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In general, the Decembrists were a normal liberal movement of intellectual thought that wanted reforms and changes. In 1812, the Poles fought against Russia. They were our enemies.
An in-depth lecture on the Decembrists, exploring their history, myths, and impact on 19th century Russian society and revolutionary thought.
Key Takeaways
- The Decembrists were primarily an intellectual and social movement, not a tightly organized secret society.
- Their legacy is complex, with contrasting historical interpretations reflecting broader debates about reform and revolution in Russia.
- The Decembrist uprising was a brief but symbolically significant event that influenced future Russian dissidents.
- Understanding the Decembrists requires examining diverse sources and perspectives beyond traditional textbooks.
- Their story highlights the challenges of effecting societal change and the role of educated elites in revolutionary movements.
Summary
- The Decembrists were a liberal intellectual movement in early 19th century Russia seeking reforms, not a structured revolutionary organization.
- They were labeled 'Decembrists' later, named after their December 1825 uprising, and did not self-identify as such.
- The movement was more a social and intellectual trend than a secretive conspiracy, with open membership and known to authorities.
- Historiographical views on the Decembrists vary from negative portrayals as naive revolutionaries to romanticized heroes of the nobility.
- The Decembrists were influenced by European education and ideas but struggled to fully understand Russian society.
- Their uprising was short-lived and surrounded by many 'what if' scenarios that could have changed Russian history.
- The Decembrists inspired later dissident movements in Russia, particularly in the 20th century.
- Extensive literature and primary sources exist, showing the complexity and unfinished nature of their story.
- Official pre-1917 historiography was mostly negative, while later Soviet and émigré perspectives offered differing interpretations.
- The lecture emphasizes the Decembrists as a pivotal moment in Russian social and political thought, raising questions about reform and revolution.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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In Paris, he published a work in three volumes in French. French was his native language. Plus, he lived in Paris. One could think that the Decembrists were agents of British intelligence.
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Then Alexander the First realized that something was wrong. The men once again took off their hats and scratched their heads, saying: "What rent? What market relations? What if there’s no harvest?
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What if the prices go up?" He even looks like Napoleon. He thinks he's Napoleon. We don't need one. We're proud.
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Stories from Russian history Vladimir Medinsky 19th Century. Good evening, dear friends. The topic of today's talk on 19th century Russian history is the Decembrists. I planned to record one lecture. It seemed easy. We know everything.
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So I just had to summarize it, put it all together, tell you everything in the most accessible language. The more I immersed myself in this topic, the more I realized that I knew nothing about the Decembrists.
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I'll tell you a secret. While preparing for this series of stories… We're going to have a whole series about the Decembrists… My opinion of the participants in the December movement has changed several times.
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I read all kinds of documents, letters. There were many interesting books, in addition to the well-known classics of history. Here's an edition from 1926.
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At that time, the centennial of the Decembrist uprising was celebrated quite widely in Soviet Russia. After all – they were the first revolutionaries. They woke up Herzen, as Vladimir Lenin said.
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And here's lots and lots of interesting literature. Here’s the Decembrist uprising in primary sources. Letters, investigative cases, from the history of soldier sentiment in the early 20s.
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And here's another wonderful edition: "The Decembrists," published by the Society of Exile Settlers and Political Convicts. Also from 1925.
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Colleagues in hard labor. It’s a correspondence, a research. It's hard to read. The style of the first quarter of the 19th century is certainly not modern.
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But it’s informative and completely turns the mind upside down. That is not at all what we were taught with textbooks. All in all, the entire story of the Decembrists is such a mystery.
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It’s untold, unfinished. You just sink right in that atmosphere. It's all in a conditional mood. What would have happened if Pestel hadn’t been arrested the day before the uprising?
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What would have happened if Lieutenant Rostovtsev hadn’t come to Nicholas and hadn’t given up the conspirators on the eve of December 14?
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What would have happened if Trubetskoy had appeared in the square and they had shown determination?
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What would have happened if several trained tsar-killers, who had been at arm's length from Nicholas for several hours, had dared to keep their promise to their comrade? And load their pistols?
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The whole story would have gone differently. It’s interesting to talk about Decembrists because they cannot be described in terms of good and bad, black and white. It's really complicated.
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Let’s start with the fact that the young revolutionaries of the first wave were called Decembrists only later, according to Lenin's definition.
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Because the military mutiny that happened in the capital in 1825 and the ensuing uprising of the Chernigov Regiment in Ukraine took place in December.
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Thus, they became Decembrists later. They did not call themselves Decembrists, of course. In fact, there was actually no Decembrist organization.
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It’s another myth that everything was structured there. The Southern society, the Northern society. Firstly, there was no Southern and Northern society in the Decembrists' view.
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They even called themselves differently. The Southern society was considered a successor of the Welfare Union, as if it hadn’t been closed. The Northern Society had a long confusing name.
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These short and snappy names were given later by the investigators who were investigating the cases, which happened in the south and in the north. There was no organization as such.
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There was a social movement. The movement of public thought. The Decembrists were more the movement of thought than the movement of action.
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You know, like the dissidents in the Soviet Union. In the 60s and 70s, they weren’t organized in any way. There were perhaps some micro-organizations. But it was a social tendency, a movement.
