Vasilii Vasilevich Popugaev

Born 1778 or 1779 in St. Petersburg; died circa 1816 in Tver’, now Kalinin. Russian poet and enlightener; member of the Free Society of Amateurs of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts.

Popugaev served as a government functionary in St. Petersburg. In his poetry and publicistic works he opposed autocracy, tyranny, and man’s enslavement by man and attempted to demonstrate the superiority of a republican regime founded on universal equal rights. His article “On Slavery and Its Orgins and Consequences in Russia” (1815–16) decried serfdom in Russia.