Kondrati Fyodorowitsch Rylejew

Kondrati Ryleev

Kondraty Ryleyev ( Russian Кондратий Фёдорович Рылеев , scientific. Transliteration Kondraty Fedorovic Ryleev * 18 ^{. Jul} / 29. September  1795 ^greg. In Batowo at Gatchina , † 13 ^jul. / 25. July  1826 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian poet and prominent participant in the Decembrist uprising , after which he was tried, sentenced to death and executed .

Life

Early years, literary activities

Ryleev came from an impoverished nobility . At the age of six he was sent to a cadet school of the Imperial Russian Army for training. The boy had already developed an interest in writing there and wrote his first poems. In 1814 Rylejew graduated from school with an officer title and from 1814 to 1815 was involved in a coalition war campaign in Switzerland and France.

In 1818 Ryleev resigned from military service. A year later he married Natalja Tevjaschowa and moved to Saint Petersburg, where he worked first in the city criminal court and later in the office of the Russian-American company .

In Petersburg Kondrati Rylejew frequented literary circles and also worked for several magazines. He also became a member of a liberal authors' association and a Masonic lodge . It was around this time that Ryleev began to write his first printed poems, some of which revealed clear political messages; For example, in one of the poems Ryleev attacked the extremely conservative Minister of War Araktschejew . He was also friends with a number of artists who were also socially critical, including the poet Alexander Pushkin .

Participation in the Decembrist uprising

In 1823 Ryleev joined a revolutionary association and was elected leader by his comrades a year later. He also organized secret meetings of the association in his own home. Ryleev's political goal consisted essentially in the implementation of a radical democratic reform, in which in particular serfdom (which existed in the Russian Empire until 1861) should be forbidden and peasants should be provided with land.

Although Ryleev had not been a proponent of violent upheaval, the initiative of an uprising, in which the Tsarist rule Nicholas I should be overthrown, actually came from him. On the eve of December 14, 1825, a handful of revolutionaries gathered in Ryleev's apartment and hastily devised a plan for the overthrow. However, this failed, among other things, because the leader chosen by the insurgents from among their number ( Sergei Trubezkoi ) did not appear the next day on the St. Petersburg Senate Square , the scene of the uprising. However, Ryleev was there and was arrested along with other insurgents - called " Decembrists " based on the month of December .

Together with several other leaders of the Decembrist uprising, he was brought before the highest court and accused, among other things, of attempted tsarist murder. Ryleev also wrote poetry during his imprisonment. In addition, during interrogations, he assumed a large part of the responsibility for preparing the coup and thus relieved many of his friends. Ultimately, Ryleev - along with Pestel , Muravjow-Apostol , Bestuschew-Ryumin and Kachowski - was sentenced to death by hanging by the court as one of the five main organizers of the uprising , while the rest of the insurgents mostly got away with imprisonment or exile . On July 25, 1826, the sentence was carried out in the Peter and Paul Fortress .

Works

Ryleev was a lively, fiery youth, his poems have a patriotic pizzazz, but also a revolutionary tendency. Ryleev's main works include:

• Dumy ("Reverie", 1825) and the epic poems:
• Woinarowski (German from Chamisso in his "poems") and
• The confession of Naliwaiko (both 1825)

In 1872 Ryleev's daughter published his collected works in St. Petersburg, but some of the poems listed in the Leipzig edition of his poems ( Stichotworenija , 1862) are not included. Jakuschkin also shared valuable information from the poet's estate in the Westnik Jewropy (November 1888).

Remarks

1. ↑ Meyers Konversationslexikon

Web links

Commons : Kondrati Rylejew  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Biography on hrono.ru (Russian)
• Biography on rulex.ru (Russian)
• Kondrati Rylejew in the anthology "Klub bis 40" about Russian poets who were not allowed to reach the age of forty (de)