1

Sergei Serebriany (Moscow)

Russian

In this paper the reception of Tagore and his works only in the Russian speaking world will be considered, which only partially overlaps with the political entity “Russia”. In 1913, when Tagore was awarded the Nobel prize, “Russia” meant the Russian Empire, which included, among other territories, a large part of today's Poland and the whole of today's Finland. From 1922 up to 1991 “Russia” was a shorthand name for the Soviet Union (the USSR) which reunited, after the civil war of 1918–1920, most of the territories and peoples of the former empire. But the restored empire disintegrated for the second time in 1991, so that now “Russia” means the Russian Federation, still a multiethnic state with Russians constituting about 80% of its population. The reception of the Bengali poet in Poland's and Finland's cultures,[1] in the cultures of the successor states of the Soviet Union, as well as in the non-Russian cultures of today's Russian Federation must be treated elsewhere.

In the twentieth century, especially after the revolution of 1917, the Russian speaking world was divided between the Soviet Russia and Russian diaspora, which spread all over the world. The number of people who chose (and in many cases had) to leave Russia after 1917 is not known exactly. They were millions, and many (if not the majority) of them were from the most educated strata of Russian society. As will be shown in this essay, the reception of Tagore's works in the Russian diaspora has been an important part of his reception in the Russian speaking world as a whole.

The theme of this study is still largely unexplored. There are several papers in Russian (published between 1961 and 1986) and even one book in English by the Soviet scholar A. P. Gnatyuk-Danil'chuk that deal with this theme.[2] All these writings, however, are now dated. Moreover, they were written under the Soviet ideological censorship, which to a considerable degree was a kind of self-censorship by the authors themselves, a result of the notorious double-think. Quite often, the Soviet scholars, who wrote about Tagore, knew the truth (even if not the whole truth), but dared not put it down on paper. Besides, much remained really unknown and will remain unknown before scholars can look into archives, personal as well as state (and, especially, secret police) archives, in Russia, India and probably elsewhere.

The story of Tagore's reception in Russia, and in the Russian speaking world as a whole, is of course closely linked to the political and cultural history of the country in the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This history itself has not been properly studied so far and remains a matter of heated controversies in today's Russia, which controversies are certainly not purely academic, but related to current politics in the country. Any study of Tagore's reception in Russia cannot possibly avoid a number of very controversial issues. For a scholar, it is rather an advantage, because this makes the study exciting, a real research work with unpredictable results. Moreover, the story of Tagore's reception in Russia, as well as the story of Tagore's perceptions of Russia may serve as a quite revealing comment on the country's history during the last hundred years. These stories, if truthfully told, may destroy some myths about (Soviet) Russia, as well as some myths about Tagore.

How India was perceived in Russia before Tagore became known

In various political discourses we may often hear that the relations (allegedly cordial) between the two countries are “many centuries old”. But old as those relations might be, they have been, through centuries, rather meagre. It is only since the nineteenth century that meaningful contacts between the Russian and Indian cultural worlds started growing substantially. In Russian folklore, in old legends, there was, of course, an image of “rich India”, of a blessed land situated somewhere near the Paradise, but the study of real India, as part of “Oriental studies” in general, was introduced to Russia only after the so called “reforms” of Peter I, together with many other West European ideas and practices. Before that, though Russia had been always nearer to the exotics of “the Orient” than the rest of Europe, Russians had not developed their own tradition of taking interest in other cultures. What was known about India, for instance, was known only through Greek (Byzantine) sources. And for long this knowledge must have been rather inadequate.

In the late 1460s a Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin got to India, stayed there about three years, and wrote a kind of travelogue known as A Journey Beyond Three Seas.[3] But this travelogue was not widely (if at all) known before it was discovered and published at the beginning of the 19th century.

Peter I (1672–1725) tried more than once to send envoys to India, both by land and by sea, but none of the envoys could reach the destination (and mostly they were rather uncertain about their itinerary).

