The Captain's Daughter: Orenburg to Moscow

Belogorsk lies forty versts from Orenburg, and the city is where Grinev sits out Pugachev's siege. In the novel it is a bleak, hungry place: townspeople grow so used to cannonballs landing in their yards that even Pugachev's assaults draw no crowds, and Grinev's only distraction is riding. History was no gentler. The real city spent about six months under siege. The fortress was abolished in 1861 and only fragments remain, but its eastern arch, the Orsk Gate, was rebuilt on its historic site in 2020.

Location precision: The old fortress was dismantled after 1861; the pin marks the former fortress area in today's Orenburg.

Visitor guidance: Fragments of the fortress survive in Orenburg, and the rebuilt Orsk Gate stands on its historic site.

Grinev expects bastions and towers and finds a hamlet fenced with logs: an old cast-iron cannon at the gate, crooked streets, straw-thatched huts. The captain's wife, Vasilisa, really runs the place. When Pugachev arrives, a gallows goes up in the square and Captain Mironov, who tells him "you are a thief and an impostor", is hanged. Belogorsk exists only in the novel. Pushkin took the real Tatishchevo fortress as its prototype and visited it twice in September 1833. In history it is where Pugachev's army was crushed on 22 March 1774.

Location precision: Belogorsk exists only in the novel; the pin marks Tatishchevo, the real fortress Pushkin took as its prototype.

Riding out of Orenburg, Grinev passes Berda, the rebels' refuge, and is led to a hut on a crossroads corner. Wine barrels and two cannon stand at the gate, the peasants call it the palace, and the walls are pasted with gold paper. In history, Pugachev made the hut of the Cossack Sitnikov his sovereign's palace, and Berda was his base near Orenburg. Berda is now a district of the city.

Location precision: The novel gives only a hut on a crossroads corner; the pin marks the Berda district of Orenburg.

Under guard, Grinev is brought to Kazan and finds it devastated and burnt. He is taken to the fortress that survived in the middle of the scorched city, chained and left in a dark cell. History agrees on the ruin: the rebels burned most of Kazan on 23 July 1774. Pushkin set out for Kazan on 17 August 1833 while researching the revolt.

Location precision: The novel says only 'the fortress'; the pin marks the Kazan Kremlin, the city's chief citadel.

Visitor guidance: The Kazan Kremlin is a World Heritage Site, declared in 2000.

Masha reaches Sophia, learns that the Court is at Tsarskoye Selo and goes for a morning walk in the garden: a wide still lake and a meadow with a new monument to Rumyantsev's victories. A lady in a white morning dress and nightcap sits on the bench facing it. Masha pleads for Grinev, and later recognises the lady as the Empress. The Kagul obelisk marks the 1770 victory under Rumyantsev, and Pushkin almost literally quoted an engraving of it in this scene.

Location precision: The novel names the court park but not the spot; the pin marks the Kagul obelisk that Pushkin drew on.

The closing note says, from family tradition, that Grinev was freed at the end of 1774 by personal order and soon married Masha. He also stood in the crowd at Pugachev's execution: Pugachev recognised him and nodded, and a minute later his head was shown to the people. History places it here. Pugachev was arrested in September 1774, brought to Simbirsk by Suvorov and moved to Moscow; he was the last man executed on Bolotnaya Square, in January 1775. Traffic was closed off in 2013, and the square is now pedestrian.

Visitor guidance: The square has been pedestrian since 2013.