At just 21, Alexander Pushkin finished *Ruslan and Lyudmila*, announcing a literary voice that would redefine an entire national language. Born in Moscow on June 6, 1799, Pushkin compressed poetry, prose, and drama into a career that lasted barely two decades before a fatal duel cut him down at 37. He invented the modern Russian literary language, stripping away stiff Church Slavonic conventions and weaving in everyday speech. His verse-novel *Eugene Onegin* gave Russian fiction its psychological template; his fairy tales entered the oral memory of millions of children. Writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov credited him as the essential ancestor. Today every Russian schoolchild recites his lines, and his birthday is celebrated as Pushkin Day, a national holiday of the Russian language.