Tsar catherine palace pushkin biography

While, for the rest of the world, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky may vie for the position of Russia's greatest writer, among Russian speakers that honour belongs unquestionably to Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, the prolific Romantic poet who, before his untimely death at the age of 37, almost single-handedly conjured into being one of the world's greatest literary traditions.

Pushkin was both Russia's Byron and Russia's Shakespeare. His desperately romantic life - a series of ill-fated love affairs, clashes with authority, and a series of duels including his final, fatal encounter with the French cavalry officer George d'Anthès - and the lyric verse it inspired remain a potent primer to the classics for generation after generation of Russian school kids.