problems of composition’], Za sots. realism, Leningrad, 1945, 2 July, No. 3, p. 3. 1946 ‘Neudachi i dostizheniya. (Otryvok iz vystupleniya na obsuzhdenii vystavki diplomnykh rabot studentov Vserossiiskoi Akademii Khudozhestv)’ [‘Failures and achievements. (Excerpt from the speech at the discussion of the exhibition of diploma works of the students from the All-Russian Academy of Arts)’], Za sots. realism, Leningrad, 1946, 2 June, No. 8, p. 3. Punin’s Writings, Published after His Death Published 1968 ‘Problema ploskosti. (Otryvki iz neopublikovannoi monografii o P. V. Kuznetsove)’ [‘Problem of the plane. (Fragments of the unpublished manuscript about P. V. Kuznetsov)’], Tvorchestvo, 1968, No. 5, pp. 8–9.

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Published 1976 ‘Russkoe i sovetskoe iskusstvo. Mastera russkogo iskusstva XIV-nachala XX veka. Sovetskie khudozhniki. Izbrannye trudy o russkom i sovetskom izobrazitelnom iskusstve’ [Russian and Soviet Art. Masters of Russian art of XIV-beginning of XX centuries. Soviet artists. Selected works on Russian and Soviet Visual art’], ed. by Irina Punina, introduction by V. N. Petrov, Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik’, 1976. Published 1988 ‘Cycle of Lectures [Extracts], 1919’, in Bowlt, John ‘Russian art of the avant-garde. Theory and criticism’, revised and enlarged edition, Thames and Hudson, 1988, pp. 170–176. Published 1989 ‘Iskusstvo i Revolutsiya’ [‘Art and revolution’], full unpublished manuscript is held in N. Punin’s Family Archive in St. Petersburg; fragment is published in ‘Iskusstvo Leningrada’, Leningrad: Avrora, 1989. Published 1994 ‘O Tatline’ [‘About Tatlin’] in ‘Arkhiv Russkogo avantgarda’, ed. by I. N. Punina and V. I. Rakitin, Moscow: Literaturno-Khudozhestvennoe Agenstvo “RA”, 1994. Published 1999 ‘The diaries of Nikolay Punin: 1904–1953’, ed. Sidney Monas and Jennifer Greene Krupala, trans. Jennifer Greene Kupala. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. Published 2000 ‘Mir Svetel Lubov’u. Dnevniki, pis’ma’ [‘The World is Enlightened by Love. Diaries, letters’], ed. by Leonid Zykov. Moscow: Artist. Rezhisser. Teatr, 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY* In preparation of this book the following archives in Russia have been used: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation (quoted in notes as AP) Funds 3, 5, 45. Archive of the State Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Central State Archive—fund 2308/1/21. Family archive of N. Punin in St. Petersburg. Russian Centre for Preservation and Study of the Documents of Newest History [Rossiiskii Tsentr Khraneniya I Izucheniya Documentov Noveishei Istorii] (quoted in notes as RCKhIDNI) Funds 17, 73. ‘Anna Akhmatova: Desyatye gody’, ed. R. Timenchik and K. Polivanov, Moscow: MPI, 1989. ‘Anna Akhmatova: Epokha, Sud’ba, Tvorchestvo’. Nauchnyi sbornik, Simpheropol, 2001. Anna Akhmatova ‘Requiem and Poem Without a Hero’, trans. by D. M. Thomas, London: Paul Elek, 1976. ‘A.V. Lunacharsky about Art’, ed. I. Sats and A. Ermakov, Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1982, two volumes. Bakushinsky, A. ‘Vystavka proizvedenii Chekrygina’, in Russkoe iskusstvo, No. 2–3, 1923, p. 15. Barooshian, V. D. ‘Brik and Mayakovsky’, The Hague: Mouton, 1978. —— ‘Russian cubo-futurism. 1910–1930. A study in Avant-Gardism’, The Hague: Mouton, 1974. —— ‘The Avant-Garde and the Russian Revolution’, in Russian Literature Triquarterly, MA: Cambridge, fall 1972. Berdyaev, N. ‘Dream and Reality’, New York, 1962. Bernshtein, Boris ‘O Punine’, in the journal Vyshgorod, Tallinn: Institute ‘Otkritoe obshchestvo’, No. 4, 1998. Bernshtein, D. K. ‘Tatlin, Punin, Matvej I Factura’, in ‘Voldemar Matvej i “Souz Molodeozhi”, Moscow: Nauka, 2005, pp. 137–153. Bessalko, P. ‘Futurism and Proletarian culture’ in Gryadushchee, no. 10, 1918, pp. 10–12. Bowlt, John ‘From Practice to Theory: Vladimir Tatlin and Nikolai Punin’, in ‘Literature, Culture, and Society in the Modern Age. In honor of Joseph Frank’, ed. E. J. Brown, Stanford Slavonic Studies, Stanford, Part II, 1992, pp. 50–67. —— ‘Russian art of the avant-garde. Theory and criticism’, revised and enlarged edition, Thames and Hudson, 1988. —— ‘Russian sculpture and Lenin’s Plan of Monumental Propaganda’ in ‘Art and Architecture in the Service of Politics’, MA: Cambridge, 1978. ‘Breaking the Rules. The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde. 1900–1937’, Catalogue of the exhibition at the British Library, Ed. Stephen Bury, London: The British Library, 2007. Campanella, Tommaso ‘The City of the Sun’, London: Hard Press, 2006. Chernykh, V. ‘Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva Anny Akhmatovoi’, Moscow: URSS, 1998, part 2. Chesnokov, A. ‘Khudozhestvennaya Zhizn’, in Novaya Petrogradskaya Gazeta, No. 19, 27 January 1918, p. 3.

* For the full list of published writings of N. Punin, see Punin’s bibliography.

