13. Orenburg was a provincial capital in the Urals. Founded in 1735 to defend the Russian border against attacks from the Bashkirs, it became an important trading post. Pushkin’s Andrey Karlovich R. is based on the historical Ivan Andreyevich Reisdorp, governor of Orenburg at the time of the Pugachov rebellion.
14. The Russian word denotes a wooden box designed for travelers. It held food and dishes and was used when travelling with post-horses.
15. This phrase becomes poignant if we remember that the elder Grinyov’s allegiance to Peter III may have cost him his place at court. See notes 2 and 11 to this chapter.
16. A trading center in southeastern Russia, in the Volga basin, founded as a fortress against raids by Turks and Tatars.
17. The standard length of service in the Tsarist army was twenty-five years. Landowners often sent their serfs away to the army if they had committed some misdemeanor.
18. A lightly alcoholic drink made from bread.
19. A quotation from Fonvizin’s “A Message to my Servants.” See note 5 to this chapter.
CHAPTER 2, “THE GUIDE”
1. The Cossacks, of whom there were several groups, lived mainly in the Ukraine, on the lower Don and on the Yaik River. Their role was to defend the Russian frontier. Being fine horsemen and good fighters, they were allowed to retain certain democratic liberties. Several rebellions, including those led by Stenka Razin and Pugachov, were supported mainly by Cossacks. After the suppression of the Pugachov rebellion, the Yaik River was renamed the Ural River. The Cossacks lost their liberties but came to form an important part of the Tsarist army.
2. A samovar is an urn in which water is boiled; tea is not made in the samovar itself.
3. The late 1760s saw Cossack protests against military conscription. Cossacks were being paid little but being conscripted in large numbers. In 1772 Major General Traubenberg led an inquiry that found against the Cossacks; he was then murdered in a riot. It took the authorities six months to reimpose order.
4. The niece of Peter the Great, Anna Ioannovna, reigned 1730–40. Her reign was autocratic, reactionary, and notoriously corrupt. This corruption was often blamed on a group of Germans that included her lover, Count Biron, and Count Münnich, the general under whom Pyotr’s father served (see note 2 to chapter 1, “A Sergeant of the Guards”).
CHAPTER 3, “THE FORTRESS”
1. In reality, Pushkin’s own composition.
2. See notes 5, 7, and 19 to chapter 1, “A Sergeant of the Guards.” By alluding to Fonvizin both here and in chapter 1, Pushkin draws a parallel between the Mironovs and the Grinyovs; both Captain Mironov and the elder Grinyov observe an old-fashioned code of honor and loyalty. Pushkin does not share Fonvizin’s satirical attitude towards “old-fashioned people.”
3. In A History of Pugachov, Pushkin writes, “The fortresses built in that region were no more than villages surrounded by a clay or wattle fence. They were enough to protect a few old soldiers and local Cossacks, defended by two or three cannon, from the arrows and spears of the nomadic tribes scattered around the steppes of the Orenburg province and its bordering territories” (Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desyati tomakh, [Moscow: Nauka, 1964], vol. 8, p. 168).
4. The Russians took Ochakov from the Turks in 1737. In 1758 a Russian army laid siege to the Prussian town of Küstrin but failed to capture the citadel.
5. “The Cat’s Funeral” was a popular satirical print about Peter the Great, commonly interpreted as an allegory; Peter the Great was seen as the cat, being buried by mice who opposed his reforms. Here the cat may represent Pugachov, who claimed to be another Peter—Tsar Peter III.
6. According to the army regulations of the late eighteenth century, soldiers had to wear their hair in long tightly plaited pigtails with one curl on each side of the head.
7. At this time, most landowners in European Russia owned fewer than sixty serfs.
8. A Turkic people inhabiting the area north of Orenburg. They were declared subjects of the Russian state in the sixteenth century but continued to resist this until well into the eighteenth century.
9. A Turkic nomadic people whose homelands at this time lay to the east of the Urals.
10. Russians traditionally celebrated not their birthday but the day dedicated to the saint whose name they bore.
CHAPTER 4, “THE DUEL”
1. See note 1 to chapter 1, “A Sergeant of the Guards.” The epigraph is taken from the comedy The Eccentrics; two servants are about to fight a duel. This, of course, was unthinkable—dueling was the prerogative of the aristocracy. That the servants mean to fight with short knives makes their proposed duel more absurd still.
