Evgeny is the protagonist in Alexander Pushkin's narrative poem The Bronze Horseman. His name is also rendered as Evgenii or Evgeny in English translations, while the Russian form is Evgenii.
Evgeny is an ordinary, poor clerk living in Saint Petersburg. He hopes to marry Parasha and build a modest personal life, but the great flood of 1824 destroys the city and separates him from her. When he discovers that Parasha has died, his grief turns into fury at Peter the Great, whose decision to build Saint Petersburg on the Neva's vulnerable shore helped create the setting for the disaster.
The poem's central conflict is not simply between Evgeny and a statue. It is between the needs of an individual and the ambitions of the state. The Bronze Horseman—Étienne Maurice Falconet's equestrian monument to Peter—seems to come alive and pursue Evgeny after he challenges it. Pushkin wrote the poem in 1833, and it was published posthumously in 1837 after censorship delayed its complete appearance.