Nikolay Alexandrovich Speshnev was a 19th-century Russian aristocrat and political activist, best known for his involvement with the pro-socialist literary discussion group the Petrashevsky Circle. He formed a secret revolutionary society from among the members of the circle, which included the young Fyodor Dostoevsky. After the government of Tsar Nicholas I arrested the members of the Petrashevsky Circle in 1849, Speshnev was interrogated, threatened with torture, and eventually sentenced, along with Dostoevsky, Petrashevsky and others, to execution by firing squad. The sentence was commuted to hard labour in Siberia, but the prisoners were only informed of this after enduring a mock execution.

The Petrashevsky Circle was a Russian literary discussion group of progressive-minded intellectuals in St. Petersburg in the 1840s. It was organized by Mikhail Petrashevsky, a follower of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier. Among the members were writers, teachers, students, minor government officials and army officers. While differing in political views, most of them were opponents of the tsarist autocracy and Russian serfdom. Like that of the Lyubomudry group founded earlier in the century, the purpose of the circle was to discuss Western philosophy and literature that was officially banned by the Imperial government of Tsar Nicholas I. Among those connected to the circle were the writers Dostoevsky and Saltykov-Shchedrin, and the poets Aleksey Pleshcheyev, Apollon Maikov, and Taras Shevchenko.