Decembrist revolt

In December 1825, during a confused change of ruler, a group of army officers in Saint Petersburg tried to stop the accession of Nicholas I and push the Russian Empire towards constitutional government. Their attempted coup on Senate Square, on 26 December (14 December in the Russian calendar of the time), was dispersed by artillery within a day. The conspirators, remembered as the Decembrists, were hanged or sent to Siberia, but they became an enduring inspiration for later Russian reformers and revolutionaries.

Many of the conspirators were young noble officers who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars. Their campaigns in Europe, and the suffering of the peasant soldiers who served under them, convinced them that Russia needed reform. Alexander I's early liberal gestures had raised expectations, but his reign later turned conservative. Some Decembrists also drew on the example of the American Revolution; a draft constitution by Nikita Muravyov closely resembled that of the United States.

In 1816 officers of the Imperial Guard founded the Union of Salvation, which was later replaced by the more moderate Union of Prosperity. After a mutiny in the Semenovsky Regiment in 1820, the society formally dissolved itself in 1821, but two groups carried on in secret. The Northern Society in Saint Petersburg, led by Muravyov and Princes Sergei Trubetskoy and Yevgeny Obolensky, wanted a constitutional monarchy on British lines and an end to serfdom. The Southern Society, based at Tulchin in Ukraine and dominated by Pavel Pestel, was more radical: it sought a republic and a redistribution of land to the peasants.

Alexander I died suddenly on 1 December 1825. His brother Konstantin had privately renounced the throne two years earlier, but few knew this, and troops in the capital swore allegiance to him. When the renunciation became public and the next brother, Nicholas, prepared to take the oath, the Northern Society decided to act, hoping to persuade soldiers that Nicholas was usurping Konstantin's rights.

On the morning of 26 December, officers led about 3,000 men into Senate Square, where they refused to swear loyalty to Nicholas. The other regiments did not join them, and Trubetskoy, the chosen leader, failed to appear. For hours the rebels faced about 9,000 loyal troops while a large crowd watched. When Nicholas sent General Mikhail Miloradovich to address them, he was shot by Pyotr Kakhovsky and mortally wounded. A cavalry charge slipped on the icy cobbles. At dusk Nicholas ordered cannon to fire grapeshot. The rebels fled, some across the frozen Neva, where artillery broke the ice beneath them.

In Ukraine, Pestel had been arrested the day before the Saint Petersburg revolt. On 10 January 1826 the Chernigov Regiment rose under Sergei Muravyov-Apostol, but it was defeated within five days.

Over a hundred conspirators were tried. Five leaders, among them Pestel, Kakhovsky and Kondraty Ryleyev, were hanged, and many others were sentenced to hard labour or exile in Siberia. Rank-and-file soldiers were flogged or sent to fight in the Caucasus. Several wives, most famously Maria Volkonskaya, followed their husbands into exile, and the word "Dekabristka" came to mean a devoted wife. In Siberia the exiles founded schools and shaped local cultural life. Their cause, especially the abolition of serfdom, later won admirers such as Leo Tolstoy and inspired the populists of the 1860s and 1870s. Serfdom itself ended with the emancipation reform of 1861.

Our 1815 map shows the Russian Empire a decade before the revolt, after its victory over Napoleon.