This second episode on the Calvary Maiden takes you through some of the formative years of the author, Nadezhda Durova.

Durova wrote briefly of her years growing up then focused on her time dressing as a man and serving for 10 years as a low-level officer in the Czar’s army, starting around 1806.

Her journals were source material for Tolstoy as to the lives of those who served in the period War & Peace is set, 1805-1812. It is presented to give you a glimpse into those frequently nameless and overlooked, who often gave their lives in the Napoleonic conflicts.

Durova’s story brings up still-relevant issues of identify, in terms how some who grew up in modern-day Ukraine or partitioned Poland, had different ties, (some to Polish nobility, others to Cossacks, some to Turks, others to runaway serfs), identified themselves. A number, like Durova, graciously accepted a life of service to the Czar. Others, like the former serf, Taras Shevchenko, or the Polish Diplomat, Adam Czartoryski, advanced the idea of nationhood and identity separate from Russian domination.

This episode is a brief overview of Durova’s experience from when she was 4 months-old, when she begins to articulate the ever-present animosity with her mother. This is illustrated with Durova being thrown out of a moving carriage upon her mother became frustrated while nursing. Her father then gave her to the primary care of one of his male servants, who Durova clung to at the sight of her mother. For her first four years of life, Durova’s family remained on the road, in military service, where she was affected by hussars shouting, drilling and riding their horses. This lifestyle attracted her.

Her Muscovite father recognized life with a growing family mandated a different position and traveled to Moscow in search of same. It was at that time that Durova and her mother returned to her parents’ home near the Poltova region in Ukraine. She spent time on the property marching, making forts, and pretending to be in hussar service. Her maternal grandparents, who initially rejected their Ukrainian daughter marrying a Muscovite, reconciled with the situation.

Durova’s father eventually received a commission to become a district mayor in Sarapul, near the Kama River in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. She spent the better part of a decade in this colder climate. She would often run away and explore nearby forests and rivers. Her father accepted her adventurous inclinations and gifted her horse, Alcides, who remained with Durova well into her military service. Durova would often wake up at the crack-of-dawn and take Alcides for a liberating run, with servants becoming accustomed to this unusual dynamic. This frustrated her mother to no end. However, her kind father and the rest of the family got a kick out of Durova’s precociousness. She remained in Sarapul until her mother grew tired of her presence and encouraged sending her back to Ukraine to live with her grandmother.