The story of Peter I

The idea of ​​writing "The History of Peter I" by Pushkin arose in the second half of the 1820s ^[2] . In a diary entry of September 1827, A. N. Wulf cites his words about the fact that he will write the story of Peter I ^[3] . A year later, he wrote the poem " Poltava ", in which the poet turned to the image of Peter I.

In July 1831, Pushkin asked Nicholas I for permission to do historical research in state archives and libraries in order to write the story of Peter the Great and his heirs to Peter III ^[4] . It is known from Pushkin’s letter to P.V. Nashchokin dated July 21, 1831 that the Tsar’s permission was obtained and that next winter Pushkin planned to begin work in the archives ^[5] . The next day, Pushkin wrote to P. A. Pletnev that the emperor opened the archives for him to rummage there ^[6] . On July 23, in the office of the III Division, it was announced that Pushkin was enrolled in the College of Foreign Affairs , which kept materials about Peter I ^[7] . On August 20, 1831, O. M. Somov, in a letter from St. Petersburg, informed M. A. Maksimovich that Pushkin was the historiographer of Peter I, was included in the College of Foreign Affairs and admitted to the archives ^[8] . In the same place, he mentioned P. P. Svinin , an opponent of Pushkin, who had worked on the history of Peter the Great for twelve years ^[8] . On September 16, A. I. Turgenev wrote to V. A. Zhukovsky that Pushkin needed the journal of the Scotsman P. Gordon , who served under Peter I ^[9] . In a letter from A. Ya. Bulgakov on September 19, he wrote to his brother that if this is true, let him take the place of N. M. Karamzin and express his opinion that he should do a useful work, and not write poetry ^[10] . In December 1831, the poet N. M. Yazykov wrote to his brother: " Pushkin only says that he is about Peter ... He, he says, has collected and will still collect new information for his story, he discovered, realized, illuminated and so on ... " ^[11] . On December 21, M.P. Pogodin, in a letter to S.P. Shevyrev , who was then living in Rome , said that Pushkin was not in the mood due to the fact that the draft on writing the "History of Peter I" was probably not approved ^{[ 12]} . On December 24, Pushkin left Moscow ^[13] .

Since the beginning of 1832, Pushkin combined work with printed sources and the study of archival documents. Minister of the State Archives K.V. Nesselrode subsequently told A.H. Benckendorff that he was allocated a special room where he would read and write events before the reign of Peter I ^[14] . On January 12, he asked Nicholas I to open to Pushkin access to the secret papers of his reign ^[1] . By order of the tsar, such historical documents were to be issued to Pushkin under the control of D. N. Bludov , who was in charge of secret archival affairs. Sources related to the political events of the history of Peter's and post-Petrine times that were hidden then ^[15] . In March ^[4], through Benckendorf, Pushkin applied to the emperor for permission to examine the Voltaire library purchased by Catherine II , which is located in the Hermitage ^[16] . It included rare books and manuscripts that he received during his work on "History of Russia during the reign of Peter the Great" ^[1] . Despite the fact that access to the Voltaire library during the reign of Nicholas I was strictly prohibited, an exception was made for Pushkin. After that, he got the opportunity to get acquainted with the historical materials collected by Voltaire, comprising 5 manuscript volumes (preserved to our time ) ^[16] . On December 8, 1832, P. A. Pletnev, in a letter to V. A. Zhukovsky, announced that Pushkin was looking for materials on the “History of Peter I”. He also wrote that he apparently planned to write a novel on their basis ^[17] .

A.S. Pushkin began his work on The History of Peter I at the end of 1834 ^[18] , continuing at the same time with The History of Pugachev and The Captain's Daughter . In February 1833, during the ball , a conversation between Nicholas I and him about his work took place, during which Pushkin asked permission to involve the historian MP Pogodin , since the work would not be completed soon ^[19] . Before embarking on his work, the author met V.I. Dahl in the autumn of 1833. According to the memoirs of the latter, Pushkin talked about the need to get used to history and constantly deal with it ^[20] . In early April 1834 from St. Petersburg, Pushkin answered Pogodin that he begins to write the text with fear and trepidation, as he did to the historical department ^[4] . In May, the poet wrote to his wife that he continued to deal with Peter I, put the documents and materials in order (they were not preserved). On June 11, the poet informed her of his readiness to print the first volume for winter. Subsequently, he was forced to abandon the original idea of ​​publishing each volume as it was ready ^[16] . Pushkin first decided to create a preparatory text that fully covers events from the birth to the death of Peter.

