Muravev-Apostol, Sergei

Muravev-Apostol, Sergei, b 9 October 1796 in Saint Petersburg, d 25 July 1826 in Saint Petersburg. (Portrait: Sergei Muravev-Apostol.) Leader of the Decembrist movement. A lieutenant colonel in the Russian army, he was one of the organizers of the clandestine Union of Salvation and Union of Welfare and headed the Vasylkiv branch of the Southern Society. He advocated centralizing the Decembrist forces, and in 1824–5 he conducted negotiations with the Polish Patriotic Society that led to the fusion of the Southern Society and the Society of United Slavs. He was, however, hostile to the Little Russian Secret Society. Muravev-Apostol compiled (together with M. Bestuzhev-Riumin) a revolutionary ‘Orthodox catechism.’ He led the revolt of the Chernihiv Regiment in January 1826 and was seriously wounded in a battle near Kovalivka, in Vasylkiv county, Kyiv gubernia. He was imprisoned and hanged in the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg. A book about Muravev-Apostol by L. Medvedska was published in Kyiv in 1961.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]