Pushkin’s ‘The Commander’: the 1835 draft, the 1836 publication and the autograph manuscript in an album

Pushkin’s poem ‘The Commander’ has three important reference points for the reader: the draft bears the date 7 April 1835, the text appeared in Sovremennik in 1836, and the surviving manuscript in the poet’s own hand in an album offers another authorial version. These milestones do not indicate an error in attribution: the first relates to work on the poem, the second to its appearance in print. The album manuscript calls for a closer reading of the lines about Barclay de Tolly, but its status as the final version remains a subject of scholarly debate.

An occasion to revisit the text is provided by ‘The Commander’, an exhibition at the A. S. Pushkin State Museum on Prechistenka, scheduled to run from 6 October 2026 to 27 January 2027. Its title refers to the 190th anniversary of the poem’s composition, while the description dates its writing to 1835. The year 2026 marks 191 years since the date on the draft and 190 years since the first publication. The museum’s anniversary wording conflicts with the year 1835 given on the same page. The note on the draft, the journal publication and the manuscript in the poet’s own hand in an album allow the text’s history to be traced more precisely.

What does Pushkin’s note on the draft date?

The note ‘7 April 1835’ dates the early work on ‘The Commander’, rather than the poem’s appearance before readers. According to the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Pushkin also recorded the location — St Petersburg — on the first draft, along with the circumstances of the day: Easter Sunday, a blizzard and frost. The author’s note places the beginning of work on 7 April, but does not indicate when each subsequent version took shape.

The literary historian N. N. Petrunina described this draft as an entry in a working notebook from 1833–1835, recording the actual process of composing the initial text. Another surviving manuscript in Pushkin’s own hand — a sheet copied out in fair hand, with layers of corrections — derives from the early version and was copied close to it in time. This distinction alone matters: ‘written in 1835’ does not mean that the text published a year later mechanically reproduces the draft. Pushkin returned to the lines, changing the vocabulary, rhythm and structure.

The State Archive of the Russian Federation links the date to the poet’s visit to the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace after the Easter service. This account helps explain the immediate inspiration, but the poem cannot be reduced to a report of a single visit. The lyric speaker describes repeatedly pausing before the portrait. What emerges is a carefully crafted reflection on how recognition and blame are apportioned during a person’s lifetime, and historical glory after their death.

Why was the portrait of Barclay de Tolly the starting point?

Pushkin chose the portrait of Mikhail Barclay de Tolly in the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace: from a description of the hall and the painting, the poem turns to the fate of the commander depicted. He is not named in the verse, but details of the 1812 campaign, together with the author’s own statements, make it possible to identify the subject of these lines. The A. S. Pushkin State Museum explicitly names Barclay as the poem’s subject; the State Archive of the Russian Federation identifies George Dawe’s work as the poet’s visual source.

The hall in the Winter Palace housed a collection of portraits of generals who had fought in the war against Napoleon. The State Archive and an article in The Tretyakov Gallery magazine cite 332 works by Dawe and his assistants Alexander Polyakov and Wilhelm Golicke. For the hall’s present arrangement, the historian A. A. Podmazo gives a different breakdown: 329 half-length portraits of generals, four full-length depictions and three equestrian portraits of monarchs. The counts refer to different groups of works. For Pushkin, the scale of the hall serves a structural purpose. First, the reader sees a multitude of faces united by a shared victory; then the gaze comes to rest on Barclay’s figure. Collective triumph and the solitude of one particular hero stand side by side in the same space.

In describing the painting, Pushkin notes Barclay’s stern appearance, the sombre background and the military camp behind the figure. The poet asks a significant question: was the facial expression part of the painter’s intention, or did it emerge unintentionally? This uncertainty maintains a distance between the image and the historical individual. The canvas does not document the thoughts of the commander it depicts; Pushkin reads character into it and builds his own poetic judgement upon that reading.

