Other meetings took place at the People’s Club on such themes as ‘Lev Tolstoy and his Work’ and ‘Culture and Revolution’. These debates were well attended, with up to 600 people in the audience, who actively participated in discussion and got involved in ferocious arguments. When Bakhtin gave a lecture on ‘The Meaning of Life’, discussion went on well past midnight, and had to be continued the next day. The artist Gurvich, a convinced Bolshevik, enjoyed polemic discussions with members of the Circle, although apparently he usually lost the argument. It is edifying to think that while the young Soviet Union was engaged in civil war, overcoming hardships, and fighting for survival, the citizens of Nevel’ were engaged in philosophical discussion.
While Bakhtin was the most revered thinker of the group, Pumpyansky and Kagan were no less in demand as speakers and lecturers. Kagan’s lectures on philosophy at Nevel’s Jewish Courses were particularly well attended, while Zubakin entertained his audiences with his dramatic talents and his ability to improvise poems on the spot. He must have made a strange impression on the Nevel’ population with his occult philosophical ideas, even if his concepts of united brotherly love and freedom were not so far away from the ideals of communism. Not that the Bolsheviks saw it like this – they dubbed him ‘an unprincipled poet’, while others criticized ‘his stagey tricks’.51 On the Day of the Working Red Army Man (12 October 1919) it was reported that ‘Comrade Zubakin recited the Marseillaise with great élan to the accompaniment of the local orchestra.’52
It was an enormous tribute to Yudina’s intellect that she was included in Bakhtin’s Circle. We have no evidence of her actual participation in public debates, but in the more intimate meetings of the group she evidently participated in the discussions. Bakhtin himself had a great respect for Yudina’s mind, remarking that ‘it transpired she had a rather rare ability for philosophical thought. As you know [. . .] there are many who can philosophize in this world, but few who can become philosophers – Yudina was amongst that number. She could have become a philosopher, something which is even rarer in women.’53 Bakhtin noted that her father was equally interested in philosophy. ‘Dr Yudin was an intelligent man with wide interests, despite his somewhat cynical world outlook, typical of the old Medical intelligentsia, a remnant of the 1860s and nihilism.’54
On the other hand, Maria’s fascination with German Romanticism was largely due to Pumpyansky’s influence. She could read the literature in the original language; indeed, most families of the local Jewish intelligentsia knew and used German. Maria’s early love for the Jena Romantics remained a lifelong passion, and she counted amongst her favourite authors Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich von Schlegel, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), Brentano and Fichte. In philosophic terms, Bakhtin dubbed Yudina ‘a follower of Schelling, and up to a point of Hegel. She was simply not interested in the theoretical, cognitive side of philosophy, neither was she interested in dialectics.’55
In the summer and autumn months Yudina, Bakhtin and Pumpyansky took long walks together. As Bakhtin recalled, ‘Nevel’ and its surroundings are exceptionally beautiful, and the town itself is wonderful. It’s situated beside a whole area of lakes, which are absolutely marvellous – we had long discussions on these walks. I remember that I exposed the initial ideas of my moral philosophy, sitting on the banks of a lake some ten kilometres from Nevel’. We called it the “Lake of Moral Reality” – before that it bore no name.’56
After moving back to Petrograd in 1919, Yudina would return to Nevel’ during the holidays. She also visited Vitebsk, where the Circle’s participants had transferred residence. The city was blossoming into a cultural centre of importance, dominated by the activities of the painter Marc Chagall, a native of the town. Chagall had initially seen the Revolution as an opportunity to achieve equality and to abolish the hated Pale of Settlement with all its injustices. In 1918 Anatoli Lunacharsky, newly designated head of the Commissariat of Enlightenment, appointed him Commissar for Arts in Vitebsk. In founding a local People’s Arts School, Chagall not only fulfilled his educational aims, but created innovative projects, which attracted some of Russia’s best painters, including the relatively conservative Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, the avant-garde artist El Lissitzky, the suprematist Kazimir Malevich and his student, Yudina’s younger cousin Lev Yudin. While Chagall was the catalyst for the School’s activity, Malevich was responsible for the creation in 1920 of Unovis, the highly influential modern art department, where he formulated his theories of abstractionism as ‘Non-objectivity’. In Malevich’s visionary understanding, abstract painting should be illuminated by mystic spiritual qualities. Yudina knew Malevich and years later recalled seeing his iconic painting of 1915, The Black Square, while in Vitebsk.
A similar renaissance occurred in the theatrical and musical life of Vitebsk. In 1918 Lunacharsky sanctioned the opening of a People’s Conservatoire in Vitebsk, where Pumpyansky and Bakhtin were invited to lecture on aesthetics. Here Pumpyansky gained an exceptionally brilliant pupil in the seventeen-year-old Ivan Sollertinsky, an expert in Romance languages, and in theatre and art history, who eventually chose musicology as his path in life, ending his career as artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic. The brilliant young polymath got to know Yudina, when he came to Nevel’ to hear Bakhtin and Pumpyansky speak, even before they moved to Vitebsk. Sollertinsky enrolled at Petrograd University in the autumn of 1921, and six years later became Dmitri Shostakovich’s inseparable friend, confidant and equal in sardonic wit. He had a lasting influence on the composer through introducing him to Mahler.
At the same time Vitebsk acquired a symphony orchestra, put together by the conductor Nikolai Malko on his arrival from Petrograd in the spring of 1918. Over the next two and a half seasons he conducted some 250 concerts in and around Vitebsk before the orchestra was dissolved. In 1922 Malko returned to Petrograd to teach at the Conservatoire, where Yudina took the odd conducting lesson from him. As chief conductor of the Petrograd/Leningrad Philharmonic from 1924, he became influential in his support of new music, and was the first to perform Shostakovich’s early symphonic works.
Two years after Yudina returned to Petrograd, Pumpyansky relocated there from Vitebsk, followed in 1924 by Bakhtin, with his new wife Yelena (Alyona). As the Circle resumed its activity, Yudina was not merely a participant, but a host to many of its meetings. Petrograd was the town where she embraced Christianity, became active in Church matters, attended university courses, completed her Conservatoire studies and started her professional career. Nevel’ remained for her the town of ‘childhood paradise’, where her musical talents were fostered and her intellectual formation was initiated.
* Today Vitebsk lies in Belarus, while Nevel’ belongs to the Pskov region of the Russian Federation.
* Leschetizky (1830–1915) counted amongst his students Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Artur Schnabel, Mieczysław Horszowski and Ignaz Friedman.