Everybody, in a word, was content--even the political mischiefmakers who were contentedly making mischief paid by a contented Sosed (Zembla's gigantic neighbor). (Pale Fire, Kinbote's Note to Line 12)

In the Prologue to The Bronze Horseman (1833) Pushkin calls Sweden nadmennyi sosed ("[Russia's] arrogant neighbor"):

И думал он:
Отсель грозить мы будем шведу,
Здесь будет город заложён
На зло надменному соседу.
(And thus He [Peter I] mused:

From here, indeed
Shall we strike terror in the Swede;
And here a city by our labor
Founded, shall gall our haughty neighbor*)

Peter's opponent, Charles XII (king of Sweden in 1697-1718) is a namesake of Kinbote (Charles Xavier Vseslav, last King of Zembla).

И не повернув
            головы кочан
и чувств
        никаких
               не изведав,
берут,
      не моргнув,
                 паспорта датчан
и разных
        прочих
              шведов.
(And without a turn
         of their cabbage heads,
their feelings
         hidden in lower regions,
they take without blinking,
         the passports from Swedes
and various
         old Norwegians.**)

Pushkin called Peter I velikiy Pyotr (Peter the Great). Ot velikogo do smeshnogo tol'ko odin shag (it is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous). This proverb is quoted by Lev Kassil in his memoir essay on Mayakovski (Na kapitanskom mostike, On the Captain's Bridge, 1934):

Маленький толстый человек, проталкиваясь, карабкается на эстраду. Он клеймит Маяковского за гигантоманию (He [a short man from the audience] accuses Mayakovski of gigantomania).

- Я должен напомнить товарищу Маяковскому, - горячится коротышка, - старую истину, которая была ещё известна Наполеону: от великого до смешного - один шаг...

Маяковский вдруг, смерив расстояние, отделяющее его от говоруна, соглашается.

- От великого до смешного - один шаг, - и показывает на себя и на коротенького оратора.

In Yubileynoe (The Anniversary Poem, 1924) Mayakovski addresses Pushkin and says that, after his, Mayakovski's, death, they are to stand almost beside each other. "Your name begins with a P and my name with an M, who is between us [in the alphabet]?" Incidentally, in Yubileynoe Mayakovski shortens his name-and-patronymic to "Vladim Vladimych."