Pushkin, Bronze statue in Arts Square, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Pushkin is a bronze statue over four meters tall, standing with its pedestal at 7.9 meters, on Arts Square before the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg. The pedestal is cut from reddish granite from Kar-Lahti, and the gold inscription on its front reads "To Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin."

A monument to Pushkin was first planned in 1936 for the centenary of the poet's death, and a competition in 1937 proposed Birzhevaya Square, renamed Pushkinskaya. No winning design emerged, and after a 1947 all-Union competition the young sculptor Mikhail Anikushin's entry was approved in 1949. The bronze was cast at the Monument Sculpture factory and unveiled on Arts Square on 19 June 1957, during Leningrad's 250th anniversary; Anikushin received the Lenin Prize in 1958.

The square is called Arts Square, not after Pushkin; it takes its name from the cluster of museums around it, including the Russian Museum behind the statue. The gold inscription on the pedestal reads "To Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin" in three lines. The monument was unveiled on 19 June 1957, the year of Leningrad's 250th anniversary.

The statue faces the Russian Museum on Arts Square, in the Mikhailovsky Park area of central Saint Petersburg. The bronze was cast at the Monument Sculpture plant in Leningrad, and the pedestal is cut from reddish granite quarried at Kar-Lahti near the city. The gold inscription on the front reads "To Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin".

Anikushin's winning design came from the fourth open round of the 1947 all-Union competition, when he was a 32-year-old recent graduate of the Academy of Arts. He later made a new, more finished model at his own expense after the state commission had approved an earlier version.