In 1830, when Pushkin became engaged to Natalia Goncharova, his father gave him the village of Kistenyovo, part of the family’s Boldino estate near Nizhny Novgorod. Now a landowner for the first time, Pushkin travelled to Boldino early that autumn, in order to have 200 serfs officially transferred to his name. Quarantine regulations imposed in response to a cholera outbreak prevented him from returning to Moscow and he was obliged – to his deep frustration – to stay in the village until early December.
During these months – now commonly referred to as the “Boldino Autumn” – Pushkin wrote an extraordinary number of masterpieces. Among them was his first complete prose work, Povesti Belkina [The Tales of Belkin] – five seemingly simple, anecdotal stories supposedly narrated
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Citation: Chandler, Robert. "Istoriia sela Goriukhina". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 May 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38950, accessed 26 December 2024.]