The idea for creating the first monument to Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin emerged in connection with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. On March 5, 1860, a jubilee committee submitted a request to Emperor Alexander II for permission to establish a nationwide fundraising campaign for the purpose of erecting a monument to the poet. The emperor endorsed the idea, the campaign was launched, and within a few years, the required funds were raised. However, even before the completion of the fundraising effort, numerous sculptors developed projects for the monument on a voluntary basis. These included Mark Antokolsky, Nikolay Laveretsky, Nikolay Pimenov, Parmen Zabello, and Alexander Opekushin, among others.

The competition was conducted in three stages — in 1873, 1874, and 1875. The committee selected Opekushin’s design, as it “combined simplicity, ease, and calmness in the pose and was the most appropriate for the character of Pushkin’s appearance”. Opekushin was born into a family of serfs in the Yaroslavl Governorate and was freed in 1859. In 1872, he became an academician of the Imperial Academy of Arts. He was able to successfully complete an incredibly challenging compositional task — creating a monumental statue of Pushkin that was both realistic and generalized in form, yet full of deep inner meaning. According to Pushkin scholar Yekaterina Pavlova, the statue “is still the embodiment of Pushkin himself and his poetry”.

Years later, the sculptor, then as an 80-years-old man, recalled working on the monument,