In Pushkin's Monument and Allusion, Sidney Dement attempts a cultural history of the Aleksandr Pushkin monument, which was dedicated in 1880 in conjunction with commemorative celebrations in Moscow of Russia's greatest poet.

The first two chapters deal with the planning and dedication of the monument and its relation to Pushkin's poem about monuments, Exegi monumentum, which he wrote less than a year before his death. Dement catalogues the huge scholarship on the texts that the monument poem seems to be referencing. But the focus is on Pushkin's idea of achieving immortality through poetry: “future reception.” He argues that if Pushkin's poem is a monument, it will only come to life and remain vibrant if one real poet engages the poem and makes it part of his poetic persona. The poem survives through a fellowship of successor poets, spiritual kin, not through the fame that a poem or a poet achieves as a national icon. In the chapter on the monument itself, Dement focuses on how Vasilii Zhukovskii's altered version of the poem shifted the idea of the physical monument and its orientation, from future poets—who seemed “to have been erased in the final design”—to naive readers: the people. Nor does it seem that this impression was overcome in speeches delivered at the Pushkin celebration by Ivan Turgenev and Fedor Dostoevskii, who addressed neither the monument itself nor the poem, preferring to recite another of Pushkin's poems, “The Poet,” which had nothing to do with the idea of a future poet. The Monument seemed to call forth a lot of tears, as admirers of Pushkin laid wreaths at the base, but not much commentary. If anything, it seemed like an excuse for a long-delayed celebration. Though it was necessary for the ceremonies to take place, it did not seem to play a significant role once the celebration was under way. As Dement emphasizes: “After its dedication in 1880, the Pushkin Monument receded to the background as public celebrations of the poet were shaped more by the 1880 Jubilee than by the aesthetics of the monument itself…It entered the domain of cliché as busts and monuments to Pushkin proliferated” (113). It was no Bronze Horseman.

Chapters 3 and 5 are devoted to the fate of Pushkin's legacy in Soviet and post-Soviet society, which Dement explores in the works of Mikhail Bulgakov and Tat΄iana Tolstaia. Dement argues that Russian writers of the twentieth century show little confidence that the poetic legacy of Pushkin can be preserved in the conditions of Soviet and post-Soviet society. Pushkin was exploited in the Soviet period for ideological purposes; the real Pushkin was forgotten or disfigured. In Master and Marguerita, Dement focuses on the minor character Riukhin, a poet ignorant of much of Pushkin's poetry or unable to appreciate the poetry of Pushkin that he knows. He is an emblem of the degradation of Russian culture during the 1930s when the nation was in danger of losing her rich cultural heritage.

In Chapter 5, Dement explores even greater damage to Pushkin's legacy in the works of Tat΄iana Tolstaia, especially Slynx. In this dystopian novel, Nikita Ivanych, a leading member of the Monument Preservation Society, is in charge of recreating the Pushkin statue that has been destroyed during the “Blast.” But the attempt is essentially futile, because in this debased society of the future, there is nothing left of the poetic tradition that would make the statue in any way relevant. With the real Pushkin lost, the reconstructed monument, which is destroyed in the end anyway, can serve no purpose other than to reveal to Tolstaia's readers the terrible cultural wasteland of the new world.

In the new world, the Pushkin monument loses significance because its referent has been effectively erased. Pushkin had written that his immortality was assured as long as a real poet existed in the world. But according to Dement, Bulgakov and Tolstaia can imagine a world without real poets.

Chapter 4, devoted to semiotician V. N. Toporov, deals with Toporov's approach to the interpretation of monuments, a methodology that Dement argues could be profitably applied to the Pushkin monument. Toporov does not address the Pushkin monument, either the poem or the statue. He focuses specifically on the Alexander Column and the Bronze Horseman and seems to be purposely avoiding any discussion of the Pushkin monument. What is important to Dement, however, is not specific allusions to the Monument but a critical approach that can be used to better understand monuments in general, even though Toporov, who “rejected the statue,” would probably have disdained applying his ideas to the Pushkin Monument.

The Pushkin monument has not had the most fortunate of histories. It was long delayed, often ignored, passed by without notice, besmirched by passing birds, erected in Moscow (not the city that Pushkin himself celebrated), diminished by its comparison to the monument that Pushkin did celebrate, situated in a much less imposing setting, and exploited by Soviet cultural orthodoxy. Until 1937, the statue even bore an adulterated version of the text of Pushkin's poem. The original text was restored during the most terrible year of the purges. In Tolstaia's Slynx, the statue is destroyed twice, once in the “Blast” and again in another explosion at the end. The irony is that the destruction of the statue was anyway of no importance to the world for which it was reconstructed. Dement provides a fascinating guide to the history and cultural resonances of the Pushkin monument from its planning stages in the nineteenth century to the present day. It is well-worth reading.