A summary of Alexander Volkov’s "Two Brothers"

Alexander Melentievich Volkov’s historical novel, written between 1938 and 1961, unfolds a broad picture of Peter the Great’s reforms through the lives of two sons of a deceased strelets soldier — Ilya and Yegor Markov. The author contrasts two life paths: the elder brother becomes a defender of the oppressed peasantry and a participant in popular uprisings, while the younger brother masters the exact sciences and mechanics, devoting his energies to the development of domestic production.

The split of the family and the beginning of wanderings

In the summer of 1698, sixteen-year-old strelets Ilya Markov found himself among the rebel regiments marching on Moscow. After the suppression of a rebellion at the New Jerusalem Monastery, the boy was tortured at the Preobrazhensky Prikaz. Without betraying his comrades, Ilya escaped from a firewood collection point. In the forest, he encountered a fugitive serf, Akinfiy Kulikov, who had been exiled to a factory for filing a petition and had escaped from penal servitude. The experienced Akinfiy became the young man’s mentor and adoptive father.

At the same time, his younger brother, Yegorka, was growing up in Moscow. The boy was renowned for his rare ingenuity: he crafted homemade windmills, toys, and a self-tapping tool for shoe lasts. Upon learning of the opening of the Navigation School in the Sukharev Tower, twelve-year-old Yegor persuaded his mother, the seamstress Agrafena, to enroll him as an apprentice.

Yegorka’s friend, the neighbor’s son Vanyushka Rakitin, runs away from home in the hopes of learning to read and write, but freezes to death in the winter wilderness. He is rescued by Ilya and Akinfiy. Upon learning that his relatives in Moscow are alive, Ilya sends the boy home with news. Yegor takes it upon himself to teach Vanyushka reading and counting using an ABC book.

Egor’s teachings and first successes

In the fall of 1701, Yegor enrolled in the "Russian school" at the Navigation School, quickly mastered writing, and was assigned to the teacher Leonty Filippovich Magnitsky. Noticing the young man’s passion for mechanics, Magnitsky gave him his famous "Arithmetic" and granted him access to the workshop. Yegor assembled his first lathe at home.

In the summer of 1704, Grandmother Ulyana died of a plague. To save the family of shoemaker Semyon Rakitin from debt bondage, Yegor crafted a mechanical toy, "dergunchiki," depicting a fight between a Russian and a German. Ivan Rakitin displayed it at markets, collecting the necessary taxes. Magnitsky bought the toy and showed it to Tsar Peter I. The Tsar met Yegor and apprenticed him to the French turner Ludwik de Schepper. Yegor soon surpassed his teacher and designed a lathe with a movable headstock and rest.

The Astrakhan Uprising and the Search for Freedom

Meanwhile, Ilya and Akinfiy arrived in Astrakhan. In the summer of 1705, a rebellion broke out in the city against the exorbitant taxes and violence of the governor, Timofey Rzhevsky. The townspeople executed the governor and elected a council of elders, led by the merchant Yakov Nosov and the strelets Ivan Sheludyak. Ilya Markov studied artillery and became a gunner for the rebels.

In the spring of 1706, Field Marshal Sheremetev’s troops stormed Astrakhan. During the battle near the Ivanovsky Monastery, Ilya was seriously wounded by a bullet to the chest. Akinfiy carried his unconscious friend away and hid him on a deserted island in the Volga Delta. After the rebellion was suppressed, the tsarist authorities brutally executed the leaders of the uprising in Moscow.

Bulavin’s Rebellion and the Battle of Poltava

After recovering from his wound, Ilya and Akinfiy travel to the Don and hire themselves out as farm laborers to the wealthy Cossack Oleksiy Pivnya in Bakhmut. Ilya falls in love with the landowner’s daughter, Ganna. In the autumn of 1707, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky’s punitive detachment arrives on the Don to track down the fugitives. Ataman Kondraty Bulavin rallies the Cossack rabble. Ilya and Akinfiy join the rebels and participate in the nighttime rout of Dolgoruky’s detachment on the Aydar River.

After Bulavin’s death in 1708, the friends were detained in the Voronezh province by Lieutenant Torpakov’s infantry company. Escaping execution, the heroes agreed to serve in the Yurlovsky Regiment.

During the Northern War, the regiment defended the Veprik fortress. On Akinfiy’s advice, the ramparts were flooded, turning them into icy slopes. The besieged expended all their ammunition and were captured. On the eve of the decisive battle near Poltava in June 1709, Ilya, disguised as a priest, crossed the front lines and delivered information about the Swedish positions to Tsar Peter. A Russian detachment liberated the captured Yurlovites.

