Borodino is a poem by Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Lermontov

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov , a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus", became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of Russian literature alongside Pushkin and the greatest...

 which describes the Battle of Borodino

Battle of Borodino

The Battle of Borodino , fought on September 7, 1812, was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the French invasion of Russia and all Napoleonic Wars, involving more than 250,000 troops and resulting in at least 70,000 casualties...

, the major battle of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. It was first published in 1837 in the literary magazine Sovremennik

Sovremennik

Sovremennik was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in St. Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that...

 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the battle.

The poem was based on his 1831 teenage version, The Battlefield of Borodino (Поле Бородина).

The poem starts with the direct appellation "Tell me, uncle,..". Lermontov had several relatives (Arsenyevs and Stolypins) who were veterans of the Patriotic War of 1812, and there have been speculation that the poem was based on the narrations of one of them. Other critics suggest that his original version was written under the influence of Denis Davydov

Denis Davydov

Denis Vasilyevich Davydov was a Russian soldier-poet of the Napoleonic Wars who invented a specific genre – hussar poetry noted for its hedonism and bravado – and spectacularly designed his own life to illustrate such poetry.-Biography:...

's Borodino Battlefield (Бородинское поле).