On the eve of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino, relatives of the cavalry girl arrived in Yelabuga, where Durova lived for almost 30 years until her death. At the Elabuga museum-estate of Nadezhda Durova, her great-great-grandnephew Pyotr Shveder and six grandchildren who live in France, and Apollo Ogranovich from Ukraine, whose great-grandfather was the cousin of a cavalry maiden, were warmly received. It’s a pity that her great-grandniece, Nadezhda Borisovna Durova, mother of Pyotr Shveder, who died this spring, could not come to Yelabuga. They say she was an exact copy of her famous namesake. Today in Yelabuga, the memory of Durova is preserved by her house-museum. Olga Aikasheva, a senior researcher at the Elabuga museum-estate of N. Durova, talks about the woman warrior.

Male share

Nadenka has loved men's games since childhood. Her mother did not like the noisy child, so from the age of four months the girl was nursed by her father’s orderly, soldier Astakhov. The first toys were a drum, a saber and a horse. When father Andrei Durov retired, 5-year-old Nadya looked more like a boy.

It was not possible to re-educate her daughter; at the age of 18, at the insistence of her mother, she was married to the official Vasily Chernov. This fact is not in the autobiographical “Notes of a Cavalry Maiden,” but it was precisely this fact that influenced Durova’s choice. In 1803, a son, Ivan, was born into the Chernov family. But Nadezhda’s life with her husband did not work out. Apparently, that’s why Durova decided to do something unprecedented at that time: she took her son and returned to her parents’ house.

When her mother wanted to return Nadezhda to her husband, 23-year-old Durova decided to disappear. But where? Serving the Fatherland became her only option.

Blessing of the King

In 1807, Nadezhda Durova was recruited into the Polish Cavalry Uhlan Regiment. At the same time, she lied, introducing herself as 17-year-old nobleman Alexander Sokolov, who was not allowed to go to war by his parents. So she justified the lack of documents, but how did she manage to hide her gender from her colleagues for 10 years?

Nadezhda was quite tall for a girl - 165 cm, and her athletic figure could easily be hidden under the thick cloth of her uniform. From her first days in the army, Durova asked to water the horses, so she had the opportunity to be alone. She did not get close to anyone, she was visible only during the battle, because the army did not have public baths or barracks. The soldiers did not get off their horses for three days and slept on horseback. During the attack, the infantry had to stand under bullets without bending down; trying to save a life was considered cowardice. During the war, Durova suffered without gloves and was constantly freezing in an unlined overcoat, although she was in good health.

When she realized that serious trials lay ahead, she wrote to her father where she was serving. Andrei Durov gave the letter to his brother in St. Petersburg, and he sent it to the military chancellery. It had the effect of a bomb exploding and reached Alexander I. A year after Nadezhda’s escape, an investigation began: what is this woman doing in the army?! It is clear that prostitution was unacceptable. But it turned out that young Sokolov was praised and did not even assume that he was a woman.

After verification, Durova was secretly taken to the Tsar. For her valiant service, he presented her with the soldier’s St. George’s Cross and asked: “They say you are not a man?” She could not lie and asked to be allowed to wear a uniform. The king allowed, but took an oath from her: never admit to anyone that she was a woman. Durova remained faithful to this oath until the end of her days. Sokolov entered the Tsar’s office, and Alexandrov came out: the Tsar gave Durova his name. And Alexander Alexandrov became a cornet of the Mariupol Hussar Regiment. The Tsar even allocated 2,000 rubles to Durova. for sewing a uniform and buying a horse. However, there was not enough money for the horse - Durova’s biographers suggest that she was forced to pay the tailors extra for silence.

Perhaps, in battles, quick-witted fellow soldiers protected the “mustacheless youth.” But it was unacceptable to talk about such guesses according to the laws of military ethics. Moreover, the emperor himself blessed Durova to serve in the Russian army. Mikhail Kutuzov and the Minister of War knew about her secret, and fellow soldiers joked: “Alexandrov, when will you get a mustache?!”

As a fiercely brave officer, she earned their respect. In 1812, Durova was wounded in the leg, but she did not go out of action. Wounded, she took part in the Battle of Borodino.

Forbidden love

The question about Durova’s sexual orientation is the most common one. During her service, women fell in love with Durova. She writes that she was forced to transfer to another regiment because of the daughter of the regimental commander. In general, she avoided women, they saw right through her, called her a “hussar girl,” and asked tricky questions.

It didn't work out with men either. Since Durova swore to the Tsar to be a man, she could not marry again. Durova wrote about vicious connections in her Notes: “Fearlessness is the first and necessary quality of a warrior; with fearlessness the greatness of the soul is inseparable, and when these two great virtues are combined, there is no place for vices or low passions.”

Following the oath, Durova could do things that were strictly forbidden to women: ride a horse, wear a uniform, smoke a pipe, sit cross-legged, talk loudly. Until the end of her days, she wore men's clothing and demanded to be treated like a man. At the same time, Nadezhda Durova had to hide her son along with her gender. He was raised by his grandfather Andrei Durov, but thanks to the merits of his mother, Ivan Chernov received a prestigious education at the Imperial Military Orphanage. But he did not become a military man for health reasons, but made a career as a civil servant in St. Petersburg. There is a legend that in order to receive his mother’s blessing for marriage, Ivan had to turn to her as officer Alexandrov. It is still unknown whether Chernov had children.

Pushkin's protégé

The secret of Durova was first revealed by Alexander Pushkin. In the preface to an excerpt from “Notes” published in 1836 in his journal Sovremennik, the poet called the author by his real name. Durova was distraught, she wrote to Pushkin: “Is there no way to help this grief?.. you call me a name that makes me shudder as soon as I think that twenty thousand lips will read and name it.” Also, without permission, the poet assigned Durova the nickname cavalry maiden. At that time, “maiden” meant “never married,” which was not true. At their first meeting, Pushkin kissed Durova’s hand, and she pulled it back with the words: “Oh, my God! I’ve been UNSUBCUTED from this for so long!”

Thanks to the light hand of genius, Durova found herself among the most fashionable and popular writers of that time. Pushkin himself assessed “Notes” this way: “...charming, lively, original, beautiful style. Success is certain." To publish them, the aspiring writer went to St. Petersburg and over the 5 years of her life there she wrote 12 (!) books. Durova's talent was appreciated by Zhukovsky, Belinsky, and Gogol. By the way, she was the first to dare to write about Pushkin after the duel.

Durova lived in Yelabuga for almost 30 years. Army habits did not leave her: she smoked a pipe and rode horseback while she had the strength. When the first photo studio opened in the city, a female officer stopped by. In the photo she is 80 years old, but her bearing is still visible - true to her oath, she holds her head proudly.

ON THE. Durova in hussar uniform

How Alexander Pushkin revealed the secret of Nadezhda Durova

Many remember the perky cavalry maiden from the film “The Hussar Ballad”, who took part in the battles against Napoleon, hiding her gender from everyone. But not many people know that this heroine has a real prototype - Nadezhda Durova, the first Russian female officer and a talented writer of the 19th century. The “Top Secret” correspondent visited the Durova Museum-Estate in the city of Elabuga and learned the life story of this extraordinary woman “in a man’s dress,” one of the founders of feminism in Russia.

Durova is 14 years old. Lithograph by unknown artist

"The saddle was the cradle"

Childhood left its mark on the entire fate of Nadezhda Durova, her biographers are sure. Nadya was born into a military family. Father Andrei Durov is a hereditary Vyatka nobleman, he served in Ukraine, in the Poltava Light Horse Regiment, as a captain. Fell in love with the daughter of wealthy Ukrainian landowners, the Aleksandrovichs. As Nadezhda herself writes in “Notes of a Cavalry Maiden,” her mother, Anastasia Ivanovna, was beautiful, willful, and, although her parents opposed marriage to a military man, and even a “Muscovite,” she ran away from home and married him, for which she was cursed by father. The only hope for reconciliation with family would have been the birth of a son, but instead of a blond first-born, a loud, black-haired girl was born. Despite the desired forgiveness of her parents, her mother disliked her and placed her in the care of a nurse. From the age of four months, in the conditions of the regiment, little Nadya’s nanny was her father’s orderly, Ostap Astakhov, who instilled in her a love of horses and military affairs. He carried the girl in his arms all day long, took her to the squadron stables, put her on horses, and let her play with a pistol. The girl fell asleep and woke up to the sounds of the regimental orchestra. Thus, “the saddle was my first cradle, and the horse, weapons, and regimental music were my first children’s toys and amusements.” At the age of five, she was already firmly in the saddle, shooting a bow, and dreaming of becoming a warrior.

When Nadya was five years old, in 1788, her father retired and settled with his family in a large noble mansion in Sarapul, a district town in the Vyatka province, becoming a mayor. Nadya loved to read; her reading circle included the works of Russian writers of that time - Sumarokov, Derzhavin, Lomonosov. She also spoke French and read in the original. Her father was involved in her education and allowed her into his large library. At the same time, he encouraged her sporting habits, stood up for the girl, saying that if he had such a son, he would become hope and support in old age.

It was a discovery for her mother that Nadya grew up like a boy: she led gangs, spent whole days in the stable, climbed trees, and shot a bow well; Running around the upper room, she shouted regimental commands at the top of her voice and asked to give her the pistol to “click.” Her mother decided to re-educate her. She forced the girl to do needlework, knitting and beadwork. But at night, Nadya ran out of the house through the window, took out the horse and rode on horseback: “She fell in love with the Czech stallion Alkida in her father’s stable, tamed him to her, and he already turned his back to the young rider,” she writes in “Notes.” The girl had a secret place where she kept a whole arsenal of weapons: arrows, a bow, a saber
ah, broken gun. “From an early age, she was not afraid of anything: no scary endings in fairy tales, no darkness, no empty abandoned houses, no brownies, no devils. She was not afraid of the height of the roofs and stories about mermaids. The only thing the girl was afraid of was her mother's anger. The relationship between Nadya and Anastasia Ivanovna was difficult. In the presence of her daughter, the mother often complained about the hardships of the female lot, portrayed the fate of women in the most bleak form, and talked about the imperfections and weaknesses of women. And in Nadya’s head the decision gradually matured to overthrow the painful yoke and separate from the sex, in the words of her mother, “under the curse of God,” and for this it was necessary to learn “male” things - shooting and dressage,” the head of the Museum told Top Secret -the estate of Nadezhda Durova, Farid Valitov.

When Nadya was 14 years old, her mother sent her to her grandmother for two years, to the Velikaya Krucha estate in Poltava province. Here the grandmother and aunts tried to cultivate femininity in her, to ennoble her character traits. Nadya went to balls of rich landowners and to church with the whole family. There she met the son of a landowner, fell in love, the young man was ready to propose, but the mother demanded that her daughter return to her parents' house: she was not happy with her family life and believed that the reason for this was disobedience to her parents in her youth. Durova herself writes that if life had continued to be the same as in Little Russia, if she had been given in marriage to a loved one, perhaps her fate would have turned out differently: “I would have said goodbye to my militant dreams forever.”

