ALEXANDER PUSHKIN, AFROPEAN POET

The pivotal role of Alexander Pushkin in the Soviet state-sponsored literary pro ject cannot be overstated: He served as the "model Poet" not only for Russia but also for all other Soviet republics that were supposed to develop "their own Pushkin," as Maxim Gorky suggested in his speech at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934. Pushkin's role as the nation's primary poet had been firmly established since the Pushkin Jubilee in 1880. In the imperial literary discourse, the religious ideal of the "poet-prophet" was largely modeled on him. In the Soviet remodeling of Pushkin, this image merged with the Socialist Realist ideal of the writer as an "engineer of the human soul." Pushkin served not only as a national poet but also as a cultural, i.e., secular saint. Consequently, Soviet Pushkin studies allowed little room for thought that seemed sacrilegious or iconoclastic. Thus, despite the significant socio-cultural changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union, contemporary Pushkin research continues to grapple with persistent lacunae in the history of his reception. A markedly different approach to Pushkin’s ancestry has emerged in the Afropean discourse of the new millennium. Texts like Bernardine Evaristo’s novel "Soul Tourists" (2005) and Johny Pitts' travelogue "Afropean. Notes from Black Europe" (2019) free Pushkin from the con fines of Russian nationalism, offering a more comprehensive understanding of Black Europe's past and present. They stress Pushkin's African heritage while also re-telling his story—and by exten sion, European history—as a testament to the presence and contributions of Afropeans in Europe. In "Afropean", Pitts approaches this endeavour as both reparative and spatial, emphasizing Pushkin’s relevance for his project: "In him I saw a sort of kindred spirit of the liminal terrain, rooted in Russia but at poetic distance from it, too; an Afropean wanderer." Approaching Pushkin as an Afropean wanderer is not merely Pitts’ projection: Pushkin himself grappled with his identity as both a Russian and a Black poet, his position within and beyond Europe.