Editing Alexander Pushkin (section)

===Russian literature===
Pushkin is usually credited with developing Russian literature. He is seen as having originated the highly nuanced level of language which characterizes Russian literature after him, and he is also credited with substantially augmenting the Russian lexicon. Whenever he found gaps in the Russian vocabulary, he devised [[calque]]s. His rich vocabulary and highly-sensitive style are the foundation for modern Russian literature. His accomplishments set new records for development of the Russian language and culture. He became the father of Russian literature in the 19th century, marking the highest achievements of the 18th century and the beginning of literary process of the 19th century. He introduced Russia to all the European literary genres as well as a great number of West European writers. He brought natural speech and foreign influences to create modern poetic Russian. Though his life was brief, he left examples of nearly every literary genre of his day: lyric poetry, narrative poetry, the novel, the short story, the drama, the critical essay and even the personal letter.

According to [[Vladimir Nabokov]], <blockquote>Pushkin's [[idiom]] combined all the contemporaneous elements of Russian with all he had learned from [[Gavrila Derzhavin|Derzhavin]], [[Vasily Zhukovsky|Zhukovsky]], [[Konstantin Batyushkov|Batyushkov]], [[Nikolay Karamzin|Karamzin]] and [[Ivan Krylov|Krylov]]:

# The poetical and [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] strain that still lived in [[Church Slavonic language|Church Slavonic]] forms and locutions
# Abundant and natural [[gallicism]]s
# Everyday [[colloquialism]]s of his set
# Stylized popular speech by combining the famous three styles (low, medium elevation, high) dear to the pseudoclassical archaists and adding the ingredients of Russian romanticists with a pinch of [[parody]].<ref>[[Vladimir Nabokov]], ''Verses and Versions'', p. 72.</ref></blockquote>

His work as a critic and as a journalist marked the birth of Russian magazine culture which included him devising and contributing heavily to one of the most influential literary magazines of the 19th century, the ''Sovremennik'' (''The Contemporary'', or ''Современник''). Pushkin inspired the [[Russian fairy tale|folk tales]] and genre pieces of other authors: [[Nikolai Leskov|Leskov]], [[Sergei Yesenin|Yesenin]] and [[Maxim Gorky|Gorky]]. His use of Russian formed the basis of the style of novelists [[Ivan Turgenev]], [[Ivan Goncharov]] and [[Leo Tolstoy]], as well as that of subsequent lyric poets such as [[Mikhail Lermontov]]. Pushkin was analysed by [[Nikolai Gogol]], his successor and pupil, and the great Russian critic [[Vissarion Belinsky]], who produced the fullest and deepest critical study of Pushkin's work, which still retains much of its relevance.