Encyclopedia
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 , 1825. Because these events occurred in December, the rebels were called the
Decembrists . 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 .
Decembrist societies
Historians have generally agreed that a revolutionary movement was born during the reign of
Alexander I. From the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Russian nobility were increasingly exposed to European intellectual trends such as
liberalism. During the period of rapprochement between Napoleon and Alexander, liberalism was encouraged on an official level, creating high expectations that would later be crushed.
The main instrument for reform in Alexander’s regime was
Mikhail Speransky. During his early years in the regime, Speransky participated in the organization of the Ministry of the Interior, the reform of ecclesiastic education, and the formulation of the government’s role in the country’s economic development. Speransky’s role increased greatly in 1808. From then until 1812, Speransky developed plans for the reorganization of Russia’s government. These plans held for a time the promise of a new constitutional regime. Speransky’s most noted essay pushed for a code of laws. Such a code of laws would have created a uniform legal system, and replaced the arbitrary decisions of government officials with objective procedures. This is the first step in the creation of a liberal government. However, court intrigue slowly unraveled Speransky’s influence with Alexander, and he was removed from the court.
The officer corps of the Russian army, which
vanquished Napoleon in 1812, was constructed from young men of the aristocratic class. These young officers were the same men, who a couple of years earlier, could be found exalting Napoleon in cocktail parties across Europe. Now, while occupying Western Europe, Russian officers were able to see Western society up close. They attended classes at the liberal universities where they heard the same teachings that had inspired the Jacobins. They experienced the prosperity of nations where
serfdom had been abolished, and where monarchical power was limited. These officers now saw the West for themselves, and returned to Russia with strengthened
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 favouring a democratic
republic.
These societies were
Masonic in style, and consisted primarily of military officers. The first real society formed was the Union of Salvation, established in St. Petersburg in 1816. A group of officers gathered together and formed this secret society of vague purpose. The testimony of some Decembrists claimed the society was dedicated to the emancipation of serfs while others insisted its purpose was to expel foreign influences from Russia. Further testimony claimed that the objectives of the society, known only to the members of the highest degree, were representative government and the refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign unless he agreed to a limited monarchy.
A founding member of the Union of Salvation, Nikita Muraviev, had been educated by an admirer of
Robespierre. Muraviev was among the soldiers to enter Paris at the end of the war against Napoleon, and he there met many of the major political actors of the time.
When internal politics and betrayal forced the dissolution of the society and the formation of the Northern and Southern Societies, Muraviev was chosen as the architect and leader of the Northern Society. Muraviev began the constitution by addressing the origin and nature of philosophy, and thereby provided an intellectual challenge to the czar’s absolute right to rule. According to the Northern Society’s constitution, the sovereignty of the state resides with the Russian people, and is relegated by them to the Tsar. Muraviev expected implementation of this less radical constitution to meet with less resistance from the Tsar and the other nobles. Once the country had accepted the constitution, there would be time for further liberalization and movement towards a republic.
Leading the Southern Society,
Pavel Ivanovich Pestel wrote a far more radical constitution. Pestel desired the complete destruction of the Tsarist regime through revolution, and the introduction of a republic by a temporary dictatorship. Pestel designed his final plan to destroy any possible resumption of Romanov rule. The idea, based on that of Riego in Spain, called for a swift
coup d'état to limit instability, and the elimination of the entire royal family. Following assumption of power, the Southern Society planned for the complete “Russification” of the empire. The republican government would recognize the autonomy of Poland, incorporate smaller nations on the borders, and require the conversion of all other peoples within; except for the Jews who would be deported to Asia Minor, where they were expected to establish an independent state. Among his more radical plans, Pestel’s agrarian reforms demonstrated familiarity with the French revolutionary literature. In his constitution, Pestel granted land to every Russian with a desire to farm.
The two societies remained independent, and their leaders maintained philosophical differences all the way through the revolt. 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.
