Ivan Pnin
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Ivan Petrovich Pnin (1773 — 1805) was a Russian poet. According to the bastardy custom, his last name is the abbreviation of his father's, Prince Nicholas Repnin. Born out of wedlock, he famously deplored the status of illegitimate children in his 1802 petition to Alexander I of Russia. His liberal Essay on the Enlightenment in Russia (1804) attacked serfdom and as such was banned in the Russian Empire. The titles of Pnin's best known poems — Man (1804) and God (1805) — mirror Derzhavin's on purpose, as he sought to refute the great poet's idealism by taking up the Deist stance of Radishchev, Volney, and d'Holbach.
