Historical Figures from Russia

Poet · 1799 – 1837

Alexander Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright and novelist, regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature, whose verse novel Eugene Onegin and other works shaped the language and the writers who followed him.

• Eugene Onegin
• Boris Godunov

Writer · 1860 – 1904

Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer — and a practising physician — widely regarded as among the greatest masters of both the short story and modern drama, whose plays like The Cherry Orchard transformed the theatre.

• The Cherry Orchard
• The Seagull

Novelist · 1821 – 1881

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist whose psychologically penetrating works, including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, probe faith, guilt, and freedom and helped shape modern existential thought.

• Crime and Punishment
• The Brothers Karamazov

Novelist · 1828 – 1910

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist and moral philosopher whose epics War and Peace and Anna Karenina rank among the greatest works of fiction, and whose later doctrine of nonviolence influenced Gandhi and King.

• War and Peace
• Anna Karenina