Pushkin Day June 6th. Program of festive events of the State Museum of A.S. Pushkin - for the Pushkin Day of Russia. What letter was sent by Heckern through Nesselrode to the commission of the military court?

Today in Russia we celebrate Pushkin Day of Russia (Russian Language Day): On June 6 (May 25, old style, on the day of the Ascension of the Lord), 1799, the genius of Russian literature Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was born in Moscow. The annual celebration of this event was established in 2011 by decree of the President of Russia.

In Moscow today, flowers will be carried to the foot of the monument on Tverskaya Street, and in St. Petersburg - to the monument in the courtyard of a house on the embankment of the Moika River. The house in whose apartment on the second floor Pushkin died before he was 38 years old. How much more he could have done! And on this holiday, the joy is mixed with a heart-aching feeling of loss and the same bitter question haunts me: how could this happen?

On the eve of the holiday, REGNUM correspondent Lyudmila Lis interviewed a member of the Pushkin Commission of the IMLI named after. A.M. Gorky RAS, Pushkin scholar, candidate of philological sciences Vladimir Evgenievich Orlov.

- Vladimir Evgenievich, first of all, I would like to know how you came to become a Pushkin scholar. What determined your creative path?

It was as if fate was preparing me for this. My childhood was spent in Moscow, on Arbat, in a house that before the revolution was a meeting house. It is described in one of Bunin's stories. The house was given over to communal apartments: all the “rooms” were converted into rooms. In one of the “cells” of a large apartment where nine families lived, my grandmother, nee Filosofova, lived. And my family returned there from evacuation in 1944. Two sisters who worked in the visiting house before the revolution also lived in the same apartment. They were not affected by repression, since in 1917 they were declared a “working element.” One of them was married, but her husband disappeared somewhere, and the second was unmarried. Both were fluent in French. In the 50s, French language teachers from Moscow State University came to consult with them. They didn't have their own children. They liked my sister and I so much that they began to teach us French. My sister was more diligent, so she graduated from a pedagogical institute, interned at the Sorbonne, then worked as a teacher at a French college, now retired. I went to study at a regular “boys’” school, and when coeducation was introduced, I was transferred to a “girls’” French special school, because it was closest to home. Even then I began to write stories and show some literary abilities. I was simply immersed in Pushkin's poetry and prose. But my father advised me not to make literature my profession, and after finishing school I entered the Bauman School, which I successfully graduated from.

In 1958, because of my father’s work, we came to Leningrad for some time. I went to the Moika, to the Pushkin museum-apartment, where Pushkin’s letter to the Dutch envoy to Russia Heckern, written in January 1837, was put on public display. The letter was in French, and next to it was a translation into Russian. I compared them and realized that the translation did not match the text of the letter. True, at that moment I doubted my knowledge of French, but “a sediment remained.” Later I learned that this is not an original letter, but a reconstruction of it. This stuck with me.

After graduating from Baumansky, I worked as a civil engineer, then I was invited to join the army, where at that time there was a shortage of specialists, and I worked as a military engineer. While serving in the army, I entered the military institute of foreign languages. Upon graduation, he became a translator and defended his Ph.D. thesis. I served my 25 years and retired, but this letter kept haunting me. And so, while reading the 1936 collection “Chronicles of the Literary Museum,” I came across an article by Pushkin scholar Izmailov, “The History of the Text of Pushkin’s Letters to Heckern,” which contained a link to an article by another famous researcher, Kazansky. Both Pushkinists reconstructed Pushkin's writing, each in their own way. It was a very serious work on textual criticism, French phraseology and philology. I was lucky: the drafts of this letter were also attached here. I started working on it. I deciphered them step by step, eliminating the shortcomings of the translation. For five years in a row I published articles in the journal “Philological Sciences” based on the results of my work. I became convinced that it was not in vain that I started this. And I still continue to work. And now not so much with this letter, but with what lay behind it.

The main thing that I understood is that the story of Pushkin’s last duel is a combination of manipulation of sources and, unfortunately, a consequence of his own mistakes. Plus, Natalya Nikolaevna’s youth played a fatal role in this whole story. I am not a supporter of the assertion that his wife cheated on Pushkin, I believe him on this issue, I believe his words addressed to his wife: “You are innocent in all this.” Yes, there was a period in their relationship, starting from the second half of 1834, when Pushkin was very busy with writing and magazine work, and his beloved Natalie, having entered high society, was forced to meet and flirt with men at balls. Such flirting was an indispensable attribute of court life, but, of course, female coquetry was within certain limits. Everything that has been made up in this regard around Pushkin’s duel is not true. Starting with the imaginary reason for the duel, the notorious cuckold diploma that he received, and ending with the letter that he sent to Heckern. Why? You can build conspiracy theories, and I know there are certain components that allow you to do this. But mainly because members of the royal family, relatives of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, were involved in this story. And when Pushkin, dying, demanded that the tsar return the documents that he had previously given to him, Nicholas I refused him. The Tsar wrote to Pushkin to “die as a Christian” and not take revenge on anyone. In return, the tsar promised that Pushkin’s family would be provided for financially. Pushkin was forced to come to terms. Zhukovsky and Dubelt, who were sorting out the papers, were ordered to seize all documents that could harm high-ranking officials and Pushkin’s family and burn them. Moreover, when the military court investigators “pressed” Dantes and Gekkern, they also began to beat around the bush and issued documents that were falsified. When they were finally forced, they still gave up the original papers. But, after looking at them, the king decided not to involve them in the case, ordered the investigation to be completed immediately and later refused to return the documents to the two intriguers.

Draft letter from Pushkin to Gekkern dated January 25, 1937, front side

Pushkin’s phrases “It will be easy for me to write the story of cuckolds” and “Natasha, you are not to blame for anything, this matter concerned only me,” coupled with the categorical royal order to consign the dueling story to oblivion, did not allow Pushkin’s friends to dig deeper. None of them really knew anything - Pushkin believed that he could handle the situation himself, and Pushkin’s closest friends did not show him the proper attention and sympathy. Those close to Dantes and Heckern remained silent for obvious reasons, although some did let it slip.

- What documents are we talking about?

First of all, about letters. Pushkin wrote two letters to Heckern - in November 1836 and in January 1837. He did not send the November letter to Heckern. He tore up two drafts, and the pieces were later found in the waste paper basket. They were missing pieces, and the most important, most meaningful pieces, which is why their reconstruction became necessary. Pushkin also wrote a letter to Benckendorf in November. But Pushkin did not send this letter either; it was found only after his death. The most disgusting thing is that it is believed that in January Pushkin insulted Dantes and Heckern in a letter so that they had no choice but a duel. This is not true. All this time, starting in November, he demanded from them, firstly, that they leave his wife alone, and secondly, that they leave Russia. And there were no insults in the January letter. Even Pushkin’s famous word “scoundrel” referred to the November letter. And someone took these scraps of the November letter from the trash bin and saved them. It looks like it was Zhukovsky. Based on them, Izmailov and Kazansky, considering them to be drafts of the January letter, reconstructed this letter. But there are also pieces of letters from the so-called Maykovsky collection - in 1925, fragments written in Pushkin’s hand were found. I am sure that they are the fragments of the draft of the real January letter to Heckern, which was hidden from everyone. Ekaterina - Natalya Nikolaevna's sister and Dantes' wife - in order to justify the duel, managed to steal the November letter, and it was presented to the investigation as January, and it really did contain a lot of insults. But the real January letter was hidden.

A scrap of Pushkin's letter from the Maykovsky collection

- Did you start by correcting errors in translations from French by other Pushkinists? Who else helped you in your research?

This work was hard. Let's start with the fact that the real French language in Russia is now completely lost. But even at the beginning of the last century it was impossible to find an educated person who did not know French. By the way, the “French” pages of the text of the first editions of “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy were not provided with a translation. Even teachers who are currently being trained by foreign language institutes and pedagogical institutes do not know the language well. And, unfortunately, no internships and no Sorbonnes will help them, because in France they also stopped studying Russian. I was lucky again. When I got seriously involved in this business, God began to send me people who could help me in my work. It’s a real miracle that I was introduced to Pushkin’s great-granddaughter, Natalya Sergeevna Shepeleva. When I met her, she was nearly 90 years old. I spent the last years of her life next to her. She was an amazing person, it was very interesting to be with her. She knew French really perfectly, so her help in my search was very important. Communicating with her, I realized that there was some secret in the Pushkin family, something carefully hidden from outsiders. Natalya Nikolaevna had a certain love for Dantes, and he later used this feeling for his own purposes. Natalya Sergeevna, Natalya Nikolaevna’s great-granddaughter, did not really like talking about this. Nevertheless, she nourished me with the realities of life in Pushkin’s family and some of the subtleties of the French language. She found the revolution as a 15-year-old girl, her father S.P. Mezentsev was a general in the retinue of Emperor Nicholas II. In 1925 he was sent to the Lubyanka for the first time, and in 1937 he was shot. Natalya Sergeevna worked in the conservatory library, she was not touched, and this was decided at the level of Stalin. There was such a director of the Pushkin Museum A. Crane. Natalya Sergeevna, according to her, quarreled with him because, as I understood, she wanted more respect for her for giving the museum the family’s personal belongings: Natalya Nikolaevna’s beaded wallet, her coral bracelet. The bracelet was in the possession of M.A. Pushkina-Hartung, Pushkin’s eldest daughter. She passed it on to her niece Anna Alexandrovna Pushkina, and she passed it on to Natalya Sergeevna. Natalya Sergeevna was ready to give many more things, but because of a quarrel she did not give them. As a result, after her death, much was lost. Where did it go - the ends are visible. But, alas... She showed me the famous amulet, in which there was a particle of the Lord’s robe. She kept it behind a curtain near the icon case; this amulet was inherited from the eldest man in the family to the next eldest son. At first Alexander Alexandrovich, Pushkin’s son, had it, then Alexander had to give it to Grigory, but he gave this amulet to his beloved granddaughter Natalya, whom he nursed in his arms and who was his last consolation in life. Natalya Sergeevna buried Pushkin's daughter Maria Alexandrovna, who died in March 1919 in poverty. For Maria they asked for a pension from the People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky. He agreed that Pushkin’s daughter needed help. But help was too late. The pension came at the funeral. Natalya Sergeevna and her old aunt Anna Alexandrovna buried Maria at the Donskoye cemetery, and the money allocated by the Soviet government went towards the coffin. They hired someone to dig the grave. After a while, they began to look for this grave, but except for Natalya Sergeevna, no one knew where the grave was located. They wanted to raze the grave of Alexander Alexandrovich, who died in July 1914 in Ostankino, Kashira district, Tula province, on the estate of his second wife, because everything there had become completely desolate. Natalya Sergeevna ensured that Pushkin’s son was reburied in the family crypt. In 1963, his ashes, according to his will, were finally transferred to Lopasnya. There are no direct descendants of Pushkin, but there are many relatives living in different countries. Under Natalya Sergeevna, they often gathered and communicated, but after her death there was less such live communication.

