Cultural meanings of Peter’s and Pushkin’s Russia: pre-Soviet and Soviet discourses

In the article, based on the use of comparative, cultural-anthropological, artistic-aesthetic methods, attention is drawn to the extent to which Peter’s Russia was a source of influence and a point of spiritual, artistic and creative attraction. Some algorithms are proposed that are significant for understanding the binary (and eventually dichotomy) not so much of the figures of the emperor Peter and the poet A. S. Pushkin, but of the worlds created and embodied by them. The first algorithm is a cultural-anthropological version, expressive in artistic terms and significant in cultural-historical terms. The second algorithm is a socio-political, socio-cultural antithesis. The third algorithm is associated with the designation of the Peter and Pushkin principles of Russian culture in relation to the personal characteristics of two persons who created and absorbed the intentions of the City. Based on the works of Yu. Tynyanov, Y. Lotman, M. Kagan emphasized the understanding of the city of Emperor Peter as the city of the poet Pushkin. Freedom and regulation are the ratio of two persons and two worlds, Pushkin and Peter, the ratio of images not only of the city as a construct of the emperor Peter and the poet Pushkin, but more broadly – of Peter’s and Pushkin’s Russia.