Editing Alexander Pushkin (section)

==Legacy==
[[File:Stamp of Moldova 153.gif|thumb|upright|1999 stamp of [[Moldova]] showing Pushkin and [[Constantin Stamati]]]]
===Literary===
Critics consider many of his works masterpieces, such as the poem ''[[The Bronze Horseman (poem)|The Bronze Horseman]]'' and the drama ''[[The Stone Guest (play)|The Stone Guest]]'', a tale of the fall of [[Don Juan]]. His poetic short drama ''[[Mozart and Salieri (play)|Mozart and Salieri]]'' (like ''The Stone Guest'', one of the so-called four ''Little Tragedies'', a collective characterization by Pushkin himself in 1830 letter to [[Pyotr Pletnyov]]<ref>{{cite book|last=Anderson|first=Nancy K. (trans. & ed.)|title=The Little Tragedies by Alexander Pushkin|year=2000|location=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/littletragedies00alek/page/1 1 & 213 n.1]|isbn=0300080255|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/littletragedies00alek/page/1}}.</ref>) was the inspiration for [[Peter Shaffer]]'s ''[[Amadeus (play)|Amadeus]]'' as well as providing the libretto (almost verbatim) to [[Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov|Rimsky-Korsakov]]'s opera ''[[Mozart and Salieri (opera)|Mozart and Salieri]]''.

Pushkin is also known for his short stories. In particular his cycle ''[[The Belkin Tales|The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin]]'', including [[The Shot (Pushkin)|The Shot]], were well received. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, <blockquote> "the narrative logic and the plausibility of that which is narrated, together with the precision, conciseness – economy of the presentation of reality – all of the above is achieved in ''Tales of Belkin'', especially, and most of all in the story ''The Stationmaster''. Pushkin is the progenitor of the long and fruitful development of Russian realist literature, for he manages to attain the realist ideal of a concise presentation of reality".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kvas|first=Kornelije|title=The Boundaries of Realism in World Literature|publisher=Lexington Books|year=2020|isbn=978-1-7936-0910-6|location=Lanham, Boulder, New York, London|pages=26}}</ref></blockquote> Pushkin himself preferred his verse novel ''[[Eugene Onegin]]'', which he wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone and focus.

''Onegin'' is a work of such complexity that, though it is only about a hundred pages long, translator [[Vladimir Nabokov]] needed two full volumes of material to fully render its meaning into English. Because of this difficulty in translation, Pushkin's verse remains largely unknown to English readers. Even so Pushkin has profoundly influenced western writers such as [[Henry James]].<ref name="Leary">[http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway/ejournal2.html Joseph S. O'Leary, ”Pushkin in 'The Aspern Papers{{'}}”. ''The Henry James E-Journal'' Number 2, March 2000] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181005013429/http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway/ejournal2.html |date=5 October 2018 }}. Retrieved 24 November 2006.</ref>
Pushkin wrote [[The Queen of Spades (story)|The Queen of Spades]], a short story frequently anthologized in English translation.

===Musical===
Pushkin's works also provided fertile ground for Russian composers. [[Mikhail Glinka|Glinka]]'s ''[[Ruslan and Lyudmila (opera)|Ruslan and Lyudmila]]'' is the earliest important Pushkin-inspired opera, and a landmark in the tradition of Russian music. [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky]]'s operas ''[[Eugene Onegin (opera)|Eugene Onegin]]'' (1879) and ''[[The Queen of Spades (opera)|The Queen of Spades]]'' (''Pikovaya Dama'', 1890) became perhaps better known outside of Russia than Pushkin's own works of the same name.

[[Modest Mussorgsky|Mussorgsky]]'s monumental ''[[Boris Godunov (opera)|Boris Godunov]]'' (two versions, 1868–9 and 1871–2) ranks as one of the very finest and most original of Russian operas. Other Russian operas based on Pushkin include [[Alexander Dargomyzhsky|Dargomyzhsky]]'s ''[[Rusalka (Dargomyzhsky)|Rusalka]]'' and ''[[The Stone Guest (Dargomyzhsky)|The Stone Guest]]''; [[Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov|Rimsky-Korsakov]]'s ''[[Mozart and Salieri (opera)|Mozart and Salieri]]'', ''[[The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Rimsky-Korsakov)|Tale of Tsar Saltan]]'', and ''[[The Golden Cockerel]]''; [[César Cui|Cui]]'s ''[[Prisoner of the Caucasus (opera)|Prisoner of the Caucasus]]'', ''[[Feast in Time of Plague (opera)|Feast in Time of Plague]]'', and ''[[The Captain's Daughter (opera)|The Captain's Daughter]]''; [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky]]'s ''[[Mazeppa (opera)|Mazeppa]]''; [[Sergei Rachmaninoff|Rachmaninoff]]'s one-act operas ''[[Aleko (opera)|Aleko]]'' (based on ''The Gypsies'') and ''[[The Miserly Knight]]''; [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky]]'s ''[[Mavra]]'', and [[Eduard Nápravník|Nápravník]]'s ''[[Dubrovsky (opera)|Dubrovsky]]''.

