Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (ˈpʊʃkɪn; Александр Сергеевич Пушкин, ɐljɪkˈsandr sjɪrˈɡje(j)ɪvjɪtɕ ˈpuʂkjɪn; ) was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. He is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin was born into the Russian nobility in Moscow. His father, Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, belonged to an old noble family. His maternal great-grandfather was Major-General Abram Petrovich Gannibal, a nobleman of African origin who was kidnapped from his homeland by Ottomans. He was freed by the Russian Emperor and raised in the Emperor's court household as his godson. He published his first poem at the age of 15, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Upon graduation from the Lycée, Pushkin recited his controversial poem "Ode to Liberty", one of several that led to his exile by Emperor Alexander I. While under the strict surveillance of the Emperor's political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play, Boris Godunov. His novel in verse Eugene Onegin was serialized between 1825 and 1832. Pushkin was fatally wounded in a duel with his wife's alleged lover and her sister's husband, Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès, also known as Dantes-Gekkern, a French officer serving with the Chevalier Guard Regiment. Pushkin's father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin (1767–1848), was descended from a distinguished family of the Russian nobility that traced its ancestry back to the 12th century. Pushkin's mother, Nadezhda (Nadya) Ossipovna Gannibal (1775–1836), was descended through her paternal grandmother from German and Scandinavian nobility. She was the daughter of Ossip Abramovich Gannibal (1744–1807) and his wife, Maria Alekseyevna Pushkina (1745–1818). Ossip Abramovich Gannibal's father, Pushkin's great-grandfather, was Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696–1781), an African page kidnapped to Constantinople as a gift to the Ottoman Sultan and later transferred to Russia as a gift for Peter the Great.