Another lonely and peaceful Russian adventurer did reach India in 1785. He was Gerasim Stepanovich Lebedev (ca 1749–1817), an amateur musician. He defected from a Russian diplomatic mission in Vienna and for several years travelled through Europe on his own. In 1785 he went to India, first to Madras, then to Calcutta. All in all Lebedev stayed in India for twelve years (1785–1797). In Calcutta he gave musical performances and learned Bengali, Hindustani, as well as, to an extent, Sanskrit. In today’s Bengal Lebedev is remembered and revered as the founder of the first Bengali theatre (in Calcutta).[4] By 1801 Lebedev returned to Russia (via South Africa and London). But at home there was practically no demand for his first-hand knowledge. His Indian trip has hardly produced any effect on Russian culture.

Indian studies did slowly developed in Russia during the nineteenth century, but they were mostly Sanskrit studies pursued by Germans (locally born or imported).[5] One of the most important nineteenth century Sanskrit scholars in Russia and in Europe at large was Otto (in Russia: Otton Nikolayevich) Böhtlingk (1815–1904), a German born in Saint Petersburg (his ancestors had come to Russia during the reign of Peter I). He is probably best remembered as the main compiler of the famous Saint Petersburg Sanskrit-German Dictionary. In 1923 the Russian Academy of Sciences sent to Tagore, at his request, a copy of this dictionary for the Visva-Bharati university.[6]

It is only since the second half of the nineteenth century, when the Russian empire expanded towards Central Asia and came closer to the British dominions in India, that Indian studies in Russia came to be more in demand. Ivan Pavlovich Minayev (1840–1890) is sometimes called the founder of Russian Indology. He was also the first Russian Indologist to travel in India. His scholarly interests were many, but the main one was in Buddhism, which may be explained by the tradition of Buddhist studies in Russia and by the fact that the (sic!) Russian empire had some Buddhist population. He studied Chinese, Sanskrit, and, especially, Pali. It seems that only by the end of his life he recognised the importance of modern Indian languages. Minayev visited India three times: in 1874–75, in 1879–1880, and in 1885–86.[7] The first visit was sponsored by Saint Petersburg University, the other two by the War Ministry. In the two latter cases Minayev was commissioned by the military to inquire about attitudes of Indians towards Russia and about their probable reactions to war between the two empires. The military establishment in Russia considered quite seriously the possibility of an expedition to India. However, to the disappointment of the military leadership in Saint Petersburg, Minayev in his balanced report wrote that, even though he met a lot of sympathy for Russia and Russians, it would be wrong to think that Indians would welcome a Russian invasion.

While in India on the third visit, Minayev attended the founding session of the Indian National Congress in Bombay and met some of the Congress leaders. He also visited Calcutta several times and met Bankimchandra Chatterji (1838–1894), the famous Bengali writer, who presented to the Russian scholar some of his books. While in Calcutta, Minayev could have heard about the Tagore family of Jorashanko and even about the young Rabindranath. But there are no traces of such knowledge in Minayev's papers and he evidently did not take much interest in modern Indian literatures. Nevertheless, notwithstanding his bitter remarks about “Bengali baboos” in his diaries, he understood the importance of Calcutta for the growth of modern Indian culture. In his report about his third visit to India Minayev wrote: “Calcutta with its baboos is going to have the same significance for India as Paris for France”.

Two pupils of Minayev became the key figures in the Russian Indological studies of the first half of the twentieth century. They were Sergey Fyodorovich Oldenburg (1863–1934) and Fyodor Ippolitovich Shcherbatskoy[8] (alias Stcherbatsky, 1866–1942). Both belonged to the generation of Rabindranath Tagore.