However, Durova was still married, although she did not describe these facts of her biography anywhere. Documentary evidence of this was found by researchers recently: in the metric books of the Resurrection Cathedral in the city of Sarapul there is a record of the wedding of Nadezhda Durova and Vasily Stepanovich Chernov in 1801. She was 18 years old, he was 25, he was an assessor of the zemstvo court of the city of Sarapul, an official of the 14th, the lowest class. Two years later - a record of the baptism of their son Ivan. But her family life did not work out. Biographers can only guess at the reasons why Nadezhda and her child ended up back in her parents’ house. Perhaps the fault was her freedom-loving, decisive character, strong will, which could not put up with philistine life.

At that time, leaving her husband was already an extraordinary act: a woman had to bear her cross until the end of her days, she did not have the opportunity to resist fate. Life in my parents' house was difficult. The mother constantly reproached her daughter and demanded that she return to her husband. Under such pressure, Nadezhda decides to become a warrior and simply disappears from home, leaving the child in the care of her parents. At that time, Russia had not yet entered the war with Napoleon, but he had already captured the countries of Europe and approached the borders of the Russian Empire. Society was excited by this news, and many young people dreamed of “beating Bonaparte.” Women were naturally not accepted into the army then, and Nadezhda decides to pass herself off as a man. She secretly cuts off her braids, changes into a man's Cossack suit and, leaving her woman's dress on the river bank so that everyone will think that she has drowned, disappears from the house under the cover of darkness, taking the horse from the stable. The father, of course, did not believe that his daughter could drown. He even advertised in the newspaper, but the search was unsuccessful. She managed, together with the Cossacks, calling herself the son of a Vyatka nobleman, to reach the ranks of the Russian army.

“Doomed myself to loneliness”

Nadezhda Durova was able to serve in the Russian army for 10 years, hiding her gender. She joined the Polish cavalry regiment under the name Sokolov Alexander Vasilyevich in 1806. The service was difficult. Not all men survived; there were many deserters. But Nadezhda did not show her weakness in any way, she was self-possessed and courageous. Nobody suspected that she was a woman. Taking part in the Prussian campaign, she saved the life of a Russian officer. For this she was nominated for an award. To receive an award and advance in career, documents confirming nobility were needed, and Nadezhda wrote a letter to her father. She announced herself and asked for a blessing to continue her military service. However, the father was horrified, imagining the conditions in which the young woman was in the regiment. He wrote to Emperor Alexander I, reported the coordinates of his daughter and demanded that she be returned home. The tsar became interested in the warring woman and ordered Sokolov to be brought to him, keeping his secret.

Durova met with the emperor in St. Petersburg. He personally awarded her the silver Cross of St. George. Thus, she became the only woman to receive this award for heroism and courage shown during the battles. Having listened to her request to remain in the army, the emperor appointed her as a cornet in the prestigious Mariupol Hussar Regiment, where wealthy nobles served. He allowed her to continue to hide her gender, ordered her to bear the surname Alexandrov, formed from his name, and to be called Alexander Andreevich. Note that this was the first precedent in the history of Russia: since the time of Peter I, there was an official ban on the service of women in the Russian army. However, the emperor made a promise with Durova never to reveal her gender, to impersonate a man until the end of her life, and she remained faithful to this oath: until her death, she wore a man’s dress and introduced herself with a man’s name.

But how did Durova manage to hide her gender in regimental conditions? She writes a little about this. It was hard, I often had to retire: “Having received the freedom that I had dreamed of since childhood, I doomed myself to loneliness.” Nadezhda could not constantly be among her fellow soldiers; they could say a strong word, tell an indecent story. The culture of military life that existed in those years saved me. It is well described in Alla Begunova’s book “Nadezhda Durova”. Soldiers then did not live in barracks and did not go to public baths. During the hikes, we spent the night in tents, side by side, with our clothes on. But the toilet and changing clothes were considered an intimate matter for everyone. Durova volunteered to bathe the horses and led the herd further to the river, where she could bathe herself. When the regiment was quartered in locality, everyone had the right to rent an apartment, and Durova rented housing alone.

In the film “The Hussar Ballad,” based on the biography of Durova, the main character falls in love and her secret is revealed. But this did not happen in the life of the real Nadezhda, biographers say. She valued her service very much and could not allow any coquetry or flirting with fellow soldiers. Lines from her “Notes”: “Fearlessness is the first and necessary quality of a warrior. The greatness of the soul is inseparable from fearlessness, and when these two great virtues are combined, there is no place for vices or low passions.” When a person is brave, noble and great in soul, there is no question of any low thoughts, Durova believed. And for all the piquancy of her biography in the light of the moral principles of modern society, it is worth saying that she was not attracted to either men or women.

She remembers that once the daughter of her commander fell in love with her as a man, and in order not to embarrass the young girl, she was forced to leave for another regiment. She writes that men were less attentive, but women, the owners of the apartments she rented, often figured her out and said, looking at her: “Hussar girl.” And she had to change her place of residence.

In 1811, Durova was transferred to the Lithuanian Uhlan Regiment. There she rose to the rank of lieutenant. She took part in the Battle of Borodino, during which she was wounded in the leg by a cannonball fragment. Despite the seriousness of the wound, she refused to go to the infirmary and remained in service. For ten days, overcoming pain, she served in the main headquarters of Field Marshal Kutuzov, was his personal orderly, and carried orders to the regiments. As biographers suggest, Kutuzov knew Durova’s secret. Rumors that a woman was fighting at the front circulated throughout the army, but no one knew who exactly this woman was. One way or another, after the end of the Battle of Borodino, Kutuzov insisted that she go for treatment to Sarapul, to her father.

Durova returned to the army in May 1813, participated in the foreign campaign of the Russian army, in the siege of the Modlin fortress in Poland, the Hamburg fortress in Germany.

In 1816, with the rank of staff captain, Durova retired, going down in Russian history as the first Russian female officer, a participant in two foreign campaigns of the Russian army, the Patriotic War of 1812, the Battle of Borodino, as an orderly of Kutuzov and a holder of the St. George Cross. The emperor himself issued a decree granting Alexandrov a military pension in the amount of one thousand rubles a year until his death.

Watercolor portrait by A.P. Bryullov 1836-1840

“I’ve been out of the habit of this for so long!”

Durova was only 33 years old, and she had already earned herself a lifelong allowance. During her hikes, she kept diaries and now decided to write memoirs. Alexander Pushkin helped her in this field. They were introduced by her brother Vasily. The poet became interested in Durova’s story, and so their correspondence began. She wrote to him under a man’s name, and he addressed her only as “Alexander Andreevich.” Pushkin offered to publish her manuscripts: “I just read the rewritten “Notes”: charming, lively, original, beautiful style. Success is certain."

Having collected her manuscripts, Nadezhda goes to St. Petersburg. They met on June 7, 1836. Subsequently, Durova describes this meeting: “I wrote a short note to Alexander Sergeevich, in which I simply notified him that I was in St. Petersburg. I live here. The next day, at half past twelve o'clock, the carriage of our famous poet stopped at the entrance; I blushed, imagining how he ascended from staircase to staircase and was surprised, not seeing the end of them!.. But then the door opened... Alexander Sergeevich enters!.. There is nothing to add to these words! since she talked about herself in masculine, and when, at parting, Alexander Sergeevich kissed the lady’s hand, the cavalry maiden was very embarrassed: “Oh, my God! I’ve been out of the habit of this for so long!”

In the second issue of his magazine Sovremennik, Pushkin published an excerpt from her notes and wrote a preface in which he revealed her secret. It became a sensation! Nadezhda Durova was outraged by Pushkin’s act, but he urged her to be as courageous in the literary field as in the military. Since then, Durova signed all her works with two surnames: Alexandrov (Durova). Her works were published in separate editions and published in the most popular magazines of the time. The blessing of the great poet opened her path to great literature. Novels and stories were published in four volumes, they were also included in the collection “One Hundred Russian Writers”. Many literature experts of that time - Belinsky, Gogol, Zhukovsky - highly appreciated her literary talent.

There are many legends around this stage of Durova’s life. As Lydia Spasskaya writes in the “Memorable Book of the Vyatka Province,” Durova gave a copy of her notes to Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich and his wife. For this she was given a gift of 1000 rubles. There is a story that Empress Alexandra Feodorovna visited the exhibition of the Academy of Arts, accompanied by Durova, and stopped with her in front of a painting depicting an incident from the battle of Gudstatt: a young cadet with great effort lifts a wounded officer and puts him on his horse... The Empress asked Nadezhda Andreevna, not familiar does she like this episode? Shocked by the memories, she fell in tears at the feet of the queen. The Empress raised her: “You should not bow, but many should bow low to you for your exploits. It’s more fitting for this painting to be with you, which is why the Emperor and I want you to receive it from us as a souvenir of your current visit to St. Petersburg.”

Such successes of Nadezhda Andreevna drew the attention of secular society to her. Durova was invited to evenings, and she invariably appeared there in a man's dress and behaved like a man. As Mikhail Rebelinsky writes in his memoirs about this period of Durova’s life, “she was healthy, cheerful, did not refuse any social pleasures, and at evenings, as they say, she danced until she dropped. In her manners there was a hint of brashness - a characteristic of all cavalrymen of that time. In a retired hussar uniform or in a black tailcoat, she terribly clicked her heels in a mazurka, knelt down, in a word, did all sorts of things in the taste of that time with all the tricks of a true hussar.<…>Alexandrov always wore a men’s suit with two crosses in his buttonhole and never spoke to himself other than in the masculine gender, and clearly showed that he could not stand ladies’ company.”

But gradually the interest in Durova of the sensation-hungry society faded away, and after 5 years in high society, Durova decided to settle in seclusion. She moved to Yelabuga, where some time ago her brother served as mayor. This ancient town in those years belonged to the Vyatka province, now it is part of Tatarstan.

Photo by N.A. Durova (first half of the 1860s)

“The motive is pure and long-term”

With money from literary royalties, Durova bought a small wooden house on a stone basement in Yelabuga. The house was not rich - tradesmen and artisans lived in such houses. Here she lived the last 30 years of her life in complete solitude. “In 1841, I said eternal farewell to St. Petersburg and since that time I have been living forever in my cave in Yelabuga,” she writes. She liked the town because of its calm, provincial and at the same time more progressive life than in other cities far from the capital. Elabuga was cultural center Vyatka province, built up with merchant houses, many educational and charitable institutions, churches and cathedrals. And the residents of the city were loyal to the originality of her personality, because she, true to her word given to the emperor, wore a man’s dress until her death, smoked a pipe, called herself Mr. Alexandrov, and demanded to be addressed as a man. In Sarapul, for example, where her parents’ estate was located, Durova could not live: every day in the morning a curious crowd flocked to the gates of her house in the hope of seeing a woman in a man’s dress.

