One Who Fulfilled His Destiny

It is neither mystical nor fantastic: the object of your aspirations seeks you. And if you seek it, you both move halfway toward each other, as collectors have long known. There is also a law of twin occurrences: the incredible can be found twice in a row. Consider the proof: I have been running all my life after the late nineteenth-century German collection of Pushkin's banned poems; and now a resounding success: I come across this book in Petersburg. And the next day, on my way home, I changed trains in Moscow and bought the book's second edition there on Stoleshikov Avenue.

Of course, you must have ample grounds to say that I collect Pushkin. But everything began so long ago and quite spontaneously.

TAKE BELINSKY
AND PUSHKIN FROM YEVBAZ

My home was on Vorovskogo St., right next to Yevbaz, the Jewish bazaar. It was a two-story building with all, as they say, the outdoor conveniences, and was intended for several residents but in fact contained several dozen. The illegal saloon on the ground floor rounded out the picture and gave the house a round-the-clock rhythm of life. And the nearby Yevbaz was, speaking plainly, a big cesspool, but the range of goods was as wide as could be: from keg moonshine (with a tiny piece of salted cucumber to sniff and if a certain simpleton ate it, there were shouts throughout the market) to antique books. It is there that I bought my first Ruslan published in 1820; I bought it for 15 rubles, while a Katiusha cigarette cost 3 rubles (5 rubles a pair), and I was 14 years old.

Did I think at the time that I had begun to collect Pushkin? Pushkin was not even a writer as such for me, his name was rather associated with a small volume from the Pushkin Library book series. But Wolf's Golden Library was even better with Mayne Reid and French writers. Of course, the literary merits of those books may be challenged, but the main thing was you could read them and SIMPLY. The Daredevil Captain is no The Childhood and School Years of Volodia Ulianov by Blaginina. I went to a night school, worked in a factory, and bought books without any higher goals. Yet, I had something by the time I left school.

And later in Leningrad, where I went to continue studies, Pushkin simply flooded me over. In general, 1949 Leningrad was a bonanza for collectors. There was everything but money.

HOW DOES A POOR
COLLECTOR GET
THE MONEY?

Do you want to know where collectors get money for their treasures from? Yes, they are all pirates, highwaymen, and great schemers. But...

When a Leningrad University student, I was paid a 220-ruble grant. The dorm took 15 rubles, trade union dues another 8, so live as you please! And whence the money for books? Very simple. Famous Petersburg used book collector Nikolai Kotov, who lived on the central prospect of Vasilievsky Island, liked, for example, the so-called merchant editions like those now favored by many new Russians. On the other hand, Pavel Pashnov on Liteiny Street preferred ornate editions and scorned the merchant editions. The point is that Pashnov would sell The Three Centuries, a gorgeous six-volume collection, for R75, while Kotov for R150. What you needed was an eraser in your pocket to rub out the old price while you were on the go.

This was not speculation or, to be more exact, not only speculation but also knowledge of the subject. The ideal scheme is as follows: you buy something from an uninitiated for a song and sell it to a connoisseur for the real price! In reality, ideal things won't do here. It is desirable to sell to a dilettante as well, making him pay through the nose. Then you might expect a poor collector to have something.

(Author's note: This way or another, most museums have grown out of private collections owned, as a rule, by the well-to-do. And only in the USSR could an ordinary poor Soviet citizen gather a collection worthy of becoming a museum. Why? First, appreciation of the true value of rarities had been diluted: the values cultivated were mass, average, and widely accessible ones. Secondly, quantity and turnover were relied on. Any library, which acquired one hundred books at 10 rubles each and not one book at a thousand, could essentially improve its financial accountability. The norms for commodity turnover for booksellers were tightened more than once: 90 days, then 40, then 31. The idea was sacred: "Our task is to serve the masses." Uniqueness did not fit in with mass culture. So the private collector could play precisely on this rejection of uniqueness by the state).

Or take another case. The Moscow Lenin Library decided to clean up its repositories, and I was taken on, by string-pulling, as an assistant: you could get the written-off books for free as a gesture of generosity. And just imagine, I look at a row of book backs, and something seems to be prodding me to take one... I took one: it was the second Beauplan (Description of Ukraine, second edition, Rouen, 1660 - Author)! I couldn't believe my eyes and rushed to look up the master catalogue: they don't have Beauplan, neither the first edition (press run of 50 copies) nor the second (also 50 copies). But I'm holding the book in my hands. What to do? Well clearly, of course, you just have to walk off with it. But how? The scum won't let you go. So I silently put it on one side of my stack of books and mentally said goodbye to it. And what do you think? The stack, Beauplan included, was sent to us all right! Is it clear now where the money came from? Money is no object!

Of course, I had to deny myself so many things all my life, that's true. I did not go on vacation, moonlighted, and saved as much as I could. Collecting is too adventuresome to take a pause, become distracted, or satisfy your appetites. Sooner or later, the collection turns into your master and makes you its servant.

Once I felt this happening to me.