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Index Abakumov, V., 284 Abez settlement (Komi Republic), 3, 286–288, 290–291, 294 Abramtsevo, 34 Academic Case, 170 Academic Museum of Plaster Casts, 98 Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg (later Petrograd and Leningrad), originally Imperial, later State, 7, 35, 41, 46, 60, 78, 82–85, 99, 109, 115, 150, 160–161, 170, 204, 223, 227, 228, 230, 235, 236, 256, 237, 242, 246, 248, 269–271, 277, 278, 283, 289, 294 Admiralty Pavilion, Tsarskoe Selo, 24, 190 Ainalov, Professor, Dmitrii, 26–27 Akhmatova, Anna, maiden name Anna Gorenko, (b Kiev 1889, d Leningrad 1966) Attends Gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, 13 Married to Gumiliev (April 1910) Son (Lev) born (1912), 189 Married to Shileko (1918), 186 First stay at Fountain House, 187 Divorced Shileko (1926), 186 Gumiliev arrested and shot, 135 Stray Dog Cabaret, 142 Affair with Lourie. 140 Emigration of Lourie, 140 Invitation to Punin (August 1922), 142 Previous meetings with Punin, 142 Affair with Zimmerman, 146 Affair with Pavel Luknitsky, 146 Meets former lover Count Zubov in Paris, 163 Rescued by Punin from Flood, 164 Moves in to the Fountain House, 186 Poem without a Hero, 187 Bar on publishing poems (1925), 187 Liev arrives at Fountain House, 189 “To be arrested” (Zinoviev), 215 Lev Gumiliev arrested, 218 Dedicates “Requiem” to arrested Punin, 218 Writes to Stalin for Punin’s release, 219 Visits Bulgakov, 219 Korney Chukovsky shot, 221 Pilnyak arrested, 222 Lev betrayal and second arrest (1937), 222

Vigil at the Kresti Prison, 222 Meets Vladimir Garshin, 224 Garshin’s proposal and terms, 225 Separation from Punin (September 1938), 225 Stays in Fountain House, 226 Dedicates poem to Tika, 228 Lev sent to front, 234 Poems permitted during Blockade, 236 Evacuats to Tashkent (via Moscow), 237 Meets Punin in Tashkent, 244, 245, 247 Returns to Leningrad (May 1944), 251 Garshin marries again, 252 Greets Punin at the Fountain House, 252 Moves back in to Fountain House (August 1944), 254 Articles in Zvezda denounced by Zhdanov, 264 Union of Writers withdraws membership, 264 Denounced by Zhdanov in Novi Mir, 265 Simonov refuses to condemn her in Pravda, 265 “Lullaby” written on Punin’s 3rd arrest, 277 Posthumous return of Punin’s Alpatov book, 291 Evicted from Fountain House (February 1952), 293 Dedicates poem to NP on his death, 294 AKhRR, (The Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia), 173–174, 176, 177, 204 A Slap in the Face of Public Taste’ [‘Poschetchina obshestvennomu vkusu’], Russian Futurist Manifesto, 55 Aleksander-Nevsky monastery, St. Petersburg, 8 Aleksinsky, G.A., 72 Alexander III, Tsar, 16, 35 Alexandra, Tsarina, 65 All-Russian Union of Writers, 183 Alpatov, Mikhail, 228, 291 Altman, Nathan, 50–51, 83, 84, 89, 107, 149, 177 Andreeva, Maria, 71

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Andreev, Nikolay, 87, 89 Annensky, Innokentii, 1, 10, 13, 14, 17, 21, 25, 136 Apartment No. 5, 52, 54, 65 Apollon, magazine, 14, 27, 28, 32, 39, 40, 42, 44, 50, 104, 126, 136, 141, 158 Appeal of the Founders, 74 Arkhitecturnaya gazeta [Architectural newspaper], 205 Arctic Institute, 253 Arens, Anna Evgenievna (Galya), N. Punin’s wife, (1892–1943) The faithful doctor, 3 Life at the Admiralty Pavilion, 24 First meeting with Punin, 23 Married Nikolay Punin (3rd July 1917), 57 Pregnant when Punin first arrested, 134 Moves out when Akhmatova moved in 187 Returns, treats Akhmatova, 187 Father moves in to Fountain House, 190 Brother arrested, 214 Evacuated to Samarkand, 242–244 Daughter Irina studying in Samarkand, 246 Death (28th August 1943), 247 Arens Zoya Evgenievna (Anna Arens’ sister, later Punina, married to N. Punin’s brother), 24 Arens, Evgenii Ivanovich, father of Anna (Galya) Arens, 24, 136, 190, 217 Arens, Igor L’vovich, Anna Arens’ nephew, 190, 214 Arens, Lev Evgenievich, Anna Arens’ brother, 24, 190, 214 Arens, Sara Iosifovna, Lev Arens’ wife, 214 Arens-Gakkel’, Vera Evgenievna, Anna Arens’ sister, 24, 254 Arkadiev, M., 200 Arkin, David, 177 Art and Revolution [Iskusstvo i Revolutsia], Punin’s unpublished memoirs, 22, 49, 52, 55, 69, 197 Art history teaching, 3, 25–26 Art of the Commune [Iskusstvo Kommuny], newspaper, 56, 92, 94, 100, 102–113, 119–121, 151, 205, 216 Art of the Young [Iskusstvo Molodykh— IMO], 104, 121 Article 136, 283, 285 Article 58, 211, 283 Artists of RSFSR in the last 15 years, exhibition, Moscow, 1933, 200

Artists of RSFSR in the last 15 years, exhibition, Russian Museum, 1932, 199–200 Arts Union, 75, 82, 90 Association of Socialist Art [Associaciya Socialisticheskogo Iskusstva], 105 Astoria, Hotel, 238 Astrological-Physical Bulletin, 15 Auslender, Sergey, 25 Babel, Isaac, 3, 54, 215 Bakunin, Mikhail, 89 Bakushinsky, Anatolii, 175 Balmont, Konstantin, 132 Banner of Labour [Znamya Truda] Newspaper, 78 Barbarossa, operation, 233 Bauhaus, 130 Bebel, August, German Socialist, 18 Belinsky, Vissarion Grigoryevich, Russian literary critic, 15 Benois, Alexander, 4, 56, 76, 77, 94, 162 Berdyaev, Nikolay, 167 Beria, Lavrentii, 236, 293 Bernshtein, Boris, 274 Black Raven, NKVD’ cars, 211 Blockade of Leningrad (September 8th 1941 to January 27th 1944), 236–242 Blok, Alexander, 33, 131 Bloody Sunday, January 9th, 1905, 16, 17 Boccioni, Umberto, Italian painter and sculptor, 115 Bogdanov, Alexander, 71–73 Bogdanovists, 125 Bolshevik Government, 75 Bolshevik Party, Bolsheviks, 2, 58, 66, 67, 97, 111, 113, 114, 117, 124, 131–133, 135, 162–163, 173, 182–183, 194, 201, 210, 232, 284 Boyarchenkov, V., 124 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 48–49 Brik, Lily (Lilya), 58, 61, 62 Brik, Osip, 74, 82, 85, 91, 92, 99, 104, 106, 107, 109–112, 118, 174 Brodsky, Isaak, 115 Brodsky, Valentin, 229 Bronshtein, Matvei, 221 Bruni, Lev, 50–52, 84, 153, 159, 171, 173, 176, 215, 250, 268, 295 Bubnov, Andrei (the head of Politburo of the Communist Party), 196, 200 Bubnova, Varvara, 179 Bukharin, Nikolay, 167, 193, 210, 214, 219 Bulgakov, Mikhail, 219–220