Talisman pendant that belonged to A. S. Pushkin

- And where did the amulet go then? Natalya Sergeevna probably had other relics. Where did they go?

As for the amulet... Before Natalya Sergeevna’s death, director Lyubimov’s wife Katalina Kunz brought her home from the hospital to say goodbye to the house. Natalya Sergeevna asked to call me, I arrived, and she told me that she had given the amulet to safe hands. I recently found out that she gave it to her doctor.

Natalya Sergeevna lived in a one-room apartment, blown through by winds. There she had a corner where icons stood, and below there was a mattress with legs on which she slept. Nearby, on the nightstand, stood an icon of the Savior. Natalya Sergeevna said that in this image Natalya Nikolaevna’s mother blessed her for marriage with Alexander Sergeevich, and on the back side of the icon, under the velvet, there is an inscription about this, made by Natalya Nikolaevna’s hand. After the death of Natalya Sergeevna, this icon disappeared. I read in the old newspaper “Evening Moscow” that this icon was sold for a million dollars to the All-Russian Pushkin Museum, which is located in St. Petersburg. There is the Pushkin Apartment Museum on the Moika, there is the Pushkin House (IRLI - Institute of Russian Literature) and there is the so-called All-Russian Pushkin Museum, which until recently did not have its own premises. For some time now, part of its exhibition can be seen in the backyard of the museum on the Moika. I looked for this icon in the exhibition, but did not find it. Then I asked the director of the museum, S. M. Nekrasov, about it, to which he answered me: where they read it, that’s where it is. This newspaper, by the way, also disappeared from the archives.

Pushkin also had a famous talisman. With the light hand of I. S. Turgenev, for more than a century and a half we have been persistently and persistently convinced that this is a ring with a carnelian stone, which Elizaveta Vorontsova gave to Pushkin in Odessa upon parting. There are two poems by Pushkin about the talisman. And in one of them there is a mention that the talisman was given to him by a “sorceress” - where the sea “eternally splashes on the desert rocks”, “where Muslims spend their days enjoying themselves in harems.” And she warned: “...When treacherous eyes suddenly enchant you, or lips in the darkness of the night kiss you without loving - dear friend! My talisman will protect me from crime, from new heart wounds, from betrayal, from oblivion!” We must pay tribute to Pushkin. He never made anything up. All the events that he described were real, starting with poems and ending with “The Captain's Daughter.” And I once told Natalya Sergeevna that I doubted that the ring stolen from an exhibition in 1917, on which was the inscription of its former owner, a merchant, in Hebrew “Simcha, son of the honest Mr. Joseph the Elder, blessed be his memory” - this is the same talisman that Pushkin wrote about in the poem. Natalya Sergeevna suddenly says to me: “Now I’ll show you something.” She took out an antique box, opened it and revealed a carnelian stone in a blackened silver frame. Its size was one centimeter. She said that, according to family legend, Alexander Sergeevich kept this box on his table and loved to sort through the things that were in it. I examined this stone under a magnifying glass. The stone had the shape of a drop; on the reverse side there was an inscription engraved on it, also in Hebrew, divided in half by a vertical line. To the right of the line is the first part of the inscription, to the left is the other. And the entire inscription was surrounded by crosses. These crosses shocked me. There were 12 or 14 of them. Pushkin at one time himself was engaged in research into the Hebrew alphabet. Apparently, he wanted to decipher this inscription as well. The myth of the talisman from Vorontsova and other common myths about Pushkin are supported by those who “scientifically” work on Pushkin’s legacy and who have provided themselves with such work for many years to come. For example, the 30-volume academic Complete Works of Pushkin should have already been out of print. Back in 1999 (!), the Institute of Russian Literature was given a grant to publish this grandiose publication. But so far only one limited edition (trial!) volume has been released. Last year I asked Pushkin scholars from IRLI how things were going, fearing that I would not have time to provide texts for the last volume, where the poet’s pre-duel letters were to be published. They looked at me, excuse me, as if I was “crazy” and said that they were only making the third volume, and they didn’t even let me see that because it wasn’t ready yet. And they didn’t let me see the second volume.

Or, for example, Natalya Sergeevna, giving her archive to the Pushkin House, wrote in the covering letter that it could be given to me - Vladimir Evgenievich Orlov. I asked the gentlemen of this House for access to the archive. They replied that they knew about Natalya Sergeevna’s permission, but they refused to let me see the papers. According to their rules, no one should be allowed near the documents until they understand them themselves. But no one knows when they will figure them out. She died almost 20 years ago, and they still haven't figured it out.

So, let's continue about the pebble. Natalya Sergeevna gave it to me before her death. I deciphered the inscription. It was written there: “Lord, save him from unhappy love.” And I told Natalya Ivanovna Mikhailova, the scientific director, about the pebble in the museum on Prechistenka. She told me that later we would work with this stone somehow. But “later” did not happen. I left for France and already thought that I would stay there to live. I embedded the pebble into the ring, having previously sketched it and the inscription that was on it. In France, I once went shopping with my daughter. And there, in the store, I lost it. It slipped off my finger, and I only noticed it at home. We looked for him and advertised in newspapers. But he disappeared. This is probably a punishment for my then desire to stay abroad, instead of continuing to collect bit by bit the truth about Pushkin here in Russia.

- So, Pushkin’s talisman is irretrievably lost? Even the one who found it is unlikely to realize its value. Then let's get back to the letters. After all, manuscripts, as you know, do not burn.

Pushkin's manuscripts are kept in a safe room in the IRLI and are opened only in front of witnesses. To view them, you need to wear gloves. And you need to get special permission. I was allowed to touch them! I needed to see these letters. Some of the scraps of the above-mentioned letters were glued together by researchers Kazansky and Izmailov, and some of the scraps lay stacked on top of each other in the envelope. It was important for me to see for myself whether they were glued together correctly. And I was allowed, as an exception, to “rotate” them. Working on the letters, clarifying the translation of letters made up of scraps, comparing them with letters to Benckendorff, I was able to clarify the chronology of the events of the duel. It turned out that Dantes is not the main character here. There was one more person, the “tempter” and the main culprit of everything that happened, who was covered up by Dantes, and Heckern, and Tsar Nicholas I, and everyone else.

- I would like to hear this tragic story from your lips.

During the summer and autumn of 1836, Pushkin’s wife was subjected to a fierce attack by two “persecutors” - the experienced intriguer Heckern and his “adopted son” Dantes. The latter’s “tireless red tape” did not cause Pushkin much concern: Dantes’ behavior was quite consistent with court morals. At the beginning of October (no later than the 19th) 1836, Idalia Poletika, a friend of Natalya Nikolaevna and Dantes’ secret mistress, lured Pushkin’s wife to her apartment. Dantes who found himself there (and quite possibly the “tempter” himself) begged Natalya Nikolaevna to “give herself” to him. She immediately ran away, but, unfortunately, she was afraid to tell her husband about everything, which subsequently allowed Heckern to blackmail the young woman, whispering to her “in all corners” about the “love” of his mischievous “son,” who was hiding under the pretext of illness at home, and even suggesting that she flee Russia “under diplomatic auspices.” Having received a refusal, Gekkern began to threaten her with revenge.

“Cuckold Diploma” - a libel on Pushkin

At the end of October 1836, Pushkin received by city mail a “nameless” (anonymous) letter (possibly with a “diploma for the title of cuckold” attached to it), which informed him of his wife’s alleged infidelity. Having found also unsigned letters and notes at home and mistakenly connecting them with Dantes, Pushkin went to him on November 2. Dantes takes upon himself their authorship, but declares that they are addressed not to Natalya Nikolaevna, but to her sister Catherine, whom he supposedly intends to marry. Pushkin, as an honest person, is satisfied with this explanation. On the same day, Dantes informs Heckern about Pushkin’s visit, giving the baron “great pleasure” by the fact that Pushkin is not even aware of the intrigue being waged against him and his wife.

After several days of reflection and investigative activities, Pushkin became convinced of Dantes’ lie. Upon careful study, he discovered that at least one of the letters presented was addressed specifically to Natalya Nikolaevna, and it was written not by Dantes, but by someone else. Pushkin realized that Dantes was trying to corrupt his wife in the interests of a certain “tempter.” It became clear to him that Heckern was directing the behavior of his adopted son. Pushkin regretted that he had trusted and shown, and perhaps even given, this compromising “tempter” letter to Dantes. But it was already too late. On November 3, Pushkin, wanting to prevent the “final blow” that the Baron and Dantes could deliver if they learned about the contents of the letter, sends out “double letters” to a narrow circle of his friends and acquaintances - blank sheets of paper enclosed in envelopes with their addresses and sealed sheets of paper with an inscription on them. "To Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin." Pushkin's calculation was that his friends, without opening the inner envelopes, would send them to him, confirming, if necessary, the very fact of their receipt. This gave him the opportunity to maneuver: if the Heckerns began to blackmail his wife, Pushkin would have every moral right to use this opportunity - to accuse Natalya Nikolaevna’s two “persecutors” of divulging the contents of the letter that had become known to them.

Pushkin “fell victim to an indecent position, into which he placed himself through an erroneous calculation,” wrote the very knowledgeable A. N. Wulf in his diary. Well, if we reduce the reasons for Pushkin’s death only to the story of the “nameless letter,” maybe this is so. Yes, the enemies turned out to be more cruel and insidious than Pushkin himself expected, and his friends, alas, were less sensitive. On November 4, Pushkin, out of seven or eight sent out, receives only 3 “internal” letters.

