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Aleksey Vasilievich Koltsov (; October 15, 1809 – October 29, 1842) was a Russian poet who has been called a Russian Robert Burns. His poems, frequently placed in the mouth of women, stylize peasant-life songs and idealize agricultural labour. Koltsov earnestly collected Russian folklore which strongly influenced his poetry. He celebrated simple , their work and their lives. Many of his poems were put to music by such composers as Dargomyzhsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov.
The first serious introduction of his poetry occurred in 1831, when Nikolai Stankevich, a poet and philosopher from Moscow, published several poems in "Literaturnaya gazeta" ( Literary newspaper) with a short introduction. In 1835, his first collection of poetry was published. Koltsov often traveled on business to St. Petersburg and Moscow, where he met Belinsky, who became his mentor, as well as Vasily Zhukovsky, Pyotr Vyazemsky, Vladimir Odoevsky, and Aleksandr Pushkin, who published one of Koltsov's poems in his journal "Sovremennik".
Koltsov's father constantly and cruelly controlled his life, suppressing Aleksey's creative writing and his personal life. Weakened by depression and a year-long tuberculosis, Koltsov died in 1842 at the age of 33. He was buried in Voronezh.
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