Abram Petrovich Hannibal
Great-grandfather of Alexander Sergeevich - the famous "Arap" Ibrahim (Abram) Hannibal,
godson of Peter the Great.
Hannibal Abram Petrovich (c. 1697-1781) - Russian military engineer, General-in-Chief (1759). Son of an Ethiopian prince, valet and secretary
Peter I. The great-grandfather of A.S. Pushkin, who immortalized him in the story "Arap of Peter the Great."
Orlov A.S., Georgiev N.G., Georgiev V.A. Historical dictionary. 2nd ed. M., 2012, p. 112-113.
Hannibal Abram (Ibragim) Petrovich (c. 1697, Lagon, North Ethiopia, -14.5.1781, Suyda, now Leningrad region), Russian military engineer, General-Anshef (1759). Genus. in the Ethiopian princedom. family; seven years taken hostage by the Turks and sent to Constantinople, from where in 1706 Rus. Ambassador S. Raguzsky was taken to Moscow and presented to the Tsar. Peter I kept him with him for 11 years as a valet and secretary, and in 1717 he sent him to study military engineering. business in France. While abroad, G. participated in the war with Spain and was wounded. Returning to Russia in 1723, he studied engineer. works in Kronstadt, Rogervik (now Paldiski), on the Ladoga Canal, during the construction of the Selenginsk fortress in the east, taught mathematics and engineering. case. In 1726 he wrote a book about the military engineer. art. After the death of Peter I, he was in disgrace. Moved forward under Elizabeth, during the reign of which he did a lot to improve the military engineer. business in Russia. In 1762 he retired.
Hannibal is the great-grandfather of A. S. Pushkin, who immortalized his image in the story "Peter the Great's Moor".
Used materials of the Soviet military encyclopedia in 8 volumes, volume 2.
Hannibal Abram (Ibragim) Petrovich [circa 1697, Lagon, Northern Ethiopia - 14 (25) .5.1781, Suyda, now the Leningrad region], military engineer of the Russian army, general-in-chief (1759). Great-grandfather (on the maternal side) of A. S. Pushkin. The son of an Ethiopian prince, seven years old was taken hostage by the Turks and sent to Constantinople, from where in 1706 the Russian ambassador S. L. Raguzsky was taken to Moscow and presented to Peter I. documents until 1737 was called Abram Petrov, then the surname Hannibal was assigned to him. For 11 years valet and secretary of the king, in 1717 he was sent to France to study military engineering. Returning to Russia in 1723, he was engaged in engineering work in Kronstadt, Rogervik (Paldiski), on the Ladoga Canal, during the construction of the Seleginsk fortress, taught mathematics and engineering in military schools. In 1726 he wrote a book on military engineering. Hannibal after the death of Peter I in disgrace (exile to Siberia 1727-1731). During the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, he held major positions in the military engineering department, did a lot to improve military engineering in Russia. From 1762 retired.
Used materials of the book: Military Encyclopedic Dictionary. M., 1986.
Hannibal Abram (Ibragim) Petrovich (c. 1697-1781) - general-in-chief (since 1759), military engineer, great-grandfather (by mother) of A. S. Pushkin. Son of an Ethiopian prince. As a boy, he was taken hostage by the Turks to Constantinople, brought to Moscow by the Russian ambassador around 1706. At baptism in 1707, he received the name of his godfather Peter I, but until 1733-1737 he was referred to in documents as Abram Petrov. In 1705-1717 he was the valet and secretary of Peter I. In 1717-1723 he studied military engineering in France and, upon his return, built engineering structures in Kronstadt, Rogervik (now Paldiski), on the Ladoga Canal, etc., taught at military schools mathematics and engineering. In 1726 he wrote a book on engineering. In the middle of the 18th century, he played a big role in improving military engineering in Russia. Since 1762 - retired. From the second marriage with H. R. Sheberg, the grandfather of A. S. Pushkin, Osip Abramovich Gannibal, was born. A. S. Pushkin portrayed Hannibal in the novel "Arap of Peter the Great" and compiled a detailed biography.
Soviet historical encyclopedia. In 16 volumes. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1973-1982. Volume 4. THE HAGUE - DVIN. 1963.
Gannibal Abram Petrovich (before baptism Ibragim) (1697 or 1698-1781), an outstanding figure of the Petrine and Elizabethan eras, great-grandfather of Pushkin. By origin - an Ethiopian, the son of a sovereign prince from northern Abyssinia. Brought to Russia, from childhood he was with the person of the great tsar. Peter favored him, took him everywhere with him, taught him to read and write and various sciences, and then assigned the best teachers to him. In 1709, young Abram Petrov (he became known as Hannibal later) took part in the Battle of Poltava. In 1717 Peter sent him to France. For six years, Hannibal studied the art of war (participated in the war with Spain), artillery and engineering, Latin and French. Upon his return, he was appointed caretaker of "His Majesty's study, in which all the drawings, projects and a library were available," as well as the chief translator of foreign books at court; by order of the tsar, he began to teach engineering and mathematics to young officers.
With the death of Peter, the long disgrace of Hannibal began, which ended only with the accession of Elizabeth Petrovna (reigning 1741-1761): in memory of her father, she generously rewarded him, bestowed estates.
Since that time, a new flowering of his diverse activities began, which left a noticeable mark. The most educated man of his time, he was a builder of fortresses, supervised the construction of the Ladoga Canal, was the director of the Kronstadt fortress, the chief commandant of Revel, the Vyborg governor, and the head of the Russian artillery; rose to the rank of general-in-chief. Abram Petrovich spent his last years in the Suyda estate near St. Petersburg, where he died.
Pushkin showed great interest in the "strange life of Annibal", was proud of his wonderful ancestor - "zealous" and "incorruptible", "confidant, not a slave" of the tsar; portrayed him in the novel "Arap of Peter the Great".
Used materials of the book: Pushkin A.S. Works in 5 vol. M., Synergy Publishing House, 1999.
Read further:
Hannibal Ivan Abramovich (1737-1801), son of Abram Petrovich.
Pushkina Nadezhda Osipovna (1775-1836). Granddaughter of Ibrahim Gannibal, mother of A.S. Pushkin.
Literature:
Pushkin A. S., Op. in 10 vols., 2nd ed., v. 5, M., 1957, p. 512-17;
Pushkin A. S., Op. in 10 vols., 2nd ed., v. 8, M., 1958, p. 78-80;
Modzalevsky B. L., Genealogy of the Hannibals, in the book: Chronicle of the Historical Genealogy Society in Moscow, c. 2, M., 1907;
Khmyrov M.D., Historical. Art., St. Petersburg, 1873; Autobiographical testimony ... A.P. Hannibal ..., "RA", 1891, book. 2 (5), p. 101-04;
Longinov M., A. P. Hannibal, in collection: Rus. Archive, M., 1864, p. 218-32.
Kamenka in the creative heritage of Alexander Pushkin.
God help you my friendsIn the cares of life...
Reading works of art and Pushkin's letters of the period of his so-called. Southern exile (1820-1824), I have repeatedly come across references to a short but happy time spent by the poet under the hospitable canopy of the Kamenka estate, which belonged to the niece of His Serene Highness Prince G.A. Potemkin-Tavrichesky E.N. Davydova (nee Samoilova, by her first marriage - Raevskaya). I heard something about the local history museum, located on the former territory of the Davydov estate, in the current regional center - the city of Kamenka, Cherkasy region of Ukraine.
But only a recent trip and direct impressions from acquaintance with the wonderful complex of the Kamensky State Historical and Cultural Reserve finally formed my idea of the special, fundamental importance of the existence of this unique monument in Ukraine, not only Russian, but also wider - the whole East Slavic history and culture.
The main object of the reserve is the Literary and Memorial Museum of A.S. Pushkin and P.I. Tchaikovsky, located in the manor wing, the so-called. Green house. Here, in the early 1820s, the Poet met with future Decembrists, and from the mid-1860s the Composer lived and worked every year. , visiting his sister Sashenka, the wife of his grandson Davydova.
Literary Memorial Museum A.S. Pushkin and P.I. Tchaikovsky (Green House)
While in Kamenka, I was literally shocked by the active and selfless work of the staff of the reserve - local residents, ethnic Ukrainians, who speak beautiful Russian with a uniquely characteristic, soft southern accent. They not only carefully store museum treasures, but also actively promote our common cultural heritage among fellow countrymen and tourists, and also carry out joint projects with the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Kyiv. (By the way, Kamenka is a sister city of the Russian city of Votkinsk, also famous for its memorial museum-estate of Tchaikovsky.)
What was my surprise when, soon, leafing through the almost 500-page tourist guide "Ukraina", repeatedly published in Kyiv by the publishing house "Smoloskip" (in Russian - "Torch"), I did not find a single (!) mention of Kamensky reserve.
Of course, this is not an accidental omission of the compilers of the book - the head of the publishing house O. Zinkevich and his co-author V. Guly. After all, this same "Smoloskip" was once founded by nationalists in America, and is now actively operating in Ukraine with the support of the administration of President Yushchenko.
Familiarization with the text of the book showed that non-Ukrainians almost do not appear in the lists of famous figures of history and culture who were born in one or another region of present-day Ukraine. The lists of sights, in particular, sculptural monuments and other memorial structures, are just as biased. For example, in the chapter on the Cherkasy region, the sons of Ekaterina Davydova, the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812, General N.N. Raevsky Sr. and Colonel V.L. Davydov, one of the Decembrist leaders. "Forgotten" by the Smoloskipovtsy is a real sculptural masterpiece - a monument to the leaders of the Southern Decembrist Society, also located on the territory of the Kamensky Reserve. Similar texts on Kyiv do not mention any of the city's monuments to Pushkin. In the texts on Odessa there is not a single name of famous Russian writers from Odessa. And, of course, the true "masterpieces of objectivity" of the guidebook's authors are the texts on Crimea.