On the same day, Pushkin sends a challenge to Dantes to a duel as a direct insult to his honor. Dantes is hiding from Pushkin while on regiment duty. Heckern comes to Pushkin and begs him to postpone the duel. Pushkin agrees only on the condition that the baron gives the name of the person whom Dantes covered up: Pushkin needed the evidence for a reasoned accusation against a high-ranking “tempter, disrespectfully (“recognizing” Dantes as the author of someone else’s letter) put in a difficult position.” Gekkern pretends that he knew nothing about this and talks about Dantes’s long-standing love for Catherine, Natalya Nikolaevna’s sister. On November 7, Zhukovsky goes to Pushkin and becomes a witness of him, who knew the background of the “discovery” made by Heckern, the “madness”. In the evening of the same day, Dantes visits Vielgorsky. The purpose of the visit was to look at one of the “double letters” received by Pushkin’s friends. Information about the events that took place in the Pushkin family could have been reported to Dantes by Ekaterina Goncharova. Vielgorsky did not show the letter.

Zhukovsky spends November 7-9 traveling between Pushkin, E.I. Zagryazhskaya (Natalia Nikolaevna’s aunt) and the Gekkerns. Pushkin flatly refuses to meet with Dantes, which was intended to involve him in explanations in front of witnesses. On the morning of November 10, Zhukovsky conveys to Dantes a refusal to mediate. Nevertheless, he continues to look for a way out of the situation, which he sees in the fact that Gekkern will officially announce his consent to the marriage of his adopted son with Ekaterina Goncharova. The Baron bargains: he demands to see the letter received by Pushkin. On November 12, Zhukovsky apparently meets with Gekkern again. The Baron makes concessions, having received assurances from Zhukovsky that all those involved in the matter, and most importantly, Pushkin, will keep “secret” the story of the challenge, the disclosure of which would disgrace Dantes and Heckern. And, I would add, it would cause the wrath of a high-ranking “tempter.”

On November 14, Pushkin met with Gekkern at Zagryazhskaya. Everything seemed to be moving towards a peaceful outcome. But in the evening Pushkin told V.F. Vyazemskaya’s significant words: “I know the hero (and not the “author,” as was mistakenly translated from French earlier) of nameless letters, and in eight days you will hear about revenge, one of a kind.” This phrase allows us to make the assumption that on November 14 Pushkin already knew the name of the “tempter” of his wife.

On November 16, Heckern receives a letter from Pushkin refusing a challenge to a duel for the reason that he learned “from rumors” about Dantes’s intention to ask for the hand of Ekaterina Goncharova after the duel. The matter could have been considered over for Dantes, but the young Frenchman suddenly showed obstinacy by sending, without Heckern’s knowledge, a daring letter to Pushkin. We know about Pushkin’s reaction to him from Zhukovsky’s Notes: “Dantes’ letter to Pushkin and his rage. Another duel." On the evening of November 16, Pushkin asks V.A. Sollogub to be his second and agree “only on the material side of the duel,” without allowing any explanations between the opponents.

On the morning of November 17, Sollogub (contrary to Pushkin’s demands) visits Dantes and sees him already completely subordinated to Heckern’s will. Sollogub goes to Pushkin, but he remains adamant. Sollogub goes to Dantes’s second d’Archiac. The duel is scheduled for November 21. Meanwhile, both the seconds and Gekkern are looking for a way to stop her. Sollogub sends a letter to Pushkin, in which he reports Dantes’s complete surrender. On the same day, November 17, Pushkin responds to Sollogub, confirming in writing his agreement to consider his challenge “as not followed” because of the “public rumor” that had reached him about Dantes’ decision to announce after the duel his intention to marry Ekaterina Goncharova. Heckern’s representative, d’Archiac, having read the letter, says: “That’s enough.” In the evening at the ball at S.V. Saltykov's engagement was announced.

Contrary to their promise, Heckern and Dantes, incited and supported by Pushkin’s enemies, began to spread rumors defaming him and his wife. In addition, soon after November 17, Gekkern, irritated by the upcoming forced marriage of his “son,” resumed the persecution of Natalya Nikolaevna as a future relative. Probably, Pushkin also learned more about the role of Heckern these days - not only as Dantes' pimp.

On November 21, Pushkin writes a letter to Benckendorf and on the same day shows Sollogub a letter written to Heckern. On November 23, Pushkin receives an audience with the emperor. It is not known about Pushkin’s active actions until the second half of January 1837, from which we can conclude that Nicholas I promised to warn the “tempter” and find the author of the letter from which it all began. It may well be, but this is my guess, he demanded this letter from Pushkin and took his word “not to start anything without notifying him.” But Pushkin could not refuse Nicholas I.

On January 10, the wedding of Dantes and Ekaterina Goncharova took place. Pushkin was not present at the wedding and stated that his house was forever closed to Dantes and his family. And Dantes, with even greater zeal, began to play the “victim of sublime love”, and Heckern - the “exhorter” of Natalya Nikolaevna. The situation began to resemble the November one, but this time, which was unbearable for Pushkin, it was accompanied by gossip in those circles where there were his friends, associates and, finally, his readers.

On January 25, 1837, Pushkin sent a letter to Heckern, which the baron and his so-called son considered a sufficient pretext to challenge Pushkin to a duel. Before this, at the Vorontsov-Dashkov ball, Dantes was clearly asking for insult from Pushkin. This gave Dantes significant advantages in the inevitable duel in this case. In addition, Dantes feared a public scandal with exposure of his, at least, unsolicited interference in the personal life of a high-ranking tempter, which could follow at one of the court balls or receptions in the presence of members of the imperial family.

The chronology shows that from November 21, 1836 to the end of January 1837, events took place, although hidden from the uninitiated, but well known to three people - Pushkin, Heckern and, partially, the Tsar. This is one of the arguments against considering the “Pushkin’s letter” presented to the military commission that examined the case of the duel as authentic: received on February 8 or 9, 1837 through the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia K.V. Nesselrode's “letter from Pushkin” did not reflect these events. Another argument is the words of Heckern himself from his unofficial letter to the same Nesselrode dated March 1, 1837: “Out of respect for the grave, I do not want to evaluate the letter that I received from Mr. Pushkin: if I presented its contents, it would be clear ..."

- What letter was sent by Heckern through Nesselrode to the military court commission?

A forgery was handed over to the commission, a list from Pushkin’s November letter. And later the so-called autocopy of this letter surfaced. Why "so-called"? In my research, I returned to the torn second white edition of the November 1836 letter. Pushkin edited on the 2nd page phrases about the role of Heckern: “You, Mr. Baron, let me note that the role that ... in this whole matter is not ... You, the representative of the crowned head, you were a pimp ... to your bastard, or so called the bastard son, you controlled the entire behavior of this young man. It was you who instilled in him the baseness... to betray, and the nonsense that he... Like an obscene old woman, you... my wife in all corners, so that she... a son, and when, sick with a venereal disease, he was..."

Then Pushkin wrote in pencil above the “pimp” a word that Kazansky and Izmailov read as “paternellement” (with two “lls”) and translated it as “fatherly.” But in the original there is no second “l”: Pushkin wrote the adverb “paternelement” (“feignedly fatherly”), forming it from the adjective “paterne”, and not from “paternel”, and the absence of a second “l” in it in this case is absolutely correct .

The mistake of the Pushkinists can only be explained by the “borrowing” of this word from the “autocopy”, which was allegedly written by Pushkin himself and which, as a result, turns out to be only a copy of the second edition of the November letter edited by Pushkin. In addition, neither stylistically nor, first of all, factually, Pushkin could have inserted into the copy, if it had been written by him, two words “probablement” (“probably”) in one sentence following the phrase about Heckern’s pandering: “All of his (Dantes) behavior was probably controlled by you; it was you who probably inspired him with the baseness that he dared to betray and the nonsense that he dared to write.” As for the “copy” from the military court case, it also turns out to be discredited by the mentioned “probably” and “fatherly”.

So, both so-called “copies” of the January letter go back to the same source - the second white edition of the November letter, corrected by Pushkin.

- What was in Pushkin’s January letter?

Five scraps of text, written by Pushkin in pencil with ink corrections, have survived. The scraps are folded into an incomplete sheet (three scraps in the middle part are missing). Five more scraps from Mike's collection can be added to this draft. They are written in ink, two of them bear traces of Pushkin's editing, the other three do not. The texts on the scraps are not repeated, which makes it possible to consider them in some, although, of course, conditional totality.

Translation of the draft and five scraps from the Mike collection:

« I am not worried that my wife is still listening to your feigned paternal admonitions, I do not want my wife... some insolent relative Mr.... after... and to present her vile behavior as a sacrifice to one monarch... in gossip... mixed in and I... warn against this... I have your standard, both of you, you don’t have mine yet. - You will ask what prevented me from disgracing you in front of Our court and yours, and dishonoring you in... which avenges me... you can’t imagine... leaving another... the vile deed that I... etc. - but, I repeat this, it is necessary so that all relations between your family and mine will be severed from now on».

“...I didn’t... the three of you played the same role... finally, Madame Eckern. However, your son, dissatisfied... I can allow that..."

“Of course, I won’t... let her... drag herself and...”

“...okay, Mr. Baron,...I won’t...allow all this to...”

“Here... I wish... there was more... which recently...”

“...writes that... St. Petersburg. In February... relatives... position... emperor... government... spoke about you... repeat..."

This, without any doubt, Pushkin’s epistolary material should be attributed with much greater reason to Pushkin’s January 1837 letter to Heckern than the notorious “copies”. Only the original of A.S. Pushkin’s last letter to L. Gekkern could put an end to this issue. Maybe it will come up someday.

The fact that the Tsar and his inner circle learned about the existence of at least two letters from Pushkin to Heckern is indirectly confirmed in a confidential letter from Empress Alexandra Feodorovna to Countess S.A. Bobrinskaya: “Pushkin behaved unforgivably, he wrote impudent letters (not just one letter) to Heckern, leaving him no opportunity to avoid a duel.” Let us also remember that the “Pushkin letter” was transferred to the military court commission through Nesselrode, to whom Heckern sent it among five documents. But after some time, Heckern sent Nesselrode another “document that was missing” among those that the baron had handed him earlier. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, although he and his wife were in very close relations with the Ambassador of the Netherlands, going beyond the official protocol, could not fail to comply with the demands of the official commission - to present it with some missing important document. We can confidently assume that this document was Pushkin’s real January letter, which the baron now could not hide from himself, because already on February 4, Pushkin’s second Danzas sent Benckendorff a genuine, “hand-written” copy of Pushkin’s letter for the emperor’s information. As I said above, the king decided to keep this copy, like the letter itself.

