IN ONE OF Russian literature's most memorable passages, Pimen, an elderly chronicler in "Boris Godunov", passes the task of recording history to a young monk: Write down, avoiding crafty sophistries, All things that you shall witness in this life: Both war and peace, the edicts of our Tsars, The holy miracles of saintly men, All prophecies and blessed revelations... Pushkin wrote his drama about the "Time of Troubles" of the early 16th century in 1825, itself a turbulent moment in Russia. The succession of Nicholas I in that year was followed by the Decembrist uprising and then an age of repression. Every country experiences such pivots-at which epochs seem to begin and end, the current age retreats into history and the future seems to make itself present. In Russia as elsewhere, artists have often sensed such shifts before they are visible to the naked eye.
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