Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow.

The Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum had a profound influence on the development of his poetic talent.

In those years, he began his literary activity. At the age of 16, he recited the poem “Memoirs of a Tsarist Village” before Derzhavin. In 1817, he graduated from the Lyceum with the rank of college secretary and was appointed to the Collegium of Foreign Affairs. In 1819, he became a member of the “Green Lamp” literary and theatrical society led by the Decembrists. He finished the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, which he began while still studying at the Lyceum. He could have been exiled to Siberia for his political works, but the patronage of his friends such as Glinka, Karamzin, and Chaadayev resulted in his sentence being commuted and his place of service changed to Ekaterinoslav instead of exile. In 1820, he was exiled to the south for publishing epigrams. During these years, he wrote the works "The Prisoner of the Caucasus", "The Fountain of Bakhchasaray", "The Robber Brothers", and began work on the novel "Eugene Onegin", which would bring him great fame in the future. In 1823, his place of service was changed to Odessa. A year later, when he applied for resignation, he was sent to northern exile, this time to the village of Mikhailovsk, where he had an estate. Here he wrote "Boris Godunov". In 1828, an order was issued to control the poet. After this order, he left Moscow on his own and went to the Caucasus, to his friends. He conveyed his impressions of the trip to readers in the essay "Journey to Erzurum", and in the poems "Caucasus", "Earthquake", "On the Hills of Georgia". In 1830, he went to the village of Kistenevka, located near the Boldino estate. Due to the plague epidemic that broke out in Moscow, he was forced to stay here for three months, where he wrote "The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin", "Little Tragedies", "A Little House in Kolomna" and many other works, and finished the novel "Eugene Onegin". In 1831, he married Natalya Goncharova and moved to St. Petersburg, where he wrote "Dubrovsky", "The Captain's Daughter" and other works on historical themes. In 1832, he also worked on the works "The Black Woman", "Angelo", "The Copper Horseman", "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Goldfish", "The Dead Prince and the Seven Heroes". After returning to St. Petersburg, he fell into financial difficulties, resigned in 1834, and from then on his life depended on the unstable income from his published works. He wasted no time in researching historical documents from the time of Peter I and participated in the foundation of the literary publication Sovremennik, where he published the novel The Captain's Daughter. In 1834, the French Baron Dantes, who had come to Petersburg, fell in love with his wife Natalia Goncharova. This gave rise to many gossips. For this reason, although the poet challenged Dantes to a duel, he withdrew the challenge after he proposed marriage to Natalia's sister, Ekaterina Nikolayevna. However, even after marriage, Dantes continued to pay attention to the poet's wife. Dantes' father, Baron Goeckern, also played a significant role in the growth of the intrigue. Tired of these events, the poet wrote an insulting letter to Baron Goeckern, hoping that Dantes would challenge him to a duel. And so it happened, and the duel took place.

The poet was mortally wounded in the stomach and died 2 days later, at the age of 37, in St. Petersburg. Fearing that demonstrations would begin, the tsar ordered the poet's body to be secretly removed from Petersburg.