The State Archive of the Russian Federation dates George Dawe’s large portrait of Barclay de Tolly to 1829. According to the Presidential Library, Barclay died in 1818 — eleven years before that date. Pushkin stood before a posthumous image of the commander; Barclay could not have sat for Dawe for this portrait. The facial expression on the canvas therefore cannot be taken as direct evidence of the thoughts of the man depicted.

The researcher A. A. Podmazo dates the opening of the Military Gallery to 25 December 1826 and notes that the hall was built to a design by Carlo Rossi. More than eight years had already passed by the time of Pushkin’s draft. Here, two intermediaries stand between the viewer and the man of 1812: a collection assembled after the war and a portrait created after Barclay’s death. The poet’s question about whether the painter had divined the commander’s thoughts is therefore significant: the poem reveals the workings of the viewer’s imagination, rather than offering access to its subject’s inner life.

What injustice does ‘The Commander’ address?

Pushkin’s ‘The Commander’ explores the injustice suffered by Barclay de Tolly: the poet sets a retreat he considered necessary against the accusations of contemporaries. In 1812, the withdrawal of the Russian armies provoked fierce criticism; supreme command later passed to Mikhail Kutuzov. Pushkin transforms this episode into the tragedy of a man compelled to endure others’ accusations at a time when the outcome of the war is still unknown.

The museum’s exhibition page links the conflict to the plan of retreat and Kutuzov’s subsequent appointment. But the poem is not an analysis of the entire campaign. Petrunina cites Pushkin’s letter to N. I. Grech of 13 October 1836, in which the poet distinguished between an assessment of Barclay’s military skill and admiration for his steadfast character. It is therefore more accurate to say that ‘The Commander’ defends its subject’s moral character. To claim that Pushkin proved Barclay was solely responsible for the victory of 1812 would replace a literary intention with a contentious historical assertion.

The distinction also matters when reading the ending. In the first part, the subject seems solitary among the portraits of celebrated generals; in the second, the poet addresses Barclay himself; the conclusion turns to how people judge an outstanding contemporary by immediate success. The judgement of posterity is presented as an opportunity to recognise the true stature of someone undervalued during their lifetime. This idea extends beyond the debate over the two commanders, although it grew out of it.

Was Barclay de Tolly forgotten after 1812?

Mikhail Barclay de Tolly received official recognition during his lifetime. In ‘The Commander’, Pushkin focused on a different period in his life: the distrust of the commander during the retreat of 1812, when the campaign’s outcome could not yet be foreseen. This distinction changes how we read the word ‘forgotten’ in the poem’s early versions. These concern the moral judgement passed on a man by his contemporaries, rather than providing a precise account of his entire subsequent career.

According to the Presidential Library, after returning to the army in the field, Barclay commanded troops in the campaigns of 1813–1814. In 1813, he received the Order of St George, 1st Class, and the title of count; in 1814, the rank of field marshal; and in 1815, the title of prince. Dawe’s large portrait of 1829 became part of the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace after the commander’s death. His honours and his place in the hall do not support a literal picture of lifelong official neglect.

Pushkin himself drew this distinction in his ‘Explanation’, published after the controversy over the poem. Responding to the argument that Barclay’s services had been recognised and rewarded, the poet asked by whom and when they had been recognised, bringing the discussion back to the mood among the people and the army specifically in 1812. Subsequent honours did not erase what he had endured during the retreat. Pushkin thus defended the right to speak of the drama within a history of victory, even if a later biographical account listed recognition and honours.

N. N. Petrunina also saw this as a possible reason for the author’s revisions. The manuscript’s description of Barclay as ‘unrecognised, forgotten’ sits uneasily with his service and honours after 1812; it could also suggest that victory was due solely to his plan. This is the scholar’s argument, rather than an established explanation of all Pushkin’s motives. It shows why checking the historical biography is necessary even when analysing a poem that deliberately focuses on a moment of misunderstanding.

What happened to the text between 1835 and 1836?

Pushkin revised ‘The Commander’ before submitting it for publication. The draft and the manuscript copied out in fair hand preserve the course of his work, while publication in the third volume of Sovremennik records a different version, available to readers. Petrunina lists changes to individual words and lines that accumulated between the manuscripts and the printed text. The year on the draft and the year on the journal therefore mark different stages in a single creative history.