Our response to tendentiously uncultured "works" of this kind can only be detailed stories about the pearls of Russian history and culture in Ukraine.
1
A picturesque corner of the Middle Dnieper - the noble estate of Kamenka in the Chigirinsky district of the Kyiv province was an outstanding center of social and cultural life of the South Russian region in the first quarter of the 19th century. The hospitable estate of Ekaterina Nikolaevna Davydova became in the 1820s the place of repeated congresses and meetings of the most prominent members of the secret union of noble revolutionaries.
Portrait of E.N. Davydova (from a painting by V.L. Borovikovsky)
The then Kamenka was, according to A.S. Pushkin, the focus of "original minds, people famous in our Russia." Among them, in addition to Davydov and Raevsky with his sons Alexander and Nikolai Jr., were the spouses of Raevsky's daughters - Generals Mikhail Orlov and Prince Sergei Volkonsky, as well as their like-minded people - the Decembrists Pavel Pestel, Sergei Muravyov-Apostol, Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Ivan Yakushkin , Konstantin Okhotnikov, brothers Alexander and Joseph Poggio, other notable people of that time. “Vasily Lvovich Davydov is a remarkable person in terms of intelligence and warmth of feelings for the cause,” wrote Sergei Volkonsky. “I will call him a horse breeder due to the influence of his lively convictions and deft, fascinating conversation, and his residence in the village of Kamenka, Chigirinsky district, was a gathering point for meetings.”
Historical sources studied by various researchers, including the Kamenchans themselves - our contemporaries, made it possible to reconstruct the following vivid image of the Davydov estate: “In the middle of the village, over the Tyasmin River, there is a beautiful park. It contains a spacious two-story landlord's house, furnished with all the luxury inherent in the life of Catherine's nobles of the 18th century. In the park - exquisite greenhouses, with rare flowers and plants; beautiful alleys of roses; park and architectural decorations - a grotto, gazebos, sculptures. In a big house (…) it was always noisy and fun from a large company of guests. The fortress orchestra played, choruses of singers thundered, and during festive celebrations, in honor of the hostess of the house, they even fired from a small old cannon. Not far from the main house stood the "Green House" - Davydov's wing, which was part of the so-called. "big yard" There were billiard and card tables, as well as part of the huge library of the Davydovs.
At the same time, the unique historical and cultural significance of the Kamensk estate also lies in the fact that here during its so-called. Alexander Pushkin repeatedly visited the southern exile, immortalizing in his work this marvelous region, its hospitable hosts, and the society surrounding them.
2
In a brief plan-outline of autobiographical notes compiled by Pushkin in 1833, the theme of staying in the Davydov estate is highlighted as a separate item: "Kamenka". Undoubtedly, the poet himself attached special importance to this episode, despite the fact that during the four-year period of his southern exile, he spent only a few months there - from November 18 (22?) 1820 to February 26 (March 3?) 1821. (Researchers suggest that the poet came to Kamenka for the second time in November - early December 1822, however, there are no details about this visit.)
Monument to A.S. Pushkin
Kamensky impressions were remembered by Alexander Sergeevich for the rest of his life, as his own memoirs clearly testify (for example, a letter to Nikolai Raevsky-son dated January 30 or June 30, 1829), and the memoirs of his acquaintances. In this regard, the following words of Pushkin's friend from Chisinau, Colonel Ivan Liprandi, are very characteristic: "I have heard many times before about the kindness to Pushkin rendered in Kamenka, and heard from him enthusiastic praises about the family there."
The poet had known Vasily Davydov since his lyceum times, when he was a cornet of the Life Guards of the Hussar regiment stationed in Tsarskoye Selo. Pushkin's acquaintance with Davydov's brother, retired Major General Alexander Lvovich, took place at the beginning of November 1820 in Chisinau in the house of Mikhail Orlov, where, in the absence of the owner, his friends and future relatives of the Davydovs lived. It was Alexander Davydov who petitioned Pushkin's boss, General Ivan Inzov, to let the poet go to Kamenka to celebrate the name day of the venerable mother of the Davydov family, Ekaterina Nikolaevna.
Pushkin's first Kamenian delights are reflected in his famous letter to Nikolai Gnedich dated December 4, 1820: “... Now I am in the Kyiv province, in the village of the Davydovs, dear and intelligent hermits, brothers of General Raevsky. My time passes between aristocratic dinners and demagogic disputes. (...) There are few women, a lot of champagne, a lot of sharp words, a lot of books, a few poems. The participants in those dinners and those debaters were, in addition to the owners of the house, Orlov, Yakushkin, Okhotnikov and Raevsky.
There were really few verses, but what verses! It was in the Davydov estate that the poet began compiling his handwritten anthology (the so-called “Third Chisinau Notebook”), which opens with the poems “ Nereid" and " The flying ridge is thinning clouds ...”, under the white autographs of which it is marked: “Kamenka”. The landscape captured in the second of them is sometimes interpreted as inspired by fresh impressions from the rocky banks of the Tyasmin, the quiet flow of the river and the autumn steppe expanses:
Sad star, evening star,
Your beam has silvered the withered plains,
And the dormant bay, and the black rocks of the peak.
I love your weak light in heavenly heights;
He awakened the thoughts that had fallen asleep in me.
Tyasminsky Canyon
By the way, filling in the sheets of this notebook was continued in Kyiv (during the trip "on contracts" from January 28 to February 10 or 12, 1821), when " land and sea», « beauty in front of the mirror" and " Alas, why does she shine ...". And just two days after returning to Kamenka (February 22), Pushkin's masterpiece is born " I've outlived my desires...", intended at first to be included in the text of the poem" Prisoner of the Caucasus”, which was completed on February 23 and is dedicated to Nikolai Raevsky Jr. At the end of the same "Kamenskaya winter" several more Pushkin's poems appear: a caustic epigram " On Kachenovsky » (« A slanderer without talent...”), friendly lines “ To the portrait of Vyazemsky"and iconic verses" To album» (« Love will pass, desires will die ..."). They complete the "Kamensko-Kyiv" cycle of Pushkin's lyrics, entitled by the author as " Epigrams in the style of the ancients».
Based on fresh Kamenian impressions, a poetic message addressed to Vasily Davydov was already being created in Chisinau, which was unthinkable to be published during Pushkin's lifetime, not so much for political censorship, but for completely different reasons. Composed in the first ten days of April 1821, simultaneously with the infamous poem "Gavriiliada", it also contained blasphemous lines that were offensive to religion and the church. After the author's death and the first of the Pushkin scholars, Pavel Annenkov, they were smeared in the manuscript after the author's archive was viewed. Apparently, this was done by the son of the poet Alexander Alexandrovich. Accordingly, the process of publishing the text of the message " V.L. Davydov” stretched out for more than half a century and ended only after the October Revolution. Leading Pushkin scholars of the second half of the 19th and the first third of the 20th centuries took part in it. from Annenkov himself to Soviet scientists Boris Tomashevsky and Mstislav Tsyavlovsky.
For the publication of the canonical text of the poem in the Complete Academic Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin's smeared lines were restored and read by photographing through special light filters at the All-Union Institute of Legal Sciences. However, the religious free-thinking and R-revolutionary nature of the young Pushkin, formed under the influence of the ideology of the French Enlightenment and other fashionable ideas that existed in the Decembrist environment, side by side in this work with simply funny lines that reflect the poet's sincere friendly feelings for the addressee of the message and his relatives:
Meanwhile, how are you, smart prankster,
You spend the night in a noisy conversation,
And for bottles of ai
My Rayevskys are sitting -
When spring is young everywhere
With a smile, she dissolved the dirt,
And from grief on the banks of the Danube
Our armless prince rebels...
You, Raevsky and Orlov,
And loving the memory of Kamenka -
I want to say two words to you
About Chisinau and about myself.
(…)
When both you and dear brother,
Putting on in front of the fireplace
democratic coat,
Salvation cup filled
Foamless, frozen stream
And for the health of those and that
They drank to the bottom to the drop! ..
But those in Naples are naughty,
And she is unlikely to resurrect there ...
The people of silence want
And for a long time their yoke will not crack.
From the handwritten versions of this poem, it can be seen that its author outlined different versions of the line about his attitude to Kamenka: “Loving Kamenka with my soul ...” or “Loving Kamenka with all my heart ...”
Portraits of executed Decembrists. Fragment of the museum exposition
Alas, neither Pushkin nor the glorious Kamenchans then knew, could not know how the attempt of their relatives and friends - "those" (future Decembrists) - to kindle the longed-for "that" (the dawn of freedom) would end: both in the north - in St. Petersburg, and in the south - not far from the nice warm house above Tyasmin.
3
« In a very cold area in the month of December, a thousandeBy the end of 1925 people of the twenties with their jumping gait ceased to exist. Time suddenly nebroke…
Then they began to measure by number and measure, to judge…
"What is a secret society? We went to the girls in Paris, here we will go to the Bear, ”the Decembrist Lunin said. (…)
Rebellion and women were the voluptuousness of poetry and even the words of everyday conversation. From here came death, from rebellion and women. (…)
They joked about women in the twenties and did not make secrets at all out of love. Sometimes they only fought or died with such an air as if they were saying: "Tomorrow to visit Istomina." There was such a term for the era: "wounded hearts." By the way, he did not interfere with arranged marriages at all.(…)
Time wandered.
Time always wanders in the blood, each period has its own type of fermentation.