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Maybe that’s why the Decembrists, the members of secret societies of the 19th century, were so popular among our dissidents. The peak of their popularity was in the 70s of the 20th century.
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That's when that wonderful movie "The Captivating Star of Happiness" came out. If memory serves me right, it came out exactly in 1975. You can check it. The secret societies we’re talking about were not secret.
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Everyone knew all about these secret societies. The rules of conspiracy were absolutely ostentatious. A member of a secret society, a leader of a so-called secret society, could be approached in the theatre, at a restaurant, at a ball by an officer and told in public: "Listen, you have such a great secret society.
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Are you up to something there? I want to join too. Accept me. I'm an honest officer. I, too, want welfare for our fatherland. Sign me up for your secret organization." That's why everyone was accepted.
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There was no conspiracy. Both the police and Alexander I knew perfectly well about these societies. So why do spears of historians break around this event, which lasted, by and large, a short daylight in December in St. Petersburg?
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There’s so much debate. I'll tell you this. At the moment of 90th only the bibliography of works about Decembrists occupies almost 5 full-fledged volumes. You can imagine. Such volumes.
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When Kliuchevsky said that the Decembrists were a historical accident overgrown with literature, it was like looking into water. It became so overgrown with literature after Vasiliy Osipovich that it's hard to imagine.
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So there you go. Why does everybody keep coming back to it? Because it’s a very important matter. It was a change in society. How should this change be carried out? By natural means, by force, by conspiracy?
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What should an honest, educated person who wants things to be better do? How should he interact with the authorities? What fate awaits him for that?
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Prior to 1917, official historiography treated the Decembrists negatively. Even such a super-liberal historian as Vasily Klyuchevsky with his: "historical accident."
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People with a bad education knew their country very poorly. They all studied at home. Knowing 5-6 foreign languages didn’t mean understanding life.
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They studied at home, they studied in foreign universities, in gymnasiums abroad, in the best military schools. Many here had a Catholic education. They studied in Catholic boarding schools.
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And that too was a very bad influence according to Kliuchevsky. He refers to the Decembrists as young people whose parents were Russian, but really wanted to be European.
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But their children, the Decembrists, the next unwhipped generation that grew up free, were French. But having won the war, having seen the greatness of their country - Russia, having come into contact for the first time with the people, they were imbued with the spirit of patriotism and suddenly wanted to become Russians very much. But they didn’t understand or know Russia.
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This is the first version. The Decembrists are negative heroes. They were people who wanted to turn the world upside down. They wanted everything at once.
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They weren’t going to build a career quietly, to achieve ranks, to convince the authorities of the need for reforms, but simply wanted to seize this power.
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The second point of view is diametrical - the Decembrists were the best of the nobility. The Decembrists were romantics. This point of view was promoted at one time by our famous political émigré, Alexander Herzen.
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The publisher of perhaps the f
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He published notes and materials. This is what he wrote word for word: "... a phalanx of heroes, nurtured, like Romulus and Remus, by the milk of a wild beast...
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They are bogatyrs, forged of pure steel from head to foot, warriors-adventurers, who consciously went out to unleash death, to awaken the new life of the younger generation and purify children, born in an environment of torture and servitude”.
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Our "Bell" was able to ring loudly when it wanted to. There’s also the third point of view. The point of view of the Decembrists themselves.
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Well, for example, Nikolai Turgenev - one of the founders of the most famous Decembrist secret societies. He ended up in exile. I'll tell you about him later, for dessert. He was an interesting man.
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So, in Paris, he published a work in three volumes. In French, of course. French was his native language. Plus, he lived in Paris. It was translated into Russian, you can look it up.
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The book is called “Russia and the Russians”. It’s Nikolai Turgenev’s generalized philosophical and memoiristic view on life, on events, on the situation in Russia, on the Russian people.
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Here’s what’s interesting. He’s a really talented and bright man, a thinker. He says that those who led the troops out to Senate Square on December 14 were not Decembrists.
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They were only part of them. The most desperate ones, the emotional ones, the hot-headed ones. In general, the Decembrists were an ordinary, liberal movement of intellectual thought, which wanted reforms and changes.
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They tried to prepare Russia for it, to convince the authorities. And those people in the square were extremists. We’re glorifying them in vain.
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By and large, they’re not so many of them in contrast the general movement of Decembrist thought. This was the situation before the Revolution. We all know what happened after. After the 1917th, we needed heroes.
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Еhis is where the subject of the Decembrists, as the first forerunners of an organized revolutionary movement in Russia, began to unfold. Kerensky published some brochures about the Decembrists.
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The Provisional Government decided to erect a monument to them. They seemed to have found their remains, put them in a box, but then the October coup happened and the box was lost somewhere, forgotten in the cellars of the Winter Palace.
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By the way. In 1925, just in time for the centenary, the box was unearthed. It was analyzed and we found out that they were definitely not the bones of the Decembrists.
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Anyways, Lenin's classic phrase from history textbooks, that anyone who studied history in a Soviet school knows: "First there were the nobles and landlords, the Decembrists and Herzen.
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The circle of these revolutionaries is narrow. They were terribly distant from the people. But their work wasn’t gone. The Decembrists awakened Herzen. Herzen deployed revolutionary agitation".
