Details on the Decembrist revolt — in the electronic collection of the Presidential Library

On December 14 (26), 2017 is celebrated the 192nd anniversary of the uprising on the Senate Square in St. Petersburg. A group of noble officers, who later would be called Decembrists, organized that attempted in 1825 coup. On the Presidential Library website there are some little-known materials of the official, memoir and research nature arrayed in the Decembrists in the history of Russia collection. The collection includes electronic copies of the monographs, popular scientific publications, collections of documents, textbooks, and graphic materials.

Analyzing the background of the uprising, the researchers do not disagree in a whole. “In the each people’s life, — O. V. Kaidanova writes in the book “Decembrists” (1906), — the same kind of thing was happening in all times: a small group of people were seizing a power and a wealth, drawing nearer to themselves their own close people to share with them power, wealth and honor, and the rest of the entire people, millions of them, found themselves under that power, living in the grip of poverty and not realizing that they are entitled to a better life for their hard work.”

This was also the opinion of the young officers who returned to Russia after the victory over Napoleon in the Patriotic War of 1812 from Europe, where they saw a different way of life.

The book Decembrists: the history of the armed uprising of December 14, 1825 (of 1923) reveals the socio-political underpinnings of the revolt: “In 1815, a small circle of young officers of the Semyonovsky Regiment, deciding to quit sprees and empty high-society life, has organized a guild for reading foreign newspapers and discuss current actual issues, especially on the Russian life. Alexander I, having learned about this guild, ordered to shut it down. This was enough for the beginning of secret societies.”

Young officers went underground and waited for an opportunity to realize their plans. Meanwhile, Alexander I died. According to the right of succession, his brother Constantine supposed to take the throne, however, as early as during the lifetime of the emperor Alexander I, he abandoned the throne in favor of his younger brother Nicholas. This abandonment was not announced publicly, and the people, the army and the state apparatus have taken their oaths to Constantine. After the situation became clear, another ceremony of swearing allegiance was appointed, which the conspirators took advantage of.

On December 13 (old style) in 1825, the members of the Northern Society decided to disrupt the ceremony of taking the oath to the new emperor and to bring the troops to the Senate building. The conspirators also prepared to read the “Manifesto to the Russian people,” according to which an autocracy and serfdom in Russia were abolished, and civil liberties were introduced; the full power go to the provisional government.

However, this coup attempt was doomed to failure, it was clearly untimely. As A. P. Belyaev wrote about this in his book Memoirs of the Decembrist about the experienced and the perceived (of 1882): “Before evening we saw that guns appeared against us; but as soon as none of the leaders was not in the square, then no one dared to send the battalions against the guns and, perhaps, start a deadly battle, which actually has decided the fate of this unfortunate attempt.” A few fired volleys of grapeshot were enough to suppress the plot.

Speaking about the surviving leaders of the uprising, E. Obolensky in the book entitled In an exile and an imprisonment complains: “Saving them from the grapeshot, a fate was not able to save them from the power of the winner; apart from all the bitterness of defeat, the horror of the execution, they had to endure shackles, tortures, imprisonment and, finally, some of them — tragic death, other — hard labor, third — Siberian casemates.”

As a result of the investigation of Decembrists uprising, five of them were executed.

A complete information about the life of the Decembrists after the uprising could be found on the Presidential Library website. For instance, the historical essay Decembrists in Western Siberia (A. I. Dmitriev-Mamonov, 1905) states that Decembrists helped the people in many ways: they taught children directly in the steppe yurt, they opened schools for children and adults in Irkutsk and a small, organized at the expense of Decembrists’ wives hospital, which, apart from the exiles, was also meant for local residents. A large number of enlightened prisoners remaining in Siberia highly contributed into the development of this region.

In the collection of the Presidential Library under the Illustrations there are also the portraits of the Decembrists by famous painters, some landscapes and photographs of places connected with their life, service and creative work.