Somewhere in the late 70s, I met a taxi driver in Moscow, a lover of port wine and high-grade theorizing. One of his theories: Russian literature is divided into two - military and civilian. He liked military writers (the theorist included Lermontov, Dostoevsky, retired artillery lieutenant Tolstoy and Konstantin Simonov among them). Civilians (from a long list I now remember Turgenev and Bunin) were completely disapproved of.

"Well, what about Pushkin?" - I asked. “Pushkin is a military man,” replied the book lover, “He was a cadet.” My explanations that the chamber cadet was a court rank, and not a military one, did not dissuade the “theorist”: “The chambers were not chambers, but the Kremlin was defended from the Bolsheviks.”

I remembered this curiosity when I learned about the recent sensational Pushkin discovery in the Russian Military Historical Archive.

There is a story about them - about the archive and the find - in the program "Time Difference".

With me in the Moscow studio of Radio Liberty is the deputy director of the Russian State Military Historical Archive, Mikhail Rafailovich Ryzhenkov.

- Mikhail Rafailovich, well, first of all, a few words about your archive, what is it?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- Our archive, the Russian State Military Historical Archive, is one of the oldest and largest archives in Russia. We trace our history back to 1797, when, by order of Paul the First, the first military-historical archive in Russia was created, namely, His Imperial Majesty's Own Map Depot. Then this institution was transformed into the Archive of the Military Topographical Depot, the Military Historical Topographical Archive, and the Military Scientific Archive. At the same time, almost in 1819, another archival formation arose in Moscow - the Moscow branch of the general archive of the inspectorate department of the General Staff. And so, gradually, over the course of two centuries, our archive took shape.

Vladimir Tolts:

- So at first only cards were stored in it?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- No, not quite like that. Of course, His Imperial Majesty’s Own Depot was created to store maps, but initially, in addition to maps, various military-historical documents, and not only military-historical ones, were also received there, as well as documents from the personal archives of various statesmen of Catherine’s era, which were considered resolved. And gradually the archive began to be filled with other military-historical documents, including documents from military institutions, from the highest military institutions, from the Military Collegium, the War Ministry and to regiments and individual battalions. Thus, the archive has developed into a colossal complex; over 3.5 million files are now stored in the archive. And these documents seem to represent the entire life of the Russian army from the time of its creation under Peter the Great until 1918, when the old Russian army was disbanded, demobilized, and ceased to exist.

Vladimir Tolts:

- I would like you to tell our listeners not only about what you store, but where it is located, about the building of your archive, which has independent historical value and a rather significant legend-story.

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- In the middle of the 19th century, those parts of the archive that were located in Moscow, before that they were in the Kremlin, in the building of the Moscow Senate, but the number of documents became so large that the Military Department began to look for a new storage location, and in 1866 the archive moved to the Lefortovo Palace. It has several names - the Palace of Peter the Great on the Yauza, the Menshikov Palace, but the most common name is the Lefortovo Palace, and here the history of our archive intersects with the history of a wonderful architectural monument, a palace built in 1699, this year marks the 300th anniversary of our building, built for Peter's associate Franz Lefort. Then the palace was rebuilt and modified several times, but from 1699 to the present day the Russian State Military Historical Archive is located here.

It’s funny that a catalog “The Swiss in Russia” was published in Switzerland, this was in 1996-97, “The Swiss in Russia from Peter the Great to Alexander the Great”, there is a chapter dedicated to our palace, since Lefortovo Palace, Lefort comes from Geneva, there is a very funny entry that says that the palace became notorious because after 1917 it was turned into a punitive institution, namely a military prison. It just so happens that the name Lefortovo is always associated with Lefortovo prison.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Well, now let’s turn from the building in which the documents you store are located, back to what they contain. Well, it is clear that these are documents primarily on the history of the Russian army. Tell me, how are they reflected, how do their contents relate to the general history of Russia?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- Here it must be said that Russia, the Russian Empire, has always been a military country. The military department permeated the entire life of Russia, as they say, from bottom to top. And the court was military, and the emperors were military, first of all, the army was their favorite brainchild, and nothing could be done without the army, not only foreign policy, which is natural for the military department, but also domestic politics - any national celebrations, or vice versa, unrest could not be done without the participation of the army. And, besides, service in the army was considered the most honorable, because practically the entire noble class served in the army. And thanks to this, sometimes materials not directly related to the army, a lot of materials related to Russian cultural figures, were deposited in the documents of the military department. But not to mention those who actually served in the army, these are Denis Davydov, Leo Tolstoy, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, and many, many others. But sometimes in the archives you come across materials that relate to people who had no connection to military service and, nevertheless, left a colossal mark on the history of culture and science in Russia. So the archive is not only military, and concerns not only the military department.