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And so on. The phrase "They were terribly distant from the people" will become a meme. It was said that many people had said it. The same dissidents, Sakharov, Brodsky and so on. And then happened the following.
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Time passed. I’ve watched a dozen new documentaries about the Decembrists, a dozen lectures by contemporary historians. I watched the audience, and was quite upset. The Decembrists were no longer heroes.
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And nobody is interested in parsing out the nuances and intricacies. The only way to attract public attention to this topic is to hype it up. It was about coming up with something and being noticed.
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Some people made up that the Decembrists were agents of British intelligence. You may not believe it, but there are such thoughts on the Net. Or the Decembrists organization was a branch of Polish military separatist organizations.
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That is, they played into the hands of Russia's enemies, the Poles, who wanted to secede. Or Pestel, the scoundrel, stole all the regimental treasury, and also got into the divisional treasury, through the members of the secret society.
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He was a crook and was lining his own pocket. And in general, all the rebels were madmen, scoundrels. Vivid comparisons were made, strained associations with modernity. As if the Senate Square was the Maidan.
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So, to avoid the temptation to draw such incorrect historical parallels, we’ll try to walk with you on a razor's edge. Let's start from the beginning, as they say. These are the young people who wanted to change the world.
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Or at least to change Russia. Who are they and where are they from? They are the new young generation. On average they are 20-25 years old. But they are already combat officers.
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Basically, they are all those who have travelled all over Europe, lived in Europe for some time, soaked in European values, as we would say now. They don’t have families. They want changes.
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This is the next generation after our young emperor Alexander I. But Alexander I was in his 40s, and the Decembrists were in their 20s.
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They were roughly the same age as his younger brother Nicholas, against whom they will put out troops later on December 14. There’s a notion in political psychology - the effect of unrealized expectations.
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So, Alexander I in the first period of his reign and after the end of the war, after the military campaign against Napoleon, gave away so many advances, he created so many deluded future expectations of liberal reforms… Of the emancipation of the peasantry, the economic transformations of the political sphere... In fact, the small steps he had taken were not at all welcomed by progressive society.
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The lack of large-scale shifts generated resentment. There is such a myth indeed. The Decembrists were the cream of society. They were very wealthy, rich, the elite. That's why they grew fussy.
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That's true and not true at the same time. The Decembrists of the first wave could be classified as the elite of society. The young, brilliant officers who were created by the first society.
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If you look you’ll see the whole Karamzin’s history of the Russian state. The brilliant surnames. Representatives of ancient families, princes, descendants of the ancient nobility. Most of them, were not poor.
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But the important thing here is this. They didn’t have all the power. And neither did their parents. The narrow circle of people close to the monarch, and the Monarch himself had all the power. Sure, they had status.
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But by and large, these young people had no influence whatsoever on anything in the country. They had only one prospect - to serve. And maybe one day, at the end of their lives, they would become state councilor or minister, if they are lucky.
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One of them would become governor. And in that way, being close to the center of decision-making, they would try to influence these decisions somehow. But you have to give your whole life, decades to do that.
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They thought they knew better how to reform the country. What were their demands? That the progressive class should be given more political rights. So that they could influence the situation in the country, the creation of laws.
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Actually, the law should be above everything, including the sovereign. That’s why they started creating secret societies. They argued, they tried to find like-minded people.
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One must understand that at that time secret societies and all sorts of Masonic lodges weren’t something forbidden. On the contrary. Paul I was officially a Freemason and allowed Masonic societies.
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His son, Alexander, was quite lenient about it. It wasn’t our invention. There were lots of such secret societies in Europe. They were called secret societies, but they were actually men's interest clubs.
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I say men's, because in no way woman back then could be a subject of politics, unless it was not directly related to the royal family. Think of Pushkin.
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"First there were conspiracies. Between Lafitte and Clicquot They were friendly arguments, Rebellious science Didn’t get too deep Into the hearts, It was all boredom, The idleness of young minds, The amusements of grown-up varmints." According to Pushkin, those grown-up varmints discussed the future of Russia between the dry Lafite, which was served at the beginning of the meal, and the Champagne Clicquot, which was served for dessert.
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We don't really know how many of these secret societies there were. I’ve come across figures of 100, 150... They were opened, they were closed. They were of completely different trends.
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There was a secret society of naval officers in St. Petersburg. Naval officers decided to engage in education. To create a big library, so that all the members of the secret society would come there, drink Lafite, Clicquot, smoke and read books.
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They started to build up the library. But a naval officer's salary wasn't much, and books were very expensive. I’m even scared to mention how much a volume of Pushkin cost at that time.
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So there was not enough money for a decent library. They decided to change the purpose of the society. And instead of a library society, they created a political one to fight for welfare.
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And a variation of the charter was written immediately: "Every member of the society, who refuses to fight for the universal brotherhood of equality and welfare, shall be killed".
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I’m not going to tell you about these societies in detail. We won't remember them anyway. One of them, the most original one, was formed in Moscow.
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To be more precise, it was not formed, but it went through the first stages of establishment. It even recruited a number of members, but didn’t continue to work on a regular basis. It had a nice name - "The Order of Russian Knights".
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This society had two founding fathers. The first figure was epochal. The son of Catherine's favorite. One of the richest landlords in Russia, Mamonov. A Russian nationalist, as we would say now.
