ABSTRACT
Kochubinsky, a researcher into Alexander Pushkin’s Bessarabian period, gave a speech entitled “Features of the countryside in the works of Pushkin,” later published. Summing up his researches, Kochubinsky declared that in the summer of 1821 Pushkin decided to abscond from Russia in secret, and for that purpose, he set off on a “gypsy excursion” as far as Izmail. As for the publishing of that poem-reminiscence, “The Gypsies,” Pushkin even ten years later on would publish it, for reasons of security, as a translation from the English. His participation in the life of the gypsy band he made conventional, as if not he, but someone else, had gone through these adventures: "I would myself in another time Have gone off with these tents". Pushkin considered the gypsies to be a branch of Indians, pariahs chased out from their own country. He noticed a desire among Russians to segregate these non-Russians, legalizing their lack of rights.
