Alexander Pushkin
Message to Siberia

Deep in the Siberian mine,
Keep your patience proud;
The bitter toil shall not be lost,
The rebel thought unbowed.

The sister of misfortune,
Hope, In the under-darkness dumb
Speaks joyful courage to your heart:
The day desired will come.

And love and friendship pour to you
Across the darkened doors,
Even as round your galley-beds
My free music pours.

The heavy-hanging chains will fall,
The walls will crumble at a word;
And Freedom greet you in the light,
And brothers give you back the sword.

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This poem is addressed to the participants in the abortive armed uprising against the autocracy, which occurred in December, 1825. Pushkin handed it to the wife of one of the Decembrists who was leaving to join her husband in Siberia. In reply to this message one of the exiles, Prince Alexander Odoyevsky (1802-1839), wrote a poem which at one time was very popular in revolutionary circles. In it he assured "the bard" that the Decembrists were proud of their chains and that their faith in the cause of freedom was unshaken:

Our grievous labors were not all in vain:
A flame will yet be kindled from the spark.

The last line is printed at the masthead of The Spark, the central organ of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, which in 1900-1903 was edited by Lenin abroad and smuggled into Russia.

Translated by Babette Deutsch