ABSTRACT
Alexander Pushkin reflected on escaping in his poems, in his letters, and probably out loud. He was going to go to the southern shore of the Mediterranean sea, his plan to find himself in Africa. Pushkin was in a most convenient place: in principle, from the part of Odessa it was possible to get away to wherever we wanted. In literary memoirs of the period, the procedure for leaving Odessa is described quite thoroughly. In order to leave Odessa, it was necessary to undergo a customs inspection. At the end of volume one of Dead Souls by Nikolay Gogol, who had traveled abroad more than once, an episode from Chichikov’s biography from before the dead souls story itself is recounted. Chichikov passionately dreamed of entering the customs service. The smugglers, in avoiding the maritime customs, moved their goods through the water in leakproof bags.
