Гимн (A Hymn) by Nikolay Nekrasov

Lord, give them freedom who are weak,

and sanctify the people’s ways,

grant them their justice which they seek,

and bless their labouring days.

 

May freedom, but a seed at first,

untrammelled rise to flower and spread.

For knowledge let the people thirst,

and light the path ahead.

 

Lord, set your chosen followers free,

release them from their ancient bands,

entrust the flag of liberty

at last, to Russian hands.

 

by Николай Алексеевич Некрасов (Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov)

(1866)

translated by Frances Cornford and Esther Polianowsky Salaman

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Recital in the original Russian:

Original Russian Cyrillic text:

Господь! твори добро народу!
Благослови народный труд,
Упрочь народную свободу,
Упрочь народу правый суд!

Чтобы благие начинанья
Могли свободно возрасти,
разлей в народе жажду знанья
И к знанью укажи пути!

И от ярма порабощенья
Твоих избранников спаси,
Которым знамя просвещенья,
Господь! ты вверишь на Руси…

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Россия (Russia) [extract] by Max Voloshin

Great Peter was the first true Bolshevik;

his project: to project his Russia, against

all her customs, all her inclinations,

hundreds of years into some distant vista.

And like us all, he knew no other way

save execution, torture and diktat

to realize truth and justice upon earth.

If not a butcher, you could call the Tsar

a sculptor – his material not marble

but flesh, hacking out a Galatea

and flinging scraps aside. But no man builds

alone. What else was our nobility

but our first Communists? Our nobility

was – all in one – the Party, secret police

and Ivan the Terrible’s Oprichniki,

a hothouse for the breeding of strange cultures.

[…] Bakunin reflects the Russian countenance

in every way – what intellectual boldness,

what sweep of thought, what soaring flights and falls!

Our creativity lies in anarchy.

All Europe took the path of fire – but we

bear in our hearts a culture of explosion.

Fire needs machines and cities, factories,

blast furnaces; an explosion, unless it aims

to pulverize itself, needs the containment

of steel rifling, the matrix of a heavy gun.

This is why Soviet hoops all bind so tight,

why the autocracy’s flasks and retorts

were so refractionary. Bakunin needed

Nicholas – as Peter’s streltsy needed Peter,

as Avvakum needed Nikon. This is why

Russia is so immeasurable – in anarchy

and in autocracy alike, and why no history

is darker, madder, more terrible than hers.

 

by Максимилиан Александрович Кириенко-Волошин

(Maximilian Alexandrovich Kirienko-Voloshin)

(1925)

translated by Robert Chandler