PBC0182: joy at reuniting Russia

PBC 182 expresses jubilation at establishing Bolshevik control over Russian territory. Spanning the years of revolution and civil war, this PBC celebrates the revolution itself in 1917 and the power-to-the-people mood: “the people themselves rule Rus’…/ In poor village huts/ Free speech flows” (W525). During the Civil War, one work depicts an old person urging the young to “Fight for a joyful Rus’!” (W370). 1921 and the Bolshevik victory bring the greatest number of instances of this PBC. One example praises the “red-starred hero” who has “washed the earth with blood” and has finally taken over the “firm ground of Crimea” (W319), the last point of fighting in European Russia. In another, the poet imagines himself Prometheus-like, his giant body splayed across Russian territory, his “ear on the Siberian taiga, …leg on the Baltic” (W115), symbolically reclaiming the Russian lands.