quality:correction, structural:reformatting
Imprisonment and exile

In 1817, while still a student, Mickiewicz, Tomasz Zan and other friends had created a secret organization, the Philomaths. The group focused on self-education but had ties to a more radical, clearly pro-Polish-independence student group, the Filaret Association. An investigation of secret student organizations by Nikolay Novosiltsev, begun in early 1823, led to the arrests of a number of students and ex-student activists including Mickiewicz, who was taken into custody and imprisoned at Vilnius' Basilian Monastery in late 1823 or early 1824 (sources disagree as to the date). After investigation into his political activities, specifically his membership in the Philomaths, in 1824 Mickiewicz was banished to central Russia. Within a few hours of receiving the decree on 22 October 1824, he penned a poem into an album belonging to Salomea Bécu, the mother of Juliusz Słowacki. (In 1975 this poem was set to music in Polish and Russian by Soviet composer David Tukhmanov.) Mickiewicz crossed the border into Russia about 11 November 1824, arriving in Saint Petersburg later that month. He would spend most of the next five years in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, except for a notable 1824 to 1825 excursion to Odessa, then on to Crimea. That visit, from February to November 1825, inspired a notable collection of sonnets (some love sonnets, and a series known as Crimean Sonnets, published a year later).

Mickiewicz was welcomed into the leading literary circles of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, where he became a great favourite for his agreeable manners and an extraordinary talent for poetic improvisation. The year 1828 saw the publication of his poem Konrad Wallenrod. Novosiltsev, who recognized its patriotic and subversive message, which had been missed by the Moscow censors, unsuccessfully attempted to sabotage its publication and to damage Mickiewicz's reputation.

In Moscow, Mickiewicz met the Polish journalist and novelist Henryk Rzewuski and the Polish composer and piano virtuoso Maria Szymanowska, whose daughter, Celina Szymanowska, Mickiewicz would later marry in Paris, France. He also befriended the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and Decembrist leaders including Kondraty Ryleyev. It was thanks to his friendships with many influential individuals that he was eventually able to obtain a passport and permission to leave Russia for Western Europe.