From the above reconstructed draft of this letter it is clear that it was not offensive in nature. Therefore, he could not be presented as the reason for the challenge to a duel, and the Heckerns had to resort to forgery - to pass off as a letter they received in January a corrected, forged list from a letter they had obtained through unknown means, most likely through Catherine, Natalya Nikolaevna’s sister, from November 1836 Pushkin. This completely rehabilitates Pushkin and greatly increases the guilt of the two intriguers who did not want to fulfill his fair demands. Faced with the threat of leaving St. Petersburg and thus interrupting such a successful career in Russia, the Heckerns decided that only a duel could turn things in the direction they wanted. Obviously, they were confident of its favorable outcome for Dantes. The reasons for this confidence and why the king ordered to “consign all history to oblivion” may lie in the personality of the “tempter” himself. In addition, Dantes was an excellent shooter. By the way, a separate story is connected with the conditions of the duel and with the weapons that were used in the duel. Pushkin did not read the conditions of the duel, but at the place of the duel he fired from an unfired new pistol; Dantes' pistol was not new and was handed to him by his second, his relative and friend.

- So who was this mysterious tempter? Did Pushkin manage to find out the name of his wife's real seducer?

Dantes and Heckern stood their ground to the end - the “tempter,” if they had betrayed him, would not have forgiven Dantes for the “disservice” rendered by admitting the authorship of the anonymous letter, a service that put the “tempter” in a very “difficult” position. The shortest search path involved Natalya Nikolaevna’s participation in them. But all the poet’s actions in the winter of 1836-37, right up to his death, indicate that Pushkin did not take advantage of him. There is no better proof of the poet’s love for his chosen one! And I, like Pushkin, believe in her complete innocence. She herself turned out to be a victim, as P.A. put it. Vyazemsky, the “hellish intrigues” that were arranged against her and Pushkin.

Apparently, the third participant in the “hunt” for Natalya Nikolaevna and her tempter was... the brother of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Prince Charles of Prussia. (Prince Karl of Prussia - Friedrich Karl Alexander of Prussia - born June 29, 1801, died January 21, 1883. Feldzeichmeister General (March 2, 1854) of the Prussian army, awarded the rank of Field Marshal of the Imperial Russian Army in 1872 - Ed.) . The prince was forced to leave his homeland because, in a fit of anger, he killed his servant with a stick. The Prussian king - the father of Charles and the Russian Empress - was forced to bring him to trial, which sentenced him to life imprisonment. The punishment was later commuted and the prince was sent to Russia, under the guardianship of his sister. Prince Charles behaved very badly, recalled lady-in-waiting Smirnova-Rosset. And Countess Dolly Fikelmon called him “an insignificant and sometimes indecent prince: 36 years old, he pretended to be a boy, danced like crazy at balls, talked only to young girls and junior lieutenants.” In those days, private balls were held at the Anichkov Palace for no more than a hundred people. The most beautiful women were invited to them. Natalya Nikolaevna was also invited there. The prince was a constant participant in such balls. Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich really did not like Karl’s frivolous treatment of the ladies; he repeatedly made comments to the prince. Another scandal, with the murder of the poet, of course, was not needed by the court. Rumors, in this case, would eventually reach Europe and would have undesirable consequences for the Prussian monarch, who vouched for his son.

Vladimir Gau. Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. 1838

The notes of the 16-year-old daughter of the Emperor Olga Nikolaevna, which she made in 1837, are of interest. “This winter we had brother Mama, uncle Karl in St. Petersburg... One day he invited officers and trumpeters of one regiment to his Winter Palace without the permission of the commander or one of the senior officers, and chose exactly six of the best dancers who could be met in all living rooms. Of course, these were only young people from the best families, and in Berlin it would never have occurred to anyone to be indignant about this. But in the eyes of Uncle Mikhail this was a crime. Uncle Karl invited Mom, who showed up at his place, to also dance a few rounds. As soon as she appeared, the trumpeters began to play a waltz, Uncle invited Mom, Mary and the young ladies-in-waiting with the officers also began to spin, everyone was in the most cheerful mood, when suddenly the door opened and Dad appeared, followed by Uncle Mikhail. It all ended very sadly, and even Uncle Karl’s usual jokes could not avert this end. The air was charged with a thunderstorm, and soon it erupted with an event that was indirectly related to the unsuccessful ball. Among the six dancers invited by his uncle was a certain Dantes, the adopted son of the Dutch ambassador to St. Petersburg, Baron Heckern. Some time after this ball, Dantes fought a duel with Pushkin, and our great poet died, mortally wounded by his hand. Dad was completely killed, and with him all of Russia: Pushkin’s death was a universal Russian grief. The Pope sent words of consolation to the dying man in his own handwriting and promised him protection and care for his wife and children. He was blessed by the Pope and died a true Christian in the arms of his wife. Mom cried, and Uncle Karl was very depressed and pitiful for a long time.”

When Pushkin was already lying mortally wounded at home, the Emperor and Prince Charles were at the Stone Theater for a vaudeville performance. Nikolai Pavlovich was informed about the duel, and Dr. Arendt conveyed to him Pushkin’s request to forgive him and Danzas. Pushkin could also ask for that same “nameless” letter to be returned to him. But the king not only did not return the letter, but he could have shown it to Charles, and he could have confessed to him his participation in the intrigue. Nikolai Pavlovich then advised Pushkin to die as a Christian, and in return promised to take care of his family. Pushkin's funeral was held secretly; the Prussian envoy was not present. All of Pushkin’s papers were ordered to be sealed and those that could compromise high-ranking officials to be burned. Dantes was expelled from the country. His wife Ekaterina Goncharova followed him along with Heckern, who received his resignation without a farewell audience with the emperor, as was required by diplomatic protocol. Prince Charles remained in Russia.

Was Charles acting for himself or in the interests of another member of the Prussian royal house? Lately I have been busy testing my assumption that Natalya Nikolaevna’s secret admirer was the Prussian Prince Adalbert (Adalbert Heinrich Wilhelm of Prussia (1811−1873), Prussian prince, naval theorist and admiral, one of the founders of the German Navy. Son Prince Wilhelm, younger brother of the Prussian king Frederick William III - Ed.). As I understand it, Prince Adalbert was also the creator of Prussian military intelligence. From his youth, the prince traveled a lot around Europe: in 1826 he visited Holland, in 1832 - England and Scotland, in 1834 - St. Petersburg and Moscow. Here Prince Adalbert was warmly received by Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, who on June 24 awarded him the highest imperial order of Russia - the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle, as the august representative of the allied Kingdom of Prussia and the crowned nephew of the King of Prussia.

Moscow Archive of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs

In the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA), a note has been preserved that notifies Alexei Fedorovich Malinovsky, historian, senator, and at that time the chief manager of the Moscow Archive of the College of Foreign Affairs, about the visit to the archive in 1834 of the Prussian Prince Adalbert.

“Receive. 13 Aug. at 10 o'clock in the morning. Dear Sir, Alexey Fedorovich! His Royal Highness Prince Adelbert of Prussia wishes to view the Foreign Archive at one o'clock in the morning, of which Your Excellency I have the honor to notify. With true respect and complete devotion, I have the honor to be Your Excellency's most humble servant, Baron (signature nrzb). August 13th, 1834."

Three years later, Prince Adalbert will visit Russia again. In the autumn of 1837, he inspected the harbors on the Black Sea. That same year he visited Greece, Turkey and the Ionian Islands. Wasn’t it him that Pushkin wrote about in his January letter to Heckern, as one of the “relatives” of the emperor, whose supposed arrival in Russia he learned about in February? And isn’t that why the two intriguers were in such a hurry to duel, in order to prevent Pushkin’s meeting with the prince?

Prince Adalbert married very late, only at the age of 38 he married Theresa Elsmere (1808−1878), who, at the request of the prince, received the title of Baroness von Barnim from King William IV of Prussia. The only son in this morganatic marriage was born in 1841, even before the king of Prussia recognized the legal marriage of his parents, which, however, did not in any way affect the prince’s career. As well as his participation, direct or indirect, in the events that led to the death of Pushkin.

- Finally, Vladimir Evgenievich, tell us about your immediate plans.

As I already said, I am now busy checking the version about the new candidate for the role of the “tempter” of Pushkin’s wife. I will ask Baroness Clotilde von Rintelen, who lives in Wiesbaden, Germany, to help me in my research. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Pushkin and the great-granddaughter of Emperor Alexander II. I met her at Natalya Sergeevna’s, she was her good angel in those difficult “perestroika” years. She often came to her from Germany, brought food and clothes, and looked after her. A very sweet, kind and smart woman, a true friend of ours. She was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship as a philanthropist and as chairman of the German Pushkin Society. In collaboration with the writer Z. Chebotar, I am finishing a documentary-fiction novel-study of the events of Pushkin’s life, starting with Pushkin’s exile in Bessarabia and up to his last days. Of course, it will also reflect what we talked about today. Well, I think the main thing is my work on a new translation of all the “French” texts of Pushkin. This is very important and necessary work.

Today in Russia we celebrate Pushkin Day of Russia (Russian Language Day): On June 6 (May 25, old style, on the day of the Ascension of the Lord), 1799, the genius of Russian literature Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was born in Moscow. The annual celebration of this event was established in 2011 by decree of the President of Russia.

In Moscow today, flowers will be carried to the foot of the monument on Tverskaya Street, and in St. Petersburg - to the monument in the courtyard of a house on the embankment of the Moika River. The house in whose apartment on the second floor Pushkin died before he was 38 years old. How much more he could have done! And on this holiday, the joy is mixed with a heart-aching feeling of loss and the same bitter question haunts me: how could this happen?

On the eve of the holiday, REGNUM correspondent Lyudmila Lis interviewed a member of the Pushkin Commission of the IMLI named after. A.M. Gorky RAS, Pushkin scholar, candidate of philological sciences Vladimir Evgenievich Orlov.

Vladimir Evgenievich, first of all, I would like to know how you came to become a Pushkin scholar. What determined your creative path?

