In Russia too poetry was in its Golden Age. It was the period of Alexander Pushkin, the greatest of the Russian lyric poets. Around him was gathered a group of the gilded youth who had mastered the art of elegant verse and who had wide human interests, even though they cloaked them under a mask of aristocratic dilettantism. As their patron and adviser, Zhukovsky was still the master critic. With his excellent court connections, where he was the tutor of the young Tsarevich, later Alexander II, he was able to save the poets from the consequences of their own pranks and to give them good advice on their literary work. More than that Gogol with his Russian stories on Ukrainian and Kozak life had concentrated the attention of the general public on the life of Little Russia, for the name of Ukraine was still taboo in official circles. Now, if ever, was the time in Russia when there might be a hearing for Ukrainian culture, even if there were still no feeling for any change in the political situation. The era of the Russian literary gentlemen was at its climax. That of the plebeian realists was yet to come. It was an ominous time for the poet himself. The Russian armies, returning from the defeat of Napoleon, had brought with them the seeds of modern democratic and republican influences. This had led the progressive aristocracy to embark upon the ill-fated Decembrist Revolution and when the tragic consequences of that evil day had passed, it was realized that Nicholas I with his narrow bureaucratic tendencies had destroyed the political power of the liberal elements of the country. Many of the literary men had suffered and even Pushkin was for a while under suspicion and in real danger. Then came the Polish revolt of 1831 and the Russian armies stormed Warsaw and destroyed the little autonomy that had previously existed in that land. Nicholas was suspicious of new outbreaks and as he firmly bound the universally recognized Pushkin with golden chains and broke his heart at the Russian court, so he was on the watch for any new malefactors who might venture to preach the hated liberal ideas. It was just at this moment that a young Ukrainian serf, Taras Shevchenko, arrived in St. Petersburg, little dreaming of the changes that a few short years would make in his life. He had been born on February 25, 1814, in the little village of Morintsy in the government of Kiev and was therefore a Ukrainian of the right bank of the Dnieper, far to the west of the home of both Kotlyarevsky and Kvitka. His father, though a serf on the estate of Vasily Vasilyevich Engelhardt, was able to read and write. His mother was also of a superior type and the boy always respected her memory and admired her, even though she died when he was nine years old. His father married again but the step-mother was not kind to him, and when his father died in 1826, the twelve year old Taras was left as an orphan amid the hard conditions of serfdom.