Mikhail Lermontov

(1814 - 1841)

A Russian Romantic poet and novelist, Mikhail Lermontov wrote A Hero of Our Time, one of the seminal works of Russian literature. He publicly clashed with a professor at Moscow University in 1832, leading him to transfer to a cadet school. After Aleksandr Pushkin’s death in a duel in 1837, Lermontov wrote an elegy in which he excoriated the tsarist court; Nicholas I exiled him to the Caucasus. Lermontov published his landmark novel in 1840 and was killed in a duel one year later.