Students, Merchants, or Poles? Depiction of the May Fires of 1862 and the Problem of Reliability in the Novel "The Troubled Seas" by A. F. Pisemsky

Abstract

The article is devoted to "The Troubled Seas" (1863) by A. F. Pisemsky, a work that shocked his contemporaries by violating the boundaries of the fictional and the reliable. The changing description of St. Petersburg fi res of 1862 in different editions of the novel shows that Pisemsky strove to create a work based on the topical journalism of his time, without departing from documentary accuracy. Even though critics and numerous readers disapproved of Pisemsky’s strategy, it ranks as a significant episode in the history of the Russian novel.