Summary of Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev. Biography - Ryleev Kondraty Fedorovich. Brief biography – K. Ryleev

Biography

RYLEEV Kondraty Fedorovich, Russian poet, Decembrist.

The son of a poor nobleman, his father had a small estate in the St. Petersburg province. Ryleev was educated in the 1st Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg. He was released from the corps in January 1814 as an artillery officer and participated in the foreign campaigns of the Russian army in 1814–15. There is a legend that in Paris, Ryleev visited the famous fortune teller, who predicted his death by hanging. After the war, he lived with his company in the Vilna, then Voronezh provinces. He retired in 1818 with the rank of second lieutenant. In 1819, out of passionate love, he married the daughter of a Voronezh landowner N.M. Tevyasheva and settled in St. Petersburg, where he entered service in the chamber of the criminal court. Like some other liberal-minded contemporaries, Ryleev tried to “ennoble” the civil service, which was unpopular among the nobility, and use it to perform humane acts and fight for justice. While serving in court, Ryleev did many good deeds, helping the disadvantaged and oppressed. In the spring of 1824, Ryleev became the head of affairs in the office of the Russian-American Company and settled in a government house on the Moika embankment. Literary activity The defining personality traits of Ryleev were his ardent patriotism, desire for the freedom of the fatherland and a romantically sublime understanding of citizenship. His political views bore a touch of romantic utopianism. According to a colleague, Ryleev was obsessed with “equality and free-thinking.” This was the main motive of his poetic work. Ryleev sang civic virtues, was alien to a purely aesthetic attitude towards poetry (“I am not a poet, I am a citizen”), his heroes are freedom fighters. From 1819, he began to collaborate in various literary magazines, and became famous in 1820 with the publication of the poem “To the Temporary Worker,” which clearly denounced A. A. Arakcheev. Author of the collection “Dumas” (original in form poetic narratives about the glorious events of Russian history; one of the thoughts, “Ermak”, became a folk song), the poems “Voinarovsky”, “Nalivaiko”. Ryleev was a member of the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature and the Society of Competitors in Education and Charity. In 1823−25, together with his friend, writer and Decembrist A. A. Bestuzhev, he published the successful literary almanac “Polar Star”, which published the works of A. S. Pushkin, P. A. Vyazemsky, A. A. Delvig and others. In the fall of 1823, Ryleev was accepted by I. I. Pushchin into the Northern Society, and quickly became one of its most active members. At the end of 1824 he entered the directory of the Northern Society and actually headed it. In his views, Ryleev gravitated more toward the idea of ​​a republic than a constitutional monarchy, but did not attach much importance to the Decembrists’ disputes on this matter. He believed that the question of the form of government in Russia should be decided not by a secret society, but by a Constituent Assembly elected by the people, and the main task of the secret society was to achieve its convening. Ryleev also came up with the idea of ​​a compromise solution to the issue of the fate of the royal family: with the support of naval officers, take it on a ship to “foreign lands.” Ryleev even tried to found the council of the Northern Society in Kronstadt, but failed. In February 1824, Ryleev was wounded in a duel with Prince K. Ya. Shakhovsky (the reason for the duel was the hurt honor of Ryleev’s sister). In September 1825, Ryleev was a second in the sensational duel of his cousin and member of the secret society K.P. Chernov with V.D. Novosiltsev, which ended in the death of both participants. The news of the death of Alexander I took members of the Northern Society by surprise, who, in order to avoid discussing the issue of regicide, decided to time the revolutionary uprising to coincide with the death of the monarch. Ryleev became one of the initiators and leaders of the preparations for the uprising on December 14, 1825 on Senate Square. During the interregnum, he was ill with a sore throat, and his house became the center of meetings of conspirators who allegedly came to visit the sick man. Ryleev, while inspiring his comrades, could not effectively participate in the uprising himself, since he was a civilian. On the morning of December 14, he came to Senate Square, then left it and spent most of the day traveling around the city, trying to find out the situation in different regiments and find help. He was arrested at his home in the evening of the same day. Sentenced to death and hanged on July 13, 1826. Ryleev had a daughter and a son who died in infancy.

