Rurik Ivnev, whose real name was Mikhail Alexandrovich Kovalev, was born in February 1891 in Tiflis into a noble family. His father, a captain in the Russian army, held the position of assistant military prosecutor in the Caucasian Military District Court. After his death in 1894, the family moved to Kars, where his mother became the head of a girls' gymnasium. From 1900 to 1908, Mikhail studied at the Tiflis Cadet Corps. In 1913, he graduated from the law faculty of Moscow University and began working in the Office of State Control.

Mikhail's literary experiments began during his studies at the cadet corps. In 1909, he published for the first time in the collective "Student Collection." In 1912, he joined Igor Severyanin's group of ego-futurists and began to publish actively. In 1913, under the pseudonym Rurik Ivnev, his first book of poetry "Self-Immolation (Revelations)" was published, attracting the attention of critics and bringing him fame. He became a sought-after guest in literary salons. In 1915, he met Yesenin, and in 1916, he released the collection "The Gold of Death."

Ivnev welcomed the February Revolution with enthusiasm and became involved in political activities. At one of the rallies, he met Lunacharsky and became his secretary after the October Revolution. In 1918, Ivnev moved to Moscow and briefly joined the group of imagists created by Yesenin, Shershenovich, and Mariengof. In 1919, he left the Order of Imagists, expressing disagreement with their methods. In the summer of 1919, he participated in the Lunacharsky agittrain, speaking across the country. Later, he went to Tiflis, from where he was expelled by the Georgian government for his report "Lenin and Russia." Upon returning to Moscow, Ivnev became the chairman of the All-Russian Union of Poets at Lunacharsky's initiative. In 1920, he rejoined the imagists, and in 1921, his new collection of poems "The Sun in the Coffin," compiled and edited by Sergey Yesenin, was published by the Order.

In 1925, Ivnev visited Germany, then worked in Vladivostok at the publishing house "Book Business," and in 1927, he traveled to Japan. In the second half of the 1920s, he released the epic trilogy "The Life of an Actress," which includes the novels "Love Without Love" (1925), "Open House" (1927), and "Hero of the Novel" (1928). In the late 1930s, Ivnev worked on an autobiographical novel "At the Foot of Mtatsminda." Since 1936, he lived in Tbilisi, and in 1950, he returned to Moscow.

After the end of World War II, Ivnev turned to Russian history and published historical chronicles: "The Tragedy of Tsar Boris," "Sergey Yesenin," "Emelyan Pugachev." In his last years, he worked on memoirs and actively engaged in translations, notably translating Nizami's poem "Seven Beauties" and the Ossetian epic "Narts."

Rurik Ivnev passed away in February 1981, three days before his ninetieth birthday.