And the The Welcome to Russian History Retold, episode 164, Alexander Pushkin, the father of modern Russian literature, part one.

Last time we covered the final years of one of the greatest authors of all time,

Leo Tolstoy.

Today we're going to talk about the person most consider the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature Alexander Pushkin.

Before we start, I'd like to share the two books that I'm going to be using primarily for this podcast series.

One is from what should be a very familiar source,

Henri Trojat.

Born Lev Tarasov in Moscow in 1911, Troyat is one of the best known biographers of famous Russians.

His works include ones on Anton Chekhov, Catherine the Great, Ross Buten, Fyodor Dostoevsky,

Ivan the Terrible, and of course Leo Tolstoy.

This work on Pushkin was originally published in 1950.

The second is by T.J. Binyon, whose book on Pushkin was published in 2002.

Now both are very different in tone and interpretation of the life of the great poet.

The second one though by Binyon is probably going to be a little bit of an easier read for the modern reader

because it is in a different style it's in a more kind of a

flowing style that I think is easier to understand today and it's using terms that we'd be more familiar with. They're both excellent and that's why I'm using them.

And because I hope these differences between the two books are going to make for a better and richer podcast.

I'd like to look at both sides of a picture so to say.

One other thing that I'm going to be doing is my blog site Russian rulers history.

I haven't done much on it for quite a while but I'm going to get back into it.

What I'm also going to do is have a section where you can see the books that I'm using with

links to Amazon, so if you're interested in buying the books I'd really appreciate

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