‘The First Russian Revolution': Dream of the Decembrists
The Decembrists, who numbered roughly 200 by the author's count, hailed from the elite of Russian society. Some were aristocrats; all were educated and cosmopolitan, while many were friends and members of the imperial guards regiments. Not only had they studied the ideas of the Enlightenment, many had seen with their own eyes what life was like in the West during the wars against Napoleon. Some of the Decembrists had even taken part in the triumphant entrance into Paris of Russian forces behind Czar Alexander I in March 1814. Their awareness of the gulf in political and legal rights between Russia and the West made inaction impossible. Justifying the rebellion to Alexander's successor, Nicholas I, one Decembrist wrote that Russia remained a benighted state in which both people and property were 'completely deprived of protection,' where there was 'a total absence of law and justice' and the wholesale 'repression of enlightenment and freedom.'
For much of his reign, Alexander I had supported attempts to reform Russia's autocratic system, but by 1820 he had become a staunch conservative, determined to squash any criticism of the existing order. Frustrated by the czar's change of heart, and unable to openly discuss politics because of increased censorship, young officers began meeting in Masonic lodges and several new secret societies, such as the Union of Salvation, to debate what needed to be done and how to turn their ideas into reality.
As Ms. Rabow-Edling makes clear, the Decembrists were patriots imbued with a profound love for their homeland and a sincere desire to serve the common good. Abolishing serfdom was the first step on the road to creating a new Russia, one in which the people would be citizens, not subjects. For some secret society members, plans for a constitutional monarchy did not go far enough. Pavel Pestel, a chief ideologue of the Decembrists, argued that regicide was necessary to guarantee Russia's path to freedom.
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