Vladimir Tolts:

- We met with you in connection with the recently lucky and unique discovery of a document related to Pushkin, a find that for many was mysteriously timed to coincide with the next Pushkin celebrations.

My question now is this: okay, you have been storing - I mean your archive - these documents for many years, tens, hundreds... What is the degree of their study, for some reason, what has been found now has only been found now, what do you know about your documents and how much do you not know?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- Well, in fact, to say that we know everything that our archive stores would, of course, be an exaggeration. Still, even several generations of archivists and researchers cannot study 3 million files. In addition, searches in the archive are always carried out on a specific topic, in a specific direction. This does not mean that the archivist simply goes and rummages through the shelves, takes the first documents he comes across, looks at them and so on, no.

In fact, there is such a thing as a scientific reference apparatus, these are inventories, these are catalogs in which practically all cases have their own headings, they are all described. But here lies a certain mystery, because in the inventory, especially in the inventory compiled in the pre-revolutionary period, headings were often included that did not reveal the essence of the matter, not to mention the fact that there are completely headings, what we call blind. But, let’s say, the title you like is “Miscellaneous Papers”, but sometimes it’s even funnier – “It’s not known what papers”. Just imagine, a clerk or a clerk, when forming a file, stitching together various documents, did not set out to study their contents, but simply filed them in a row, and so the file gets this name. How can one, looking at the inventory, determine what this file actually contains? Very difficult.

So when researchers on a particular topic work in our archive, they may look through quite a lot and not find what they need. And vice versa - if archivists undertake to study a topic entirely, that is, to study in a row all the documents that could be related to this topic, this is where sometimes surprising discoveries happen. Well, here, in connection with Pushkin’s anniversary, is that over the past year and a half, purposeful work has been going on in the archive to search for materials known, unknown, any materials related to the name of Pushkin, with his ancestors, his entourage, his family, his descendants, thanks to this work, the find that we are talking about today became possible.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Mikhail Rafailovich, about the recent discovery, as it were, we are still talking about it, and what other, let’s say, in your memory, in the near future, such discoveries, finds have been made, what, in fact, has your archive provided over the past decades for our acquaintance, if you like, with Russian and world, perhaps, history?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- In my memory, there are several such amazing finds, well, for example, documents were found about the descendants of General Gordon, who was also one of Gordon’s sons, served in Russia, but this is a very famous figure, iconic, one might say, for the era of Peter the Great. In fact, his diary is kept in the archive; it is 6 volumes in English. In the 300 years that have passed since the death of General Patrick Gordon, there is still no complete scientific translation, only now we are trying to do it. But documents about the descendants of Gordon Lefort were discovered quite recently.

For example, I am personally involved in the history of military oriental studies in Russia, and I have come across very interesting finds. Well, for example, here’s a question: what is the connection between the Bulgarian militia during the Russian-Turkish war and the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul? But the fact is that the commander of the Bulgarian militia, General Stoletov, was sent by the Russian representative to Kabul in 1879, this had fatal consequences, because it was the cause of the second Anglo-Afghan war. But I managed to find a report from the Asian part of the General Staff, where all the circumstances of this embassy are described in detail and they shed light on very interesting moments in Russia’s eastern policy.

Well, if we talk about some other finds, there were, of course, others, but in the 70s, for example, letters were discovered from the parents of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Nadezhda Osipovna and Sergei Lvovich, who in 1825 appealed through the General Staff to His Imperial Majesty with a request to allow the disgraced Pushkin to come from Mikhailovsky to Pskov (he was also in Mikhailovsky under supervision), come to Pskov for consultation with doctors. These letters were unknown to anyone until the 70s. But the employees of our archive, Kira Mikhailovna Nikolasheva and Alexander Shneider, found and published them, albeit in the magazine “Soviet Archives,” a small-circulation magazine, and I’m afraid that now these documents are no longer known to many of the general reading public, but these are very interesting authentic letters. And a funny note on the file in which they are located is written in a clerk’s hand: “The Chief of the General Staff ordered to find out and report to him in St. Petersburg: who is this Pushkina, nee Hannibal, is this not the mother of the Pushkin who writes poetry?”

