New Alexander Pushkin Documentary

The untold story of his dueling pistol and its custom case

Vortex Studios, in collaboration with the Cultural Department of the Pskov Regional State Archive, is honored to present a new documentary about the death of Russia’s greatest writer, and the untold story of his personal dueling pistol being reunited with its custom case.

Dr. Arkady Gennadievich Troyansky, Honorary Chairman of the Pushkin Heritage Society and Director of the Cultural Department of the Archive, is team leader of the scholars responsible for researching and discovering the details of this forgotten and fascinating portion of Russian history

Arkady was born in the city of Pskov in 1969, his father a worker at the Pskov Cable Factory, and his mother a sewing machine operator at the Slavyanka Garment Factory. Youngest of four, Arkady was the only child to survive the influenza epidemic of 1977, since attributed to a lab leak.

Little Arkady fell in love with Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin’s poetry at the age of 8, when his mother read him the master’s “A Tale about a Fisherman and a Fish.” Despite expectations for Arkady to follow in his father’s footsteps at the cable factory, his son became an aspiring historian.

After serving in the Red Army near Dzerzhinsky in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Arkady studied at Pskov State Pedagogical University. He obtained a doctorate in Russian literature, focused on the poetical and metaphysical use of Church Slavonic forms and locutions throughout Pushkin’s work.

Dr. Troyansky’s first job was as junior researcher at the Pskov State Archives, where he gained access to rare historical relics, including a police report from 1837 in which Pushkin’s wife, Goncharova Natalia Nikolayevna, mentioned the disappearance of Pushkin’s own dueling pistol and its case.

Fascinated by the mysterious whereabouts of this one-of-a-kind pistol, Dr. Troyansky created an independent research team that eventually led them to the story of Sir Arthur Chadwick of Berkshire, a collector from England who had found the poet’s pistol, yet still sought its long lost custom case.

Coming to the attention of the KGB in the late 80s, Dr. Troyansky raised suspicions regarding his English contacts, and was forced to stop his research. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the eminent historian has persisted, the fruits of his labor captured in this new video.

On behalf of Dr. Troyansky, his dedicated team at the Cultural Department of the Pskov Regional State Archive, and all of us at Vortex Studios, we are thrilled to finally reveal the story of the greatest Russian writer’s fated pistol and case. May you be as inspired as we were during this production:

Transcript

As told by…

Dr. Arkady Gennadievich Troyansky
Honorary Chairman of the Pushkin Heritage Society, and
Director of the Cultural Department of the Pskov Regional State Archive

Poets aren’t born for deeds domestic,
To follow greed or battle’s fire,
We’re born to author sounds majestic,
To nourish prayers, and to inspire.

This timeless poem reminds me of a story about an antique collector from the United Kingdom. His name was Arthur Chadwick of Berkshire.

Arthur was a successful financier who lived an uneventful and frankly boring life — aside from having a unique obsession:

He collected rare and often historic 19th century pistols and their cases.

He even had a professional restoration expert to help bring these antiques back as close as he could to their original condition.

After decades of research and hunting throughout the world to find the best of them, he felt his collection was mostly complete — except for one very interesting item.

The crown jewel of his antique pistols was the one owned by the legendary Russian writer and poet, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin.

The German Mang-in-Graz percussion dueling pistol was in excellent condition, and was used in the final duel that cost Pushkin his life.

The relic even featured a brown spot on its grip that was alleged to be dried drops of Pushkin’s own blood.

A literary genius, Pushkin was known for being a jealous husband. In November of 1836, he challenged his rival, the Frenchman Georges d’Anthès to a duel.

After weeks of failed negotiations, the duel with d’Anthès took place on January the 27th at the bank of the Chornaya Rechka, or Black River, in Russia.

A strong wind blew across an empty field, and the weather was cold and clear, with snow falling from the bare trees.

At the signal, the opponents walked to two barriers, 10 steps apart, and were instructed to shoot when ready. After the first one shot, the other returned fire.

Pushkin was the first to approach his barrier, stopped and began to aim. d’Anthès fired first from the step before his barrier, a total distance of 11 steps.

The bullet struck Pushkin’s hip, puncturing his abdomen. But the duel continued! Pushkin announced that he would shoot, d’Anthès turning sideways.

Pushkin got up, fired, and d’Anthès fell. When Pushkin asked where d’Anthès was wounded, he replied in his chest, to which Pushkin shouted, “Bravo!”

That was a lie.

His adversary was only lightly wounded in his right arm, while the father of modern Russian literature collapsed, and was already bleeding heavily from his abdomen.

In the depth of a cold Russian winter, on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, Pushkin was taken to his home.

Of the three doctors who lived nearby, none was there. By pure accident, his family and friends found a German physician, a Dr. Schulze.

The doctor did his best, but Pushkin died of peritonitis two days later, at 2:45pm on January the 29th, 1837.

Pushkin was buried in the grounds of Svyatogorsk Monastery in present-day Pushkinskiye Gory, near the town of Pskov, beside his dear mother.

At first the pistol was believed to be lost forever.

But scholars have revealed that Dr. Schulze took Pushkin’s fateful, blood-stained pistol with him back to Germany, where it remained for over a hundred years.

Somehow and at some point, Pushkin’s pistol got separated from its custom made case, which also contained accessories such as pistol brushes and tools.

The pistol alone was eventually found by an American soldier during WW2, and brought back to his home in Ohio, placed in a drawer, and forgotten about for decades.