index

Bulgakova, Yelena, 220 Bunin, Ivan, 132 Burlyuk, David, 55, 104 Byzantine art, 2, 26–29, 39, 40, 42, 58, 204 Campanella, Tommaso, 86 Capri School, 71–72 Catherine II, 87 Catherine Palace, Tsarskoe Selo, 10, 24 Central Committee, 167, 170, 265 Cézanne. Paul, 3, 31, 32, 40, 108, 128, 187, 199, 229–230, 258, 268, 272, 295 Chagall, Marc, 3, 54, 107, 115, 130, 150, 176 Chaliapin, Feodor, 71, 132 Chashnik, Ilya, 159 Chavannes, Puvis de, 115 CHEKA, 68, 135–137 Chekrygin, Vasilii Nikolaevich, 175 Chernyshevsky, Nikolay, 269 Chesnokov, A., 91 Chetire Iskusstva Society, [4 Arts Society], 173 Chukovskaya, Lydia, daughter of K. Chukovsky, 221–222, 225–227, 244 Chukovsky, Korney, 114, 131, 148, 221, 262 Chulkova, Nadezhda, 237 Churchill, Winston, 261 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, 19 Civil War, 103, 132–133, 193 Cleopatra’s couch, 289 Code on Marriage and the Family (1918), 59 Collectivisation, 193, 207 Comintern, The Communist International, 231 Committee for Artistic Affairs, 266 Communal apartment (kommunalka), 183, 190 Communism, Communists, Communist Party, 58–59, 76, 81, 103, 119, 122, 123, 129156–157, 168–169, 183, 194, 196, 198, 202, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 218–220, 231, 232, 239, 262, 266, 267, 270, 281–282 Comte, Auguste, 70 Conservatory, St. Petersburg, 269 Constructivism, 53–54, 151–152 Cosmopolitanism, Cosmopolitism, 3, 274–276, 282, 284 Council of Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom), 68 Coup d’état 25th October 1917 (7th November new-style), 67–68

315

Criminal Code, 283 Cubism, 155, 258, 266 Cubo-Futurism, 4 Cultural Revolution, 194 Cycle of Lectures [‘Tsikl Lekziy’], (Petrograd, 1920), 51 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 140 David, Jacques-Louis, 295 Death by Mistake, theatre play, 76 Death of Stalin, 6th March 1953, 293 Declaration of the Thirteen, 167 Decree of 23rd April 1932 (‘On the Reconstruction of Literary and Art Organizations’), 201 Degas, Edgar, 31, 257 Delacroix, Eugène, 268, 290 Denikin, General, 132 Department of Icons and Church Relics, Russian Museum, 113 Department of Newest Trends, Russian Museum, 174, 179, 204 Deported Peoples (Crimean Tartars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingushi Karachai, Balkars and Meshketian Turks), 262 Deshevov, Vladimir, 25 Diaghilev, Sergey, 33, 41, 43, 56 Dobuzhinsky, Mstislav, 165 Doctor’s Plot, 293 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 12, 37, 227, 269 Drevin, Alexander, 180 Duma, The, 17, 23, 66, 72 Durand-Ruel Gallerie, Paris, 31 Dymshits-Tolstaya, Sofya, 153 Dzerzhinsky, Felix, 68, 134, 146 Dzhakov, Krum, 275 Engels, Friedrich, 289 Enigma Code, 233 Ermolaevea, Vera, 213 Esenin, Sergey, 197 Evacuation to Samarkand, 242–248 Exhibition of contemporary Russian art in Japan, 176 Expressionism, 53–54 Exter, Alexandra, 130 Ezhov, Nikolay, 236 Ezhovshchina, 236 Factura, 33, 127 Falk, Robert, 177 Famine of 1932–33, 207 Fascism, 119, 201, 232 Father Gapon, 16

316

index

Fauvism, 266 Favorsky, Vladimir, 251, 194 February 1917 Revolution, 65–66, 70 Fedorov, Evgeniy, 20–21 Fedotov, Pavel, 46, 280 Filonov, Pavel, 54, 55, 101, 150–151, 176, 180–181, 199–201, 294 First 5-Year Plan (1928), 193 First World War, 2, 4, 46–47, 49, 96–98, 151, 265 Flegel, Mikhail, 267 Flood in Petrograd, 1924, 164–165 Florensky, Pavel, 210, 249 Fokine, Mikhail, 33 Food rationing, 1918, 91–92 Formalism, 258, 266, 275 FOTO-KINO, 122 Fountain House, [Fontannyi Dom], 1, 182, 184, 186, 189–191, 215–216, 222, 225–227, 252–253, 270, 293 Fourth Five Year Plan, 262 Freedom of Art Association, 74 Freidenberg, Olga, 238, 276 French Art, 155 Freud, Sigmund, 189 Fry, Roger, 34, 152 Fueloep-Miller, René, 115 Futurism, Futurists, Russian and Italian, 3–4, 49, 50, 53, 55–56, 69, 78–83, 94, 99, 102, 104, 107, 111– 115, 118–121, 125, 126, 151, 153, 160, 197, 201, 258, 296 Futurists’ Newspaper [Gazeta Futuristov], 104, 105 Gabo, Naum, 103 Garshin, Vladimir, 224–225, 237, 248, 251–252, 254 Gatchina Palace, 163 Gauguin, Paul, 31, 229 General Strike, Great Britain (1926), 232 Gerasimov, Alexander, 256, 294 Gerasimov, Sergei, 251 Gerstein, Emma, 191 GINKhUK (The State Institute of Artistic Culture), 147, 150, 151, 174, 184 Giorgione, Italian High Renaissance Painter, 257 Giotto, di Bondone, Italian painter and architect from Florence, 26–27 Glakhkom, The Chief Artistic Committee, 125 Glavpolitprosvet [Glavniy politicoprosvetitel’niy komitet], Chief Committee of Political Education, 122–123, 125 God-building philosophy, 71