Vladimir Tolts:

- You mentioned a very impressive figure - 3 million storage units. What part, say, of these millions of storage units has been studied and known, in order to evaluate, as it were, what else can await us as discoveries, and what is still unknown, not studied, not read?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- A very difficult question, since the degree of study of certain documents is very difficult to assess. But I think that half of what the archive repository contains is still missing, and half has not yet been thoroughly studied, and what discoveries are yet to come, oh, it’s very difficult to say.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Then the question is: how many employees do you actually have and how many readers and archive users do you have?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- There are a total of 85 employees in the archive, specialists, and another 25 service personnel. As for the readers, every day in the reading room, we have a small reading room, of course, from 50 to 60 people fill it every day, researchers work almost every day.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Who are these people who, now in rather difficult times, let’s say, spend their working day sitting in the quiet of the hall of the Lefortovo Palace and leafing through rather old papers?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- First of all, these are, of course, researchers-scientists, that is, they are employees of academic institutes, universities, this is a category of researchers that is in any archive in the world. There are, of course, amateur historians, the archive is open, we have no secret documents and everything is open to researchers. Recently, especially in the last 10 years, say, the archive has very much attracted the attention of those people who have begun to look for the history of their ancestors, that is, sometimes engaged in such sometimes professional, and sometimes amateur genealogical research. Interest in one's past has increased so much that the hall is sometimes half filled with amateur genealogists looking for the history of their family, their ancestors.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Well, now, when the first part of our program is coming to an end, we can say that these amateurs, searching for the history of their families, looking not only for the truth about the past, sometimes even creating legends about it, in general, bring something into our common history, because their families are part of the history of that country, the mysteries of which are kept in your archive too.

Now with me in the studio is Valery Mikhailovich Shabanov, head of the department of the Russian State Military Historical Archive and an employee of this archive, deputy head Larisa Grigorievna Korovina. I want to talk with you, our dear guests, about your sensational discovery, Pushkin’s, about a discovery literally of the very last time.

My first question is addressed to Valery Mikhailovich Shabanov, a man who, in fact, was lucky to find Pushkin’s document: what is it all about? - Explain to our listeners...

Valery Shabanov:

- This discovery was, of course, not accidental, but joyful. The thing is,

In recent years, the question has arisen: what else could we have in our archives on this topic? From publications we know that the case, its essence, was reported to the tsar, where could there be materials for the consideration of this “Military Court Case”? At the beginning, I conducted my search using materials from the research department of the War Ministry. The Inspectorate Department was in charge of all issues related to the services of personnel of officer ranks, and some military court materials related to the consequences for the participants in the duel are available in this fund. And we specifically looked at materials for 1837.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Valery Mikhailovich, allow me just a clarifying question: that is, you specifically looked for the materials of this case, without knowing anything? For the anniversary?..

Valery Shabanov:

- Yes, in general, so, because I have never actually studied the Pushkin era, I have not studied the 19th century, but knowing the structure of our funds and being tied to a specific date, I conducted a targeted search. Unfortunately, nothing was found in the materials of the inspectorate department in court cases, in court correspondence, or more precisely, in cases related to guards officers. There was also no special correspondence about Dantes’s exclusion from Russian service. And then I began to work through the inventory complexes, that is, the scientific reference apparatus, and the complex of files from the fund of the Main Military Judicial Directorate, where the materials of the predecessor of the Main Military Judicial Directorate, the Audit Department of the Military Ministry, are also stored.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Valery Mikhailovich, here I allow myself to interrupt you to ask again about this: I have heard a lot about this fund, there are literally legends about it, and I heard that if one day in Russia it is destined to find, say, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, a list, then it is quite possible that it will be in the materials of your archive and even possibly of this fund...

What kind of fund is this, what is this collection of documents, how much have they been studied and read so far, and why does this fund turn out to be the source of such significant finds of all kinds?

Valery Shabanov:

- The fund of the Main Military Court Directorate of the Military Ministry includes several tens of thousands of cases, the chronological framework of the documents stored in this fund is from 1812 to 1917. Many high-profile military court cases, of course, have been studied to one degree or another, but mostly researchers operate with records, that is, old inventories of the 19th century, which often do not provide any information about the essence of these cases.

And it was precisely in the midst of this kind of case that a discovery was made. In particular, I looked through all the so-called Most Submissive reports on confirmed military court cases for the year 1837, and in the case for the period from February to March 1837, this document was identified - “Report of the Auditor General in the Highest Name dated March 18, 1837.”