Ryleev Kondraty Fedorovich (1795-1826) - Russian poet, Decembrist, public figure. Born on September 18 (29), 1795 in the village of Batovo, St. Petersburg province. The father was of a noble family with a small estate. In 1801-1814. young Kondraty studied in the First Cadet Corps of St. Petersburg and received the rank of artillery officer. He began writing literary works under the impression of the victory over Napoleon. In 1814-1815 participated in military campaigns abroad as part of the Russian army. In the post-war period he served in the Vilna and Voronezh provinces.

In 1818 he left the service as a second lieutenant. A year later he began to actively publish in various literary magazines. In 1820 he married the daughter of the landowner N. Tevyasheva. From 1821 he sat in the St. Petersburg Criminal Chamber, and after 3 years he headed the office of the Russian-American Company.

Founded in 1823 with A. Bestuzhev the almanac “Polar Star”, which was published regularly for 3 years. He was a member of the Masonic lodge of St. Petersburg. In the same year he entered the Northern Society of Decembrists, and in 1824 he headed it. He advocated republican rule, but was against bloody reprisals against the monarch, so he proposed taking the royal family to distant lands.

In 1824-1825 worked on the poetry censorship committee. He was one of the organizers of the Decembrist uprising on December 14 (26), 1825. But he did not take direct part in the revolutionary events on Senate Square, since he was no longer a military man. He was arrested that very day at his home, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death.

In the reader's mind, Ryleev is, first of all, a Decembrist poet, publisher of the almanac "Polar Star", a noble revolutionary, a man who confirmed his loyalty to freedom-loving ideals by martyrdom.

Biography of Kondraty Ryleev

K. F. Ryleev was born on September 18 (29), 1795 in the village of Batovo, near St. Petersburg, in the family of a retired lieutenant colonel, and from the age of six he was brought up in the St. Petersburg Cadet Corps. Here he fell in love with books and began to write. Thirteen years passed in classes and drills, not without childhood pranks, of course, but also with severe retribution for them. Ryleev's popularity was greatly contributed to by his poems.

Ryleev's youth coincided with a heroic era in the life of Russia, with the glorious year of twelve. He passionately awaited his release into the active army and sang “victory songs for heroes,” remembering the heroic past of his homeland. Already in the first attempts of Ryleev's pen, themes and poetic principles were outlined that he would remain faithful to forever. In 1814, as an eighteen-year-old warrant officer-artilleryman, Ryleev entered the theater of military operations. One can only guess how stunning the contrast was between thirteen years of imprisonment within the walls of the building - and foreign campaigns, when in two years Ryleev walked the whole of Europe twice.

Then came everyday life in the army. Ryleev's artillery company moved from Lithuania to the Oryol region until in the spring of 1817 it settled in the Voronezh province, in the village of Podgorny, Ostrogozh district. Here Ryleev began raising the daughters of a local landowner and soon fell in love with the youngest of them, Natalya Tevyashova. Ryleev, having married and retired, rushes to the capital - where life is in full swing. In the fall of 1820, Ryleev, his wife and daughter settled in St. Petersburg, and from the beginning of 1821 he began serving in the St. Petersburg Chamber of Criminal Court.

Creativity of Kondraty Ryleev

Ryleev's poems have already appeared in St. Petersburg magazines. The satire on Arakcheev made the poet’s name widely known overnight. Following “Kurbsky,” poems appear one after another in magazines and newspapers signed by Ryleev, in which the pages of Russian history are read as evidence of the ineradicably freedom-loving spirit of the nation. By the nature of his talent, Ryleev was not a pure lyricist; No wonder he constantly turned to various genres of both prose and drama.

Ryleev's Duma belongs to the genre of historical elegy, close to the ballad, widely used along with lyrical and epic-dramatic artistic means. It is impossible not to notice the educational foundations in Ryleev’s worldview, and the features of civil classicism in his artistic method. At the beginning of 1823, Ryleev was accepted by I. I. Pushchin into the Northern Secret Society and soon became its leader. Alien to ambitious calculations and claims, Ryleev became the conscience of the Decembrist conspiracy.

Ryleev's poetry did not glorify the delight of victory - it taught civic courage. The poetic maturity of Kondraty Fedorovich was just becoming apparent to his contemporaries on the threshold of 1825 - with the publication of “Dumas” and “Voinarovsky”, with the appearance in print of excerpts from new poems. Having directly connected his life with a secret society, with the organized struggle against autocracy and serfdom, Ryleev in the same 1823 began work on a poem about the Siberian prisoner Voinarovsky.

