46 pages • 1-hour read
The Captain's Daughter
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Background
Authorial Context: Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is considered the founder of modern Russian literature. He was a Romantic writer of poetry, plays, and prose whose best-known works are the novel in verse Eugene Onegin and the play Boris Godunov. Pushkin achieved great renown in his lifetime and is still widely read in Russia and in translation. The novella The Captain’s Daughter contains many elements of Russian Romantic literature, most notably the emphasis on the life of a remarkable individual and the role of emotional sentimentality in driving the action of the plot. The work itself became a model for later Russian writers like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Turgenev in the way that it weaves together a folkloric structure with closely observed realism about the social and historical conditions of Russian life. As writer Ben Okri states, “[O]ut of this little book came a forest” (Okri, Ben. “I Began Don Quixote as One Person and Finished as Another.” The Guardian, 8 Mar. 2019).
Pushkin wrote The Captain’s Daughter, a work of historical fiction about the 1770s, in part to understand and respond to social concerns of his class in 1836 from a liberal perspective. Pushkin was born into a noble family. He attracted attention for the quality of his writing while he was still in high school. However, he came under scrutiny for his liberal views and messages in his works; he was exiled from Moscow and banned from publishing by Emperor Alexander I in 1820 as a result. “Liberal” here refers to a set of beliefs in individual autonomy, artistic freedom, and governance through social contract rather than by divine right. This turbulent political background is reflected in The Captain’s Daughter. The protagonist Pyotr Grinyov, a noble like Pushkin himself, has great sympathy for the Romantically rendered heroic rebel leader Pugachov. A noble providing a sympathetic portrayal of the revolutionary forces of the serfs attempting to overthrow the monarchy was highly controversial in Pushkin’s day. Indeed, a chapter detailing the chaos of the fight against the revolutionaries was cut from the final draft, possibly to avoid censorship.
A key plot point in The Captain’s Daughter is a violent duel between the protagonist, Pyotr, and his nemesis, Aleksey Ivanovich Shvabrin, over a common love interest, Maria. Pyotr nearly dies. This plot point proved to be prescient, as shortly after the publication of The Captain’s Daughter, Pushkin fought a pistol duel with French military officer Georges d’Anthès, who was suspected of having an affair with Pushkin’s wife. Pushkin was mortally wounded in the duel and died two days later on February 10, 1837, at the age of 37.
Historical Context: The Pugachev Rebellion (1773-1775)
The Captain’s Daughter is a work of historical fiction about the Pugachev Rebellion, also known as the Peasants’ War or the Cossack Rebellion. In 1834, Pushkin published a nonfiction account of the rebellion entitled A History of the Pugachev Rebellion. These historical facts make up the background of the novella.
In 1762, Catherine II (more commonly known as Catherine the Great), a Prussian, overthrew her husband, Emperor Peter III Fyodorovich, and claimed the throne of Russia. Peter III died a week later under mysterious circumstances, presumably because his wife had him murdered. Catherine, in order to garner support from the nobles, reinforced their rights over the serfs, leading to peasant unrest throughout the empire. In tsarist Russia, serfdom was a form of indentured servitude or enslavement in which peasants were legally tied to their landlords, the noble class.
Against this backdrop of growing unrest, in 1770, disaffected Cossack lieutenant Yemelyan Pugachev (also spelled Pugachov or Pugachyov), left the military without leave and began to live life as a fugitive amongst his people. The Cossacks are a Slavic semi-nomadic ethnic group who are known for their independence and fighting ability. It is believed that around 1772, Pugachov first came into contact with Cossacks in the Urals near the present-day Kazakhstan border (the Yaik Cossacks) and began contributing to their rebellion against the monarchy. Pugachov won support for his cause by posing as the late Emperor Peter III attempting to reclaim his throne. Although this ruse seems preposterous, it was a not unprecedented in Russian history, as seen in the examples of the False Dmitrys who pretended to be the son of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Pugachov, as Peter III, promised the serfs he would liberate them from the bondage of serfdom. He also won support from various indigenous ethnic minorities like the Bashkirs (Turkic nomadic herdsmen) and the Kalmyks (Buddhist Mongols) who resented attempts at forced conversation to Russian Orthodoxy and other forms of imperial control.
In 1773, Pugachov’s troops began to win territory in Russia. Catherine the Great and her military advisors initially did not take the rebellion seriously and were slow to respond. However, by 1774, imperial troops began to respond in greater numbers and beat back Pugachov’s army. In September 1774, Pugachov was captured by the imperial troops after being betrayed by some Yaik Cossacks, his former allies. In January 1775, Pugachov was publicly executed in Moscow. These are the events that young Pyotr Grinyov, stationed on the Kirghiz steppe in Southern Russia, finds himself in the midst of.
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