Ivan Andreyevich Krylov (February 13, 1769 – November 21, 1844) is Russia's best known fabulist and probably the most epigrammatic of all Russian authors. Formerly a dramatist and journalist, he only discovered his true genre at the age of 40. While many of his earlier fables were loosely based on Aesop's and La Fontaine's, later fables were original work, often with a satirical bent.

Later monuments chose to represent individual fables separately from the main statue of the poet. This was so in the square named after him in Tver, where much of his childhood was spent. It was erected on the centenary of Krylov's death in 1944 and represents the poet standing and looking down an alley lined with metal reliefs of the fables mounted on plinths. A later monument was installed in the Patriarch's Ponds district of Moscow in 1976. This was the work of Andrei Drevin, Daniel Mitlyansky, and the architect A. Chaltykyan. The seated statue of the fabulist is surrounded by twelve stylised reliefs of the fables in adjoining avenues.