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Biography, life story of Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev
Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev, Russian poet and Decembrist, was born on September 18 (29), 1795 in the small estate of his father, Batovo, St. Petersburg province. The father was a nobleman, served as manager of the Golitsyn estate. Kondraty Ryleev entered the First St. Petersburg Cadet Corps at the insistence of his mother in 1801. He was released from the corps in 1814.Military service
Ryleev K.F. left the corps as an artillery officer and was sent to the army, which was on a campaign abroad. Ryleev visited Switzerland, Germany and France. In 1817 he was transferred to serve in Russia, in the Voronezh province. The Arakcheev order in Russia began to weigh heavily on him.
Retirement and civil service
Ryleev K.F. retired in 1818 with the rank of second lieutenant. He married for love and began to live with his family in St. Petersburg in 1820, entering the service as an assessor of the St. Petersburg Criminal Chamber. His wife Natalya Mikhailovna, nee Tevyasheva, was the daughter of a Voronezh landowner. The family had two children - a daughter and a son, who died in infancy. After his first job, Ryleev got a job as head of the office of a Russian-American company. Civil service was not popular among the nobility, so Ryleev tried to ennoble his service with the fight for justice and humane actions. In his political views, Ryleev was a romantic utopian and ardent patriot. According to contemporaries, it was an obsession with free thought and equality.
Literary activity
A penchant for writing led Ryleev to the Free Society. Ryleev began writing as a translator. He translated the poem "Duma" by the Polish poet Glinsky. The translation was published by the printing house of the Imperial Orphanage. In 1820, Ryleev wrote a satirical ode “To the Temporary Worker.” His poem "The Death of Ermak" became famous. Part of this poem was set to music, becoming a popular song. During his lifetime, only two books were published: the poem “Voinarovsky” and the book “Dumas”. Ryleev viewed his literary works as a civic duty, and not as artistic creativity, which distinguished him from all other poets of that time. All the heroes of his works were freedom fighters.
CONTINUED BELOW
Correspondence with and Bestuzhev
Friendly correspondence with and Bestuzhev was about literary creativity and was not of a political nature. A.A. Bestuzhev, also a Decembrist, together with Ryleev published a literary almanac called “The Polar Star”. In this almanac they published works by Vyazemsky, Delvig and other writers. The almanac was published in the period 1823-1825.
Masonic lodge
Ryleev was a member of the Masonic lodge called "To the Flaming Star".
Activities in the Decembrist Society
Ryleev joined the ranks of the “Northern Society” of the Decembrists in 1823, he was received by I.I. Pushchin. Kondraty Ryleev was in its most radical wing and actually headed the society. The first mass performance of the Decembrist society was the funeral of Chernov, which resulted in a mass demonstration. Chernov was killed in a duel with the aristocrat Novosiltsev. The conflict occurred due to the social inequality of the duel participants. Chernov acted as a defender of his sister's honor. Novosiltsev promised to marry her, but refused to marry at the insistence of his relatives, since Chernova was not his equal in origin. Both participants in the duel were mortally wounded. They died from their wounds a few days later.
The essence of Ryleev’s idea was that the Decembrists had to convene a Constituent Assembly and at it elect a new government in Russia. He did not attach any importance to the Decembrists' disputes about a constitutional monarchy. As for the fate of the monarchy, Ryleev proposed withdrawing royal family abroad. To decide fate royal family Ryleev tried to organize a council of the “Northern Society” among naval officers in Kronstadt, but he failed to do this.
The role of Ryleev at the time of the Decembrist uprising
Ryleev became the main organizer of the Decembrist uprising. Before the day of the uprising, during the interregnum, the Decembrists gathered on the Moika embankment, where the Ryleev family lived. This was a convenient method of conspiracy, since Ryleev was sick with a sore throat and people came to visit him. While under investigation, he took all the blame on himself and tried to justify his comrades. Ryleev was not a military man, so he could not have been an active participant in the uprising, although he came to Senate Square in the morning. Then he spent the whole day looking for help for the rebels, visiting the regiments. In the evening of the same day he was arrested.
