Russian duel. Gordin Ya.A.

"? I hate a duel - this is barbarism, in my opinion, there is nothing knightly in them, ”Emperor Nicholas I once said.“ One cannot help but respect a duel. This is a noble and tragic matter, ”wrote the Russian philosopher Konstantin Leontyev. Between these two poles lies the deadly space of a duel - a duel as a way in which the Russian nobility has defended and honed its sense of personal dignity for many decades. The book of Y. Gordin is devoted to the historical, cultural and, finally, philosophical and examinal aspects of Russian duel practices of the XVIII-XIX centuries-from the era of Catherine II, the time of the first fights in Russia, to the reign of Alexander III, when the duel tradition died. The Russian duel - purposefully ruthless in comparison with the European - played a decisive role in raising a nobleman as a person of honor. The book is built on extensive and diverse material - memoir and epistolary certificates, archival documents (military -festivities about fights). The reader passes a gallery of bright characters: from brtiers, professional duelists, to the defenders of the honor of their wives and sisters, their own honor, as well as people involved in a random conflict, but did not consider it possible to evade the fight. Without knowledge of the duel tradition, it is impossible to understand the drama of the Russian nobility, and therefore the very drama of Russian history of the post -Peter period. In the application, the reader will find genuine affairs - about Pushkin duel and Dantes, two cases about the duels of Lermontov, the case of the famous duel of Captain Kushelv and General Bakhmetyev and others, as well as excerpts from the literary works of Russian classics, where dueling fights become the subject of artistic narrative.