Leonid Barbashin is a character (the murderer who never
turns up*) in VN's play "Sobytie" ("The Event").
Barbashin comes from Barbash. In Herzen's novel "Kto
vinovat?" ("Who is to Blame?") there is one Emel'ka Barbash (Part One,
chapter 2).
Emel'ka Barbash is a namesake of Emel'yan Pugachyov,
the leader of the Cossack insurrection (1773-75) whom Pushkin, the author of
"The History of Pugachyov" (1834) used to call Pugach.
Pugach (toy gun) and Pugachyov come from pugat' (to
frighten, scare).
Leo Tolstoy famously said of the playwright and short story
writer Leonid Andreev (1871-1919): On pugaet, a mne ne strashno ("He
frightens me, but I'm not scared"). On the other hand, in a letter to Strakhov
(Strakhov comes from strakh, "fear;" in his review of VN's play
Khodasevich says that its title could have been "Strakh") Tolstoy
mentions the murder of Suvorin's wife by her lover who committed
suicide and exclaims: "kakoe znamenatel'noe sobytie!" ("what a
significant event!")
*as Revshin suggests (Act One), Barbashin ne tak uzh
strashen (Barbashin is not that terrible)
Alexey Sklyarenko