On Saturday, June 8, Dr. Andrew Kahn presented “How Pushkin Became Russia’s National Genius,” as a part of the Russian History Museum’s Second Saturday online lecture series.

To commemorate the 225th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Pushkin, Dr. Andrew Kahn gave an overview of Pushkin’s career and works.

The story of how Pushkin became a national writer is full of unlikely twists and moments of intense politicization. During his talk, Dr. Kahn explained how Pushkin became central to Russian culture as a writer who faces East and West.

In the Q&A session, Dr. Kahn discussed Pushkin’s African lineage and his international appeal beyond Russia.

About the Speaker

Andrew Kahn is Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. His area of specialization is Russian poetry of all periods and eighteenth-century literature and thought. He is the author and editor of a number of books including Pushkin's Lyric Intelligence (Oxford University Press, 2008, pbk. 2012), Mandelstam's Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2020), co-author with Mark Lipovetsky, Irina Reyfman and Stephanie Sandler of A History of Russian Literature (Oxford University Press, 2018, pbk. 2022), and the forthcoming with Mark Lipovetsky, All the World on a Page. A Critical Anthology of Modern Russian Poetry (Princeton University Press, 2025). He has also edited the Cambridge Companion to Pushkin (Cambridge) and with Kelsey Rubin-Detlev is the editor and translator of Catherine the Great, Selected Letters (Oxford Worlds Classics, 2018).