It was in the twenties wine fermentation - Pushkin»
These lines belong to the great Russian writer and scientist, the classic of world literary criticism and the brilliant Pushkinist Yuri Tynyanov. They are from his novel about Griboyedov, created simultaneously with the film script "The Union of the Great Cause" (1927), the theme of which was the uprising of the Chernigov regiment in Ukraine, led by the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Muravyov-Apostol and Lieutenant Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin (December 29 1825 - January 3, 1826). These officers headed the Vasylkiv council of the Southern Secret Society and were participants in the congresses of the Decembrist leaders in Kyiv and Kamenka. According to legend, especially secret meetings of the conspirators, held by Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Davydov, the head of the Kamensk administration of the Decembrists in southern Russia, were held in the premises of the manor mill, now called the “Mill of the Decembrists”.
Mill of the Decembrists
It is believed that it was there that the meetings of the revolutionaries were secretly overheard by non-commissioned officer Ivan Sherwood, the author of the first denunciations to Emperor Alexander I about Pavel Pestel, Prince Sergei Volkonsky and their comrades. The arrests of the leaders of the Southern Society began even before the start of the uprising in St. Petersburg.
On December 13, 1825, in Tulchin (now the regional center of the Vinnitsa region of Ukraine), where the headquarters of the 2nd Army, Field Marshal Peter Wittgenstein was located, Colonel Pestel and Quartermaster General of the 2nd Army Alexei Yushnevsky were taken into custody.
December 29 in with. Trilesy (now - Fastovsky district, Kyiv region) in the apartment of the commander of the 5th company of the Chernigov regiment, lieutenant Anastasy Kuzmin, arrested the Muravyov-Apostol brothers - Sergey and Matvey, who, however, were soon released by the insurgent comrades in arms.
The second arrest of Chernigov officers took place on January 3, 1826 near the village. Kovalevka (now - Vasilkovsky district, Kyiv region). The wounded Sergei Muravyov-Apostol and Bestuzhev-Ryumin were taken prisoner with weapons in their hands on the battlefield with a detachment of General Fyodor Geismar, loyal to Nicholas I, who reigned on December 14.
Two days after the suppression of the uprising of the Chernigov regiment, General Volkonsky was arrested at the location of the 2nd Army, and on January 14 Davydov was taken in Kyiv ...
Fortunately, Pushkin at that time was far away from cold St. Petersburg, as well as from sweet, cozy Kamenka. Deported back in the summer of 1824 from Odessa to the Pskov region, to his family nest with. Mikhailovskoye, he learned about the uprising on Senate Square only a few days later from a neighboring serf - the cook Arseny.
On December 13-14, 1825, the poet finishes "Count Nulin" - a cheerful poem about an unlucky hero-lover. And soon Vasily Davydov, who learned about the arrest of Pestel and Yushnevsky, burns, among his other papers, "... some of Pushkin's poems" ...
4
Five years after the defeat of the Decembrist movement, Alexander Sergeevich will remember its glorious beginning: both in the northern capital and in the distant southern Kamenka, where those very “demagogic disputes” boiled over. He will remember and write about it in the stanzas of the "glorious chronicle" - the Tenth Chapter of "Eugene Onegin". He will remember and burn the barely finished text, leaving to posterity a couple of leaves with scattered lines - intricately encrypted fragments ...
« They had their gatherings
They are over a cup of wine
They are over a glass of Russian vodka
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Famous for their sharp ornateness,
The members of this family gathered
At restless Nikita,
At cautious Ilya.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Friend of Mars, Bacchus and Venus,
Here Lunin boldly suggested
Your drastic measures
And he muttered with inspiration.
I read my Noel Pushkin,
Melancholic Yakushkin,
It seemed to silently uncover
Regicide dagger.
Seeing one Russia in the world,
Pursuing your ideal
Lame Turgenev listened to them
And, hating the whips of slavery,
Foresaw in this crowd of nobles
Liberators of the peasants.
So it was over the icy Neva.But where earlier springShines over the shady KamenkaAnd over the hills of Tulchin,Where are the Wittgenstein squadsPlains washed by the DnieperAnd the steppes of the Bug lay down,Other things have already gonePestel is there. . . for tyrants...And the army ... recruitedcold blooded generalAnd Ants bowing him,And full of boldness and strength,Minutes flash hurried.
(…)
First these conspiraciesBetween Lafite and ClicquotThere were only friendly disputes,And didn't go deepIn the heart of rebellious science.It was all just boredomThe idleness of young minds,Fun adult naughty.
Alas, everything ended - seriously, cruelly and bloody.
Pushkin and the Decembrists in Kamenka (drawing by D. Kardovsky, 1934)
The defeat of the Decembrists meant for Vasily Davydov and his like-minded friends many years of hard labor and exile in Siberia. Following him, the young wife Sashenka voluntarily went, having accomplished, like Marie Volkonskaya, Katasha Trubetskoy, Aleksandrin Muravyova, Polina Annenkova and other wives of the Decembrists, "the feat of selfless love." From there, Pushkin's friend never returned. After serving a 13-year hard labor, he was "turned to a settlement" in Krasnoyarsk, where he died on October 25, 1855, not having lived quite a bit before the amnesty manifesto of August 26, 1856, granted to the exiled Decembrists by the new Emperor Alexander II. After burying him, Alexandra Ivanovna Davydova returned home to Kamenka, where she lived a very long life in the circle of loving children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Alexandra and Vasily Davydov
In addition to the poetic message V.L. Davydov”, in the creative heritage of Alexander Pushkin there are also three letters, presumably addressed to the Kamensky Decembrist. The first of them was written almost immediately after the poet's return from Kamenka to Chisinau (first half of March 1821), and the rest - much later (June-July 1824). They concern the revolutionary events in the Balkans - the anti-Turkish liberation movement of Greek and Romanian rebels. But if the text of 1821 reflects Pushkin's romantic admiration for the first steps of the insurgents, then subsequent letters testify to a deeper understanding by the poet of the hidden essence of events, including the unsympathetic psychology of their driving force. All this, alas, is relevant not only for that time, but also for the most recent “pink”, “red” and other “colored” pseudo-revolutions.
“Regretting that I am forced to justify myself before you, I will repeat here what I happened to say about the Greeks.
People are for the most part proud, incomprehensible, frivolous, ignorant, stubborn; an old truth, which is still not bad to repeat. They rarely tolerate contradiction, never forgive disrespect; they are easily carried away by pompous words, willingly repeat any news; and, having become accustomed to it, they can no longer part with it.
When something is a common opinion, then common stupidity harms it as much as unanimity supports it. Greeks among Europeans have much more harmful champions than prudent friends.
“We saw these new Leonids on the streets of Odessa and Chisinau - we know many of them personally, we can certify their complete insignificance - they managed to be idiots even at a moment when their stories should have been of interest to any European - not the slightest idea about military affairs , no idea of honor, no enthusiasm - the French and Russians who live here show them well-deserved contempt; (...) the cause of Greece arouses in me ardent sympathy, which is why I am indignant, seeing that these insignificant people are entrusted with the sacred duty to defend freedom.
Decembrist Davydov's sword
Unfortunately, the volume of Pushkin's texts that have come down to us, dedicated to a remarkable person, a personality of a "high standard" to the Decembrist Vasily Davydov, is significantly inferior to the number of poems and prose that "perpetuated" the images of his older brother - a person of a completely different kind, as well as a charming wife and a funny sons of General Alexander Lvovich.
5
“In my youth, an accident brought me closer to a man in whom nature, it seemed, wishing to imitate Shakespeare, repeated his brilliant creation. *** was the second Falstaff: voluptuous, cowardly, boastful, not stupid, funny, without any rules, tearful and fat. One circumstance gave it an original charm. He was married. Shakespeare did not have time to marry his bachelor. Falstaff died with his female friends, before he could be either a horned husband or a father of a family; how many scenes lost to the brush of Shakespeare!
Here is a feature from my venerable friend's home life. His four-year-old son, the spitting image of his father, little Falstaff III, once, in his absence, he repeated to himself: “What a papa is cold! How the sovereign loves papa! The boy was overheard and called: “Who told you this, Volodya?” - "Daddy," Volodya answered.
This is how Alexander and Vladimir Davydov are depicted in Pushkin's "Table-Talk" of 1835-1836. Poetic and epistolary variations on the same theme appeared much earlier, back in Odessa, in 1823 and 1824, when two Alexanders - Pushkin and Davydov met again after the Kamensky parting. Odessa contacts of former Kishinev-Kamenian acquaintances were not pleasant. On this occasion, the poet wrote to Alexander Raevsky (October 15-22, 1823): “Your uncle, who, as you know, a pig, was here, quarreled with everyone and quarreled with everyone himself. I am preparing a wonderful letter to him under chord number 2, but this time he will receive a fair amount of abuse in order to be, like everyone else, dedicated to the secret. Pushkin's "abusive" letter (if, of course, it was written) did not reach us, and the aforementioned "secret" remained undisclosed for posterity. However, it is significant that in the same year the textbook lines from the XII stanza of the First Chapter of Onegin were born, which depict a certain:
... majestic cuckold,Always happy with myselfWith my dinner and my wife.
Soon this definition was already quoted in a letter from Sergei Volkonsky to Pushkin (dated October 18, 1824) in relation to Alexander Davydov. Around the same time, a sharply satirical poem appeared: You can't my fat Aristipus”, also addressed to the gourmet general. It is believed that Pushkin disliked Alexander Davydov shortly after their first meeting in Chisinau. After all, the self-satisfied landowner, who had secured permission for the poet to go to Kamenka, allowed himself to show an arrogantly patronizing attitude towards the young man, which he could not stand. A kind of Pushkin's "revenge" was not long in coming. In Kamenka, he had a short but stormy romance with Davydov's thirty-three-year-old wife, General Aglaya Antonovna, nee Duchess de Grammont. Once this charming French aristocrat was the courtier of the emigrant king Louis XVIII, and then jumped out to marry the handsome fat man Alexander Lvovich, giving birth to a boy Volodya and two girls Adele and Catherine. As was the custom of emancipated ladies of her time, she more than once "decorated" her husband's wild head with horns and in 1829 was honored with a mention in Pushkin's famous "Don Juan" list.
