Pseudonym of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Kovalev. Rurik Ivnev was born into a nobleman's family in Tiflis. After the death of their father in 1894 the family moved to Kars, where their mother obtained the position of principal in an all-girl secondary school. By the insistence of their mother, the sons entered into the Tiflis Military School.

Rurik was a politically loyal intellectual who served the people's commissar of enlightenment as secretary; he also led a gregarious love life with a series of working-class men. His known lover was Vsevolod Leonidovich Pastukhov (pianist, writer).

With increasing oppression from the Soviet authorities in 1930s and 40s, Ivnev was reduced to doing translations of foreign-language poetry and writing historical plays. In the late 30s he worked on an autobiographical novel, At the Foot Of Mtatsmindy. In the same years he began to work on another autobiographical novel, Bohemia, which Ivnev completed in the month before his death.