The most striking difference concerns the passage after the old commander’s unsuccessful attempt to find death in battle. In one manuscript version, an exclamation about the futility of this desire was followed by a quatrain comparing Barclay’s fate with his successor’s success. In Sovremennik, Pushkin retained only this exclamation and a visual gap — lines of dots. Kutuzov is not explicitly named in this part of the printed text. The reader is given a stark image of defeat and a pause in place of an explanation of its causes.

At the same time, Pushkin changed earlier lines about the transfer of command. The manuscript text pointed more clearly to another individual; the printed version spoke of Barclay having to relinquish his authority and his plan, without explicitly identifying his successor. The question of Kutuzov did not disappear: contemporaries readily recognised the historical allusion. The focus of meaning, however, shifted from personal rivalry to the experience of a commander left alone to face public opinion.

Such a revision cannot automatically be explained by a single motive. Scholars have suggested concerns about censorship or a wish to avoid offending Kutuzov’s relatives; Yuri Tynyanov emphasised the artistic role of the pause. Having compared the versions and correspondence, Petrunina considered reasons internal to the poem particularly compelling. The manuscripts themselves establish that a change took place. They contain no explanation signed by Pushkin of why he excluded these particular lines.

Who speaks at the end of ‘The Commander’ after the author’s revisions?

In the printed version, the concluding judgement on people reads as a general reflection by the lyric speaker. In the early draft, the connection to the voice of the dying Barclay was closer. Petrunina showed that Pushkin initially framed the closing lines as his subject’s imagined speech, then redrew the boundary between his address to the commander and his own conclusion. This shift explains the artistic significance of the cut more precisely than a count of the missing lines.

One trace of the revisions appears in the verb before the ending: in the manuscripts, Pushkin replaced the completed action ‘recalled’ with the ongoing ‘was recalling’ and added a full stop. Petrunina associated such decisions with a weakening of the impression that the words that follow belong to Barclay himself. After the passage about his successor was removed, there was even less room for another voice. The ending can be heard as the voice of the poet judging society’s treatment of an outstanding individual, rather than as the commander’s posthumous prediction of his own glory.

The punctuation, grammatical form and omission do indeed vary across the authorial sources; the explanation of their combined effect belongs to the textual scholar. It does not prove that censorship had no influence on Pushkin, but it does demonstrate a specific result of the printed version. Even a reader who considers the risk of censorship plausible must take into account that the pause after the death scene changes who voices the concluding thought.

The manuscript in the poet’s own hand in an album makes the debate particularly substantial: it restores some of the omitted text, but does not negate the fact of the journal publication with its different rhythm. Comparing two epithets in isolation cannot convey this difference. The surrounding lines must be read to see whether the conclusion remains the subject’s own speech or reaches beyond his individual fate. It is here that differences between the manuscripts affect the meaning of the work, rather than merely the contents of the scholarly apparatus.

When was ‘The Commander’ first published?

The poem was first published in the third volume of Pushkin’s Sovremennik for 1836. Having studied documents relating to the journal’s publication, L. A. Chereisky established the volume’s release date as 30 September 1836. He noted separately that permission from the censor was dated 28 September. Newspaper and book accounts often place the volume’s publication in October; the State Archive of the Russian Federation, for example, refers to an October publication. This discrepancy of a few days makes no difference to the central question: approximately a year and a half elapsed between the note of April 1835 and publication in autumn 1836.

N. V. Izmailov also explained the choice of 1836 in terms of the circumstances surrounding Pushkin’s journal. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the war of 1812 was a year away; participants’ recollections and the roles of both commanders were again being discussed. The museum’s exhibition page recalls that Sovremennik published the memoirs of Denis Davydov and Nadezhda Durova. Their appearance in the same journal does not establish the immediate reason for publishing the poem, but it does show the context in which an earlier text could acquire fresh relevance.