Goebbels, Joseph, 238 Gollerbakh, Erikh, 13 Golovin, Alexander, 94 Golubev, Andrey Andreevich (Tika’s father), 242 Golubeva, Martha (Tika), (1906–1963) Meets Punin, 227 Encourages Punin to start writing again, 235 House bombed, 237 Moves in to Fountain House, 238 Family moves to House of Stage Veterans, 242 Death of husband, 245 Travels to Samarkand, 246 Returns with Punin to Leningrad, 248–252 Would not share compartment with Punin, 248 Refuses to live with Punin, 255 Sends parcels to Abez, 289 Informed of Punin’s death by Gorbatenko, 294 Goncharova, Natalia, 36, 176, 179–180, 199 Gorbatenko, Ivan Prokofievich, 294 Gorky, Maxim, 71–72, 114, 120, 132, 137–138, 195, 214–215 Gosizdat, The State Publishing Company, 125, 156 Grabar, Igor, 42, 43, 44 Great Patriotic War, 3, 236 Greece, 38 Grigoriev, Boris, 44–45 Grinkrug, Lev, 105 Gryadushchee, [Future], Proletkult newspaper, p. 112 Gudovich, Count A. V., 185 Guild of Poets, 141 Gulag, The Main Administration of Corrective-Labour Camps [Glavnoe Upravlenie Ispravitelno-Trudovikh Lagerei], 1–3, 148, 187, 230, 234, 258, 279, 286, 290, 294–295 Gumilev, Lev (Akhmatova’s Son), 179, 189, 191, 217–218, 220– 224, 226, 234, 282, 284, 293 Gumilev, Nikolay, 21, 135–138, 141, 142, 146, 189 Gyakov, journalist, 230 Gymnasium, Imperial Nikolaevskaya Boys’, 1, 12–15, 17–21, 23, 25, 114 Helsingfors [now Helsinki], 7 Hermitage Museum, 2, 35, 69, 95–102, 148, 238, 267–268, 295



index

Hertsen, Alexander, 269 Hitler, Adolf, 232–233, 238 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 146 House of Arts [Dom Iskusstv] magazine, 80 House of Entertaining Science (Sheremetiev Palace), 226 House of Writers, 130 Hylea Group, 4, 55–56 Hyperborean magazine, 141 Icons, Russian, 2, 33, 38, 49, 52, 127 IMO – Iskusstvo Molodykh, see Art of the Young Impressionism, Impressionists, French, 31, 155, 179, 181, 229–230, 256–258, 268, 272, 289 Institute of Communal Construction, Leningrad, 223 Institute of the History of Art, the State, Petrograd, 139, 161–163, 182 Institute of Visual Culture, 173 International Congress of Russian and German Artists, 94 Ioann of Kronshtadt, 9 Ionov, Iliya, 120 Iron curtain (Churchill’s speech (March 5th, 1946), 261 Isakov, S. K., owner of the Apartment No. 5, 53 Iskusstvo [Art], magazine, 195 Iskusstvo i Revolutsia, see Art and Revolution Iskusstvo Kommuny, see Art of the Commune Ivanov, Alexander, 271, 280 Ivanov, Andrei, 271–272 Izergina, Anna, 295 IZO, Department of Fine Arts of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment, Petrograd, 54, 60, 76–77, 82–84, 87, 93–94, 104, 107, 110, 111, 116, 122–125, 147, 198 IZO, Moscow, 92 Izogiz [Visual Arts Publications], Moscow, 197 Japan, 127, 176–180 Japanese prints, 44 Jugendstil, 28 Kadets, the Liberal Constitutional Democrats, 18, 19, 130 Kadiak, A., Lenin’s doctor, 134 Kalinin, Mikhail, 211

317

Kalugin, Oleg, 146, 215 Kamenev, Lev Borisovich, €born Rozenfeld, 167, 210 Kameneva, Olga, 75 Kamensky, Vasily, 104 Kaminskaya, Anna Genrichovna, Punin’s granddaughter, 186, 189, 238, 242, 243, 247, 252–253, 256, 270, 276, 277, 290–291, 293 Kaminsky, Genrikh, 246 Kandinsky, Wassily, 54, 79, 93, 102, 130, 149, 156, 176 Kardovsky, Dmitry, 84 Karev, Alexei, 82, 85, 93 Karsavin, Lev, 287–291 Kerensky, Alexander, 67 KGB, 1, 146, 215, 249 Khachaturian, Aram, 266 Kharszhiev, Nikolay, 244 Khodasevich, Vladimir, 55, 76, 137, 177, 279 Khrushchev, Nikita, 263, 294 Kiev, 163–164, 213 Kirov, Sergey, 209, 215 Kiselis, P., 123 Knave of Diamonds Group [Bubnovii valet], 32, 52 Koblanovsky, A., secretary of A. Lunacharsky, 138 Kolkhoz, Collective Farm, 207, 282 Kolli, Nikolay, 89 Koltsov, Mikhael, 215 Komarovsky, Count Vasilii, 25, 27 Komsomol, 124 Konchalovsky, Petr, 176, 180 Kondakov, Nikodim, 26 Konstantinovsky Artillery College, 57 Kornilov, General, 67, 132 Korolev, Boris, 89 Korsakova, Alexandra, 28 Korsini, I., 185 Koskul, Baron, 95 Kotova, Vera, Chekrygin’s wife, 176 Kovalev, Lieutenant, 283 Krasin, Leonid, 71 Krasovsky, M., 185 Kremlin, 98, 219–220, 234, 265 Kresty [Crosses], prison in Leningrad, 222 Krimov, Nikolay, 44–45 Krivich, Valentin, 10 Kronstadt Naval Mutiny, 133 Kruchenikh, Alexei, 55, 126 Krupskaya, Nadezhda (Lenin’s wife), 121 Kulaks, 193, 207 Kulbin, Nikolay, 126

318

index

Kuprin, Alexander, 132 Kushner, Boris, 77–78 Kuznetsov, Pavel, 4, 41, 149, 206 Lake Ladoga, 242–243 Lamballe, Princess de, 65 Lapshin, Nikolay, 159 Larionov, Michail, 4, 175, 176, 179–180, 199 Lassal’ House, 113 Lassalle, Ferdinand, German Socialist, 18 Lazarev, Victor, 228, 230 League of Nations, 195, 231–232, 261 Lebedev, Georgy, 176 Lebedev, Vladimir, 177, 178, 180–181, 200 Lebedeva, Sarra, 294 Lebedev-Polyansky, Pavel Ivanovich, Head of Glavlit, 125 Lef (Left Front of the Arts), 81, 126 Lefortovo Prison, 284 Leftist Bloc of the Active Artists Association, 53 Lenin, 59, 67–69, 71, 79, 87, 97, 103, 120–123, 129–130, 132, 134, 137, 138, 157, 164, 167, 163, 169, 170, 185, 195, 263, 289 Leningrad Affair, or Leningrad case [Leningradskoe Delo], 276 Leningrad Radio Committee, 236 Leningrad, 2, 165, 171, 177, 180, 187, 190, 200, 209, 213, 215, 225, 231, 234–236, 238–243, 245, 246, 248, 251–253, 256, 263, 267, 281, 287, 288, 291, 295 Leningradskaya Pravda, Newspaper, 275 Leontieva,Lydia (Dama Luni), Punin’s first love, 20 Lermontov, Mikhail, 226 Life of Art [Zhizn’ Iskusstva] magazine, 148 LIIKS, the Leningrad Institute of Engineers of Communal Construction, 5 Likhachev, Dmitriy, 169 Likhachev, Nikolay, and his collection of Russian icons, 35, 38 Literature and Revolution, Trotsky, 203 Lourie, Arthur, 4, 65, 139–140, 226 Lozinsky, Mikhail, 27 Lubetkin, Berthold, 89 Lubyanka, Moscow, 249, 282, 284, 285 Luknitsky, Pavel, 136, 146, 147, 186 Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 3, 40, 56, 59, 69, 71, 72– 80, 82, 86, 88, 89, 91, 94–96, 107, 113–116, 120–123, 137, 162, 176, 195–196, 215 Lüüs, Lembit, 285 Lvov, Petr, 50–51, 254 Lvov, Prince, 66 Lyass, A., 249

