Nikolay Ogaryov was born in Saint Petersburg into a family of wealthy Russian landowners. Having lost his mother early, Nikolay spent his childhood years in his father's estate nearby Penza. In 1826 he met and became a close friend of his distant relative Aleksandr Herzen, with whom he instantly found two things in common, the aversion to monarchy and deep empathy with the Decembrists' ideas. In 1829 he left the farm and went to study at the University of Moscow, where he developed a remarkable political work by joining a group of utopian socialists, resulting in his arrest and exile on his father's farm.