The original text was written in the period from January to December 1835, it was based on the study of the multi-volume code of historical materials by I. I. Golikov under the title “Acts of Peter the Great”, published at the end of the 18th century ^[1] . They were collected from reliable, unpublished and forbidden sources and arranged in chronological order. On February 23, M.P. Pogodin arrived in Petersburg ^[21] , and after talking with Pushkin, on March 11, he wrote to the Moscow editorial office of the journal “Moscow Observer” that Pushkin was involved in sources “The History of Peter I” ^[22] . In the fall of 1835, N. A. Poleva took part in an absentee contest for writing The Story of Peter I. In his letter, he said that he did not know anything about Pushkin’s work on “The History of Peter I”. On October 26, Nicholas I arrived in Moscow with A. Kh. Benkendorf ^[23] . On December 15, 1835, the preparatory text of The Story of Peter I was completed. Prior to this, on December 6, O.S. Pavlishcheva wrote to her husband that Pushkin was going to go to Moscow for two or more months ^[2] . In May 1836, he arrived there with the aim of continuing to work in the archives for the next six months ^[1] . P. Ya. Chaadaev wrote to A. I. Turgenev on May 25 that Pushkin was very busy with Peter the Great ^[24] . At the end of December, the poet said that this work took him a lot of time. He continued to study materials on the activities of Peter I until his death.

In a conversation with a diary translator P. Gordon and an official D. E. Köhler, Pushkin admitted that he plans to write “The History of Peter I” in six months or a year, and then correct it according to documents ^[4] . Work on the "History of Peter I" was in the last years of the poet's life, according to contemporaries, the most important work. The memoirs of Pogodin, who knew about her from Pushkin himself, have been preserved: “ In recent years ... Peter the Great occupied all his attention. With zeal, he reread all the documents relating to the life of our great converter, all the writings about him were written ” ^[25] . In his diary dated January 21, 1837, A. V. Nikitenko wrote about Pushkin’s meeting with P. A. Pletnev a week before his death ^[4] . Pushkin told Pletnev that “The History of Peter I” will not be published yet, because censorship will not allow it. According to the testimony of A. N. Wulf, Pushkin believed that he would be punished for a duel by a new exile to Mikhailovskoye , where he could work on Peter's story at large ^[26] . Before the duel itself - on January 25 and 26, A. I. Turgenev was analyzing with him European archival documents and reports from the French ambassadors at the court of the emperor and his successors ^{[16] [27]} . On January 29, 1837, the author of The Story of Peter I died .

A. S. Pushkin drew information for his "History of Peter I" from the work of the Serbian author Z. S. Orfelin, "The Life and Glorious Deeds of Emperor Peter the Great ." Not knowing the name of the author, Pushkin called him simply "the Venetian historian." ^[28]

After the death of Pushkin, V. A. Zhukovsky attempted to publish his work ^[4] . Nicholas I, after reading the manuscript, banned publication. The reason for this was the fact that in his work Pushkin, with great courage for that time, allowed himself to illuminate not only the positive, but also the negative aspects of the personality of Peter I ^[29] . M.P. Romanov , brother of the emperor, claimed in December 1836 that Pushkin underestimated the emperor , that his point of view was false and that he regarded him as a strong person than as a creative genius ^[30] . The poet’s friends, striving for his work to see the light, decided to remove from it everything that could be deemed unfit for printing by the tsar. The original manuscript of Pushkin, which composed thirty-one notebook after stitching its sheets, was rewritten.

A copy in 6 manuscript volumes was handed over to retired censor K.S. Serbinovich , who had some historical background and was versed in the State Archives of the Petrine era ^[29] . He did not limit himself to removing from the Pushkin manuscript certain expressions that sharply characterize Peter I. There is a version that he distorted or excluded from it lines that included Pushkin’s historical conception, which was not accepted by the autocracy ^[31] . The places marked by him were copied to a free register, and remarks on the exclusion of censored lines censored were marked against each statement. In the latter case, Serbinovich proposed a new edition, which gave a more acceptable look to Pushkin’s historical judgments about Peter I ^[29] .

