Alexander Pushkin is Russia’s most beloved poet. Pushkin is a decedent of a noble family on his father’s side and on his mother’s side the great-grandson of Peter the Great’s Blackamoor slave, who was presented with his freedom and became a general in the tsar’s Navy. Pushkin’s poem “Ode to Liberty” brought hope to the Russian people during a time when other countries were defining their democracy. He is considered to be the Shakespeare of Russian literature having inspired many other writers to follow him. He was revered for his masterpiece Eugene Onegin, and like the hero in his masterpiece became changed by the woman he loved. As a poet, he was also known as the patron saint of dueling having fought many duels during his short life, often over a matter of words or women. His last duel was surrounded with mystery involving an anonymous letter accusing his wife of being unfaithful. He fought this duel to defend his wife’s honor and the mystery of the anonymous letter was never solved, until now! Explore the poetry and letters of Pushkin and read about his fascination with dueling, issues with religion, his struggles with censorship, the years he spent in exile while still serving the autocracy, his tribute to his comrades who fought in the Decembrist Uprising and his search for happiness as he finds and marries the most beautiful woman in all of Russia. Author M. A. DuVernet tells a captivating story of a black poet in Russia during the 1800’s, a man who believed in himself and became a legend in spite of the powerful few who hated him.

Pushkin was born into Russian nobility in Moscow. His father, Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, belonged to Pushkin noble families. His matrilineal great-grandfather was Abram Petrovich Gannibal. 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 Lycee, Pushkin recited his controversial poem "Ode to Liberty," one of several that led to his being exiled by Tsar Alexander the First. 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.

"He is the greatest artist in the world, the beginning of all the beginnings of Russian literature. He was the founder of our poetry, and always the teacher of all us." -- Maxim Gorky"He will always remain great, an exemplary master of poetry, and teacher of art. His poetry possessed the peculiar virtue of being able to develop in people a sense of artistic refinement and a sense of humanity... The time will come when he will be held up in Russia as a classical poet, whose works will guide the formation and development of not only the aesthetic but also the moral sense." -- Vissarion BelinskyThe time Belinsky predicted in 1846 has come, for the world.

Blending close literary analysis with social and cultural history, Daria Khitrova shows how poetry lovers of the period all became nodes in a vast network of literary appreciation and constructed meaning. Poetry during the Golden Age was not a one-way avenue from author to reader. Rather, it was participatory, interactive, and performative.

Sergey Gandlevsky's 2002 novel Illegible has a double time focus, centering on the immediate experiences of Lev Krivorotov, a twenty-year-old poet living in Moscow in the 1970s, as well as his retrospective meditations thirty years later after most of his hopes have foundered. As the story begins, Lev is involved in a tortured affair with an older woman and consumed by envy of his more privileged friend and fellow beginner poet Nikita, one of the children of high Soviet functionaries who were known as "golden youth." In both narratives, Krivorotov recounts with regret and self-castigation the failure of a double infatuation, his erotic love for the young student Anya and his artistic love for the poet Viktor Chigrashov. When this double infatuation becomes a romantic triangle, the consequences are tragic. In Illegible, as in his poems, Gandlevsky gives us unparalleled access to the atmosphere of the city of Moscow and the ethos of the late Soviet and post-Soviet era, while at the same time demonstrating the universality of human emotion.

The word “freedom” is so overly used—and frequently abused—that it is always in danger of becoming nothing but a cliché. In Another Freedom, Svetlana Boym offers us a refreshing new portrait of the age-old concept. Exploring the rich cross-cultural history of the idea of freedom, from its origins in ancient Greece to the present day, she argues that our attempts to imagine freedom should occupy the space of not only “what is” but also “what if.” Beginning with notions of sacrifice and the emergence of a public sphere for politics and art, Boym expands her account to include the relationships between freedom and liberation, modernity and terror, and political dissent and creative estrangement. While depicting a world of differences, she affirms lasting solidarities based on the commitment to the passionate thinking that reflections on freedom require. To do so, Boym assembles a remarkable cast of characters: Aeschylus and Euripides, Kafka and Mandelstam, Arendt and Heidegger, and a virtual encounter between Dostoevsky and Marx on the streets of Paris. By offering a fresh look at the strange history of this idea, Another Freedom delivers a nuanced portrait of freedom, one whose repercussions will be felt well into the future.