Pushkin's Grotto (a possible place for the poet's creative retreat and love dates with Aglaya Davydova)
Apparently, the relationship between the poet and the Kamenskaya beauty was not easy. This is explicitly stated in his message. coquette »:
At first we were friends ( option: I was rightly captivated by you)But boredom, chance, jealous husband ...I pretended to be crazy ( option: I pretended to be in loveAnd you pretended to be bashful;We swore ... then ... alas! ( option: We got close...)Then they forgot our oath;Did you love Cleon? ( option: You took a hussar for yourself)And I'm Natasha's confidante.
In fact, however, the betrayal of his mistress with a certain “hussar Cleon” clearly did not leave Pushkin indifferent. After all, the beauty Aglaya became after that the target of three or four very frank epigrams in Russian and French, two of which the poet placed in the texts of letters to his brother Leo (January 24, 1822) and to a friend - Prince. Peter Vyazemsky (March 1823). This is the rarest case in his work. In the first case, Pushkin writes: “If you want, here’s another epigram for you, which (...) don’t dissolve, every verse in it is true.
Another had my AglayaFor your uniform and black mustache,Another for money - I understandAnother for being a FrenchmanCleon - frightening her mind,Damis - for singing tenderly.Tell me now, my friend Aglaya,Why did your husband have you?
Other texts of the same kind (" Leaving the honor of fate to chance ..." and " A son amant Eagle Sans resistance… ”) are no less, if not more outspoken. In a letter to Vyazemsky, the author directly calls them "dirty things" and asks not to show them "to anyone - not to Denis Davydov." But, apparently, some of the mentioned works nevertheless became known to their “addressee”, who inflamed with indignation at their author. Already in March 1822, I. Liprandi, who visited the Davydov couple in St. Petersburg, writes about Aglaya Antonovna's disposition against Pushkin. However, this or that relationship of the poet with this married couple did not at all prevent the poet from writing a sweetest message to their daughter Adele in the same year. While in Kamenka, he jokingly "looked after" a twelve-year-old girl.
Play it AdeleDo not know sadness;Charity, LelYou were crownedAnd the cradleYours was rocked.your springQuiet, clearFor enjoymentYou are born.The hour of raptureCatch, catch!Young summersGive loveAnd in the noise of the worldLove, AdeleMy flute.
The short stay of Alexander Pushkin in the Kamensk estate of the Davydovs in late 1820 - early 1821 and, possibly, at the end of 1822, his sincere, trusting relationship with the owners of the estate left a very tangible mark on the poet's creative heritage. Born at the very beginning of the 1820s, the "Kamenskaya theme" became one of the most cherished motifs of Pushkin's work.
Monument to the leaders of the Southern Society of Decembrists, installed on the territory of the Kamensky Reserve (from left to right: Vasily Davydov, Sergei Volkonsky, Pavel Pestel, Sergei Muravyov-Apostol, Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin)
He returned to it more than once, both throughout the 1820s and 1830s. Here: and classical examples of Pushkin's lyrics; and sincere lines from a message to a Decembrist friend Vasily Davydov; and the final verses of the "Prisoner of the Caucasus", dedicated to the nephew of the "dear Kamensky hermit" - Nikolai Raevsky. Here are sharply satirical texts concerning the Kamensky sybarite Alexander Davydov, his loving wife and son - daddy's minicopy, as well as a good message to their daughter.
Here are fragments of the burned Chapter Ten of Eugene Onegin, where they are commemorated: both Kamenka itself, along with the names of friends and associates of its heroic inhabitant, and the glorious deeds of the Decembrists-southerners, some of whom have already been executed, while others languish "in the depths of Siberian ores" .
This is a quote from the Yuri-Kyiv message
The great-grandfather of the famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, Abram Gannibal, lived a long life and the son of a noble African prince, he was kidnapped in early childhood by the Turks and taken to Constantinople. At the age of seven, the boy came to Moscow and became Peter I's favorite black child. Subsequently, he managed to get an excellent education and make a brilliant military career, rising to the rank of General-in-Chief. Abram Petrovich went down in history thanks to his famous grandson A. S. Pushkin, who dedicated the historical work “Arap of Peter the Great” to him.
Date and place of Hannibal's birth
Dark skin and dark curly hair Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin inherited from his great-grandfather, Abram Gannibal, who was born in distant and hot Africa. The black ancestor of the great poet was an extraordinary person, personally acquainted with Peter the Great, Anna Ioannovna, Elizabeth and other prominent personalities of the 18th century. What was the fate of the famous great-grandfather of Pushkin? You can find out about this by reading his biography.
Abram Petrovich Hannibal was born in the last years of the 17th century. His date of birth is 1696 or 1697. The most likely homeland of Hannibal is Abyssinia, a region in northern Ethiopia. But some researchers of the biography of Pushkin's ancestors are inclined to believe that his great-grandfather was born in the Logon Sultanate, located on the border of Cameroon and Chad. This opinion is supported by Hannibal's letter addressed to the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, in which he named the city of Logon as the place of his birth. However, to date, it has not been possible to find documentary evidence of this version.
First years of life
At birth, Pushkin's great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, was named Ibrahim. His father was a noble African prince who had many wives and children. At the age of seven, Ibrahim, along with his older brother, was kidnapped by the Turks and sent to Constantinople. There, dark-skinned boys were settled in the palace (seraglio) and began to be trained as pages to the sultan. And it is not known how their fate would have developed if Count Savva Raguzinsky-Vladislavich had not arrived in Constantinople in 1705 and acquired them as a gift to Peter the Great.
Why did the Russian tsar need African children, whom in Russia it was customary to call the Arapchats? Peter the Great traveled extensively in Europe and often observed how foreign kings in palaces were served by dark-skinned boys. A lover of everything overseas and unusual, he wanted to have a black boy in his service. But not any, but literate and trained in good manners. Going to meet the desires of Peter I, Raguzinsky-Vladislavich looked in the seraglio for the most suitable dark-skinned boys for service in the royal palace and bought (according to other sources, stole) them from the head of the seraglio. So Ibrahim and his brother ended up in Russia.
Baptism, service to Peter I
In the summer of 1705, the newly arrived Arapchats converted to Orthodoxy in the Church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa in Vilnius. During the rite of baptism, Ibrahim was given the name Abram, and his brother, Alexei. The godparents of Pushkin's great-grandfather were Peter the Great and the wife of the Polish king August II, Christian Ebergardin. The patronymic of the Arapchon was given by the name of the Russian Tsar who baptized them. After that, the African boy Ibrahim became Abram Petrovich. For a long time he bore the surname Petrov (in honor of the godfather) and only in the early 40s of the 18th century changed it.
Abram Gannibal became the favorite black boy of Peter the Great. At first, he acted as a servant-priorozhnik (a boy who lived on the threshold of the royal chambers), then became a valet and secretary of the sovereign. Peter I trusted his black man so much that he allowed him to guard the books, maps and drawings in his office, and also gave him secret instructions. In 1716, Pushkin's great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Hannibal, went with the tsar on a trip to Europe. In France, he was assigned to study at an engineering school. After studying in it, Abram Petrovich was included in the French army and took part in the War of the Quadruple Alliance of 1718-1820, where he was wounded in the head.
With the rank of captain, Hannibal returned to Russia in 1723 and was issued under the command of Peter I. Thanks to his brilliant knowledge of mathematics, obtained in Europe, he became the first engineer-general in the history of the Russian army. In addition to the exact sciences, Abram Petrovich was well versed in history and philosophy, knew French and Latin, so in society he was treated as a highly educated person. By order of Peter, Pushkin's great-grandfather taught young officers mathematics and engineering. In addition, he was instructed to translate foreign books in the imperial court.
In exile
The service of Abram Petrovich Gannibal to Peter continued until his death in 1725. After the death of the sovereign, the Arap fell out of favor with Prince Alexander Menshikov, who became the de facto ruler of the country. This happened due to the fact that Hannibal knew his sins and secrets too well. He knew about the intrigues and abuses of the prince, and about his close relationship with Catherine I. Wanting to get rid of a dangerous witness, Menshikov removed him from the court in 1727 and sent him to Siberia. Abram Hannibal was in exile for more than three years. Until the end of 1729, he was kept under arrest, giving out 10 rubles every month.
Service in Pernov
In January 1730, the niece of Peter the Great, Anna Ioannovna, ascended the imperial throne. She remembered Abram Petrovich from childhood and always treated him well. The new empress canceled Hannibal's punishment and allowed him to continue his military service. From January to September 1730, he was a major in the garrison of Tobolsk, after which he was recalled from Siberia and transferred to the city of Pernov (now Pärnu in Estonia) located in Estonia. Here the rap of Peter the Great was granted the rank of engineer-captain. During 1731-1733 he served as a commandant in the Pernovsky fortified area and at the same time taught drawing, fortification and mathematics at the garrison school to conductors (junior military engineers). In 1733, Hannibal resigned, citing health problems as the reason for his decision.