Some time later the pistol was sold at an antique flea market to a European antique dealer, and brought to the UK, where it fell into the hands of our collector.

But the case was missing, and that prevented Arthur from being excited about showing what would otherwise be the matching pair to the crown jewel of his pistol collection.

The tension nearly drove him mad. Despite having the pistol, finding its missing case turned into one of his life’s most important and urgent missions.

For years after acquiring just the pistol, he tried to hunt down this equally rare case, but couldn’t find it. Eventually, he resigned himself to its unique case being forever lost.

One day his cousin came for a visit. Dreading the experience, he never really liked the guy, who was too loud and obnoxious, traveling the world wasting his trust fund.

For the hundredth time the conversation veered toward how boring the financier’s life seemed in comparison to his, until his cousin asked about his rare pistol collection.

All their relatives had heard about it, but few had ever seen it. So Arthur took his cousin for a tour, and walked him into a room dedicated to these rare items.

The space was like a museum, beautifully decorated and softly lit, with rows of rare pistols in their cases placed along the perimeter on little wooden oak podiums.

His cousin’s eye was drawn to the lone pistol without a case, the German Mang-in-Graz percussion dueling pistol used by Pushkin during his final duel.

“Hey!” he asked, “where is the case for this one?”

“I’ve been searching for it for years,” said Mr. Chadwick, “and I’ve looked everywhere. Nobody seems to know where it is, or if it even still exists.”

“What does it look like?” his annoying cousin asked.

“Legend has it that Pushkin’s pistol case had distinctive features, including a gorgeous brass flower, embossed on the top of the case, alongside his initials, cyrillic A.P.”

“I think I remember seeing something like it!” said his cousin. “I was traveling with my friends across the Adriatic, exploring the islands of Croatia.”

“We went to this tackle shop in the Island of Unije,” he continued. “The owner was an old man, who had seen better days.”

“The case you describe was on a shelf, filled with gear.”

“With a brass flower on the top?”

“Yes.”

“And with the initials, written in cyrillic, A.P.?”

“Yes!”

Arthur wasted no time! He sent his cousin away, packed a few things, and was on the road within minutes.

He took a cab to Heathrow Airport, and got the first flight to Zagreb.

Arriving first thing the next morning, he got a local taxi. The driver spoke some English, but demanded a crazy fare for taking him to the island as soon as possible.

Arthur happily paid, and promised to pay him even more if the cabbie agreed to be his personal guide and translator all the way to his destination.

The town was on the western shore of the Island of Unije, so they had to take a ferry for the rest of the way, leaving the taxi behind.

After another full day’s journey, they got to their destination at six or seven in the morning. They searched for, and found, the ramshackle tackle shack.

But they arrived too early. People were showing up for the daily fish market, and they asked them about the identity of the shop owner by the pier.

He was Damien Petrovich, an old man, ninety something, who was a drinker and therefore slept late most days.

Finally about ten that morning, Arthur and his driver, drinking coffee at a cafe across the street to stay awake, saw the old man shuffle toward the store.

He held a large ring of keys, and struggled to find the right one, and took forever to finally open the creaking door to his run down store.

Arthur threw several dinars for the coffee, and rushed into the store, eager to see if his dream of finding the case could actually come true.

Once inside, it didn’t take long for Arthur to identify Pushkin’s pistol’s case, sure enough embossed with the brass flower and the poet’s initials.

He couldn’t believe it! There it sat on a shelf, but full of fishing gear wrapped in an old, yellowed Yugoslavian newspaper.

“How much for that case?” he asked, trying to hold back his excitement.

“Not for sale,” snapped the old man.

“Why not?”

“It’s such a nice old case, and I like to use it to hold my favorite tackle.”

“Would you sell it to me if I found you another case that’s even bigger and better?”

“Try it,” replied the old man, “I might like it.”

Not wasting a second, Arthur ran out of the tackle shop, and frantically searched for another store that might sell something he could convince the old man to swap.

Much to his relief, he found a tourist shop that sold an old, gorgeous chess set. Throwing down more dinars, he bought the expensive oak set immediately.

On the way back he dumped the loose, custom-carved chess pieces into the Adriatic, wanting only one thing: a suitable tackle box to replace Pushkin’s pistol case.

“Will this work,” he gasped back at the old man’s shop.

“Looks good to me,” said the shop owner, agreeing and charging Arthur more than he thought it was worth, thinking him a big sucker.

Elated, Arthur took the antique pistol case on the plane with him to London, cradling it like a baby in his arms, cherishing every moment.

Back at Heathrow Airport in London, he drove directly to his restoration expert for a professional consultation.

The pro then went to work, and before long the one hundred and fifty year old pistol case looked almost brand new.

Except for these brown spots on the inside of the case, near the indentation in the soft felt that held the grip.

“I left these intact,” said the restoration expert, pointing to the telltale spots. “I thought they might be historically important.”

“Indeed they are!” gasped Arthur, realizing what those discolored and blemished areas of the case might mean.

Arthur then hovered Pushkin’s pistol above the case, matching the undercut in the felt with the grip.

The trail of brown spots from the pistol grip seamlessly blended with the brown spots in the case.

That’s when they both realized that Arthur had finally done it! He’d found the actual pistol case that contained Pushkin’s fated dueling pistol!

Then with pure joy and sensuous pleasure, Arthur very carefully slid the antique pistol into its one and only case.

And that, my friends, is how it feels when you put your pee-pee into the right hoo-hoo.

— FIN —