2. The Captain’s surname, Mironov, derives from the Russian “mir,” which means both “peace” and “village commune.” Though a brave soldier, Captain Mironov is a man of peace. Belogorsk is a peaceful world ruled by a woman.
3. Alexandr Sumarokov (1718–77), a neoclassical poet and dramatist.
4. Vasily Tredyakovsky (1703–69) was often ridiculed for his overcomplex syntax and vocabulary. By the 1830s, however, Pushkin had come to recognize his contribution to the development of a Russian literary language.
5. Russia was at war with Turkey from 1736 to 1739, and with Sweden from 1741 to 1743.
6. Duels were surprisingly uncommon in the eighteenth century. Until 1787, around fifteen years after Grinyov’s and Shvabrin’s fictional duel, duelling was punishable by death.
7. In an Orthodox wedding, crowns are held over the bridal couple as the priest pronounces them man and wife.
CHAPTER 6, “THE PUGACHOV REBELLION”
1. Pushkin took this epigraph from a song about the capture of Kazan by the Russians in 1552. The song continues: “. . . have to tell / About the terrible Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich.” Viktor Shklovsky has suggested that Pushkin associated Pugachov with Ivan the Terrible. Much of the peasantry, of course, genuinely believed Pugachov to be the true Tsar. See also the epigraph to chapter 10, “The Siege.”
2. See note 3 to chapter 3, “The Guide.”
3. That is, he was an “Old Believer,” one of the many Russians who did not accept Patriarch Nikon’s reform of traditional ecclesiastical ritual in the 1650s. Despite persecution, the “Old Believers” not only survived but even flourished; by the early twentieth century they made up about a fifth of the population of European Russia.
4. See note 2 to chapter 1, “A Sergeant of the Guards.”
5. A nomadic Buddhist people.
6. In the “Great Instruction” (1767) of the Legislative Commission she convened, Catherine the Great wrote, “The use of torture is against every dictate of nature and reason; humanity cries out against it, and loudly demands its total abolition.”
7. There were several violent uprisings in Bashkiria between 1735 and 1740. The authorities retaliated savagely, burning down some 700 villages, deporting 4,000 men and cutting off the noses and ears of 300 ringleaders. In A History of Pugachov Pushkin draws attention to the cruelty of this.
8. Very well (Bashkir).
9. Alexander I ruled 1801–25. The first years of his reign, up to the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, gave liberals hope for political reform.
10. In “A Journey from Moscow to Petersburg” (1834), Pushkin wrote: “Of course, great changes must still take place, but there is no need to hurry time, which is active enough anyway. The best and most enduring changes are those that come about as a result of an improvement in morals, without violent political upheavals, which are always terrible for mankind.”
CHAPTER 7, “THE ATTACK”
1. “Pugat'” means “to frighten.” The noun “pugach” has two meanings, both relevant: “toy pistol” and “eagle owl.” Pugachov is associated several times with birds of prey.
2. It was an old Russian custom to welcome an important guest with bread and salt—usually on a plate, on an embroidered towel.
CHAPTER 8, “AN UNINVITED GUEST”
1. Just as Pugachov impersonated Peter
III, so some of his comrades impersonated important aristocrats.
2. Fyodor Fyodotovich Chumakov was Pugachov’s chief of artillery. Towards the end of the uprising, after Pugachov had been decisively defeated in battle, Chumakov and two other Cossacks bound him hand and foot and delivered him to the authorities. For this they received full pardons from the Empress. It is ironic that Pugachov should ask Chumakov, who betrayed him, to sing this song about a “true thief.”
3. This song was popular among both peasants and Cossacks.
4. As we know, Pugachov claimed to be Peter III, the Tsar to whom the elder Grinyov appears to have remained loyal. For Pyotr to deny Pugachov’s claim would be suicidal; it would also, symbolically, be to deny the sacrifice made by his father. That Pyotr bears the same name as the murdered Tsar makes his dilemma still more poignant.
5. Grigory (or Grishka) Otrepyev, popularly known as “The False Dmitry,” was a monk who claimed to be Dmitry, the murdered son of Ivan the Terrible. He reigned for eleven months during 1605–6.
