Blok – the Poet of Russian Counter-revolution

Abstract

In the article the author examines the early creative works of A.A. Blok in the context of his political views which for a long time were clearly right-wing, conservative and even counter-revolutionary. The author quotes the opinions of many well-known Blok scholars who state that even in the years of 1905 – 1907 Blok was not ready to fully resign his ideals of autocracy and his reaction to the fi rst Russian revolution as really mixed. The author also claims that Blok’s poetic myth of the early years was based on the assumption that it was possible to revive the Petersburg empire, to inspire renewed force illuminating it with dawn light and waling it from hibernation. The author notes that the image of “dawn” in Blok’s poetry has much in common with the symbol of “returning ships”. On the basis of the analysis of a number of Bloc’s texts, the author comes to the conclusion that the “retuning ships” for Blok included also the Baltic squadron that sailed to the coast of Japan and perished in May of 1905 in the battle of Tsushima. This hypothesis lets the author to conclude that the poet, as well as many St. Petersburg intellectual class representatives, including Blok’s father-in-law D.I. Mendeleev, hoped that the empire could be revived by the turn to the East of those days, that the new reign would open for Russia the vast areas of Asia and revive the power of Peter’s state. The feeling of disaster that overcame St. Petersburg over the news of the squadron defeat at Tsushima was refl ected in Blok’s lyrical drama “King in the Square”, where the poet still chose the side of the dying myth of the autocracy in its opposition to the revolutionary masses.