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He wore only Russian clothes: a surcoat, a cloak, boots a la peasant. He disposed of money in a peculiar way. Quite patriotically, I must say. Like Pierre Bezukhov in "War and Peace" in 1812.
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He formed, trained, equipped and armed an entire regiment at his own expense from his peasants. That's a lot of money.
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This regiment fought the whole war, then it returned to Mamonov's estate, and Mamonov did not disarm it, he put some of the weapons into storage. He had his own artillery.
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He built a version of some castle there. So, his personal armed regiment became the guard of this fortress. There were exercises. And in between, the peasants were probably still working. I don't know, to be honest.
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Mamonov wrote the policy document of this union. The documents were absolutely fabulous. For example, he was an ideologue of Old Russia. He descended directly from the Rurik.
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Hence, he was a Rurikovich and in his mind he was no less famous, than these upstarts Romanov's. At home he kept a museum piece. A blood-stained child's shirt, in which, according to legend, Dmitry, the last of the Rurikovich’s, had been stabbed with a knife.
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The policy documents envisaged the unification of all Slavs and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. Greece was to join Russia, Turks were to be moved away.
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An army was to be send to batter the English in India. To bring order to India. To wash the boots in the ocean. To join Russia with a number of ancient Slavic lands. The territory of Yugoslavia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland.
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No Poles. They were all Russians. And Norway. Here I think that Mamonov proceeded from the fact that he was a Rurikovich, thus this was the land of his ancestors.
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Hence, Norway should also be an ancestral Russian land. Not to even mention America, Alaska, California. It's all ours. Less universities. It's all this Western bad influence, all that scholasticism, philosophy.
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More technical universities, engineering, cadet schools. It was the right education for the old Russian military empire. Mamonov's colleague was another bright character - general Mikhail Orlov.
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By the way, he was Grigory Orlov’s nephew, Catherine's favorite. A handsome man, a stately bogatyr of exceptional courage. A spy. A military spy.
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He went through the whole war, met with Napoleon, negotiated with him. Accepted the surrender of Paris in 1814. He knew Emperor Alexander well.
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Alexander persuaded him to serve in the retinue as a wing-adjutant, but Orlov said: "No. I'll join the army. Give me a division. I will educate the soldiers". Alexander even got offended.
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Mikhail Orlov was married to the daughter of the famous hero of the Battle of Borodino Nikolay Rayevsky. By the way, it’s rather curious, because Rajewski’s two daughters will be married to two famous Decembrists.
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You probably know the second one, but I'll tell you more about her next time. So these two brave brightest lads formed an alliance, the "Order of Russian Knights".
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At the same time, various kinds of regimental artels were set up in the army. What is a regimental artel? It's a kind of an official club. I must say that in peacetime officers had a schedule of service: it started early.
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At 6 o'clock he had to be at the brevet in the barracks. Then some military exercises, assignments followed. After lunch, the soldier was handed over to a feldfebel, and the officer, if there was no war, was free to go.
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In that free time the officers gathered in artels. They discussed the situation in the country, politics, books and theatrical performances. Participated in educating soldiers. They taught them to read and write.
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For example, in the Semenovsky Regiment all the officers gave up smoking. At the artel they decided that smoking was bad for them. And an officer's promise is law.
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Not a single officer in the Semenov Regiment smoked, and back then everyone smoked. These artels existed in almost every military unit. Even at the General Headquarters, as it was then called, had an officer's artel.
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It was called "Sacred artel of officers of the general headquarters". It was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Muravyev, a representative of the great illustrious Muravyev family.
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A family which gave so many participants of the Decembrist movement. While preparing for the lecture, I found out that they were confused by many historians, even Klyuchevsky.
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But I think Kliuchevsky made that mistake because of the lack of primary sources. He had no access to the archives. So even Kliuchevskii mixed up the Muravyevs.
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He attributed to Nikita Muravyov something he didn’t do. Boris Akunin also mixed up the two Muravyevs. In his book he made the future Muravyov-Vilensky, aka Muravyov the hanger, the founder of the Salvation Union.
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By the way, I'm also not immaculate. I’m not reading, I’m trying to talk, so I can probably misname some surnames too. It's not hard to get confused. Correct me if you hear something. I'd appreciate it.
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These officers visited Europe and saw that things were different there. Freedom, labour, property, the parliament. Plus, the winner's complex. The nobility was enthusiastic.
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There was a rise of national consciousness, as the encyclopedias wrote. And what's next? So we go back home. And then? Boredom again? Back to the regiment to waste life away at balls?
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And the soldiers we've been side by side with all over Europe. Our brothers. How many times did they protect me from an enemy bullet, a bayonet? I fought next to them. Where will they go?
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Back to the military settlement, the yoke of serfdom again? This is all unfair. Serfdom seemed to the members of the early secret societies to be a moral evil of enormous proportions. It was an injustice.
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The notion of injustice is the main foundation for any revolutionary ferment. Revolution doesn't happen when people live badly. No. Not when there’s an economic crisis, for God's sake.
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A revolution takes place when a large part of society - the Decembrists, believes that life is unjust and that something must change. What else besides serfdom angered the Decembrists?
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Alexander 1 was a popular monarch and everyone in Europe adored him, he promised many reforms. But where was the result? The privileged position of the newly annexed territories outraged people.
