Decembrist revolt
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- This article is about the failed Russian revolt. For the Portland, Oregon-based band, see The Decemberists.
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The Decembrist revolt or the Decembrist uprising was attempted in Imperial Russia by army officers who led about 3,000 Russian soldiers on December 14 (December 26 New Style), 1825. Because these events occurred in December, the rebels were called the Decembrists (Dekabristy, Russian: Декабристы). This uprising took place in the Senate Square in St. Petersburg. In 1925, to mark the centenary of the event, it was renamed as Decembrist Square (Ploshchad' Dekabristov, Russian: Площадь Декабристов).
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Decembrist societies
Historians have generally agreed that a revolutionary movement was born during the reign of Alexander I. Young officers who had pursued Napoleon into Western Europe came back to Russia with liberal ideas, including human rights, representative government, and mass democracy.
The intellectual Westernisation that had been fostered in the 18th century by a paternalistic, autocratic Russian state now included opposition to autocracy, demands for representative government, calls for the abolition of serfdom, and, in some instances, advocacy of a revolutionary overthrow of the government. Officers were particularly incensed that Alexander had granted Poland a constitution while Russia remained without one. Several clandestine organizations drafted the projects for Russian constitution, one project providing for the constitutional monarchy and another favoring a democratic republic. In the mid-1820s, the Northern society in St Petersburg and the Southern society in Kishinev were preparing for an uprising when Alexander's unexpected death on December 1, 1825 spurred them to action.
Following his death, there was some confusion on succession issues. Alexander I died having left no direct heir to the throne. According to the house law, his brother Constantine Pavlovich should have become emperor, but he had abdicated in favor of his younger brother Nicholas I. In 1822, Alexander had signed a declaration to the effect that Nicholas would take the throne upon his death. As this document had only been seen by a few trusted members of the royal family, the Russian society anticipated transfer of the crown to the liberal-minded Constantine rather than to the autocratic Nicholas.
At the Senate Square
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A group of officers commanding about 3,000 men refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar, Nicholas I, proclaiming instead their loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution. On December 14 the leaders (many of whom belonged to the high aristocracy) elected Prince Trubetskoy as interim dictator and marched to the Senate Square. The subordinate soldiers had to follow suit.
The revolt suffered because those in charge communicated poorly with the soldiers involved in the uprising. Soldiers in Petersburg were made to chant "Constantine and Constitution," but when questioned, many of them professed to believe that "Constitution" was Constantine's wife.
When Prince Trubetskoy failed to turn up at the square, Nicholas sent Count Miloradovich, a military hero who was greatly respected by ordinary soldiers, to pacify the rebels. While delivering a speech, Miloradovich was shot dead by the officer Peter Kakhovsky. When the rebellion was over, the latter was executed by hanging together with four other leading Decembrists: Pavel Pestel, responsible for the most radical political theories; the poet Kondratiy Ryleev; Sergey Muravyov-Apostol; and Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin. Other Decembrists were exiled to Siberia and the Far East.
Suspicion also fell on several eminent persons who were on friendly terms with the Decembrist leaders and could have been aware of their clandestine organizations, notably Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Griboedov, and Aleksey Ermolov. Wives of many Decembrists followed their husbands into exile. The expression Decembrist wife is a Russian symbol of the devotion of a wife to her husband.
Assessment
Although the revolt was a proscribed topic during Nicholas' reign, Alexander Herzen placed the profiles of executed Decembrists on the cover of his radical periodical Polar Star. Pushkin addressed poems to his Decembrist friends, Nikolay Nekrasov wrote a long poem about the Decembrist wives, and Leo Tolstoy started writing a novel on that liberal movement, which would later evolve into War and Peace.
To some extent, the Decembrists were in the tradition of a long line of palace revolutionaries who wanted to place their candidate on the throne. But because the Decembrists also wanted to implement a liberal political program, their revolt has been considered the beginning of a revolutionary movement. The uprising was the first open breach between the government and liberal elements, and it would subsequently widen.
External link
- Decembrist exile in Irkutsk (http://www.nomadom.net/russia/decembrists.htm)
- Decembrist exile in Siberia (http://decembrists.krasu.ru/)
- Online Museum of the Decembrist movement (http://decemb.hobby.ru/)
- Freemasonic background of the movement (http://www.rus-sky.org/history/library/dekabristy.htm)pl:Dekabryści