Muravev-Apostol, Matvei Ivanovich

Born Apr. 25 (May 6), 1793, in St. Petersburg; died Feb. 21 (Mar. 5), 1886, in Moscow. Decembrist; retired as lieutenant colonel (1823). Brother of S. I. Murav’ev-Apostol.

Murav’ev-Apostol saw military service in the Patriotic War of 1812 and in the foreign campaigns of the Russian Army of 1813–14. He was one of the founders of the Union of Salvation and a member of the Fundamental Council of the Union of Welfare. He was also a member of the Southern Society of the Decembrists, which he represented from May 1823 to August 1824 in St. Petersburg, where he conducted negotiations concerning the unification of the Southern and Northern societies. Murav’ev-Apostol participated in the uprising of the Chernigov Regiment and was sentenced to 20 years at hard labor, but the sentence was later commuted to 15 years. After the amnesty of 1856 he returned from Siberia and lived in Tver’ until 1863 and then in Moscow. He remained faithful to the ideals of the Decembrists and cooperated with the progressive intellingentsia of the generations of the 1850’s and the 1870’s.