Was Pushkin Black?
The famous poet was a white man living in Russia. His color was a little bit darker though, which was a consequence of an African origin.
Pushkin had a darker skin color that caused many speculations regarding his origins. He was proud of his African ancestry despite he didn’t always know much about Africa. Other Russians who knew even less, had made dozens of stories relating to the famous poet’s ancestors. One Bulgarian man who disliked Pushkin went so far as to even claim that the poet descended from a slave who was bought from a ship’s captain for a bottle of rum.
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His father, Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, was allegedly a member of an old noble family. His maternal great-grandfather was Major-General Abram Petrovich Gannibal. Gannibal was a Russian military engineer. He was also a nobleman of African origin. He was born and lived in Eritrea. His father was a lower prince who had 18 more children and possessed many slaves and servants. Sadly, the prince who begotten a part of Pushkin’s bloodline died in battle against the Ottomans. It was when Ottomans kidnapped Gannibal and brought him to the sultan as a gift.
For a year, Gannibal served in Sultan Ahmed III’s household. This happened during the time when a Russian ambassador Sava Vladislavich-Raguzinsky was looking for “a few clever little African slaves” for the Tsar’s palace in Moscow. The sultan gave the boy as a gift. It’s how Ganibal ended in the Russian capital. The Tsar Peter the Great freed him and raised him in the Emperor’s court household as his godson. He became fond of the boy and funded his education which eventually led to Gannibal becoming a military engineer.
