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“I Was Among the Don Cossacks…”

June 6, 2020 marks the 221st anniversary of the birth of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837). And this day was chosen to celebrate Pushkin Day in Russia, also called Russian Language Day.

Pushkin loved the Caucasus, the free steppe region, he was interested in the history of the Cossacks. Researchers are still interested in the stay of A. Pushkin on the Don, the routes of his movements on the land of the Don Army, the circle of people with whom the poet could meet and communicate, the location of memorial buildings are verified and specified.

The Don Trail passes through all periods of A. Pushkin. The word "Cossack", according to the "Dictionary of the Language of Pushkin", appears in his works 317 times. The poet dedicated to the Don Cossacks the poem “Cossack”, written by him at the Lyceum, “Delibash”, “Don”, “I Was Among the Don Cossacks”. Cossacks “inhabit” such works of his as “The Prisoner of the Caucasus”, “Poltava”, “Boris Godunov”, “The Brothers Robbers”, “The Captain's Daughter” and others.

As we know, Pushkin visited the Don three times. For the first time - in 1820, shortly after being enraged by his freedom-loving poems and epigrams, Alexander I decided to send him on a stage to a settlement in Siberia or in the Solovetsky Monastery, and only thanks to the intercession of friends did he change the place of the poet's exile to southern Russia. A. Pushkin was sent to serve in Yekaterinoslav (now the Dnieper, Ukraine), where he got seriously ill. There he was found by the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, General Nikolay Raevsky and persuaded the Chief Trustee of the southern colonies I. Inzov allow sick Pushkin leave. Having received permission, Raevsky in early June with the poet went to the Caucasus. Pushkin was glad of this trip. It promised a pleasant novelty of impressions.

The main source for determining the route of Alexander Pushkin in this journey is the "Travel Journal of General Raevsky." The postal route by which Raevsky and Pushkin traveled went through Mariupol. “Near Mariupol, - Raevsky wrote his daughters, - our eyes opened - the Sea of ??Azov. Mariupol, like Taganrog, does not have a marina, but ships moor in depth closer to the coast. 40 years since it was inhabited by Greeks alone, they sell a lot of bread, cattle, surrounded by fertile lands." Having passed Mariupol, Taganrog, Rostov, Raevsky and Pushkin arrived in the village of Aksayskaya, at one time challenging the right of Novocherkassk, founded in 1805, to become the capital of the region of the Don army.

Some literary scholars write that the famous poem “At the Lukomorye, the green oak” was inspired by Don nature: the poet himself supposedly saw the oak somewhere between Tanais and Taganrog, and the mermaid was invented after he saw a Cossack woman who was sitting on the branches of a tree and combing hair.

On June 7, Raevsky and Pushkin went to Novocherkassk to visit the Don Ataman Andrian Denisov. "New Cherkassk," wrote Raevsky, "the city is very vast, regular, but still sparsely populated, on a high steppe spot, on the banks of the Aksay River, which now spills with the Don in floods."

Having dined with Denisov, Pushkin and Raevsky returned to the village of Aksayskaya by water. We drove along the coast "with various valleys, hills, vineyards, everyone was delighted with" this kind of steppe corner of the globe. "

The day after the visit to Novocherkassk, travelers by boat made a trip to the old center of the Don army - Stary Cherkassk. They went around the whole village, examined its sights and monuments of the Cossack antiquity, the next day continued their journey.

The Don steppes at that time were the scene of the struggle of rebellious peasants with punitive detachments. Impressed by the events witnessed by Pushkin on the Don in the summer of 1820, he developed the idea of ??the poem "Brothers robbers".

The second time Pushkin visited Don in 1829, having left for the Caucasus, where the war was waged with Turkey. The poet spent several days in Novocherkassk. Interested in the originality of Cossack clothes, he bought a kulelek (women’s old dress), an embroidered cap and a Don coat that he wore with pleasure.

Returning from the Caucasus, Pushkin visited the Don land for the third time. A stay on the Don did not pass without a trace. In his works, the poet repeatedly turned to Don, used Don Cossack folklore, the motives of Don Cossack folk art.

In 1836, Pushkin planned to publish a book by placing a section in it entitled "Poems Written During the Journey (1829)." In a series that literary scholars dubbed the Caucasian cycle, the poet intended to include nine lyric works. Last on the list was “Don”.

Mikhail Sholokhov was familiar with the work of Alexander Pushkin from an early age. His father had a large library - books by Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov and other authors of Russian classical literature. Starting from the 1920s, as soon as he began to receive the first fees, Sholokhov began to collect his personal library, which included world and domestic classics, poetry collections, books on history, geography, and about travels and adventures.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Mikhail. Sholokhov knew Russian and foreign classical literature well, often in a conversation he quoted one or another author - and this was an appeal not only to a popular work, but also to letters and journalism.

In the book "About the Father" Mikhail Sholokhov (the writer’s son) passes conversations with his father. On many pages about different years, he says how his father quotes Pushkin (not only poetry, but also his articles), Hemingway, Chekhov, L. Tolstoy, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Leskov. “Knowing a large number of verses of various poets and being able to recall huge passages from prose from memory, his father often and very skillfully used them in conversation". I owe my spiritual development (if it is permissible to talk about myself with such a high "calm") to this soft and extremely tactful correction of my reading circle."

A lot is connected with the name of the poet in our country - streets, theaters, cinemas, libraries of his name, the most extensive network of historical and literary museums are dedicated to Alexander Pushkin. Museums dedicated to the life of  Pushkin, are available in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Chisinau, Gurzuf, Brodzyany (Slovakia) and other cities.

According to various sources, in Russia and abroad there are up to 300 monuments to the great Russian writer and poet in bronze and marble. One of them is located in the very center of Rostov-on-Don, at the intersection of Pushkinskaya Street and Voroshilovsky Prospekt. The monument cast in bronze was created in 1959 by the sculptor G. Schultz and architect M. Minkus and is an object of cultural heritage of regional importance.

Marina Furmanova