born Sept. 5, 1817, St. Petersburg, Russia
died Oct. 10, 1875, Krasny Rog
Russian poet, novelist, and dramatist.
A distant relative of Leo Tolstoy , he held various court posts. In the 1850s he began to publish comic verse, often satirizing government bureaucracy. Among his popular historical novels is Prince Serebrenni (1862). His dramatic trilogy about the 16th and 17th centuries
The Death of Ivan the Terrible (1866), Tsar Feodor Ioannovich (1868), and Tsar Boris (1870)
is written in blank verse and contains some of Russia's best historical dramatic writing. His lyric poetry includes many love and nature poems, as well as Ioann Damaskin (1859), a paraphrase of St. John of Damascus's prayer for the dead.