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Alexander Pushkin
Poet and novelist; founder of modern Russian literature
The great-grandson of an African prince who became Russia's Shakespeare.
The rise
Born on 6 June 1799 in Moscow, the great-grandson of Abram Petrovich Gannibal — an African page who became a general under Peter the Great — he published his first poem at fifteen and by his twenties had created the modern Russian literary language. 'Eugene Onegin' and 'The Bronze Horseman' established him as Russia's national poet.