In Yelabuga, Durova became friends with the father of the future artist, Ivan Shishkin, often visited them, and danced at balls with girls. The Shishkin house stood out for its originality, unlike many merchant families of Elabuga. People of different interests and views met here. Among the guests were rich and educated merchants, famous industrialists, and artists. Here she was understood and respected.

Altai writer Ivan Kudinov, who visited the Shishkins, described her this way in his story: “... what kind of old woman is this, so ridiculously and strangely dressed - in a high top hat worn to a shine, long out of fashion, in a frock coat and excessively wide trousers, set into some completely unimaginable supports. Her face was tiny, withered like an old mushroom, earthy, and only her eyes were lively and sharp, with a bright pupil, they were surprisingly clear, they looked mockingly and intelligently... The old woman’s name was Nadezhda Andreevna Durova, but she herself had long lost the habit of this name and called herself simply - Alexandrov. At that time she was approaching her eighties, but her memory was bright, and she remembered her whole life to the smallest detail...”

Mayor Joseph Erlich was also a good friend of Durova. Participation in foreign campaigns and in the War of 1812 provided rich soil for their conversations and brought them closer together. Residents, knowing about this friendship, came to her with their problems. And she wrote him witty notes - to whom she asked for firewood, to whom space for construction. For example: “This butterfly is asking and crying that it’s as if they threw some kind of harness on her husband. Be merciful to her." Sometimes she bothered the mayor so much with her requests that when they met, he said to her: “Hello, dear Nadezhda Andreevna.” She was offended and left him alone for a while. But at the next meeting he apologized: “Forgive me, last time I mistook you for one of my friends.”

The first floor of the Elabuga house was non-residential; numerous cats and dogs lived there, to which she gave shelter. She had only one servant - a retired veteran soldier, Stepan. Durova lived quietly and simply in a military way. I got up early and immediately went horseback riding. In old age, leaning on a cane, she walked to the Settlement. Then she drank tea, read or embroidered with beads. She was friends with the priest of the St. Nicholas Church, Spassky. I went to Sunday services at the Spassky Cathedral. But she avoided noisy meetings and gatherings. In addition to a thousand rubles for her service, she received 240 rubles annually from the St. Petersburg Society for benefits to needy writers and scientists. She “lived” all her money; after her death, 1 silver ruble was found in the house. She gave away her manuscripts and letters from Pushkin.

Durova lived to be 83 years old and was buried at the Trinity Cemetery with military honors. She asked to be buried in a man's dress, but the priest did not agree to this. In 1901, the dragoons of the Lithuanian regiment - the descendants of Durova's fellow soldiers - erected a grave monument made of green granite for her. The burial place is located next to an old tall poplar; near the fence of the cemetery there is a monument to Durova the Rider.

Durova's descendants through her brother Vasily live in France today. With the permission of the emperor, she placed her son Ivan, who was left with his parents when he was three years old, in a closed military educational institution in St. Petersburg - Imperial War Orphanage. Her son received a metropolitan education and upbringing, but did not communicate with his mother, only once asking in a letter for a blessing for the marriage.

Bust of Nadezhda Durova in the house-museum

The museum-estate of Nadezhda Durova opened in 1993 in Elabuga, in an authentic house that has survived to this day, in the historical center of the town, on Moskovskaya Street. This house is a monument of history and culture federal significance. Every year the museum is visited by more than 10 thousand tourists from different cities of Russia and abroad.

Farida Valitova, the permanent director of the museum, told Top Secret that most often people come to the museum with a negative attitude, perceiving Durova from the perspective of our time: “How could she leave her husband and son? Are you drawn to men?” But by the end of the excursion, the visitors' opinion changes. “These were the first beginnings of feminism. Her mother always told her that a woman is a weak-willed, insignificant creature, born to be the slave of her husband, and cannot do anything in this life. At that time, a woman in Russia had three roles: daughter, wife or widow. And Durova writes that she did not become a man out of whim or contempt for female, but to show that a woman can do a lot,” says Valitova. We must understand, she notes, that Durova’s fate was unique for its time. Today, many women make careers, raise children themselves, and place them in prestigious institutions. But then this was an isolated case: “In the Austrian, French, Italian and Prussian armies there were female heroes who, dressed in men's dresses, served. But this did not happen for long: some followed their loved ones, others - to be close to their husbands. Durova’s motive was pure and long-term.”

House-Museum of Nadezhda Durova

In the fall of 1806, the daughter of the Sarapul mayor, Nadezhda Durova, secretly left home, changed into a man's dress and, under the name of Alexander Sokolov, entered military service. In 1807, she already took part in battles. Durova's secret was known only to a few people, but the rumor that a woman served in the Russian cavalry nevertheless spread throughout the army, acquired legendary details, and Durova herself heard fantastic stories about herself. Thus began the legend about the brave cavalry maiden, a legend that still arouses unflagging interest and grateful admiration, inspiring poets, artists, and musicians.

This legend, as befits a legend, does not exactly follow the facts and circumstances of the event it narrates, but retains its main meaning, its general idea, moral and universal meaning, and therefore resonates in the minds and hearts of a long series of subsequent generations. The idea of ​​the legend about Nadezhda Durova is victory in the struggle for freedom, for personal freedom and for the freedom of the Fatherland. The legend speaks about this; the life and work of Nadezhda Andreevna Durova, a richly and versatilely gifted person who had the courage, rare in people, to transgress the prejudices of her time, a brave warrior, and a talented writer, were dedicated to this.

Nadezhda Andreevna Durova was born in September 1783. She herself did not know her birthday. “My father doesn’t have this written down anywhere,” she tells the historian who was compiling her biography. “Yes, it seems there is no need for this. You can set the day you want.”

Her father, Andrei Vasilyevich Durov, is a hussar officer, the owner of a single small village in the Sarapul district of the Vyatka province (now the Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), her mother, Nadezhda Ivanovna, is a beauty, “one of the most beautiful girls in Little Russia,” Durova says about her, - came from a family of wealthy Ukrainian landowners, the Aleksandrovichs. Nadezhda Ivanovna's parents were against this marriage. The newlyweds were married by "carrying away". Durova described in detail both the passionate romantic love of her parents and her mother’s romantic flight from home with the poor hussar. Apparently, the mother often recalled and told these episodes because they were the only bright and happy pages of her marriage; the following years turned out to be a chain of disappointments and suffering. Despite the fact that after the wedding Nadezhda Ivanovna asked her father for forgiveness for violating his ban, her father did not forgive her and abandoned her. In her parents' house she was the darling of the family, knew no worries and certainly no material deprivations; Having become the wife of a low-ranking combat officer (Durov then had the rank of captain), who also lived only on his salary, she found herself in completely different conditions. She had to limit herself in everything, camp life was difficult and tiring, all this - and much more - was completely different from the idea of ​​​​life that she had formed under the influence of reading idyllic novels. “The torments that preceded my birth,” writes Durova, “surprised my mother in the most unpleasant way; they had no place in her dreams and made the first impression on her that was unfavorable for me.” Nadezhda Ivanovna was expecting her son, thinking that for the sake of her grandson her father would forgive her, but a girl was born. The mother still received the desired forgiveness, but her hostility towards her daughter remained.

Durova says that once on a hike her mother, tired and irritated by her screaming, threw her, a baby, out of the carriage window in a nervous fit, and then the father instructed the flank hussar Astakhov to nurse his daughter. “My teacher Astakhov,” recalls Durova, “carried me in his arms all day long, went with me to the squadron stable, put me on horses, let me play with a pistol, waved a saber.” But when the mother decided to take care of her daughter herself, who by that time was already six years old, she was faced with the fact that the upbringing of Hussar Astakhov had taken ineradicable roots. “Having taken me from Astakhov’s hands, my mother could no longer be calm or cheerful for a single minute; every day I angered her with strange antics and my knightly spirit; I knew all the command words firmly, I loved horses madly, and when my mother wanted to force me to knit a lace, then I asked with tears that she would give me a pistol, as I said, to click; in a word, I took the best advantage of the education given to me by Astakhov! Every day my warlike inclinations intensified, and every day more mother did not love me. I did not forget anything of what I learned while constantly with the hussars; I ran and jumped around the room in all directions, shouting at the top of my voice: “Squadron! go right! from place! march-march!" My aunts laughed, and my mother, who was driven into despair by all this, knew no bounds to her annoyance, took me into her room, put me in a corner and made me cry bitterly with abuse and threats."

Meanwhile, a tragedy was unfolding in the Durov family: Andrei Vasilyevich, who in 1789 left military service due to the growth of his family - besides Nadezhda, he had two more daughters and a son - and had secured the position of mayor in Sarapul, began to cheat on his wife, Nadezhda Ivanovna had a hard time experiencing the betrayal husband, her health deteriorated.

Nadezhda Durova in her youth

The difficult atmosphere in the house and the mother’s constant complaints about fate made a deep impression on N. A. Durova and gave direction to thoughts that later determined her entire life path. “Perhaps I would have finally forgotten all my hussar habits and become an ordinary girl, like everyone else, if my mother had not imagined the fate of a woman in the most bleak form. She spoke to me in the most offensive terms about the fate of this sex: a woman, according to in her opinion, she must be born, live and die in slavery; that eternal bondage, painful dependence and all kinds of oppression are her lot from cradle to grave; that she is full of weaknesses, deprived of all perfections and incapable of anything; that, in a word, "A woman is the most unfortunate, the most insignificant and the most despicable creature in the world! My head was spinning from this description; I decided, even if it cost me my life, to separate myself from Iol, who, as I thought, was under the curse of God."

Durova suffered because her mother, in her desire to subjugate her daughter and break her will, forced her to do things for which the girl felt disgust, humiliated her with reproaches and ridicule, and took away everything she was attached to. Over the years, the mother's supervision became more petty and burdensome. “She continued to keep me locked up,” says Durova, “and not allow me a single youthful joy. I was silent and submitted; but oppression gave maturity to my mind. I made a firm intention to overthrow the painful yoke.”

At that time, the only release from parental authority for a girl was marriage, which is why, probably, eighteen-year-old Nadezhda Durova willingly agreed when the assessor of the Sarapul Zemstvo Court, an official of the 14th grade, Chernov, proposed to her. In 1803 she gave birth to a son, Ivan. But her marriage turned out to be unsuccessful; she soon left her husband, who was transferred to serve in Irbit. and returned to her parents' house. What caused this is unknown; Subsequently, Durova, describing her life, did not mention a word about marriage or her son and did not maintain any relationship with him or her husband. One can only assume that some features of her own married life and the fate of her mother were reflected in the story “The Game of Fate, or Illegal Love.” Of course, neither she herself nor her mother have anything in common with the main character of the story, Elena G*** - a weak, characterless nature, just as the events described in her cannot be correlated with the actual events in the Durov family, but The idea consistently pursued in the story that the behavior of her husband is to blame for Elena’s death makes one think that here Durova was thinking about herself, and if in the story she, with the help of fantasy, brought the logical development of events to a tragic end, then in reality she interrupted it at the initial stage.

