Russian literature: exploring ‘Pushkin Hills’ by Sergey Dovlatov (1983)🖋️

The context – who was Sergey Dovlatov?

Dovlatov was a writer of dry, funny and often poignant stories. After dropping out of university he was deployed by the state to work as a prison guard. He later worked as a journalist and also wrote fiction, but was never published in the USSR in his lifetime.

After his work was smuggled abroad and published, Dovlatov began to experience severe repression from the authorities. After emigrating with his family to the USA in the late 1970s, he was published in ‘The New Yorker’ as well as other reputable publications, and was praised by the likes of Iosif Brodsky.

Dovlatov was only 48 when he died of heart failure in 1990. After his death and the collapse of the Communist regime, his works began to be published and widely read in Russia.

‘Pushkin Hills’ has been described as one of Dovlatov’s most personal works. Like the story’s narrator, while struggling to make a living as a writer he spent time as a summer tour guide at the Mikhailovskoye estate, an open-air museum dedicated to Alexander Pushkin.

The story – hopes of change at Pushkin Hills

Boris Alikhanov is a witty, warm man. However, he drinks too much and has for years failed to become a published writer. He struggles to commit to anything – even dissidence, though he struggles with the Soviet regime – and has recently divorced his wife. He has a daughter who he barely sees.

A summer job at the Mikhailovskoye estate is a chance to get things back on track, though we quickly sense that things may not work out. Boris finds himself surrounded by slightly unhinged people – mostly unapologetic drunks and Pushkin obsessives – who offer little in the way of support for his rehabilitation.

Dovlatov’s humorous writing style

Dovlatov sketches Boris’s world through a series of vignettes – many short, choppy, humorous conversations which give us a sense of the tumult of his world, and perhaps the wider Soviet society of the time.

He has barely started his new role when he’s asked by a female colleague whether he is single. This is not because he’s a handsome or eligible man – but rather because “There are a lot of single girls here. The guys left”. Such is the dearth of men that even a bow-legged tractor driver who whines for beer is the centre of attention.

Boris’s job interview, such as it is, is also funny:

“Do you know the tour?” he’s asked.

“I’ve been here three times.”

“That’s not enough.”

“You’re right. Hence I’m back again.”

He’s also probed on why he loves Pushkin: none of his answers quite seem right – even trying to link Pushkin to The Renaissance. It turns out the right answer is a simple and rather Soviet one: “Pushkin is our pride!…not only a great poet, but a great citizen.”

Horrible living conditions

The living quarters Boris finds are nothing short of disgusting. Rotten food left lying around, holes in the floor and a sagging roof, putrid sheepskins covering the bed. But it’s cheap for this penniless man. He only has to pay his alcoholic landlord in drink, and as a bonus wryly ascertains that at least he has a south-facing window.

The landlord speaks in barely intelligible but creative insults, while also begging those neighbours he insults to be good Soviet citizens and lend him a few roubles for drink.

A world where anything goes

Dovlatov portrays a world that, despite the top-down state control, is cracking – one in which anything goes. “The world had been seized by madness – madness was becoming the norm. And the norm brought a sense of wonder…” muses Boris at one point.

Boris becomes a reasonable tour guide after a shaky start (he accidentally quotes another poet rather than Pushkin during a tour). Maybe life would have continued in this ramshackle but passable way – but then his estranged wife turns up.

To leave for America?

It is here that we begin to understand the struggle at the core of Boris’s life. His ex-wife, Tanya, though also part of the outer dissident circle, is practical and keen to take the opportunity to emigrate to the USA with their daughter.

Boris, for his part, wants to stay in Russia and keep writing – even though Tanya would like him to leave with the family. He worries about his loss of identity when working in a different language, and finds that likes his country: “even the policemen”. He also admits to himself that these are probably excuses – he’s become passive, inclined to let things happen to him, rather than make a decision.

Ultimately Tanya leaves with their daughter, and life unravels even further. It is a poignant rather than amusing end to the story with Boris. He is on a bender and being pursued by the authorities because his ex-wife has “betrayed the motherland”, hiding away in the family’s Leningrad flat as the police knock and knock. Life has, in his own words, gone beyond love and morphed into a matter of fate.

Key themes in ‘Pushkin Hills’ – the autobiographical angle

The autobiographical aspects of ‘Pushkin Hills’ thread throughout the text: the writer’s own struggles for recognition amidst repressions by the state (the KGB destroyed the typeset of his first novel) and the dilemma of leaving one’s own homeland forever to pursue that recognition.

Decline of the Soviet system

‘Pushkin Hills’ also give the reader a sense of gradual decline in that final Soviet decade. We have the rampant alcoholism which seems to take priority over both work and family: a KGB officer Boris is summoned to complains that “There’ll come a day when everyone’ll be juiced to the gills…Which is clearly insufficient for building Communism…”

And there are also the beginnings of cracks in the bureaucracy itself. After delivering a warning to Boris about his anti-Soviet conduct, the KGB officer whispers that he should “get the hell out of here while they’re letting people go – reunite with your wife and all the best for it.”

Pushkin: the facade of glory

We also see amidst this decay a need to grasp at past glory. This is portrayed in the reverence the tour guides have for Pushkin, though we soon discover it is a facade: a portrait of Abram Gannibal has to be removed because it isn’t a portrait of Gannibal after all, and many of the artefacts in the museum are not of Pushkin’s time but rather there to create an “atmosphere”. All that’s left is the somewhat generic countryside, and the supposition that Pushkin spent time there.

Finally, Dovlatov seems to be questioning that fundamental question that hits all budding writers in mid-life when we sense our opportunities are passing by: stick to our principles and what we are familiar with, accepting noble failure as a potential outcome, or compromise those principles while knowing this may also bring little reward.

Where to read ‘Pushkin Hills’

The author’s daughter Katherine Dovlatov has produced a highly acclaimed translation – the only one so far. It occasionally slips into American-sounding slang, though the translator rationalises this by pointing out that her father lived in the USA. This language also helps the reader to grasp a sense of the slangy language Dovlatov used, which might otherwise have been rendered odd in translation.

Like that? Want a little more?

I’ve written about 50+ Russian language stories: a full list is here.

Others I’ve featured who wrote their best works after emigration are Ivan Bunin, Nadezhda Teffi and Gaito Gazdanov. You can read my focus on Teffi’s masterpiece ‘And Time Was No More’, Bunin’s ‘In Paris’ and Gazdanov’s ‘Requiem’.

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