Yes, Pushkin!

A reader writes:

Your reader couldn't be more wrong. When Russian dissidents and democracy advocates gathered bravely in the late sixties and early seventies, frequently led by Elena Bonner and Andrei Sakharov, they had a favorite place--before the statue of Pushkin on Pushkin Square in central Moscow.  They would stand quiet vigil before the great poet, and read some lines of his poetry gathering strength and resolve from it, and remembering that the Russia that crushed freedom in Prague and trampled demonstrators in Vilnius, Baku and Tbilisi was not the only Russia.  There was a richer tradition and vision to be safeguarded.

Pushkin, who was descended from a dark-skinned servant of Peter the Great and was proud of his exotic part-African heritage, is the greatest of Russia's poets and he presents the most noble vision of what it means to be Russian--a generosity of spirit, graciousness and liberality in dealing with foreigners that reflects the very antithesis of the soul-less KGB man now at the nation's helm. He shared the Romanticist fascination with the Caucasus, and no Georgian would ever resent his voice being heard at a time like this one. There is a wonderful poetic tradition in Georgia, but not much of it in English translation. Though Boris Pasternak translated a great deal of it into Russian. Chavchavadze is the winner from the Pushkin era, I think.