6. In “Pushkin and Pugachov” Tsvetaeva writes, “The whole encounter of Grinyov with Pugachov is between those two gestures: first he leads him back onto the road [during the snowstorm], and then he lets him go free to all four corners of the earth.” (Marina Tsvetaeva, “Pushkin i Pugachov,” Proza, (Moskva: Pokolenie, 1996), p. 546.
CHAPTER 9, “PARTING”
1. Mikhail Kheraskov (1773–1807) wrote plays, novels, and poems, including The Rossiada, an epic about the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible. His contemporaries saw him as the most important Russian poet of the age. These four lines are from a poem titled “Parting.”
CHAPTER 10, “THE SIEGE”
1. From The Rossiada. The half line immediately before this epigraph includes the words “the Russian Tsar.” The “He” of the second line of the epigraph is clearly Tsar Ivan the Terrible. See epigraph to chapter 6, “The Pugachov Rebellion” and note 1 to that chapter.
2. The sixth of the fourteen grades in the Civil Service. A collegiate councilor was considered equal in rank to a colonel.
3. The siege of Orenburg lasted from October 1773 to March 1774.
4. A real figure. Both her father and her husband were in command of fortresses in the Orenburg district; both were executed by Pugachov, as was her mother. She herself became Pugachov’s mistress but was murdered by Cossack elders jealous of her influence. Pushkin tells her story in A History of Pugachov.
5. Rascal (German).
CHAPTER 11, “THE REBEL CAMP”
1. These lines are by Pushkin, in the manner of Sumarokov. See note 3 to chapter 4, “The Duel.”
2. Holders of the order of St. Andrew, the highest imperial decoration, wore a light blue ribbon. In this respect, as in others, Pugachov and his comrades are copying the ways of the Imperial Court.
3. Khlopusha’s choice of threat may be occasioned by Beloborodov’s name: “Whitebeard.”
4. A village twenty miles from Orenburg where, in early November 1773, Pugachov defeated government forces sent to relieve the city.
5. Frederick the Great (1712–86) had been King of Prussia since 1740. After a victory over Prussia in 1759, Russian armies occupied Berlin in 1760. Russian soldiers used to Russianize Frederick’s name and refer to him as Fyodor Fyodorovich.
6. See note 5 to chapter 8, “An Uninvited Guest.”
CHAPTER 12, “THE ORPHAN”
1. Pushkin’s reworking of a wedding song he noted down during his journey to Kazan, Orenburg, and the Urals. A song like this was sung when the bride was an orphan and was being “given away” by surrogate parents. Here the effect is poignant. Pugachov is generously allowing Masha and Pyotr to marry; he is, in effect, “giving Masha away.” But it was he himself who had made her an orphan.
CHAPTER 13, “ARREST”
1. See note 1 to chapter 1, “A Sergeant of the Guards” and note 1 to chapter 4, “The Duel.” Like the epigraph to chapter 11, these lines are almost certainly Pushkin’s own pastiche.
2. A card game of pure chance, popular among the European aristocracy during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
3. An apparently decisive victory in March 1774.
4. General Ivan Ivanovich Michelsohn (1740–1807) finally defeated Pugachov in August 1774.
5. Pyotr is mentally addressing Pugachov by an affectionate form of his Christian name, Yemelyan.
CHAPTER 14, “THE TRIBUNAL”
1. Compare: “Kazan was in a terrible state; 2,057 of its 2,867 houses and government buildings had burned down. Twenty-five churches and three monasteries had also burned down. The market hall had been pillaged, along with those houses, churches, and monasteries left standing.” (Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desyati tomakh, vol. 8, p. 249).
2. Rikoun convincingly suggests that Pyotr is afraid that drawing attention to Masha’s situation, alone in a village occupied by Pugachov’s men, would lead to slurs on her honor: how could she have avoided being raped? (The Trickster’s Word, p. 130).
3. Another respect in which Pushkin has lent parts of his own family story to the Grinyovs. Fyodor Pushkin, an ancestor of the poet, was executed on a charge of treason.
