He opened the door. The flames leaped in and twisted along the beams which were caulked with dry moss. My father fired the pistol, stepped over the burning threshold and shouted: ‘Follow me!’ I took my mother and Maria Ivanovna by the hands and quickly led them out into the air. By the door lay Shvabrin, with a bullet through him fired by my father’s decrepit hand. The crowd of brigands who had fled at our unexpected emergence instantly took courage and began closing in upon us. I succeeded in dealing a few more blows with my sword; but a well-aimed brick caught me full in the chest. I fell to the ground and lost consciousness for a few seconds; I was surrounded and disarmed. Coming to myself, I saw Shvabrin sitting on the blood-stained grass with my family standing before him.
I was supported under the arms. A crowd of peasants, Cossacks and Bashkirs encircled us. Shvabrin was dreadfully pale. He was pressing one hand to his wounded side. His face expressed suffering and hatred. He slowly raised his head, glanced at me and said in a weak, hardly audible voice: ‘Hang him… and all of them… except her…’
The crowd surrounded us at once and dragged us to the gates. But suddenly they left us and scattered: Zurin and a whole squadron of hussars with drawn swords were riding in through the gates.
The rebels fled right and left. The hussars pursued them, struck out with their swords and took them prisoner. Zurin jumped off his horse, bowed to my father and mother, and warmly clasped me by the hand. ‘Got here just in time!’ he said to us. ‘Ah, and your betrothed is here too!’ Maria Ivanovna coloured to the ears. My father approached and thanked him calmly, though he was obviously shaken. My mother embraced him, calling him our delivering – angel. ‘Welcome to our home!’ said my father, leading him into the house.
Zurin stopped as he passed Shvabrin. ‘Who is it?’ he asked, looking at the wounded man. ‘That is the leader of the gang in person,’ replied my father with a certain pride which betokened the old soldier. ‘God assisted my feeble old hand to punish the young miscreant and avenge the blood of my son.’ – ‘It is Shvabrin,’ I told Zurin. ‘Shvabrin! Charmed! Hussars, take him! Tell the leech to dress his wound and watch over him like the apple of his eye. Shvabrin must certainly be sent before the Kazan Secret Commission. He is one of the chief criminals and his evidence will assuredly be of great importance!’
Shvabrin opened his eyes wearily. His face expressed nothing save physical pain. The hussars carried him away on a cloak.
We went into the house. I looked about me with a tremor, recalling the years of my childhood. Nothing had changed in the house, everything was in its old place. Shvabrin had not allowed it to be plundered: low as he had stooped he had preserved an instinctive aversion to the dishonouring greed for booty.
The servants appeared in the hall. They had taken no part in the rebellion and whole-heartedly rejoiced at our release. Savelich was triumphant. I must tell you that in the commotion caused by the outlaws’ attack he had run to the stables where Shvabrin’s horse was, saddled and led her out quietly under cover of the general hubbub and galloped off unobserved to the ferry. He came upon the regiment enjoying a halt on this side of the Volga. Hearing from him of our danger, Zurin had sounded the trumpet call to mount, ordered his men forward at the gallop and, thank God, arrived in time.
Zurin insisted that the head of Andriushka, the village scribe, should be exhibited for a few hours on the end of a pole by the tavern.
The hussars returned from their chase with a number of prisoners. These were locked in the same granary where we had endured our memorable siege. We all went to our rooms. The old people needed a rest. Not having slept the whole night long, I threw myself on to the bed and dropped fast asleep. Zurin departed to make necessary arrangements.
In the evening we all gathered in the drawing-room round the samovar, chatting gaily of the peril that was past. Maria Ivanovna poured out the tea. I sat down by her side and devoted myself exclusively to her. My parents appeared to view with favour the tender feelings we had for each other. To this day that evening lives in my memory. I was happy, completely happy – and are there many such moments in this poor life on earth?
