ИСТИНА

The name of Nadezhda Durova is one of a few among prominent Russian women, which is known to a wide audience in Russia. However, this fame is associated exclusively with the image of “Cavalry-maiden” as she was first presented by Pushkin to the reading public on pages of his “Sovremennik”, and later in a book of her memoirs. This glory played a cruel joke with Durova: contemporaries quickly quenched their curiosity about the emancipated woman, who violated social taboos, while she was of little interest to them in another quality - as the author of a fairly good prose. There is a long list o books describing Durova’s life, however few deserve the title of biography. The image of the “Cavalry-maiden” excited imagination of generations of writers, each in his own manner tried to draw her portrait. Just a decade after her death Durova became the heroine of the first novel dedicated to her, and then with amazing regularity - every 10-15 years - her name reemerged on the pages of the new literary works. The last was published in the fall of 2016 and was written by… an American novelist. How did the understanding and image of the heroine evolve in time, and what is it in Cavalry-Maiden that continues to attract today?