The title of Suknovalov's social satire is a play on Geroy nashego vremeni ("A Hero of Our Time"), a novel by Lermontov (1840). The hero's name, Pechorin, comes from Pechora, a river in the NE European Russia, flowing from the Ural Mountains to the Arctic Ocean. The Archpriest Avvakum wrote his Zhitie in Pustozyorsk on the Pechora River, just north of the Arctic Circle, where he spent fourteen years incarcerated in an underground cellar and where on April 14, 1682, he was burnt at the stake (kaznyon v ognennom srube).

 

Alexey Sklyarenko