duel

For the study of the death of Pushkin, P. E. Shchegolev did more than all the Pushkinists combined. He found, published and commented on the most important documents reflecting the course of the dueling history. The author of the article has consistently reviewed all editions of his famous book and its previous publications. This made it possible to identify the research techniques used by the outstanding researcher of Pushkin, which had a strong influence on Soviet Pushkin studies. The scientist interpreted the sources one-sidedly and biased, setting a biased goal at all costs to make N. N. Pushkin the main culprit of the poet’s death. Even in cases where P. E. Shchegolev knew that the sources were unreliable, but they served to accuse the poet’s wife, the outstanding researcher, whose contribution to Pushkin studies cannot be overestimated, did not stop to use them to create his own concept of the death of Pushkin. It was based on the projection of his own vision of the relationship between a creative person and just a beautiful woman on the relationship between Pushkin and Natalia Nikolaevna. While the true reason for the duel remained unknown to him.