How did Pushkin’s grandmother influence his interest in Russian stories?

Aleksandr Pushkin’s maternal grandmother played a significant role in his early exposure to Russian culture. While Pushkin and his siblings were primarily raised in a French-speaking environment, their grandmother was responsible for their care and specifically told Aleksandr stories about his ancestors in Russian.1

This early influence helped foster his connection to his heritage, which he later integrated into his literary work. It is important to note, however, that his interest in Russian folktales was also deeply shaped by his old nurse, Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva, a freed serf who shared traditional stories with him. During his youth, Pushkin spent summers at his grandmother’s estate near Moscow, where he engaged with local peasants and spent significant time in imaginative solitude, further grounding his appreciation for the Russian folk tradition that would eventually inform his major works, such as the poem Ruslan and Ludmila.1