Vladimir Tolts:

And now I want to ask Larisa Grigorievna Korovina: the actual documents related to the court case that Valery Mikhailovich is talking about, they were known, they were published, as he says, what exactly new does this find give to Pushkin scholars, to people interested in literature and history?

Larisa Korovina:

- The fact is that this case presents us with a completely new version of the translation of the famous letter of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin to Gekkern, which was written on January 26, 1837 and which served as the reason for the duel. The history of this letter was such that on January 28, Baron Heckern handed over this letter to Count Nesselrode, who was then the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to present it to the Sovereign, that subsequently Heckern and Dantes were cleared of the guilt that this duel had occurred. Then, when the military trial itself began, at the request of the commission members, this letter was presented for study. Then the first translation of this letter was made. This translation was first published in the military court case in 1900, and then we found a new version of this translation, and in our opinion, although we are not professional translators, philologists, or linguists, it seems to us that our version is more literate, more stylistically consistent, probably. But, of course, specialists still have to work with him. There are, of course, some nuances here that, to some extent, present Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkina to us in a new way.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Larisa Grigorievna, well, what’s new, in the end, in our knowledge about Pushkin, about his fate, about his wife, are these discrepancies, in general, minor discrepancies in the translation that you discovered in this truly completely new document?

Larisa Korovina:

Until now, our reader was aware of the translation, which was made in the 30s and 40s, when the attitude towards Natalya Nikolaevna Pushkina was very definite. And this translation sounds like this, there is the following phrase:

“I forced your son to play a role so pitiful that my wife, surprised by such cowardice and vulgarity, could not help laughing, and the feeling that this great sublime passion may have aroused in her died away in the most calm contempt and well-deserved disgust.”

And this translation wandered from one publication to another, no one paid attention to the fact that there was some inaccuracy in this translation. And only in the 80s, not very long ago, Obodovskaya and Dementyev, famous Pushkin scholars, noticed that the word “emotion”, which was in Pushkin’s original, is not translated entirely accurately, that “emotion” has never been translated in any dictionary as “feeling”, it is “excitement, embarrassment, mental movement”, but in no case “feeling”. In our version, in the translation that exists in the report of the military court case, the word “emotion” was translated as “annoyance,” and then the meaning of this phrase even changes a little, it turns out:

“And that annoyance, which the sublime passion may have caused in her, faded away in contempt, completely deserved, in completely cold forgiveness.”

We can only guess why the translator translated this word in this way, which in French does not sound like “emoussier”, then “annoyance” is not “emotion”, “emotion” is not “annoyance”. We can assume that this was done intentionally, what exactly was the reason, we have several such assumptions.

Vladimir Tolts:

I want to ask you, and Valery Mikhailovich Shabanov, and Mikhail Rafailovich Ryzhenkov, who is still in the studio: your versions, what could have caused such a discrepancy in translation?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- In my opinion, there can be three main versions. The first version is that the translator, translating this “emussier” as “annoyance,” made a mistake. In fact, the version is unlikely, since the translator was quite qualified, I think, translating for a report to the king. The second version is that the translator did this deliberately, he did not want to make it clear to the sovereign that Natalya Nikolaevna could have any other feeling for Dantes other than annoyance. And the third version, a version of course risky, maybe this is that the translations were made from different French texts, because in addition to Pushkin’s letter, which he sent to Baron Heckern, Pushkin himself made a copy with his own hand and gave it to Konstantin Danzas. Then, after Pushkin’s death, Danzas sends it to Benckendorff, and then this copy appears in the court case. Thus, in the court case there were two French texts: one was an autocopy of Pushkin, the other was an original French text, which Baron Heckern, through Nesselrode, handed over for the Tsar’s information. It is possible that discrepancies in translations are due to different sources. The version, I repeat, is risky, I do not insist on it.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Do you completely agree with this, Larisa Grigorievna?

Larisa Korovina:

- I have a slightly different opinion on this matter; I can agree that the translator could have deliberately translated this word as “annoyance.” And as for the different texts that they could have before their eyes, I think that it is unlikely, since it is known that the letter that was written by Pushkin in January 1937, and his November letter, are repeated in their main parts, that is, the text was preserved by him, as for the part where he talks about this “emotion”. Therefore, it seems to me that perhaps the attitude of the members of this commission themselves was such that for a secular lady, which was Natalya Nikolaevna Pushkina, a woman who was in plain sight, whose name was constantly being exaggerated and who simply could not have any other reaction to these persistent advances of a young man, an officer, there could be no reaction other than annoyance. Maybe that's how they perceived it.

