Ivan Muravyov-Apostol
Encyclopedia
Ivan Matveyevich Muravyov-Apostol was a Russia
n statesman and writer.
Ivan Muravyov-Apostol came from an old notable family. His father was a military engineer Matvei Muravyov and his mother was Elena Apostol, granddaughter of a Ukrainian
hetman
Danylo Apostol
) (Ivan adopted the last name Muravyov-Apostol at soliciation of his cousin in 1800). Ivan Muravyov-Apostol himself was the father of three Decembrists (besides seven other children) - lieutenant colonel
Matvey Muravyov-Apostol (1793-1886), lieutenant colonel Sergey Muravyov-Apostol
(1796-1826), and warrant officer
Ippolit Muravyov-Apostol (1806-1826).
Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was born near the town of Borovichi
in Novgorod guberniya. In 1773, he was turned soldier of the Izmaylovsky Regiment
. In 1776-1777, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol attended Leonhard Euler
's boarding school
and then was homeschooled after its closing. In October 1784, he joined the staff of Saint Petersburg Governor-General
Yakov Bruce first as a legal adviser, then as an aide-de-camp
(1785), and second major (1788). Also, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol served at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Purveyance Department and supervised the Schlisselburg canal as a Premier Major. In 1792, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was introduced to the court of Catherine the Great as a tutor of Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich
and Konstantin Pavlovich. He was then appointed a marshal of ceremonies. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol managed to gain the affection of Catherine the Great and even Pavel Petrovich (future emperor), which would affect his further career quite favorably. In December 1796, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol (already Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich’s chamberlain
) was sent as a resident minister
to Eutin
to represent Russia at the court
of Duke Peter of Holstein-Gottorp and Bishop of Lübeck
. He combined this post with a similar post in Hamburg
(1798) and Copenhagen
(late 1799). As a diplomat, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol applied efforts to intensify the activity of the Second Coalition against France
. He was a polyglot
and was able to speak eight foreign languages, including a few ancient ones. In 1800, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was recalled to Russia and promoted to privy councilor. In 1801, he was appointed vice president of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Ivan Muravyov-Apostol never supported Paul I (despite the latter’s benevolence towards him) and took part in the 1801 conspiracy against the emperor, becoming the author of one of the unrealized draft laws on legal restriction of sovereign power. In 1802, he was appointed Russia’s envoy to Spain, only to be dismissed four years later for some obscure reasons. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was not in the service until 1824. That same year he became a member of the Governing Senate
and a member of the General Board of Educational Institutions (Главное училищ правление). In the 1820s, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol’s liberal views on certain issues received much public attention and gained him prominence. For example, he made a stand for Vasili Popov, the director of the Department of Public Education, who had taken part in the translation of a mystical book by Johannes Gossner
banned in Russia. Also, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol asserted the right of universities and professors to make use of books disregarding the official censorship. He stood for the teaching of philosophy at the universities, contravening the official stance of a powerful statesman Mikhail Magnitsky, who had been overseeing the educational affairs at that time.
In 1826, the family of Ivan Muravyov-Apostol suffered through an immense tragedy. After the suppression of the Decembrist Revolt
, his youngest son Ippolit Muravyov-Apostol shot himself not wanting to surrender to the authorities. His older son Sergey Muravyov-Apostol was hanged with four other leading Decembrists. His oldest son Matvey Muravyov-Apostol was sentenced to 15 years of katorga
, which would later be changed to exile in Siberia
. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol left the service after the revolt and was then officially discharged in May 1826. He was registered as an "absent" senator up until 1847, all this time living mainly in Vienna
and Florence
. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol’s name completely disappeared from the mainstream Russian press from 1826 until the late 1850s (even though he returned to Russia in the 1840s).
Ivan Muravyov-Apostol died in Saint Petersburg in March 1851 and was interred at the Georgiyevskoye Cemetery.
Ivan Muravyov-Apostol is also known to have been a litterateur. He participated in the proceedings of a literary club called Conversations of the Admirers of the Russian Language ("Беседы любителей русского слова"). Also, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was a member of the Free Society of the Admirers of the Russian Literature (Вольное общество любителей российской словесности). He was an active member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
(since 1811) and honorary member of Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol’s most significant work was a book called Journey across Taurida in 1820. It contains valuable information on archaeology, flora and fauna of the Crimea
, unique features of urban, rural and monastic life of this region, and colorful depictions of oriental customs.
