Kvashina L.P.

Echo of the December of 1825 events in A. S. Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter. Pp. 107–112.

UDC 821.161.1-31.09″18″

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2025.86.1.011

 

Abstract. The article considers A. S. Pushkin’s novel The Captain’s Daughter as a multilevel narrative where the concrete-historical, topical and universal themes are deeply and closely interconnected. A new reading of the classic text allows us to better understand and appreciate the aesthetic discoveries and originality of Pushkin’s “artless” prose.

The timeline is set at the beginning of the story: Grinyov’s father’s resignation from Army service (following the coup d’état that made Catherine II Empress of Russia) is the starting point of the conflict. The narrative also includes the theme of Pugachev’s imposture as the Tzar, a problem of our Russian history and consciousness. In the novel, this is supported by a whole system of hints and associations.

Pushkin’s narrative is organized in such a way that in the key moments of the hero’s fate we can guess the critical events of the author’s life and ancestral history. For example, the dialogue between Grinyov and Pugachev correlates with the poet’s conversation with Nicholas I in the autumn of 1826, and the experience of Catherine the Great’s reign correlates with the living modernity: the fate of the Decembrists. This theme was very personally experienced by the poet, and the present article analyzes this hidden layer of The Captain’s Daughter.

Empress Catherine’s act of mercy on Grinyov is interpreted as a realization of the principle of supreme power, and thus it is a way of overcoming Catherine’s own act of “imposture” and a guarantee of the legitimacy of her rule. In Pushkin’s contemporary context, Catherine’s gesture can be seen as a call for “mercy to the fallen” (in Pushkin’s version of Exegi monumentum), addressed quite directly to Tsar Nicholas I.

Thus, “the simple tale of Russian life” is made a deep reflection on the laws of history, the nature of authority, as well as on the fate of condemned “friends, brothers, and comrades” (the Decembrists of 1825).

 

Keywords: Decembrists, Catherine the Great, “The Captain’s Daughter,” mercy, Nicholas I, A. S. Pushkin, imposture in political history.

 

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