PUSHKIN'S VESTS

By the time I graduated from the university I already had had 30-35 of the rarest publications: items published in Pushkin's lifetime, by his entourage, and almanacs. And then I had a feeling for the first time that the collection was my master and not vice-versa. I also understood I needed a grand idea. In 1955, incidentally, the Pushkin Museum was being organized in Moscow on Prechistenka Street. There was a customary get-together at the Central House of Literature with lots of eulogy and hot air, and Aleksandr Krein, the then director, said that our Moscow museum would be better than the one in Petersburg.

(Author's note: One can understand the director's challenging intonation, for it was Moscow's second attempt to set up a museum of its own, seemingly made from a negative line of departure. In 1937, with the centennial of Pushkin's death approaching, the History Museum unveiled an All-Union Pushkin Exhibition, which occupied a whole floor of that colossal building. Its organizers were given exclusive rights to withdraw any item from any collection or museum. But after the war, the exhibition that had collected unique items and actually become the All-Union Pushkin Museum did not return to Moscow - it was re-evacuated to Leningrad for good. So the Moscow jubilation of 1955 cost a certain amount of suffering.)

Viktor Shklovsky once noted in this connection, "What do you mean 'better'? Pushkin only put on one vest when he was going to the Black River (site of the duel - Ed.). Of course, if he had thought at once about two museums, one better than the other, he would have put on two vests, so that each museum had one shot-through garment. Perhaps one should not set oneself the task of being 'better'? For one can set up a DIFFERENT museum, namely, Pushkin in Moscow."

So this idea captured my heart. Indeed, it should not be "Pushkin Was born - Pushkin was shot," for there really can be only one museum like this. It should be Pushkin in a specific locality. Pushkin and Ukraine. Do you understand?

AND IF YOU WANT A
MUSEUM OF HOMER?

In reality, it is not so difficult to link Pushkin with Ukraine. For he traveled a thousand miles across Ukraine and not in a Toyota or a helicopter. The road, stopovers, nights, meetings, and visits... His influence, in all possible ways, on Ukrainian cultural areas and the influence of Ukraine on Pushkin... On May 6, 1820, he set out to Katerynoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk): this is where the museum begins; on July 31, 1824, he left Odesa for Mykhailivske, and this is where the museum ends. That's all.

This is a real part of Pushkin's life! Back in 1949, a bibliophile I knew told me the name of Rudykovsky, and I didn't know who he was. Shame on you, said he, this is a doctor who treated the Davydov family and healed Pushkin in 1820 in Katerynoslav. And, for me not to forget this, he presented me a book, an anatomy manual with words engraved in gold on the binding: "To the graduate of the Imperial Medico-Surgical Academy Yevstafy Rudykovsky for academic excellence..." Isn't it the living Pushkin-related Ukrainian material! But...

"Why does independent Ukraine need a museum of a Russian poet?" This has already become a catch-phrase. It was said by none other than a Ph.D. philologist, the then head of the Department of Culture.

"And if you had materials on Shakespeare, would you have us open a Shakespeare museum?" This might be a good idea, in general, but I had no material either on Shakespeare or Homer; I did have material on Pushkin.

I applied three times to open the museum. In the fourth attempt, on the gooth anniversary of the poet's death, the authorities gave Pushkin a gift: they passed a decision to set up the Museum of Pushkin and the Decembrists in Ukraine.

We were subordinated to and occupied part of the premises of the Museum of Occidental and Oriental Art.

AT THEIR MERCY

My deed of gift contained several conditions. Firstly, the collection was to remain as one whole, and, secondly, it was to be "the Rayevsky House." This mansion at 14 Hrushevsky Street, is closely bound up with Pushkin in the minds of Kyivans. In reality, this is  pure myth: neither Pushkin nor [General] Rayevsky were ever there. Long ago, Kyiv historians put up these memorial plaques on the house, perhaps to preserve a building, as if haunted since then by Pushkin's spirit, with a really interesting history. Ask any Kyivan where the Pushkin Museum should be. They will say only in "the Rayevsky House." So I wrote in my deed of gift: either the museum will be in this house or the whole collection will go to the Moscow museum.

A few years passed. We were not, of course, given "the Rayevsky house." Why "of course?" Because, pardon the expression, it faces the front of the Mariyinsky Palace that houses the suites of the top Ukrainian leadership. Could they live face to face with Pushkin? Scandalous! They kept offering one building or another (eventually handing them over to somebody else), while the collection stayed in a former communal apartment next to the Museum of Occidental and Oriental Art. Meanwhile, perestroika came down with a bang. Ukraine became independent, and, overnight, my collection turned into national property subject to no smuggling, sale, or transfer to other countries.

I could still take everything with me. How simple! I could have taken and stored it somewhere with friends. They are decent people and would have kept it as long as necessary. But what then? And then, a festive date or no date at all, one would have found a pretext and said: "That yid took everything away from us, so now we've got nothing."