Execution of Ryleev
According to the laws of the state, the Decembrists who attempted the life of the Tsar were to be quartered. This method of execution was replaced by hanging. The execution took place on July 13, 1826 in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Ryleev was among those hanged for the second time when the rope broke. He made a short speech before the second hanging: cursed, they say, is the land where they can neither form a conspiracy, nor judge, nor even hang. It is known that all the Decembrists were buried on Goldai Island.
The fate of Ryleev's family after his execution
The wife received a pension until her marriage after the execution of her husband. Ryleev’s daughter also received a pension until she came of age.
The fate of Ryleev's works
There was a ban on Ryleev’s books, so the publications were distributed by Russian emigration abroad. Some books were distributed illegally on the territory of the Republic of Ingushetia. In 1860, the works were distributed in exile by Herzen and Ogarev. Books were published in London, Leipzig and Berlin.
In the reader's mind, Ryleev is, first of all, a Decembrist poet, publisher of the almanac "Polar Star", a noble revolutionary, a man martyrdom confirmed loyalty to freedom-loving ideals.
Biography of Kondraty Ryleev
K. F. Ryleev was born on September 18 (29), 1795 in the village of Batovo, near St. Petersburg, in the family of a retired lieutenant colonel, and from the age of six he was brought up in the St. Petersburg Cadet Corps. Here he fell in love with books and began to write. Thirteen years passed in classes and drills, not without childhood pranks, of course, but also with severe retribution for them. Ryleev's popularity was greatly contributed to by his poems.
Ryleev's youth coincided with a heroic era in the life of Russia, with the glorious year of twelve. He passionately awaited his release into the active army and sang “victory songs for heroes,” remembering the heroic past of his homeland. Already in the first attempts of Ryleev's pen, themes and poetic principles were outlined that he would remain faithful to forever. In 1814, as an eighteen-year-old warrant officer-artilleryman, Ryleev entered the theater of military operations. One can only guess how stunning the contrast was between thirteen years of imprisonment within the walls of the building - and foreign campaigns, when in two years Ryleev walked the whole of Europe twice.
Then came everyday life in the army. Ryleev's artillery company moved from Lithuania to the Oryol region until in the spring of 1817 it settled in the Voronezh province, in the village of Podgorny, Ostrogozh district. Here Ryleev began raising the daughters of a local landowner and soon fell in love with the youngest of them, Natalya Tevyashova. Ryleev, having married and retired, rushes to the capital - where life is in full swing. In the fall of 1820, Ryleev, his wife and daughter settled in St. Petersburg, and from the beginning of 1821 he began serving in the St. Petersburg Chamber of Criminal Court.
Creativity of Kondraty Ryleev
Ryleev's poems have already appeared in St. Petersburg magazines. The satire on Arakcheev made the poet’s name widely known overnight. Following “Kurbsky,” poems appear one after another in magazines and newspapers signed by Ryleev, in which the pages of Russian history are read as evidence of the ineradicably freedom-loving spirit of the nation. By the nature of his talent, Ryleev was not a pure lyricist; No wonder he constantly turned to various genres of both prose and drama.
Ryleev's Dumas belong to the genre of historical elegy, close to the ballad, widely used along with lyrical and epico-dramatic artistic means. It is impossible not to notice the educational foundations in Ryleev’s worldview, and the features of civil classicism in his artistic method. At the beginning of 1823, Ryleev was accepted by I. I. Pushchin into the Northern secret society and soon became its leader. Alien to ambitious calculations and claims, Ryleev became the conscience of the conspiracy.
Ryleev's poetry did not glorify the delight of victory - it taught civic courage. The poetic maturity of Kondraty Fedorovich was just becoming apparent to his contemporaries on the threshold of 1825 - with the publication of “Dumas” and “Voinarovsky”, with the appearance in print of excerpts from new poems. Having directly connected his life with a secret society, with the organized struggle against autocracy and serfdom, Ryleev in the same 1823 began work on a poem about the Siberian prisoner Voinarovsky.
