Re-construction of the Pushkin Library room (2003) was done to replicate Pushkin's "Last Cabinet", his study in St. Petersburg where he died following a duel---"surrounded by 1505 of his friends: his books."

In addition to its three salons, the Library houses books, films, videos, DVDs---in Russian and English---and sculptures and paintings.

Evgeniy Bogatyrev, Director of the State Pushkin Museum, Moscow, is Russian Curator of the RCC Pushkin Library.

During restoration and construction of the RCC building in 1998, it was determined that the institution would be home to three libraries, one of which is the Alexander Pushkin Library of the Arts and Humanities. A sculpture of Pushkin was donated at the RCC Grand Opening in December 1999. In early 2000, the RCC began receiving books and visuals for the library which, as of June 2003, totaled 2610 books and 235 videos. In mid 2000, the library entrance cornice and columns were constructed. In 2001, the Pushkin portrait was donated.

Construction will be in 3 phases.

Phase I was completed in June 2003. Phase I projects included: raising the ceiling to eleven feet; re-routing the airconditioning ducts; matching and applying the different shades of green paint found in the Pushkin study; applying the matching crown moulding.

Phase II will commence in July 2003. Phase II will involve constructing and installing the bookcases. As noted above, hundreds of beautiful volumes of Pushkin and other famous Russian writers have been received and will be placed on the shelves. Phase II was completed in 2004.

Funding has been received for Phases I & II. Fundraising for Phase III has begun.

Phase III will require two years to complete. Phase III will involve commissioning custom made furniture and other furnishings to match those in the Last Cabinet. For example, the main chair has a hinged back and front drawer, and other pieces are similarly unique. Target date for completion is fourth quarter 2009.

Names of Contributors to the Library in increments of $500 or greater will be installed in the Library in 2009. The Friends of the RCC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and contributions are fully tax deductible.

The evening includes a brief introduction or lecture and a reception on the Dacha Terrace or Moscow Room.

The RCC has installed a built-in audio system and acquired new video projection equipment.

Pushkin's great grandfather, Abram Petrovich Hannibal (1697-1762). In 1704, the acting Russian Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople, Savva Vladislavich-Raguzinsky, noticed something special about a young African page in the Sultan's Court, Abram (Hannibal), the son of a reigning prince of Logon* (now in the area of Chad and Cameroon). It is not clear how or why Abram, and his older brother, left their homeland and appeared in the Sultan's Court. The Ambassador brought the child, and his brother, to Peter the Great who also was impressed with the quality of the young man and installed Abram in the Czar's Court, with subsequent promotions to valet, secretary and then custodian for the monarch's private library. In 1707, Abram was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church with Peter the Great as his godfather, as Abraham Petrovich (he later took the surname of Hannibal). As Peter's godson, he accompanied the Czar on several military campaigns. Peter arranged for his early schooling where he showed a natural gift for mathematics and engineering. In 1716, Peter sent Abram to Paris to further study engineering, and while there he served in the French Army as an Engineering Lieutenant in the Spanish war, until Peter ordered him home in 1723. Abram helped to construct the naval port and fortress town of Kronstadt. He was an expert in canal construction. He wrote a treatise on geometry and fortifications. He was commissioned to fix the boundary line between Russia and Sweden. At this point Abram was one of the most highly educated people in Russia, and a favored officer in Peter's army. Following Peter's death in 1725, Hannibal's fortunes suffered. He was assigned to Siberia where he built the fortress of Selenchinsk. However, with the ascension to the throne of Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, Hannibal was restored to his position and honor in the army. In 1742 he received the rank of Major General. He was Commandant of the city of Reval from 1743-1751. Empress Elizabeth gave Hannibal land and thousands of serfs: specifically, the estates of Mikhailovskoye which belonged to the royal family, "to Abram Hannibal for eternal possession as a sign of recognition of his services to the motherland."

*In 1999, a Pushkin 200th anniversary expedition of St. Petersburg ethnographers and historians to Central African countries, headed by Igor Danilov with support of the Foreign Ministry, confirmed the assertion in 1964 by Russian poet and novelist, Vladimir Nabokov, and later supported by a French philologist, that Abram Hannibal had come from the now defunct sultanate of Logon, located on the border of present-day Chad and Cameroon, and not Abyssinia (Ethiopia) as previously believed. The project began in Russia when researchers located Hannibal's petition in 1742 to Empress Elizabeth for a coat-of-arms, in which he wrote: "I am a native of Africa..was born in the town of Logon, in the domain of my father, who had under him two other towns besides." The key evidence involved an elephant and the word "FUMMO", in Latin alphabet letters, on Hannibal's seal. The expedition, in two jeeps, reached the Kotoko tribe whose elders explained that the elephant was the patron and holy animal of their tribe, and that "FUMMO" meant "native land." Unconvinced, Ethiopia celebrated Pushkin's 200th anniversary and his "Ethiopian ancestry" with exhibitions, commemorative stamps and a street-naming ceremony in Addas Abba.

Alexander Pushkin. "Russia's greatest poet", "Father of the Russian Literary Language", "Founder of modern Russian literature". In 1799, Hannibal's great-grandson, Alexander Sergeyeich Pushkin, was born in Moscow. Sheltered because of his noble status and financial security, Pushkin was able to devote much of his life to exploiting his exceptional writing skills, producing poetry which made him one of the world's greatest poets. If there were an opera singer with a range from tenor to bass, one could compare the scope of his talent as a writer. Pushkin was masterful in expressing human nature and emotions, from those of the jaded aristocratic life, to the simple joys of the common people of his beloved Russia.