ON THE THRESHOLD

In 1981, in the heat of Kyiv's 1500th anniversary celebrations, I managed to show my Pushkin Series for the first time. That exhibition in the Russian Museum was a real feat by its curator Tamara Soldatova.

(Author's note: In subsequent years, the same place saw another series of exhibitions of items from the Berdychevsky collection with him participating in the organization: bookplates of Pushkin's contemporaries, an exhibition dedicated to the 175th anniversary of Lermontov, etc. Deserving special mention is the exhibition of the works of artist Mykola Kuzmin. Yevgeny Onegin, illustrated by him and published in 1933 with a press run of 5,000 copies, was awarded the gold medal during Pushkin festivities in Paris and was repeatedly republished in various countries, but not its own. Berdychevsky expressed the hope in the exhibition catalogue that "...on the threshold of Pushkin's bicentennial, this book will be at last published with an adequate press run and leave the list of constantly searched-for bibliographic rarities."

This was in 1990! Who else could have been standing "on the threshold" of this jubilee with its magic opportunities?)

In 1989, I was invited to Berlin to deliver lectures on Russian culture and the history of imperial Russia. I worked for three years there as a visitor. Who knows what would have happened if anything had changed here at that time. But the only thing that changed was the names of streets: Repin St. became Tereshchenkivska, so the address of my museum seemed to be different, but in fact everything remained in the communal apartment. One more thing: funding came to a grinding halt. My wife said: we'll live the rest of our lives in Europe. And we left for good. What more could I do? I had almost reconciled myself to the fact that the museum epic had resulted in nothing. But they really should do something for the bicentennial, shouldn't they?! Of course! I only wished I would live to mark Pushkin's 200th anniversary.

THE MUSEUM

From the author:

Late last year, the Pushkin Museum was newly subordinated to the Museum of the History of Kyiv, which put an end to its dead season. Having lost its awkward "Occidental and Oriental" specifics, the museum came to be funded by the city. A building was at last found for it, if only according to the principle, "better than nothing." Built in the 1880s, this little modest building at 9 Kudriavska Street, has perhaps the only plus: Mikhail Bulgakov spent his childhood in it. ("Only childhood?" Mr. Berdychevsky quipped sarcastically as if he were still a young man, "or school years, too? For if it is 'childhood and school years,' we must refer to Blaginina.")

The renovation of the building and paving of access routes were completed at the last minute, just before the mayoral elections, with which, by coincidence, the museum's opening was timed. For better or worse, the museum was opened (then closed for clearing up some muddle made during the transfer, then reopened). There were many eloquent speeches and much poetry reciting, the microphone was also given briefly to Berdychevsky who came from Germany. Well, he had done more than he said.

Look in at the Kyiv Pushkin Museum on Kudriavska Street. A quiet locale, neat little courtyard, an almost toy-like tiny house, making you feel as if you had returned to the town of your childhood to see your grandmother. You feel an impulse to take off your shoes at the entrance (by the way, this is not forbidden). Pleased with your coming, the guide herself will show you a portrait of Catherine II ("she is said to have killed her husband") and the book which Napoleon himself presented to Pushkin.

This old escritoire cannot always  be kept open, for visitors simply won't be able to get by. But, on our request, the desk is opened in order to place a few household items of those times on its dark shelf: a cigarette holder, an embroidered tobacco pouch, playing cards, and a chiming pocket watch. All this is being brought in a box from auxiliary premises, then put back again and taken away, and the escritoire is closed. The things and furniture are genuine, though Pushkin's hand never touched them. In any case, the spirit of genuineness is a great and noble thing.

This bust of Voltaire, to which the guide advises we pay attention, came from Goudon's studio (but it came here, to the museum, in Berdychevsky's bag). This book (which "Napoleon presented to Pushkin") belonged to the French Emperor's lifeguard and medical officer; there are two known copies in the CIS territory, one being ours. Here is the first Ruslan (it sold for 60 kopecks in those times), an edition unique in the sense that most of the edition was published without the belated illustrations, while ours is, as you see, illustrated. This information always warms the hearts of visitors. Two steps left, please..., and we are carried to an entirely different epoch. The owner's symbols, memorabilia, gift signatures, even the names of the former owners of these books are a rarity. Another two steps forward, please... We again enter an entirely different epoch.

Yet, the people of independent Ukraine love Pushkin (the author mentally continues the argument with the cultural officeholder, already won by Berdychevsky). Here are two gifts to the museum from Kyivans, which seem to be at the opposite ends of the spectrum, one from the writer and bibliophile Myron Petrovsky, the Severnaya pchela (Northern Bee) almanac of 1837 (the only publication which printed the mournful news of the poet's death), and the other from an educated businessman Fedir Zernetsky, the museum's restored furniture, the exceptional quality of which all visitors note. "The museum exists, it has come to stay," Berdychevsky said before leaving, "let it grow now wider and deeper... Or higher..."

But Berdychevsky refused to confirm the version, so much demanded from him, that he "is happy to have fulfilled his destiny." He confined himself to the word "lucky." Strange. He might have already been happy, or at least say he is.