Marriage to Dioper
Shortly after moving to Pernov, Pushkin's great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, for the first time in his life thought about marriage. An inveterate bachelor, who by the beginning of the 30s of the 18th century managed to exchange his fourth decade, did not suffer from a lack of attention from the weaker sex. The unusual appearance of Hannibal attracted Russian beauties, and the ardent arap had a lot of novels, but he never put amorous affairs above military service. His bachelor life continued until, at the end of 1730, while on a business trip in St. Petersburg, he met the beautiful Greek woman Evdokia Dioper. Inflamed with passionate feelings for the girl, the African decided to marry her.
Evdokia was the youngest daughter of the Greek officer of the galley fleet from St. Petersburg, Andrei Dioper, whom Hannibal had to meet during a business trip. After staying in the northern capital longer than expected, Abram Petrovich was introduced to his family. The ardent black man really liked the young daughter of Dioper, and he made her a marriage proposal. Despite the fact that Evdokia Andreevna was in love with the young lieutenant Alexander Kaisarov and was preparing to marry him, her father decided that the godson of Peter the Great would be the best match for her. At the beginning of 1731, he forcibly married her to Abram Petrovich in the St. Petersburg Church of St. Simeon the God-Receiver. After the wedding, the newlyweds went to Pernov, where Hannibal served. So that Lieutenant Kaisarov would not get under Hannibal's feet, he was transferred to Astrakhan.
Treason and judgment
Forced marriage did not bring happiness to either Abram Petrovich or his young wife. Evdokia did not love her husband and was not faithful to him. In Pernov, she stared at the young military and soon became the mistress of the local Don Juan Shishkin, who was a student of her husband. In the autumn of 1731, Dioper gave birth to a white-skinned and fair-haired girl, who could not be the daughter of Abram Hannibal, a native of Africa. In Pernov, which at that time had only 2 thousand inhabitants, the news of the birth of a white child by a black engineer-captain became a real sensation. Pushkin's great-grandfather Abram Petrovich Hannibal caught the mocking glances of those around him and was very upset by his wife's infidelity. It was during this period that he wrote a letter of resignation, which was granted only in 1733. After his dismissal, Abram Petrovich moved to the Karjaküla manor, located near Revel.
Hannibal could not forgive the traitor-wife. There were rumors that he beat her mercilessly, kept her locked up and threatened to kill her. Not wanting to live with Evdokia in the same house anymore, he started a high-profile divorce proceedings, accusing her of adultery. The military court found Dioper guilty and decided to send her to the Hospital Yard, where all the prisoners were kept. There, the unfaithful wife spent a long 11 years. Despite the fact that Evdokia's guilt was proven, the court did not divorce her from her husband, but only punished her for fornication.
Second marriage
While Evdokia Dioper was serving a sentence for treason, her husband married a second time. The chosen one of Abram Petrovich was a noblewoman of Swedish origin Christina Regina von Sheberg, who lived in Pernov. She was 20 years younger than her husband. Abram Petrovich entered into a marriage with her in 1736, providing instead of a certificate of divorce, a certificate from a military court confirming the fact of betrayal of his first wife. After the wedding, he brought his wife to Karjakülu Manor.
1743 Evdokia Dioper was released from prison and soon became pregnant. In order to marry a new lover, she submitted to the spiritual consistory a request for a divorce from Hannibal, in which she confessed to her past infidelities. The unexpected act of Evdokia almost cost Abram Petrovich his freedom and career, because he could be accused of bigamy. The divorce proceedings lasted until 1753 and ended unexpectedly well for Hannibal: he was ordered to repent and pay a fine. The consistory recognized his marriage to Christina Sjöberg as valid, considering the military court guilty in the current situation, which was not supposed to consider the case of adultery without the presence of representatives of the Holy Synod. Evdokia was much less fortunate. For adultery committed in her youth, she was sentenced to imprisonment in the Staraya Ladoga Monastery, where she remained until the end of her life.
Offspring
In a marriage with Christina Sheberg, the poet's great-grandfather had 11 children, of whom only seven survived to adulthood (Ivan, Osip, Isaac, Peter, Sophia, Elizabeth and Anna). The children of Abram Hannibal gave him many grandchildren. His son Osip in 1773 married Maria Alekseevna Pushkina, who 2 years later gave birth to a daughter, Nadezhda, the mother of the Russian genius Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
Of the children of the dark-skinned godson of Peter I, his eldest son Ivan became the most outstanding. He was a famous Russian military leader and commander in chief of the Black Sea Fleet. During the Russian-Turkish war of 1768-1774, Ivan commanded the Battle of Navarino and participated in the Battle of Chesma. Kherson was founded in 1778 under his direct supervision. As you can see, the descendants of Abram Hannibal became outstanding and worthy of respect people.
Military career under Elizabeth I
In 1741, Abram Petrovich returned to military service. During this period, the daughter of Peter the Great, Elizabeth I, ascended the throne, who favored the arap and contributed to the growth of his career. The biography of Abram Gannibal testifies that in 1742 he received as a gift from the empress the Karyakulu manor, where he lived, and several other estates. In the same year, Hannibal was elevated to the position of chief commandant of Revel and was awarded palace lands near Pskov, where he later founded the Petrovskoye estate. In the early 40s of the 18th century, Abram Petrovich, on the initiative of Elizabeth, changed the surname Petrov to the more sonorous Hannibal, taking it in honor of the legendary commander of antiquity, who, like him, was a native of Africa.
In 1752, Abram Gannibal was transferred from Revel to St. Petersburg. The African great-grandfather of the Russian genius served here as the manager of the engineering department, and later supervised the construction of Kronstadt and founded a school for the children of craftsmen and workers. Abram Petrovich rose to the rank of General-in-Chief and retired at the age of 66.
last years of life
After his dismissal, Pushkin's dark-skinned great-grandfather settled with his wife in the village of Suyda near St. Petersburg. He was a very wealthy landowner, who owned more than 3,000 serfs. Hannibal lived in Suida for the last 19 years of his life. Alexander Suvorov came to visit him more than once, with whose father Abram Petrovich was friendly for a long time. According to rumors, it was he who convinced his friend to train his son in military affairs.
In the winter of 1781, Christina Sjoberg died at the age of 64. Hannibal survived her by only 2 months and died on April 20, 1781. He was 85 years old. They buried Abram Petrovich at the village cemetery in Suida. Unfortunately, his grave has not survived to this day. Now in the house where Hannibal spent his last years, there is his museum-estate.
Disputes around the portrait of Pushkin's great-grandfather
Our contemporaries do not know for certain what Abram Hannibal looked like. The photo of his portrait in military uniform, which is presented in books and on the Internet, has not been finally identified by researchers. According to one version, the person depicted on the old canvas is indeed the great-grandfather of A.S. Pushkin, Abram Gannibal, according to another, Ivan Meller-Zakomelsky, general-in-chief of the time of Catherine II. One way or another, but the portrait of a dark-skinned man in military uniform that has survived to this day is considered by most of Pushkin's biographers to be one of the few images of Abram Petrovich that have survived to this day.
The memory of Hannibal in literature and cinema
Abram Hannibal Pushkin did not find. The legendary Russian poet was born 18 years after the death of his African great-grandfather. Alexander Sergeevich was always interested in the biography of Abram Petrovich and described his life in his unfinished historical work “Arap of Peter the Great”. In 1976, the Soviet director, based on Pushkin's novel, shot the feature film "The Tale of How Tsar Peter the Arap Got Married." The role of Hannibal in the film was played by Vladimir Vysotsky.
Pushkin's great-grandfather - arap of Peter the Great Ibrahim Gannibal
Memories are the strongest ability of our soul. I greatly value the name of my ancestors, the only legacy that I inherited from them.
A. S. Pushkin
Abram Petrovich Hannibal
Alexander Sergeevich could not see his great-grandfather - his great-grandfather died 18 years before his birth.
But he met with his two sons. They were his cousins.
Pushkin was brought to Ibrahim's eldest son, Ivan Gannibal, for acquaintance at the age of one in 1800, a few months before Ivan's death.
With the second son of the Hannibals - Peter, who died in 1826, he repeatedly met. The conversations with him were very interesting, and he learned a lot from them about his African relatives.
But how could African Arap blood appear in the veins of the original Russian nobles?
Probably some mysterious dramatic story should have preceded this? Let's give the floor to Pushkin himself, who was keenly interested in his ancestors.
He could ask old people, his grandmother, the wife of one of the sons of Hannibal, who died in 1818. Could use "family traditions".
His nanny, Arina Rodionovna, could tell him something, she was 23 years old when her great-grandfather died.
For some reason, Pushkin's parents avoided talking about this topic. Perhaps shy?
Nevertheless, in 1826 Pushkin wrote a lengthy footnote to the first chapter of Eugene Onegin. He reports in it that on his mother's side he is of African descent.
His future great-grandfather, Ibrahim, was born in Ethiopia on the Red Sea. In the eighth year of his life, the boy is kidnapped, put on a ship, taken by sea, by land, again by sea and brought to Istanbul - to the court of the Turkish Sultan.
Pushkin could not understand why the boy was taken away?
But they explained to him that at that time, children from the most noble families were brought to the supreme ruler of all Muslims.
Ibrahim was the youngest of 19 brothers - the sons of one of the powerful, wealthy and influential Abyssinian princes. Kidnapped children became hostages, who were killed or sold if their parents "behaved badly."
In 1703, Ibrahim ended up in the capital of Turkey. And a year later, he was kidnapped again and taken out of there by order of the Russian ambassador in Istanbul, Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy. (It is curious that this Tolstoy is the great-grandfather of the great Leo Tolstoy.)
Of course, all this was done secretly on the orders of Tsar Peter and for Peter himself.
With all the precautions, the boy is transported by land through the Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine. This route seemed safer than the sea route through the Black and Azov Seas: there the Turks could overtake the fugitives.
