Kondraty Ryleyev - Career

Career

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 aide 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 (Вольное общество любителей российской словесности) — an influential association of Russian writers and intellectuals. Ryleyev also edited and co-published a popular annual literary almanac, The Polar Star (Полярная звезда), 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.