After considering the manuscript in 1840 by official censorship, which made some more amendments, it was allowed for publication. Nevertheless, there was no publisher for the draft version, and the custody established over the children and Pushkin’s property returned the manuscript to N. N. Pushkina ^[32] . The critic V. G. Belinsky wrote that there are still materials in the manuscript for the history of Peter the Great, and it is not known when the Russian public will wait for him ^[33] . In the years 1855-1857 P.V. Annenkov published in the collected works of Pushkin the beginning of his historical work entitled "Materials for the first chapter of the history of Peter the Great," from the birth of Peter until the beginning of his sole reign. In the Materials for Pushkin's biography, Annenkov published two more passages concerning the founding of St. Petersburg and the death of the emperor. He accompanied them with a commentary, where he noted that the passages are only drafts, a program of an unrealized plan ^[32] .

Subsequently, Annenkov printed an article in Vestnik Evropy , in which he cited a number of places seized in 1840 from the History of Peter I by censorship and copied at his direction (thanks to this they have survived to the present day) ^{[34] [35]} .

As a material that did not find its publisher, interest in the manuscript was lost. The History of Peter, along with books from the Pushkin library, was stored in the basement of the horse-guards regiment barracks, commanded by P. Lanskoy , the second husband of Natalia Nikolaevna. Subsequently, boxes of books and manuscript were transported to the Ivanovo estate of Bronnitsky district. When the son of Pushkin, Alexander , in 1866, transferred part of his belongings to the estate at the station of Lopasnya. Before the library was taken out of there in 1890 (again to Ivanovo), the books began to air and repack. Inadvertently, the box in which the manuscript of the History of Peter I was kept was left ^[36] . She was accidentally discovered there in the summer of 1917 by N. I. Goncharova, niece of N. N. Goncharova-Pushkina. In addition to the manuscript of the “History of Peter”, the Pushkin family documents were kept in a box. It turned out that the servant used paper from a box for household needs. While at the same time in Lopasn, Grigory Pushkin (the poet’s grandson) recognized his grandfather’s handwriting. Of the 31st Pushkin notebooks, 22 survived, and of the six volumes of the censored copy, three ^{[37] [38]} .

The manuscript for 1703 is known from the publication of Annenkov (1855). The clerical copies of the records for the second half of 1709, 1717 and 1718 were preserved. The remaining part, covering the periods from 1690–1694 to 1719–1721, was not preserved ^[4] . In 1950, a censorship registry of Serbinovich was discovered in the Central State Historical Archive , which allows clarifying the following lines in this publication: “The difference between the state institutions of Peter the Great and his temporary decrees is surprising…”. In addition, 2 brief comments of the author were included there, which are essential for understanding his historical concept. The final story The History of Peter I was published in the same year in the Bulletin of the USSR Academy of Sciences ^[39] .

The “History of Peter I” by A. S. Pushkin entered literature not only as a work of the advanced era, but also became a new word in the development of “artistic history” ^[40] . P. A. Pletnev, a friend of the poet, noted that his work represents not only historical, but also “artistic truth” ^[41] . According to Belinsky, Pushkin planned to convey the “deeds and image” of Peter I; the preparatory text, despite its incompleteness, makes it possible to judge its image ^[40] . Along with this, the author expressed his artistic decision - the disclosure of the contradiction, clearly manifested in the transformation of the king. Revealing dialectically this contradiction, Pushkin shows the character of Peter I in a social way. The text of the “History of Peter I” has a different structure ^[1] . In some places, among the supporting texts, a simple reader can see the pages of excellent author's prose. There is a version that they were intended to be transferred to the final text of the work ^[42] . Assessing his transformations, the author in his unfinished article of 1834 wrote that the emperor “gave too great a turn to the enormous wheels of the state” ^[40] . On October 19, 1836, Pushkin wrote to P. Ya. Chaadayev that despite the barbaric measures of Peter I towards society , Russia has made significant progress in its development (due to the fact that its “Philosophical Letter” reflected a misunderstanding of the historical past) ^[43] .

