Decembrists

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Decembrist uprising in St. Petersburg

The Decembrists ( Russian Декабристы Dekabristy from декабрь dekabr 'December', therefore also known as the Decembrists in German-speaking countries ) were "noble revolutionaries" (after Lenin ), above all officers of the Russian army , who on 14 December July / December 26, 1825 greg. refused to take the oath on the new Tsar Nicholas I on the square in front of the Senate and Synod in Saint Petersburg . With this they expressed their protest against the autocratic Tsarist regime , against serfdom , arbitrary police force and censorship . The rebellious officers served in St. Petersburg guards regiments and were trained in the West . Their leaders were hanged , some were demoted, and around 600 of them were exiled to Siberia and sentenced to forced labor. As prisoners, they brought culture and education to this part of the world, which was relatively little cultivated at the time, and are therefore still held in high regard there today.

The Decembrists were the first consciously against the tsarist autocracy directed revolutionary movement whose program until the abolition of serfdom and partly to the establishment of a politically Republic submitted, even if the majority one of them constitutional monarchy favored, in which similar to the Tsar a role that was intended for the British kings.

background

The liberal and social ideas had developed in the Russian upper class since the beginning of the 19th century. At first these ideas were only propagated in secret societies . The contact with revolutionary France during the Napoleonic Wars , in the course of which many Russian officers had come to Western Europe , played a role in this . Some personal contacts connected selected Decembrists with the poet Alexander Pushkin , who in his poem Eugene Onegin also makes direct reference to the Decembrist uprising. Pushkin was rather critical of the content and goals of the Decembrist movement.

Prehistory and uprising

After the death of Alexander I , who had remained childless, on December 1, 1825 in Taganrog , the crown was to go to his brother Nikolaus Pavlovich ; Alexander's second brother, Grand Duke Constantine , who was governor in Poland, had renounced the crown in 1823. Alexander had accepted this waiver and thus designated Nicholas as his legitimate successor. However, he had not made this fact publicly known. When Alexander died unexpectedly, chaos broke out at court, which encouraged the uprising. First Constantine was proclaimed his successor, but as in 1823 he refused the dignity and proclaimed Nicholas as Tsar of the Russian Empire. Nikolaus, on the other hand, may not have been informed about this and, as befits the actual succession to the throne, initially wanted his brother to go first. The revolutionaries won some regiments of the capital for the revolt that broke out in St. Petersburg on December 26th. At the head of the movement were officers of the imperial army . They wanted to persuade Nicholas to renounce the throne. After a brief skirmish between the insurgents and the troops loyal to the government, the uprising was put down in the " Senate Square ". Some indecisive attempts at rebellion in the province have already been nipped in the bud.

consequences

Monument on Execution Square of the Insurgent Leaders, Saint Petersburg
Memorial plaque on the Decembrist monument

The new Tsar Nicholas I took the revolt very seriously and personally directed the following investigations. The authorities tried to track down all sympathizers of the movement. The repression, which saw itself as “exemplary” and final, did not shy away from atrocities. The five most important initiators, Mikhail Bestuschew-Ryumin , Pawel Pestel (leader of the Southern League), Sergei Muravjow-Apostol , Kondrati Rylejew and Pyotr Kachowski , were sentenced to death and hanged; Hundreds of people immigrated to prisons, were expelled or deported for forced labor. At the end of the proceedings, Nikolaus wrote a manifest against any change that was not initiated from above:

“It is not from cheeky dreams, which always have a destructive effect, but rather from above that the patriotic institutions are gradually being perfected, deficiencies are being removed and abuses abolished. In accordance with this gradual perfection, we will always accept with goodwill every measured striving for improvement, every thought of strengthening the force of the law, of expanding true education and activity, provided that it is brought to us by the legal path open to all. For we have no wish and cannot have any other wish than to see our fatherland at the highest level of happiness and fame which Providence has chosen for it. "

The approximately 120 Decembrists deported to Siberia and the eleven women who had voluntarily followed their husbands or loved ones into exile had a lasting influence on their new surroundings. Princess Maria Volkonskaya was an outstanding figure , who recorded the impressions of her journey and her decades-long stay in her memoir . In Siberia, the Decembrists formed a closed community of progressive intellectuals who remained in close correspondence with friends and relatives in the centers of Russia and thus did not fall into oblivion, as was intended by the exile. Rather, the Decembrists remained a focal point for reformist ideas.