The following day my father was told that the peasants had assembled in the courtyard to ask for his pardon. My father went out on to the steps to talk to them. As soon as he approached, the peasants fell on their knees. ‘Well, you foolish ones I’ he said to them. ‘Why did you take it into your heads to rebel?’ – ‘We are sorry, master,’ they answered in one voice. ‘Sorry, are you? You get into mischief and then you are sorry! I forgive you for the happiness God has given me of seeing my son, Piotr Andreich, again. Very well, so be it: a sin confessed is a sin forgiven.’
‘We did wrong, of course we did!’
‘God has sent us fine weather. We ought to be getting the hay in; and you, you pack of donkeys, what have you been doing these last three days? Elder, put everyone on to haymaking. And see that by St John’s Day1 all the hay is stacked, you ginger-headed rascal! Now be off!’
The peasants bowed and went about their work as though nothing had happened.
Shvabrin’s wound did not turn out to be a mortal one. He was sent under escort to Kazan. From the window I watched them laying him in the wagon. Our eyes met. He bent his head and I made haste to move from the window: I was afraid of looking as though I were triumphing over a broken and unhappy enemy.
Zurin was obliged to continue farther, and I decided to accompany him, in spite of my desire to spend a few more days with my family. On the eve of our departure I went to my parents and, in accordance with the custom of the time, bowed down to the ground before them and asked their blessing on my marriage with Maria Ivanovna. The old people lifted me up, and with tears of joy expressed their consent. I brought Maria Ivanovna, pale and trembling, to them. They gave us their benediction. I cannot describe what I felt. Those who have been in my position will understand in any case; as to those who have not, I can only pity and advise them, while there is still time, to fall in love and receive their parents’ blessing.
The following day the regiment was ready. Zurin took leave of my family. We were all convinced that military operations would soon be over. I was hoping to be married within a month. As she said good-bye, Maria Ivanovna kissed me in front of everyone. I took my seat in the carriage. Savelich came with me once again and the regiment marched off. For as long as it was in sight I looked back at the country house that I was leaving again. I was troubled by a gloomy foreboding. A voice seemed to whisper that not all my troubles were past and done with. In my heart there was a presentiment of another storm.
I shall not describe our campaign and the end of the war against Pugachev. We passed through villages he had pillaged, and were obliged to take from the poor inhabitants what little the rebels had left them.
The people did not know whom to obey. Law and order everywhere came to a standstill. The gentry were hiding in the forests. Bands of brigands roamed the countryside, robbing and plundering. Commanders of isolated detachments sent in pursuit of Pugachev, who was by then fleeing in the direction of Astrakhan, chastised the guilty and the innocent at will. The whole region where the conflagration raged was in a parlous condition. Heaven send that we may never see such another senseless and merciless rebellion à la russe! Those who plan impossible revolutions in Russia are either youngsters who do not know our people or positively heartless men who set little value on their own skins and less still on those of others.
Chronology
1799 26 May: Born in Moscow. Father of ancient Muscovite aristocratic lineage; mother a granddaughter of Abyssinian General A. Gannibal (the ‘Negro of Peter the Great’).
1811–17 Educated at newly opened Imperial Lycée at Tsarskoe Selo. First poetry (earliest publication 1814).
1817–20 Nominal government appointment in Foreign Office, St Petersburg. Life of dissipation. ‘Free-thinking’ acquaintances (future Decembrists).
1820 Completed first major narrative poem, Ruslan and Lyudmila. Exiled to sout
h for a handful of ‘liberal’ verses on freedom, serfdom and autocracy.
1820–24 ‘Southern exile’ (via Caucasus and Crimea to Kishinev and, from July 1823, Odessa). ‘Byronic’ narrative poems, including The Captive of the Caucasus and The Fountain at Bakhchisaray. Began Eugene Onegin (1823). Recognition as leading poet of his generation.
1824–6 After misdemeanours in Odessa, exile continued in greater isolation of parental estate of Mikhaylovskoe. The Gipsies (1824); Count Nulin; Boris Godunov (1825). Misses Decembrist Revolt of 1825, ruthlessly suppressed by new emperor, Nicholas I.