Izmailov notes that in the third volume Pushkin placed ‘My Hero’s Genealogy’ and ‘The Cobbler’ alongside ‘The Commander’ — works from different years and in different genres. An editorial decision made in 1836 cannot be treated as the date of composition of each text named. Pushkin revised the poem and presented it to the journal’s readers at a time when the memory of the war of 1812 was once again under discussion. The different dates of the manuscript and the printed volume thus form a publication history rather than competing with one another.

There was also a publishing milestone. The All-Russian Pushkin Museum states that the poet applied for permission to publish his own journal on 31 December 1835; the first volume of Sovremennik appeared in April 1836. The journal therefore did not yet exist when he was working on the draft. This explains why the manuscript’s date cannot serve as the date of publication specifically in Sovremennik, although it does not reveal why Pushkin did not offer the poem to another journal earlier.

The first printed version appeared without the author's name, Chereisky reports. This does not alter its attribution: it appeared in Pushkin's own journal, the author's manuscripts survive, and the poet subsequently responded publicly to the objections. For the reader, another point matters more: the published version became a historical fact in its own right. It was this version, with its pause after the tragic scene, that contemporaries read and critics responded to.

Why did publication spark a debate about Kutuzov?

Some contemporaries saw the defence of Barclay as diminishing Kutuzov's role, although the poem contained no detailed comparison of their military decisions; a relative of the commander, Loggin Golenishchev-Kutuzov, prepared a separate pamphlet setting out his objections. According to Chereisky's research, the manuscript reached the censorship committee on 3 November 1836, was approved that same day and was printed shortly afterwards; copies were also distributed as an insert in Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti.

The text of Pushkin's ‘Explanation’ is preserved by the Russian Virtual Library. In it, Pushkin acknowledges that Barclay bore the burdens of the retreat, while Kutuzov enjoyed public confidence and led the next phase of the campaign. The poet does not present the commanders as interchangeable: each faced a distinct historical situation. His attention centres on the period in 1812 when Barclay had already made an unpopular decision but could not yet show his contemporaries its outcome.

In replying to his opponent, Pushkin also reproduced his own verses dedicated to Kutuzov's memory. In this way, the poet showed readers in 1836 explicitly that he honoured both commanders. At the same time, the ‘Explanation’ was written in response to accusations and serves a polemical purpose. Its words clarify the author's position after the poem's publication, but do not explain every revision to the previous year's draft.

Pushkin replied in the fourth volume of Sovremennik, published in December 1836. In his ‘Explanation’, he insisted that respect for Kutuzov did not require ingratitude towards Barclay. This formulation shows the limits of the dispute: the poet was not proposing to replace one hero in the nation's memory with another. In his printed response, Pushkin asks why gratitude towards Barclay should depend on acknowledging Kutuzov's greatness.

What exactly was found in Elena Pavlovna's album?

In 1969, the researcher I. T. Trofimov discovered another complete autograph manuscript of ‘The Commander’ in Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna's archival collection. The State Archive of the Russian Federation reports that the text occupies five pages of the album and is written neatly, without corrections; a nearby note by the owner confirms that it is in Pushkin's hand. By that time, researchers had two complete manuscripts in the author's hand: a draft and a fair copy on a separate sheet with revisions.

Petrunina described the physical features of the discovery. Pushkin's text occupies the opening leaves of the album; beside the author's flourish is a note in French by Elena Pavlovna stating that the text was written by Pushkin himself. On some of the paper, the researcher found a watermark bearing the number 1835. This feature helps establish the earliest possible date when the sheets were made, but not the day the poem was written down: the paper could have been used later. This mark on the paper cannot be treated as a second confirmation of the April draft's date.

Elena Pavlovna left several blank pages after the autograph manuscript and returned to the album only in late 1849 or early 1850, when she made diary-like entries. The notebook's arrangement explains why Pushkin's text survived separately from the later notes. Their position, however, does not establish the exact date when the poem was entered in the album.

