Dmitry Svyatopolk-Mirsky | |
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| Born | Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky 9 September [O.S. 22 August] 1890 Giyovka estate,Lyubotin,Russian Empire (now Liubotyn, Ukraine) |
| Died | 7 June 1939(1939-06-07) (aged 48) |
| Pen name | D. S. Mirsky |
| Occupation | Writer, historian |
| Genre | Criticism |
| Subject | Literature |
| Part ofa series on |
| Eurasianism |
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D. S. Mirsky is the English pen-name ofDmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky (Russian:Дми́трий Петро́вич Святопо́лк-Ми́рский), often known asPrince Mirsky (9 September [O.S. 22 August] 1890 – c. 7 June 1939), a Russian political and literary historian who promoted the knowledge and translations ofRussian literature in the United Kingdom and ofEnglish literature in theSoviet Union. He was born inKharkov Governorate and died in a Soviet gulag nearMagadan.
He was born Prince Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky,[1] scion of theHouse of Svyatopolk-Mirsky, son ofknyazPyotr Dmitrievich Svyatopolk-Mirsky,Imperial Russian Minister of Interior, and his wife, Countess EkaterinaBobrinskaya (1864-1926), descendant ofCatherine the Great.[2] He relinquished his princely title at an early age. During his school years, he became interested in the poetry ofRussian symbolism and started writing poems himself.
Mirsky was mobilized in 1914 and saw service in theImperial Russian Army duringWorld War I. After theOctober Revolution he joined theWhite movement as a member ofDenikin's staff. After the defeat of the White forces he fled to Poland in 1920.
Mirsky emigrated toGreat Britain in 1921. While teaching Russian literature at theUniversity of London, Mirsky published his landmark studyA History of Russian Literature: From Its Beginnings to 1880.Vladimir Nabokov has called it "the best history of Russian literature in any language including Russian".[3] This work was followed withContemporary Russian Literature, 1881–1925.
Mirsky was a founding member of theEurasianist movement and the chief editor of the periodicalEurasia, his own views gradually evolving towardMarxism. He also is usually credited with coining the termNational Bolshevism. In 1931, he joined theCommunist Party of Great Britain and askedMaxim Gorky if he could procure his pardon by Soviet authorities. Permission to return to theUSSR was granted him in 1932. On seeing him off to Russia,Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary that "soon there'll be a bullet through your head".[4]
Mirsky returned to Russia in September 1932.[5] Five years later, duringthe Great Purge, Mirsky was arrested by theNKVD. Mirsky's arrest may have been caused by a chance meeting with his friend the British historianE. H. Carr who was visiting the Soviet Union in 1937.[6] Carr stumbled into Prince Mirsky on the streets of Leningrad (modern Saint Petersburg, Russia), and despite Prince Mirsky's best efforts to pretend not to know him, Carr persuaded his old friend to have lunch with him.[7] Since this was at the height of theYezhovshchina, and any Soviet citizen who had any unauthorised contact with a foreigner was likely to be regarded as a spy, the NKVD arrested Mirsky as a British spy.[7] In April 1937, he was denounced in the journalLiteraturnaya Gazeta as a "filthyWrangelist andWhite Guard officer".[8] He died in one of thegulag labour camps near Magadan in June 1939 and was buried on the 7th of that month.[4] He wasrehabilitated in 1962. Although hismagnum opus was eventually published in Russia, Mirsky's reputation in his native country remains sparse.
Korney Chukovsky gives a lively portrait of Mirsky in his diary entry for 27 January 1935:
I liked him enormously: the vast erudition, the sincerity, the literary talent, the ludicrous beard and ludicrous bald spot, the suit which, though made in England, hung loosely on him, shabby and threadbare, the way he had of coming out with a sympathetic ee-ee-ee (like a guttural piglet squeal) after each sentence you uttered—it was all so amusing and endearing. Though he had very little money—he's a staunch democrat—he did inherit his well-born ancestors' gourmandise. His stomach will be the ruin of him. Every day he leaves his wretched excuse for a cap and overcoat with the concierge and goes into the luxurious restaurant [of the Hotel National in Moscow], spending no less than forty rubles on a meal (since he drinks as well as eats) plus four to tip the waiter and one to tip the concierge.[9]
Malcolm Muggeridge, who met Mirsky after his return to the USSR, apparently met one of the author's critics, a French correspondent to Russia named Luciani, who had this to say of Mirsky: "Mirsky had pulled off the unusual feat of managing to be a parasite under three regimes — as a prince under Czarism, as a professor under Capitalism, and as an homme-de-lettres under Communism." On the other hand, Muggeridge himself said that he was "glad to be his protégé".[10]
George Orwell calledThe Intelligentsia of Great Britain "a viciously malignant book",[11] butTariq Ali had a more favourable assessment of it.[12]