Sergei Oldenburg was not only a scholar, one of the major specialists in Buddhism, but also a kind of political figure. He worked as the permanent Secretary, actually the manager-in-chief of the Russian Academy of Sciences, from 1904 up to 1929. After the Bolshevik takeover Oldenburg managed to keep the Academy of Sciences as a semi-autonomous body until 1929. Oldenburg knew many languages, though hardly read Bengali. No doubt, he read most, if not all, works of Tagore translated into English (and probably into Russian as well). There was at least one personal link between Oldenburg and Tagore: the French Orientalist Silvain Lévi (1863–1935). Oldenburg was his close friend since the 1890s while Tagore came in touch with Lévi in the 1920s. Oldenburg has never been to India. He might have met Tagore in Europe in the 1920s, but most probably he did not. In the 1920s Tagore missed several opportunities to visit Russia before Stalin's “third revolution”. Had Tagore come before 1929, he would have met Oldenburg in Russia and enjoyed his hospitality there. When Tagore actually came to Moscow in 1930, it was too late.

Fyodor Stcherbatsky is probably the Russian Indologist best known outside Russia. He was a great scholar of Buddhist thought, and his major works have been written and published in English.[9] In 1910 Stcherbatsky undertook his only trip to India. In the autumn of that year he stayed for some time in Calcutta, working with the British scholar Denison Ross (1871–1940) on the translation of Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosha. He might even have met Tagore in Calcutta, but he took no interest in modern Indian languages and literatures. It was only in the 1920s, in Europe, that Stcherbatsky met Tagore. The Russian scholar even entertained the idea of going to teach at Visva-Bharati, like Silvain Lévi and Moriz Winternitz (1863–1937), but it has never been realised.

In the nineteenth century there was one more missed opportunity to establish close relations between the Tagore family and Russia. Nishikanta Chattopadhyaya (1852–1910), a relative-in-law of Tagore (Nishikanta's daughter was married to Rabindranath's nephew), in 1878 came to Saint Petersburg hoping to teach at Saint Petersburg University.[10] He stayed in Russia for about two years, till 1880. Once he visited Moscow and was shown the Moscow Kremlin by the writer Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883). But for some unknown reason Nishikanta left Russia for Switzerland. His doctoral dissertation produced in Zürich on Bengali folk dramas[11] was the first doctoral thesis submitted by an Indian in Europe and his book Indische Essays was probably the first book written by an Indian in German.[12]

Now I must briefly describe the place occupied by India in modern Russian literature before 1913. India was certainly known to Russian writers and poets. Thus, the poet Ivan Dmitriyev (1760–1837) in his ode “To Volga” (1794) exclaimed: “You are more illustrious than the Ganges!”. In the middle of the nineteenth century, at the peak of the Russian imperial might, the India and the river Ganges signified the extent of Russian aspirations, as the great lyrical and philosophical poet Fyodor Tyutchev (1803–1873) puts it in one of his political verses entitled Russian Geography (c1849),

From the Volga to the Euphrates, from the Ganges to the Danube...

This is the Russian empire... and it will never pass away.

(Translated by the author of the paper)

As early as 1787 a Russian translation of the Bhagavadgita was published, and scenes from Kalidasa's Shakuntala came out in Russian in 1792. But in nineteenth century classical Russian literature, roughly from Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) to Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), India occupied a modest place. Educated Russians looked, in general, more to the West than to the East. Thus, Pushkin in his works, both poetry and prose, very rarely refers to India, though in his personal library there was a French translation of Kalidasa's “Shakuntala”, and he even mentioned the “Ramayana” once in a private letter.[13] Unlike Goethe and German romanticists, Pushkin and other master-minds of nineteenth century Russian literature evidently were not too much interested in Indian culture.

It is only by the end of the century that some Russian writers and poets became curious about India and Indian culture. The most famous example is, of course, Lev Tolstoy (1828–1910). By the end of his long life he took some interest both in Indian cultural heritage and the life of contemporary India. Thus he learned about Ramakrishna[14] and read some writings of Vivekananda.[15] It is widely known that not long before his death Tolstoy corresponded with M.K.Gandhi. It is less known that since the 1880s Tolstoy corresponded with about twenty Indians, some of them Bengalis. For instance, in 1907–1908 he corresponded for a while with Abdullah al-Mamun al-Suhrawardy (1870–1935). The last years of Tolstoy's life are meticulously documented, but the name of Tagore is not found in these records.