Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022775, Tue, 1 May 2012 23:25:33 -0400

Subject
QUERY: V.D. Nabokov and the death penalty
Date
Body
Dear list,

Several years ago, Sandy Klein sent in a brief statement that Solzhenitsyn
had made about the death penalty in Russia. In it, Solzhenitsyn mentioned
that V.D. Nabokov had reversed himself on his opposition to capital
punishment in 1917. (I'm appending a copy of that info below my name.) D.
Barton Johnson asked the list generally if anyone had ever heard this
assertion before, but it doesn't look as if he got any public replies.

When I met last fall with Tatiana Ponomareva, director of the Nabokov
Museum, she mentioned the same thing in casual conversation. I circled back
to ask her about it by email last month, thinking perhaps I had misheard
her. She noted this item online:

Но позднее, 2 сент., Набоков выступил в петрогр. Гор. думе в защиту
смертной казни за антивоен. пропаганду. По мнению А.В. Тырковой, "из всех
его речей это была самая мужественная. Как юрист, как либеральный правовед
и гуманист, он был убеждённый противник смертной казни... Но в эти
поворотные решающие для России месяцы он понял, что спасти армию, вести
дальше войну до победного конца можно только при суровой дисциплине, и он
имел смелость сказать это во всеуслышание" (Думова Н.Г. Кончилось ваше
время., М., 1990, с. 180).
http://www.hrono.info/biograf/bio_n/nabokov_vd.php

However, Ponomareva recalls that the source she was thinking of was someone
else--Hessen or Shulgin, she thinks, though neither of us has pinned it
down yet. Has anyone seen any additional related references? Boyd has
clearly established that in 1922, V.D. Nabokov was as opposed to capital
punishment as he was in 1906, and the new book by Dana Dragunoiu (*Vladimir
Nabokov and the Poetics of Liberalism*) seems to show definitively that the
Crimean Regional Government, in which V.D. Nabokov was Minister of Justice,
consistently maintained an anti-death penalty stance, despite serious
ramifications. But it would be interesting to know definitively whether
there was a brief reversal in 1917.

I am working on getting a hard copy of the Думова to verify the quote and
will also try to trace the original Тырковой. (If anyone already has a copy
of either, please write me off list!) But I would be very grateful to hear
from anyone who has any addtional information on this topic.

Best,

Andrea

Here's the original Solzhenitsyn snippet, sent in by Sandy Klein in 2003:

*SOLZHENITSYN STANDS UP FOR CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN RUSSIA*
The well-known Russian writer and Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn
believes that Russia will stop terrorism only if it lifts the moratorium on
capital punishment.

"Sometimes, capital punishment is needed for the sake of saving the nation
and the state. In Russia matters stand this way at the moment,"
Solzhenitsyn has told Interfax.
Chechnya remains "an unfinished chapter in Russian history, and a grim
political problem. Therefore, the wave of terrorism is rising in this
country," he said.

He said that writer Vladimir Nabokov's father, under the influence of Leo
Tolstoy's ideas, had spent 20 years campaigning against capital punishment
in Russia. "But when the whole quagmire of the 1917 February revolution
inundated Russia and the country was covered with a wave of unpunished
murders, he admitted in the State Duma that he was wrong and that
uncontrollable violence could be stopped only by the execution of capital
punishment verdicts.

"Those in Europe who are telling us to abolish capital punishment do not
know the trials Russia has gone through. Europe has never experienced
anything of the kind," Solzhenitsyn said.

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