Makovets group of artists, 173 Makovsky, Sergei, 27, 28, 44 Malevich, Kazimir, 36, 51, 85, 93, 102, 106, 107, 149–151, 156, 173, 175, 176, 198–201, 204, 215, 292, 294 Malinovsky, Pavel Petrovich, architect, civil commissar of Kremlin, 75 Mamontov, Savva, 34 Mandelstam, Nadezhda, 147, 186, 207–208, 212, 223–225, 277, 282 Mandelstam, Osip, 3, 53, 158, 208, 211, 214–216, 218, 219 Manet, Édouard, 229, 257 Marcu, 103 Mariinsky Women’s Gymnasium, 13 Marinetti, Filippo, 55 Markov, Vladimir, 26 Marx, Karl, 18, 58, 88–89, 182 Marxism, 115, 118, 124, 169–170, 182 Marxism-Leninism, 194, 196 Marxist, 148, 202, 213 Maslova, Elena, 270 Matisse, Henri, 51, 181, 267 Matyushin, Mikhail, 85, 150 Matveev, Alexander, 87–88, 93, 149, 159 Matvejs, Voldemārs, 33, 34, 126, 179 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 1, 4, 14, 55, 74, 89, 104–107, 109, 110, 111, 121, 125, 129, 149, 177, 197, 215 Mayerkhold, Vsevolod, 33, 215 Meerson, Yosif, 153 Mein Kampf, 232 Mensheviks, 67–68, 130 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 215 Meyerkhold, Vsevolod, 215, 286 Mezentsev, Sergei, 89 Michael, Grand Duke, 66 Military-Medical Academy, St. Petersburg, 7, 244 Ministry of Arts, 75 Ministry of State Security, 293 Mitrokhin, Petr, 13 Miturich, Petr, 50, 93, 171, 200 Modern Western Art, 199 Modernism, 153, 268 Modernity, 257 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 211, 230, 233 Monet, Claude, 31, 257 Monigetti, I. A., 12 Monument to the Third International, [‘Pamyatnik III Internazionala’], 153–155 Moreau, Gustave, 28 Morozov, Ivan, 32, 266 Moscow, 11, 17, 54, 87–89, 96, 104, 106, 124, 125, 132, 137, 145, 157, 160, 168, 171, 172,



index

176, 180, 184, 185, 187, 194, 197, 200–203, 215, 219, 223–224, 228, 233, 234, 236, 237, 248, 250, 251, 264, 266, 281, 296 MOSKh [Moscow Union of Artists], 203–204 Mstera, 40, 113 Muradeli, Vano, 265 Muratov, Pavel, 37 Museum of Artistic Culture, Petrograd, 149, 160, 164 Museum of Christian Relics, 35 Museum of Western European Art, Moscow, State Museum of Modern Western Art, 98, 198, 266, 267 Museum of the Revolution, 98, 100 Mushtakov, A, 111 Myatlev House, 60, 76, 150 Nara, Japan, 179 Narkompros (The Peoples’ Commissariat of Education), 73, 75, 76, 80, 85, 86, 90, 106, 110, 122–125, 198 Nazi-Soviet Pact, 263 Nemchinovo, 160 NEP, 162, 193 Neradovsky, Pyotr, 93, 198, 214 New Life [Novaya Zhizn’] newspaper, 120 New Petrograd Newspaper [Novaya Petrogradskaya Gazeta], 83, 91, 96 Neyman, Anatoly, 216, 223 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 21, 48, 116, 182, 216 Nikolay I, Tsar, 271 Nikolay II, Tsar, 12, 16, 17, 217 Nissel’shtraus, Tsitsiliya Genrikhovna, 256, 267, 270, 289 Nivat, Georges, 217 NKVD, 193, 194, 209, 211, 212, 215, 216, 223, 236, 281, 282, 285 Northern Camps of Special Assignment (Severnie lagerya osobogo naznacheniya), 169 Northern Commune [Severnaya Communa] newspaper, 95, 101 Novgorod, 27 Novyi Mir [New World] journal, 265 Obradovich, Georgii, 5 October Manifesto, 17–18 OGPU (or GPU), 146, 168, 169, 193, 194, 210, 219, 248 Okhrana, 68, 72 Old Testament Trinity icon, also Holy Trinity, 29, 35, 39 Oleniev, Oleg, 120–121 Olshevskaya, Nina, 251–253

319

Opritchniki, of Ivan the terrible, 209 Ordzhonikidze, Sergo, 211 Oreshnikov, Viktor, 255 Orlov, V., 18 Orlovsky, Vasiliy, 134 Orwell, George, 217 OST, [Association of Easel Artists], 173 Ostretsov, Ivan, 198 Ostroukhov, Ilya, 38 Our Century [Nash Vek] newspaper, 83 Palace of Arts (The Winter Palace), 97, 100, 109, 113 Palace of the Poor, 97 Pasternak, Boris, 14, 140, 174, 183–184, 196, 202, 211–212, 219–221, 238, 250, 262, 276 Pavlovsk, 7–10, 20, 21, 22, 47, 144, 248, 294 Pavlovsk Park, 20, 22, 141 Pavlovsk train station, 21–22 Petrograd Free Artistic Studios (PEGOSKhUM), 82–85, 150 Petrograd Military Organisation, 134 Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, 67–68 Petrograd Party Committee, 72 Petrograd Soviet of Art Teaching Organisations [Petrogradskii Soviet Uchebnikh Khudozhestvennich Organizatsiy], 82 Petrograd, 48, 56, 66, 87, 97, 116, 117, 126, 135–137, 147, 159–160, 198, 292 Petrosovet [Petrograd Union], 110 Petrov-Vodkin, Kuzma, 84, 177, 178, 206 Pevsner, Nathan, 130 Picasso, Pablo, 41, 51, 53, 181, 258, 295 Pilnyak, Boris, 202, 222 Pilsudski, Marshal, 133 Pirosmanishvili, Niko, 198–199 Plan for Monumental Propaganda, 86, 87 Plekhanov, Georgi, 166 Poets’ cafe [‘Kafe poetov’], 104, 105 Pokrovsky, Mikhail, 72, 75 Poletaev, Evgenii, 60, 90 Politburo, 156, 167, 209 Popov, B. P., 84 Porcelain Factory, The State, Petrograd, 159–160, 164 Port Arthur, 16 Poskryobyshev (Stalin’s secretary), 220 Post-Impressionism, 266, 268 Potemkin mutiny, June 1905, 17 Prakhov, A. V., 25–26 Pravda, newspaper, 93, 123–124, 156, 215, 265 Prokofiev, Sergey, 266 Proletarian Art, 69, 148, 157