It was as if fate was preparing me for this. My childhood was spent in Moscow, on Arbat, in a house that before the revolution was a meeting house. It is described in one of Bunin's stories. The house was given over to communal apartments: all the “rooms” were converted into rooms. In one of the “cells” of a large apartment where nine families lived, my grandmother, nee Filosofova, lived. And my family returned there from evacuation in 1944. Two sisters who worked in the visiting house before the revolution also lived in the same apartment. They were not affected by repression, since in 1917 they were declared a “working element.” One of them was married, but her husband disappeared somewhere, and the second was unmarried. Both were fluent in French. In the 50s, French language teachers from Moscow State University came to consult with them. They didn't have their own children. They liked my sister and I so much that they began to teach us French. My sister was more diligent, so she graduated from a pedagogical institute, interned at the Sorbonne, then worked as a teacher at a French college, now retired. I went to study at a regular “boys’” school, and when coeducation was introduced, I was transferred to a “girls’” French special school, because it was closest to home. Even then I began to write stories and show some literary abilities. I was simply immersed in Pushkin's poetry and prose. But my father advised me not to make literature my profession, and after finishing school I entered the Bauman School, which I successfully graduated from.

In 1958, because of my father’s work, we came to Leningrad for some time. I went to the Moika, to the Pushkin museum-apartment, where Pushkin’s letter to the Dutch envoy to Russia Heckern, written in January 1837, was put on public display. The letter was in French, and next to it was a translation into Russian. I compared them and realized that the translation did not match the text of the letter. True, at that moment I doubted my knowledge of French, but “a sediment remained.” Later I learned that this is not an original letter, but a reconstruction of it. This stuck with me.

After graduating from Baumansky, I worked as a civil engineer, then I was invited to join the army, where at that time there was a shortage of specialists, and I worked as a military engineer. While serving in the army, I entered the military institute of foreign languages. Upon graduation, he became a translator and defended his Ph.D. thesis. I served my 25 years and retired, but this letter kept haunting me. And so, while reading the 1936 collection “Chronicles of the Literary Museum,” I came across an article by Pushkin scholar Izmailov, “The History of the Text of Pushkin’s Letters to Heckern,” which contained a link to an article by another famous researcher, Kazansky. Both Pushkinists reconstructed Pushkin's writing, each in their own way. It was a very serious work on textual criticism, French phraseology and philology. I was lucky: the drafts of this letter were also attached here. I started working on it. I deciphered them step by step, eliminating the shortcomings of the translation. For five years in a row I published articles in the journal “Philological Sciences” based on the results of my work. I became convinced that it was not in vain that I started this. And I still continue to work. And now not so much with this letter, but with what lay behind it.

The main thing that I understood is that the story of Pushkin’s last duel is a combination of manipulation of sources and, unfortunately, a consequence of his own mistakes. Plus, Natalya Nikolaevna’s youth played a fatal role in this whole story. I am not a supporter of the assertion that his wife cheated on Pushkin, I believe him on this issue, I believe his words addressed to his wife: “You are innocent in all this.” Yes, there was a period in their relationship, starting from the second half of 1834, when Pushkin was very busy with writing and magazine work, and his beloved Natalie, having entered high society, was forced to meet and flirt with men at balls. Such flirting was an indispensable attribute of court life, but, of course, female coquetry was within certain limits. Everything that has been made up in this regard around Pushkin’s duel is not true. Starting with the imaginary reason for the duel, the notorious cuckold diploma that he received, and ending with the letter that he sent to Heckern. Why? You can build conspiracy theories, and I know there are certain components that allow you to do this. But mainly because members of the royal family, relatives of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, were involved in this story. And when Pushkin, dying, demanded that the tsar return the documents that he had previously given to him, Nicholas I refused him. The Tsar wrote to Pushkin to “die as a Christian” and not take revenge on anyone. In return, the tsar promised that Pushkin’s family would be provided for financially. Pushkin was forced to come to terms. Zhukovsky and Dubelt, who were sorting out the papers, were ordered to seize all documents that could harm high-ranking officials and Pushkin’s family and burn them. Moreover, when the military court investigators “pressed” Dantes and Gekkern, they also began to beat around the bush and issued documents that were falsified. When they were finally forced, they still gave up the original papers. But, after looking at them, the king decided not to involve them in the case, ordered the investigation to be completed immediately and later refused to return the documents to the two intriguers.

Pushkin’s phrases “It will be easy for me to write the story of cuckolds” and “Natasha, you are not to blame for anything, this matter concerned only me,” coupled with the categorical royal order to consign the dueling story to oblivion, did not allow Pushkin’s friends to dig deeper. None of them really knew anything - Pushkin believed that he could handle the situation himself, and Pushkin’s closest friends did not show him the proper attention and sympathy. Those close to Dantes and Heckern remained silent for obvious reasons, although some did let it slip.

What documents are we talking about?

First of all, about letters. Pushkin wrote two letters to Heckern - in November 1836 and in January 1837. He did not send the November letter to Heckern. He tore up two drafts, and the pieces were later found in the waste paper basket. They were missing pieces, and the most important, most meaningful pieces, which is why their reconstruction became necessary. Pushkin also wrote a letter to Benckendorf in November. But Pushkin did not send this letter either; it was found only after his death. The most disgusting thing is that it is believed that in January Pushkin insulted Dantes and Heckern in a letter so that they had no choice but a duel. This is not true. All this time, starting in November, he demanded from them, firstly, that they leave his wife alone, and secondly, that they leave Russia. And there were no insults in the January letter. Even Pushkin’s famous word “scoundrel” referred to the November letter. And someone took these scraps of the November letter from the trash bin and saved them. It looks like it was Zhukovsky. Based on them, Izmailov and Kazansky, considering them to be drafts of the January letter, reconstructed this letter. But there are also pieces of letters from the so-called Maykovsky collection - in 1925, fragments written in Pushkin’s hand were found. I am sure that they are the fragments of the draft of the real January letter to Heckern, which was hidden from everyone. Ekaterina - Natalya Nikolaevna's sister and Dantes' wife - in order to justify the duel, managed to steal the November letter, and it was presented to the investigation as January, and it really did contain a lot of insults. But the real January letter was hidden.

Did you start by correcting errors in translations from French by other Pushkin scholars? Who else helped you in your research?

This work was hard. Let's start with the fact that the real French language in Russia is now completely lost. But even at the beginning of the last century it was impossible to find an educated person who did not know French. By the way, the “French” pages of the text of the first editions of “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy were not provided with a translation. Even teachers who are currently being trained by foreign language institutes and pedagogical institutes do not know the language well. And, unfortunately, no internships and no Sorbonnes will help them, because in France they also stopped studying Russian. I was lucky again. When I got seriously involved in this business, God began to send me people who could help me in my work. It’s a real miracle that I was introduced to Pushkin’s great-granddaughter, Natalya Sergeevna Shepeleva. When I met her, she was nearly 90 years old. I spent the last years of her life next to her. She was an amazing person, it was very interesting to be with her. She knew French really perfectly, so her help in my search was very important. Communicating with her, I realized that there was some secret in the Pushkin family, something carefully hidden from outsiders. Natalya Nikolaevna had a certain love for Dantes, and he later used this feeling for his own purposes. Natalya Sergeevna, Natalya Nikolaevna’s great-granddaughter, did not really like talking about this. Nevertheless, she nourished me with the realities of life in Pushkin’s family and some of the subtleties of the French language. She found the revolution as a 15-year-old girl, her father S.P. Mezentsev was a general in the retinue of Emperor Nicholas II. In 1925 he was sent to the Lubyanka for the first time, and in 1937 he was shot. Natalya Sergeevna worked in the conservatory library, she was not touched, and this was decided at the level of Stalin. There was such a director of the Pushkin Museum A. Crane. Natalya Sergeevna, according to her, quarreled with him because, as I understood, she wanted more respect for her for giving the museum the family’s personal belongings: Natalya Nikolaevna’s beaded wallet, her coral bracelet. The bracelet was in the possession of M.A. Pushkina-Hartung, Pushkin’s eldest daughter. She passed it on to her niece Anna Alexandrovna Pushkina, and she passed it on to Natalya Sergeevna. Natalya Sergeevna was ready to give many more things, but because of a quarrel she did not give them. As a result, after her death, much was lost. Where did it go - the ends are visible. But, alas... She showed me the famous amulet, in which there was a particle of the Lord’s robe. She kept it behind a curtain near the icon case; this amulet was inherited from the eldest man in the family to the next eldest son. At first Alexander Alexandrovich, Pushkin’s son, had it, then Alexander had to give it to Grigory, but he gave this amulet to his beloved granddaughter Natalya, whom he nursed in his arms and who was his last consolation in life. Natalya Sergeevna buried Pushkin's daughter Maria Alexandrovna, who died in March 1919 in poverty. For Maria they asked for a pension from the People's Commissar of Education Lunacharsky. He agreed that Pushkin’s daughter needed help. But help was too late. The pension came at the funeral. Natalya Sergeevna and her old aunt Anna Alexandrovna buried Maria at the Donskoye cemetery, and the money allocated by the Soviet government went towards the coffin. They hired someone to dig the grave. After a while, they began to look for this grave, but except for Natalya Sergeevna, no one knew where the grave was located. They wanted to raze the grave of Alexander Alexandrovich, who died in July 1914 in Ostankino, Kashira district, Tula province, on the estate of his second wife, because everything there had become completely desolate. Natalya Sergeevna ensured that Pushkin’s son was reburied in the family crypt. In 1963, his ashes, according to his will, were finally transferred to Lopasnya. There are no direct descendants of Pushkin, but there are many relatives living in different countries. Under Natalya Sergeevna, they often gathered and communicated, but after her death there was less such live communication.

Photo: Vladimir Orlov

And where did the amulet go then? Natalya Sergeevna probably had other relics. Where did they go?

As for the amulet... Before Natalya Sergeevna’s death, director Lyubimov’s wife Katalina Kunz brought her home from the hospital to say goodbye to the house. Natalya Sergeevna asked to call me, I arrived, and she told me that she had given the amulet to safe hands. I recently found out that she gave it to her doctor.

Natalya Sergeevna lived in a one-room apartment, blown through by winds. There she had a corner where icons stood, and below there was a mattress with legs on which she slept. Nearby, on the nightstand, stood an icon of the Savior. Natalya Sergeevna said that in this image Natalya Nikolaevna’s mother blessed her for marriage with Alexander Sergeevich, and on the back side of the icon, under the velvet, there is an inscription about this, made by Natalya Nikolaevna’s hand. After the death of Natalya Sergeevna, this icon disappeared. I read in the old newspaper “Evening Moscow” that this icon was sold for a million dollars to the All-Russian Pushkin Museum, which is located in St. Petersburg. There is the Pushkin Apartment Museum on the Moika, there is the Pushkin House (IRLI - Institute of Russian Literature) and there is the so-called All-Russian Pushkin Museum, which until recently did not have its own premises. For some time now, part of its exhibition can be seen in the backyard of the museum on the Moika. I looked for this icon in the exhibition, but did not find it. Then I asked the director of the museum, S. M. Nekrasov, about it, to which he answered me: where they read it, that’s where it is. This newspaper, by the way, also disappeared from the archives.

