Fyodor Artyom was born in the village of Glebovo, Fatezhsky Uyezd, Kursk Governorate, Russian Empire, near the city of Fatezh to a family of peasants.

Sergeyev joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and became interested in revolutionary thinking, adopting the nickname 'Artyom'.

In 1905, he moved to Kharkov, where he headed the Bolshevik organisation and in December, he led an armed rebellion by factory workers.

In 1918, while Ukraine was under German occupation, Artyom was a chairman of the Sovnarkom of the separatist Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic and Narkom of Public Economy.

The city of Bakhmut (now in Ukraine), former center of Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, was renamed after Artyom as Artemovsk (Artemivsk) in 1924.

On 15 May 2015, the then President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed a bill into law that started a six-month period for the removal of communist monuments and the mandatory renaming of settlements with a name related to the Soviet Union.

[9] On 12 May 2016, Ukraine's national parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, decided to restore the name of Kypuche as part of the country's decommunization process.

[12] In Thomas Keneally's novel The People's Train, the lead character, Artem — aka "Tom" — Samsurov, is loosely based on the life of Sergeyev.