ABSTRACT
The ideological split between Solzhenitsyn and Siniavskii had developed in the late 1970s in emigration, with Solzhenitsyn emerging as the leader of the conservative national wing and Siniavskii defending the liberal democratic position. In “Puteshestvie na Chernuiu rechku”, however, Siniavskii puts two more balls into the juggler’s hands. As well as juggling with Pushkin’s art and his life, he adds his own biography and his own art. He weaves into the story of Kapitanskaia dochka the return of Siniavskii and Tertz to Russia: Siniavskii in person, Tertz in print. Pushkin presents Kapitanskaia dochka, in a draft of a “sketch of a preface”, as an anecdote which circulated in the locality of Orenburg. Pushkin created Kapitanskaia dochka out of the pressures of his own life, the stain on his honour, his hopeless love for his wife, his growing awareness that only in fairy tales was it possible to have a happy ending.