320

index

Proletarian Culture, 177 Proletarian Society, 2 Proletarian, Proletariat, 71, 84, 97, 101, 103, 109, 110, 115, 117, 120, 202 Proletarii, magazine, 71, 72 Proletcult, 72–73, 75, 77, 110, 112, 123–125, 203 Propaganda, 283 Provisional Government, 66–67 Puni, Ivan, 85, 101, 107 Punin, Alexander, N. Punin’s brother, 7, 12, 19, 47–48, 189–190, 217, 241, 255 Punin, Leonid, N. Punin’s brother, 7, 47 Punin, Lev, N. Punin’s brother, 7, 47–48 Punin, Nikolay Mikhailovich, N. Punin’s father, 7, 8, 10, 13, 19, 47, 48 Punin, Nikolay Nikolaevich (1888–1953) Birth in Helsinki, 7 Early life in Pavlovsk, 7 ‘English’ park, 7 Death of mother (5th August 1897), 8 Father’s remarriage (Elizaveta Antonovna (Zhanin Perro)), 9 Move to Tsarskoe Selo, 10 Attends Gymnasium, 13 Influence of Annensky, 13 First political speech, 18 Expelled from the Gymnasium, 2, 19 First love: Leontieva, Lidia, 20 Attends St. Petersburg University, 23 Changes faculty to study History of Art, 25 Debate on teaching of History of Art, 27 Graduation from the University (1914), 27 First meets Anna Arens, 23 First job at Russian Museum (Dept of Old Russian Art), 27 First Articles for Apollon, 27 Articles on Byzantine Art, 28 First encounter with French Impressionists, 32 Introduction to Cézanne, 32 Working for Russian Museum, 35 Writing on Russian Icons, 36 Promoted to Secretary of Society of Research of Old Russian Paintings, 37 Writing for “The Russian Icon”, 37 Apollon article on Andrei Rublev, 39 Apollon article on Mikhail Vrubel, 40 Writing for Severnie Zapiski, 42 Article on Japanses Prints, 44 Reviews of Grigoriev, Sapunov, Krimov, Fedotov, 45, 46

Apollon articles on Altman, Lvov, Miturich, Bruni and Tirsa, 50 First encounter with Malevich, 51 Articles on The Knave of Diamonds Group [‘Bubnoviy valet’], 52 Apartment No. 5, 52, 54 Leftist Bloc of the Active Artists Association, 53 Articles on Expressionism and Symbolism, 53, 54 First meeting with Tatlin, 54 Interest in Futurists, 4, 55, 102 Article on Filonov, 55 Articles for Art of the Commune [Isskustvo Kommuni], 56 Marriage to Anna Arens (Galya) (3rd July 1917), 2, 23, 57 First encounter with Lilia (Lily) Brik, 58 Encounter with “N”, 61 Affair with Lily Brik, 61 Reconciliation with Anna Arens, 62 Birth of daughter Irina, 63 An invitation from Anna Akhmatova, 63 Welcoming the October Revolution, 69 Anatoly Lunacharsky’s Appointment, 69 Origins of Proletcult, 72, 73 Active in the Union of Art Workers, 74 Narkompros and the State’s involvement, 75 Meetings with Lunacharsky, 76 Formation of Department of Visual Arts (IZO), 76 Appointed People’s Commissar of the State Hermitage (6th August 1918) 2, 76, 96 Appointed People’s Commissar of the Russian Museum (Jan 1919), 2, 76 Debate on definition of Proletarian Art, 78, 79 Emergence of the Left Artists, 79 Liquidation of the Academy of Arts, 82 Opens PEGOSKhUM (Petrograd Free Artistic Studios), 84 Appointed Commissar of PEGOSKhUM, 85 Work on Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propoganda, 87 Against Civilisation book published, 90 State Committee for purchasing new art, 93 Joins IZO, 94 Starts work as Commissar of the Hermitage, 96–97



index Creation of the Museum of the Revolution, 98 Return of the Hermitage collection (from Moscow),99 First Free State Exhibition of Contemporary Art (13th April 1919), 100 First exhibition of Filonov, 101 Resignation from role at the Hermitage, 102 Futurism is the State Art article, 102 Launch of Art of the Commune, 106 Proletariat and Art debate, 110 Left-Right debate, 111 Criticised in the Proletkult newspaper, 112 Closure of Art of the Commune, 120 Pravda denunciation of Proletkult, 123 Central Committee steps in, 124 Liquidation of the Petrograd IZO (1921), 124 Lecturing to drawing teachers, 126 Lenin’s denunciation of modern art (1921), 129 First arrest (3rd August 1921), 134 Death of Gumiliev, 135 Released (6th September 1921), 137 Invitation from Anna Akhmatova, 142 Relationship with Anna Akhmatova, 2, 63, 140, 141, 146, 186, 218, 225, 226, 244, 245, 252, 254, 277, 294 Wife’s first objections, 145 Akhmatova’s affair with Zimmerman, 146 Akhmatova’s affair with Pavel Luknitsky, 146 Museum of Artistic Culture, 149 Museum buys avant-garde paintings, 149 Academy of Arts reinstated, 150 State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKhUK), 150, 161, 162 Tatlin’s Tower, 153 Director of Porcelain Factory, 159 Lectures at the Academy of Arts, 160, 161, 204, 237, 247 Institute of the History of Art formed, 161 Associate Professor at State University, 163 Lecturing on Art History, 3, 160, 204, 237, 247 Lectures in Kiev, 163, 213