Pushkin also had a famous talisman. With the light hand of I. S. Turgenev, for more than a century and a half we have been persistently and persistently convinced that this is a ring with a carnelian stone, which Elizaveta Vorontsova gave to Pushkin in Odessa upon parting. There are two poems by Pushkin about the talisman. And in one of them there is a mention that the talisman was given to him by a “sorceress” - where the sea “eternally splashes on the desert rocks”, “where Muslims spend their days enjoying themselves in harems.” And she warned: “...When treacherous eyes suddenly enchant you, or lips in the darkness of the night kiss you without loving - dear friend! My talisman will protect me from crime, from new heart wounds, from betrayal, from oblivion!” We must pay tribute to Pushkin. He never made anything up. All the events that he described were real, starting with poems and ending with “The Captain's Daughter.” And I once told Natalya Sergeevna that I doubted that the ring stolen from an exhibition in 1917, on which was the inscription of its former owner, a merchant, in Hebrew “Simcha, son of the honest Mr. Joseph the Elder, blessed be his memory” - this is the same talisman that Pushkin wrote about in the poem. Natalya Sergeevna suddenly says to me: “Now I’ll show you something.” She took out an antique box, opened it and revealed a carnelian stone in a blackened silver frame. Its size was one centimeter. She said that, according to family legend, Alexander Sergeevich kept this box on his table and loved to sort through the things that were in it. I examined this stone under a magnifying glass. The stone had the shape of a drop; on the reverse side there was an inscription engraved on it, also in Hebrew, divided in half by a vertical line. To the right of the line is the first part of the inscription, to the left is the other. And the entire inscription was surrounded by crosses. These crosses shocked me. There were 12 or 14 of them. Pushkin at one time himself was engaged in research into the Hebrew alphabet. Apparently, he wanted to decipher this inscription as well. The myth of the talisman from Vorontsova and other common myths about Pushkin are supported by those who “scientifically” work on Pushkin’s legacy and who have provided themselves with such work for many years to come. For example, the 30-volume academic Complete Works of Pushkin should have already been out of print. Back in 1999 (!), the Institute of Russian Literature was given a grant to publish this grandiose publication. But so far only one limited edition (trial!) volume has been released. Last year I asked Pushkin scholars from IRLI how things were going, fearing that I would not have time to provide texts for the last volume, where the poet’s pre-duel letters were to be published. They looked at me, excuse me, as if I was “crazy” and said that they were only making the third volume, and they didn’t even let me see that because it wasn’t ready yet. And they didn’t let me see the second volume.

Or, for example, Natalya Sergeevna, giving her archive to the Pushkin House, wrote in the covering letter that it could be given to me - Vladimir Evgenievich Orlov. I asked the gentlemen of this House for access to the archive. They replied that they knew about Natalya Sergeevna’s permission, but they refused to let me see the papers. According to their rules, no one should be allowed near the documents until they understand them themselves. But no one knows when they will figure them out. She died almost 20 years ago, and they still haven't figured it out.

So, let's continue about the pebble. Natalya Sergeevna gave it to me before her death. I deciphered the inscription. It was written there: “Lord, save him from unhappy love.” And I told Natalya Ivanovna Mikhailova, the scientific director, about the pebble in the museum on Prechistenka. She told me that later we would work with this stone somehow. But “later” did not happen. I left for France and already thought that I would stay there to live. I embedded the pebble into the ring, having previously sketched it and the inscription that was on it. In France, I once went shopping with my daughter. And there, in the store, I lost it. It slipped off my finger, and I only noticed it at home. We looked for him and advertised in newspapers. But he disappeared. This is probably a punishment for my then desire to stay abroad, instead of continuing to collect bit by bit the truth about Pushkin here in Russia.

Does this mean that Pushkin’s talisman is irretrievably lost? Even the one who found it is unlikely to realize its value. Then let's get back to the letters. After all, manuscripts, as you know, do not burn.

Pushkin's manuscripts are kept in a safe room in the IRLI and are opened only in front of witnesses. To view them, you need to wear gloves. And you need to get special permission. I was allowed to touch them! I needed to see these letters. Some of the scraps of the above-mentioned letters were glued together by researchers Kazansky and Izmailov, and some of the scraps lay stacked on top of each other in the envelope. It was important for me to see for myself whether they were glued together correctly. And I was allowed, as an exception, to “rotate” them. Working on the letters, clarifying the translation of letters made up of scraps, comparing them with letters to Benckendorff, I was able to clarify the chronology of the events of the duel. It turned out that Dantes is not the main character here. There was one more person, the “tempter” and the main culprit of everything that happened, who was covered up by Dantes, and Heckern, and Tsar Nicholas I, and everyone else.

I would like to hear this tragic story from your lips.

During the summer and autumn of 1836, Pushkin’s wife was subjected to a fierce attack by two “persecutors” - the experienced intriguer Heckern and his “adopted son” Dantes. The latter’s “tireless red tape” did not cause Pushkin much concern: Dantes’ behavior was quite consistent with court morals. At the beginning of October (no later than the 19th) 1836, Idalia Poletika, a friend of Natalya Nikolaevna and Dantes’ secret mistress, lured Pushkin’s wife to her apartment. Dantes who found himself there (and quite possibly the “tempter” himself) begged Natalya Nikolaevna to “give herself” to him. She immediately ran away, but, unfortunately, she was afraid to tell her husband about everything, which subsequently allowed Heckern to blackmail the young woman, whispering to her “in all corners” about the “love” of his mischievous “son,” who was hiding under the pretext of illness at home, and even suggesting that she flee Russia “under diplomatic auspices.” Having received a refusal, Gekkern began to threaten her with revenge.

At the end of October 1836, Pushkin received by city mail a “nameless” (anonymous) letter (possibly with a “diploma for the title of cuckold” attached to it), which informed him of his wife’s alleged infidelity. Having found also unsigned letters and notes at home and mistakenly connecting them with Dantes, Pushkin went to him on November 2. Dantes takes upon himself their authorship, but declares that they are addressed not to Natalya Nikolaevna, but to her sister Catherine, whom he supposedly intends to marry. Pushkin, as an honest person, is satisfied with this explanation. On the same day, Dantes informs Heckern about Pushkin’s visit, giving the baron “great pleasure” by the fact that Pushkin is not even aware of the intrigue being waged against him and his wife.

After several days of reflection and investigative activities, Pushkin became convinced of Dantes’ lie. Upon careful study, he discovered that at least one of the letters presented was addressed specifically to Natalya Nikolaevna, and it was written not by Dantes, but by someone else. Pushkin realized that Dantes was trying to corrupt his wife in the interests of a certain “tempter.” It became clear to him that Heckern was directing the behavior of his adopted son. Pushkin regretted that he had trusted and shown, and perhaps even given, this compromising “tempter” letter to Dantes. But it was already too late. On November 3, Pushkin, wanting to prevent the “final blow” that the Baron and Dantes could deliver if they learned about the contents of the letter, sends out “double letters” to a narrow circle of his friends and acquaintances - blank sheets of paper enclosed in envelopes with their addresses and sealed sheets of paper with an inscription on them. "To Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin." Pushkin's calculation was that his friends, without opening the inner envelopes, would send them to him, confirming, if necessary, the very fact of their receipt. This gave him the opportunity to maneuver: if the Heckerns began to blackmail his wife, Pushkin would have every moral right to use this opportunity - to accuse Natalya Nikolaevna’s two “persecutors” of divulging the contents of the letter that had become known to them.

Pushkin “fell victim to an indecent position, into which he placed himself through an erroneous calculation,” wrote the very knowledgeable A. N. Wulf in his diary. Well, if we reduce the reasons for Pushkin’s death only to the story of the “nameless letter,” maybe this is so. Yes, the enemies turned out to be more cruel and insidious than Pushkin himself expected, and his friends, alas, were less sensitive. On November 4, Pushkin, out of seven or eight sent out, receives only 3 “internal” letters.

On the same day, Pushkin sends a challenge to Dantes to a duel as a direct insult to his honor. Dantes is hiding from Pushkin while on regiment duty. Heckern comes to Pushkin and begs him to postpone the duel. Pushkin agrees only on the condition that the baron gives the name of the person whom Dantes covered up: Pushkin needed the evidence for a reasoned accusation against a high-ranking “tempter, disrespectfully (“recognizing” Dantes as the author of someone else’s letter) put in a difficult position.” Gekkern pretends that he knew nothing about this and talks about Dantes’s long-standing love for Catherine, Natalya Nikolaevna’s sister. On November 7, Zhukovsky goes to Pushkin and becomes a witness of him, who knew the background of the “discovery” made by Heckern, the “madness”. In the evening of the same day, Dantes visits Vielgorsky. The purpose of the visit was to look at one of the “double letters” received by Pushkin’s friends. Information about the events that took place in the Pushkin family could have been reported to Dantes by Ekaterina Goncharova. Vielgorsky did not show the letter.

Zhukovsky spends November 7-9 traveling between Pushkin, E.I. Zagryazhskaya (Natalia Nikolaevna’s aunt) and the Gekkerns. Pushkin flatly refuses to meet with Dantes, which was intended to involve him in explanations in front of witnesses. On the morning of November 10, Zhukovsky conveys to Dantes a refusal to mediate. Nevertheless, he continues to look for a way out of the situation, which he sees in the fact that Gekkern will officially announce his consent to the marriage of his adopted son with Ekaterina Goncharova. The Baron bargains: he demands to see the letter received by Pushkin. On November 12, Zhukovsky apparently meets with Gekkern again. The Baron makes concessions, having received assurances from Zhukovsky that all those involved in the matter, and most importantly, Pushkin, will keep “secret” the story of the challenge, the disclosure of which would disgrace Dantes and Heckern. And, I would add, it would cause the wrath of a high-ranking “tempter.”

On November 14, Pushkin met with Gekkern at Zagryazhskaya. Everything seemed to be moving towards a peaceful outcome. But in the evening Pushkin told V.F. Vyazemskaya’s significant words: “I know the hero (and not the “author,” as was mistakenly translated from French earlier) of nameless letters, and in eight days you will hear about revenge, one of a kind.” This phrase allows us to make the assumption that on November 14 Pushkin already knew the name of the “tempter” of his wife.