Alexander I died having left no direct heir to the throne. The populace expected that on the death of Alexander, his liberal-minded brother
Constantine Pavlovich would ascend the throne in accordance with house law. Unbeknownst to the public, upon Constantine’s marriage to a non-royal Polish woman, Constantine had agreed to renounce his claim to the throne in favour of his autocratic younger brother
Nicholas I. In 1822, Alexander had signed a declaration to the effect that Nicholas would take the throne upon his death. This document had only been seen by a few trusted members of the royal family.
At the Senate Square
When Alexander died on December 1, 1825, the royal guards swore allegiance to Constantine. When Constantine made his renunciation public, and Nicholas stepped forward to assume the throne, the Northern Society acted. With the capital in temporary confusion, and one oath to Constantine having already been sworn, the society scrambled in secret meetings to convince regimental leaders not to swear allegiance to Nicholas. These efforts would culminate in the events of December 14.
On the morning of December 14, 1825, a group of officers commanding about 3,000 men assembled in Senate Square, where they refused to swear allegiance to the new
tsar, Nicholas I, proclaiming instead their loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution. They expected to be joined by the rest of the troops stationed in St. Petersburg, but they were disappointed. Nicholas spent the day gathering a military force, and then attacked with artillery. With the firing of the artillery came the end of the revolt in the north.
On December 14 the leaders elected Prince Sergei 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 St. Petersburg were made to chant "Constantine and Constitution," but when questioned, many of them professed to believe that "Constitution" was Constantine's wife. This may just be a rumor, however, because in a letter from Peter Kakhovsky to General Levashev, Kakhovsky says, "The story told to Your Excellency that, in the uprising of December 14 the rebels were shouting 'Long live the Constitution!' and that the people were asking 'What is Constitution, the wife of His Highness the Grand Duke?' is not true. It is an amusing invention." Kakhovsky claims that this is nothing but a story.
When Prince Trubetskoy failed to turn up at the square, Nicholas sent Count
Mikhail 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.
While the Northern Society scrambled in the days leading up to December 14, the Southern Society took a serious blow. On December 13, acting on reports of treason, the police arrested Pestel. It took two weeks for the Southern Society to learn of the events in the capital. Meanwhile, other members of the leadership were arrested. The Southern Society, and a nationalistic group called the United Slavs discussed revolt. When learning of the location of some of the arrested men, the United Slavs freed them by force. One of the freed men, Muraviev-Apostol, assumed leadership of the revolt. After converting the soldiers of Vasilkov to the cause, Muraviev-Apostol easily captured the city. The rebelling army was soon confronted by superior forces armed with artillery loaded with
grapeshot, and with orders to destroy the rebels.
On January 3, the rebels met defeat and the surviving leaders were sent to St. Petersburg to stand trial with the northern leaders. The Decembrists were interrogated, tried, and convicted. Kakhovsky was executed by hanging together with four other leading Decembrists:
Pavel Pestel; the poet
Kondraty Ryleyev;
Sergey Muravyov-Apostol; and
Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin. Other Decembrists were exiled to
Siberia,
Kazakhstan, 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
Aleksandr 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
With the failure of the Decembrists, Russia's monarchial absolutism would continue for another century, although serfdom would be officially abolished in 1861. Though defeated, the Decembrists did effect some change on the regime. Their dissatisfaction forced Nicholas to turn his attention inward to address the issues of the empire. In 1826, a rehabilitated Speransky began the task of codifying Russian law, a task that continued throughout Nicholas’s reign. Anecdotally, after being defeated in the
Crimean war, Nicholas is said to have lamented that his corrupt staff treated him worse than the Decembrists ever had.
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.
Aleksandr Pushkin addressed poems to his Decembrist friends,
Nikolai 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 is an epic novel [i] by Leo Tolstoy [i], first published from 1865 [i] to 1869 [i] in ...
.
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.
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