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- Pushkin will pay for the apartment: financial problems of geniuses from an economist's point of view
Pushkin will pay for the apartment: financial problems of geniuses from an economist's point of view
Money and Celebrities is a collection of entertaining and educational articles published in the historical magazine Rodina and the newspaper Nedelya by Yakov Mirkin, Doctor of Economics. Critic Lidia Maslova presents the book of the week, especially for Izvestia.
Yakov Mirkin
"Money and celebrities. Choosing a personal financial model"
M. : ABC Business, ABC Publishing House, 2025. — 400 p.
Regular readers of Mirkin, a publicist and best-selling author of financial literacy, will be pleased with the familiar life-affirming style, although many of the collisions described by the author from the lives of cultural figures and the powerful are far from rosy, starting with the very first story "Pushkin's Money", which opens the chapter "How to pull a strap. Recipes from famous people."
The deplorable financial condition in which the "sun of Russian poetry" chronically resided is generally known, but Mirkin explains in more detail why it was difficult for the chamber junker Pushkin to support a family with four children, quoting Ilya Shlyapkin's book From the Unpublished Papers of A.S. Pushkin: "The emperor, having deigned to accept me into the service, graciously appointed me 5,000 salary. This amount is huge, and yet it is not enough to live in St. Petersburg. I have to spend 25,000 here, and besides that, I have to pay all my debts, arrange family affairs, and finally have free time for my studies." The author of the book describes the everyday details that drove Pushkin into huge debts, with which he ended his life, starting with the costs of an apartment, which was "a floor with 11 rooms in a mansion with services (kitchen, basement, stable, barn, hayloft, places in the glacier and attic, wine cellar, two servants' quarters, laundry). Rent — 4.3 thousand rubles per year in banknotes. The current rate is 700 thousand rubles per month."
In the same chapter, one of the important thoughts outlined in the book is that money itself is not so good as the opportunity to buy with it a sense of freedom from some of the most unpleasant life circumstances. "I don't like money much, but I respect it as the only way to decent independence," Mirkin quotes Pushkin's letter to his wife, and in later chapters we will meet with the coined wording of F.M. Dostoevsky, who discovered in penal servitude that "money is coined freedom, and therefore for a person completely deprived of freedom, they are ten times more expensive.".
Dostoevsky's financial circumstances, also quite widely known, open the third chapter of the book, "Celebrity Poverty. Ways of survival", where Mirkin, on the one hand, endlessly sympathizes with Fyodor Mikhailovich, like all his characters, but at the same time, with his usual optimism, discovers his advantages in money troubles.: "Down with poverty! The worst of all is the poverty of writers. Although why is it worse? It's also a source of inspiration! Poor as a church mouse, Fyodor Dostoevsky began his writing life with the novel "Poor People." "Of course, the "poor" ones, what else should I write about? Mirkin argues, sincerely rejoicing at the success that has come to the aspiring 25—year-old writer. — It became more fun, royalties. The novel was published by Nekrasov as soon as it was received..."
In the chapter on Dostoevsky, Mirkin does not for the first time resort to the subjunctive mood, which was already encountered at the beginning of the book, where it was about Lermontov, who, thanks to his adoring grandmother, was happily freed from financial problems. "What a complex person, in whose creation a myriad of labor and money has been invested," the economist comments on Elizaveta Alekseevna Arsenyeva's "investment" in Michel, and then launches into interesting assumptions that if Lermontov had not been so spoiled with money, maybe his character would not have been so bad, and if he had behaved more modestly, he would not have liked to offend people so much and, therefore, would have lived longer. With Dostoevsky, the course of reasoning is about the opposite, here the grip of poverty seems to be a productive factor that successfully balances both personality and its creative manifestations: "If it were not for poverty, if it were not for hard labor, would Dostoevsky's "Russian soul" be so desperate, so sad, so ready to scream at a break?" But this chapter ends with the recognition that, from a universal point of view, there is little good in poverty.: "Poverty is not a vice for an individual, there are different circumstances, but a huge vice for a society in which the humiliated and insulted, the poor and the unfortunate should be a barely discernible minority."
"Money and Celebrities" in subject matter and structure sometimes vaguely resemble the "Money" section of Zoshchenko's "Blue Book", although Mirkin radically differs from Zoshchenko in his jovial tone, his desire to cheer up the reader at all costs, and his optimistic confidence that if a person takes up his mind, then everything will happen to him financially sooner or later. Too late will be fine. "This book is a prompter. There are a lot of stories in it, very personal ones. They are in order to think about themselves," the author declares his position, although after reading you realize the irony of the subtitle "Choosing a personal financial model." It lies in the fact that, judging by the examples given in the book, it is quite difficult to choose this model by a strong-willed decision, it is almost impossible, rather it chooses you. The way a person handles money, his financial habits, the ability/inability to earn and save, and favorite ways to spend are pre—written into his basic psychological settings, dictated by his individual character and fate (which, according to some, is the same thing), so trying to turn it all around is only going to die tired (as a satirist would say).
Apparently, Mirkin himself, as an intelligent and practical man, understands this lack of learning of financially incompetent people perfectly well, and as he delves into his book, a more precise designation of its genre gradually emerges. This is not so much a guide to financial self-development as a collection of toasts and wishes for all financial occasions. For example, at the end of the story "The Genius of the Embezzler" about how I.A. Bunin blew away the Nobel Prize, Mirkin wholeheartedly "tricks" the reader, urging forethought: "Please think, do not close your eyes. Only a person who thinks about their money and income will be able to spend any time of their life managing risks — there will be a lot of them — and fully preserving their dignity in the most difficult circumstances."
The most practical and reasonable, albeit somewhat cruel, advice is in the section dedicated to Korney Chukovsky, who also had a hard time in the early 1920s.: "Earn with everything you can, anywhere and anytime, day after day, from morning to evening, on the run, without a break, as much as you can and can't." But the further he goes, the more Mirkin departs from the edifying tone and from the desire to teach unreasonable readers who do not know how to build a reliable economic model. Many of the finales of the stories told in the book are like toasts, calling for hope in a happy combination of circumstances, God's mercy, and their own best efforts: "What can I wish for, as Chekhov wished? Easy money? Winning two hundred thousand with "that money"? No — the consistency and personal freedom created by our ideas, our masterful work, and what only we know how to do as skilled professionals! The highest monetary valuation from the market! The opportunity to build family property without suffering from everyday life. And yet — instead of day labor, instead of a one—time gain that sends you flying to hell, instead of day after day of destruction, there is great pleasure in what you are doing — for everyone and for your family!"
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