The epilogue to Ryleev’s entire work was destined to be his prison poems and letters to his wife. December 14, 1825 - the first of the organizers of the uprising on Senate Square— Ryleev was arrested, imprisoned in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, and six months later he was executed.
- Thirty years later, A. I. Herzen began publishing an almanac of free Russian literature abroad for Russian readers, giving it the glorious name “Polar Star”.
- The motives of Ryleev's lyrics will be developed in the poetry of Polezhaev, Lermontov, Ogarev,.
Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev(September 18, 1795, the village of Batovo, St. Petersburg province - July 13, 1826, Peter and Paul Fortress, St. Petersburg) - Russian poet, public figure, Decembrist, one of the five executed leaders of the December uprising of 1825.
Biography
Kondraty Ryleev was born on September 18 (September 29), 1795 in the village of Batovo (now the territory of the Gatchina region Leningrad region) in the family of a small nobleman Fyodor Andreevich Ryleev (1746-1814), manager of Princess Varvara Golitsyna and Anastasia Matveevna Essen (1758-1824). In 1801-1814 he studied at the St. Petersburg First Cadet Corps. He took part in the foreign campaigns of the Russian army in 1814-1815. In 1818 he retired. In 1820 he married Natalya Mikhailovna Tevyasheva. From 1821 he served as assessor of the St. Petersburg Criminal Chamber, and from 1824 - ruler of the office of the Russian-American Company.
In 1820 he wrote the famous satirical ode “To the Temporary Worker.” A year later he entered the “Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.” In 1823-1825, Ryleev, together with Alexander Bestuzhev, published the annual almanac “Polar Star”. He was a member of the St. Petersburg Masonic Lodge “To the Flaming Star”.
Ryleev's Duma “The Death of Ermak” was partially set to music and became a song.
In 1823 he became a member of the Northern Society of Decembrists, then heading its most radical wing. At first he took moderate constitutional-monarchist positions, but later became a supporter of the republican system.
On September 10, 1825, he acted as a second in a duel between his friend, cousin, lieutenant K. P. Chernov and the representative of the aristocracy, adjutant V. D. Novosiltsev. The reason for the duel was a conflict due to prejudices associated with the social inequality of the duelists (Novosiltsev was engaged to Chernov’s sister, Ekaterina, however, under the conviction of his mother, he decided to abandon the marriage). Both participants in the duel were mortally wounded and died a few days later. Chernov's funeral resulted in the first mass demonstration organized by Northern society Decembrists.
Ryleev (according to another version - Kuchelbecker) is credited with the free-thinking poem “I swear by honor and Chernov.”
He was one of the main organizers of the uprising on December 14 (26), 1825. While in the fortress, he scratched his last poems on a tin plate, in the hope that someone would read them.
“Prison is my honor, not a reproach,
I am in it for a righteous cause,
And should I be ashamed of these chains,
When I wear them for the Fatherland!”
Pushkin's correspondence with Ryleev and Bestuzhev, concerning mainly literary matters, was friendly. It is unlikely that Ryleev’s communication with Griboedov was politicized - if both of them called each other “republicans,” it was more likely because of their affiliation with VOLRS, also known as the “Scientific Republic,” than for any other reasons.
In the preparation of the uprising on December 14, Ryleev played one of the leading roles. While in prison, he took all the “blame” upon himself, sought to justify his comrades, and pinned vain hopes on the emperor’s mercy towards them.
According to Russian custom, an attempt on the life of the Emperor (and this was the charge against the person under investigation) was punishable by quartering. The king, giving instructions to begin the process, promised to surprise everyone with his mercy. Ryleev was executed by hanging on July 13 (25), 1826 in the Peter and Paul Fortress, among the five leaders of the speech, along with P. I. Pestel, S. I. Muravyov-Apostol, M. P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, P. G. Kakhovsky. His last words on the scaffold, addressed to the priest P. N. Myslovsky were: “Father, pray for our sinful souls, do not forget my wife and bless my daughter.” Ryleev was one of the three unfortunates whose rope broke. He fell inside the scaffold and was hanged again some time later. According to some sources, it was Ryleev who said before his second execution: “Cursed land, where they can neither form a conspiracy, nor judge, nor hang!” (sometimes these words are attributed to P.I. Pestel or S.I. Muravyov-Apostol).