But why did Tsar Peter need a dark-skinned boy?
I must say that in those days it was “fashionable” to have a court black. Peter not only for the sake of this fun sent a secret instruction - "to get a better and more skillful Negro."
He wanted to prove that the dark-skinned Arabs were no less capable of sciences and deeds than many stubborn Russian undergrowths.
In other words, there was an educational purpose. At that time, blacks were considered wild people. Tsar Peter broke prejudices and customs, he “appreciated heads according to their abilities, and hands according to their ability to create things, and not according to skin color!”
And now Ibrahim is being taken to Russia. On the way, he sees snow for the first time in his life! He arrived in Moscow on November 13, 1704.
Then Pushkin writes:
“The sovereign baptized the boy Ibrahim in 1707 and gave him the surname Hannibal.
At baptism he was named Peter. But since Ibrahim cried and did not want to bear a new name, he was called Abram until his death. (This is consonant with Ibrahim.)
And by patronymic he was called Petrovich - in honor of Peter.
This is how Abram Petrovich Hannibal appeared in Russia. The famous Arap of Peter the Great!
Ibrahim's elder brother came from Abyssinia to Petersburg and offered Tsar Peter a ransom for him. But Peter kept his godson with him. He loved him.
Until 1716, Hannibal was inseparably with the person of the sovereign, slept in his turnery, accompanied him on all campaigns.
But even in extreme old age, Ibrahim still remembered Africa, the luxurious life of his father, 18 brothers who were taken to their father with their hands tied behind their backs so that they “did not learn to encroach on the power of their father.”
He also remembered his beloved sister Lagan, sailing in tears from afar behind the ship on which they took him away from Abyssinia.
In 1717, the king with his retinue, where there was also a black man, visited France. There they got acquainted with her sciences, art, generals and King Louis XV himself, who ascended the throne at the age of five and ruled the country for the second year.
About this meeting, Peter amusingly writes to Empress Catherine I: “... I announce to you that last Monday I was visited by the local king, who is two fingers more than Luke, our dwarf, a child who is very fair in manner and figure, and by his age is quite reasonable, who is seven years old ".
Abram Hannibal was left to study in Paris. Leaving a smart dark-skinned student in France - in the center of European culture, the king expected a lot from him.
The king himself personally recommended him to the Duke of De Meun, a relative of the king and head of all French artillery.
In Paris, Ibrahim studied at a military school and was released from it as an artillery captain. Then he joined the French army. During the Spanish war, he distinguished himself at the front, but was seriously wounded in the head and returned to Paris.
And, as Pushkin writes, “for a long time he lived in the scattering of great light.” Peter I repeatedly called him to him, but Hannibal was in no hurry, making excuses under various pretexts.
Parisian life captivated Ibrahim. The appearance of Ibrahim in Paris, his appearance, natural intelligence and education (he knew four languages) aroused everyone's attention.
All the ladies wished to see the “royal arap” at their place. He was invited to fun evenings, he attended many dinners.
And finally, the young officer fell in love. He was 27 years old. He fell in love not with anyone, but with the countess, who was famous for her beauty. Her house was the most fashionable in Paris.
She was going to the color of Parisian society. And, as Alexander Sergeevich writes, “the countess gradually got used to the appearance of a young Negro. She liked his curly head, blackened among the powdered wigs. Ibrahim did not wear a wig because of a wound on his head.” The Countess fell in love with Ibrahim!
But the tsar finally wrote a letter to his favorite, after which he immediately returned to St. Petersburg.
Peter wrote to him that he “does not intend to captivate him and leaves him to his good will - to return to Russia or remain in France. But that, in any case, he will never leave his pet.”
Frustrated, Hannibal immediately returned to St. Petersburg. The sovereign granted Hannibal to the bombardment company of the Preobrazhensky Regiment as a captain-lieutenant. Peter was her captain. It was in 1722.
Three years later, Tsar Peter died. After his death, Hannibal's fate changed.
Since 1730, the country has been ruled by the niece of Peter I Anna Ioannovna. Together with her favorite Biron, she instills fear with executions, torture, and exile.
Historians write: "Dashing winds rocked a great country, took thousands of lives, erected and overthrew cheerful favorites."
They also fell furiously on Pushkin's great-grandfather.
In Pushkin's notes we read: “Menshikov found a way to remove him from the yard. Hannibal was renamed the majors of the Tobolsk garrison and sent to Siberia with the assignment to measure the Chinese wall.
He was not given any serious instructions - Pushkin writes ironically about the "Chinese Wall". But it is known that in Siberia, an experienced and conscientious engineer Hannibal built excellent fortifications.
Having learned about the fall of Menshikov, he arbitrarily returned to St. Petersburg at the end of 1730. There, Field Marshal Munnich miraculously rescues him and secretly sends him to the village of Reval, thirty kilometers from present-day Tallinn, where, as Pushkin writes, “he lived in the expectation of arrest.”
Nevertheless, Abram Hannibal enters the service there and for two years - from 1781 to 1783 - teaches at the garrison school in the Pernov fortress, that is, in Pärnu.
And then he spent seven years in the village.
During this time, Hannibal managed to marry twice.
The first time in 1731 was unsuccessful. He lived only a few months with the beautiful Greek Evdokia Dioper.
Pushkin's notes say: “My great-grandfather was unhappy in family life. His first wife, a Greek by birth, bore him a white daughter. He suspected her of treason, divorced her and forced her to take a haircut in a monastery. And he left her daughter Polixena with him, gave her a careful upbringing, a rich dowry, but never let her in front of him.
According to the materials of the divorce proceedings, it was discovered many years later that “the husband beat the Greek woman with mortal beatings in an unusual way, accusing his wife, and, it seems, not without reason, of treason and in an attempt to poison him. He kept her for several years on the verge of starvation under guard.”
You can read about this tragic epic in David Samoilov’s beautiful poem “The Dream of Hannibal”
Here is one stanza from it:
Oh Hannibal, where is intelligence and nobility?
So do the Greek!
Or simply
Did the wild temper get along with the wild temper?
I still feel sorry for the Greek!
(And I am not a judge of a woman or a century).
His second wife, the German Christina Regina von Schaberch, married him when he was chief commandant in Reval and bore him many black children of both sexes - there were eleven in all.
Pushkin ironically recalls her, admiring his colorful ancestors.
He writes: “My grandfather, Osip Abramovich Gannibal, my mother's father, was born in 1744, and his real name was January. My great-grandmother, his mother Khristina, who spoke Russian poorly, did not agree to call him the name Januarius, which was difficult for her German pronunciation. She said: “Shorne shorts make me shorns and give them a Sherthof name.”
And instead of Januarius, she assigned the name of Osip to her grandfather.
We again learn about the further fate of Abram Hannibal from the notes of Alexander Sergeevich:
“When Empress Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1741, Hannibal wrote her gospel words: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom!”.
Hannibal's letter to Empress Elizabeth Petrovna.
Elizabeth immediately called him to court, promoted him to brigadier, and soon afterwards to major general and, finally, to general general. Granted him a dozen villages in the Pskov and St. Petersburg provinces.
In the first - Zuyevo (this is the current village of Mikhailovskoye), Bor and Petrovskoe. And in the second - Suidu, Kobrino and Thais. And also the village of Ragolu, near Reval
. In 80 years, some of them will become “Pushkin places”.
Under Elizabeth, Hannibal is the most important person in the empire.
In 1732 he was one of the leaders of the engineering corps. All fortification works in Kronstadt, Riga, Pernovskaya, Peter and Paul and other fortresses are carried out “according to his reasoning”.
Since July 4, 1756, he has been a general engineer, that is, the chief engineer of the country!
The rank of general-in-chief assigned to him in 1759 is connected precisely with this activity.
He builds Kronstadt docks, Siberian fortresses, Tver canals and Estonian ports.
And yet, in June 1762, already under Peter III, Hannibal, full of strength, suddenly retires prematurely.
Appeared favorites and upstarts tried to talk down to him and even shout at him! But he was not of such a nature to endure it!
In addition to building canals, houses, fortresses, Hannibal was especially good at doing one more thing - quarreling with his superiors.
Abram Gannibal did not want to “meet”, he wanted to “do business”!
His absolute honesty, conscientiousness and uncompromising nature were especially evident under Elizaveta Petrovna.
Pushkin wrote about him: “He is zealous, incorruptible and not a slave!”
Tired of complicated intrigues, in 1762 he submitted his resignation. After retiring, he settled in his manor in Suida. He lived there for two decades in peace and quiet with his wife Christina, who was not only loved, but also respected by her wayward husband. She was smart, educated and well-bred. At the end of the 18th century, retired general-in-chief Abram Petrovich Hannibal was living out his days.
Alexander Sergeevich writes about him:
In the village where, Petra's pet,
My great-grandfather was hiding,
Where, forgetting Elizabeth
Feasts and magnificent vows,
Under the shade of linden alleys
He thought in chilled years
About distant Africa!
He is 85 years old, he survived seven emperors and empresses. A testamentary order has already been made: 1,400 serf souls, many villages donated by the empress and acquired by him, and 60,000 rubles are divided among the heirs.
Ibrahim Hannibal died on April 20, 1781, he was buried in Suyda, near the Resurrection Church, next to his wife Christina, who died two months before him.
Historians write with regret that in this way he “will never know that 18 years later a child will appear in his family, who will lead his descendants, friends, and ancestors to immortality!”
What was the fate of the "chicks of Hannibal's nest"? The fate of his four sons? About the eldest son, Ivan Abramovich, who got the Suyda manor, we will only say that he was a famous general, one of the main heroes of the naval battle with the Turks in 1770 near Navarino. Pushkin was proud of the fact that in Tsarskoye Selo the name of Ivan Hannibal was engraved on a special column in honor of Russian victories.
