Historical Current Affairs Analysis

The seeming political miracle which occurred in the 1990s of the demise of the Soviet Union was due to a variety of political, economic and cultural factors.  The last dynamic has often been overlooked.  In this context, the obituary by HCAA Convener Dr. David Bennett of Dimitry Likhachev, which appeared in the November 2000 edition of the Melbourne based publication,  Serendipity was appropriate.  This was because this Mr. Likhachev demonstrated how success in fighting for cultural freedom can subsequently lay the groundwork for political freedom.

 

Dimitry Likhachev

1907-1999

 The saintly Dimitry Likhachev, modern Russia’s greatest writer and scholar, died on the 30^th of September last year at the age of 92.  Mr. Likhachev was a man of impeccable integrity, whose contribution to preserving Russian culture and tradition during the Soviet era and bolstering it following communism’s collapse was invaluable.

Mr. Likhachev’s extraordinary public life commenced in the early 1920s.  Within a few weeks of his graduation from Petrograd University when Dmitry Likhachev was imprisoned for three years on the Solovski Island concentration camp, followed by a harrowing year long stint as a slave labourer working on the White Sea Canal.  The ‘crime’ which precipitated Mr. Likhachev’s imprisonment was his performance in a humorous skit at a private function on the advantages of pre-revolutionary spelling.  Having survived his four year ordeal, Mr. Likhachev returned to Leningrad (sic) (St. Petersburg) and worked as a proof reader at a publishing house before being employed at the Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Russian Literature.

Due to the revival of Russian nationalism during World War II and after, there was officially renewed interest in the ancient roots of Russian culture.  On this subject, Mr. Likhachev wrote more than 1000 papers during his life and adopted and argued the hypothesis that Russian culture emerged and developed from the time of Russia’s conversion to Orthodoxy in the 10^th century through to the reign of Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century.  Mr.  Likhachev also later wrote about the Russian literary greats of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Pasternak.  As an historian, Mr. Likhachev researched and studied the language of ancient and medieval Russian transcripts and translated these works in a series entitled ‘Monuments to Literature’. 

 

A theme which ran through Mr. Likhachev’s work was the importance that Russian Orthodox Christianity fulfilled in underpinning Russian culture and tradition.  Although this perspective of Mr. Likhachev’s – who was a practicing Russian Orthodox Christian- was not officially sanctioned by the Soviet authorities, his value as Russia’s foremost literary historian enabled him to research, write and publish relatively unmolested by the state.  (However it is strongly suspected the thugs who beat him up in 1976 were KGB agents). 

During the period of stagnation in the mid 1970s to early 1980s under Leniod Brezhnev, Mr. Likhachev took advantage of the decline of the Soviet state’s authority (which was not transparently evident at the time) to campaign to save ancient buildings from destruction.  Because Mr. Likhachev shrewdly challenged the state within legal bounds, he successfully evaded being imprisoned and/or banished into foreign or internal exile.  Nonetheless, Mr. Likhachev bravely refused to sign either the Academy of Science’s letter demanding the expulsion of Andrei Sakharov from that institution or a letter condemning Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. 

 

In the Gorbachev Perestroika era in the mid to late 1980s, Mr. Likhachev founded the Soviet Cultural Foundation.  Despite the foundation’s oxymoronic name, Mr. Likhachev utilised it as a platform to preserve, protect and restore ancient/medieval monuments.  He also initiated a Cultural Fund.

 

During the August 1991 coup attempt by communist hardliners, Mr. Likhachev spoke at protest rallies at the juncture when it was unclear whether the putsch would fail.  Under President Yeltsin Mr. Likhachev fulfilled an important role of re-connecting Russia to its post-communist past.  It was Mr. Likhachev who persuaded the Russian government to return religious valuables to the Russian Orthodox Church.

 

One of the highlights of Mr. Likhachev’s illustrious career occurred in 1998 when President Yeltsin awarded him the reinstated Order of St. Andrew.  The poignant pinnacle in Mr. Likhachev’s career also occurred in 1998 when he persuaded President Yeltsin to both re-bury the remains of Nicholas II and his family and to attend the funeral ceremony himself.  Due to Grand Duchess Marie Romanov’s unfortunate decision to boycott the state funeral, Mr. Likhachev was accorded the place of honour. 

 

Although Mr. Likhachev was a staunch Russian patriot who was dedicated to the maintenance of Russian unity, he was free from any chauvinist taint as he spoke out passionately against the persecution of racial minorites and vigorously campaigned against the death penalty. 

 

Dimitry Likhachev’s life stands testament to the fact that a person’s contribution to a noble cause is valuable no matter how isolated the individual may feel at times and how adverse the odds may appear.  While figures such as Boris Yeltsin can justifiably be credited with successfully opposing communism on a political level Dimitry Likhachev can rightfully claim credit for bequeathing (or reviving) a cultural tradition which countered the legacy of Soviet nihilism. 

 

Dr. David Bennett is Historical and Current Affairs Analysis (HCAA) Convener and the International Liaison Officer of the Australian Monarchist League (AML) and the Editor of Social Action Australia Pty Ltd.