ABSTRACT
Pu s h k i n ’ s historical novel The Captain’s Daughter is a story of the experiences of Pyotr Andreyitch Grinyov, son of a Russian country gentleman, inheriting a tradi tion of martial and loyalist service, in the period of the Cossack rebellion of Pugatchov in the seventeen-seventies. Grinyov, travelling to his first garrison, is helped by an anonymous Cossack to whom he makes in return a small gift. After an interview in Orenburg with his general, he is appointed to a small garrison in territory still not entirely conquered from the Bashkirs and Kirghiz. The commander of the garrison, Cap tain Mironov, is a simple old soldier, much under the thumb of his admirable and upright wife, and has a paternal attitude to the troops under his command. Grinyov gradually falls in love with the captain’s daughter, and fights a duel on her be half with the other junior officer, Shvabrin, an exiled rake. Grinyov is wounded, but recovers in time to see Pugatchov and the rebel Cossacks take the ‘fortress’. Shvabrin turns trai tor and the Mironovs are brutally executed, but Pugatchov, revealed as the anonymous Cossack of the earlier incident, allows Grinyov to escape, to help in the defence of Orenburg
against the rebels. The captain’s daughter, however, Marya Ivanovna, is left in the hands of Shvabrin, and Grinyov again enlists the aid of Pugatchov to release her. He rejoins the loyalist forces and is able to defend the paternal estate against the rebels under Shvabrin, but when the rising is finally quelled, he faces a court-martial because of his dealings with Pugatchov. He is saved by the personal intervention of the Empress, after Marya Ivanovna has enlisted her aid.