Even during the investigation, Nicholas I sent Ryleev’s wife 2 thousand rubles, and then the empress sent another thousand for her daughter’s name day. The tsar continued his care of Ryleev’s family even after the execution, and his wife received a pension until her second marriage, and his daughter until she came of age.
Ogarev wrote a poem in memory of Ryleev.
The exact burial place of K.F. Ryleev, like other executed Decembrists, is unknown. According to one version, he was buried along with other executed Decembrists on Goloday Island.
Books
During Kondraty Ryleev’s lifetime, two of his books saw the light: “Dumas” were published in 1825, and a little later that year the poem “Voinarovsky” was published.
It is known how Pushkin reacted to Ryleev’s “Dumas” and - in particular - to “Oleg the Prophet”. “They are all weak in invention and presentation. They are all of the same cut: made up of commonplaces (loci topici) ... a description of the scene of action, the speech of the hero and a moral lesson,” Pushkin wrote to K. F. Ryleev. “There is nothing national or Russian in them except names.”
In 1823, Ryleev made his debut as a translator - a translation from Polish of Glinsky’s poem “Duma” was published in the printing house of the Imperial Orphanage.
After the Decembrist uprising, Ryleev's publications were banned and mostly destroyed. There are known handwritten lists of poems and poems by Ryleev, which were distributed illegally on the territory of the Russian Empire.
Berlin, Leipzig and London editions of Ryleev, undertaken by Russian emigration, in particular Ogarev and Herzen in 1860, were also distributed illegally.
Quotes
It is indecent to begin the cause of freedom of the Fatherland and the establishment of order with unrest and bloodshed.
He who is Russian at heart, cheerfully and boldly,
And joyfully dies for a just cause!
(“Ivan Susanin”, 1823)
I know: destruction awaits
The one who rises first
On the oppressors of the people;
Fate has already doomed me.
But where, tell me, when was it
Freedom is redeemed without sacrifice.
RYLEEV Kondraty Fedorovich was born into the family of a poor landowner - a Decembrist poet.
Kondraty Fedorovich's father was a retired lieutenant colonel who managed the estates of Prince Golitsyn.
For six years he was sent to the 1st Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg, which he graduated at the beginning of 1814, receiving the rank of ensign.
From 1814-15 he was abroad as part of an artillery brigade. Subsequently, in his testimony at the trial, Kondraty Fedorovich testified that “he was initially infected with free-thinking... during his campaigns in France in 1814 and 1815.” Of decisive importance here was his stay in the army that liberated Europe from the dictatorship of Napoleon, and his connection with the heroic Russian people.
From 1819-1819 Ryleev served in the Horse Artillery Company stationed in the Voronezh province, in Ostrogozhsk. The formation of Ryleev’s views here took place under the influence of the advanced Ostrogozh intelligentsia, the worst revelry of the serf owners and the arbitrariness of the authorities.
In December 1818, Kondraty Fedorovich left military service, not accepting the ever-increasing Arakcheev regime.
At the beginning of January 1819, Ryleev married the daughter of an Ostrogozh landowner, Natalya Mikhailovna Tevyasheva.
In 1820 he moved to St. Petersburg.
In January 1821, he was elected assessor of the St. Petersburg Criminal Chamber, where he tried in every possible way to defend the interests of the oppressed (for example, in the case of the Razumovsky peasants who protested against the cruel exploitation of their landowner).
In October 1823, he was admitted to the Northern Secret Society on the recommendation of I. I. Pushchin, a colleague in the criminal chamber.
In 1824, Ryleev joined the Russian-American Trading Company as the ruler of its office. Working in this, no longer a state institution, Kondraty Fedorovich energetically advocated in favor of the economic interests of Russia. Along with official affairs, he was also busy with publishing activities.