Liberation through marriage failed.

The home situation became more and more difficult every day. The mother no longer hoped for anything, “continuous annoyance spoiled her already naturally hot-tempered disposition and made it cruel,” she, “oppressed by grief, now described the fate of women in even more terrible colors.” The idea of ​​the fatal slavery of women caused Durova “disgust for her life” and forced her “with firmness and constancy” to engage in “contemplation of a plan to leave the environment assigned by nature and customs to the female sex.”

It is not known how long Durova spent in her parents’ house after leaving her husband, but, apparently, quite a long time - a year or two. It was a time of serious reflection about life, about oneself, about one’s future, a time of persistent self-education. Elena G***, the heroine of the story “The Game of Fate”, abandoned by her husband, reasons: “What am I in the world?.. a wife without a husband... was I given an upbringing?.. Why didn’t they teach me anything!.. why I don’t know what the local colonel knows; the mayor; even old R***: I would cry, playing my fantasies on the piano or the harp... I would draw... if only they would instill in me a desire to read; maybe Perhaps the judgments, instructions, examples that I could find in books gave me strength of character, spiritual strength!..” Of course, this reflected Durova’s own thoughts about the poverty of her own education. Showing extraordinary willpower, she began to replenish it on her own. At the same time, she begins to write, and her first literary experience is the story about the fate of Elena G***, the story about the fate of a woman in modern society. Subsequently, this story was repeatedly revised, and now it is impossible to separate the original text from the later revisions, but, apparently, the plot line and its main ideas remained the same as in the original version.

Having confirmed her intention to “leave the sphere assigned by nature,” Durova naturally comes to the idea of ​​posing as a man, and just as naturally for herself - as a man, she represents the only type of activity - military service in the cavalry, she simply had no idea about any other. Of course, patriotic impulses, family traditions, and character traits played a role here.

The year was 1806. Napoleon, having defeated the troops of the Russian-Austrian coalition in the campaign of 1805, was preparing to conquer Russia. In Russia they understood the inevitability of a war with Napoleon and also prepared for it: reforms were carried out in the army, weapons were improved, especially artillery, and patriotic sentiments intensified in society.

Both her childhood years, spent under the supervision of Hussar Astakhov and remembered as the happiest in her life, and her father’s approving reviews of her ability to ride a horse - everything forced Durova to think in one direction: “A warlike heat flared with incredible force in my soul; dreams took root in mind, and I actively began to find ways to put into action my previous intention - to become a warrior, to be a son for my father and to forever separate from the sex, whose fate and eternal dependence began to frighten me."

On September 17 (29 according to the new style), Durova, having changed into a men's Cossack suit, left home at night and, posing as a nobleman who wanted to enter military service against the will of her parents, joined the Cossack regiment in order to reach the place of deployment with him regular troops. She called herself Alexander Vasilyevich Sokolov. Under this name, having reached Grodno with the Cossacks, she was recruited as a “comrade,” that is, an ordinary nobleman, into the Konnopol Uhlan Regiment.

“So, I am free! free! independent! I took what belonged to me, my freedom: freedom! the precious gift of heaven, which inalienably belongs to every person! I knew how to take it, protect it from all claims for the future, and from now on until the grave it will be and my inheritance and reward!" - this is how Durova conveys her first thoughts that night when she took a decisive step, left the house and rode on horseback through the forest, catching up with the Cossack regiment. “Will”, “freedom” - words often found in Durova: “Will - precious will! - spins my head with delight from early morning to late evening”; on the most difficult days, when she falls down from exhaustion from military drill (after all, she is an ordinary soldier), when every minute she must submit to harsh military discipline, she still repeats with delight: “Freedom, the precious gift of heaven, has finally become the lot of mine forever! I breathe it, I enjoy it, I feel it in my soul, in my heart!" “Will” and “freedom” are broad, multi-valued concepts, but for Durova they have a completely definite and unambiguous meaning: she understands by “will” and “freedom” the right of a person to choose his own path in life; she chose military service, thereby realizing, as she herself says, “the inalienable right of a person to control his own will,” therefore, for her, soldiering is a will, despite the fact that for others this same soldiering is the most indisputable expression of bondage.

Until the end of her days, Durova recalled her first year of military service with particular warmth. “I will never be erased from my memory,” she writes, “this first year of my entry into the military field; this year of happiness, complete freedom, complete independence, all the more precious to me because I myself, alone, without the help of an outsider, knew how to acquire them ".

Durova joined the Konnopol regiment on March 9, 1807; in early May, the regiment set out on a campaign to join the Russian army, already fighting Napoleonic troops in Prussia.

Before setting out on the campaign, Durova wrote a letter to her father, in which she reported where she was and under what name she was, and begged him to forgive the escape, “to give a blessing and allow me to follow the path necessary for my happiness.”

Durova's service in the Konnopol Regiment and her participation in the hostilities of 1807 are recorded in the formal list - the main official document of each serviceman. We present it in full because it wonderfully conveys the flavor of the time and, moreover, is the only documentary source of this period of Durova’s biography.

"Formular list

Comrade Sokolov's Polish Horse Regiment

November 6th, 1807.

Names. Comrade Alexander Vasiliev son of Sokolov.

How old are you? 17.

By measure. 2 arshins 5 vershoks.

What signs does it have? His face is dark, pockmarked, his hair is brown, his eyes are brown.

From what state? From the Russian nobles of the Perm province, the same district. He has no peasants and has not provided proof of nobility.

During the entire service, where and when he was on campaigns and in action against the enemy. In Prussia and in actual battles with French troops, 1807 May 24 near the city of Gutstatt, 25 in pursuit of the enemy to the Pasarzhi River, 26 and 27 in a shootout and skirmishes at the Pasarzhi River - well, 28 at the cover of the rearguard March and with strong reflection the enemy at the crossing near the city of Gutstatt, 29 near the city of Gelzberkh, June 2 near Frindland, from May 30 to June 7 at the cover of the rearguard March to the town of Tylzeta in an incessant firefight and when the enemy advanced in strong reflections of Onago.

Did you go on home leave and when and did you show up on time? I haven't been.

Whether he was fined in court or without court, when and for what exactly. I haven't been.

Single or married, has children. Single.

Included or on top and where is it located. Included with the shelf."

Durova's father, having received his daughter's letter, submitted, through his brother living in St. Petersburg, a petition to the Tsar with a request to find his “daughter Nadezhda, by her husband Chernov, who, due to family disagreements, was forced to hide from home and... registering under the name of Alexander Vasilyev, Sokolov’s son, Polish cavalry regiment, serves as a comrade" and return "this unfortunate woman" to her parents' home. A.V. Durov showed particular persistence in this matter, not only because he loved his daughter, but also because Nadezhda Ivanovna died in the spring of 1807 and he, experiencing later repentance, grieved the loss and felt lonely.

Durov, “by the highest order,” without revealing her incognito, was taken to St. Petersburg by a special courier. Attached to her form list was a report from Commander-in-Chief Buxhoeveden: “His excellent behavior, Sokolov, and the zealous performance of his position from the very moment he entered the service acquired him from everyone, both his superiors and his comrades, complete affection and attention. The chief of the regiment himself, General -Major Kakhovsky, praising his service, the zeal and efficiency with which he always carried out everything entrusted in many battles with the French troops, convincingly asks to leave him in his regiment as such a non-commissioned officer who gives hope of being very good over time officer, and he himself, Sokolov, has an indispensable desire to always remain in the service."

The Tsar, who initially had the intention, as Durova herself reports, to “reward” her and “return her with honor to her father’s house,” after her request allowed her to remain in the army, ordered to be called by her name Alexandrov, which in itself, but according to the concepts of that time, meant a great degree of favor, and ordered her to be enlisted in the aristocratic Mariupol Hussar Regiment. Having learned that Durova saved the life of an officer on the battlefield (she herself did not tell him about this), the Tsar presented her with the Cross of St. George, which, he explained, was due to her for this act according to the statute of the order.

Nadezhda Durova saves a wounded officer

From the day of the royal reception - December 31, 1807 - Durova, now called Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov, the name she bore until her death, was enlisted as a cornet in the Mariupol Hussar Regiment.

In St. Petersburg, Durova learned about the death of her mother. Since her mother died shortly after receiving her letter from Grodno, Durova blames herself for the fact that her letter upset her mother and, perhaps, hastened her death. The Tsar instructed the head of his chancellery, Lieven, to bring to his attention the requests of Cornet Alexandrov; Durova asked for protection for her father, which she informed her father about. Soon Lieven received a letter from old man Durov that was in no way consistent with the royal command. Later, Andrei Vasilyevich would be proud of his “senior lancer,” but now he was surprised, outraged, and worried. “On the notice of my daughter, who lives in St. Petersburg under the name Alexander Sokolov,” he writes, “but unfortunately, who served as a comrade in the Konnopolsky regiment, who writes that I should directly address you, which I fulfill, I humbly ask the first to accept me into your patronage and my entire poor family, and therefore my unfortunate friend Sokolov, or, I don’t know what name he goes by now. I ask Your Excellency to listen to the voice of nature and feel sorry for the unfortunate father, who served in the army for too twenty years as an officer, and then continued to serve as a civilian I also served for more than twenty years, having lost my wife, or, better said, my best friend, and having hope in Sokolov that, at least, he would delight my old age and bring peace to the depths of my family; but everything turned out the opposite: he writes, that she is going to serve in the regiment, where without explaining in her letter. Is it possible to do the favor of notifying me with your most respectable notice, where and in what regiment, and can I hope to soon have her as a mistress of the house? This kindness of yours will increase my patience, and I take the courage to ask Sometimes I’ll write to Sokolov; he assured me that you would deliver my letters to him. Oh, how I, my father, will be grateful to you for this, and then honor me with your gracious answer! " Apparently, when Durov wrote this letter, he did not yet know that his daughter’s military service was sanctioned by the tsar; subsequently he did not repeat his request.

Durova served in the hussars for just over three years, then, at her request, she was transferred to the Lithuanian Uhlan Regiment. In "Notes" she explains that she transferred because the daughter of the colonel of their regiment fell in love with her and she did not want to put the girl in an awkward position. But the same “Notes” say that there was another reason: service in the hussars required significant funds; for the life that hussar officers traditionally led, their salaries could not be enough, which many did not care about at all, since they were rich and received income from their estates, Durova had no income other than her salary, and, naturally, she did not feel particularly comfortable among her fellow soldiers. Uhlan officers lived more modestly.

