Letters from Rifka

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837) is widely revered as the national poet of Russia, a profound influence on modern Russian literature, and the creator of enduring works of world literature. A common Russian expression, “Pushkin is our everything,” references the poet’s national importance. Thus, when Rifka takes a volume of Pushkin’s poetry with her as she and her family flee Russia, she also symbolically takes the nation with her. She writes to Tovah, “When I read your Pushkin, I remember those cows, and the girls’ singing,” memories of Russia (34).

Since Rifka has a conflicted relationship with Russia, however, Pushkin also encapsulates Rifka’s and her family’s mixed feelings about leaving home. She and her family flee Russia to escape persecution; all things Russian represent to them this bitter past, in contrast to the hope of their American future. Rifka notes that her mother, for instance, “did not like [Tovah] teaching me Pushkin in Berdichev” (39).

Pushkin is symbolically and literally connected to Rifka’s efforts to write throughout Letters from Rifka, given that she composes her letters to Tovah in a book of Pushkin’s poetry given to her by Tovah. She treasures the book for its connection to her past, but also because of the meaning that his poetry holds in her life.