The following thirty-year rule of Nicholas I was strongly influenced by the experience of the Decembrist uprising. In any case, a staunch advocate of the principle of legitimacy , he saw himself from then on as the keeper and guarantor of the existing order and as a defender of the autocracy and led an ongoing struggle against the revolution. In 1826 he created a new police organization, the so-called "Third Department of His Majesty's Supreme Ownership". In 1830/31 he suppressed the Poles' aspirations for independence, which reached their climax in the November uprising, with military severity. In the revolutionary year of 1848 he intervened in Austria and had the Hungarian uprising against the ruling Habsburgs put down by his troops. Before the Olomouc puncture , Nikolaus exerted strong pressure on Prussia to prevent a small German unification under Prussian leadership and to keep the German Confederation in its existing form. Only his son and successor, Tsar Alexander II , took up some of the Decembrists' demands for reforms in the Russian Empire with the beginning of his rule from 1855.

Decembrist alphabet

The secretary of the investigative commission that passed the verdict on the Decembrists on July 13, 1826, Alexander Dmitrijewitsch Borowkow , has compiled a list with the names and dates of all of those summoned to the interrogations. This document, called the Decembrist alphabet , is a valuable source for research into the Decembrists.

literature

  • Modest von Korff : The accession to the throne of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia in 1825. Read online in 1857 according to his own notes and the memories of the imperial family on the orders of his imperial majesty Alexander II. Berlin .
  • Alexander Herzen : The Russian conspiracy and the uprising of December 14th, 1825 : a reply to the writing of Baron Modeste Korff: The accession to the throne … Hamburg 1858 read online .
  • Andrei Rosen : From the memoirs of a Russian Decembrist . Contributions to the history of the St. Petersburg military uprising of December 14 (26), 1825, and its participants. Read Leipzig 1874 online .
  • Malwida von Meysenbug : retelling of a book by Kropotkin on pages 435-526 in Individualities (1901). 2nd edition, Schuster & Loeffler: Berlin, 1902, 579 pages, read online .
  • Adda Goldschmidt: From the time of decease ; Read the memories of high Russian officers ( Jakuschkin , Obolenski, Wolkonski) Hamburg 1907 online .
  • Sergei Volkonsky : The Decembrists. The first Russian freedom fighters of the 19th century. A. d. Soot. v. Waldemar Jollos. Zurich 1946.
  • Hans Lemberg : The national world of thought of the Decembrists (=  Cologne historical treatises . Volume 7 ). Böhlau, Cologne / Graz 1963, DNB  452797764 (revised dissertation University of Cologne November 13, 1962, 168 pages).
  • Gerhard Dudek (ed.): The Decembrists - seals and documents . Leipzig 1975.
  • Dmitri Mereschkowski : The fourteenth of December . Read the novel (1921) online .
  • Christine Sutherland: The Princess of Siberia. Maria Volkonskaya and her time . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-25672-0 .
  • Joachim Winsmann, Dekabristenlexikon, The Decembrists from AZ, epubli 2015 ISBN 978-3-7375-5802-0 .
  • Jost Meyen: In the footsteps of the Decembrists, Neuchâtel 2016, ISBN 978-3-7412-7426-8 .

Web links

Commons : Decembrists  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Hans-Joachim Torke: The Russian Tsars 1547-1917 . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-42105-9 , p. 286 ff.
  2. Hans-Joachim Torke: The Russian Tsars 1547-1917. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-42105-9 , p. 295.
  3. Hans-Joachim Torke: The Russian Tsars 1547-1917. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-42105-9 , p. 300 f.