1826 September: Summoned to Moscow by Nicholas I. Freed from exile, with tsar as personal censor; subject thereafter to ‘surveillance, guidance and counselling’ of Count Benkendorf, Head of the Third Section (Secret Police). Resumed life in Moscow and St Petersburg; restlessness, search for stability.
1828 Poltava (narrative poem on Peter the Great and Mazepa).
1829 Four-month visit to Transcaucasia. Witnessed Russian army in action against the Turks.
1830 Proposed to Natalya Goncharova (1812–63). In September–November stranded by cholera epidemic at new estate of Boldino: first and most productive ‘Boldino autumn’ (onegin; lyrics; little Tragedies; Tales of Belkin; The Little House in Kolomna).
1831 Married in February. Settled in St Petersburg. Completed Onegin.
1833 Historical research. Travelled to Urals. Second Boldino autumn (The Bronze Horseman; work on The Queen of Spades).
1833–6 Unhappy period in St Petersburg: humiliations at court (with requests for retirement from government service refused), mounting debts and marital insecurity. Relatively little creative work: The Captain’s Daughter (completed 1836) and some outstanding lyrics.
1837 27 January: Provoked into duel with Baron D’Anthès, adopted son of Dutch ambassador, and shot in stomach. Died two days later. ‘Secret’ burial decreed, to avoid expressions of public sympathy.
1. Regent of France from 1715 to 1723.
1. Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1689–1735), political publicist and satirist.
2. Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757), savant and publicist.
1. John Law (1671–1729), projector of financial schemes, organizer of La Banque Générale in Paris.
2. Duc de Richelieu (1698–1788), marshal of France and a gay, outstanding figure of the Court of Louis XV.
3. Voltaire: La Pucelle d’Orléans, Canto XIII.
4. François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778).
5. Guillaume Chaulieu (1639–1720), poet and author of frivolous songs.
1. Eighteen miles.
1. Prince Menshikov (1670–1729), general-field-marshal and favourite of Peter the Great.
2. Prince Dolgoruky (1639–1720), senator and close adviser of Peter the Great. Noted for his forthrightness.
3. Y. V. Bruce (1670–1735), of Scottish extraction, mathematician, astronomer and naturalist. Reputed to be a sorcerer.
1. Count Sheremetyev (1652–1719), general-field-marshal.
2. I. M. Golovin (d. 1737), commissary general of the army.
3. I. I. Buturlin (1661–1738), member of the Collegium of War.
4. Feofan Protopovich (1681–1736), archbishop of Novgorod and Peter the Great’s closest collaborator in church matters.
5. Gavril Buzhinsky (1680–1731), director of all the printing presses in Moscow and Petersburg.
6. I. F. Kopievich (d. c. 1707), Lutheran pastor, translator and author of text-books.
1. Peter the Great’s mother.
2. Russian national dress.
3. A short sleeveless jacket.
1. Until the reign of Peter the Great (d. 1725) Russian women lived in almost Oriental seclusion, and it was for the purpose of abolishing this custom that Peter established his famous ‘Assemblies’.
1. In his eagerness to introduce the customs of Western Europe into his new Empire Peter the Great had decreed that all Russians (except the clergy) should shave off their beards and wear their hair short.
1. An ancient Russian body-guard abolished by Peter the Great.
1. Assassination of Peter III and accession of his wife Catherine II
2. One of Catherine’s adherents in the revolution of 1762.
1. There follows the complete transcript of a lawsuit in the province of Tambov which dragged on from 1826 to 1832, until finally the Kozlov District Court by an act of glaring injustice deprived a poor landowner of his property in favour of a rich one. Pushkin merely changed the names of the principals in the case to Dubrovsky and Troyekurov and, foreseeing trouble otherwise with the censor, removed the case from contemporary times to the not very distant past.