In 1822-24, Ryleev annually published, together with A. Bestuzhev, the almanac “Polar Star”.
In 1825 - the collection “Star”. These publications, very successfully carried out, served to disseminate advanced ideas and at the same time were intended to financially support needy authors. These collections contained works by Zhukovsky and Pushkin, Griboedov and Krylov, Baratynsky and Ryleev himself, Vyazemsky, Davydov, Yazykov, A. Bestuzhev, Gnedich and others.
Based on observations of Russian reality, as a result of studying the works of French encyclopedists, the works of Bentham, Montesquieu, Benjamin Constant, as well as Russian historians - Karamzin, Stroev, Kornilovich, Kondraty Fedorovich emerged as an active public figure and revolutionary. He fought for a republican form of government, for the liberation of peasants, freedom of printing, open justice, and personal safety.
In Northern society, he took a leading role and led the uprising of 1825. Ryleev courageously spent the last seven months of his life in the Alekseevskaya ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress. According to legend, he wrote a quatrain on a tin plate in prison, testifying to the steadfastness of the freedom fighter:
“Prison is my honor, not a reproach,
I am in it for a righteous cause,
And am I ashamed of these chains,
When do I wear them for my homeland?”
Hanged among the five leaders of the uprising.
Literature occupied a significant place in Ryleev’s activities, to which he, like other Decembrists, attached great social importance, seeing literature as the most important means of involving educated people in the circle of his ideas.
The creative path of Ryleev the poet is typical of most Decembrist poets. This is the path from the idea of personal freedom to social freedom. On this path there is also awareness of the contradictions of the Decembrist ideology and overcoming them. Despite the short duration of Ryleev’s literary activity, his work most consistently reveals the internal logic of the development of the Decembrist poet. At the same time, in his work recent years Kondraty Fedorovich reveals a distinct originality, individual character of the style. Like other poets later associated with the liberation movement at its noble stage, he begins with a passion for anacreontics, following Batyushkov, with the affirmation of the ideals of personal freedom, life closed in the sphere of intimate relationships
"To friend" ,
"To Delia"
"Happy Change" - 1820;
"Misconception"
"Unexpected Happiness"- 1821, and others.
"To K - mu" - 1821,
"I don't want your love..." - 1824.
Already in 1822, Ryleev affirmed the ideal of a civic poet, first interpreting Derzhavin in this regard (“He put the public good above all other goods in the world” - the thought “Derzhavin”), and then declaring it in the dedication to the poem “Voinarovsky” (1825). “I am not a poet, but a citizen.” This formula emphasized the subordination of poetic activity to civil, revolutionary goals. Ryleev’s formula was then paraphrased by Nekrasov (“You may not be a poet, but you must be a citizen”). In his further activities, Kondraty Fedorovich strictly followed the established understanding of poetry and the poet.
Turning to the motives of political freedom, the poet, like other poets ideologically close to Decembrism, naturally, first of all, used traditional forms civil poetry, forms of classicism, subordinating them to the ideas of love of freedom. Ryleev's solemn odes are very close to the traditional genre. The idea of Decembrist citizenship is expressed by the message -
"A. P. Ermolov" (1821)
"Civil Courage" (1823),
"On the Death of Byron" (1824).
Much more significant are Ryleev’s satirical odes - “To the Temporary Worker” (1820) and the ode “Citizen” (1825) -
"Will I be at the fatal time
Disgrace the Citizen San...”
The first of them was directed against the then omnipotent Arakcheev and predicted for him the inevitability of punishment from an angry people and a harsh sentence from posterity. The second also meant the force-social passivity of the majority of educated society, the “reborn Slavs”, who were not prepared “for the future struggle for the oppressed freedom of man,” which was also extremely hostile to the Decembrist movement. Both odes became very widespread and were in circulation in revolutionary circles for many decades.
