AN AMALGAM of biography, history, politics and literature, all woven together by informed commentary and observation, it is difficult to categorise Jack Robertson’s book on Alexander Pushkin.

Taking the reader down numerous fascinating discursive byways, the focus is on the acknowledged founder of Russian literature and his great 1833 poem The Bronze Horseman.

Its title references the great equestrian statue in St Petersburg’s Senate Square celebrating the founder of the city, Peter the Great.

Imperious, astride his rearing steed which crushes a writhing snake beneath its hooves, he symbolically imposes authority over a subject race.

Providing context, Robertson’s exhaustively researched book concisely traces Russian history from the founding of the nation — a litany of authoritarian regimes, tsars constantly fearing assassination, internal palace coups and revolts by oppressed subjects.[[{"fid":"13617","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]

Pushkin’s short life spanned the feverish post-French revolutionary period that troubled Russian rulers as it did all those across Europe.

Born into the aristocratic elite, he quickly established a reputation both as the leading poetic voice of his nation and a dangerous critical voice who was constantly at odds with Nicholas I and his creed of “autocracy, orthodoxy and nationality” which imposed an intellectual as much as a physical serfdom on his vast domain.

Two major events inform Pushkin’s 1833 epic, censored and only published posthumously — the great St Petersburg flood of 1824 and the Decemberist uprising the following year.

Pushkin, at the time enduring one of a number of periods of exile, was lucky to escape execution, the fate of many of his close friends among the rebels.

After a paean to the resplendent city — “a window on Europe” carved from the “midst of the forest and boggy mire” — Pushkin reminds the reader that nature can destroy as much as man can construct when the Neva floods disastrously.

Evgeny, a poor clerk, loses his fiancee and in enraged impotency threatens the mounted titan. In his demented nightmare, horse and rider descend from their granite plinth and pursue the lost soul to his death.

This simple tale spoke to its own time and to this day captures the minds and hearts of millions of Russians in ways that foreigners find difficult to fathom.

An interesting final chapter on translation emphasises the difficulties in capturing what Robertson describes as “the terseness and compactness of Pushkin’s style.”

His own translation of the poem reflects these difficulties but this in no way reduces the pleasurable satisfaction to be gained from a hugely informative study, refreshingly free from academic stodginess.

Highly recommended.

Published by Redwords, £16.99.