How Pushkin confessed to atheism & was punished

After graduating from the Lyceum, Pushkin lived a socialite’s life in St. Petersburg and wrote poetry that deeply displeased the authorities. In his ode ‘Freedom’ (1817), he denounced autocracy, while his poem ‘The Village’ (1819) denounced serfdom. He also penned scathing epigrams about the monarch himself and his inner circle. Emperor Alexander I was furious and ordered the young poet exiled to Siberia or, as a last resort, to the Solovetsky Monastery.

Pushkin’s influential friends – N. Karamzin, V. Zhukovsky and others – rushed to intercede on his behalf and seek a lighter sentence. Karamzin personally persuaded the tsar that exile to Siberia would be excessively harsh, insisting that "Pushkin is a genius and geniuses must be forgiven".

In the end, the tsar relented. In May 1820, Pushkin left St. Petersburg – officially to take up a "new post", but, in reality, to go into exile in the south. He was transferred from the capital's College of Foreign Affairs, where he had previously served, to the chancellery of General I. Inzov – the Chief Trustee of Colonists in the Southern Region – based in Kishinev (now Chișinău).

Inzov, a good-natured and lenient man, treated the disgraced poet gently and did not burden him with official duties. The poet spent nearly three years in Kishinev (until July 1823); this period marked the flourishing of his romantic lyric poetry and the beginning of work on ‘Eugene Onegin’.

In July 1823, he was transferred to Odessa to serve under Count M. Vorontsov, the new Governor-General of Novorossiya. The Odessa of 1823–1824 was a bustling, cosmopolitan port city featuring Italian opera, restaurants and a vibrant social scene. Pushkin immersed himself in this atmosphere: he frequented the Vorontsovs' home, made use of their library and visited theaters and casinos. Over the course of 13 months (from July 3, 1823, to July 31, 1824), he wrote two and a half chapters of ‘Eugene Onegin’ and the narrative poem ‘The Gypsies’, completed ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisaray’ and penned more than 30 shorter poems.

Initially, his relationship with the count was cordial and amicable, but it soon deteriorated. According to contemporary accounts, the rift was caused by Pushkin’s affair with Vorontsov’s wife, Elizaveta Ksaveryevna. The conflict came to a head when Vorontsov assigned Pushkin a humiliating task: traveling to the Kherson Governorate "to combat locusts". Vorontsov subsequently petitioned Foreign Minister K. Nesselrode to have Pushkin removed from Odessa.

The decisive factor was an intercepted letter Pushkin had sent in Spring 1824 to a friend in Moscow (scholars debate whether it was addressed to P. A. Vyazemsky or V. K. Küchelbecker). In it, the poet wrote: "You want to know what I am doing – I am writing colorful stanzas of a romantic poem and taking lessons in pure atheism. There’s an Englishman here, a deaf philosopher, the only intelligent atheist I have ever met." That "Englishman" was William Hutchinson, Vorontsov’s physician.

The poet later admitted that the letter had been written to stir up "talk and gossip" among his acquaintances. But, it was precisely this letter that sealed his fate: the Moscow police took notice of him and, on July 11, 1824, Count Nesselrode informed Vorontsov that the government had "become convinced" that Pushkin had "not in the least renounced his wicked principles".

In July 1824, a decree from the highest authority was issued: Pushkin was to be dismissed from the service "for misconduct" (“par son inconduite”) and exiled to his family’s estate in the Pskov province, where he would be placed under the supervision of local authorities. On August 1, Pushkin, accompanied by his serf manservant Nikita Kozlov, departed from Odessa; he arrived at Mikhailovskoye on August 9, 1824 and spent the next two years there.