Pushkin’s “Bronze Horseman” and the Formation of the Official Image of Peter the Great in Russia in the Era of Nicholas I

Abstract

The article is devoted to the formation of images and plot of the “Bronze Horseman” by A.S. Pushkin in the context of the state ideology, as well as ideas about Peter the Great in the Russian educated society. The author reveals the main strategies for the development of the positive image of Peter in the 18th century, as well as their criticism in public circles at the turn of the 18th – 19th centuries. He considers the ways of creating Pushkin’s authorly image of the emperor and the tasks that the poet solved with its help. The Bronze Horseman is analyzed in the context of the political confrontation between A.S. Pushkin with A. Mitskevich. The relationship between Pushkin’s apology for Peter and the state cult of the tsar-reformer, recreated in the early 1830s, is noted. The author comes to the conclusion that two lines of development of the positive myth about Peter, coming from Feofan Prokopovich and Catherine II, are synthesized in Pushkin’s work. Initially, the poet strove to achieve an amnesty for the Decembrists, but after 1830 the image of a “revolutionary from above” arose, and the topic of amnesty ceased to be relevant. In the 18th century the image of Peter in the public consciousness was formed under the influence of the state ideology, but after 1825 the situation changed to the opposite.