Word: pushkins
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...behavior under Brezhnev, except that Brezhnev as a person was deeply afraid of the possibility of war. How does Andropov compare with him? My feeling is, if I may oversimplify, that Brezhnev was a Russian soul as we think of a Russian soul from having read Dostoyevsky or Pushkin, whereas Andropov is a modern computer filled with Russian software...
...that changed in 1967, as Kaminskaya recounts in an engrossing new book, Final Judgment (Simon & Schuster; $18.95). In that year she made the fateful decision to represent the Soviet Union's most outspoken dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky, who had been charged with organizing a demonstration in Moscow's Pushkin Square. Kaminskaya boldly pleaded for acquittal, partly on the ground that Bukovsky had the right to demonstrate under the Soviet constitution. The legal community was shocked that she had invoked the constitution-a tactic that is taboo in political cases. In practice, the basic civil rights guaranteed by the constitution...
...centerpiece of his novel, Thomas has translated an unfinished story by Pushkin and supplied two alternative endings. Signs of Thomas' other collaborations are on virtually every page: snatches of Russian poetry; names of obscure Armenian writers; places that evoke poems by Pushkin...
...lovemaking, each bard tells a snippet of a story. A Russian seduces a teen-age Polish gymnast on an ocean liner; an Armenian American on a pilgrimage to Soviet Armenia makes furious love with her guide. The lengthiest improvisation is narrated by the poet Surkov, who fancies he is Pushkin incarnate. After a jealous scene with Pushkin's wife, he retells the master's unfinished tale, Egyptian Nights, followed by a parodic string of bromides: "Her black eyes flashed . . . Her red lips were inviting . . . Her bosom swelled over the décolletage...
...invocation of Mount Ararat is meant to raise the eyes heavenward, Thomas' repeated mention of Russia's greatest poets from Pushkin to Pasternak is obviously intended to heighten the moral tone of this melodrama of murderers, scoundrels and sadistic sex. As Thomas well knows, poets have historically served as a symbol of redemption in Russia. But merely dropping their names will not redeem Ararat for readers who expected more from the author of The White Hotel. -By Patricia Blake