Aleksandr Pushkin is, by common agreement -- at least among his own compatriots -- the greatest of all Russian writers. The major part of his lyrical poetry was written between 1820 and 1830, but some of his poetical masterpieces were composed in the last seven years of his life, when he was turning his attention to prose. 

A development can be traced from the sparkling ebullience of his early verse -- the crowning achievement of which is the first chapter of Evgeny Onegin, written in 1823 -- to the concetrated expressiveness and restrained power of his later poetry. By effecting a new synthesis between the three main ingredients of the Russian literary idiom -- the Church Slovanic, the Western European borrowings, and the spoken vernacular -- Pushkin created the language of modern Russian poetry. His personal life was made difficult by his conflicts with the authorities who disapproved of his liberal views. He was killed in a duel.

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (6 June 1799 – 10 February 1837) was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.

Born into the Russian nobility in Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo.

Although Pushkin had some Slavophile sympathies, they were combined with a deep admiration for Classical Liberalism. As a result, he composed verse praising the Decembrist Revolt and sharply criticising Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I. As a result, he was sent into internal exile in Kishinev and later in Tbilisi. While under the strict surveillance of the Tsar's political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play, the drama Boris Godunov. His novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, was serialized between 1825 and 1832.

Notoriously touchy about his honour, Pushkin fought a total of twenty-nine duels. At the age of thirty-eight years, however, Alexander Pushkin was fatally wounded in such an encounter with Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès. d'Anthès, a French officer serving with the Chevalier Guard Regiment, had been attempting to seduce the poet's wife, Natalya Pushkina. Pushkin's early death is still regarded as a catastrophe for Russian literature.

Despite his aristocratic status and differences with Marxism, Pushkin's verse was deeply admired by Lenin's Bolsheviks. During the seventy year existence of the Soviet Union, Pushkin was portrayed in State propaganda as a predecessor of Socialist Realism. In 1937, the town of Tsarskoe Selo was renamed Pushkin in his honour. In more recent years, his life has inspired the film Pushkin: The Last Duel.