The popularity of his work was no doubt due to the impact of his powerful, passionate and eloquent expressions of the human experience---which people felt as their own. His self-deprecating nature, apparent in his writing, was probably also a factor. His sense of skepticism and irony captured what it means to be Russian, winning the hearts of his countrymen. At a time when most of the great literature was written in English and French, his prolific production in the Russian language of poems, short stories, novels, plays, histories and fairy tales, installed Pushkin as the father of modern Russian literature. He established the foundation for Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and all the great Russian writers who followed.

He could also be powerfully controversial, particularly about the excesses of autocratic rule, notably in his Ode to Liberty, and satirical verse portraits of court figures---which caused him to be exiled by Czar Alexander I, in 1820, to southern Russia. In exile, he was strongly moved by, and wrote poems about, the beauty of the Crimea and the Caucasus, The Prisoner of the Caucasus (1822) and The Fountain of Bakhchisaray (1824). However, he soon yearned for freedom, as expressed in The Gypsies (1824). In 1824, he was sent to his family's Mikhailovskoye estate by Alexander I and to stay there in exile, under the supervision of the Czar. He was pardoned by Czar Nicholas I in 1826.

Some of his most famous works have the additional strength and substance of being anchored in Russian history. Poltava (1828) and The Bronze Horseman (1833) glorify Peter the Great---inspired, no doubt in part, by his ancestral connection to the Czar; the poems are titled for Peter's greatest military victory at Poltava in 1709 against the Swedes, and his equestrian statue in St. Petersburg. Boris Godunov (1831), a tragic historical drama based on the impoverished boyar who was Czar from 1598-1605; it became the basis of Moussorgsky's famous opera of the same name. Other works became the subject of operas: Rimsky-Korsakov based an opera on Puskin's The Golden Cockerel (1833). Tchaikovsky based operas on both Eugene Onegin (1831) and the Queen of Spades (1834).

Pushkin's masterpiece is Eugene Onegin, written between 1823-31. A novel in verse about mutually rejected love, it best exemplifies Pushkin's genius---in particular, his use of wit and perception to capture the essence of Russian society of the period.

Pushkin's personal life was as dramatic and passionate as his writings. He died as a result of a duel over a woman (his wife). Pushkin had received anonymous letters stating that a young Frenchman, Baron Georges d'Antes, was having an affair with Pushkin's very beautiful wife, Natalia. Challenging the Frenchman to a duel on February 27, 1837, he received a mortal wound and died on February 29, 1837, in what is known as "The Last Cabinet", his study in St. Petersburg. It is said "he died surrounded by 1505 of his friends, his books."

Further testimony to the author is his current popularity in other countries. In the United States, most of the premier universities, from Arizona to Yale, have strong Russian departments and feature the study of Pushkin. Statues in the U.S. have been erected to Pushkin in Jackson, NJ, Arrow Park near Harrison, NY, and the most recent, in 2000, on the campus of George Washington University, Washington, D.C. This institution, The Alexander Pushkin Library of the Arts and Humanities, a joint project of the Russian Cultural Centre and the Friends of the Russian Cultural Centre, will be a focal point of Pushkin aficionados in the U.S.

An additional tribute to the poet and the multi-faceted appeal of his writings, is their popularity in other languages. His writing style has distinctive rhythmic patterns which are nearly impossible to translate. However, his perceptive thoughts about life do not have linguistic boundaries. Nor do they have time boundaries; the thoughts and questions about the human experience that Pushkin had in the early 1800s, we are thinking and asking today.

The translation and transliteration of Pushkin's works into English, can only be done by the most talented of writers. Some translations attempt to maintain the rhythm and rhyme of the originals, while others use free verse in order to more accurately duplicate Pushkin's thoughts. The Library presently has on its shelves many well respected translations of Pushkin (and other authors), as well as the original in Russian. For example, the Library has Eugene Onegin in Russian, and English translations including Vladimir Nabokov's translation (1964), and a recent translation (1995) written, and donated by, James Falen of the University of Tennessee; a two volume translation of Pushkin's poetry and prose by Ivy and Tatiana Litvinov (1974) and other translations.

It appears that the idea for the RCC Pushkin Library is timely. Just as one cannot predict the trends of the Dow average, one cannot forecast the ebb and flow of a writer's popularity through history. Nevertheless, it is clear that we are presently in a bull market for Pushkin. His current popularity seems to exceed that of the great poets of his era: Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Emerson, Thoreau and Poe. That, of course, can change as societal attitudes change. However, there are many classic aspects of his writings, firmly rooted in human nature, that will always be current.

It is the high level stature and spirit of Pushkin, that the Library and its salons attempt to apply to their presentations, in the Arts and Humanities, to the American public. We believe the Library was appropriately named.

History of the estate. When Hannibal died, Mikhailovskoye was left to one of his two sons, Osip, who built a country estate with a park and flower gardens. When Osip and his wife died, the estate went to their daughter, Nadezhda, the poet's mother. After Alexander Pushkin's death, the estate, left to his children, fell into neglect. In 1899, the poet's son, Grigory, sold Mikhailovskoye to the state. In 1922, Mikhailovskoye, Trigorskoye and Pushkin's grave at the Svyatogorsky monastery were declared a state memorial. The complex is under renovation and much of the work on Pushkin's family estate and Trigorskoye was completed in time for the 200th anniversary in 1999. Completion of the entire Memorial estate is scheduled for 2011.

Natalie Batova, RCC Director. Lloyd Costley, FRCC Chairman. June 2004