23. An African Descendant in Russia
A born aristocrat, Pushkin was a descendant of Abram Petrovich Gannibal, an African kidnapped and sold into slavery as a child. Gannibal ended up in Istanbul, and from there was taken to Russia and presented as a gift to Peter the Great. The Tsar adopted Gannibal and raised him in the imperial household as his godson. He rose to prominence as a general and courtier during the reign of Peter’s daughter Elizabeth – an extraordinary life described in Pushkin’s biographical novel The Negro of Peter the Great. Gannibal’s great-grandson Pushkin was a precocious youth, who published his first poem when he was fifteen years old while a student at the elite Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.
While still at the Lyceum, he began his first major work, the romantic poem Ruslan and Ludmilla. It used folkloric Russian themes in an epic romance about a hero who overcomes numerous obstacles to rescue his bride. It flouted accepted genre rules with a rejection of the traditional Russian style of classic poetry, and broke barriers to use colloquial speech in verse. The poem was violently attacked, but it brought Pushkin fame and cemented his place as an innovator. By the time he graduated, Pushkin was a committed social reformer, which upset the Tsarist authorities and secret police, who placed him under surveillance for the remainder of his life.
