Alexander Pushkin — poet, playwright and novelist with roots in the Russian Empire
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born in Moscow on 6 June 1799 (26 May, Old Style) into the Russian nobility. His father, Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, came from an old noble family. His mother, Nadezhda Osipovna, née Gannibal, was the granddaughter of Abram Gannibal, the African-born godson of Peter the Great who rose to general-in-chief, through his son Osip. At home Pushkin learned to speak French, and Russian from his grandmother; he heard Russian folk tales from his nurse.
In 1811 he entered the newly founded Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo, near St Petersburg, a school for sons of the nobility that trained them for state service. He published his first poem at fifteen and by his graduation in 1817 was recognised by the literary establishment. He took a post in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs in St Petersburg, and his poems, including the Ode to Liberty, circulated widely.
In 1820, the year his long poem Ruslan and Lyudmila was published, he was sent by the authorities to the south of the Empire. During these years he travelled in the northern Caucasus and Crimea and began Eugene Onegin. From 1824 he was confined to his family's estate under surveillance, where he wrote the historical drama Boris Godunov, which he could not publish until 1831. After the Decembrist revolt he petitioned the new emperor, Nicholas I, and in 1826 was allowed to return to Moscow.
Eugene Onegin, his novel in verse, appeared in instalments from 1825 to 1832 and as a whole in 1833. His other works include The Bronze Horseman, the story The Queen of Spades and a history of the Pugachev rebellion, and Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky later based operas on Boris Godunov and Eugene Onegin. He is usually credited as the founder of modern Russian literature, the writer who showed that the Russian language could carry every literary form. In 1831 he married Natalya Goncharova and settled in St Petersburg.
He was proud of his African great-grandfather and left unfinished a novel about him, The Moor of Peter the Great, published after his death. He died in St Petersburg on 10 February 1837 (29 January, Old Style), aged thirty-seven, of wounds received in a duel. Tsarskoye Selo was later renamed Pushkin in his honour.
"Lived his whole life in the Russian Empire; sent by the authorities to the south in 1820 and confined to his family estate from 1824; allowed back to Moscow in 1826."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Moscow (Russia)
Born in Moscow in 1799 into the Russian nobility, he is the founder of modern Russian literature. Through his mother he was the great-grandson of Abram Gannibal, the African-born godson of Peter the Great, about whom he began the unfinished novel The Moor of Peter the Great.
Father Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, of an old noble family; mother Nadezhda Osipovna, née Gannibal, granddaughter of Abram Gannibal through his son Osip.
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Moscow (Russia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.