Background
Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov was born on January 4, 1795.
Princess Nino Chavchavadze
Nino Chavchavadze
Monument in Moscow
Monument in Moscow
Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov was born on January 4, 1795.
Alexander studied at Moscow University from 1810 to 1812. He then obtained a commission in a hussar regiment, which he resigned in 1816. The next year, he entered the civil service.
In 1818 he was appointed secretary of the Russian legation in Persia, and transferred to Georgia.
In 1826, while he was diplomatic secretary, Griboedov was suddenly arrested and brought to St. Petersburg for alleged connections with the revolt of the Decembrists. Many of the conspirators were Griboedov's close friends, but his formal connection with the conspiracy was never established, and he was finally freed. Soured by disappointment, he returned to Georgia.
Several months after his wedding to Nino Chavchavadze, Griboyedov was suddenly sent to Persia as Minister Plenipotentiary. In the aftermath of the war and the humiliating Treaty of Turkmenchay, there was strong anti-Russian sentiment in Persia. Soon after Griboyedov's arrival in Tehran, a mob stormed the Russian embassy.
The incident began when an Armenian eunuch escaped from the harem of the Persian shah, and at the same time two enslaved Armenian women escaped from the harem of the Shah's son-in-law. All three sought refuge at the Russian legation. As agreed in the Treaty of Turkmenchay, Georgians and Armenians living in Persia at that time were permitted to return to Georgia and Eastern Armenia. However, the Shah demanded that Griboyedov returned the three escapees. Griboyedov refused. His decision caused an uproar throughout the city and several thousand Persians encircled the Russian compound demanding their release. When Griboyedov decided to return the escaped eunuch and two Armenian women, it was too late. Soon after, urged on by the mullahs, the mob stormed the building.
Griboyedov and other members of his mission had prepared for a siege and sealed all the windows and doors. Armed and in full uniform, they were resolved to defend to the last drop of blood. Although small in number, the Cossack detachment assigned to protect the legation held off the mob for over an hour until finally being driven back to Griboyedov's office. There, Griboyedov and the Cossacks resisted until the mob broke through the roof of the building, and then through the ceiling, to slaughter them. The escaped eunuch and Griboyedov, who fought with his sword, were among the first to be shot to death; the fate of the two Armenian women remains unknown.
Griboyedov's body, thrown from a window, was decapitated by a kebab vendor who displayed the head on his stall. The mob dragged the uniformed corpse through the city's streets and bazaars, to cries of celebration. It was eventually abandoned on a garbage heap after three days of ill-treatment by the mob, such that in the end it could be identified only by a duelling injury to a finger. The following June, Griboyedov's friend Alexander Pushkin, travelling through the southern Caucasus, encountered some men from Tehran leading an oxcart. The men told Pushkin they were conveying the ambassador's remains to Tiflis (now Tbilisi). Griboyedov was buried there, in the monastery of St. David (Mtatsminda Pantheon).
Quotations: Their houses are new, but their prejudices are old.
Quotes from others about the person
Author Angela Brintlinger has said that "not only did Griboyedov's contemporaries conceive of his life as the life of a literary hero - ultimately writing a number of narratives featuring him as an essential character - but indeed Griboedov saw himself as a hero and his life as a narrative. Although there is not a literary artifact to prove this, by examining Griboedov's letters and dispatches, one is able to build a historical narrative that fits the literary and behavioural paradigms of his time and that reads like a real adventure novel set in the wild, wild East."
When Nino, Griboyedov's widow, received news of his death she gave premature birth to a child who died a few hours later. Nino lived another thirty years, rejecting all suitors and winning universal admiration for her fidelity to her husband's memory.