Alekandr Ivanovich Polezhaev was born on August 30, 1804, in the estate of Struyskie Ruzaevka, located in the Insar district of the Penza province, now part of the Ruzaevsky district of Mordovia. He was the illegitimate son of the landowner L. N. Struyskiy and his serf Agrafena Ivanova. Alekandr was the grandson of N. E. Struyskiy and a cousin of the poet D. Yu. Struyskiy, also an illegitimate son of a landowner but legitimized.

After the birth of her son, Agrafena gained her freedom and married the Saransk merchant Ivan Ivanovich Polezhaev, with whom she moved to the village of Pokryshkino. This led to errors in some sources indicating the birthplace of the future poet. To conceal the "landlord's sin," documents were altered to state that Polezhaev was born in 1805 in Pokryshkino in a "lawful family." Alekandr lived with his mother and stepfather in Saransk for five years. In 1808, Ivan Polezhaev disappeared without a trace, and in 1810, Alekandr's mother passed away. Struyskiy entrusted Alekandr and his half-brother Konstantin, the son of Agrafena and Ivan Polezhaev, to the care of Y. Andreyanov, a household teacher married to Agrafena's sister Anna.

In 1816, Struyskiy, the father, before departing for Siberia for settlement due to the murder of a serf, took Alekandr to Moscow and arranged for him to attend a boarding school at Moscow University. Struyskiy himself died in exile in 1825.

In 1820, Alekandr Polezhaev became a free listener at the Department of Philology of Moscow University. In 1825, inspired by Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin," he wrote the poem "Sashka." That same year, Polezhaev's translation "Man. To Byron from Lamartine" was published in M. P. Pogodin's almanac "Urania." In 1826, he was admitted as a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature at Moscow University.

After a denunciation by the gendarmerie colonel Ivan Petrovich Bibikov, the poem "Sashka," which criticized the order at Moscow University and described student life, reached Nicholas I. The biographer notes that at another time, Polezhaev's prank could have ended in trivialities, but after the December events of 1825, the matter took a different turn. Herzen recounts that Polezhaev was brought to the tsar at night, who forced him to read the poem aloud in the presence of the Minister of Public Education. The emperor suggested that Polezhaev "cleanse himself" through military service. In 1826, Alekandr was sent as a non-commissioned officer to the Butyrsky Infantry Regiment by the personal order of the tsar. His comrade Alexander Afanasyev was also expelled from the university for participating in this "wild prank."

In June 1827, Polezhaev attempted to escape from the regiment to reach St. Petersburg and petition for release from military service. However, he was caught, returned to the regiment, and put on trial. According to another version, he returned to the regiment himself, "having thought better of it." The poet was demoted to private and stripped of his personal nobility, remaining a private in military service for the rest of his life.

In despair and longing, he began to drink and, returning to the barracks one day inebriated, responded to the sergeant major with insults for reprimanding him about his late return. In 1828, Polezhaev was arrested for insulting the sergeant major. He spent almost a year in chains in the guardhouse in the basement of the Moscow Spassky barracks, but instead of being subjected to a punishment drill, he was sentenced to prolonged detention. While in custody, he wrote the poem "The Prisoner," which contained sharp attacks against the tsar. "In respect for his very young age," he avoided more serious consequences and was transferred to the Moscow Infantry Regiment, with which he went to the Caucasus. There he participated in military actions in Chechnya and Dagestan. Caucasian motifs occupy an important place in his lyrics; the anonymously published poems "Chir-Yurt" and "Erpeli" were published at the request of the censors. Distinguishing himself in campaigns, in 1831 he again became a non-commissioned officer.

In 1833, Polezhaev returned to Moscow with the regiment. In the autumn, he was transferred to the Tarutinsky Jaeger Regiment. In 1834, Colonel I. P. Bibikov, who had denounced the poet in 1826, met with Polezhaev again and secured him a two-week leave. The poet spent it with the Bibikov family in the suburban estate Ilyinskoye, where he fell in love with Bibikov's 16-year-old daughter Ekaterina, who painted a famous portrait of the poet in watercolor. Polezhaev created several poems inspired by his love for the girl.

Later, in 1889, she published memoirs about the poet under the pseudonym "Old Woman from the Steppe." The necessity of returning to the regiment weighed so heavily on Polezhaev that he went missing on the way back, and he was found with great difficulty.

After corporal punishment and the exacerbation of a "malignant consumption" contracted during imprisonment, Polezhaev was placed in the Lefortovo Military Hospital in September 1837, where he died on January 16, 1838. At the end of December 1837, he was promoted to officer and received the rank of ensign, but he hardly learned of this even on his deathbed.

Polezhaev was buried at the Semyonovsky Cemetery, but his grave has not survived. Later, the cemetery was destroyed due to industrial development in the area; now part of its territory occupies a park between Semyonovsky Val, Izmaylovsky Highway, and Semyonovsky Passage, while another part is an industrial quarter between Zolotaya Street and Budyonny Avenue.