Nikolai Bestuzhev, a Renaissance man of his time, was an artist, historian, economist, political thinker, writer of fiction, dramatist, natural scientist, agronomist, astronomer, ethnographer, mechanic, and inventor. He was also a revolutionary; thus from 14 December 1825 until his death in 1855 Bestuzhev lived in permanent exile in Siberia, first in Chita and then, upon his release from prison, in Selenginsk. Through his ordeal he lived with his brother Mikhail and, after the deaths of his mother and brother Pavel in 1846, with his sisters, Elena, Olga, and Maria, who moved to Siberia to be with him.

Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bestuzhev was the first child born to Aleksandr Fedoseevich Bestuzhev, a member of the Russian nobility, and Praskovya Mikhailovna Bestuzheva of the merchant class. In this marriage the Bestuzhev family symbolically embodied part of the liberal agenda of Russian Enlightenment thinking in the waning years of the eighteenth century. The union conferred on...