The Queen of Spades and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin
1. A commandant’s daughter whom Pugachev took for a mistress. Jealous of her influence, his Cossack companions later murdered her.
1. The paragraph that follows replaces in the printed version the long episode contained in Pushkin’s manuscript, and which is included here at the end of the book.
2. I. I. Mikhelson (1740–1807) was one of Catherine II’s greatest war leaders. He drove Pugachev south from Kazan, and finally routed him on 24 August 1774.
1. A. P. Volynsky (1689–1740) and his accomplices, one of whom was A. F. Hrushchev (1691–1740), were executed in June 1740, having been accused by Biren, the unscrupulous German favourite of the Empress Anna, of endeavouring to put Peter the Great’s daughter Elizabeth on the throne.
1. Sofia forms part of Tsarkoe Selo – taking its name from the Cathedral of St Sofia which was built by Catherine II after the plan of St Sofia in Constantinople.
1. Rumyantsev (172–93) fought and defeated the Turks, for which Catherine II made him a field-marshal and had obelisks erected in his honour at Tsarkoe Selo and in Petersburg.
1. This fragment of a preliminary version of the novel was found among Pushkin’s MSS, and published in Russian Archives in 1880.
1. The Tchuvashes ate a Mongolian tribe which settled in Russia.
2. A character who disappeared from Pushkin’s final draft of the book.
1. June 24.
Alexander Pushkin, The Queen of Spades and Other Stories
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