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Which historical event is portrayed in The Captainâs Daughter?
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Aleksandr Pushkin
Aleksandr Pushkin, oil on canvas by Vasily Tropinin, 1827; in the National Pushkin Museum, St. Petersburg.
The Captainâs Daughter (1836), a celebrated historical novel by Aleksandr Pushkin, portrays the Pugachev Rebellion, a major uprising of Cossacks and peasants that took place in Russia between 1773 and 1775.12
Led by the Don Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev, who claimed to be the deposed Emperor Peter III, the rebellion sought the abolition of serfdom and the overthrow of Catherine the Great. Pushkinâs interest in this period was significant; prior to writing the novel, he conducted a formal historical study of the conflict titled A History of Pugachov (1834).12