The initial connection with the tradition of psychological romanticism determined in the works of writers, including Ryleev, who became civil poets, the transformation of friendly messages of anacreontics into political messages. These were also the messages of Ryleev, in particular to “Bestuzhev” (1825), where the main motive was unshakable loyalty to “high thoughts”, love “for public good", as well as a message "Vera Nikolaevna Stolypina"(1825), containing a call to raise children in accordance with the ideals of a human citizen.
In the literature of psychological romanticism, imitations of folk songs (Neledinsky-Meletsky, Dmitriev and others) were widespread. And Ryleev wrote similar songs in his early years. Now Kondraty Fedorovich, together with A. Bestuzhev, writes political propaganda songs designed for distribution among soldiers in order to awaken in them social self-awareness, an understanding of the intolerance of their economic and social situation. Seven such songs have reached us (1823-24).
They are very close to the traditions of Radishchev and are opposed to songs in the spirit of Karamzin and Zhukovsky.
One of them - "Oh, I feel sick..." is directly opposed to the Neledinsky-Meletsky romance, which begins with the same words. This song along with another - “As the blacksmith goes from the forge...” most consistent in their nationality and revolutionary spirit. The propaganda songs of Ryleev and Bestuzhev became widespread, penetrated the people, became phenomena of folklore, and contributed to the formation of similar works in subsequent decades.
The originality of Ryleev’s poetry within Decembrist literature was most clearly reflected in his thoughts and poems. Twenty-five thoughts of Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev
(1821-23, separate edition - 1825; four were published only in the 2nd half of the 19th century) and his poems:
"Voinarovsky", 1822-24;
unfinished -
"Nalivaiko", 1824-25;
"Gaydamak"
"Paley"
“Partisans” - all three 1825) are works of civil romanticism, imbued with the pathos of revolutionary patriotism. Ryleev created an original form of duma, using Ukrainian folk dumas (N. A. Tsertelev’s collection “The Experience of a Collection of Old Little Russian Songs”, 1819), “Spiewy Historyczne” by the Polish poet Yu. Nemtsevich (1816 and other publications), and also took the influence of Byron’s poems and southern poems by Pushkin.
The structure of Kondraty Fedorovich’s thoughts and his poems is very similar; they differ only in volume: a duma is a short poem, “Voinarovsky” is an extended thought. Most of the thoughts are a lyrical monologue of the hero framed by a landscape, revealing his inner world. This is the legendary Boyan, historical figures Dmitry Donskoy, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Kurbsky, Nalivaiko, Derzhavin, Ivan Susanin and others. The characters are depicted in sharp colors, without chiaroscuro, without halftones. Their inner world is revealed in conflict with environment, in a clash with tyranny. The actions of the heroes illustrate their unchanged appearance. The love conflict is absent or only slightly outlined. The heroes are revealed in their selfless service to the cause of the struggle for liberation from tyranny, for the freedom of their homeland, in their devotion to this idea and the people captured by it, in their perseverance and firmness, in their readiness to sacrifice themselves. The affirmation of the unity of interests of the individual and society on the basis of the individual’s struggle for the freedom of the homeland, a struggle in which the individual is ready to sacrifice himself, is characteristic of noble revolutionaries. The idea of the historically and socially unchanged national character of a human citizen, a Russian person, led to Ryleev’s appeal to historical material and the nature of its interpretation. The past, in Ryleev’s understanding, differed from the present only in “terrain”, specific events, but not in the characters of the people who created history, since they were Russian people. The romantic poet was not interested in objective historical truth. The heroes of Kondraty Fedorovich's thoughts and poems are completely captured by the contemporary poet's pathos of love of freedom and only in their external appearance are they referred to the past. His thoughts and poems clearly show him extremely intensive development his creativity, which was a consequence of the deepening of his revolutionary worldview and the growth of his talent. The political urgency of his works intensified.
First thoughts ( "Boyan", "Oleg the Prophet") are politically quite uncertain. Subsequent thoughts, and then poems, are typically Decembrist in content. The Dumas, especially the early ones, are a very imperfect implementation of the principles of civil romanticism in the genre of the poem. “Voinarovsky” is a much more mature work. The image of the main character is significantly complicated. The coloring of the area is given more clearly.
