Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin Russian poet, novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer; he has often been considered his country's greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.

The early years Like many aristocratic families in early 19th-century Russia, Pushkin's parents adopted French culture, and he and his brother and sister learned to talk and to read in French. They were left much to the care of their maternal grandmother, who told Aleksandr, especially, stories of his ancestors in Russian. From Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva, his old nurse, a freed serf (immortalized as Tatyana's nurse in Yevgeny Onegin), he heard Russian folktales. During summers at his grandmother's estate near Moscow he talked to the peasants and spent hours alone, living in the dream world of a precocious, imaginative child. He read widely in his father's library and gained stimulus from the literary guests who came to the house. In 1811 Pushkin entered the newly founded Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo (later renamed Pushkin) and while there began his literary career with the publication (1814, in Vestnik Evropy, "The Messenger of Europe") of his verse epistle "To My Friend, the Poet." In his early verse, he followed the style of his older contemporaries, the Romantic poets K.N. Batyushkov and V.A. Zhukovsky, and of the French 17th- and 18th-century poets, especially the Vicompe de Parny.

St. Petersburg In 1817 Pushkin accepted a post in the foreign office at St. Petersburg, where he was elected to Arzamбs, an exclusive literary circle founded by his uncle's friends. Pushkin also joined the Green Lamp association, which, though founded (in 1818) for discussion of literature and history, became a clandestine branch of a secret society, the Union of Welfare. In his political verses and epigrams, widely circulated in manuscript, he made himself the spokesman for the ideas and aspirations of those who were to take part in the Decembrist rising of 1825, the unsuccessful culmination of a Russian revolutionary movement in its earliest stage.

Exile in the south For these politicalpoems,Pushkin was banished from St. Petersburg in May 1820 to a remote southern province.. Sent first to Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine), he was there taken ill and, while convalescing, traveled in the northern Caucasus and later to the Crimea with General Rayevski, a hero of 1812, and his family. The impressions he gained provided material for his "southern cycle" of romantic narrative poems: Kavkazsky plennik ( ; The Prisoner of the Caucasus), Bratya razboyniki and Bakhchisaraysky fontan. Although this cycle of poems confirmed the reputation of the author of Ruslan and Ludmila and Pushkin was hailed as the leading Russian poet of the day and as the leader of the romantic, liberty- loving generation of the 1820s, he himself was not satisfied with it. Although this cycle of poems confirmed the reputation of the author of Ruslan and Ludmila and Pushkin was hailed as the leading Russian poet of the day and as the leader of the romantic, liberty-loving generation of the 1820s, Pushkin had meanwhile been transferred first to Kishinyov and then to Odessa. At Odessa he fell passionately in love with the wife of his superior, Count Vorontsov, governor-general of the province. He fought several duels, and eventually the count asked for his discharge. This finally led to his being again exiled to his mother's estate of Mikhaylovskoye, near Pskov, at the other end of Russia.

Return from exile After the suppression of the Decembrist uprising of 1825, the new tsar Nicholas I, aware of Pushkin's immense popularity and knowing that he had taken no part in the Decembrist "conspiracy," allowed him to return to Moscow in the autumn of 1826 During a long conversation between them, the tsar met the poet's complaints about censorship with a promise that in the future he himself would be Pushkin's censor and told him of his plans to introduce several pressing reforms from above and, in particular, to prepare the way for liberation of the serfs. This is the reason for his persistent interest in the age of reforms at the beginning of the 18th century and in the figure of Peter the Great, the "tsar-educator," whose example he held up to the present tsar in the poem "Stansy" (1826; "Stanzas"), in The Negro of Peter the Great, in the historical poem Poltava (1829), and in the poem Medny vsadnik (1837; The Bronze Horseman). Pushkin saw, however, that without the support of the people, the struggle against autocracy was doomed. The collapse of the rising had been a grievous experience for Pushkin, whose heart was wholly with the "guilty" Decembrists, five of whom had been executed, while others were exiled to forced labour in Siberia.

In The Bronze Horseman, Pushkin poses the problem of the "little man" whose happiness is destroyed by the great leader in pursuit of ambition He does this by telling a "story of St. Petersburg" set against the background of the flood of 1824, when the river took its revenge against Peter I's achievement in building the city. The poem describes how the "little hero," Yevgeny, driven mad by the drowning of his sweetheart, wanders through the streets. The poem's descriptive and emotional powers give it an unforgettable impact and make it one Seeing the bronze statue of Peter I seated on a rearing horse and realizing that the tsar, seen triumphing over the waves, is the cause of his grief, Yevgeny threatens him and, in a climax of growing horror, is pursued through the streets by the "Bronze Horseman."After returning from exile, Pushkin found himself in an awkward and invidious position The tsar's censorship proved to be even more exacting than that of the official censors, and his personal freedom was curtailed. Not only was he put under secret observation by the police but he was openly supervised by its chief, Count Benckendorf Moreover, his works of this period met with little comprehension from the critics, and even some of his friends accused him of apostasy, forcing him to justify his political position in the poem "Druzyam" (1828; "To My Friends") The anguish of his spiritual isolation at this time is reflected in a cycle of poems about the poet and the mob ( ) and in the unfinished Yegipetskiye nochi (1835; Egyptian Nights).. He spent the autumn of 1830 at his family's Nizhny Novgorod estate, Boldino, and these months are the most remarkable in the whole of his artistic career.. During them he wrote the four so-called "little tragedies"--Skupoy rytsar (1836; The Covetous Knight), Motsart i Salyeri (1831; Mozart and Salieri), Kamenny gost (1839; The Stone Guest), and Pir vo vremya chumy (1832; Feast in Time of the Plague)--the five short prose tales collected as Povesti pokoynogo Ivana Petrovicha Belkina (1831;

Last years In 1831 Pushkin married Natalya Nikolayevna Goncharova and settled in St. Petersburg Once more he took up government service and was commissioned to write a history of Peter the Great Three years later he received the rank of Kammerjunker (gentleman of the emperor's bedchamber), partly because the tsar wished Natalya to have the entrйe to court functions In 1831 Pushkin married Natalya Nikolayevna Goncharova and settled in St. Petersburg Once more he took up government service and was commissioned to write a history of Peter the Great. Three years later he received the rank of Kammerjunker (gentleman of the emperor's bedchamber), partly because the tsar wished Natalya to have the entrйe to court functions. Meanwhile, both in his domestic affairs and in his official duties, his life was becoming more intolerable. In court circles he was regarded with mounting suspicion and resentment, and his repeated petitions to be allowed to resign his post, retire to the country, and devote himself entirely to literature were all rejected Finally, in 1837, Pushkin was mortally wounded defending his wife's honour in a duel forced on him by influential enemies

Finished: Kokin Alexander Checked: Bryndina Natalya Victorovna