1828

The year 1828 is presented as a turning point in Pushkin’s career after his pardon by Nicholas I: restored to official favor, he published Poltava, a major poem whose subject connected his work to Byron’s Mazeppa.

Restoration and Publication

Nicholas I pardoned Pushkin on his accession and received him once more into favor. At a subsequent interview, the Tsar was said to have promised that he alone would censor Pushkin’s productions. The year 1828 falls within this renewed relationship with imperial authority, when Pushkin published Poltava, described in the account as one of his finest poems.

Poltava and Byron

Poltava was founded on incidents familiar to English readers from Byron’s Mazeppa. The connection places the poem in a literary conversation across languages: Pushkin drew on a subject already made recognizable to an English audience by Byron, while producing a work judged among his own finest. The year thus joins the account of Pushkin’s restored standing to the continuing importance of Byron as a point of reference for his poetry.

Place in Pushkin’s Career

The account situates 1828 amid a broader return to public and literary activity. Pushkin had been restored to his position in the Foreign Office and appointed Court Historian; in the following year, he accompanied the Russian army on its campaign to capture Erzeroum. The sequence gives the publication of Poltava a place between official rehabilitation and further literary and historical work, without reducing the poem to a mere consequence of his restored status.