In “Nalivaiko” and “Paleya” the elements of historicism are even stronger.
The language is improving, in the latest thoughts, especially in “Voinarovsky”, speech is largely freed from metaphor, the syntax becomes more condensed, the number of Slavicisms decreases, and local words appear more often. Pushkin had a negative attitude towards the thoughts, with the exception of “Ivan Susanin”. But he received “Voinarovsky” much more favorably.
“Ryleev’s “Voinarovsky,” wrote Pushkin, “is incomparably better than all his thoughts,” the poem “is needed for our literature.” Works by K.F. Ryleev were models for a number of poems of civil romanticism (Yazykov, A. Bestuzhev, F. Glinka Davydov, Yazykov, Vyazemsky), another returned to the traditions of psychological romanticism (Venevitinov, Baratynsky); if Pushkin shifted his attention as an artist and thinker to understanding the reasons for the social passivity of the majority, K. F. Ryleev remained faithful to the idea of struggle in the name of the final victory of freedom, realizing the inevitability of death in at this stage this fight. In the poem “Nalivaiko”, in the chapter “Confession of Nalivaiko”, he wrote:
I know: destruction awaits
The one who rises first
On the oppressors of the people;
Fate has already doomed me.
But where, tell me, when was it
Freedom redeemed without sacrifice?
I will die for my native land, -
I feel it, I know it
And joyfully, holy father,
I bless my lot!
Ryleev Kondraty Fedorovich, both in his political activities and in his poetry, was one of those whom V.I. Lenin had in mind when he noted: “ The best people of the nobles helped to wake up people"(Works, vol. 19, p. 295).
Died - St. Petersburg.
Kondraty Ryleev born on September 18 (September 29), 1795 in the village of Batovo (now the territory of the Gatchina district of the Leningrad region) in the family of a small nobleman Fyodor Andreevich Ryleev (1746-1814), manager of Princess Varvara Golitsyna, and Anastasia Matveevna Essen (1758-1824). In 1801-1814 he studied at the St. Petersburg First Cadet Corps. He took part in the foreign campaigns of the Russian army in 1813-1814.
There is a description of the appearance of Ryleev from his period military service: “He was of average height, good build, round, clean face, proportional head, but top part it is somewhat wider; his eyes were brown, somewhat bulging, always moist... being somewhat short-sighted, he wore glasses (but more so when studying at his desk).”
In 1818 he retired. In 1820 he married Natalya Mikhailovna Tevyasheva. From 1821 he served as assessor of the St. Petersburg Criminal Chamber, and from 1824 - ruler of the office of the Russian-American Company.
In 1820 he wrote the famous satirical ode “To the Temporary Worker”; On April 25, 1821, he entered the “Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.” In 1823-1825, Ryleev, together with Alexander Bestuzhev, published the annual almanac “Polar Star”. He was a member of the St. Petersburg Masonic Lodge “To the Flaming Star”.
Ryleev's Duma “The Death of Ermak” was partially set to music and became a song.
In 1823 he became a member of the Northern Society of Decembrists, then heading its most radical wing. At first he took moderate constitutional-monarchist positions, but later became a supporter of the republican system.
On September 10, 1825, he acted as a second in a duel between his friend, cousin, lieutenant K. P. Chernov and the representative of the aristocracy, adjutant V. D. Novosiltsev. The reason for the duel was a conflict due to prejudices associated with the social inequality of the duelists (Novosiltsev was engaged to Chernov’s sister, Ekaterina, but under the influence of his mother, he decided to refuse marriage). Both participants in the duel were mortally wounded and died a few days later. Chernov's funeral resulted in the first mass demonstration organized by the Northern Society of Decembrists.
Ryleev (according to another version - V.K. Kuchelbecker) is credited with the free-thinking poem “I swear by honor and Chernov.”
He was one of the main organizers of the uprising on December 14 (26), 1825. While in the fortress, he scratched his last poems on a tin plate, in the hope that someone would read them.
