What a Pushkin, what a son of a bitch! What a Pushkin, what a son of a bitch! "What a Pushkin, what a son of a bitch!" (; sometimes separated by exclamation mark instead of comma) is a catchphrase and winged word from Alexander Pushkin's correspondence with one of his friends, poet Pyotr Vyazemsky. The phrase commonly expresses a joy after finishing one's work and appears particularly in several Russian literary works. In a letter dated circa November 7 or beginning of October, 1825 Pushkin, celebrating his finished drama "Boris Godunov" wrote to Vyazemsky: That was preceded by what Pushkin wrote to Vyazemsky on July 13 of the same
What Is a Nation? Anderson also points out that the reason many French citizens of Renan's time knew anything of these massacres was because they learned of them in state-run schools. Thus, the state itself preserved the knowledge which needed to be forgotten for national identity. In a 1995 book, "For Love of Country: an essay on patriotism and nationalism", Maurizio Viroli called Renan's essay "the most influential late nineteenth-century interpretation of the meaning of nation", because of its focus on the "spiritual principle" as opposed to race, religion or geography. Other authors, like Joxe Azurmendi, consider that really there is no such opposition