The Story on Pugachev as a Part of Tolstoy’s First Russian Book for Reading: Redactions, Original Sources, “Labyrinth of Linkages”

Abstract

Purpose. The work examines the cycle-creating poetics of Tolstoy’s The First Russian Book for Reading and in particular – the story “How auntie told her grandmother about how the bandit Yemelka Pugachev gave her a dime” (1875) which occupies an essential place and, as demonstrated in the article, may be regarded as one of the key poles in the artistic structure of this collection of prose works.

Results. The article compares three editions of the story on Pugachev, establishes their continuity in relation to The Captain’s Daughter and The Squire's Daughter by A.S. Pushkin, analyzes the changes in Pugachev’s image and the entire narrative strategy of representing the impostor. The main images and motifs that form the meaning for the story on Yemelyan Pugachev are presented in the book as a system of repetitions and juxtapositions: conformity / non-conformity to one's place, imposture/self-denial, etc. They are gradually included in the book and develop into stories about animals and people. Thus, in order to understand Tolstoy’s view of Pugachev the necessary explanatory context was reconstructed, and within this context the hero’s semantic and functions were clarified. It is concluded that multiple “linkages” of this selected story with other stories within a framework of “The First Russian Book for Reading” allowed the reader to see the national ideal (Ermak) and its antipode (Pugachev) correlated with each other.

Conclusion. The methodological basis of this paper is provided by works of W. Schmid on narrative equivalence, V.B. Shklovsky, S.G. Bocharov, V.G. Odinokov and Yu.V. Lebedev on Tolstoy’s techniques of “estrangement” and “linkages”, as well as B.A. Uspensky’s and A.M. Panchenko’s observations on Russian imposture.