4. Volynsky (1689–1740) was the leader of the party opposed to Count Biron, the German favorite of the Empress Anna. (See note 4 to chapter 2, “The Guide”) Volynsky and his accomplices, including Khrushchev (1691–1740), were executed after being accused of trying to place Peter the Great’s daughter, Elizabeth, on the throne. Khrushchev, especially, remained loyal to Peter the Great’s vision of a more modern Russia.
5. Probably intended for her soon-to-be-exiled son.
6. A suburb of Tsarskoye Selo, the small town (now called Pushkin) near St. Petersburg, that was the summer home of the Russian Imperial family.
7. Count Rumyantsev (1725–93) was another important general, famous for his victories over the Turks.
8. In this scene Pushkin reworks an episode from Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian during which Jeanie Deans pleads with Queen Caroline to pardon her sister, wrongly charged with child murder; unlike Jeanie Deans, however, Masha gains access to the monarch with miraculous ease. Pushkin is also verbally reproducing a famous painting by Vladimir Borikovsky (1757–1852) in which Catherine the Great is depicted standing in the park at Tsarskoye Selo. A whippet, or perhaps greyhound, is at her side, looking up at her. Catherine is gesturing towards the obelisk, but she looks relaxed and does not seem concerned with affairs of state. There is something odd in the exactness with which Pushkin reproduces these details. First, Pushkin emphasizes that it is a chilly autumn morning, yet the Empress is dressed for summer. In the words of Viktor Shklovsky: “she has come into the garden directly from the portrait, and Pushkin did not want to put new clothes on her.” Second, Borikovsky painted the portrait in 1791, over sixteen years after the suppression of the Pugachov rebellion. All this may be Pushkin’s way of hinting the fairy-tale resolution of The Captain’s Daughter takes place in another world, outside historical time.
9. On 19 October 1811, aged twelve, Pushkin began his studies at the prestigious Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo, near Petersburg; he was part of the first intake. Almost every year after graduating, he attended anniversary reunions. One of the best known of his several poems dedicated to these anniversaries was also written in 1836. Pushkin originally published The Captain’s Daughter anonymously; October 19, however, was the equivalent of a signature. It was a date intimately linked for Pushkin with reflections on his own fate, the fate of his contemporaries, and the fate of Russia herself. That Pushkin was the author of the novel was, in any case, no secret.
OMITTED CHAPTER
1. In chapter 8 of A History of Pugachov Pushkin describes the incident on which this scene is based.
2. A Mongolian tribe that settled in Russia.
3. Evidently a character from the novel’s first draft. There is no reference to him in the final version.
4. During his campaign along the middle and
lower Volga, Pugachov’s mere presence in a region was enough to spark off a general peasant uprising. At the rumor of his approach, “peasants would gather at the sound of the tocsin, seize whatever weapons they could lay their hands on—scythes, pitchforks, clubs, and perhaps a musket or two—and march on the local manor house or state tavern. Several thousand nobles and their families, as well as stewards, publicans, tax officials, and sometimes clergymen, lost their lives, or would flee at the approach of trouble” (Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire 1552–1917 [HarperCollins, 1997], p. 113). In chapter 8 of A History of Pugachov, Pushkin writes, “Pugachov was fleeing, but his flight seemed like an invasion. Never had his successes been more terrible; never had the rebellion raged more fiercely.”
5. August 2. Ilya is the Russian equivalent of Elijah.
PUSHKIN AND HISTORY
1. Russia and the Russians (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 2001), 229.
2. Ibid., 229.
3. Ibid., 229–30.
4. Ibid., 231.
5. The Letters of Alexander Pushkin, translated by J. Thomas Shaw (Indiana University Press, 1963), vol. 3, 613.
6. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desyati tomakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1964), vol. 8, 363 and 178.
7. Ibid., 152.
8. Ibid., 223–24.
9. Ibid., 213, 220, 160, 199.
10. Ibid., 179 and 357.
11. Ibid., 171. “Razve pushki lyutsya na tsarey?” The Russian is remarkably succinct: “Can canons be cast against tsars?” The words “that will function against” are left implicit.
12. Ibid., 269. Vor means “thief,” voron means “crow” or “raven,” and voronok means “small bird.” Here I reproduce Paul Debreczeny’s translation with only minor changes; “jailbird” is his inspired reproduction of Pugachov’s wordplay.
COATS AND TURNCOATS
1. Pushkin: A Comparative Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 1971), 338.
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