From great to comic: unknown facts from the lives of famous people revealed in the Presidential Library

The Presidential Library’s electronic collections, numbering now more than 650,000 units of storage, is not by chance called the national treasury of the history of Russia, and the documents and books digitized by library specialists are “prescribed in eternity”. Here are both royal decrees and the first editions of Ivan Fyodorov’s printing house and official biographies of prominent statesmen, as well as little-known facts from their lives. There are funny incidents and curiosities that sometimes happened to the powerful of the world in the "story in gigabytes".

How the uncle-valet brought up Pushkin

The Presidential Library’s portal features the book by V. Veresaev "Pushkin in Life" which reflects the memoirs of many who personally knew the poet. Andrey Vsevolozhsky, for example, describes one funny incident that happened to Pushkin in his father’s house, Nikita Vsevolozhsky, one of the founders of the literary society "Green Lamp". Nikita Vsevolodovich had an old uncle-valet, very loyal, but extremely stubborn. Once he heard that Pushkin complained about a single publisher, demanding the end of one poem, for which he had already received money in advance. Once the poet came in the morning to Nikita Vsevolodovich, but he was somewhere in the hunting field. Further events developed as follows: “The old man uncle took the opportunity and began to molest Pushkin, that he should finish the poem, as he received money for it. Pushkin cursed him and announced that he would never finish the poem. The stubborn old man, not at all embarrassed, locked Pushkin with a key in the office of Nikita Vsevolodovich. Whatever annoyed Pushkin did, but the old uncle, standing behind the doors, repeated everything the same thing: “Do write, Alexander Sergeyevich, your poems, you gave to write them”. Pushkin, seeing that before Nikita Vsevolodovich’s return, that is, until the evening, the uncle would not let him go, sat down at his desk and got so carried away that he wrote until the next day, dispelling the uncle and Nikita Vsevolodovich himself. “Thus”, - A. Vsevolozhsky concludes his story, - “Pushkin finally finished one of his poems”.