Leafing through an old family tree released around 70 years ago, I noticed a short note next to someone I had never heard of: My great-great-great-great-great uncle, Pinchas Posner (Pevzner). Cut off from their families and communities, the boys were under tremendous pressure to abandon their Judaism, and many displayed heroic devotion to the faith of their ancestors.

Often snatched as young as six years old, they became soldiers when they turned 18 and were then made to serve as long as 25 additional years. If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.The cantonists were Jewish boys in the Russian Empire who were forcibly taken to camps (“cantons”) where they were trained to become soldiers in the Tsar’s army between 1827 and the end of the 1850s. When reading the novel one should remember that it was written by Stalin’s orders, so the author clearly sympathizes with the strong personality of Peter, who does not spare the lives of ordinary people in pursuit of his main goal - the creation of an empire and the rapid development of the state. Peter seeks to surround himself with ordinary people who he can trust, whether it’s German Lefort or Alexander Menshikov, both of whom previously could not appear at court due to their low origin. On one side is Peter’s treacherous sister, who in fact rules the country, and on the other side is Peter’s entourage who ignore his orders. Tolstoy masterfully portrays people close to the tsar, embroiled in intrigues and telling lies for the sake of the throne.

Anton Chekhov “The Cherry Orchard”Īnother novel about Peter the Great tells of his early years in power. To embolden the group, he organizes the murder of an innocent person. With his arrival from abroad a lot of misfortunes happen in a small provincial city: fires, duels, and squabbles.Īnother revolutionary, the cunning manipulator Pyotr Verkhovensky, creates a secret society the main idea of which is that people are the bearers of God’s will (and not the tsar). He is an impudent guy and doesn’t care about the norms of behavior: he even openly conducts love affairs with unmarried girls, which was an unheard-of insolence for the 19th century. Nikolai Stavrogin, one of the main characters and a gloomy person, is a communist and atheist. In this novel their harmful ideas are like demons that fly around and poison the minds and lives of ordinary people. They are revolutionaries who defy social standards.

The deeply faithful Dostoevsky is interested in a new generation - the young people who grew up after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. Vladimir Khotinenko/Non stop production, 2004

The new tsar book