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Finland’s, and especially Poland’s, where there was a constitution, a parliament, special financial orders, and a different legislation. It was freer, more liberal. The Finns were fine. At least they were harmless.
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Poles fought against Russia in 1812. They were our enemies. The brutality of the Poles towards Russians exceeded many times the brutality of Middle Europe and France.
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We were used to looking at those Poles only through the rifle scope. And here we conquered them, annexed them. But they had a parliament, freedom, their own army, laws, no serfdom.
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And what about us? We had nothing. Why were they so blessed? Alexander I was always abroad, he was a popular sovereign. And other people were ruling on his behalf inside the country.
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I told you about Arakcheyev. He was a complicated figure, not a negative one. But for the young people of that time, he was a symbol of conservatism. No one explained that Arakcheyev was against military settlements.
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He was only carrying out the sovereign's will by carrying out that futile and difficult project. And finally, the young officers were outraged at the general domination of foreigners, of Germans, in the Russian army.
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They believed that we, the Russians, had won the war, but that there was no opportunity for further promotion. All positions were filled. In 1817 the court moved to Moscow for a while, along with the Guard.
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And then a rumour spread that the tsar's complacency towards the Poles had gone completely beyond the bounds of propriety.
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Allegedly Alexander promised to return to Poland all these territories, which had been taken away from Poland - western Ukraine, the western Belarus, partially Lithuania.
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Thus, Poland would become a huge state. How could one possibly return them? Those lands were Russian for many decades. What right does he have? From the officers' point of view, this was high treason.
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So in the first secret societies, in the artels, there was a lot of fuss and for the first time the idea appeared that one tyrant, one autocrat, who could make such mistakes, couldn’t be given all the power.
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The thought of tsar’s murder appeared. Remember: "The melancholic Yakushkin, seemed to be silently drawing the tsar-killing dagger".
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That’s about the officer of the Semenov Regiment Yakushkin, who said at one of the meetings of the officers' artel: "If Alexander decides to give the Russian lands to Poland, I’ll personally quench him with a dagger and after that I’ll shoot myself".
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And everyone shouted bravo. If your hand is intercepted, we will finish off the usurper. One cannot give up Russian lands. We made some noise. It turned out later that Alexander had never had any such plans.
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Everyone calmed down, but the thought that it was possible to allow the Tsar to be assassinated in the interests of the motherland and the fatherland, remained. Soon the first political alliance emerged from these artels.
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We know it from the textbooks. It’s the "Union of Salvation". It was our first political organization, which had both a program and a goal. The goal was the abolition of serfdom and the destruction of autocracy.
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Among the participants was the aforementioned Alexander Muravyov, an officer of the General Staff, as well as his relatives, friends, brothers, cousins and fellow officers. They were all very young.
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At the time Muravyev was 24 years old. Trubetskoy - 26. Releyev - 21. Yakushkin, a fellow soldier - 23. Lunin was a little older - 28. The apostle Muravyov was 19. And etc. The only stranger in that company, was Paul Pestel.
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Probably the most famous of the Decembrists. He was German. Like all of them, he was brilliantly educated. By the way, he graduated from the Corps of Pages. It was an institution that trained the army's elite.
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He was a war veteran, badly wounded at Borodino. His chest was covered with medals, had a sword for bravery. He was about 28. He was a colonel, a commander of the Vyatka Infantry Regiment.
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It was a regular army regiment. He put it in such perfect order that at some exercises Alexander came to utter delight and rewarded Pestel.
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He said that the regiment was no different from the Guards, it was that perfect in military affairs. Who else was a member of the Salvation Union?
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Trubetskoy - the future dictator, Colonel of the Guards, a knyaz from Gediminovich. On the 14th of December he will be the oldest Decembrists in the Senate Square.
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Mikhail Lunin, Alexander Muravyov’s cousin, the founder of the Union for Salvation. He came from a wealthy landowner's family. He was also a war veteran. Ivan Yakushkin, with the tsar-killing dagger.
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He was a combat officer but retired after the war. He tried to do some housework for a while. A very interesting story happened to him when he decided to give the peasants their freedom.
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By the way, the Decembrists were often rebuked for doing so. They could have started with themselves, let the peasants go. It's a long and complicated story. They couldn't let them go.
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But I’ll tell you about it by Yakushkin’s example. Ivan Yakushkin comes to his estate. Conducts a whole series of such steps towards the peasantry. He decreases the so-called landlord's ploughing.
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He abolishes a number of heavy levies. Creates an internal peasant court, so that the peasants would not be judged by the lord, but by themselves.
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He begins to teach literacy to peasant children, but most importantly he gathers the peasants together and says: "Guys. Serfdom is evil. I want to set you all free.
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I want you to be free, to do whatever you want, whatever you like. Whoever wants to stay and work for me can stay. Those who don't want to, look for another free life." The men scratched their heads.
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They didn’t have money to leave for the town. What would they do there? They don’t know anything about town life. Who would hire them? Why should they work for someone else?
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We have the best living conditions here. Our children learn here. And we pay less renders than our neighbors. So thank you. So, we're free, but how shall we divide the land?
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Ivan Yakushkin was slightly stunned by such straightforwardness. What do you mean, land? I'm letting you go. Peasants were commodity. It's a lot of money.