According to testimonies of Ivan Muravyov-Apostol’s contemporaries (such as Konstantin Batyushkov
, Nikolai Grech and others), he was a man of a brilliant mind, esthete, polyglot, and bibliophile. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol ranged almost all of Europe
and met many prominent people, such as Immanuel Kant
, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
, Vittorio Alfieri
, George Byron
etc. He is known to have been a tyrant to his family members, an epicurean, and a squanderer (dissipated several millions of rubles of fortune).
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n statesman and writer.
Ivan Muravyov-Apostol came from an old notable family. His father was a military engineer Matvei Muravyov and his mother was Elena Apostol, granddaughter of a Ukrainian
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
hetman
Hetman
Hetman was the title of the second-highest military commander in 15th- to 18th-century Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which together, from 1569 to 1795, comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Rzeczpospolita....
Danylo Apostol
Danylo Apostol
Danylo Apostol , was a Hetman of the Left-bank Ukraine and Ukrainian Cossack starshina.Born in a noble Cossack family of Moldavian boyar origin, Danylo Apostol was a prominent military leader, polkovnyk of the Myrhorod Regiment, and a participant in the Russian campaigns against the Ottoman...
) (Ivan adopted the last name Muravyov-Apostol at soliciation of his cousin in 1800). Ivan Muravyov-Apostol himself was the father of three Decembrists (besides seven other children) - lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...
Matvey Muravyov-Apostol (1793-1886), lieutenant colonel Sergey Muravyov-Apostol
Sergey Muravyov-Apostol
Sergey Ivanovich Muravyov-Apostol was a Russian Lieutenant Colonel, one of the organizers of the Decembrist revolt. He was the brother of other Decembrists Ippolit Muravyov-Apostol and Matvey Muravyov-Apostol...
(1796-1826), and warrant officer
Warrant Officer
A warrant officer is an officer in a military organization who is designated an officer by a warrant, as distinguished from a commissioned officer who is designated an officer by a commission, or from non-commissioned officer who is designated an officer by virtue of seniority.The rank was first...
Ippolit Muravyov-Apostol (1806-1826).
Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was born near the town of Borovichi
Borovichi
Borovichi is the second largest town in Novgorod Oblast, Russia. Population: -Geography:The town is located in the northern spurs of the Valdai Hills, east of Veliky Novgorod. It stands upon the Msta River. Just upstream Borovichi there are the famous rapids of Msta popular among...
in Novgorod guberniya. In 1773, he was turned soldier of the Izmaylovsky Regiment
Izmaylovsky Regiment
Izmaylovsky Regiment was one of the oldest regiments of the Russian army, a subdivision of the 1st Guards Infantry Division of the Imperial Russian Guard. It was formed in Moscow on 22 September 1730. The first colonel of the regiment was appointed Adjutant general Count Karl Gustav von Löwenwolde...
. In 1776-1777, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol attended Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion...
's boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
and then was homeschooled after its closing. In October 1784, he joined the staff of Saint Petersburg Governor-General
Governor-General
A Governor-General, is a vice-regal person of a monarch in an independent realm or a major colonial circonscription. Depending on the political arrangement of the territory, a Governor General can be a governor of high rank, or a principal governor ranking above "ordinary" governors.- Current uses...
Yakov Bruce first as a legal adviser, then as an aide-de-camp
Aide-de-camp
An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state...
(1785), and second major (1788). Also, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol served at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Purveyance Department and supervised the Schlisselburg canal as a Premier Major. In 1792, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was introduced to the court of Catherine the Great as a tutor of Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich
Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....
and Konstantin Pavlovich. He was then appointed a marshal of ceremonies. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol managed to gain the affection of Catherine the Great and even Pavel Petrovich (future emperor), which would affect his further career quite favorably. In December 1796, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol (already Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich’s chamberlain
Chamberlain (office)
A chamberlain is an officer in charge of managing a household. In many countries there are ceremonial posts associated with the household of the sovereign....
) was sent as a resident minister
Resident (title)
A Resident, or in full Resident Minister, is a government official required to take up permanent residence in another country. A representative of his government, he officially has diplomatic functions which are often seen as a form of indirect rule....
to Eutin
Eutin
Eutin is the district capital of Eastern Holstein located in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. As of 2005, it had some 17,000 inhabitants....
to represent Russia at the court
Royal court
Royal court, as distinguished from a court of law, may refer to:* The Royal Court , Timbaland's production company*Court , the household and entourage of a monarch or other ruler, the princely court...
of Duke Peter of Holstein-Gottorp and Bishop of Lübeck
Peter, Duke of Oldenburg
Peter I or Peter Frederick Louis of Holstein-Gottorp was the Regent of the Duchy of Oldenburg for his incapacitated cousin Peter Frederick William from 1785 to 1823, and then served himself as Duke from 1823-1829...