Information about Durova’s further service is contained in the formal list compiled for her upon resignation. To what was contained in the form of “comrade” Sokolov, it added that “in Prussia against French troops in battles” “for excellence he was awarded the insignia of the Military Order of St. George, 5th class.” She met the Patriotic War of 1812 already as a second lieutenant of the Lithuanian Uhlan Regiment, and with the regiment she went the entire route of the Russian army from the border to Tarutino. “1812 against French troops in Russian borders in various actual battles,” reports the formulary list, - June On the 27th near the town of Mir, on July 2nd near the town of Romanov, on the 16th and 17th near the village of Dashkovka, on August 4th and 5th near the city of Smolensk, on the 15th near the village of Luzhki, on the 20th near the city Rzhatskaya pier, on the 23rd near the Kolotsky monastery, on the 24th near the village of Borodino, where he received a concussion in the leg from a cannonball.”

On August 29, Durova was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. After leaving Moscow, she served for a short time as M. I. Kutuzov’s adjutant.

The contusion she received under Borodin turned out to be more serious than first thought, and Durova was forced to take leave for treatment. She spent her vacation at her parents' house in Sarapul, and in the spring of 1813 she returned to the army, which by that time was already abroad. During the campaign abroad, the Lithuanian regiment took part in battles in Poland and Germany.

In 1816, having served in total ten years, Durova retired with the rank of captain. Official documents say that Lieutenant Alexandrov was “dismissed from service due to illness,” she herself writes in a short autobiography: “In 1816, at the request of my father, I retired, although with great reluctance I left my brilliant career,” a contemporary reports , that “Alexandrov refused to serve as an offended person: they sent him a captain to head him,” that is, instead of appointing her squadron commander, as should have been the case, according to seniority, they appointed someone else. It is the third version that is most likely: Durova, in a temper, submitted her resignation letter, but soon regretted it, wrote a request to be re-entered into service, but, as noted in the official certificate, “the highest permission was not given” to her request.

Durova lived for several years in St. Petersburg with her uncle, for a year in Ukraine with her relatives, then returned to Sarapul to live with her father, who held the position of mayor. After the death of A.V. Durov in the mid-1820s, his position was taken by his son, Vasily Andreevich, who was soon transferred to the same position in Yelabuga; together with her brother she moved to Elabuga and N. A. Durova.

In Yelabuga, “having nothing to do,” Durova writes in her autobiography, “I decided to review and read various scraps of my Notes that had survived from various upheavals of a not always peaceful life. This activity, which revived the past in my memory and in my soul, gave me the idea to collect these scraps and put them together into something whole, print it.”

From the few incidental remarks and details contained in Durova’s works, it is clear that she was engaged in literary work a lot and constantly. In the story “Literary Inventions,” which describes the events of the end of 1811, she reports: “In my suitcase there were many sheets of paper written on,” including “a description of Elena G.” - future story "The Game of Fate"; describing an episode that happened to her in Germany in 1814, when she and a friend, having set off on a journey and being left without all the things and money stolen from them, while the upset friend went to bed, went to persuade the hostess to “light a candle for nothing” and After the candle was received, she “wrote two pages.” From this we can conclude that the manuscript was always with her and daily literary work became a custom and habit for her.

Durova's works reveal a good knowledge of Russian and foreign literature. When characterizing someone she knows, she often resorts to comparing him with a literary character; in the same story “Literary Inventions” she expresses the idea that the main condition for creating a real literary work is the writer’s talent - a simple truth, but difficult to grasp for those who have free time and have paper and a pen at hand: "...the name of the poet, in my opinion, can be given to anyone who just tidies up rhymes, even if there is no spark in them human meaning; but only one who has received from nature this elegant gift, independent of skill and science, can be a poet."

Durova doubted whether she had this gift, since only in 1835 she decided to take the first steps towards publishing her literary works - “Notes”, as she called them.

Nadezhda Durova at Kutuzov's

Durova's brother Vasily Andreevich accidentally met A.S. Pushkin in 1829; in 1835 he convinced his sister to send her works to Pushkin and undertook to be an intermediary. To V. A. Durov’s letter, Pushkin replied: “If the author of the Notes agrees to entrust them to me, then I will willingly undertake to work on their publication. If he thinks of selling them in manuscript, then let him set the price for them himself. If the booksellers do not agree, then, I'll probably buy them. It seems we can guarantee success. The author's fate is so curious, so famous and so mysterious that the solution to the riddle should make a strong overall impression. As for the syllable, the simpler it is, the better. The main thing: truth, sincerity. The subject in itself is so entertaining that it does not require any decorations. They would even harm it."

Despite the fact that rumors about a girl fighting in the ranks of the Russian army spread quite widely during the Patriotic War of 1812, only a few knew the truth. The low degree of awareness of contemporaries is characterized by Denis Davydov’s answer to Pushkin’s question about Durova: “I knew Durova because I served with her in the rearguard, throughout our retreat from Neman to Borodino. The regiment in which she served was always in the rearguard, together with our Akhtyrsky Hussar Regiment. I remember that then they said that Alexandrov was a woman, but so, slightly. She was very secluded and avoided society, as much as you can avoid it in bivouacs. I happened to once at a halt enter a hut together with the officer of the regiment in which Alexandrov served, namely with Volkov. We wanted to drink milk in the hut... There we found a young Uhlan officer who had just seen me, stood up, bowed, took his shako and went out. Volkov told me; “This is Alexandrov, who, they say, is a woman.” I rushed to the porch, but he was already galloping far away. Subsequently, I saw her at the front...”

When a year later, Pushkin published an excerpt from Durova’s “Notes” in Sovremennik, he prefaced it with a preface in which he writes about what exactly aroused the curiosity of society: “What reasons forced a young girl, of a good noble family, to leave her father’s house, to renounce of her sex, to take on labors and responsibilities that frighten even men, and to appear on the battlefield - and what other ones? Napoleonic! What prompted her? Secret family grief? A fevered imagination? An innate, indomitable inclination? Love?.. These are the questions now forgotten, but which at that time greatly occupied society."

Doubting her literary talent, Durova’s writings sometimes seemed “insignificant.” When sending “Notes” to Pushkin, she did not at first intend them for publication, but saw in them only material on the basis of which a literary work could be created. “Your wonderful pen,” she wrote to Pushkin in her first letter, “can make something very interesting out of them for our compatriots.” Pushkin’s enthusiastic review: “I just read the rewritten Notes: charming, lively, original, beautiful style. The success is undoubted,” made Durova happy, thanks to him she believed in her literary talent.

It was initially assumed that Pushkin would be the publisher of Durova's Notes. She came to St. Petersburg with their complete manuscript. Durova described her meetings with Pushkin in the story “A Year of Life in St. Petersburg, or the Disadvantages of the Third Visit,” but in the end she entrusted the publication of “Notes” not to Pushkin, but to her cousin Ivan Grigorievich Butovsky, a military writer, translator, author of the books “On the Discovery of monument to Emperor Alexander I", "Field Marshal Prince Kutuzov-Smolensky at the end and beginning of his military career", translator of "History of the Crusades" by Michaud, "Conversations in the Kingdom of the Dead" by Fontenelle. Subsequently, Durova regretted that, as she herself writes, “I was stupid to deprive my Notes of their most brilliant decoration, their high glory - the name of the immortal poet!”

Correspondence with Pushkin and memories make it possible to imagine the essence of what happened. She hurried with the publication, but Pushkin patiently explained: “The troubles of a writer are incomprehensible to you. It is impossible to publish a book in one week; it takes at least two months”; demanded that Pushkin go to the Tsar, who was also at the maneuvers, and present him with the manuscript for censorship (before this, Pushkin told Durova that his works must undergo the Tsar’s censorship), he answered her: “It is impossible for me to go to the Tsar for the maneuvers because many reasons. I even thought of turning to him as a last resort, if the censorship did not let your Notes through. I will explain this to you when I have the good fortune to see you in person"; disagreements arose between them over the title of the book: Durova wanted to title it “The Handmade Innuendo of the Russian Amazon, Known as Alexandrov,” Pushkin objected to her: “The Innuendo of the Amazon” was somehow too elegant, mannered, reminiscent of German novels. “Notes of N. A. Durova” - simple, sincere and noble”; Durova’s displeasure was also caused by the fact that Pushkin in the magazine called her N. A. Durova, and not Alexandrov.

But main reason Durova's break with Pushkin was probably that, when publishing an excerpt from her notes in Sovremennik, he, perceiving them as a historical documentary source, edited it accordingly and shortened the fictional pieces. Durova was writing a work of fiction, that is, a work of a different genre, and therefore, quite naturally for the author, she reacted painfully to the distortion of her plan. She does not write about her indignation at Pushkin’s editing, but her statement about the author’s will in the story “A Year of Life in St. Petersburg” is directly related to this issue: “Today I read that there are a lot of Gallicisms in my Notes. This could easily be because I I have no idea what Gallicism is. They accuse the publisher, why didn’t he correct them? I couldn’t! I absolutely couldn’t, I had neither the right nor the power to do so. During the author’s lifetime, the publisher is neither the master nor the owner of the published work and must comply with the will of the present his ruler. Not only did I make it an indispensable condition for my relative not to correct anything in my Notes, but I also vigilantly guarded against this happening. So, everything that is good in them is mine and everything that is bad is also mine. There is no not a single word of someone else’s, that is, not actually mine.” Confirmation of the same is the preface “From the Publisher” preceding the publication of her book: “The author of the Notes offered here, my cousin, instructed me to publish them without the slightest change. I willingly fulfill her wish.”

When editing Durova's text, Pushkin had at his disposal a small excerpt of her Notes, which did not give an idea of ​​​​the nature of the entire manuscript or the author's intention. After the release of the first volume, when the peculiarity of Durova’s works became clear to Pushkin, he no longer makes the same demands on it as a historical document, but evaluates it as a remarkable literary work.

Durova's "Notes" were published as a separate book in the fall of 1836 under the title "Cavalry Maiden. Incident in Russia." As Pushkin predicted, they were a great success and revived the former interest in their author. Durova receives invitations to aristocratic houses, fashion appears for her, she described all this in the story “A Year of Life in St. Petersburg,” depicting the curious world in satirical colors. The fashion for Durova in aristocratic drawing rooms soon passed, but an interesting, original and talented writer came to Russian literature with the book “The Cavalry Maiden”.

Nadezhda Durova 1837

The deepest and exact description Durova the writer was given by V. G. Belinsky. He also responded to the publication of an excerpt in Sovremennik in a review article dedicated to this issue of the magazine: “Here is a wonderful article “Notes of N. A. Durova, published by A. Pushkin.” If this is a hoax, then, we admit, it is very masterful; if genuine notes, then entertaining and fascinating to the point of incredibleness. It is only strange that in 1812 they could write in such good language, and who else? a woman; however, perhaps they have been corrected by the author at the present time. Be that as it may, we really wish so that these interesting notes continue to be published." In 1839, in a review of new book"Aleksandrov's Notes. Addition to the Maid of the Cavalry" Belinsky writes about Durova as an undeniable talent, notes that already from her first appearance in Sovremennik "the literary name of the Maid of the Cavalry was consolidated"; the following year he places Durova’s name on the list of names of “more or less brilliant and strong talents” along with Karamzin, Baratynsky, Delvig, Denis Davydov, Polezhaev, Dahl, Zagoskin.

