Pushkin’s duels

09.12.2022

1816. Pushkin challenged Pavel Hannibal, his own uncle, to a duel. Reason: Pavel beat off the young 17-year-old Pushkin’s girl Loshakova at the ball. Bottom line: the duel was canceled.

1817. Pushkin challenged Peter Kaverin, his friend, to a duel. The reason: composed by Kaverin playful poems. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1819. Pushkin challenged the poet Kondrati Ryleev to a duel. The reason: Ryleev retold a joke about Pushkin at a social salon. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1819. Pushkin is challenged to a duel by his friend Wilhelm Kuchelbecker. Reason: joking poems about Kuchelbecker, namely the passage “Kuchelbecker and nauseating”. Bottom line: Wilhelm shot Sasha, but Sasha did not shoot Wilhelm.

1819. Pushkin challenged Modest Korff, a servant from the Ministry of Justice, to a duel. The reason: Pushkin’s servant pestered Korff’s servant drunk and the latter beat him. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1819. Pushkin challenges major Denissevich to a duel. The reason: Pushkin was behaving provocatively in the theater, he was shouting at the actors and Denisiewicz reprimanded him. Result: the duel was cancelled.

1820. Pushkin challenged Fyodor Orlov and Alexei Alexeev to a duel. The reason: Orlov and Alexeyev reprimanded Pushkin for trying to play billiards while drunk and disturbing others. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1821. Pushkin challenges the officer of the French service Degilli to a duel. The reason: a quarrel with unexplained circumstances. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1822. Pushkin is challenged to a duel by lieutenant colonel Semyon Starov. The reason: they did not share a restaurant band at the casino, where both indulged in a game of chance. Result: they shot, but both missed.

1822. Pushkin challenges 65-year-old State Councilor Ivan Lanov to a duel. The reason: a quarrel during a festive dinner. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1822. Pushkin challenged to a duel the Moldavian nobleman Todor Balsh, the owner of the house where he was a guest in Moldavia. The reason: Pushkin was not courteous enough to answer a certain question from the wife of Balsh, Maria. Result: they shot, but both missed.

1822. Pushkin challenges Bessarabian landlord Scartl Prunculo to a duel. Reason: He was a second in a duel, where Pushkin was also a second, and the guys did not agree on the rules of the duel. Result: The duel was cancelled.

1822. Pushkin challenges Severin Pototsky to a duel. Reason: discussion at the dinner table about serfdom. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1822. Pushkin was challenged to a duel by staff-captain Rutkovsky. The reason: Sasha did not believe that there are hailstones weighing 3 pounds (and hailstones of such weight do exist, my note) and mocked the retired captain. The result: the duel was cancelled.

1822. Pushkin was challenged to a duel by the Kishinev oligarch Inglesi. Reason: Sasha was harassing his wife, the gypsy Lyudmila Shekora. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1832. Pushkin was challenged to a duel by ensign of the General Staff Alexander Zubov. The reason: Pushkin caught Zubov cheating during a game of cards. Conclusion: Zubov shoots at Pushkin (past) and Pushkin himself refused to be shot.

1823. Pushkin challenges the young writer Ivan Russo to a duel. The reason: Pushkin’s personal dislike to this person. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1826. Pushkin challenged to a duel Nikolai Turgenev, one of the leaders of the Union of Welfare, a member of the Northern Society. The reason: Turgenev scolded the poet’s poems, in particular his epigrams. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1827. Pushkin was challenged to a duel by an artillery officer Vladimir Solomirsky. Reason: the officer’s lady named Sofia, to whom Pushkin showed sexual interest. Result: the duel was cancelled.

1828. Pushkin challenged the Minister of Education Alexander Golitsyn to a duel. The reason: Pushkin wrote an impertinent epigram on the minister and the latter questioned him about it with passion. The result: the duel is cancelled.

1828. Pushkin challenges the secretary of the French embassy in Petersburg Lagrée to a duel. The reason: the unknown girl at the ball. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1829. Pushkin challenged to a duel an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Khvostov. The reason: Khvostov expressed his dissatisfaction with Pushkin’s epigrams, in particular with the fact that Pushkin compares Khvostov with a pig. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1836. Pushkin challenges prince Nikolai Repin to a duel. Reason: dissatisfaction with Pushkin’s poems about himself. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1836. Pushkin challenged Vladimir Sologub to a duel. The reason: unflattering statements of Sologub about the poet’s wife Natalia. Result: the duel is cancelled.

1836. Pushkin challenged the French officer Georges Dantes to a duel. The reason: an anonymous letter, which claimed that Pushkin’s wife was cheating on him with Dantes. Conclusion: In January 1837 Pushkin is killed.