321

Artists’ increasing disillusionment, 172 Closure of the State Institute of Artistic Culture, 173 Transfers GINKhUK collection to Russian Museum, 174 Department of the Newest Trends, 174 Exhibition in Japan, 176–180 Exhibitions in Leningrad (Petrograd), 180, 199 Last articles on Contemporary Art, 182 Awarded Apartment in the Fountain House, 184 Crowding of the Fountain House, 185, 189, 190 Anna Akhmatova moves in, 186 Lev Gumilev moves in, 189, 216, 284 Rejection of Art and Revolution, 198 Exhibition Artists of the RFSR in the last 15 years, 199–201 Dismissed from the State Institute of the History of Art, 204 Head of Department, Academy of Arts, 204 Director of Department, Russian Museum, 204 Unpublished articles, 206 Financial situation, 208 Second arrest (22nd October 1935), 216 Lev Gumiliev betrayed, arrested, 218 Akhmatova (and Pasternak) write to Stalin 219 Punin released (4th November 1935) Tensions with Lev post arrest, 222 Separation from Akhmatova (September 1938), 225 Meets Martha Golubeva, (Tika), 2, 227 Writing textbook on Western European Art, 228 Praise for Van Gogh and Cézanne criticised, 230 Starts diary again, 235 Blockade of Leningrad, 236–237 Academy of Arts evacuated 236 Tika’s house bombed, 237 Tika moves to Fountain House, 238 Lecturing to remaining students, 237 Rigours of Blockade life, 239, 240 Dystrophy, 242 Family Evacuated to Samarkand, 242–244 Meets Akhmatova in Tashkent, 244, 245 Tika arrives in Samarkand, 246 Winter in Samarkand, 246

322

index

Death of Anna Arens (28th August 1943), 247 Return to Leningrad, 248–252 Visit to Zagorsk monastery, 248–250 Apartment No. 5 reunion in Moscow, 250 Akhmatova’s brisk greeting at Fountain House, 253 Akhmatova moves back in (August 1944), 254 Lecture on Impressionism at Union of Artists, 256 Votes against Serov in Union of Artists, 258 Stalin’s reassertion of control, 263 Continued lecturing on Cézanne, 268 Fired from Academy of Arts (October 1946), 230, 269 Continues lecturing at the State University, 270 Snubs Serov (President of LOSKh), 272 Serov’s criticism in Smena, 274 Fired from State University (April 1949), 275 Third arrest (26th August 1949), 277 Accusation and Interrogation, 280 - 285 Transferred to Lubyanka, 282 Sentenced . . . due to lack of evidence, 283 Sentenced to 10 years in camp for disabled, 285 Arrival in Abez, 286 Tika sends books, food and money, 290 Death by heart attack (21st August 1953), 3, 294 Grave No. H11 at Abez, 294 Post-Stalin exhibitions, 295 Rehabilitation of Nikolay Punin (1957), 29 Punina, Anna Nikolaevna, N. Punin’s mother, 7, 9 Punina, Irina, N. Punin’s daughter, 63, 144, 185, 189–191, 240, 243, 246, 253, 254, 276, 277, 282 Punina, Marina, N. Punin’s niece, 247, 250, 254 Punina, Zinaida, N. Punin’s sister, 7, 47 Purges, 3, 208–212, 263 Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, The, Moscow, 267, 295 Pushkin, Alexander, 14, 37, 111, 156, 168, 237, 269 Rabkrin, Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, 125 Rabochaya Gazeta Newspaper, 249

Radishchev, Alexander, 87–88 Railyan, Foma, 96–97 Rand School of Social Science, New York, 70 Raphael, Sanzio da Urbino, 114, 151, 295 Rasputin, Gregory, 65–66 Realism, 206, 250, 281 Rech [‘Speech’], newspaper, 56 Red Army, 98, 132–133, 167 Red Guards, 67–68 Red Terror, launched September 1918, 68 Rembrandt Exhibition, 1937, 205 Rembrandt, Harmenszoon van Rijn, 266 Renaissance, Italian, 2, 26, 37, 39, 56, 204, 223, 257, 268 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 257 Repin, Ilya, 266, 280 Requiem, poem by A. Akhmatova, 218, 222 Review of Soviet Art, journal, 193 Revolution, 7 November 1917 (new style), 2, 4, 12, 56, 59, 65–66, 73, 75, 78, 81, 88–90, 96, 102, 103, 107, 113, 116, 120, 130–131, 154, 156, 158, 164–166, 198, 205, 266, 292, 295 Ribbentrop, Ulrich von, 233 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay, 269 Rodchenko, Alexander, 204 Roerich, Nikolay, 85 Romanovs, 66, 49, 70, 82, 172 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 261 Rossky, A. M., 125 Rubens, Peter Paul, 199 Rublev, Andrei, 35, 39, 40 Ruskin College, Oxford, 70 Russian Academy of Artistic Studies, 130 Russian Association of Proletarian Artists, 203 Russian Museum, 2, 27, 32, 35, 38, 48, 69, 92, 99, 164, 173–176, 179, 180, 182, 198–199, 201, 205, 266, 281 Russian Orthodox Church, 207 Russian-Japanese war 1905, 16 Russkaya Icona [The Russian Icon] periodical, 37 Ryabushinsky, Pavel, 38 Rybakovs, 251, 253 Rykov, Alexei, 167, 210 Rylov, Arkadiy, 85 Salon of Science and Art, 25 Samarkand, 236, 241, 244–249 Sapunov Nikolay, 44–45 Sarian, Martiros, 206 Schiele, Egon, 193



index

Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies, (25th October 1917), 68 Second Artistic Meeting, 118 Second World War, 225, 230, 261, 263, 279 Seifullina, Lydia, 220 Semenov, 135 Serov, Valentin, 42, 43 Serov, Vladimir, (pseudonym of V. Rapoport), 258, 268, 272–274, 278 Seurat, Georges, 181 Severnye Zapiski [‘Northern Notes’] Magazine, 42, 44 Shakol, A., 61 Shapiro, Tevel, 153 Shchukin, Sergei, 31, 267 Shentalinsky, Vitaly, 249 Sheremetev Palace, 184–186, 190, 226, 293 Sheremetev, Count Sergey, 184–187 Shervud, Leonid Vladimirovich, 84, 87 Shileyko, Vladimir, 63, 139, 147, 185, 186 Shishkin, Ivan, 32 Shklovsky, Viktor, 126 Shopenhauer, Arthur, German philospher, 16, 17, 20 Shostakovich, Dmitry, 236, 266 Shterenberg, David, 76, 77, 82, 87, 92, 107, 125, 131, 173, 177, 203 Shukhaev, Vasily, 84 Sichev, Nikolay, 214 Simonov, Konstantin, 265 Slavophiles, 34, 36 Smena newspaper, 274 Smirnov, Evgeny, 185, 190 Smirnov, Valya, 190 Smirnov, Vova, 190 Smirnova, Anna, 185 Smirnova, Tatiana, 190 Smolny Institute, 88 Socialist Realism, 115, 176, 180, 199, 200–202, 204, 206, 250–251, 256, 265, 267, 289 Socialist, Socialism, 20, 57, 103, 112, 115, 130, 194 Society for the Research of Old Russian Painting, 37 Sokolov, Petr, 280 Sologub, Fyodor, 67 Sologub, Leonid Romanovich, architect, 74 Solovetsk Camp of the Forced Labour of Special Assignment (Solovetskiy Lager’ Prinuditelnikh Rabot Osobogo Naznacheniya – SLON), 148, 169, 249