Belinsky drew attention to the main thing that, in fact, constitutes the essence of both “The Cavalry Maiden” and “Aleksandrov’s Notes”: “...my God, what a wonderful, what a wondrous phenomenon of the moral world the heroine of these notes.” At the same time, he notes her literary skill: “And what a language, what a style the Cavalry Maiden has! It seems that Pushkin himself gave her his prose pen, and it is to him that she owes this courageous firmness and strength, this bright expressiveness of her style, this the picturesque fascination of his story, always complete, imbued with some hidden thought."

Many contemporaries expected to find in Durova's Notes a disclosure of secret circumstances, some sensational revelations, others were looking for accurate historical information about the era of the Napoleonic wars - both of them were quite disappointed: the book turned out to be devoid of a taste of scandal, it did not contain new information about major historical figures.

The subtlety and insight of Belinsky’s assessment was determined by the fact that he read Durova’s “Notes” without a biased look and saw in them what they contained, and did not demand what they did not contain.

Durova's "Notes" are not memoirs in the generally accepted sense, but a literary and artistic work. The main thing in them is not the chain of events, not the series of historical figures passing through their pages. Although Durova also has vivid descriptions historical episodes, and characteristics of historical persons, and the characteristics are interesting, for example, she depicts the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, Miloradovich, not as most of his contemporaries saw him, but similar to the views reached by historians who also knew what was hidden from contemporaries, the main thing in Durova’s “Notes” is the image of their author, “a wondrous phenomenon of the moral world.”

The image of Durova appears to the reader in development, year after year, step by step, the writer depicts how it develops, under what influence, she analyzes her actions, psychology, identifying the main thing. That is why this image is so convincing.

The formation of the image occurs throughout the entire book, from the first to the last page, gradually and sequentially, therefore Durova’s book is unusually holistic, it cannot be divided into fragments, excerpts (excluding sometimes only inserted short stories - stories heard by the author from different people), in There is no complete image in a separate passage.

Durova in life created her own destiny, her “Notes” are a literary parallel to the same creative process: just as in life she swept away what was unnecessary to her, so in the book she removed what was unnecessary, distorting the idea of ​​developing the image. Therefore, in “Notes” there is no story about marriage; the generally accepted emphasis on historical events, the chronology was violated, and first of all the chronology of her own life, she consistently reduced her age, throwing out from her own life the years from getting married to joining the army.

Despite the exceptional fate of her literary counterpart, Durova created an artistic, typical image of her contemporary. What she decided to do in life worried the minds of her contemporaries, it was their secret dream. She knew this and in the book she addressed them directly: “Freedom, the precious gift of heaven, has finally become my destiny forever! I breathe it, I enjoy it, I feel it in my soul, in my heart! My existence is permeated with it, it enlivens it! To you, young people "My peers, you alone understand my admiration! You alone can know the price of my happiness!"

Durova's literary work is also a literary phenomenon. “It’s only strange that in 1812 they could write in such good language,” Belinsky marvels. Indeed, in terms of age, according to the models on which she cultivated her literary taste, Durova belongs to the pre-Pushkin period of literature; she is older than the most significant prose writers of the 1830s, Zagoskin, Lazhechnikov, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, but her prose is often less archaic than theirs. .

Following "The Cavalry Maiden", Durova published a number of books: the stories "A Year of Life in St. Petersburg", "Pavilion" and "Sulfur Spring" (positively assessed by Belinsky), "An Angle", "Treasure", the novels "Gudishki" and "Yarchuk" . Dog-spirit", her "Tales and Stories" are published in four volumes. Strictly speaking, all of Durova’s literary works constitute a kind of single organism, the unifying principle of which is her autobiographical narrative, and everything else branches off from it. The form in which this happens is always the same: “Pavilion”, and “Sulfur Spring”, and “Gudishki”, and other works are built according to the same model - someone tells the author some story, and the author, in turn, , retells it to the reader.

Among Durova's stories, V. G. Belinsky especially highlights the story "Pavilion", he calls it "beautiful" and in a review dedicated to it, reveals the deep moral meaning contained in it and penetration into the recesses of human psychology, which makes it possible for a philosophical comparative description of love and passions.

Nadezhda Durova

“This story makes a deep and sharp impression,” writes Belinsky, “with the exception of the excessive abundance of details and some prolixity, so energetically and with such art presented!.. This reckless father, who arbitrarily assigned his son a field that is contrary to his spirit and for that curses him a corpse for a terrible crime; this young priest, with his deep soul and volcanic passions, strengthened by upbringing and solitary life, passions that, without this, perhaps would have been imbued with the light of thought and would have been kindled with the gentle fire of feeling, and a powerful will would have rushed to good and in good activity would have yielded fruit a hundredfold: what two terrible lessons!.. Doesn’t the first prove that the moral freedom of man is sacred: Valerian’s father doomed him to serve the altar as a child, but God did not accept the vows uttered by unconscious and dissatisfied obedience to someone else will, and not by one’s own desire to fulfill the needs of one’s spirit and in this fulfillment to find one’s bliss!.. Doesn’t the second prove that only feeling is true and worthy of a person; but that every passion is a lie, delusion, sin?.. Feeling does not allow murder, blood, violence, villainy; but all this is the necessary result of passion. What was Valerian's love? - the passion of a mighty soul and, like any passion, a mistake, deception, delusion. Love is the harmony of two souls, and the lover, lost in the beloved object, finds himself in it and if, deceived by appearance, considers himself not loved, then he walks away with quiet sadness, with some kind of painful bliss in his soul, but not with despair, not with the thought of revenge and blood, about all this that humiliates the divine nature of man. Passion expresses the will of a person, striving, contrary to the definitions of eternal reason and divine necessity, to fulfill the claims of his pride, the dreams of his imagination or the impulses of his boiling blood!..

Yes, let us repeat once again: the story “Pavilion” presents excellent content, fascinating and powerful, although in places it is drawn out; exposes a strong, masculine hand."

Of course, Durova’s entire work belongs entirely to the era of romanticism, such are the subjects she chooses, strange incidents, and affected passions. In the forties, such romanticism became a hopelessly outdated phenomenon in Russian literature. Reviews of Durova's new works are becoming cooler; critics still note the entertaining nature of her narrative, but at the same time write about the strangeness of the choice of topics and the outdatedness of literary techniques. Durova stops publishing.

She leaves for Yelabuga and lives there forever, intercedes with local authorities for everyone who turns to her for help, turns her house into a shelter for abandoned and crippled animals.

They asked her why she didn’t write anything anymore, to which she answered: “... because now I can’t write the way I wrote before, and I don’t want to appear in the world with anything.” But, probably, she still wrote, but was not published, as she had not been published before until 1836, although she had been writing for two decades.

A literary work lives two lives: one - with its contemporaries and the second - in the perception of subsequent generations. Over time, the merits of Durova’s works, and above all her “Notes”, noted by A. S. Pushkin and V. G. Belinsky, become increasingly clear, and what contemporaries blamed on her as shortcomings seems increasingly insignificant; the image created by her acquires greater depth and is revealed more fully: contemporaries saw in him only a portrait of a specific person, we now see in him a typical character, a portrait of the era. And it is easier for us than for her contemporaries to understand the depth of the content of her work and perceive the artistic perfection - “it seems that Pushkin himself gave her his prose pen” - of her prose.

Now Durova’s works are perceived completely differently than they were perceived by her contemporaries: now in their perception the element of the acuteness of the knowable mystery has weakened significantly, because it has long been no secret to anyone that a woman was hiding under the name of Ulan Alexandrov, although, it must be said, this ancient event continues also interest readers of the last quarter of the 20th century. But if earlier readers were eager to know how it all happened, now they want to know why it happened.

It is significant that Pushkin, among the reasons that, in the opinion of society, could prompt Durova to put on a military uniform - “secret family sorrows”, “inflamed imagination”, “innate, indomitable inclination”, “love” - does not name the true one that guided her and directly named in the “Notes”: the desire for freedom, for the implementation of the inalienable right of man to control his own will, although this was the main one.

Contemporaries, trying to explain Durova’s act to themselves, went through all the reasons listed by Pushkin and paid special attention to the “innate, indomitable inclination”:

Clutching the hilt of the saber in his hand,

Bellona looked stern.

Flies towards the enemy army, -

This is how the poet of the 1820s - 1840s A. N. Glebov described it. She was also portrayed as Bellona, ​​the Roman goddess of war, in some other poems and prose works. Such an interpretation simplifies and distorts the idea of ​​Durova's Notes and the image of their heroine.

In Durova’s life, military service occupied such a significant place that it was in relation to it that her personality manifested itself especially clearly and fully.

Durova grew up in a military environment, military life was dear and close to her. It is also very important that this was a time when the army was entrusted with the high mission of defending the fatherland, which ennobled and gave the highest purpose to military service. Durova was admired by the courage of the Russian soldier, she was able to be carried away by the excitement of the attack, the desire for glory, and finally, she was subjugated by the mighty beauty of the moving troops, but she by no means possessed that “indomitable inclination” for war that was attributed to her.

Monument to Nadezhda Durova in Yelabuga

“I love a bloody battle,” D. Davydov sang. Durova does not try to poeticize the war. About the fierce battle of Heilsberg, she writes: “Ah, man is terrible in his frenzy! All the properties of a wild beast are then united in him!” they groan and crawl across the so-called field of honor!” She sees the battles as a series of “terrible, bloody scenes.” Durova galloped into attacks, was in danger of being killed, showed great personal courage, but in her “Notes” a generally insignificant episode is told, one phrase was dropped about it, but in its light the image of Durova-Bellona takes on a completely different color. In this episode, Durova talks about how she fulfilled the captain’s request to get a goose for dinner: “Oh, how ashamed I am to write this! How ashamed to admit such inhumanity! With my noble saber I cut off the head of an innocent bird!!! This was the first blood, which I have shed throughout my entire life. Although this is the blood of a bird, believe me, you who will someday read my Notes, that the memory of it weighs on my conscience!.."

Wearing men's clothing, legally accepting male name, she did not cease to be a woman - not in the sense that from time to time she remembered that she female body weaker than a man and less adapted to military service, that, comparing herself with male colleagues, she notes: “... everything that is ordinary for them is very unusual for me,” but that, despite the circumstances, the creative principle is stronger in a woman than in a man, manifested itself in her constantly. The remark thrown as if in passing is significant here: “Great God! What strange activities has my fate condemned me to! Should I scream in a wild voice, and in such a way that even a mad horse was pacified!.. I was angry with myself for my forced feat: for the insult inflicted on the tenderness of the female organ by my heroic exclamation!