Vladimir Tolts:

And now I want to ask Valery Mikhailovich Shabanov, because as far as I understood from the preliminary conversation with you, the Sovereign Emperor did not see where all these nuances of the translations were, right?

Valery Shabanov:

- Yes, indeed, the Sovereign could not study absolutely all the military court cases that were sent for audit to the Audit Department and he judged the eventual side of the case, the arguments of the investigation, the court, the opinions of the commanders who were involved in the case not on the actual court case, but on the report that was drawn up specifically for him by the Auditor General.

Vladimir Tolts:

- But then, Valery Mikhailovich, I want to ask you and the rest of the participants in our program: what significance do all these discrepancies in translations have for the case, the sovereign did not see them, for the solution of this case all these subtleties, for the decision that you found, written by the hand of the emperor, these discrepancies did not affect it, what is the significance of these discrepancies for the court case? (Because Larisa Grigorievna already told us about the historical significance.)

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- The fact is that this was the tsar’s reaction to this whole matter, his resolution, because he changed Dantes’ fate to a certain extent, because the military court sentenced Dantes to demotion to private and exile to remote garrisons, most likely the Separate Caucasian Corps, that is, to the Caucasus.

Having read the report, having read all the circumstances presented to him, Nikolai changed the sentence, because in the original resolution, which was discovered by Valery Mikhailovich, it is said: “Private Heckern, as a non-Russian subject, should be sent abroad with the gendarme, taking away his officer’s patents.” That is, Nikolai thus deprives Dantes of the opportunity to ever earn forgiveness, to distinguish himself in the service, he thereby deprives him of the opportunity to restore his good name, restore his honor, his officer’s honor, he expels him completely from the service.

It is possible that this verdict, this decision of the tsar, was influenced by all those circumstances, all those nuances that were in the discovered report, because the tsar saw it, he judged by it. That is, for the end of this case, for the fate of the participants, this was of no small importance, I think.

Vladimir Tolts:

- The time of our program is coming to an end, and I want to ask about the fate of this find, well, okay, you carried it out, as is usual in Russia, on time for Pushkin’s anniversary, what now - are you going to study it, publish it?

Valery Shabanov:

- The fact is that the archive is working on preparing a collection of materials and documents about Pushkin, his ancestors, environment and family. And it is assumed that the discovered document will be included in this collection.

Vladimir Tolts:

- Larisa Grigorievna, do you have anything to add to this? You are one of those who will study and comment on this document.

Larisa Korovina:

- This letter still requires additional research, it requires that all the editions of this translation known to us be checked in order to be able to express our opinion. This is, of course, very serious work, very difficult, and I hope that it will be done with the involvement of specialists, that is, of course, translators, philologists, and people who professionally engage in such translations. Moreover, we must take into account that this is Pushkin’s time, and you need to have a good command of the language of this period and know exactly how Pushkin mastered it, so this is a very difficult job. But I hope that, to the extent possible, I will also take part in this.

Vladimir Tolts:

Well, the very last question in this regard to Mikhail Rafailovich Ryzhenkov: so, the find was carried out within the planned time frame, and when are you going to complete this fundamental work to complete what you found?

Mikhail Ryzhenkov:

- Well, I would like to clarify: we are not going to complete the study, this is still a very long process and, apparently, will require quite a lot of time, but we want as soon as possible, the work is in full swing, to make exactly the same collection that Valery Mikhailovich said about, which will include more than 400 documents on Pushkin topics, including this case.

Of course, it is sensational, but there are a lot of documents related to Pushkin, which are also extremely interesting, for example, the order of Abram Petrovich Hannibal, as you know, the ancestor of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, the arap Peter the Great, his order when he was a general “On the prohibition of the use of torture during interrogations during the investigation,” signed by him with his own hand, “On punishment for false denunciations.”

Or, for example, aren’t the documents about the fate of the descendants of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin interesting? But we are also going to include them, for example, Alexander Alexandrovich Pushkin - after all, he is a military officer, he ended his career as a general in the Russian army. And it seems to me that this would be very interesting not only for researchers, but also for a wide range of readers. We would like, as far as possible, to complete the work on preparing the collection, the very publication in question, by the end of summer.

Vladimir Tolts:

Well, all I can do is wish you success in this and sincerely thank all the participants in our program today.