Decembrists

Decembrists, members of a Russian revolutionary society consisting mainly of Russian army officers who led a mutiny in December 1825. The immediate spur for the revolt was the sudden death of Alexander I, Emperor of Russia, on December 1 (November 19 according to the Julian, or Old Style, calendar used in Russia at the time), 1825, in Taganrog, in south-western European Russia. As he was childless his eldest brother Constantine should have succeeded him. However, following Constantine’s morganatic marriage (that is, a marriage between a person of high social rank and a person of lower social rank; such a marriage meant that Constantine’s wife and children had no claim to his titles and possessions) to a Catholic Pole, Alexander had decided that his younger brother Nicholas should succeed him and had drawn up a secret manifesto, which remained unpublished on the emperor’s death, to this effect. The result was confusion over the oath of allegiance to the new emperor. During this interregnum a number of army officers staged a revolt and gathered some 3,000 soldiers in Senate Square in St Petersburg on December 14 (December 3, Old Style), where they demanded that Constantine should succeed and that he should introduce a constitution. The revolt was suppressed with ease. At the same time, an abortive uprising took place in the south. The leaders of the revolt were arrested and interrogated; 5 were executed and 31 exiled to Siberia.

The majority of the Decembrists were army officers. The roots of the Decembrist uprising can be traced to numerous sources: the newly aroused Russian nationalism in the wake of the invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812; the contact Russian officers made with foreign officers, and particularly with freemasons, during the campaigns in Germany and the occupation in France; the acquaintance of educated Russians with Western ideas and Napoleonic constitutions; and the disillusionment felt by these men with Alexander’s failure to implement fundamental political reform at home after 1815 and his introduction of the loathed military colonies. Early secret societies, of which the Union of Salvation, later renamed the League of Welfare, was most significant, split in 1821 into the more moderate Northern Society (based mainly in St Petersburg), which favoured a monarchical, federal constitution, with a restricted franchise, and the emancipation of the peasants without land, and the far more radical Southern Society (comprising officers stationed in the south of the empire), led by Pavel Pestel, who proposed the abolition of both the monarchy and of serfdom. The Decembrists lacked the manpower, the co-ordination, and the unity of purpose to present a genuine threat at the time but their ideas fundamentally challenged the political and social basis of the Russian tsarist regime and influenced future generations of Russian intellectuals. Moreover, the execution of the movement’s leaders, including Pavel Pestel, provided martyrs for the cause of reform in Russia.