Tabachnyi kapitan ("The Tobacco Captain," 1944) is a
comedy by N. A. Aduev (the penname of Nikolay Rabinovich, 1895-1950, who
finished the Tenishev school, as Mandelshtam and VN did). The action in it
takes place in the reign of Peter I. The czar sends a boyar's son to study
navigation in Holland but it is the young ignoramus' kholop Ivan
who succeeds in learning and becomes a naval officer after returning to
Russia. (Other characters include Karpiy Smurov and his daughter
Lyubov'.) Ivan Giovannovich Tobak (Cordula's first husband) is a namesake
of the Tobacco Captain.
A. N. Tolstoy (who coined the phrase propustit'
cherez tabak) is best known as the author of Peter I, a
historical novel (1929-34). Btw., it was Peter I who never parted with his
pipka (pipe) and taught Russians to smoke. In his long poem
Rossiya ("Russia," 1924) M. A. Voloshin (VN's teacher of
prosody) calls Peter I "the first Bolshevik." Koba, too,
loved his trubka (pipe)...
kholop =
plokho
S + Tobak = T + Sobak = St.
Koba
kholop - Russ.,
serf
plokho - Russ.,
bad
Sobak - Fima Sobak, a character in
Ilf and Petrov's "The 12 Chairs" (the private furrier, a friend of Ellochka the
cannibal); sobak (unlike Sobak,
accented on the second syllable) - gen. pl. of sobaka, dog,
hound
St. Koba - Stalin (Koba
was Stalin's nickname, after the hero of Kazbeghi's novel "The Patricide;" cf.
Colonel St. Alin, a scoundrel, one of the two seconds in Demon's duel with
d'Onsky: 1.2)
Alexey Sklyarenko (VN's ustalyi rab, weary
slave)