A member of the Petrashevsky Circle and later the leader of his own underground group of intellectuals, Durov was arrested in 1849 and spent 8 months in the Petropavloskaya Fortress, followed by 4 years in Omsk prison.

The boy's education in the Nobility Boarding school at the Saint Petersburg University (1828-1833) was paid for by his uncle on his mother side, Nikolai Khmelnitsky, a well-known playwright of his time.

In the spring of 1849, dissatisfied with what he saw as the chaotic nature of these meetings, he—along with his friends Alexander Palm and A.D.Shchelkov—organised another underground circle, which included brothers Fyodor and Mikhail Dostoyevsky, Aleksey Pleshcheyev, Nikolay Speshnev, Nikolai Grigoriev, P.N.Filippov, V.A.

After Durov's release he spent one year serving in the army as a soldier, then retired due to ill health and settled in Omsk.

[1] As a poet, Durov was noticed by Vissarion Belinsky who reviewed his "Molodik" poem (1844) positively, yet opined that the author was "notable more for his earnestness than talent."

Influenced by Lermontov, Baratynsky and Tyutchev, Durov, according to biographer O.Bogdanova, still left several "really exciting pieces, marked by fine sparseness, energy and tightness."

While Sergey Durov's literary legacy is lean, the strength of his personality made a deep impression upon the people who knew him, particularly Petrashevsky's cohorts (Pleshcheev, N.Grigoriev, A.P.Milyukov) and members of his own circle (Ch.Valikhanov, G.N.Potanin, Viktor Burenin and others).