The Presidential Library: common features among Peter I and Alexander Pushkin

In June, with a difference of 127 years, two people came into this world. Their names glorified our Fatherland. They were both Great ones and both First ones. They were Peter the Great, the first Russian emperor and Alexander Pushkin, the first poet of Russia.

The writer Alexander Kuprin called the names of Peter I and Alexander Pushkin “the main focus, everburning beacons of Russian culture”, admitting that he was often struck by “the similarities in the main milestones of the lives of these two national giants”.

The poet and the tsar, the ruler and the prophet - these topics have worried historians, writers, poets for many centuries. Peter was the hero of Pushkin's poems "Stansy" and "The Feast of Peter the Great", the unfinished novel "Arap of Peter the Great", the poems "Poltava" and "The Bronze Horseman", the historical work "The History of Peter I".

The poet also had personal reasons to be interested in the life of the emperor. The image of Peter from an early age accompanied him in family memories, and from two sides.

From the father's - these were stories about the ancestors of the Pushkins of the time of Peter the Great, of which one was executed for participating in the archery conspiracy. Pushkin's great-grandmother on her father's side was the daughter of Peter I's batman, who became Admiral Ivan Golovin.

But the most important common feature with Peter for the poet was traced along the maternal line - here the poet's great-grandfather was the famous Ibrahim (Abram) Petrovich Hannibal, "The Moor Peter the Great'". Pushkin could hear stories about him from people who personally knew him, and met his son, Pyotr Abramovich, after graduating from the Lyceum and during his exile in Mikhailovskoye in the estate of Hannibals Petrovskoye.

The African traits inherent in Hannibal were inherited to one degree or another by his descendants. Thus, for example, the poet's mother, Nadezhda Osipovna, who, according to her contemporaries, "unusually good-looking", was nicknamed "a beautiful Creole" in the world.

In his lyceum years, Pushkin sometimes signed with a nickname invented for him by classmates: “A mixture of a monkey and a tiger,” and in the poem “To Yuriev” he even called himself “an ugly descendant of blacks”. In a footnote to the first edition of Eugene Onegin, the poet said about himself: “The author, on the part of his mother, is of African origin. His great-grandfather Abram Petrovich Annibal was abducted from the coast of Africa at the age of eight.

The journal "Russkaya Starina" for April 1886, which is available in the Presidential Library, features a unique document - the study "Russian Chosen Ones" by historian Georg von Gelbig.

In 1830, Bulgarin published a caustic allusion to Pushkin's origins in “The Northern Bee”. The poet answered with the poem “My Genealogy”.

The relationship between the great-grandfather - the "confidant of Tsar" - and the emperor became the plot of Pushkin's unfinished work "The Moor of Peter the Great". Pushkin borrowed the plot of the novel from the historical anecdote "The generosity of the monarch in rewarding merit", given in the famous work of Ivan Golikov Deeds of Peter the Great, the wise reformer of Russia (1788).

For several years, Pushkin did not leave the thought of writing a historical work dedicated to Peter I. In a letter to the chief of the III department of His Own Imperial Majesty's Chancellery, Count Benckendorff dated July 21, 1831 (Oeuvre of A. S. Pushkin, 1887), the poet asked for "permission to engage in historical research in state archives and libraries”.  

The work over the "History of Peter I" became the most important work for him in the last years of the poet's life. Pushkin “followed” Peter to shipyards, to a tent on the Poltava field, to assemblies, to a lathe, to the Senate ... Admiring genius Peter, Pushkin, however, was not blinded by him. The preparatory texts for his work say: “The difference between the state institutions of Peter the Great and his temporary decrees is worthy of surprise. The former are the fruits of a vast mind, full of benevolence and wisdom; the latter - often cruel - are capricious and, it seems, written with a whip. According to Alexander Kuprin, Pushkin "was, is and will be the only writer who could, with his divine inspiration, penetrate into the giant soul of Peter and understand, feel its supernatural dimensions".

Veresaev's book Pushkin in Life contains a memoir of court adviser Keller about a conversation with the poet about the "History of Peter". “One has opportunity to write about this sovereign”, - Pushkin told him, “more than about the history of Russia in general… <…> This work is suicidal, <…> if I had known in advance, I would not have taken it up”.

Three weeks after this conversation Alexander Pushkin died. The first poet of Russia was only 37 years old. The first emperor of Russia passed away at the age of 52, although, Kuprin says, “according to his scope of life, he should have lived another hundred years”...And all the years that fate allotted them, they worked tirelessly - “not as mercenaries, but as zealous, hard-working masters who will give a report about their lives to only one supreme master”...

Each of them cultivated his own field. Pushkin left us Russian literature as a legacy. Peter left us Russia.