P. A. Vyazemsky, a friend and contemporary of Pushkin, described the “History of Peter I” as follows: “In Pushkin there is a true understanding of history ... his accessories were: clarity, insight and sobriety. He wouldn’t paint pictures by the measure and volume of frames prefabricated, as the latest historians often do for conveniently investing in them events and persons coming up to the image ... ” ^[44] . Pushkin's idea was clear. He collected, studied and pre-processed huge historical material ^[16] . A. I. Turgenev, regretting that Pushkin did not have time to complete his work, wrote: “He ... knew and found out a lot that others did not notice. His conversation was full of ... curious indications of remarkable points and characteristic features of our history ” ^[45] . Pushkin, speaking of the Boris Godunov tragedy, sought to “put on dramatic forms one of the most dramatic eras of modern history” ^[16] . The “History of Peter I” reflected the realism of his historical thinking and the new realistic art , which reveals reality in depth.

P. S. Popov in his article writes that in total Pushkin had 31 notebooks on the History of Peter I, some of which were lost ^[46] . Comparing his notes with fragments of Golikov’s work “The Acts of Peter I”, he concluded that Pushkin did not collect any materials about the activities of Peter I and completely followed his example ^[47] . The author, quoting a letter to M.A. Korf from October 14, 1836, emphasizes that Pushkin was not familiar with books about Peter I, and that he was at the preparatory stage of work. Popov believed that, using the work of Golikov, in his extracts and summaries he wrote his own judgments about Peter I and his reform ^[48] . In 1822, in “Historical remarks”, the poet recognized his activity and autocracy as progressive, and in Mikhailovsky in letters to A. Bestuzhev and Ryleyev - new views that developed further ^[46] . After December 14, 1825, Pushkin’s assessment of the emperor’s personality changed. On the one hand, Peter I was the creator of the great "northern power" for him, and on the other - the "destroyer" and the social essence of his reform was unacceptable ^[46] . The historian M.P. Pogodin, unlike Pushkin, considered Peter “a human god”, fully accepted him, condemning only that he “began to remodel in a foreign manner” ^{[49] [50]} . In the same place, Popov pointed out that Pushkin in his work treated Tsarevich Alexei positively, using the epithet “unhappy” ^[51] . A. Shebunin, in his article, denies this and quotes words from Pushkin’s text: “superstitious mothers and bailiffs hardened him against his father ... teaching him they derived“ political conclusions ”from the texts.” He also noticed the fact that when Peter I found out about this and took up his upbringing, Alexey was always pretending ^{[49] [52]} . Another drawback in Popov’s article is that he ignores Pushkin’s notes about the cessation of Peter I’s rule , secret transport and theft in solo crafts and the conclusion of a peace treaty with Sweden ^[49] .

The publication of The History of Peter I gave rise to a philosophical and political discussion about the position of Alexander S. Pushkin on the historical fate of Russia. It did not coincide with the views of P. Ya. Chaadayev, nor with the views of the Slavophiles . Various sources helped to understand the philosophical and historical views of the poet on the activities of Peter I, among which were: collections of letters, notes, memoirs of the writer and his contemporaries, research by A. I. Gessen , A. M. Gordin , L. P. Grossman and others . N. Ya. Eidelman in his works touched on the issue of the struggle of the "moral line" and historicism in the views of Pushkin ^[53] . The book “The Last Year of Pushkin's Life” by A. I. Gessen presents documents and memoirs of contemporaries that help to reveal the poet’s historical and philosophical views in his work on The History of Peter I. Some Pushkinists, in particular B.V. Tomashevsky and N.N. Skatov , analyzed the views of Pushkin on history and government. The works of literary critic S. M. Petrov , philosopher G. N. Volkov , historians O. V. Volobuev and M. V. Nechkina laid the foundation for research on his views, combining historical, philosophical, literary, artistic, aesthetic, cultural and linguistic Aspects. At present, it has been proved that the work “The History of Peter I” is a product of Pushkin's philosophical and ideological reflection on the ways of Russia, on the “Russian idea”. His views on the history of Russian statehood are interpreted as literary, as well as philosophical, historical and cultural philosophical ^[53] .

