Vasily Kapnist

He was a descendant of the Venetian noble family of Capnissi (whose name derives from the Zakynthos surname Καπνίσης[4]), he spent all his life in the manor of Obukhovka near Poltava.

His lifelong friendship with Nikolay Lvov and Gavrila Derzhavin date from the early 1770s, when all three served in the Leub Guard.

His later poems belong to the Horatian tradition, anticipating Russian Romanticism in their social pessimism and admiration of simple family joys.

Kapnist revealed himself as a savage satirist in his most famous work, a satirical verse drama based on the poet's litigation against a neighbour and aptly entitled Chicane (1798).

[5]In 1788, Kapnist wrote a petition to Catherine the Great proposing the Empress restore the Zaporozhian host and use its soldiers in the ongoing war against Turkey.