. He combined this post with a similar post in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
(1798) and Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
(late 1799). As a diplomat, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol applied efforts to intensify the activity of the Second Coalition against France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. He was a polyglot
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
and was able to speak eight foreign languages, including a few ancient ones. In 1800, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was recalled to Russia and promoted to privy councilor. In 1801, he was appointed vice president of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Ivan Muravyov-Apostol never supported Paul I (despite the latter’s benevolence towards him) and took part in the 1801 conspiracy against the emperor, becoming the author of one of the unrealized draft laws on legal restriction of sovereign power. In 1802, he was appointed Russia’s envoy to Spain, only to be dismissed four years later for some obscure reasons. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was not in the service until 1824. That same year he became a member of the Governing Senate
Governing Senate
The Governing Senate was a legislative, judicial, and executive body of Russian Monarchs, instituted by Peter the Great to replace the Boyar Duma and lasted until the very end of the Russian Empire. It was chaired by the Ober-Procurator...
and a member of the General Board of Educational Institutions (Главное училищ правление). In the 1820s, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol’s liberal views on certain issues received much public attention and gained him prominence. For example, he made a stand for Vasili Popov, the director of the Department of Public Education, who had taken part in the translation of a mystical book by Johannes Gossner
Johannes Gossner
Johannes Evangelista Gossner , German divine and philanthropist, was born at Hausen near Augsburg.He was educated at the University of Dillingen...
banned in Russia. Also, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol asserted the right of universities and professors to make use of books disregarding the official censorship. He stood for the teaching of philosophy at the universities, contravening the official stance of a powerful statesman Mikhail Magnitsky, who had been overseeing the educational affairs at that time.
In 1826, the family of Ivan Muravyov-Apostol suffered through an immense tragedy. After the suppression of the Decembrist Revolt
Decembrist revolt
The Decembrist revolt or the Decembrist uprising took place in Imperial Russia on 14 December , 1825. Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I's assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession...
, his youngest son Ippolit Muravyov-Apostol shot himself not wanting to surrender to the authorities. His older son Sergey Muravyov-Apostol was hanged with four other leading Decembrists. His oldest son Matvey Muravyov-Apostol was sentenced to 15 years of katorga
Katorga
Katorga was a system of penal servitude of the prison farm type in Tsarist Russia...
, which would later be changed to exile in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol left the service after the revolt and was then officially discharged in May 1826. He was registered as an "absent" senator up until 1847, all this time living mainly in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol’s name completely disappeared from the mainstream Russian press from 1826 until the late 1850s (even though he returned to Russia in the 1840s).
Ivan Muravyov-Apostol died in Saint Petersburg in March 1851 and was interred at the Georgiyevskoye Cemetery.
Ivan Muravyov-Apostol is also known to have been a litterateur. He participated in the proceedings of a literary club called Conversations of the Admirers of the Russian Language ("Беседы любителей русского слова"). Also, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol was a member of the Free Society of the Admirers of the Russian Literature (Вольное общество любителей российской словесности). He was an active member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals....
(since 1811) and honorary member of Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol’s most significant work was a book called Journey across Taurida in 1820. It contains valuable information on archaeology, flora and fauna of the Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
, unique features of urban, rural and monastic life of this region, and colorful depictions of oriental customs.
According to testimonies of Ivan Muravyov-Apostol’s contemporaries (such as Konstantin Batyushkov
Konstantin Batyushkov
Konstantin Nikolayevich Batyushkov was a Russian poet, essayist and translator of the Romantic era.-Biography:The early years of Konstantin Batyushkov's life are difficult to reconstruct...
, Nikolai Grech and others), he was a man of a brilliant mind, esthete, polyglot, and bibliophile. Ivan Muravyov-Apostol ranged almost all of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and met many prominent people, such as Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock was a German poet.-Biography:Klopstock was born at Quedlinburg, the eldest son of a lawyer.Both in his birthplace and on the estate of Friedeburg on the Saale, which his father later rented, young Klopstock passed a happy childhood; and more attention having been given...
, Vittorio Alfieri
Vittorio Alfieri
Count Vittorio Alfieri was an Italian dramatist, considered the "founder of Italian tragedy."-Early life:Alfieri was born at Asti in Piedmont....
, George Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
etc. He is known to have been a tyrant to his family members, an epicurean, and a squanderer (dissipated several millions of rubles of fortune).