The epilogue to Ryleev’s entire work was destined to be his prison poems and letters to his wife. On December 14, 1825, the first of the organizers of the uprising on Senate Square, Ryleev was arrested, imprisoned in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, and six months later he was executed.

• Thirty years later, A. I. Herzen and N. M. Ogarev will begin to publish an almanac of free Russian literature abroad for Russian readers, giving it the glorious name “Polar Star”.
• The motives of Ryleev's lyrics will be developed in the poetry of Polezhaev, Lermontov, Ogarev, Nekrasov.

A short biography of Cavalry Ryleev, a famous Russian poet, is presented in this article.

Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev short biography

Ryleev was born on September 18 (29), 1795 in the family of a retired army officer. His father was very fond of cards and lost two of his estates. He wanted to train his son and sent him to the St. Petersburg Cadet Corps, where the young man studied for 13 years (1801 - 1814). While still in the cadet corps, he discovered his talent for writing poetry.

In 1818, Kondraty Fedorovich decided to engage in creativity. After 2 years, he married Natalya Tevyasheva and, inspired by this event, Ryleev wrote the famous ode “To the Temporary Worker.” The parents of the poet's wife were wealthy Ukrainian landowners who kindly accepted him, despite his father's squandering and unenviable position.

In 1821, he entered the service of the criminal state chamber of St. Petersburg, and after 2 years he transferred to the Russian-American company, receiving the position of ruler of the chancellery.

In 1823, Ryleev became a member of the “Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature” and until 1924 he was publishing “The Polar Star” together with Bestuzhev. Along with his literary activities, Kondratiya Fedorovich was engaged in political activities, joining the Northern Decembrist Society. He adhered to republican views. When the Decembrists marched to Senate Square, he was in the forefront.

Biography, life story of Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev

Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev, Russian poet and Decembrist, was born on September 18 (29), 1795 in the small estate of his father, Batovo, St. Petersburg province. The father was a nobleman, served as manager of the Golitsyn estate. Kondraty Ryleev entered the First St. Petersburg Cadet Corps at the insistence of his mother in 1801. He was released from the corps in 1814.

Military service

Ryleev K.F. left the corps as an artillery officer and was sent to the army, which was on a campaign abroad. Ryleev visited Switzerland, Germany and France. In 1817 he was transferred to serve in Russia, in the Voronezh province. The Arakcheev order in Russia began to weigh heavily on him.

Retirement and civil service

Ryleev K.F. retired in 1818 with the rank of second lieutenant. He married for love and began to live with his family in St. Petersburg in 1820, entering the service as an assessor of the St. Petersburg Criminal Chamber. His wife Natalya Mikhailovna, nee Tevyasheva, was the daughter of a Voronezh landowner. The family had two children - a daughter and a son, who died in infancy. After his first job, Ryleev got a job as head of the office of a Russian-American company. Civil service was not popular among the nobility, so Ryleev tried to ennoble his service with the fight for justice and humane actions. In his political views, Ryleev was a romantic utopian and ardent patriot. According to contemporaries, it was an obsession with free thought and equality.

Literary activity

A penchant for writing led Ryleev to the Free Society. Ryleev began writing as a translator. He translated the poem "Duma" by the Polish poet Glinsky. The translation was published by the printing house of the Imperial Orphanage. In 1820, Ryleev wrote a satirical ode “To the Temporary Worker.” His poem "The Death of Ermak" became famous. Part of this poem was set to music, becoming a popular song. During his lifetime, only two books were published: the poem “Voinarovsky” and the book “Dumas”. Ryleev viewed his literary works as a civic duty, and not as artistic creativity, which distinguished him from all other poets of that time. All the heroes of his works were freedom fighters.

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Friendly correspondence with and Bestuzhev was about literary creativity and was not of a political nature. A.A. Bestuzhev, also a Decembrist, together with Ryleev published a literary almanac called “The Polar Star”. In this almanac they published works by Vyazemsky, Delvig and other writers. The almanac was published in the period 1823-1825.

Masonic lodge

Ryleev was a member of the Masonic lodge called "To the Flaming Star".

