Some passports arouse an obliging smile
While others are treated as mud. Vladimir Mayakovski
A passport can conceal or reveal, open or close. Who knows how the true-blue British passport will be treated after Brexit, but right now Russian travellers are likely to be attracting more than average scrutiny at border control. And none too many smiles.
Is this another fake diplomat on a hacking expedition? A fumbling assassin with Wikipedic knowledge of local tourist attractions?
With Russian passports in the news – and spread across the Bellingcat website for the world to see – I am intrigued to get an email from a good friend in America introducing me to the poet Vladimir Mayakovski and The Poem of the Soviet Passport. David (Irish-born and Russian-speaking) got in touch after reading my blogpost on the poetry in an Irish passport. It made him look more closely at his newly renewed Irish passport, ‘to find all the things I had not noticed before, it also made me remember Mayakovski’s poem.’
The official stood stock-still…
He takes my pass, as if it were
A bomb, a blade or those sorts of things,
He takes it with extraordinary caution
and scare
As if it were a snake with dozens of
stings.
This ‘red-skinned pass’ is a document of provocation and pride in a full-bodied punchy poem which has many different translations. But Alec Vagapov’s version is the one in the link David sends. One click leads to another. And what a story.
Mayakovski (also spelt Mayakovsky, take your pick, I prefer the look of Mayakovski) was a celebrated poet,
playwright, artist and actor of the early Soviet era. Unlucky in love, increasingly at odds with the Soviet state, always loyal to Lenin, he shot himself through the heart in 1930 at the age of 36. Despite his turbulent relationship with the politburo, the poet’s funeral was attended by more than 150,000 – only Lenin and Stalin have stirred a greater display of public mourning. So far.
Of Grandfatherly gentleness I’m devoid,
there’s not a single grey hair in my soul! A Cloud in Trousers – epilogue
A short life with a long, still unravelling tale. Mayakovski left a hand-written suicide note “To all of you. I die, but don’t blame anyone for it, and please do not gossip. The deceased disliked that sort of thing terribly.”
A recent biography, Mayakovsky by Bengt Jangfeldt, suggests he was not only broken hearted but disillusioned by the head-grinding direction of Soviet socialism. According to Anna Aslanyan in the Spectator review of the biography:
For a poet who put absolute trust in language, the Soviet doublespeak that emerged a decade after the revolution must have been unbearable. ‘Freedom’, a word that rang so true in 1917, was rapidly losing its meaning under bureaucratic collectivism, a more precise term for ‘socialism’.
And, certainly, bureacracy is targeted from the start of The Poem of the Soviet Passport.
I’d root out bureaucracy once and forever.
I have no respect for formalities.
May every paper go to the devil
The Soviet Union passport system (internal and external) is also a complicated story. But as the holder of the red passport for foreign travel, Mayakovski covered a lot of ground, starting in 1922 with a trip to Riga, Berlin and Paris. In 1929, the year before he died, he travelled in Europe and then went west, visiting Mexico, Cuba and the USA. In that same year he wrote The Poem of the Soviet Passport, with its revealing caricatures of different national identities: the British Lion …taken with special regard; the USA met with exorbitant honor; the Polish passport, however, ‘makes them stare like a sheep might stare at a Christmas tree’.
By mid 1930s the Soviet government had closed its borders. Travelling to capitalist countries was no longer possible to all but an inner circle of the People’s Commissariat and handpicked artists. Mayakovski, citizen of the Soviet Union, for all his earlier revolutionary zeal, would probably not have been one of them.
The Poem of the Soviet Passport
I’d root out bureaucracy once and for
ever.
I have no respect for formalities.
May every paper go to the devil
But for this…
A courteous official passes through
The maze of compartments and halls.
They hand in passports, and I, too,
Hand in my red-skinned pass.
Some passports arouse an obliging smile
While others are treated as mud.
Say, passports picturing the British Lion
Are taken with special regard.
A burly guy from the USA
Is met with an exorbitant honor,
They take his passport as if they
Were taking a gift of money.
The Polish passport makes them stare
Like a sheep might stare at a Christmas
tree:
Where does it come from, this silly and
queer
Geographical discovery?
Without trying to use their brains,
Entirely dead to all feelings,
They take quite coldly passports from
Danes
And other sorts of aliens.
Suddenly, as if he had burnt his mouth,
The official stood stock-still:
It’s my red passport fall this bound
Into the hands of his majesty.
He takes my pass, as if it were
A bomb, a blade or those sorts of things,
He takes it with extraordinary caution
and scare
As if it were a snake with dozens of
stings.
The porter meaningly bats his eyes
Ready to serve me for free.
The detective looks at the cop in
surprise,
The cop looks at him inquiringly.
I know I’d be fiercely slashed and hanged
By this gendarmerie caste
Only because I have got in my hand
This hammer-and-sickle pass.
I’d root out bureaucracy once and for
ever.
I have no respect for formalities.
May every paper go to the devil
But for this…
This little thing, so dear to me,
I withdraw from my loose pantaloons,
Read it and envy me: I happen to be
A citizen of the Soviet Union.
Featured image: Museum Vladimir Mayakovski – Moscú, Image Antonio Marin Segeovia CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
This post is also published on Sceptical Scot poetry page.
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