Kondraty Fyodorovich Ryleyev (Russian: Кондра́тий Фёдорович Рыле́ев, Russian pronunciation: [kɐnˈdratʲɪj ˈfʲɵdərəvʲɪtɕ rɨˈlʲejɪf], September 29 [O.S. September 18] 1795 – July 25 [O.S. July 13] 1826) was a Russian poet, publisher, and a leader of the Decembrist revolt, which attempted to overthrow the Russian monarchy in 1825.
Ryleyev was born in the village of Batovo, now part of Gatchinsky District, Leningrad Oblast. His father, Fyodor Ryleyev, was an impoverished nobleman, a small landowner, who was later employed as the manager of one of Prince Golitsyn's estates.
In spite of his family's pecuniary difficulties, Ryleyev was able to study at the Corps des Pages, an elite military academy attended only by members of the nobility, in Saint Petersburg. After his graduation, Ryleyev was awarded a commission in the First Cavalry Company of the First Reserve Artillery Brigade. He participated in the foreign campaigns of 1814 and 1815, seeing action in Poland, Germany and France, during the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1818, Ryleyev resigned his commission, and for a time was employed tutoring the children of a wealthy landowner named Tevyashev. A year later he married the landowner's daughter, Natalya Tevyasheva, and went on to father two children.
He gained recognition in literary circles in 1820, for penning a satirical ode To the Favorite, addressing an unpopular Tsarist official, Alexey Andreyevich Arakcheyev. That same year he joined a Masonic lodge in Saint Petersburg, where he became acquainted with several future members of the Decembrist uprising.
In need of a regular income, from 1821 to 1824, Ryleyev worked as an assessor of the Saint Petersburg criminal court. He frequently used his position to aid common men and women in distress. One of those he assisted was twenty-year-old Alexander Nikitenko, an educated Ukrainian serf, working in Saint Petersburg, whom Ryleyev met in a bookstore. Nikitenko had been struggling for some time to obtain emancipation. He explained his dilemma to Ryleyev, who immediately set about convincing several influential cavalry officers, old comrades of his, to campaign for Nikitenko's freedom. Nikitenko's case became something of a cause célèbre in Saint Petersburg, and the pressure ultimately proved to be too much for Nikitenko's owner, Count Sheremetev, to bear. He granted Nikitenko his freedom on October 11, 1824.
Ryleyev did not completely abandon his literary pursuits, however. In 1821, he joined the Free Society of Russian Literature Lovers (Volnoye obshchestvo lyubiteley rossiyskoy slovesnosti), an influential association of Russian writers and intellectuals. Ryleyev also edited and co-published a popular annual literary almanac, The Polar Star (Polyarnaya zvezda), with Alexander Alexandrovich Bestuzhev between 1823 and 1825. The three issues that Ryleyev published contained contributions from many of the foremost Russian authors and poets of the age, among them: Alexander Pushkin, Pyotr Vyazemsky, Vasily Zhukovsky, and Evgeny Baratynsky. He also continued to write poetry during this period. His most well-known poems being Grazhdanskoe muzhestvo (Civic Courage), Grazhdanin (The Citizen), and Ispoved' Nalivaiki (Nalivaiko's Confession). Ryleyev's writing was influenced largely by his compatriots Pushkin, Derzhavin, Gnedich, and the British poet Lord Byron, whose verse and account of the Greek War of Independence served to inspire many Russian intellectuals and artists of Ryleyev's generation. Ryleyev was a minor poet, but his poetry was passionate, and popular at the time it was published.
Ryleyev could not support his family with his literary work alone, and after leaving the criminal court, he found employment with the Russian-American Company as a manager in the Saint Petersburg office.
In 1823, Ryleyev was recruited by Ivan Pushchin to the revolutionary Northern Society, an organization of reform-minded individuals, mainly veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, dedicated to abolishing serfdom, and replacing the Tsar's government with either a democratic republic or a constitutional monarchy.
Ryleyev believed that the revolt was likely to fail and the participants would be executed. Still, he argued that their sacrifice would not be in vain, as the uprising might "awaken Russia." As Ryleyev explained prior to the uprising:
An upheaval is essential. The tactics of revolution may be summed up in two words—to dare. If we come to grief our failure will serve as a lesson to those who come after us.
Another Decembrist leader, Pavel Pestel, further elaborated on the motivations of the Society's members:
The desirability of granting freedom to the serfs was considered from the very beginning; for that purpose a majority of the nobility was to be invited in order to petition the Emperor about it. This was later thought of on many occasions, but we soon came to realize that the nobility could not be persuaded...we became even more convinced when the Ukrainian nobility absolutely rejected a similar project [proposed by] their military governor.
In his poem, Nalevaiko's Confession, Ryleyev makes veiled allusions to his own willingness to die for the Decembrists' cause:
That this is sin, thy words are vain,
Worse than all crimes that ever have been,
I care not - for could I but see
Could I but see my race restored