On the day of the Battle of Poltava, June 27, 1709, Akinfiy shielded Ilya from a Swedish bullet and died. Consumed by rage, Ilya smashed the enemy with a swineherd at the cannon. The Russian army utterly defeated Charles XII’s forces. The seriously wounded Ilya was sent with a hospital convoy to St. Petersburg.

The escape of Tsarevich Alexei and the journey to Europe

In St. Petersburg, Ilya ends up in a filthy military hospital with a wounded soldier, Gavrila Gushchin. He finds his brother, Yegor, who has become the Tsar’s mechanic at the Summer Palace. Yegor takes them both in and helps them recover. Later, Ilya is sent to serve in the garrison, and Gushchin is sent to Astrakhan.

Yegor perfected the casting of thin-walled guns and developed universal machine tools. Ivan Rakitin, noted by the tsar for his phenomenal memory for mental arithmetic, founded a company trading in ship supplies and leased a gunpowder mill on the Sestra River.

Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich was hostile to his father’s reforms. Unwilling to learn military science and fearing the prospect of becoming a monk, the tsarevich decided to flee to Austria. In the autumn of 1716, having received orders to go to the tsar in Copenhagen, Alexei took with him Yegor Markov, who had been sent by the sovereign to study Dutch gunpowder technology. In the Saxon village of Marienthal, the tsarevich’s servants slipped a sleeping potion into the mechanic’s hand and left him penniless.

After awakening, Yegor makes his way to Stettin on foot, where he meets a friend from his youth, naval officer Kirill Voskresensky. Together, they find the Tsar in Amsterdam and report the heir’s betrayal.

Investigation of the heir’s case

Peter I commissioned diplomats Pyotr Tolstoy and Alexander Rumyantsev to locate the fugitive. Alexei was found first in the Tyrolean castle of Ehrenberg, and then in the Neapolitan fortress of San Elmo. The ambassadors persuaded the tsarevich to return to Russia, promising his father’s forgiveness.

In early 1718, Alexei returned to Moscow and abdicated his rights to the throne in the Assumption Cathedral in favor of his young brother, Peter Petrovich. However, the Preobrazhensky Prikaz investigation revealed the tsarevich’s secret correspondence with foreign courts and his willingness to rely on Swedish troops to seize power. The Supreme Court, composed of 127 dignitaries, sentenced the traitor to death. On June 26, 1718, the tsarevich died in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

The secret of gunpowder and victory over foreigners

The Tsar tasks Yegor with creating a strong and durable domestic gunpowder. Pieter Schmidt, a master gunsmith invited from Holland, refuses to share the technology with the Russians and demands an exorbitant sum.

Yegor Markov, together with manager Elpidifor Bushuev, conducts hundreds of experiments at the Sestroretsk mill. The mechanic comes up with the idea of replacing mortar pounding with continuous grinding of a moistened mixture using heavy copper millstones.

In the winter of 1719, comparative tests were conducted on the parade ground in St. Petersburg. Schmidt’s gunpowder ejected a test cone from a mortar eighty-five feet. Markov’s charge struck with such force that the projectile flew far beyond a hundred-foot mast, and the gunpowder itself retained its properties even after long storage. Peter the Great appointed Yegor Chief Gunpowder Master of the Artillery Chancellery, and Ivan Rakitin received lucrative government contracts and married Anna Rusakova. Yegor married Rakitin’s sister, Masha.

The Peace of Nystad and Ilya’s Choice

The Russian fleet’s naval victories at Gangut Island in 1714 (where Kirill Voskresensky and the paratrooper Ilya Markov distinguished themselves), at Ösel Island in 1719, and at Grengam in 1720 finally broke Swedish resistance. On August 30, 1721, the Treaty of Nystad was signed, securing Russia’s access to the Baltic Sea.

Ilya Markov’s company of disabled soldiers is sent to Karelia to quell a revolt of enlisted peasants at Andrei Butenant’s Kizhi Ironworks. The plant had been shut down due to excessive corvee labor and the manager’s plundering. Upon reaching the Kizhi Pogost, the soldiers encounter a pile of ancient pine trees, where Gavrila Gushchin stands with a rifle.

Gushchin asks his former comrade-in-arms whether he will go to war against his brothers. Ilya recalls Akinfiy Kulikov’s orders never to turn weapons against his own people. Overcoming a limp, Corporal Markov leaves the army line and climbs to the top of the rebel barricade.