He was deeply critical of the limitations of the Emancipation reform of 1861, claiming that the serfs were not set free, but had simply exchanged one form of serfdom for another.

In 1826 he met and became a close friend of his distant relative Aleksandr Herzen,[2] with whom he instantly found two things in common, the aversion to monarchy and deep empathy with the Decembrists' ideas.

In 1856 he left Russia for good, living many years in London and Geneva, dedicated to the organization of free Russian print publication of The Bell and General Assembly.

Between the 1840s and 1850s, he wrote several novels in verse such as The Village (1847), The One, Winter Road (1856), in which he describes the life of the rural gentry and the peasantry under the law of servitude.

His time in London corresponds to the creation of Dreams (1857), The Night (1857), The Jail (1857), Matvei Radáyev (1856), all imbued with tones of pathetic patriotism.