Anne Lounsbery, associate professor of Russian and Slavic studies at New York University and a fan of works of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, carried out an interesting studied. Throughout the course of a year she asked Ney York cab drivers whether they had heard of the existence of a certain Russian poet by the name of Alexander Pushkin. Ms. Lounsbery that white tax drivers knew practically nothing about the poet. However, black tax drivers considered Pushkin to be one of their own and called him a poet of African origin.
“They know that he was black,” Lounsbery writes in her paper “Bound by Blood to the Race”: Pushkin in the African American Context. Interestingly, in the Dictionary Catalog of the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History at the New York Public Library (one of the most authoritative catalogs of texts related to the history of African-American literature) Pushkin is cited in 118 entries. “Some of these entries note ‘The author was a Russian with Negro blood,’ while many merely state ‘Negro author,’” Lounsbery writes.
Anne Lounsbery’s research takes a look at how Pushkin over the course of many years was almost a hero of African-Americans, and the poet’s lack of recognition in Europe and the United States was attributed to his African roots. An example of this is an article from 1929 in the Amsterdam News (a black New York newspaper). “In America Pushkin would have to ride in dirty Jim Crow cars, would have been refused service in restaurants, theaters and libraries. For Pushkin was a Negro.” In 1983 Pushkin was the star of a comic book that was included in a series of comics devoted to black heroes.
With all due respect to Anne Lounsbery, New York cab drivers and comic series compliers, Pushkin was not a black poet. This we know for sure! But Alexander Pushkin sincerely respected, valued and took pride in his African roots. It’s no coincidence that the history of the life of his great grandfather Ibragim Gannibal is found in the annals of classic Russian literature.
“The names of my ancestors are encountered over and over again in our history,” modestly notes Pushkin in one of his autobiographical works. Here we find the retelling of the fateful story of the author’s international ancestor: “The family tree of my mother is even more interesting. Her grandfather was a Negro, the son of an influential prince. A Russian emissary to Constantinople was somehow able to free him from the court and sent him to Peter I together with two other Negro children. The emperor christened young Ibragim in Vilnius in 1707 and gave him the surname Gannibal.
The geographical location of Gannibal’s birthplace has been constantly called into question. The most popular version is that of Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov which was further developed by Dieudonn
