Although the vast majority of African Americans are unfamiliar with Pushkin’s monumental works, most students of literature are at least aware of his “Blackamoor of Peter the Great,” an unfinished romance which relates the biographical data of the poet’s great-grandfather, Ibrahim Petrovitch Gannibal his black great-grandfather.
Some early critics wrongly suspected that Pushkin attempted to aggrandize the African lineage of this black forebear by playing up the family tradition that he was an Ethiopian princeling. However, Pushkin certainly did not need to embellish his ancestor’s own personal history. For the accomplishments of Ibrahim Petrovitch Gannibal are proof of what any man – despite his colour – could rise to, given the opportunity. Ibrahim was treated as no less than a member of the royal family at court and, in the biographical notes on him written either by his wife or by someone in her family shortly after his death, the following statement is made:
“….he (Peter) wished to make examples of them and put (Russians) to shame by convincing them that out of every people and even from among wild men – such as Negores, whom our civilized nations assign exclusively to the class of slave, there can be formed men who by dint of application can obtain knowledge and learning and thus become helpful to their monarch.” Read more about this Black Russian noble man.