On November 16, Heckern receives a letter from Pushkin refusing a challenge to a duel for the reason that he learned “from rumors” about Dantes’s intention to ask for the hand of Ekaterina Goncharova after the duel. The matter could have been considered over for Dantes, but the young Frenchman suddenly showed obstinacy by sending, without Heckern’s knowledge, a daring letter to Pushkin. We know about Pushkin’s reaction to him from Zhukovsky’s Notes: “Dantes’ letter to Pushkin and his rage. Another duel." On the evening of November 16, Pushkin asks V.A. Sollogub to be his second and agree “only on the material side of the duel,” without allowing any explanations between the opponents.

On the morning of November 17, Sollogub (contrary to Pushkin’s demands) visits Dantes and sees him already completely subordinated to Heckern’s will. Sollogub goes to Pushkin, but he remains adamant. Sollogub goes to Dantes’s second d’Archiac. The duel is scheduled for November 21. Meanwhile, both the seconds and Gekkern are looking for a way to stop her. Sollogub sends a letter to Pushkin, in which he reports Dantes’s complete surrender. On the same day, November 17, Pushkin responds to Sollogub, confirming in writing his agreement to consider his challenge “as not followed” because of the “public rumor” that had reached him about Dantes’ decision to announce after the duel his intention to marry Ekaterina Goncharova. Heckern’s representative, d’Archiac, having read the letter, says: “That’s enough.” In the evening at the ball at S.V. Saltykov's engagement was announced.

Contrary to their promise, Heckern and Dantes, incited and supported by Pushkin’s enemies, began to spread rumors defaming him and his wife. In addition, soon after November 17, Gekkern, irritated by the upcoming forced marriage of his “son,” resumed the persecution of Natalya Nikolaevna as a future relative. Probably, Pushkin also learned more about the role of Heckern these days - not only as Dantes' pimp.

On November 21, Pushkin writes a letter to Benckendorf and on the same day shows Sollogub a letter written to Heckern. On November 23, Pushkin receives an audience with the emperor. It is not known about Pushkin’s active actions until the second half of January 1837, from which we can conclude that Nicholas I promised to warn the “tempter” and find the author of the letter from which it all began. It may well be, but this is my guess, he demanded this letter from Pushkin and took his word “not to start anything without notifying him.” But Pushkin could not refuse Nicholas I.

On January 10, the wedding of Dantes and Ekaterina Goncharova took place. Pushkin was not present at the wedding and stated that his house was forever closed to Dantes and his family. And Dantes, with even greater zeal, began to play the “victim of sublime love”, and Heckern - the “exhorter” of Natalya Nikolaevna. The situation began to resemble the November one, but this time, which was unbearable for Pushkin, it was accompanied by gossip in those circles where there were his friends, associates and, finally, his readers.

On January 25, 1837, Pushkin sent a letter to Heckern, which the baron and his so-called son considered a sufficient pretext to challenge Pushkin to a duel. Before this, at the Vorontsov-Dashkov ball, Dantes was clearly asking for insult from Pushkin. This gave Dantes significant advantages in the inevitable duel in this case. In addition, Dantes feared a public scandal with exposure of his, at least, unsolicited interference in the personal life of a high-ranking tempter, which could follow at one of the court balls or receptions in the presence of members of the imperial family.

The chronology shows that from November 21, 1836 to the end of January 1837, events took place, although hidden from the uninitiated, but well known to three people - Pushkin, Heckern and, partially, the Tsar. This is one of the arguments against considering the “Pushkin’s letter” presented to the military commission that examined the case of the duel as authentic: received on February 8 or 9, 1837 through the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia K.V. Nesselrode's “letter from Pushkin” did not reflect these events. Another argument is the words of Heckern himself from his unofficial letter to the same Nesselrode dated March 1, 1837: “Out of respect for the grave, I do not want to evaluate the letter that I received from Mr. Pushkin: if I presented its contents, it would be clear ..."

What letter was sent by Heckern through Nesselrode to the military court commission?

A forgery was handed over to the commission, a list from Pushkin’s November letter. And later the so-called autocopy of this letter surfaced. Why "so-called"? In my research, I returned to the torn second white edition of the November 1836 letter. Pushkin edited on the 2nd page phrases about the role of Heckern: “You, Mr. Baron, let me note that the role that ... in this whole matter is not ... You, the representative of the crowned head, you were a pimp ... to your bastard, or so called the bastard son, you controlled the entire behavior of this young man. It was you who instilled in him the baseness... to betray, and the nonsense that he... Like an obscene old woman, you... my wife in all corners, so that she... a son, and when, sick with a venereal disease, he was..."

Then Pushkin wrote in pencil above the “pimp” a word that Kazansky and Izmailov read as “paternellement” (with two “lls”) and translated it as “fatherly.” But in the original there is no second “l”: Pushkin wrote the adverb “paternelement” (“feignedly fatherly”), forming it from the adjective “paterne”, and not from “paternel”, and the absence of a second “l” in it in this case is absolutely correct .

The mistake of the Pushkinists can only be explained by the “borrowing” of this word from the “autocopy”, which was allegedly written by Pushkin himself and which, as a result, turns out to be only a copy of the second edition of the November letter edited by Pushkin. In addition, neither stylistically nor, first of all, factually, Pushkin could have inserted into the copy, if it had been written by him, two words “probablement” (“probably”) in one sentence following the phrase about Heckern’s pandering: “All of his (Dantes) behavior was probably controlled by you; it was you who probably inspired him with the baseness that he dared to betray and the nonsense that he dared to write.” As for the “copy” from the military court case, it also turns out to be discredited by the mentioned “probably” and “fatherly”.

So, both so-called “copies” of the January letter go back to the same source - the second white edition of the November letter, corrected by Pushkin.

What was in Pushkin’s January letter?

Five scraps of text, written by Pushkin in pencil with ink corrections, have survived. The scraps are folded into an incomplete sheet (three scraps in the middle part are missing). Five more scraps from Mike's collection can be added to this draft. They are written in ink, two of them bear traces of Pushkin's editing, the other three do not. The texts on the scraps are not repeated, which makes it possible to consider them in some, although, of course, conditional totality.

Translation of the draft and five scraps from the Mike collection:

“I am not worried that my wife is still listening to your feigned paternal admonitions, I do not want my wife... some insolent relative Mr.... after... and to present her vile behavior as a sacrifice to one monarch... in gossip... mixed in and I... warn because of this... I have your standard, both of you, you don’t have mine yet. - You will ask what prevented me from disgracing you in front of Our court and yours, and dishonoring you in... which avenges me... you can’t imagine... leaving another... the vile deed that I... etc. - but, I repeat this, it is necessary , so that all relations between your family and mine will be severed from now on.”

“...I didn’t... the three of you played the same role... finally, Madame Eckern. However, your son, dissatisfied... I can allow that..."

“Of course, I won’t... let her... drag herself and...”

“...okay, Mr. Baron,...I won’t...allow all this to...”

“Here... I wish... there was more... which recently...”

“...writes that... St. Petersburg. In February... relatives... position... emperor... government... spoke about you... repeat..."

This, without any doubt, Pushkin’s epistolary material should be attributed with much greater reason to Pushkin’s January 1837 letter to Heckern than the notorious “copies”. Only the original of A.S. Pushkin’s last letter to L. Gekkern could put an end to this issue. Maybe it will come up someday.

The fact that the Tsar and his inner circle learned about the existence of at least two letters from Pushkin to Heckern is indirectly confirmed in a confidential letter from Empress Alexandra Feodorovna to Countess S.A. Bobrinskaya: “Pushkin behaved unforgivably, he wrote impudent letters (not just one letter) to Heckern, leaving him no opportunity to avoid a duel.” Let us also remember that the “Pushkin letter” was transferred to the military court commission through Nesselrode, to whom Heckern sent it among five documents. But after some time, Heckern sent Nesselrode another “document that was missing” among those that the baron had handed him earlier. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, although he and his wife were in very close relations with the Ambassador of the Netherlands, going beyond the official protocol, could not fail to comply with the demands of the official commission - to present it with some missing important document. We can confidently assume that this document was Pushkin’s real January letter, which the baron now could not hide from himself, because already on February 4, Pushkin’s second Danzas sent Benckendorff a genuine, “hand-written” copy of Pushkin’s letter for the emperor’s information. As I said above, the king decided to keep this copy, like the letter itself.

From the above reconstructed draft of this letter it is clear that it was not offensive in nature. Therefore, he could not be presented as the reason for the challenge to a duel, and the Heckerns had to resort to forgery - to pass off as a letter they received in January a corrected, forged list from a letter they had obtained through unknown means, most likely through Catherine, Natalya Nikolaevna’s sister, from November 1836 Pushkin. This completely rehabilitates Pushkin and greatly increases the guilt of the two intriguers who did not want to fulfill his fair demands. Faced with the threat of leaving St. Petersburg and thus interrupting such a successful career in Russia, the Heckerns decided that only a duel could turn things in the direction they wanted. Obviously, they were confident of its favorable outcome for Dantes. The reasons for this confidence and why the king ordered to “consign all history to oblivion” may lie in the personality of the “tempter” himself. In addition, Dantes was an excellent shooter. By the way, a separate story is connected with the conditions of the duel and with the weapons that were used in the duel. Pushkin did not read the conditions of the duel, but at the place of the duel he fired from an unfired new pistol; Dantes' pistol was not new and was handed to him by his second, his relative and friend.

So who was this mysterious tempter? Did Pushkin manage to find out the name of his wife's real seducer?

Dantes and Heckern stood their ground to the end - the “tempter,” if they had betrayed him, would not have forgiven Dantes for the “disservice” rendered by admitting the authorship of the anonymous letter, a service that put the “tempter” in a very “difficult” position. The shortest search path involved Natalya Nikolaevna’s participation in them. But all the poet’s actions in the winter of 1836-37, right up to his death, indicate that Pushkin did not take advantage of him. There is no better proof of the poet’s love for his chosen one! And I, like Pushkin, believe in her complete innocence. She herself turned out to be a victim, as P.A. put it. Vyazemsky, the “hellish intrigues” that were arranged against her and Pushkin.

