Gambling in Russian Literature

Alexander Pushkin, as you may know, was an avid fan of gambling games. He could play Bridge or Preference all night long. And although in those days there was no online casino Australia, the great writer, losing considerable sums, often got into big debts, but he could not leave his hobby. In his work there are a lot of poems and books in which one way or another he mentions card games.

Nikolai Gogol

The sad fate of an inveterate gambling addict in the story “The Queen of Spades” is especially vividly presented. The main character appears full of hope and with faith in the future in the first chapters. But at the end of the story, he remains in the deepest depression and huge debts. Nikolai Gogol describes the behavior of sharpers with incredible accuracy. The writer himself has never been noticed in hobbies for gambling. However, his comedy The Gamblers perfectly describes gambling and tells the story of clever cheats tricking each other at the card table.

Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov was also an inveterate gambler. As a Russian cavalryman and officer, he simply could not escape the harmful influence of card games that were widespread among the military ranks of that time. He has written several works about gambling. Masquerade, Tambov Treasurer – these stories describe the hopelessness of the situations in which the main characters find themselves, following the lead of their gambling addiction.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky talks about the same problem in his novel The Gambler, which tells how a person degrades when is caught in the gambling nets. It is possible to trace how the consciousness and self-identification of the hero of the work changes, which is sinking deeper and deeper into the eerie world of gambling addiction.

Dostoevsky himself was not fond of cards, but thanks to his outstanding literary talent, he managed to convey to the smallest detail the perception of the world from the point of view of an avid gambler. The pernicious fascination with cards and craps has played a disastrous role in the lives of many prominent writers and poets. Perhaps without their passion for gambling, they could have written even more of their greatest works. But pleasure comes at a high price.

As we can see gambling is an integral part of human culture, which is why many artists and writers devote a separate place in their creations to the gambling nature of the human mind.