The “compulsion” of a consciously accomplished feat in no way detracts from its significance and greatness; moreover, it makes it even more significant and majestic, it naturally reveals the depth and richness of the nature of Durova who accomplished this feat.

Durov’s creative work is placed on a par with the defense of the fatherland. Seeing that Cossack officers are working in the fields on the Don, she finds this “the most noble”: “With what respect, I say, I watched how they themselves cultivated this land: they themselves mowed the grass of their fields, they themselves swept it into haystacks!.. How nobly they use their time of rest from the occupations of a warrior!..” Respect for the working man, the peasant, was also dictated by her reasoning about one of the villages through which she passed with the regiment: “... this village is poor, bad and ruined, it must think about the exorbitant demands of her landowner." The humanistic direction of Durova’s thinking was, as they liked to determine trends in political and social development at the beginning of the 19th century, in the “spirit of the times”; this was the atmosphere in which Decembrism arose and developed. Respect for human personality, a protest against corporal punishment, so common in the army - all this allows us to consider Durova among the leading people of her time.

Humanity, kindness, and endless love for all living things were evident in Durova and in her attitude towards animals. Belinsky also specifically drew attention to those pages of her “Notes” in which she writes about this. Perhaps what speaks most clearly about her attitude towards animals is a small reflection about one of the properties of her own character: “Nature has given me a strange and restless quality: I love, get used to, become attached with all my heart to the apartments where I live; to the horse I ride; to a dog, which I will take to myself out of regret; even to a duck, a chicken, which I buy for the table, I will immediately feel sorry for using them for what they were bought for, and they live with me until they accidentally disappear somewhere.” Durova's love for animals was combined with an intuitive insight into the psychology of the animal; in her Notes she describes many subtle and interesting observations of animals. Of course, this trait was inherited by her cousin, the famous trainer V.L. Durov, with his system of “painless training” - training animals with affection.

Until old age, Durova retained clarity of mind and sensitivity and understanding of the demands of modern times, rare in an elderly person. A researcher of her life and work, B. Smirensky, discovered in the archive her article written in 1858, on the eve of reforms, in which the statements of seventy-five-year-old Durova sound surprisingly fresh and modern: “In our time, a woman is bored, unable to find something to do, tired of inaction, such a woman is more inappropriate than ever! Now, more than ever, Russian society needs active, working women, intelligently sympathetic to the great events that are happening around them, and capable of making their contribution to the building of the public good and order that is being built by common efforts."

Photo of Nadezhda Durova (1860-1865)

N.A. Durova died in 1866. She bequeathed to call herself Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov during the funeral service, a name that she achieved for herself and under which she lived her life. The priest did not dare to break the rules of religion and in the funeral service he called her God’s servant Nadezhda.

She went down in history under her real name with a definition indicating her life’s feat - cavalry maiden Nadezhda Durova.

Durova was buried with military honors. In front of her coffin, an officer of the local garrison carried her St. George Cross on a velvet pillow - the first and only St. George Cross since the establishment of this main military order of Russia in the mid-18th century - given to a woman

World history has known a huge number of examples when women were forced to hide their belonging to the fair sex in order to engage in activities that in those years were considered exclusively male. A living example of this was Nadezhda Andreevna Durova, who became one of the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812, as well as the first female officer in the Russian Army, forever entering the national history. This story was so unique that it has survived to this day, leaving its traces in art. For example, the film “The Hussar Ballad” made a significant contribution to the popularization of Nadezhda Durova.

It is believed that Nadezhda Durova became the prototype of Shurochka Azarova from this Soviet film. But I didn’t know until that moment that the character of Shurochka was taken from a real image.

If this is news for anyone else, let's find out the details...

Even the birth of this amazing woman was preceded by a romantic story. The father of the future cavalry girl, commander of the squadron of the Akhtyrsky Hussar Regiment, captain Andrei Vasilyevich Durov, married Maria Alexandrovich, the daughter of a Ukrainian landowner, for whom her father predicted a more prestigious party. Having escaped, the young couple got married secretly without receiving a parental blessing, after which the father cursed Mary. And only after the birth of his first child, Nadezhda, on September 17, 1783, he was able to forgive the young couple.

The girl’s childhood could hardly be called cloudless. Her mother wanted a boy, but in due course a daughter was born into the young family. The father was happy about the birth of his first child of any gender, but Maria could not fall in love with the girl. Later, in her memoirs, Nadezhda Andreevna wrote that one day her mother simply threw her out of the carriage window, just because the child was crying. Fortunately, the girl only scratched her cheek when she fell. However, this cruel act prompted her father Andrei Vasilyevich to transfer the girl into the care of non-commissioned officer Astakhov; he was simply afraid to leave the child with his mother. This, apparently, determined the fate of our heroine. Until she was five years old, she was in the care of non-commissioned officers and soldiers. Of the women, only the nurse looked after the girl, but very soon there was no need for her. So being raised by hussars and living in barracks conditions made the girl more like a tomboy.

Nadezhda Durova in her youth

In 1789, Nadezhda’s father resigned and received the position of mayor in Sarapul, Vyatka province (today the Udmurt Republic). Here, on the banks of the Kama, the mother again took charge of raising the girl, but she did not like any of the girl’s activities. The mother tried to teach the girl to do needlework and household chores, but without much success. Her favorite pastime was riding the Circassian horse Alkida, which was given to the girl by her father. Gradually she turned into a girl, but she never made any friends, and she was a stranger to male society.

In October 1801, at the age of 18, following the will of her father, Nadezhda married the chairman of the Sarapul Lower Zemstvo Court, V. S. Chernov. However, their family life did not work out, and the birth of their son Ivan in 1803 did not help. The birth of the first child did not add to the agreement between the spouses, and Nadezhda, apparently, did not particularly love her child. In any case, the marriage did not work out and soon Nadezhda Durova returned to her father’s house, leaving the child with her husband. For three whole years she was torn between her unloved husband and son and her stepfather’s house, where her mother was not happy about her return.

Such a life soon became simply unbearable for her, and on her birthday, September 17, 1806, dressed in a man’s dress, Nadezhda joined the Cossack regiment, which had left Sarapul the day before. According to one version, she fell in love with a Cossack captain and left the city with him on her favorite horse Alkida. For some time she lived with the captain under the guise of an orderly, but after a while the love faded, but Nadezhda liked the army life, which she had known from the cradle. Since the Cossacks were required to wear beards, sooner or later she would have been exposed, so she decided to change her unit, reaching the Konnopolsky Uhlan cavalry regiment, where she asked to serve, calling herself Alexander Vasilyevich Sokolov, introducing himself as the son of a landowner. At the same time, she reduced her age by 6 years, since there was not even a hint of stubble on her face. The regiment believed her and accepted her as a comrade - a rank of private of noble origin. This happened on March 9, 1807 in Grodno.

It is worth noting that in 1806-1807 Russia fought against Napoleon in East Prussia and Poland. Finding himself at war, the newly minted lancer simply got lost among the numerous young daredevils, who were always in abundance in the cavalry. At the same time, the commanders never tired of reprimanding the lancer Sokolov for his reckless bravery in battle, but later they spoke about him in the most flattering way before their superiors. The reputation of an efficient campaigner and a brave man was the best shield from all suspicions. Alexander Sokolov, although young and bare-faced, was respected by his comrades. Nadezhda Durova took part in the battles of Gutstadt, Heilsberg, Friedland, where she showed courage, and for saving an officer from death in battle she was even nominated for the St. George Cross. Her military career was quite successful; she was promoted to cornet (the first officer rank in the cavalry).

The military idyll was disrupted by her parents, who were still able to find their daughter. Asking to return her to her father's house, they wrote personally to the Russian Emperor Alexander I. After this, she was deprived of freedom of movement and weapons in the regiment, then escorted to St. Petersburg for a personal audience with the emperor, who became interested in this unusual story. After a rather long conversation, Alexander I, who was struck by the woman’s selfless desire to serve her country in the military field, allowed her to stay in active army. And in order not to reveal her secrets and hide her from her relatives, he transferred her to the Mariupol Hussar Regiment with the rank of second lieutenant, while she was transferred under the name of Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov, which was derived from the emperor’s own name, moreover, the autocrat even allowed her to contact him with requests. At the same time, the emperor asked the cavalry maiden to take the secret of her name with her to the grave.

To top it all off, the generous Russian monarch gave the cornet two thousand silver rubles to sew a hussar uniform, which Durova simply did not have the opportunity to pay for on her own. A set of hussar clothing in those years really cost a lot, since it was supposed to be decorated with gold fittings, or, in extreme cases, silver, however, the amount issued by the emperor was hefty. Most likely, a fairly significant part of it went to pay for the silence of the tailors, who perfectly understood who they were taking measurements from to sew the hussar uniform.

N. A. Durova, 1837. Drawing by V. I. Gau

Three years later, she transferred from there to the Lithuanian Uhlan Regiment - either because of a romantic story with the daughter of the regiment commander who fell in love with her (the regiment never found out that she was a woman), the colonel was very dissatisfied that Alexander Andreevich did not propose to him daughter in love with him; according to another version, the reason was more prosaic - the high cost of living for hussar officers. One way or another, she returned to her father in Sarapul for two years, but her relationship with her husband and son never went well. Apparently, from birth she was assigned to serve the sovereign and the fatherland, simple joys family lives were alien to her. In 1811, the cavalry maiden again left Sarapul and went to serve, only now she transferred to the Lithuanian Lancer Regiment, with which she eventually ended up taking part in the Patriotic War with Napoleon.

With the Lithuanian Uhlan Regiment, where she commanded a half-squadron, Durova took part in the battles of Smolensk, the Kolotsky Monastery, and in the Battle of Borodino, a cavalry maiden defended the Semyonov flushes, where she was shell-shocked in the leg by a cannonball, remaining in the ranks. Durova herself explained her action by the fact that she did not see any blood, which means, as she believed, there was no danger to her health. In fact, she was simply afraid to turn to doctors, as she was afraid of being exposed. Many years later in last years In life, this injury received in the war will make itself felt; because of her bad leg, she will not be able to not only ride a horse, but will even have difficulty walking.

After leaving Moscow, already with the rank of lieutenant, she was appointed adjutant to Kutuzov, who knew who she really was. Soon the consequences of the shell shock made themselves felt and she was sent home on leave, where she remained until May 1813. Most likely, the field marshal himself sent her on leave, convincing her that the shell shock needed to be treated. She returned to the active army during an overseas campaign. She took part in the battles for the liberation of Germany, distinguishing herself during the capture of Hamburg and the Modlin fortress.

