This year, Russia celebrated the 225th birthday of the great poet and writer Alexander Pushkin. The importance of Pushkin and the extent of his influence on Russian culture can hardly be overestimated. In 1859, literary critic Apollon Grigoryev famously said, “Pushkin is our everything,” and in Russia, this principle has remained unshakeable for two centuries.
While in the mid-19th century, Grigoriev’s contemporaries may not have unanimously agreed with him, today virtually no one can refute this. We will explore why Pushkin is so important and why he is a key figure in Russian culture. Alexander Pushkin was born on June 6, 1799.
He came from a noble family and was brought up according to the standards of high society. Pushkin’s years of study at the Tsarskoye Selo Imperial Lyceum in 1811-1817 were an important milestone in his education as a poet. At that time, Pushkin's talent first became known – his teachers and friends recognized his gift, and this largely determined his future.
Pushkin lived only 37 years but left behind a huge literary and cultural legacy – scholars, philologists, and philosophers study it to this day. He died on February 10, 1837 in St. Petersburg after being mortally wounded in a duel with the French military officer Georges d’Anthès.
During his short life, Pushkin wrote 14 poems, six plays, 12 novels and short stories in prose, seven fairy tales, a vast number of poems, and his immortal novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. The modern Russi.