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He could sell them. But he lets them go. But the land was his. He inherited it from his grandfathers and great-grandfathers. They shed blood for it for generations. He could lease it to them.
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They could take as much as they wanted and then pay the appropriate price for it on market terms. And to work it. If it's not profitable, go somewhere else. I'm not keeping you.
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Once again, the men scratched their heads and said, "What lease? What market relations? What if there’s no harvest? What if the prices go up? No, sir, let's do it the old-fashioned way.
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We will belong to you and the land will be ours. We don't need that kind of freedom. That was the end of Yakushkin's experiment. He went back to serve in the army.
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Stories from Russian history Vladimir Medinsky 19th Century The Salvation Union didn’t last long. Then another one appeared with the same characters. A big serious organization. They say it had 200 members, but to be honest, I've read that there were as many as 2,000.
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No one kept written records of membership. 2,000 and even 3,000 members were counted by some researchers. The Welfare Union. It was a big organization with local chapters.
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And it's no longer just officers. Civilians, artists and elites were there too. The poets Ryleyev, Kuchelbecker.
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The almanac Polar Star, issued by Ryleev, published all the major writers of the time: Krylov, Pushkin, Griboyedov, Zhukovsky and Baratynsky.
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They were all aware of the existence of the Welfare Union and related to it in one way or another. At that time poets and officers were kindred concepts. Many poets were officers and vice versa.
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From Denis Davydov and Fyodor Glinka to Odoevsky and Mikhail Lermontov. The members of that union tried to improve life in a peaceful way.
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They wrote notes to the Emperor on how best to abolish serfdom in stages. Such a serious justification was given by Nikolai Turgenev, whom I mentioned at the beginning of our story.
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The emperor read it but did not put any resolution. He said: "Tell this young man: let him stay out of what he doesn't know." He did not create the motivation to develop relations legally.
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The Welfare Union was a beautiful organization. There was even a secret anti-monarchist society in Germany called the Virtue Union. It was practically a copy of the Welfare Union.
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Its symbol was a bee, hard work. It had a policy. I've got a blue book here, they had a green one. Their policy consisted of two parts. The first one was the official one.
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There was nothing anti-monarchist in it. Even Alexander the First read it. Recommended it to friends, as they say. He sent it to Konstantin to read. Said it was useful, told him to study it.
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What was good about the Welfare union? All union members had to work for the good of the fatherland. For the good of the fatherland and the citizens. That is, to do something useful.
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It wasn’t an organization of professional revolutionary loafers like the Bolshevik party. No. These were people who were useful to society. What were they supposed to do?
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Well first of - education. Union members hired lecturers. They held public lectures on various sciences, taught soldiers. There was a very popular school the Lancaster Mutual. What was it?
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The idea was the following. Soldiers sat in such a wedge in the classroom. The first row was usually the smallest, the second one was bigger, and so on. The last row, in the gallery, was the widest.
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That's where most people were. That meant that the first row was the most literate. Farther on, there were less literate people and D-graders.
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The officer tells the cleverest ones what he wants to teach in arithmetic or Russian. They turn around and tell the next row the sane stuff in plain language.
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As this knowledge continues on to the gallery, the officer tells the next idea to the first row soldiers. Actually, when you’re recounting what you’ve learned, you remember the information much better.
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The schools were doing quite well. Arakcheyev supported them. And the army actively supported them. It was a good system. The members of the Welfare Union were also engaged in legal issues.
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Some of them, having abandoned their officer's Guards service, entered the most despicable caste. They became judges. At that time a judge was synonymous with bribe-taker and swindler.
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Ivan Pushchin, Pushkin's friend. "My first friend, my priceless friend." Kondraty Releyev - the future most prominent Decembrists. They both became honest judges.
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Other union members visited prisons and took care of prison conditions. They acted as a public watchdog over the entire law enforcement system. Then they engaged in philanthropy.
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What was philanthropy in that sense? It meant helping people, helping peasants. Ransoming the most talented ones, releasing them. By the way, people asked a lot of money for them.
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Thus the Decembrists ransomed quite a lot of people. The future actor Shchepkin. There’s the Shchepkin School in Moscow. One of the founders of Russian classical theatre.
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They bought out peasants who became poets. The landlords were asking crazy money for those talented peasants. There’s a story, how General Volkonsky wanted to buy a talented lad free.
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A crook landlord, sensing Volkonsky's interest, slammed down an absolutely outrageous sum. So Volkonsky put on the ceremonial uniform, his sword, his tunic, and went out on the market square to collect alms.
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The alms were intended for the ransom of the serf. Perhaps Volkonsky could have bought him out of his personal funds, but that PR-action was threefold.
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Firstly, he drew a lot of merchants into the noble cause and they all chipped in half an hour. Secondly, he embarrassed the landowner in front of all the people. All in all, Decembrists did small, but good deeds.
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And finally, those who could tried to run a farm with varying degrees of success, for example, Ivan Yakushkin. What was going on in the world at that time? Europe was turbulent.
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A series of political assassinations, political terror. In Paris, the heir to the throne was assassinated. In England, a king was almost killed, the conspiracy was uncovered.