“Prison is my honor, not a reproach,
I am in it for a righteous cause,
And should I be ashamed of these chains,
When I wear them for the Fatherland!”
Pushkin's correspondence with Ryleev and Bestuzhev, concerning mainly literary matters, was friendly. It is unlikely that Ryleev’s communication with Griboedov was politicized - if both of them called each other “republicans,” it was more likely because of their affiliation with VOLRS, also known as the “Scientific Republic,” than for any other reasons.
In the preparation of the uprising on December 14, Ryleev played one of the leading roles. While in prison, he took all the “blame” upon himself, sought to justify his comrades, and pinned vain hopes on the emperor’s mercy towards them.
Execution
Ryleev was executed by hanging on July 13 (25), 1826 in the Peter and Paul Fortress, among the five leaders of the speech, along with P. I. Pestel, S. I. Muravyov-Apostol, M. P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, P. G. Kakhovsky. His last words on the scaffold addressed to the priest P. N. Myslovsky were: “Father, pray for our sinful souls, do not forget my wife and bless your daughter.” Ryleev was one of the three unfortunates whose rope broke. He fell inside the scaffold and was hanged again some time later. According to some sources, it was Ryleev who said before his second execution: “An unfortunate country where they don’t even know how to hang you” (sometimes these words are attributed to P.I. Pestel or S.I. Muravyov-Apostol).
The exact burial place of K.F. Ryleev, like other executed Decembrists, is unknown. According to one version, he was buried along with other executed Decembrists on Goloday Island.
Books
During Kondraty Ryleev’s lifetime, two of his books were published: in 1825, “Dumas,” and a little later that year, the poem “Voinarovsky” was published.
It is known how Pushkin reacted to Ryleev’s “Dumas” and - in particular - to “Oleg the Prophet”. “They are all weak in invention and presentation. They are all of the same cut: made up of commonplaces (loci topici) ... a description of the scene of action, the speech of the hero and a moral lesson,” Pushkin wrote to K. F. Ryleev. “There is nothing national or Russian in them except names.”
In 1823, Ryleev made his debut as a translator - a free translation from the Polish poem by Yu. Nemtsevich “Glinsky: Duma” was published in the printing house of the Imperial Orphanage.
After the Decembrist uprising, Ryleev’s publications were banned and mostly destroyed. Handwritten lists of Ryleev’s poems and poems are known, which were distributed illegally on the territory of the Russian Empire.
Berlin, Leipzig and London editions of Ryleev, undertaken by Russian emigration, in particular Ogarev and Herzen in 1860, were also distributed illegally.
Memory
- In St. Petersburg there is Ryleeva Street.
- In the city of Tambov there is also Ryleeva Street.
- In Ulyanovsk there is Ryleeva Street.
- In Petrozavodsk there is Ryleeva Street and Ryleeva Lane.
- In Tyumen there is Ryleeva Street.
- In Lviv there is Ryleeva Street.
- In Kaluga there is Ryleeva Street.
- In Makhachkala there is Ryleeva Street.
- In Astrakhan there is Ryleeva Street.
- In Samara - Ryleev Lane (located near Pestel Street).
- In Chelyabinsk there is Ryleeva Street.
Addresses in St. Petersburg
Spring 1824 - December 14, 1825 - house of the Russian-American Company - Moika River embankment, 72.
Editions
- “Poems. K. Ryleeva" (Berlin, 1857)
- Ryleev K.F. Dumas. Poems. With a foreword by Ogarev N. / Iskander edition. - London: Trubner & co, 1860. - 172 p.
- Ryleev K. F. Poems. With a biography of the author and a story about his treasury / Edition by Wolfgang Gerhard, Leipzig, in the printing house of G. Petz, Naumburg, 1862. - XVIII, 228, IV c.
- Works and correspondence of Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev. Published by his daughter. Ed. P. A. Efremova. - St. Petersburg, 1872.
- Ryleev K. F. Dumas / Edition prepared by L. G. Frizman. - M.: science, 1975. - 254 p. Circulation 50,000 copies. (Literary monuments)
