The Captain's Daughter

"The Stories of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin" was written by A.S. Pushkin in the autumn of 1830 in Boldino during a three-month quarantine. And, by his own admission, "he had never written like this before" - "simply, briefly, and clearly" and so productively. According to the poet himself, one must write prose that simultaneously "demands thought and thoughts - without them brilliant expressions serve no purpose." The main question of all reflections in "Belkin's Tales" was the question of happiness and fate. This absolutely innovative cycle allowed for the creation of a broad picture of Russian life with the highest degree of humanity.

The tale "Dubrovsky" was conceived by the author as a novel of the Pugachev era with a noble hero who sided with the rebels. While working on "Dubrovsky", Alexander Pushkin conceived "The Captain's Daughter", writing it while working on "The History of Pugachev". And Nikolai Gogol called "The Captain's Daughter" "the decidedly best Russian work in the narrative genre", in which "truly Russian characters appeared: a simple commandant of the fortress, a captain's wife, a lieutenant; the fortress itself with a single cannon, the nonsense of the time and the simple greatness of ordinary people".

In "The Queen of Spades", A. Pushkin combined the traits of fashionable narratives of the time - secular and fantastic tales and achieved wide recognition. "The peak of fantastic art" was later called "The Queen of Spades" by F.M. Dostoevsky.