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That is, such terrorist anti-monarchist organizations existed in many countries. Moreover. The Decembrists were not supporters of a mass popular revolution. Everyone was fed up with it. The guillotine, the Jacobins.
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They were well aware that the illusion of the enlightener could take over the whole people…I’m talking about red-caps… Everything would be fine. But it didn’t work. There will be a Vendée, blood and Jacobin terror.
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That is why the Decembrists believed that if any change was to be achieved, it should not be through big revolutions, but through precise surgical military coups.
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And there were several such successful military coups in Europe during those years. Spain's was most successful one. Young revolutionary officers revolted.
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They marched all over the country with rebellious troops from the provinces. And forced the king to sign the constitution. A similar kind of military revolution took place in Piedmont in 1821.
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That is, in the north of Italy. The same in Naples in southern Italy. Revolutionary Greece was booming. Germany was booming. There are examples of how organized military could change the state system.
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How they could seize power and try to make their country better. Against this backdrop we had the famous Semyonovsky Regiment uprising, which was not really an uprising at all.
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And then Alexander I finally realized that something was wrong. He didn’t take any efforts to disperse those secret societies. Alexander's position was well known.
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When he was reported, he said, "I myself in my youth was full of these liberal ideas, and it’s not for me to judge them, to punish them. They will grow up, they will change their views. I’m certainly not going to be their judge".
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Nevertheless, Alexander bans Masonic lodges. Also on the grounds of this rebellion in the Semenovsky Regiment, although it had nothing to do with the mutiny, a number of officers were dispatched to distant garrisons, investigations were conducted and soldiers were punished.
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Therefore, the members of the secret societies decided to dissolve the Union of Welfare and started working in a more conspiratorial mode. Two groups of Decembrists were organized. One in the south.
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It was headed by Pestel. By that time Pestel served at the headquarters in Podolsk province. This is present-day Vinnitsa province. He gradually created an organization, which we call the "Southern Society".
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They called themselves the Welfare Union. This organisation was joined by several other small organisations of officers. The "Society of United Slavs" and others. Those were poor local officers.
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They were not the Guards elite, for whom a secret society and the possibility to change something wasn’t just a romantic idea.
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It was also the desire to change their lives for the better, because they certainly didn’t see any great prospects for themselves. They saw the secret society as a kind of career lift.
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Pestel's society was based on an entirely different premise. He was a good organizer. He basically created a small secret army, conspiracies. He was a leader. Technically, a board was in charge.
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But was the biggest boss. Everyone who joined took a symbolic oath of consent to the tsar’s assassination. It’s clear that it didn’t mean that people would become his killers, but they agreed to the idea.
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So there was a kind of a mutual cover-up. The only disadvantage was that Pestel was such a charismatic and tough leader that he was surrounded by people who were much weaker than him.
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And later, when the uprising of the Chernigov Regiment will take place, it will echo. Without a superior, without a leader, the officers will be afraid to join the rebellious Chernigov regiment.
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There, in the Ukraine, in seclusion, Pestel was engaged in self-education, reading and writing a great personal work, which we mistakenly call in our textbooks "The policy of southern society".
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That work was called "The Russian truth". It wasn’t a policy at all. It was Pestel's own reflection on how to arrange his life further, in case of the victory of the conspiracy. His work wasn’t finished.
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But it’s global. It’s an entire encyclopedia of Russian life. It covers a variety of areas. It’s the most interesting document. What did Pestel want? He assumed that by the end of the military coup Russia will be proclaimed a Republic.
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In that case the tsar, and most likely the entire royal family, including children, would have to be killed. A parliament would be introduced. Executive power would be held by a directorate of five members.
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One member of the directorate would become president. The head of the executive branch and they would change every year. Pestel wanted to create a unitary state.
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He didn’t want separate Poland, the Polish kingdom, a separate principality of Finland. There was supposed to be a unified Russian state, with a unified Russian language.
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Even at his leisure, Pestel fought against foreign words and believed that the future of the unified Russian language laid in ancient Slavic roots and there was no need for this foreignness.
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There should not be any guardsmen, but oprichniks. The capital should be moved to Nizhny Novgorod and renamed Vladimir.
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Pestel elaborated the future military uniform, reflected on how the institution of marriage and family should be arranged. He has a very interesting section devoted to creating a system of special services which shall maintain order and legality in the Russian republic.
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Often modern readers criticize Pestel for that, saying: "Well, his entire evil dictatorial essence was manifested in the way he wanted to cover the whole Russia with this network of special services".
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But in fact he had it all worked out. And later, in the Soviet years, he implemented it on a much larger scale. Next came universal suffrage. Abolition of serfdom. Freeing of peasants along with their land.
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Not like Yakushkin wanted. But with land. Pestel had an interesting approach toward solving the national question, or rather toward the two most painful issues: the Caucasian and the Jewish.
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As for Caucasus. He decided to divide the Caucasian peoples and all Caucasians into two unequal parts. The biggest part were good peaceful Caucasians.
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Let them live in the Caucasus, engage in agriculture, sheep breeding and gradually Russificate. But as for the violent Caucasians who don't want to live peacefully… They should be deported. Not to Siberia.
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He had a much more humane approach. To settle them in small groups all over the immense territory of Russia. So that they would spread out and slowly Russify themselves too.