Apparently, the third participant in the “hunt” for Natalya Nikolaevna and her tempter was... the brother of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Prince Charles of Prussia. (Prince Karl of Prussia - Friedrich Karl Alexander of Prussia - born June 29, 1801, died January 21, 1883. Feldzeichmeister General (March 2, 1854) of the Prussian army, awarded the rank of Field Marshal of the Imperial Russian Army in 1872 - Ed.) . The prince was forced to leave his homeland because, in a fit of anger, he killed his servant with a stick. The Prussian king - the father of Charles and the Russian Empress - was forced to bring him to trial, which sentenced him to life imprisonment. The punishment was later commuted and the prince was sent to Russia, under the guardianship of his sister. Prince Charles behaved very badly, recalled lady-in-waiting Smirnova-Rosset. And Countess Dolly Fikelmon called him “an insignificant and sometimes indecent prince: 36 years old, he pretended to be a boy, danced like crazy at balls, talked only to young girls and junior lieutenants.” In those days, private balls were held at the Anichkov Palace for no more than a hundred people. The most beautiful women were invited to them. Natalya Nikolaevna was also invited there. The prince was a constant participant in such balls. Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich really did not like Karl’s frivolous treatment of the ladies; he repeatedly made comments to the prince. Another scandal, with the murder of the poet, of course, was not needed by the court. Rumors, in this case, would eventually reach Europe and would have undesirable consequences for the Prussian monarch, who vouched for his son.

The notes of the 16-year-old daughter of the Emperor Olga Nikolaevna, which she made in 1837, are of interest. “This winter we had brother Mama, uncle Karl in St. Petersburg... One day he invited officers and trumpeters of one regiment to his Winter Palace without the permission of the commander or one of the senior officers, and chose exactly six of the best dancers who could be met in all living rooms. Of course, these were only young people from the best families, and in Berlin it would never have occurred to anyone to be indignant about this. But in the eyes of Uncle Mikhail this was a crime. Uncle Karl invited Mom, who showed up at his place, to also dance a few rounds. As soon as she appeared, the trumpeters began to play a waltz, Uncle invited Mom, Mary and the young ladies-in-waiting with the officers also began to spin, everyone was in the most cheerful mood, when suddenly the door opened and Dad appeared, followed by Uncle Mikhail. It all ended very sadly, and even Uncle Karl’s usual jokes could not avert this end. The air was charged with a thunderstorm, and soon it erupted with an event that was indirectly related to the unsuccessful ball. Among the six dancers invited by his uncle was a certain Dantes, the adopted son of the Dutch ambassador to St. Petersburg, Baron Heckern. Some time after this ball, Dantes fought a duel with Pushkin, and our great poet died, mortally wounded by his hand. Dad was completely killed, and with him all of Russia: Pushkin’s death was a universal Russian grief. The Pope sent words of consolation to the dying man in his own handwriting and promised him protection and care for his wife and children. He was blessed by the Pope and died a true Christian in the arms of his wife. Mom cried, and Uncle Karl was very depressed and pitiful for a long time.”

When Pushkin was already lying mortally wounded at home, the Emperor and Prince Charles were at the Stone Theater for a vaudeville performance. Nikolai Pavlovich was informed about the duel, and Dr. Arendt conveyed to him Pushkin’s request to forgive him and Danzas. Pushkin could also ask for that same “nameless” letter to be returned to him. But the king not only did not return the letter, but he could have shown it to Charles, and he could have confessed to him his participation in the intrigue. Nikolai Pavlovich then advised Pushkin to die as a Christian, and in return promised to take care of his family. Pushkin's funeral was held secretly; the Prussian envoy was not present. All of Pushkin’s papers were ordered to be sealed and those that could compromise high-ranking officials to be burned. Dantes was expelled from the country. His wife Ekaterina Goncharova followed him along with Heckern, who received his resignation without a farewell audience with the emperor, as was required by diplomatic protocol. Prince Charles remained in Russia.

Was Charles acting for himself or in the interests of another member of the Prussian royal house? Lately I have been busy testing my assumption that Natalya Nikolaevna’s secret admirer was the Prussian Prince Adalbert (Adalbert Heinrich Wilhelm of Prussia (1811−1873), Prussian prince, naval theorist and admiral, one of the founders of the German Navy. Son Prince Wilhelm, younger brother of the Prussian king Frederick William III - Ed.). As I understand it, Prince Adalbert was also the creator of Prussian military intelligence. From his youth, the prince traveled a lot around Europe: in 1826 he visited Holland, in 1832 - England and Scotland, in 1834 - St. Petersburg and Moscow. Here Prince Adalbert was warmly received by Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, who on June 24 awarded him the highest imperial order of Russia - the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle, as the august representative of the allied Kingdom of Prussia and the crowned nephew of the King of Prussia.

June 6, the birthday of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, has recently been celebrated as International Russian Language Day. Concerts, exhibitions, and literary readings will be held throughout the country today. And this is not the first year in a row that the largest one in Moscow has ended on this day.

The results will be summed up on all points. The festival will host the super final of the “Living Classics” competition, which will determine the best young readers of the country. The winners of the Lyceum literary award in the Poetry and Prose categories will be announced.

And the day before, VTsIOM published data from another study, this time dedicated to the most popular Russian classics. Both our compatriots and Russian-speaking citizens of foreign countries took part in the survey. The first three positions in the reader rating were occupied by Pushkin, Tolstoy and Lermontov. At the same time, Alexander Sergeevich, as sociologists would put it, is “confidently in the lead.” For millions of people, Pushkin's poetry and prose are a kind of passport to the world of literature. His works have accompanied us since childhood - just like the living and modern Russian language given to us by Pushkin. Report by Stanislav Dore - from the Moscow Museum of the Poet.

“Alexander NKSHP” - that is, “Pushkin” in reverse and without vowels - this is the signature under the first published poem of the great poet, which appeared in the magazine “Bulletin of Europe” in 1814. The first lifetime publication appeared six years later - this is “Ruslan and Lyudmila”. It is also presented in the exhibition, which contains more than a hundred editions of Pushkin’s works, which the poet could see with his own eyes. True, there are exceptions, for example, the publications of “Eugene Onegin”.

“Since this book was sold out within several days after the news of Pushkin’s death, the owners bound especially interesting copies into mourning bindings,” says Olga Asnina, head of the book collections department of the Pushkin Museum.

A special attitude towards the works of Alexander Sergeevich and towards the figure of the poet himself developed during the turning-point years for Russia. The exhibition entitled “Pushkin. “Pushkin. 17.37" talks about the attitude towards the "sun of Russian poetry" during the formation of Soviet power. Then the myth of Pushkin - an atheist, friend of the Decembrists, herald of the revolution - was widely cultivated - the famous “comrade, believe: she will rise, the star of captivating happiness,” according to Soviet ideology, of course, was the poet’s prophecy about the October Revolution.

“By a blasphemous irony of fate, when the prisoners arrived at Solovki, they were greeted by Pushkin’s slogan: “Hello, young, unfamiliar tribe!” And it’s surprising, because many Pushkin scholars suffered from repression and, at the same time, when the struggle for Marxist-Leninist methodology was waged, at the same time, Pushkin studies experienced its heyday, and at this time the works of outstanding Pushkin scholars were created,” notes the chief researcher of the Museum Pushkina Natalya Mikhailova.

In the capital of Russia, on this occasion, the book festival “Red Square” will be held, and the Pushkin Mountains museum-reserve will host the international festival of youth theaters “Mikhailovskoye-2017”. In the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, Nalchik, on June 6, Pushkin’s poems will be read in different languages. The most unusual event will take place in Novosibirsk - there, any person who reads at least two stanzas of the poet will be allowed into the metro for free.

June 6, 2017, Pushkin’s birthday

In the capital, you can celebrate Pushkin Day in a special way by going to the “Literary Megapolis”. On June 6, Pushkin Day, thematic events will be organized in the library lecture halls. Everyone can attend the play “From Belkin’s Stories” and re-read the author’s great works in the summer reading room.

All day, from 12:00 to 18:00, fans of the writer’s work will be able to take part in the photo shoot “Do I look like Pushkin?” and take a selfie in the image of Alexander Sergeevich, trying on a wig, top hat, cloak, gloves and picking up a cane of “centuries past.” You can immerse yourself in the Pushkin era at the lecture “Moscow secrets of A.S. Pushkin." At the meeting, which will take place in the lecture hall at 15:15, the famous local historian and author of books about Moscow Natalya Domashneva will talk about the most unusual places associated with Pushkin’s life in Moscow and the people who surrounded the writer.

When is this holiday held? Pushkin Day in Russia, which is also called Russian Language Day, is celebrated annually on June 6.

How is Pushkin Day celebrated?

How is the celebration going? It is celebrated with theatrical performances, performances of poetic works, and musical and literary concerts, which are held in museums, libraries, exhibition halls, theaters, cultural centers and other institutions throughout the country.

In kindergartens, schools and universities, matinees, essay and drawing competitions, quizzes, and festive evenings are held.

A large festive program is organized at Pushkinskiye Gory and Mikhailovsky, where thousands of people gather. The poems of A. S. Pushkin are read by both young, beginner and famous poets.

Conferences and seminars are held on various poetic movements and authors; poetry collections and almanacs are published.

History and traditions of Russian Language Day

The holiday, which is dedicated to the birthday of the great Russian poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, has a long history. During the Soviet years, it was called the Pushkin Poetry Festival.

Today we celebrate a memorable date established in 1997 according to the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On the 200th anniversary of the birth of A.S. Pushkin and the establishment of Pushkin Day in Russia."

And in 2011, the President of Russia signed a Decree on the annual celebration of Russian Language Day on June 6. This holiday was established “in order to preserve, support and develop the Russian language as the national heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation, a means of international communication and an integral part of the cultural and spiritual heritage of world civilization.”

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was born on June 6, 1799 in Moscow. He is deservedly called the founder of Russian literature.

Even during his lifetime, in 1832, N.V. Gogol said about him: “Pushkin is an extraordinary phenomenon and, perhaps, the only manifestation of the Russian spirit: this is the Russian man in his development, in which he may appear in 200 years".

Pushkin's creativity accompanies us from early childhood - throughout our lives. The books of the great poet, which are in almost every Russian family, unite people of all ages, religions and nationalities.

And the language of his works, which combine the norms of book and living spoken language, still remains the basis of Russian literary speech.

In addition to Pushkin Day in Russia, June 6 is also celebrated: International Russian Language Day. The holiday was established by the United Nations Department of Public Affairs. According to some data, about 250 million people around the world speak Russian.