Activities in the Decembrist Society

Ryleev joined the ranks of the “Northern Society” of the Decembrists in 1823, he was received by I.I. Pushchin. Kondraty Ryleev was in its most radical wing and actually headed the society. The first mass performance of the Decembrist society was the funeral of Chernov, which resulted in a mass demonstration. Chernov was killed in a duel with the aristocrat Novosiltsev. The conflict occurred due to the social inequality of the duel participants. Chernov acted as a defender of his sister's honor. Novosiltsev promised to marry her, but refused to marry at the insistence of his relatives, since Chernova was not his equal in origin. Both participants in the duel were mortally wounded. They died from their wounds a few days later.

The essence of Ryleev’s idea was that the Decembrists had to convene a Constituent Assembly and at it elect a new government in Russia. He did not attach any importance to the Decembrists' disputes about a constitutional monarchy. As for the fate of the monarchy, Ryleev proposed taking the royal family abroad. To decide the fate of the royal family, Ryleev tried to organize a council of the “Northern Society” among naval officers in Kronstadt, but he failed to do this.

The role of Ryleev at the time of the Decembrist uprising

Ryleev became the main organizer of the Decembrist uprising. Before the day of the uprising, during the interregnum, the Decembrists gathered on the Moika embankment, where the Ryleev family lived. This was a convenient method of conspiracy, since Ryleev was sick with a sore throat and people came to visit him. While under investigation, he took all the blame on himself and tried to justify his comrades. Ryleev was not a military man, so he could not have been an active participant in the uprising, although he came to Senate Square in the morning. Then he spent the whole day looking for help for the rebels, visiting the regiments. In the evening of the same day he was arrested.

Execution of Ryleev

According to the laws of the state, the Decembrists who attempted the life of the Tsar were to be quartered. This method of execution was replaced by hanging. The execution took place on July 13, 1826 in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Ryleev was among those hanged for the second time when the rope broke. He made a short speech before the second hanging: cursed, they say, is the land where they can neither form a conspiracy, nor judge, nor even hang. It is known that all the Decembrists were buried on Goldai Island.

The fate of Ryleev's family after his execution

The wife received a pension until her marriage after the execution of her husband. Ryleev’s daughter also received a pension until she came of age.

The fate of Ryleev's works

There was a ban on Ryleev’s books, so the publications were distributed by Russian emigration abroad. Some books were distributed illegally on the territory of the Republic of Ingushetia. In 1860, the works were distributed in exile by Herzen and Ogarev. Books were published in London, Leipzig and Berlin.

Kondraty FedorovichRyleev- Decembrist and poet. Born into a seedy noble family on September 28, 1795. His father, who managed the affairs of Prince Golitsyn, was a tough man and treated both his wife and son despotically. Mother, Anastasia Matveevna (née Essen), wanting to save the child from his cruel father, sent him to the first cadet corps when Kondraty was only six years old. In 1814, Ryleev became an officer of horse artillery and took part in a campaign in Switzerland, and in France in 1815. In 1818 he retired.

In 1820, Kondraty Ryleev married Natalya Mikhailovna Tevyashova and moved to St. Petersburg. First heSettledto the position of judge, and became known for his incorruptible honesty, and soon discovered two talents in himself: poetic and commercial. He joined a Russian-American trading company and fell passionately in love with the United States, seeing it as a model of a free state. He was the first to publish a literary magazine ("Polar Star"), which gave writers and poets decent fees. At the same time, Ryleev wrote his “Dumas”, in which, inspired by Karamzin, he tried to sketch poetic images of the most prominent personalities of Russian history. Then he published the poem "Voinarovsky", highly appreciated by Pushkin. This poem is remarkable because in it he described exactly those places where, several years later, his Decembrist friends had to serve exile.

In St. Petersburg, Ryleev meets many conspirators, recognizes in them the same poetic, blind and naive thirst for freedom and becomes, in his own words, “the spring of the conspiracy.”He truly became the soul, inspirer and singer of the uprising. He dispelled any sober doubts of his comrades with sometimes illogical, but firm arguments. He calmly and at the same time persistently convinced one, another, the third that Russia was all infected with evil, that there was nothing alive left in it, that debauchery, bribery, and injustice were everywhere. The temporary worker Arakcheev rules everywhere, whose image was for Ryleev a mythical fusion of all the most vile features of the “despotism” he hated. Russia is groveling in darkness, and the only way out of this darkness is a revolution. We need to start, Ryleev believed, and then people will see the rightness of the work started and will pick up the baton. Russia will be turned upside down, and from this chaos the goddess of freedom will be born, who will illuminate her beloved fatherland with a new light.