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As for the Jews. There were many of them in the Ukraine, in the Polish lands. Since the Jews were a state within a state, living under their own laws and they didn’t want to obey certain authority.
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They didn’t want to obey the Russian law. They didn’t want to serve in the army. They didn’t want to pay taxes. They ignored the Orthodox Church. They lived in communities.
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One should not prevent them from doing that. Therefore, all who do not want to be like the normal Russian Orthodox, should be escorted by Cossacks, and send through the Turkish lands somewhere to Palestine.
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Let them live there as they want, found their own ancient state there. And as for those who want to stay. Please, there’s land, agriculture, trade, but you should join the Russian nation.
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That was in the south. In the north, members of the disintegrated Union of Welfare, led by Nikita Muravyov, formed the Northern society. It even had a different name, but it doesn’t matter.
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It was dominated by supporters of constitutional monarchy. Probably of the modern British model. Textbooks call the Muravyov constitution the main document, which Nikita Muravyov wrote as a policy document.
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But it was also unfinished and nobody voted for it. It was just an idea. It was supposed to abolish serfdom, to abolish conscription. At the same time, most of the land would remain with the landlords.
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I must say Muravyov approached this matter very seriously. He was a clever man, an intellectual.
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Imagine in the process of preparing the constitution he read, studied not only the constitution of the United States, but the constitutions of all 23 American states.
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He analyzed and compared those which formed the United States. Based on that experience and on the European legislation, which he knew very well, he wrote his constitution. Why the USA?
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At that time the USA was the only example of an effective and successful large country, which was governed as a republic. Back then, everyone thought that a republic could only be small.
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Everyone should know each other in a republic. And a big complicated country, with a big geography, with stretched communications, could only be a monarchy.
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But the USA created a system by dividing the country into states, by creating electoral colleges, and a system where a republic also worked effectively. In general, Nikita Muravyov was an interesting man.
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In 1812, at the age of 16, he ran away to the front. He was caught and brought back. Who caught him? Peasants who mistook him for a French spy. They handed him over to our officers.
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He waited till he was 17, enlisted in the army after all, took part in the Foreign campaign, went all over Europe. He was an order bearer, a hero, an intellectual, one of the main ideologues of Northern society.
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By that time another interesting person appeared, about whom I’ll tell you in detail next time. Kondraty Ryleyev.
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Kondraty Ryleyev was interesting because together with him the Decembrists of a completely different type began to join the Northern society. They weren’t princes, weren’t the elite, weren’t Guards officers.
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They were almost raznochinets (self-employed plebeians). Poor nobles, poor officers. Half of officers had no estates at all.
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Officers who had nothing to lose began to appear in society. For example, the Bestuzhev brothers, who played a major role in the December uprising.
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In addition to five brothers, they also had several sisters in their family. Plus, that huge family of military officers had 30 serfs. It was poverty by noblemen's standards.
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Kuchelbecker, Pushkin's friend, had no serfs at all. The Decembrist Kakhovsky, had 18 serfs. He was minor landed gentry, against which even our Alexander Pushkin, who had 200 serfs, seemed rich.
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In 1824 an event took place that could have been a turning point both in the Decembrist movement and in the history of our country. Pestel came to St. Petersburg and proposed to unite two societies.
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To create on their basis a single coherent organization. An underground party. Pestel spoke very ardently. He was a good orator. He was persuasive. He wasn’t stubborn.
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He actively compromised. He said: "All right, I'm even ready to give up the idea of a republic. Let there be a constitutional monarchy at first. Gradually we’ll come to a republic.
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If you are against killing the tsar, let's think about what else we could do with him. Let's send him somewhere. In case of success we’ll have a revolt”. So he was ready to negotiate.
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In fact, these disagreements between, say, Northerners and Southerners, were more of a personal nature. There were no fundamental political differences between them.
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Pestel was a fighter. At first the northerners agreed to the merger. Just a couple of days later they reversed their own decision.
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Gathered in a tight circle, they believed that Pestel would simply seize power in that united organization. He was a very dangerous man.
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Releyev told while having dinner with Pestel, Pestel relentlessly admired Napoleon and his methods. He said: "This Pestel will be the next Bonaparte, look at him. Look at his profile, his haircut.
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He even looks like Napoleon. He thinks he's Napoleon. We don't need that. We’re proud”. In the end Pestel achieved nothing. He left.
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He was so upset that he even said: "I’ll resign from the service and go to the estate. Or maybe even to a monastery. If you don't want me here, that’s fine." In the end they agreed to meet again, to discuss everything, maybe in a year, in 1826, to start taking some actions after all. I don't know whether they met or not. Perhaps it would end with just talks.
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Many Decembrists were slowly drifting away from the activities of the societies. While they were in their 20s and 25s, they get emotional.
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And then they get married, get a household, have children. But then the unexpected happened. Somewhere out there in Taganrog, the blooming Alexander I, who had never been ill, died.
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And the empire was in interregnum. The Decembrists thought that it was the perfect moment for seizing power. What happened next, how they tried to seize power and why they failed I’ll tell you next time.
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Thank you for your love for Russian history. See you next time.
Topics:DecembristsRussian history19th centuryrevolutionliberal movementsecret societiesAlexander IRussian nobilityhistorical interpretationpolitical reform