Hannibal Ivan Abramovich
The second son of his great-grandfather, Pyotr Abramovich, major-general of the artillery, by his nature was a rude, quick-tempered, unrestrained person. The life of the village of Petrovsky, which he inherited, was serfdom, full of cruelty and tyranny.
P. A. HANNIBAL (?). Unknown artist. Butter. End of the 18th century
Pyotr Abramovich's valet recalls:
“When the Hannibals were angry, or if Pyotr Abramovich lost his temper, then people were carried out on sheets.”
In other words, flogged to death! For a long time there were serf musicians and dancers in Petrovsky. Here, for more than three decades, the landowner Peter Gannibal, the owner of one and a half thousand acres of land and about 300 serf souls, lived without a break.
When Pushkin visited his great-uncle in 1817, grandfather was 75 years old, he lived with pleasure.
His wife did not interfere with him: 30 years have passed since he drove her away and did not reconcile.
It was said about him that, like the Turkish Sultan, he keeps a serf harem. Therefore, many dark-skinned, curly-haired blacks run around its villages.
His favorite pastime was "the erection of tinctures to a certain degree of fortress."
He tirelessly and passionately prepared vodkas and tinctures. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin caught him doing this when he first appeared in Petrovsky in 1817.
Pushkin says:
“Grandfather asked for vodka. Served vodka. He poured himself a glass and told me to bring it. I drank and did not wince, and by that, it seems, I extremely borrowed the old black man. A quarter of an hour later he again asked for vodka and repeated this five or six times before dinner. Then appetizers were served.”
And then the conversations began, for which Pushkin went, Pyotr Abramovich began to talk about “an unforgettable parent”!
Finally, a notebook covered with old German Gothic letters lies on the table in front of the grandson. This is a detailed biography of his great-grandfather, written 40 years ago.
Her great-grandfather saved her, then she came to her eldest son Ivan, and after his death, Pyotr Abramovich received her.
Now, at last, Pushkin held her. And this had considerable consequences for Russian literature. Alexander Sergeevich wrote the well-known, although unfinished novel “Arap of Peter the Great”.
Pushkin visited his grandfather more than once in Petrovsky. The last time he visited him was in 1825, shortly before his death.
Let us now turn to Pushkin's grandfather, Osip Gannibal. He was born in 1744. He inherited from his father the village of Mikhailovskoye. Starting from an early age serving in artillery, he rose to the rank of naval artillery captain of the second rank. He led a scattered, disorderly life. He had many debts. His strict father refused him financial support and did not want to see him.
Maria Alekseevna Gannibal (born Pushkin)
To improve his affairs, Osip Abramovich decided to get married. And soon he married Maria Alekseevna, the daughter of the Tambov governor, a wealthy landowner. Two years later they had a daughter - Nadezhda Osipovna, the future mother of Alexander Pushkin. The relationship between the parents was bad.
The husband, in order to pay off creditors, immediately sold all the movable and immovable property received as a dowry.
He led a faulty life, cheated on his wife and insulted her. It ended with the fact that in 1776 he secretly left home without saying goodbye. Maria Alekseevna went to Petersburg in search of her husband. But Osip Abramovich, as his wife writes, “refused to return to his family with curses.” In addition to that, he also managed to secretly take away his one-year-old daughter Nadia from his wife's house.
He did it for the purpose of blackmail.
Maria Alekseevna, having learned about this, immediately sent him a letter in which she agreed to “part forever” on the only condition: that her daughter stay with her.
The girl was returned.
But Osip Abramovich decided to marry a second time to improve his affairs and did a number of shameless, criminal acts for this.
Pushkin softly wrote about him: "The African character of my grandfather, ardent passions, combined with terrible frivolity, involved him in amazing delusions."
In order to formalize the second marriage, he used a false document stating that Maria Alekseevna had died.
In January 1779, he managed to get married without getting a divorce from Maria Alekseevna. Outraged, Maria Alekseevna ensured that the case of the unseemly, outrageous act of her husband reached the empress.
Catherine II approved the final decision on it:
“First, consider Maria Alekseevna Hannibal as a lawful wife.
The second is that the second marriage with Ustina Tolstaya, committed by Osip Gannibal, is recognized as annihilated and not recognized as her lawful wife.
The third - for the crime committed by Osip Gannibal - entering into a second marriage with a living wife - to send him on ships to the Mediterranean Sea, so that he could atone for the crime he committed there by service and repentance.
Returning from a voyage, Osip Abramovich twice tried to contact the Empress, complaining and challenging how unfair the transfer of the maintenance of his ex-wife and daughter of all estates near St. Petersburg.
But complaints and petitions did not yield results, and he was forced to spend the last fifteen years of his awkward, chaotic life alone in Mikhailovsky, somehow managing his considerable household: he had 2,000 acres of land and about 400 serf souls.
He died in 1807, younger than other Hannibals, he was 63 years old.
His daughter Nadezhda Osipovna, well brought up by her mother, married in 1796 a modest lieutenant of the Izmailovsky regiment Sergei Lvovich Pushkin. She was well-read, witty, knew how to dress with taste and was fluent in French.
On May 26, 1799, their first son Alexander was born - the future brilliant Russian poet!
About the life of the Pushkins in Moscow at the beginning of the 19th century, their acquaintances tell:
“About two or three years before the French, in 1809-1810, they lived cheerfully and openly, and the old woman Hannibal - Maria Alekseevna was in charge of everything in the house. She took care of all household chores. She knew how to run the house properly. She took care of the children more than her parents. She also found a nanny for them - her serf Arina Rodionovna. And later she took mamzels and teachers to them and taught them good Russian herself.”
The grandmother was especially attached to her eldest grandson. When the swarthy, curly-haired Alexander was nine or ten years old, she spoke of him:
“He is smart, a hunter for books, but he studies poorly, rarely when he passes his lesson in order.
He rushes from one extreme to another - he has no middle ground.
Grandmother loved him more than other children, but she told him:
“After all, what a naughty you are! Mark my word, don't take your head off!”
The wise grandmother seemed to foresee the sad end of the life of the great-grandson of the arap Peter the Great, Ibrahim Hannibal.
Pushkin and his contemporaries.
The last period of the life of A.S. Pushkin in St. Petersburg. Museum-apartment of A.S. Pushkin
Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkina-Lanskaya (Goncharova)
The rivals of the beautiful Natalie
Sisters Elizabeth and Ekaterina Ushakov.
Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkina-Lanskaya (Goncharova)
Sushkova Sofia Nikolaevna
Nanny of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva
Ekaterina Pavlovna Bakunina
House of the "Queen of Spades"
Natalia Petrovna Golitsyna
By Pushkin places
Avdotya Ilyinichna Istomina
Emilia Karlovna Musina-Pushkina.
Avrora Karlovna Demidova
Alexander Pavlovich Bakunin
Black Six. Predictions of Pushkin's fate.
Watercolors by Pyotr Fedorovich Sokolov. Part 1.
Watercolors by Pyotr Fedorovich Sokolov. Part 2.
Raevsky Nikolay Nikolaevich
Raevsky Alexander Nikolaevich.
Raevsky Nikolai Nikolaevich - Jr.
Vorontsova Elizaveta Ksaverevna
The wonderful film by Alexander Mitta "The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married Married" with Vladimir Vysotsky in the title role still does not leave our screens. But with all the many advantages, the picture has one drawback - it has nothing to do with the true story of the life and love of Abram Petrovich Hannibal.
There are still many gaps and secrets in the biography of Alexander Pushkin's great-grandfather Abram Hannibal (Hannibal is a name invented by Empress Anna, they say, if he comes from Africa, then he is a descendant of the commander Hannibal) there are still many gaps and secrets.
kidnapped and baptized
The son of a “negerian” prince of noble origin, Ibrahim (that was the name of Abram), was supposedly born in 1688 in Africa. According to one version, allegedly in the north of Ethiopia, according to another, on the border of modern Cameroon and Chad, where the Logon Sultanate of the Kotoko people, who is a descendant of the Sao civilization, was located. Surely the exact place of birth of Ibrahim will never be revealed.
But it is known for certain that in the eighth year of his life, Ibrahim was kidnapped along with his brother and brought to Constantinople, from where in 1705 Savva Raguzinsky brought the brothers as a gift to Peter I, "who loved all sorts of rarities and curiosities."
In the church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, the boys converted to Orthodoxy. The godparents were Tsar Peter (who gave the black girl the patronymic Petrovich and the surname Petrov) and the Polish Queen Christian Ebergardina. Ibrahim received the Russified name Abram, his brother - Alex.
This is reminiscent of one of the memorial plaques on the current building of the church. The text reads: “In this church, Emperor Peter the Great in 1705 listened to a prayer of thanksgiving for the victory over the troops of Charles XII, presented her with the banner taken from the Swedes in that victory, and baptized in it the African Hannibal, the grandfather of our famous poet A.S. Pushkin.
Abram's brother, Alexei Petrovich (named so, apparently, in honor of Tsarevich Alexei), did not make a career, served in the Preobrazhensky Regiment, was married to a serf of the Golitsyn princes and was last mentioned in the late 1710s. In the Hannibal family, the memory of him was not preserved; his existence became known only from the archives of Peter the Great in the 20th century.