Nikolai Pavlovich could not decide to ascend the throne, and Konstantin Pavlovich refused the kingdom, the conspirators realized that the one and onlymoment. It was decided to spread rumors among the soldiers that they were being deceived, that Constantine did not abdicate the throne at all, that the deceased tsar left a will in which the soldiers’ service life was reduced and freedom was given to the peasants. Ryleev gave himself entirely to revolutionary exaltation. He knew that most likely their cause was doomed to failure, but a certain fate drew him to the square, he saw himself as a sacrifice made for the liberation of humanity. “Yes, there are few prospects for success,” he said, “but still we have to, we still have to start.” And a few months earlier, in “Nalivaiko’s Confession,” Ryleev wrote: “I know: destruction awaits / The one who first rises / Against the oppressors of the people; / Fate has already doomed me. / But where, tell me, when was / Freedom redeemed without sacrifice ?"

That same night, Ryleev said goodbye to his wife. With all the strength of a suffering woman's heart, she held him back. “Leave me my husband, don’t take him away, I know that he is going to his death,” she repeated, turning to Ryleev’s friends. But everything had already been decided. Even the sobs of a five-year-old daughter, who hugged her father’s knees, peering into his concentrated face with her clear, piercing eyes full of tears, could not change anything. Ryleev broke free from his daughter’s embrace, laid his almost unconscious wife on the sofa and ran out after Nikolai Bestuzhev, who many years later captured this scene in his memoirs.

And by the evening of the same day it was all over. Groups of raging commoners were still walking around, the last traces of the insane jealousy of the noble revolutionaries were still being removed from the square, Karamzin and his three sons were still wandering through the twilight streets of St. Petersburg, peering into the terrible face of that force that in a hundred years would swallow up Russia so beloved by him and the autocratic state so precious to him. power. And Ryleev returned home. Something collapsed forever in his soul, some new voice began to sound muffled in it. Conscience spoke. “They did something wrong, all of Russia was destroyed,” he said after returning from the square.

And soon he and most of the other Decembrists were in the Peter and Paul Fortress. It is known how cowardly they betrayed each other, how zealous they were in their revelations, how easily the foundations of all their theoretical constructions crumbled before the horror of prison and power. From the first days of his imprisonment, Ryleev began to feel the increasingly growing voice of the higher forces of the soul, a voice calling a person to the eternal, the heavenly, not subject to the laws of earthly life. If before that he had always thought about the kingdom of justice here on earth, and not outside the tomb, now he looked more and more seriously at the appearance of Christ, who suffered for people and called them to the incomprehensible Heavenly Kingdom. It is impossible for us to trace with accuracy how and at what speed this revolution took place in the soul of the prisoner. But the rebirth that has taken place is obvious. A pre-revolutionary researcher of Ryleev’s life and work, Nestor Kotlyarevsky, writes that “by the end of his imprisonment, he did not have a shadow of a revolutionary spirit left.”

This is best evidenced by the wonderful letters of Kondraty Fedorovich to his wife. All of them are imbued with one thing: confidence in the goodness and mercy of Providence. For him, the Tsar is now not an autocratic despot, but an exponent of this will. “Rely on the Almighty and the mercy of the sovereign,” writes Ryleev many times from the fortress. Anticipating the impending execution, he in no way considers it cruel or unfair and calls out to his wife: “Whatever befalls me, accept everything with firmness and submission to His (God - T.V.) holy will.” Shocked by the royal mercy (Nicholas sent his wife 2 thousand rubles, and then the empress sent a thousand rubles for her daughter’s name day), Ryleyev, with all the strength of his Russian soul, surrenders to a feeling of love and gratitude to the royal family. “Whatever happens to me,” he says, “I will live and die for them.” (It should be noted that the tsar continued his care for Ryleev’s family, and his wife received a pension until her second marriage, and his daughter until she came of age.) Ryleev also says that “to this day he is treated not as a criminal, but as a with the unfortunate one." And seeing the tsar’s merit in this, he writes to his wife: “Pray, my friend, may he (the tsar - T.V.) have close friends of our dear fatherland and may he make Russia happy with his reign.”

