Case file · Folklore / legend
Major Baturin's dream of the Bronze Horseman
In 1812, when Alexander I planned to evacuate the statue of Peter the Great from St Petersburg, a Major Baturin is said to have dreamed that the Horseman rode to the tsar and told him the city was safe as long as he stood there; the statue stayed.
1812 CE · 59.94, 30.30 · status: legend
The account
The story was told among Pushkin's friends and shaped the poem 'The Bronze Horseman' (1833), in which the statue chases a man through the flooded city. During the Second World War the monument was again left in place, protected with sandbags and boards, and the legend was retold during the siege of Leningrad.
The sceptical view
A story known from memoir tradition; there is no record of the dream itself.