323

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 133, 216–217, 280–281, 285 Sounding Shell poetic studio, 138 Souris, B., journalist, 289 Soviet Art, 173, 200, 257, 269, 272, 275 Soviet Culture, 250–251, 267 Soviets of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies, 68 Sovnarkom, Council of People’s Commissars, 86, 91 Spanish Civil War, 232 Spassky, Sergei, 197 Spatial Realism, studio of, 85 Sreznevsky, Vyacheslav, 226 St. Petersburg, 12, 17, 22, 23, 35, 37, 47, 48, 54, 63, 130, 144, 159, 177, 184 Stalin, Vissarion, 129, 157, 158, 167, 169, 173, 193, 194, 201, 202, 207, 209, 210, 211, 213, 215, 218–222, 224, 230–234, 242, 262–265, 267, 270, 275, 278, 279, 283, 284, 293, 294 Stanislavsky, Constantin, 33 State Soviet on Art Affairs, 74 Sterligov, Vladimir, 213 Stolypin, Feodor, 33 Stray Dog Café, 142, 236 Sudeikin, Sergey 41 Sudeikina, Olga, 160, 226 Suetin, Nikolay, 159, 200 Suprematism, 51, 108, 159, 292 Surikov, Vasilii, 216, 266, 280 Symbolism, Symbolists, 33, 53 Syrovyatkina, Anna Semenovna, 8 Tagantsev Case, 135 Tagantsev, Vladimir, 133–135 Tamanov, A, 82 Tap (dog), 185 Taran, Andrei, 163 Tashkent, 225, 236, 243, 247, 248, 251 Tatlin, Vladimir, 36, 54, 62, 76, 83–85, 89, 93, 102, 107, 114, 145, 147, 149, 151–156, 171, 173, 176, 201, 294 Teheran conference, 262 The All-Russian Congress of Proletkult (1920), 123 Timenchik, Roman, 216 Tirsa, Nikolay, 50, 54, 160, 177, 200 Tishler, Alexander, 54, 177, 178 Titian, Venetian artist of the sixteenth century, 199, 257 Tokyo, 176–180 Tolstoy, Count, 95 Tolstoy, Lev, 12, 37, 269, 290 Tomashevsky, Boris, 237

324

index

Tomsky, Mikhail, 167 Treadgold, Donald, 168 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 132 Treaty of Locarno, 231 Treaty of Rapallo, 231 Tretyakov Gallery, 31, 35, 198, 216, 266 Tretyakov, Pavel Mikhailovich, 11, 12 Trinity-Sergiev Monastery, Zagorsk, 248–249 Trotsky, Leon, 68, 132, 156–158, 166, 167, 169, 172, 174, 203, 206, 222 Tsarskoe Selo, 1, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19, 21, 23, 27, 141, 168, 11, 172, 190, 248 Tsushima, battle of, 16 Tugendkhol’d, Iakov, 117, 175 Tukhachevsky, Marshal, 210 Turgenev, Ivan, 12, 37, 269 Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 50 Twentieth Party Congres, 296 Tynianov, Yuri, 203 Udaltsova, Nadezhda, 180, 204 Ukrainian Academy of Arts, 213 Union for the Resurrection of Russia, 134 Union of Art Workers, 74, 76, 86 Union of Soviet Artists, Leningrad, (LOSKh), 201, 256, 258, 268, 272, 273, 275, 278 Union of Soviet Writers, Leningrad, 201, 215, 264 Union of Youth [Souz Molodyozhi] Society, The, 33 United Nations, 261–262 University, State, St. Petersburg (from 1914– Petrograd, from 1924–Leningrad), 23, 24, 25, 26, 47, 133, 162, 163, 169, 230, 256, 270, 272, 273, 275–277, 283, 287, 289 Van Gogh, Vincent, 31, 51, 229–230, 256, 258, 268, 272, 295 Vaneev, Anatoly, 287–288, 291–292 Varvara Dmitrievna, N. Punin’s grandmother, 9 Vasilenko, Viktor, 291 Vasiliev, Fyodor, 280 Vasnetsov, Victor, 43 Vauxhall Gardens, 70 Vechernii Leningrad, [Evening Leningrad], Newspaper, 275 Velázquez, Diego, 257 Vilonov, N. E., party nickname Mikhail, 72 Virgin Mary, icon of the, 37

Visual Art [Izobrzitel’noe Iskusstvo] journal, 106 Vitebsk Museum of Contemporary Art, 150 Voevodin, P., 122 Volkova, Kapitolina, 252 Volkovisky, Nikolay, 135 Vollard, Ambroise, 312 Voroshilov, Marshall Kliment, 167, 267 Voznesenky, Nikolay, 275 Vpered group, 72 Vrubel, Mikhail, 28, 40, 41 Vsemirnaya literatura [World literature] Publishing House, 137 VTSIK (the highest legislative, administrative, and revising body of the Soviet state), 80 Wanderers, The [Peredvizhniki], 32, 43, 78, 94, 199, 280 Western European Art, 126, 163, 182, 204, 228–229, 266, 272, 283 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 229 Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, 16, 76, 87, 97, 98, 100, 109, 295 Witte, Count, Prime Minister, 17 Wölfflin, Heinrich, 273 Worker’s Soviet, 17 World of Art group, 4, 41, 43, 54, 77, 79, 85, 93–94, 104, 153, 165 Yabe, Tomoe, Japanese artist, 177 Yagoda, Genrikh, 216, 236 Yakulov, Georgy, 4 Yaremich, Stepan Petrovich, 42, 93 Yatmanov, Grigory, 99 Yezhov, Nikolay, 210 Yudenich, General, 133 Za Sotsialistichskii Realism, [For Socialist Realism], newspaper, 289 Zabolotsky, Nikolay, 282 Zagorsk, (now Sergiev Posad), 176, 248, 250, 252, 286 Zakovsky, Leonid, 216 Zamyatin, Evgenii, 80 Zetkin, Clara, 122 Zetkin, Klara, 70, 151 Zhanin Perro, Elizaveta Antonovna (N. Punin’s step-mother), 9, 185 Zhdanov, Andrei, 215, 218, 234, 263–265, 275



index

Zhegin, Lev, 175, 179 Zhirnovaya, Anna, 273 Zhizn’ Iskusstva [Life of Art], magazine, 158 Zhoffrua, Gotfrid, 137 Zimmerman, Mikhail, 146 Zinoviev, Grigorii, 110, 124, 138, 167, 210

Zoshchenko, Mikhail, 226, 264–265 Zubov, Count Valentin Platonovich, 161–163 Zvezda [Star] magazine, 205–206 Zyelinsky, Kornel, 106

325