Alexander Pushkin
Biography
Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist—widely regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature. His verse novel Eugene Onegin, poems like “The Bronze Horseman,” the drama Boris Godunov, and stories such as “The Queen of Spades” shaped the modern Russian literary language. He died at 37 after a duel.
Many books were written about Pushkin’s life including, Pursuing Alexander Pushkin, A Memoir by Robert Coles and Great Black Russian: A Novel on the Life and Times of Alexander Pushkin by John Oliver Killens.
Was he Black?
Pushkin had African ancestry through his great-grandfather Abram (Ibrahim) Gannibal, an African child brought to Russia who became a military engineer and a general under Peter the Great.
That makes Pushkin one-eighth African by ancestry. He was a Russian aristocrat who embraced this heritage (for example, his unfinished novel The Moor of Peter the Great is about Gannibal).
Whether to call Pushkin “Black” depends on modern, culture-specific racial labels. Most scholars describe him as Russian with African/Black ancestry rather than a Black writer per se.
Gannibal’s exact birthplace is debated (often cited as in sub-Saharan Africa, with hypotheses including present-day Cameroon or Eritrea/Ethiopia).