The album's autograph manuscript is valuable for more than the mere existence of a third manuscript. It includes a passage absent from the journal publication and reveals new wording within it. Kutuzov is described as a ‘rival’ rather than a ‘successor’; Barclay as ‘abandoned’ rather than ‘unrecognised’. These substitutions bring the tension between the men and the hero's position after losing command into sharper focus. At the same time, one line in the album text restores an earlier formulation about the people that had been discarded during revision.

The album text is therefore not simply a copy of the version in Sovremennik. Yet it cannot be described without further qualification as a direct continuation of the revisions made for publication. If one line reverts to an earlier reading and the omitted passage reappears, the author may have had a particular purpose in writing the poem in a private album. The manuscript reveals possibilities within the text that the printed version left off the page, and shows that Pushkin wrote out the poem for a particular recipient.

Can the album's autograph manuscript be regarded as expressing Pushkin's final intentions?

The album's autograph manuscript is the latest of the known manuscripts, but its precedence over the printed version is disputed. The archival publication describes it as the author's last return to the text and a reflection of the poet's final intentions. Petrunina agrees that the entry belongs late in the sequence of surviving autograph manuscripts, but cautions against automatically recognising it as the final version intended for publication.

The exact date when the poem was entered in the album is not recorded. Petrunina considers two possibilities: it was written either between the journal's preparation and release or after publication. In support of a later date, she cites indirect evidence: a letter from Elena Pavlovna to her husband dated 26 December 1836, mentioning invitations to Pushkin. The suggestion that the omitted lines themselves prompted the conversation remains a scholarly reconstruction rather than a documented scene.

The distinction between ‘later in date’ and ‘definitive for the reader’ has practical significance. The author may have copied out the poem for a particular recipient, explained the omission and restored the lines absent from the journal publication. Petrunina considered the possibility that he wrote it from memory: she pointed to the return of an earlier formulation and to punctuation that differed from the carefully considered choices in other manuscripts. These are arguments for the version's particular purpose as an album entry, rather than proof that Pushkin made a mistake.

Even before the album was discovered, N. V. Izmailov considered it impossible to reconstruct a single definitive text with confidence. As Petrunina explains, the editor of the scholarly edition printed the journal version as the main text and presented the omitted manuscript passage alongside it as a variant reading. The discovery of 1969 added new wording and further evidence of the author's revisions to this editorial problem. This approach offers the reader more than mechanically combining all the lines: it reveals both the choice made for the first publication and the manuscript's alternative reading.

The most cautious conclusion is therefore this: the discovered autograph manuscript presents a late authorial version of ‘The Commander’ that is important for understanding its history, but the choice of a single main text remains a matter for textual scholarship. Reading only the album version risks losing the artistic force of the pause in the journal text. Reading only the journal version means losing sight of what Pushkin was trying to say in the omitted lines.

Was the omission a result of censorship?

Censorship has been proposed as an explanation, but the manuscripts provide no conclusive answer. Supporters of this view believed that a direct comparison between the two commanders was politically or socially sensitive. Other researchers linked the omission to concern for the feelings of people close to Kutuzov's family. Both explanations seek to account for an established fact: before publication, Pushkin removed a specific comparison, while the later autograph manuscript contains the corresponding passage once again.

Officials did indeed review the poem; their role in the omission cannot be ruled out without investigation. N. Pereselenkov published information from censorship records: on 24 August 1836, the St Petersburg committee referred ‘The Commander’ to higher authorities because it considered the statements about Barclay to require a special ruling. On 26 August, the Minister of Public Education, Sergei Uvarov, reported that he saw no obstacle to publication. The documents confirm that the text underwent additional review and was approved for publication.

These papers, however, neither identify the omitted quatrain nor state who decided to remove it from the version submitted to the censors, when or why. They prove neither that the minister ordered the omission nor that there was no pressure from literary circles. It is more reliable to separate the two questions: the administrative review is documented, while the reason for this particular authorial revision must be reconstructed from the manuscripts, correspondence and structure of ‘The Commander’.

