The Black Chicken, or Underground Dwellers

Antoniy Pogorelsky 1787-1836 - the pseudonym of the Russian romantic writer of the first half of the 19th century Alexei Alexeevich Perovsky. He was the illegitimate son of Count Alexei Kirillovich Razumovsky, however, Emperor Alexander I, at the count's request, granted noble titles to all his illegitimate children. They all received the surname Perovsky - named after the suburban estate of the Razumovskys in Perovo. The future writer received a good home education, was admitted to Moscow University, and already in 1807 he obtained the highest academic degree - Doctor of Philosophy and Literature. In the same year, A.A. Perovsky translated Karamzin's Poor Liza into German, which was his first serious literary experience. From 1808 to 1812, he served in the civil service, and with the onset of the Patriotic War in 1812, he left his post as secretary to the Minister of Finance for the Department of Foreign Trade and joined the army. In 1816, the future writer returned to St. Petersburg, where he continued to serve in the civil service. In 1822, Count Razumovsky died, and A.A. Perovsky inherited the village of Pogoreltsy in the Chernigov province, from the name of which the writer's pseudonym derives. Along with A.A. Perovsky, his sister, Anna Alexeevna Razumovskaya, lived in Pogoreltsy with her son Alyosha - the future writer Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy. Once, little Alyosha told Pogorelsky how during a walk in the boarding house yard, he became friends with a chicken and saved it from the cook. This real story was transformed by A.A. Perovsky in 1829 into a kind and wise fairy tale The Black Chicken, or Underground Dwellers.