1. Military academy reserved for the sons of the aristocracy.
1. Lines from Derzhavin’s ode On the Death of Prince Mesbcbersky, written at Petersburgh in 1780. (In Russia when a person died the body was lifted on to the table to lie in state until taken to church for the funeral.)
1. Opening line of a poem by Derzhavin, set to music by Kozlovsky, celebrating the taking of Ismail in 1791, during the Russo-Turkish war.
2. A low four-wheeled carriage.
1. To meet a priest was considered a bad omen in Russia.
1. i.e. during the Russo-Turkish war, 1787-91.
1. At the end of the Liturgy in the Orthodox Church all the members of the congregation go up to kiss the crucifix which the priest holds out to them.
1. Lavater, born in Zurich in 1741, is remembered mainly for an exhaustive work on the art of judging character and disposition from the features of the face or the form of the body generally.
1. A successful Russian general in the struggle against Napoleon (Russo-Swedish war, 1808–9).
1. Mrs Ann Ward Radcliffe, English romantic novelist of the late eighteenth century. Her favourite ‘props’ were ruined castles, secret passages, and dark and desperate villains.
1. The Russians put in a second set of windows to their houses in winter.
1. Hero of Christiane Vulpius’ ‘Robin Hood’ novel Rinaldo Rinaldini.
1. A reference to a poem by the Polish poet Mickiewicz in which the hero’s beloved, musing sadly on his absence, abstractedly embroidered a rose in green silk and its leaves in red.
1. Pushkin did not finish Dubrovsky, which was first published posthumously in 1841. His MSS. notes contain the following synopsis for the continuation of the novel:
1. The conversation occurred between the poet Denis Davydov and Mme Maria Naryshkin, Alexander I’s favourite, and had been related to Pushkin years previously by Davuidov.
cf. Davuidov’s letter to Pushkin of 4 April 1834.
1. La Divina Commedia, Il Paradiso, canto xvii: Tu proverai si come sa di sale lo pane altrui, e com’è duro calle lo scendere e’ I salit per I’altrui scale.
1. In 1829 Pushkin planned a romance in the form of letters, on the lines of the old sentimental novel (cf. Richardson), and wrote passages of it during the thirties. The heroine’s name Liza, the hero’s – Hermann. This work eventually developed into The Queen of Spades.
1. Kniazhnin (1742–91), dramatist.
2. Von Münnich (1683–1767), a Dane who entered the service of Peter the Great.
3. Pushkin’s manuscript has the date 1762, which he deleted when the book was published, probably in order not to offend the censors. Griniov’s father must have retired from the army after the coup d’état of Catherine II, being unwilling to serve the new ruler. (This would explain his ill humour when he reads in the Court Calendar of the dignities conferred on his former comrades who had shown more enthusiasm than he at the accession of the Empress.)
1. The Order of St Andrei founded by Peter the Great in 1689, and the Order of Alexander Nevsky founded by Catherine in 1725.
1. The diatchok reads the Psalms and chants the responses in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
1. Comedy of manners by Fonvizin (1745–92).
2. A little over twenty-five miles.
1. Used for scrubbin
g the skin.
1. A. P. Sumarokov (1718–77), poet and dramatist, regarded as the founder of the modern Russian theatre.
1. V. K. Tredyakovsky (1703–69) owes his place in Russian literature to his work as a critic. Peter the Great is reported to have said of him: ‘A busy worker, but master of nothing.’
1. A little over 2½ inches.
1. Early in her reign (1762–96) Catherine II set up a Commission to draft a new legal Code. One of the 500 or so Articles in the book which she herself wrote for the guidance of this Commission rejects the use of torture.
1. Grishka Otrepyev became the first False-Dmitri who seized the Russian throne in June 1605 and held it for almost a year.
1. M. M. Kheraskov (1733–1807) was rector of Moscow University from 1778 to 1802. He wrote odes, dramas, long epic poems, and exercised a great influence upon the youth of his day.