Ryleev thanks fate for what happened to him. “Having spent three months alone with myself,” he writes to his wife, “I got to know myself better, I looked at my whole life and clearly saw that I was mistaken in many ways. I repent and thank the Almighty for opening my eyes. No matter what happens to me it was, I will not lose as much as I gained from my misfortune, I only regret that I can no longer be useful to my fatherland and to such a merciful sovereign.” With bitterness, Ryleev feels terrible guilt towards his family. He has only one consolation: to pray fervently for his wife and daughter. “My dear friend,” he writes, “I am cruelly guilty before you and her (daughter - T.V.): forgive me for the sake of the Savior, to whom I entrust you every day: I confess to you frankly, only during prayer am I "I am calm for you. God is just and merciful, he will not leave you, punishing me."

Shortly before the execution, Ryleev writes a note addressed to Nikolai. In it, he renounces “his errors and political rules” and motivates this renunciation by the fact that his spirit discovered the world of the Christian faith and now everything appeared to him in a new light, and he “was reconciled with his Creator by the holy gift of the Savior of the world.” In this note, he does not ask for mercy, recognizes his execution as deserved and “blesses the punishing right hand,” but prays for only one thing: “Be merciful to the comrades of my crime.” Ryleev places the main blame on himself, claiming that it was he who “with his criminal jealousy was a disastrous example for them” and because of him “innocent blood was shed.”

The night before his execution, Kondraty Fedorovich was meek and quiet. The priest Father Peter Smyslovsky came, who for more than six months was, according to the prisoner himself, “his friend and benefactor.” The priest gave communion to the condemned man. In the pre-dawn hours, Ryleev wrote his last letter to his wife: “God and the sovereign have decided my fate: I must die and die a shameful death. May His holy will be done! My dear friend, surrender yourself to the will of the Almighty, and He will comfort you. For your soul pray to God. He will hear your prayers. Do not grumble either at Him or at the sovereign: it will be both foolish and sinful. Shall we comprehend the inscrutable ways of the Incomprehensible? I never grumbled even once during my imprisonment, and for that the Holy Spirit marvelously comforted me. Marvel, my friend, and at this very moment, when I am busy only with you and our little one, I am in such a comforting calm that I cannot express to you. Oh, dear friend, how saving it is to be a Christian..." It was already dawn, Footsteps and voices were heard behind the doors, Ryleev was finishing the last words of his last letter: “Farewell! They are told to get dressed. May His holy will be done.”

Early in the morning of July 13 (25), 1826, a small crowd of people gathered on one of the St. Petersburg embankments. The faces were concentrated and gloomy, the rising sun illuminated the bodies of the executed. This was an unprecedented thing for Russia. Since the time of Pugachev, there have been no executions here. The gallows were made awkwardly, too high, and school benches had to be carried from the nearby Merchant Shipping School. They spent a long time selecting ropes, but they could not find any suitable ones. Three of those executed failed. The executioners themselves pitied the criminals who, raising their hands to the sky, prayed before death, kissed the priest’s cross and ascended to the scaffold, which for them became a step to an incomprehensible eternity.

This execution of Pavel Pestel, Sergei Muravyov-Apostol, Kondraty Ryleev, Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin and Pyotr Kakhovsky and the tragic events preceding it gave rise to one of the most terrible cracks in our history. The tsar, who ascended the throne against his will, met the enemies of his state in the person of the most talented, noble and educated youth, and throughout his reign he could not get rid of deep doubts about the good intentions of the noble society, and society, in turn, was still muted and secretly, but increasingly stood in opposition to the Russian historical system.

Understanding all the actual criminality of our first revolutionaries, recognizing the deeply negative consequences of their actions, one cannot, however, help but become interested in their contradictory and strange destinies. Peering into the depths of these souls, ardent and poetic, but agitated to the extreme by the spirit of the time, one can sometimes discover amazing pearls. And the words spoken about the Decembrists by the priest Peter Smyslovsky, who confessed them in the fortress, seem deeply true. “They are terribly guilty,” he said, “but they were mistaken, and were not villains! Their guilt came from delusions of the mind, and not from the depravity of the heart. Lord, let them go! They didn’t know what they were doing. That’s our mind! How long will it last?” get lost? And delusion leads to the brink of destruction."