Photo of N. A. Durova (circa 1860-1865)

The service of the cavalry maiden continued until 1816. With the rank of staff captain (the next rank after lieutenant), succumbing to her father’s persuasion, she retired with a lifelong pension. After which she lived in Sarapul and Yelabuga. Here she begins to write “Notes” about her unusual life. So she would have lived in Yelabuga, possessing only local fame, if not for the great Russian poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

Nadezhda Durova really wanted to keep her word that she once gave to the emperor, remaining until the end of her days as a retired captain-captain Alexandrov, if not for Pushkin, who met the brother of a cavalry maiden in the Caucasus in 1835. At that time, Durova, having left the service, had been living in Yelabuga for almost 10 years on the imperial pension. It was then that Vasily spoke about the unusual life story of his sister and suggested that Pushkin publish the memoirs that she wrote, talking about the affairs of bygone days. Durova agreed to send the famous poet fragments of her future “Notes”. When Pushkin read this manuscript, he saw that it was written beautifully literary language and didn’t even need editing by an editor. Therefore, he decided to publish them in the second issue of his magazine Sovremennik, in which he informed the society of the real name of the author, indicating in the preface to the memoirs that they belonged to the cavalry maiden Durova. Initially, Nadezhda Andreevna was very angry with the famous poet for revealing her secret and true name, forcing her to unwittingly break her oath to the emperor, but soon the woman forgave him and in 1836 even moved to live in St. Petersburg.

At that time, the life of the retired captain captain was developing very successfully, she even became a writer. She was readily accepted in the capital's society, she visited Winter Palace. Emperor Nicholas I and Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich shook hands with the cavalry maiden, which not all Russian generals were honored with at that time. The Empress took Nadezhda Durova through the numerous halls of the palace, showing rare things and asking her opinion about the battle paintings. However, for some unknown reason, all this suddenly ended. Having lived in St. Petersburg for 5 years, Nadezhda Durova managed to publish 12 novels, but soon left everything and returned to her native and beloved Yelabuga. Despite the fact that her writing was highly appreciated by such luminaries of Russian literature as Belinsky, Zhukovsky, Pushkin and Gogol, she never returned to literary activity.

Monument to N.A. Durova in Yelabuga

In Yelabuga, Durova lived quite secludedly, content with the company of only her servant Stepan. She lived in the house of her younger brother, distinguished by her love for animals, picking up dogs and cats from the street. Despite her solitude, she also visited local society and appeared on city streets, but certainly only in men's clothing, be it a civilian suit or a uniform without epaulettes. The retired cavalry maiden demanded that the people around her address her exclusively in the masculine gender, and she herself spoke only on behalf of Alexander Alexandrov. The townspeople knew perfectly well who was hiding under this name and the corresponding men's clothing, but respecting and coming to terms with her habits, they did not express any surprise or displeasure about this matter.

Despite her isolation, Nadezhda Durova also had friends. They say that she was especially friendly with the mayor of the city, Ivan Vasilyevich, who was the father of the famous Russian artist Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin. This family very often invited Nadezhda Durova to balls, where she danced only with ladies, as befits a real officer. She lived a long life in Yelabuga. Nadezhda Durova died at an advanced age on March 21 (April 2, new style) 1866, when she was 82 years old. She bequeathed to bury herself as God's servant Alexander, but the priest was afraid to break church rules and buried her as Durova. At the same time, she was honored as a military officer by firing a three-shot salvo over her grave at the Trinity Cemetery in Yelabuga. Today, it is in Yelabuga that the only museum-estate in Russia of the cavalry maiden Nadezhda Durova is located.

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Monument to Nadezhda Durova

Nadezhda Andreevna Durova

Nadezhda Andreevna Durova was one of the first Russian women to devote herself to military affairs. Despite the enormous difficulties that she had to overcome, she achieved her goal and became the first female officer in the Russian army, a “cavalry maiden.” She can rightfully be considered a hero of the War of 1812: leaving her home, her relatives, Durova rushed into this adventure, risking her life and valiantly fighting the French in 1807, 1812, and 1813.

Hussar education
Nadezhda Andreevna was born on September 17, 1783. In her “Notes” she indicated the year 1789 or 1790, which is due to the fact that Durova decided to reduce her age, since the Cossacks where she served were supposed to wear a beard, and she had to give himself as a 14-year-old boy in order to somehow explain the lack of a beard.

Durova's parents were the hussar captain Durov and the daughter of the Little Russian landowner Alexandrovich (one of the richest gentlemen of Little Russia). Their marriage was not approved by the girl's parents, and she ran away from her parents' house along with the brave hussar.

From the first days, the Durov family began to lead a wandering regimental life. The mother, who really wanted to have a son, hated her daughter: “Take it away, take the worthless child out of my sight and never show it.” One day, when one-year-old Nadezhda was crying for a long time in the carriage, her mother snatched her from the nanny’s hands and threw her out the window. The bloody baby was picked up by the hussars.

After this, the father gave Nadezhda to be raised by the hussar Astakhov: “My teacher Astakhov carried me in his arms all day long, walked with me to the squadron stable, put me on horses, let me play with a pistol, waved a saber, and I clapped my hands and laughed at the sight of the showering sparks and shiny steel; in the evening he brought me to the musicians, who played various things before dawn; I listened and finally fell asleep.”

In 1789, Andrei Vasilyevich left military service and received the position of mayor in the city of Sarapul, Vyatka province. Little Nadezhda again began to be raised by her mother. But her “hussar” upbringing and fighting disposition prevented her from mastering typically female occupations - needlework and housekeeping.

A few years later, her mother sent her to her relatives in Little Russia. There her ardent temper subsided. She read more and more, walked, and even began to go out into the world. She became more feminine, and her regimental quirks faded into the background.

But after returning home, Durova again remembered her childhood, and she spent more and more time with her father. He gave her a Circassian horse, Alcis, whose riding soon became her favorite pastime.

In 1801, when Nadezhda turned 18, she married assessor Vasily Stepanovich Chernov, and a year later her son Ivan was born. Durova, probably like her mother towards her, did not have any feelings for her son: she did not even mention him in her “Notes”. Life with her husband did not work out; she also could not sit still in her parents’ house. And in 1806, Nadezhda Durova, dressed in a Cossack costume, ran away from home. This is what she was thinking: “So, I'm free! free! independent! I took what belonged to me, my freedom: freedom! a precious gift from heaven that inherently belongs to every person! I knew how to take it, protect it from all claims for the future, and from now on until the grave it will be both my inheritance and reward!”

How Alexander Vasilyevich Sokolov became Alexander Alexandrovich Alexandrov
Only in 1807 did Durova’s father receive news from her. Until that moment, he believed that she was no longer alive. And the news that his daughter, under the name Alexander Vasilyevich Sokolov, was in the army shocked him. Andrei Vasilyevich decided to find his daughter. And by that time she had already taken part in many battles of the military campaign of 1807:

“May 22nd 1807. Gutstadt. For the first time I saw the battle and was in it. How much nonsense they told me about the first battle, about fear, timidity and, finally, desperate courage! What nonsense! Our regiment went on the attack several times, but not together, but in squadrons. I was scolded for going on the attack with each squadron; but this, really, was not from excessive courage, but simply from ignorance...”

“June 1807. Friedland. In this cruel and unsuccessful battle, more than half of our brave regiment fell! We went on the attack several times, drove the enemy away several times, and in turn were driven out more than once! They showered us with grapeshot, crushed us with cannonballs, and the piercing whistle of hellish bullets completely deafened me! Oh, I can't stand them! Another thing is the core! At least it roars so majestically and it always gives short shrift! After several hours of hot battle, the rest of our regiment was ordered to retreat somewhat to rest. Taking advantage of this, I went to see how our artillery operated, not at all thinking that they could rip my head off for nothing. Bullets showered me and my horse; but what do bullets mean in this wild, silent roar of guns?

For saving a wounded officer in the midst of one of the battles, Durova was awarded the soldier's St. George Cross and promoted to non-commissioned officer. Amazingly, while participating in battles, she never shed someone else’s blood.

But soon her secret was discovered, thanks to the efforts of her father and uncle. She was deprived of weapons and freedom of movement in the regiment and was sent with an escort to St. Petersburg, where she was immediately received by Alexander I.

Durova asked the emperor for permission to continue her military service, which he allowed her to do: he ordered her to join the Mariupol Hussar Regiment with the rank of second lieutenant under the name of Alexander Alexandrovich Alexandrov.

According to Durova, being a hussar meant a lot to her, and so she transferred to the Lithuanian Lancer Regiment.

Patriotic War
During the Patriotic War of 1812, Durova commanded a half-squadron.

Her mood at the beginning of the war was not very encouraging: “They say that Napoleon entered our borders with a large army. Now I’ve somehow become more indifferent; There are no longer those lofty dreams, those outbursts, those impulses. I think that now I will no longer go on the attack with each squadron; It’s true that I have become more reasonable; experience took its usual toll on my fiery imagination, that is, it gave it a decent direction.”

However, already near Smolensk Durova was ready to fight: “I again hear the menacing, majestic roar of cannons! I see the shine of bayonets again! The first year of my warlike life is resurrected in my memory!.. No! a coward has no soul! Otherwise, how could he see and hear all this and not glow with courage! We waited for two hours for orders under the walls of the Smolensk fortress; Finally we were ordered to go to the enemy.”

Durova fought heroically in the Battle of Borodino: “Hell of a day! I almost went deaf from the wild, incessant roar of both artillery... Our squadron went on the attack several times, which I was very unhappy with: I don’t have gloves, and my hands are so numb from the cold wind that my fingers can barely bend; when we stand still, I put the saber in its sheath and hide my hands in the sleeves of my overcoat: but when they are ordered to attack, I must take out the saber and hold it bare hand in the wind and cold. I have always been very sensitive to cold and, in general, to any bodily pain; Now, enduring day and night the cruelty of the north wind, to which I am exposed defenselessly, I feel that my courage is no longer what it was from the beginning of the campaign. Although there is no timidity in my soul and the color of my face has never changed, I am at peace, but I would be happy, however, if they stopped fighting.”

In this battle, she was shell-shocked in the leg by a cannonball and was sent for treatment. Later, Durova served as an orderly for Kutuzov.

In May 1813, she again appeared in the active army and took part in the war for the liberation of Germany, distinguishing herself during the blockade of the Modlin fortress and the capture of the city of Hamburg.

Photo by N. A. Durova (circa 1860-1865)

Durova was promoted to lieutenant, and in 1817 she retired with the rank of headquarters captain, with the right to receive a pension. She spent the rest of her life in Yelabuga. It would seem that her military service has come to an end. But, nevertheless, she constantly wore a man’s suit, signed all her letters with the surname Alexandrov, got angry when people addressed her as a woman, and in general was distinguished, from the point of view of her time, by great oddities.

Nadezhda Andreevna died on April 2, 1866 in Yelabuga, Vyatka province at the age of 82, and was buried in the Trinity Cemetery. At burial she was given military honors.