But Abram Petrovich became a famous person. He was inseparably near the king, slept in his room and accompanied him on all campaigns. In the documents, he is mentioned three times along with the jester Lacoste. Since 1714, Peter I began to give various assignments to the black man, including secret ones, and Hannibal became the orderly and secretary of the king. In 1716, Abram went abroad with the sovereign for the first time. At this time, he received 100 rubles a salary per year. In France, Abram Petrovich, on the instructions of Peter I, remained to study: after spending 1.5 years at an engineering school, he entered the French army, participated in the Spanish war (War of the Quadruple Alliance 1718 - 1719), was wounded in the head and rose to the rank of captain. Upon his return to Russia in 1723, Hannibal was appointed to the Preobrazhensky Regiment as an engineer-lieutenant of the bombardment company, the captain of which was the tsar himself.
Business first! Dads later...
The love affairs of Abram Petrov, shown at the beginning of the film “The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married Married” in the lubok genre, fully correspond to historical reality. But they were not limited to Paris alone. When the young engineer returned from the French capital, the emperor awarded him the rank of lieutenant of the Preobrazhensky regiment. As we already wrote, Peter himself was his captain, and a young man of an exotic appearance, who was patronized by the sovereign himself, aroused keen curiosity among the female. After all, the temperamental Afro-Russian learned from the French not only the exact sciences, but also became adept at amorous affairs, as love affairs were then called.
Peter's godson was an outstanding engineer and a very intelligent person. A retired captain of the French army, who was fluent in French, brought a library from Paris, which, in terms of volume, entered the top twenty book collections in Russia of its time. It consisted of about 400 volumes. These were mainly works on mathematics, fortification, artillery, geography, history and the Koran in French translation. Among fashionable fiction there was a place for antique and French classics.
There were also rare specimens. Semyon Geichenko, the former director of the Hannibal House Museum in Petrovsky, cites the 1687 edition of Hugo Grotius' book De Jure Belli ac Pacis ("On the Law of War and Peace") with Cardinal Mazarin's autograph and his personal seal as an example.
Of course, the young man in the prime of his life did not waste time. He gnawed at the granite of science and comprehended the science of tender passion. Evidence has come down to posterity in the epistolary legacy of Abram. Correspondence went from Kronstadt to Petersburg. Here is an example of African passions spilled onto paper: “The compliment is not great, but plaintive, I don’t write much, but I close a lot of strength. A coquette, a cheat, a maiden, Princess Yakovlevna, a fickle, a wind, a mad, a beater (a pugnacious, grumpy woman - ed.), how long will you scold me, your master, as long as I will endure the ignorance that comes from your lips, like an abyss from the abyss sea, I give you free rein now before my arrival, forgive me, my Darya Yakovlevna, stupid madam, naughty Filipyevna ... "
But the arap of Peter the Great was not an ordinary womanizer and zhuir. Documents and contemporaries unanimously testify that women for Abram Petrovich were in the background. Business first! And he managed to do a lot: work in Kronstadt, give lectures to conductors (officers in engineering, construction or other departments), run the imperial office and library, write a textbook on geometry and fortification. In this, the godson was akin in spirit to his godfather.
Moor's unfaithful wife
Great Peter died, his wife, Empress Catherine I, died, the all-powerful Menshikov fell, who exiled Hannibal the arap to the distant Tobolsk garrison, other times came. (After the death of Peter I, Hannibal joined the party dissatisfied with the rise of Alexander Menshikov, for which he was sent to Siberia in 1727. In 1729, Hannibal's papers were ordered to be taken away and kept under arrest in Tomsk.)
On the monument "Millennium of Russia" in Veliky Novgorod, among 128 figures of prominent personalities of Russian history, there is a figure of a seated man - this is Count Munnich. The governor of St. Petersburg, a member of the Military Collegium, the director of work in Kronstadt, with the rank of general-in-chief, was the director of the general administration of artillery and the head of the engineering unit and needed smart people. This courtier, influential at the court of Anna Ioannovna, rescued Major Abram Petrovich from exile. Minich once worked hand in hand with Hannibal and had the opportunity to appreciate the engineering talent and erudition of the Russian African. Among the military engineers of his time, Abram Petrovich was one of the most intelligent. Here the authors of the film did not sin one iota against the truth.
In 1730 Abram returned to the capital. The empress granted him the rank of engineer-captain - this was a promotion, probably made on the recommendation of Munnich. In the first days upon arrival in St. Petersburg, Abram met the captain of the galley fleet Andrei Dioper. There was mutual sympathy. Peter attracted this Greek from Amsterdam to the Russian service in 1698, when the little black was still walking under the table. The eldest captain's daughter was already married by the time dad met the black officer, the youngest, Evdokia, lived in her father's house.
Contemporaries considered Evdokia Dioper to be a written beauty, and it is not surprising that the ardent black man was inflamed with serious passion and decided to end his bachelor life. When Abram asked for the girl's hand, the old man Dioper gave his consent. He did not know that his daughter was secretly in love with naval lieutenant Alexander Kaisarov. Evdokia, having learned about the matchmaking of Peter's godson, resolutely protested, but did not say a word about her love for the lieutenant: they say, the groom is "arap and not of our breed."
Unlike the noble hero Vysotsky from the film, the real black man was not shy from bride's whims. The young was forced to obey the will of her father. On the evening of January 17, 1731, the wedding ceremony of Abram Petrovich Petrov and Evdokia Andreevna Dioper took place in the Church of St. Simeon the God-Receiver. And here is another moment that was distorted in the film - on the eve of the wedding
In March, the newlyweds went to the new place of service of Abram Petrovich - in Estonia, in Pernov (now Pärnu). The inconsolable lieutenant Kaisarov was transferred to Astrakhan the same month. Life with an unloved husband did not immediately work out. The beautiful Evdokia looked at the stately conductors. In a small town in the house of a certain bourgeois Moor (Morsha, as it appears in the documents), Evdokia began an affair with one of her husband's subordinates, a certain Shishkin. This Shishkin was a local Casanova. Before the arrival of the Petrovs, he seduced the daughter of the bourgeois Moor, promised to marry and deceived. Morsha complained to the authorities, who ordered "to inflict punishment on the body, and that's the end of the matter." But Evdokia was not embarrassed by such a reputation for Shishkin, and she became his mistress. Soon, the whole of Pernov, where about four thousand people lived, was gossiping about the beautiful Greek woman who cuckolded her Moor husband. In February 1732, Abram Petrovich, who had previously only heard rumors about his wife's infidelity, received direct evidence.
But even earlier, in the autumn of 1731, another scandal erupted. A blond, white-skinned child was born to a Greek woman and an Arap. Nevertheless, reluctantly, Abram Hannibal admitted his paternity. The girl was named Avdotya. A year later, when the whole city was talking about his wife's betrayals, Abram Petrovich wrote a report addressed to the head of Field Marshal Munnich asking for his resignation for health reasons. Minich perfectly understood Captain Abram Petrov, but members of the Senate considered that Hannibal's place was now in Pernov. Then Abram decided to act differently. On February 28, he sent a complaint to the office against his student conductor Shishkin. He also accused his wife of fornication and attempted ... poisoning. The investigation began immediately. All witnesses corroborated their testimony. Evdokia also confessed. For a month, she continued to "live with her husband, and only at the end of March of the same year was she put in the Hospital Yard, where convicts were usually imprisoned." In a terrible conclusion, the unfaithful stayed for 11 years.
Great great grandson of a great great grandfather
True love and a real family for the arab Abram appeared a little later. And in the series of his numerous offspring, as a result, there was a wonderful great-grandson - the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. And it was like that. While the legal wife was cheating on Hannibal with Shishkin, he met in the same Pernov with Christina Sheberg (daughter of a Russian officer with Italian roots), love broke out between them.
By the way, it was then that Abram Petrovich received his loud surname - Hannibal. It was with the light hand of Empress Anna and Field Marshal Munnich that in the text of the honorary diploma on retirement with a life pension of 100 rubles per annum, he was noted as Abram Petrovich Hannibal. Thus, none of these names were his real name.
But back to Christina. Hannibal married her in 1736, while his wife was still alive, presenting as evidence of a divorce a court ruling on punishment for adultery. In 1743, Evdokia, released on bail, became pregnant again, after which she filed a petition with the consistory, in which she recognized her past betrayal and herself asked to divorce her from her husband. However, the lawsuit with Evdokia ended only in 1753 - the spouses were divorced, the wife was exiled to the Staraya Ladoga Monastery, and penance and a fine were imposed on Hannibal, recognizing, however, the second marriage as legal and considering the military court guilty, which ruled in the case of adultery without consideration by the synod.
Hannibal had eleven children, but four sons (Ivan, Peter, Osip and Isaac) and three daughters (Elizaveta, Anna and Sophia) survived to adulthood.
The "Black General", having briefly outlived his beloved wife, died at the age of 88 in honor and glory. He was called the last witness of the Petrine era. This happened in the spring of 1788.
The most famous trace in history was left by the son of Hannibal Ivan - the famous general, holder of many orders, in the rank of general-in-chief. When Ivan Abramovich retired due to illness, his irresponsible brother Osip was brought to trial for bigamy. Then, worried about the fate of his brother's first family (wife Maria Alekseevna and daughter Nadezhda), Ivan took care of his relatives, settling them in his house. Ivan was personally involved in the upbringing of the girl, gave her a secular education.
In society, Nadezhda was called the beautiful Creole. She was swarthy, charming, cheerful and pretty. And in the end, a young officer Sergei Lvovich Pushkin proposed to her. Uncle Vanya agreed: although the groom was not rich, he was educated and honest! In the autumn of 1796, a wedding took place in the Hannibal family church in Suida (Koporsky district, 60 km from St. Petersburg). The charming Nadezhda Osipovna soon gave birth to a daughter, Olga, and then a son, Sasha, in the future the famous poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin!
Abram Petrovich spent his last years in the Suyda estate near St. Petersburg, where he died on May 14, 25, 1781.