The prophetic quality of the dream is immediately apparent to those who have already read the rest of The Captain's Daughter: for the muzhik who guides Grinyov through the snowstorm and then haunts his dream will turn out to be
Pugachov; he will repeatedly spare Grinyov's life and even play a kind of perverse father-figure to him during his violent rebellion (both Gershenzon and Katz read the dream in this light).
Pugachov, "Possibilities to reduce cogging torque of PMSG with non-overlapping concentrated windings", 15th Int.
Shalamov's "new prose" is elastic enough to incorporate elements of the essay ("Women in the Criminal World"), the adventure tale ("Major
Pugachov's Last Battle"), and the Gothic romance ("The Lepers").
The
Pugachov rebellion of 1773-4 made her particularly sensitive to the risk of any fresh shocks to the social or political order, and she came to accept the inevitability of gradualness.
Other byliny may relate events from the reigns of Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great, or deal with the Cossack rebels Stenka Razin and Yemelyan Ivanovich
Pugachov. Taken together, byliny constitute a folk history in which facts and sympathies are often at variance with official history.
"The Captain's Daughter" and "A History of
Pugachov." Translated by Paul Debreczeny.