Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
rial authorities, who took him to Moscow and
paraded him around the city streets in an iron
cage. After a trial in late December 1774, Puga-
chev was executed by quartering in January
1775. It is estimated that the rebels were respon-
sible for about 3,500 deaths, of which almost
half were nobles, the rest government officials,
soldiers, and about 200 members of the clergy.
On the rebel side the number of deaths reached
about 20,000, not including those suffered by
the Bashkirs and those killed by government
troops in savage reprisals after the rebellion had
died out. The Pugachev rebellion planted the
fear of similar future peasant uprisings in the
minds of officials and nobles. Some responded
by seeking to entrench the institution of serf-
dom, others by beginning the long process
toward the abolition of serfdom, capped by the
EMANCIPATION ACT
of 1861.
Pushkin, Aleksander Sergeevich
(1799-1837)
poet
Regarded by Russians as their great national
genius, Pushkin is also one of the great figures of
world literature. Born into an old noble family,
on his maternal side Pushkin descended from
AVRAM PETROVICH HANNIBAL
, the Ethiopian gen-
eral brought to Russia during
PETER I
the Great's
reign. True to his background, Pushkin received
a first-class education and after graduation held
various posts at the foreign office (1817-24). As
a young man he was raised on the liberal ideals
of the Enlightenment and the French Revolu-
tion, which often landed him in trouble. For
political poems that he wrote while a member of
the secret Union of Salvation. He was twice ban-
ished from St. Petersburg, in 1820 to New Russia
in the south and in 1824 to a family estate.
Although friendly to many of the
DECEMBRISTS
and politically sympathetic to their ideas, he did
not join their movement or the insurrection they
attempted in 1825. He published his first poem at
the age of 15, and his early work shows the clas-
sical and romantic literary influences of the era.
Long poems like
Ruslan and Liudmila
(1819),
Cau-
Aleksander Sergeevich Pushkin
(Library of Congress)
casian Prisoner
(1821),
Fountain of Bachkisarai
(1822), and
Gypsies
(1824) reveal the strong
influence of Byron on his early work. Pushkin
succeeded at many other forms such as historical
and philosophical poems, like
Poltava
(1828), and
The Bronze Horseman
(1833); historical dramas
like
Boris Godunov
(1825); short and long stories
like
Belkin's Tales
(1830),
The Queen of Spades
(1834), and
The Captain's Daughter
(1836), as well
as fairy tales in verse. His masterpiece is undoubt-
edly the novel “in verse,”
Evgenii Onegin
(
Eugene
Onegin
), written between 1823 and 1831, which
has often been described as an encyclopedia of
contemporary Russian life. Although he was on
good personal terms with
NICHOLAS I
, who often
served as his censor, Pushkin did not relate well
to the intrigue-ridden court life of St. Petersburg.
In 1837 he became entangled in one such
intrigue over his wife's good name, and was
fatally wounded in a duel.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search