His parents were a Russian prince of
Rurikid stock, Prince Andrey Vyazemsky (1754–1807), and an Irish lady, Jenny Quinn
O'Reilly (1762–1802), rechristened and russified as Evgenia Ivanovna Vyazemskaya. As a young man he took part in the
Battle of Borodino and other engagements of the
Napoleonic Wars. Many years later,
Tolstoy's description of the battle in
War and Peace appeared inaccurate to him, and he engaged in a
literary feud with the great novelist. In the 1820s Vyazemsky was the most combative and brilliant champion of what then went by the name of
Romanticism. Both Prince Pyotr and his wife Princess Vera (née
Gagarina) were on intimate terms with
Alexander Pushkin, who often visited their family seat at
Ostafievo near Moscow (now a literary museum). Unsurprisingly, Vyazemsky is quoted in Pushkin's works, including
Eugene Onegin. The two friends also exchanged several epistles in verse. Vyazemsky and the other leading Russian liberals, such as Pushkin and
Alexander and
Nikolay Turgenev, were all heavily shaped by the Kantian teachings of
Alexander Kunitsyn and often discussed their attitudes on serfdom, the Russian administrative and legal system, civil society, and foreign policy through private correspondence, where Vyazemsky was highly critical of the administration's abuses in the western provinces. He also published a prospectus declaring an "uncompromising war to all the prejudices, vices and absurdity that reign in our society." At that time, the elderly poet gained admission to the Russian court, in part through his daughter's marriage to
Pyotr Valuev, the future Chairman of the Committee of Ministers. In the 1850s, Vyazemsky served as a deputy minister of education and was in charge of
state censorship. In 1863, he settled abroad on account of bad health. Prince Vyazemsky died in
Baden-Baden, but his body was brought to
Saint Petersburg and buried there. == Literary output ==