Social activism[edit]

While at the Lyceum, Pushkin was heavily influenced by the Kantian liberal individualist
teachings of Alexander Petrovich Kunitsyn, whom Pushkin would later commemorate in
his poem 19 October.[16] Pushkin also immersed himself in the thought of the
French Enlightenment, to which he would remain permanently indebted throughout his
life, particularly Diderot and Voltaire, whom he described as "the first to follow the new
road, and to bring the lamp of philosophy into the dark archives of history." [17][18]
Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for
literary radicals. That angered the government and led to his transfer from the capital in
May 1820.[19] He went to the Caucasus and to Crimea and then
to Kamianka and Chișinău in Moldavia, where he became a Freemason.

Pushkin's married lover Anna Petrovna Kern, for whom he probably wrote the most famous love
poem in Russian
He joined the Filiki Eteria, a secret organization whose purpose was to overthrow
Ottoman rule in Greece and establish an independent Greek state. He was inspired by
the Greek Revolution and when the war against the Ottoman Turks broke out, he kept a
diary recording the events of the national uprising.