Following the Second Partition of Poland in 1792, a vast territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was ceded to the Russian Empire including the eastern Podillia.

There is little known about his early life except that he possessed some literacy and was fluent in Russian, Polish and Yiddish, besides his native Ukrainian language, as attested by the police documents of the time.

As a result, his owner decided to forcibly send him into Russian military service, in order to remove him from others whom he was inciting to rebellion.

He was forcibly inducted into the Russian Imperial Army, and served in the Napoleonic Wars of 1812 in an Kharkov Dragoon Regiment, but eventually escaped and organized rebel bands who attacked merchants and landowners, while distributing the booty between the poor.

He was then sent to serve out the 25-year term of penal service in a military unit in the Crimea, but he fled again, returning to northern Podolia.

In Podolia, he once again organized rebel bands in Olhopil, Letychiv, and Lityn regions, attracting a wide support base among Ukrainians, Jews and even Poles.

The rebellions intensified over the years, and then had spread not only to other parts of Podolia, but also to the neighboring provinces of Volynia, Kyivshchyna, and Bessarabia.

Karmaliuk bore no ill will towards the poor of all ethnic groups and minorities in Ukraine, Jews in particular, and as a result they supported him en masse.

His close companions were the Poles Jan and Alex Glembovski, Feliks Jankowski and Aleksander Wytwycki and Jews Avrum El Itzkovych, Abrashko Duvydovych Sokolnytsky and Aron Viniar.

When the noise was repeated, Karmaliuk decided to check what was happening and looking out he saw a frightened nobleman, Rutovsky, who shot him in the head out of fear.

According to one version Tropinin was introduced to Karmaliuk by his friend physician Prokopy Danylevsky, who had given medical help to Karmalyuk's people.