Petrunina places the emphasis elsewhere. She shows that even without the disputed quatrain, the journal text retained the idea that Barclay had lost his command and that his steadfastness had been undervalued. If the sole aim had been to conceal this meaning, the revision would have been incomplete. Moreover, in a later letter to Grech, Pushkin himself distinguished Barclay's moral character from the question of the soundness of his military decisions. On this basis, the researcher considers the poet's continued work on his conception of the poem a more convincing explanation for the revision.

The visual pause after the exclamation also shapes the poem's structure. Instead of a ready-made allocation of credit for victory between two names, the reader encounters a moment in which further words are held back. The address that follows is no longer confined to Barclay's personal resentment towards his successor; it broadens the theme to society's failure to understand an outstanding individual. Tynyanov and Petrunina both noted this effect. It does not disprove the possibility of social pressure, but shows that the omission has artistic significance regardless of its unestablished motive.

How does comparing the three textual witnesses change our reading of the poem?

The draft reveals the initial work on the portrayal of Barclay, the journal publication the version presented to the first readers, and the album the restoration of the omitted passage in a private entry. These documents cannot be combined into a single ‘complete’ poem without identifying the source of each line. Any edition that selects a main version makes an editorial decision; a conscientious reading retains an awareness of the variant readings.

The changes in wording in the restored passage are particularly revealing. In the early version, the relationship between the two commanders is expressed through the order of their appointments; in the album version, through personal rivalry. These are different nuances of the same historical situation, and neither in itself establishes how Pushkin judged Kutuzov's military skill. The poet stated his position on that question clearly in his letter to Grech. The manuscript revision therefore helps us explore the poem's voice, but does not replace other evidence of the author's views.

The portrayal of ‘the people’ in the different authorial versions calls for the same caution. The printed version emphasises that those affected by the decision that would save them could not understand it; the album version restores a harsher early description. Petrunina suggested that this return might reflect the author's memory of an earlier line, rather than necessarily signalling a new approach to judging society. When a text offers two authorial readings, an editor serves the reader better by showing their origins than by turning a single word into a definitive political conclusion.

This history provides a clear answer to the original question. The draft dates from 1835, the first publication following revision from autumn 1836, while Elena Pavlovna's album adds an important late version and evidence for the debate over the omission. The 2026 exhibition brings renewed attention to the work, but the anniversary calculation on its webpage conflicts with the year of composition given on the same page; an accurate chronology is better established from the manuscript, the journal and scholarly research. Behind these different dates lies Pushkin's work on the poem: from his response to Barclay's portrait in the Military Gallery to the debate over the recognition the commander received during his lifetime.

You can explore the poet's life in Moscow on the ‘Alexander Sergeyevich's Moscow’ tour: its route begins in Pushkin Square, follows Tverskoy Boulevard and leads via the Church of the Great Ascension to the memorial apartment on the Arbat. Work on the dated draft of ‘The Commander’ is associated with St Petersburg.

Sources

1. State Archive of the Russian Federation: marking the 225th anniversary of A. S. Pushkin’s birth
2. A. S. Pushkin State Museum: ‘The Commander’ exhibition
3. N. N. Petrunina. A New Autograph Manuscript of ‘The Commander’
4. L. A. Chereisky. On Pushkin’s Poem ‘The Commander’
5. The Tretyakov Gallery Magazine: the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace
6. Russian Virtual Library: T. G. Tsyavlovskaya’s commentary on ‘The Commander’
7. A. S. Pushkin. ‘Explanation’, text in the Russian Virtual Library
8. N. Pereselenkov. From the History of Sovremennik
9. N. V. Izmailov. Lyric Cycles in Pushkin’s Poetry of the Late 1820s and 1830s
10. Presidential Library: Biography of Mikhail Barclay de Tolly
11. All-Russian Pushkin Museum: Periodicals of Pushkin’s Era
12. ‘Alexander Sergeyevich’s Moscow’: Tour Itinerary
13. A. A. Podmazo. ‘The Mysterious Depiction of the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace’