Sergey Durov
| Sergey Fyodorovich Durov | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
January 15, 1815 Oryol Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | December 18, 1869 (aged 54) Poltava, Ukraine (then Russian Empire) |
| Occupation | poet, translator, political activist |
| Years active | 1830s – 1869 |
Sergey Fyodorovich Durov (Russian: Серге́й Фёдорович Ду́ров, 1816, Oryol Governorate, Russian Empire - December 18 [o.s. 6], 1869, Poltava, Ukraine, then Russian Empire) was a Russian poet, translator, writer, and political activist. A member of the Petrashevsky Circle and later the leader of his own underground group of intellectuals, Durov was arrested in 1849, spent 8 months in the Petropavloskaya Fortress, followed by 4 years in Omsk prison.
In 1857 Durov returned from Siberia, and the ban on his literary activity was lifted in 1862. But, broken physically by his long ordeal, he fell critically ill soon after and died at the age of 54.
Sergey Fyodorovich Durov was born in the Oryol Governorate in the family of a minor nobleman. His father, an army colonel, died in 1834 penniless and the boy's education in the Nobility Boarding school at the Saint Petersburg University (1828-1833) was paid by his uncle on mother side Nikolai Khmelnitsky, a well-known playwright of his time. In 1833-1847 Durov worked as a civil servant, then retired and made literature his profession. Most of Durov's works - poems, short stories and novellas, - were published in 1843-1849, before the arrest, mostly in almanacs, magazines and newspapers.
In the late 1847 Durov started to attend regularly Petrashevsky's Fridays. Dissatisfied with what he saw as the chaotic nature of these meetings, he - along with Alexander Palm and A.D.Shchelkov - in the spring of 1849 organised his own underground circle, including brothers Fyodor and Mikhail Dostoyevsky, Aleksey Pleshcheyev, Nikolay Speshnev, Nikolai Grigoriev, P.N.Filippov, V.A. Golovinsky and F.N.Lvov. The social and economical situation in Russia was taken as the main issue. Among the documents read there was the banned Belinsky's Letter to Gogol, as well as "The Soldier Talk" (Soldatskaya beseda), the first ever document propagating the revolutionary ideas in the Russian army. Four of the circle members, Speshnev, Dostoyevsky, Filippov and Lvov, decided to organize the underground lithography. Durov disliked the idea and in April 1849 declared his 'evenings' closed.
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