In an unfinished article of 1834 (the historical part of which was closely connected with his work on the “History of Peter I”), Pushkin wrote that in the previous century kings and boyars agreed to link Russia with Europe ^[40] . After Peter I came to power, the transformations made by him were recognized by the poet as prepared by previous historical development. At the very beginning of his work, he noted the obstacles posed to Russia by Western European states, which sought to prevent its strengthening. After the outbreak of war with Sweden, the question of its state existence was decided. In the preparatory text, Pushkin emphasized that in response to the peace proposals of Peter I (one and a half years before the Battle of Poltava), the Swedish ministers announced the king's intention to overthrow Peter from the throne, destroy the regular Russian army and divide Russia into small principalities. In the poem "Pierre of Peter I", written in 1835 , the poet said that he saved his state by the victory of Poltava ^[40] . In the first edition of Poltava, the author noted the role of the Battle of Poltava as success and the need for transformation. At the same time, in an article, Pushkin wrote about the abrupt and bloody coup committed by his powerful autocracy. He called it “revolution” ^[40] ; in his historical notes dating back to the early 1830s , the author wrote that Peter I is Robespierre and Napoleon I , and thus divided his reign into 2 periods. Assessing in the preparatory text one of the decrees published by him in 1719 , Pushkin describes this as a prudent step. At the same time, Peter I, in his opinion, did not apply the new means consistently, since along with them he continued to use the means, which were distinguished by a large “admixture of autocracy” ^[54] . In a letter to Chaadaev on October 19, 1836, Pushkin emphasized that until the reign of Catherine II, subsequent rulers continued the work of Peter, instead of consolidating the state ^[54] . In the same place he gave an explanation against whom the decree “Table of Ranks” was directed ^[55] . The author believed that thanks to this and the abolition of the patriarchate, Peter I destroyed the nobility (hereditary land aristocracy) and the clergy. Comparing this coup with the French bourgeois revolution of 1789 - 1793 , Pushkin believed that the nobility was a counterweight to the unlimited power of the autocracy ^[56] . Studying the era of Peter I and the Pugachev revolt , Pushkin came to a socialist understanding of the historical process. In addition, he paid much attention to the peasantry (the theme "Peter and the people") ^[29] . Trying to understand who Peter I really was, Pushkin, in his draft of 1822, called him both a “despot” and “a great man” ^[40] . Then, in the process of work, he noted that Peter I was a “strong man”, a “giant” ^[40] . Assessing Pushkin’s attitude to this phenomenon, modern science says that it is the class, exploiting essence of the landowner "Peter's" state. F. Engels in his writings called the emperor a great man, emphasizing his merits in foreign policy . K. Marx in his work “Secret Diplomacy of the 18th Century” noted that Russia, after the return of the Baltic states, took control of what was necessary for its further development ^[57] . At the same time, Engels emphasized that serfdom continued to develop in the reign of Peter I (landowners received the right to oppress the peasants, and this caused discontent among the population) ^[58] .

• A.N. Wulf . Diaries. M. 1929, p. 137.
• Pushkin: collection. Documents of the State Archive / Comp. N. Gastfreind. - St. Petersburg, 1900 .-- S. 17-18.
• Feinberg I. L. Incomplete work of Pushkin. - 6th edition. - M. , 1976.
• Pushkin and his contemporaries . Volume Six, p. 59.
• V. Danchenko . Pushkin and the historical theme in Russian literature ( Literary Heritage , No. 16-18, pp. 466-512).
• V.I. Dahl . Memories of Pushkin.
• Works and letters of P. Ya. Chaadayev . Volume Two. M. 1914, p. 205.
• Russian archive . 1865, p. 108.
• Collection "Pushkin in the memoirs of contemporaries . " 1936, p. 311.
• The collection "Pushkin in the letters of the Karamzins . " USSR Academy of Sciences. 1960, p. 372.
• V. G. Belinsky . Full composition of writings. Volume Seven. USSR Academy of Sciences. 1955, p. 100.