Additionally, ballets and [[cantata]]s, as well as innumerable [[Art song|songs]], have been set to Pushkin's verse (including even his French-language poems, in [[Isabelle Aboulker]]'s [[song cycle]] "[[Troika (Julia Kogan album)|Caprice étrange]]"). [[Franz von Suppé|Suppé]], [[Ruggiero Leoncavallo|Leoncavallo]] and [[Gian Francesco Malipiero|Malipiero]] have also based operas on his works.<ref>Taruskin R. Pushkin in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera''. London & New York, Macmillan, 1997.</ref> Composers [[Yudif Grigorevna Rozhavskaya]], [[Galina Konstantinovna Smirnova]], [[Yevgania Yosifovna Yakhina]], [[Maria Semyonovna Zavalishina]], [[Zinaida Petrovna Ziberova]] composed folk songs using Pushkin's text.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cohen|first=Aaron I.|title=International encyclopedia of women composers|date=1987|isbn=0-9617485-2-4|edition=Second edition, revised and enlarged|location=New York|oclc=16714846}}</ref>

''The Desire of Glory'', which has been dedicated to Elizaveta Vorontsova, was set to music by [[David Tukhmanov]], as well as ''Keep Me, Mine Talisman'' – by [[Alexander Barykin]]  and later by Tukhmanov.{{cn|date=March 2024}}

===Romanticism===
Pushkin is considered by many to be the central representative of Romanticism in Russian literature; however, he was not unequivocally known as a Romantic. Russian critics have traditionally argued that his works represent a path from [[Neoclassicism]] through Romanticism to [[Literary realism|Realism]]. An alternative assessment suggests that "he had an ability to entertain contrarities which may seem Romantic in origin, but are ultimately subversive of all fixed points of view, all single outlooks, including the Romantic" and that "he is simultaneously Romantic and not Romantic".<ref name=basker/>

===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.

===Soviet centennial celebrations===
In the centennial year of Pushkin's death in 1937, a mass renaming of streets across the entire [[Soviet Union]] occurred in his honour.<ref name="7473415pushkin"/> Prior to 2022, Pushkin was the third most common historical figure represented in Ukraine’s streets; however, [[Demolition of monuments to Alexander Pushkin in Ukraine|his monuments]] were removed and streets bearing his name were renamed following the [[Russian invasion of Ukraine]].<ref name="7473415pushkin">{{Cite web|title=Pushkin must fall: monuments to Russia's national poet under threat in Ukraine|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/05/monuments-to-russia-national-poet-pushkin-under-threat-in-ukraine|date=5 May 2023|access-date=5 September 2024|website=[[The Guardian]]|language=English}}</ref><ref name="Pushkin7379110"><br/>{{cite web |author=|title=Bandera Street appeared in the liberated Izium|url=https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2022/12/3/7379110/|website=[[Ukrainska Pravda]] |date=3 December 2022|access-date=3 December 2022|language=Ukrainian}}<br/>{{cite web |author=Lyudmyla Martinova|title=Kyiv renamed Pushkinska Street to Chikalenka, Nekrasivska to Dracha|url=https://ukranews.com/ua/news/890959-kyyiv-perejmenuvav-vulytsyu-pushkinsku-na-chykalenka-nekrasivsku-na-dracha|website=[[Ukrainian News Agency]] |date=28 October 2022|access-date=3 December 2022|language=Ukrainian}}<br/>{{cite web |author=|title=Monuments to Pushkin, Lomonosov, and Gorky will be removed from public space in Dnipro - city council|url=https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2022/12/6/7379537/|website=[[Ukrainska Pravda]]|date=6 December 2022|access-date=6 December 2022|language=Ukrainian}}<br/>{{Cite web|title=Poltava decided to demolish monuments to two Soviet generals and Pushkin|url=https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2023/04/7/7396940/|website=[[Ukrainska Pravda]]|date=7 April 2023|accessdate=14 April 2023|language=Ukrainian}}</ref> These monuments, along with any [[toponymy]] named after him, are now illegal in [[Ukraine]] following the implementation of [[On the Condemnation and Prohibition of Propaganda of Russian Imperial Policy in Ukraine and the Decolonization of Toponymy|a law that bans symbols]] "dedicated to persons who publicly, including … in literary and other artistic works, supported, glorified, or justified [[Russian imperialism|Russian imperial]] policy".<ref name="7473415pushkin"/>

The centennial of Pushkin's death in 1937 was one of the most significant literary commemorations of the Soviet era, second only to the 1928 centennial of [[Leo Tolstoy]]'s birth. Although Pushkin's image was prominently displayed in Soviet propaganda, from billboards to candy wrappers, it conflicted with the ideal Soviet persona. Pushkin was reputed as a [[libertine]] with aristocratic tendencies, which clashed with Soviet values and led to a form of repressive revisionism, akin to the Stalinist reworking of Tolstoy's [[Christian anarchism]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Morrison |first=Simon |title=Sergey Prokofiev and His World |publisher=Princeton University Press |date=2008 |page=60}}</ref>