**Sanitized Transcript:**

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In December 1825, the unexpected death of Emperor Alexander threw Russia into confusion. The line of succession had been secretly changed from his brother Constantine to a younger brother, Nicholas. As Nicholas struggles to assert his claim to the throne, a secret society of army officers prepares to make its move. Most are veterans of the wars against Napoleon, and now they want a political revolution in Russia, an end to autocratic government, and the abolition of serfdom. The fate of their revolution will be decided in a single day of chaos and violence on the streets of St. Petersburg. They will be known by the month of their uprising: The Decemberists.

On December 14, 1825, in St. Petersburg, the Decemberist Northern Society has its headquarters at the offices of the Russian American Company, where one of its key members, Rel, is a major shareholder. Decemberist leaders have been working feverishly to put everything in place for a coup. Rel is the chief organizer, despite being unwell. Before dawn, they learn that the new emperor has ordered all troops and officials in the capital to swear an oath of loyalty to him. That morning, they must act immediately; once the troops swear the oath, it will be too late.

Most Decemberists are officers in the Lifeguards regiments stationed in St. Petersburg. They plan to tell their men that Nicholas, known and disliked by the troops, is usurping the throne from his brother Constantine, to whom the soldiers swore an oath of loyalty just 17 days ago. There is no plan to involve the Russian people in their revolt; these young aristocrats fear that this would only lead to the bloody chaos of the French Revolution. Instead, they will rely on their social connections and the unquestioning trust of the men under their command. They will then use these troops to seize control of the capital, the emperor, and the government.

They will form three groups. The first will be led by Captain Alexander Yakubovich, a distinguished veteran of the Caucasus War with a reputation for courage. His men will seize the Winter Palace and secure Emperor Nicholas and his family. Some Decemberists want to keep the emperor prisoner, but Rel secretly entrusts his assassination to 28-year-old Botra Kovski, an officer recently retired due to ill health. As a cadet officer in the Lifeguards regiment, Kovski had been demoted for rudeness, debt, and laziness. He is a loner without friends or money but dedicated to the cause of liberty and imagines himself a slayer of tyrants.

A second detachment will be commanded by 32-year-old Colonel Alexander Bulatov, a hero of the Napoleonic Wars and Rel’s childhood friend. He is recruited just a few days before the revolt as the Decemberists seek to involve more senior officers. His unit will seize the Peter and Paul Fortress, which contains the city’s arsenal and dominates the city center. Colonel Prince Sergey Trubitsky has been appointed dictator or leader of the coup. He is another officer of proven courage from a distinguished family and will command the main force expected to number nearly 10,000 men, which will assemble in Senate Square. Trubitsky will then enter the Russian Senate and demand that it issues the Decemberists’ manifesto to the Russian people. The document announces the establishment of a new provisional government until elections can be held, the freedom of the press and of worship, equality before the law, the introduction of jury trials, and the abolition of serfdom and military settlements. Two well-known and respected politicians, Nikolai Morozov and M. Speransky, would lead the new government to provide continuity and reassurance.

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The Decemberists, drawing on their military experience, have come up with a realistic plan to seize control of the Russian capital, but almost immediately, the conspiracy begins to unravel. On a bitterly cold morning, Kovski and Yakubovich come to Rel’s apartments where the Decemberists have been meeting. Kovski has lost his nerve and is no longer willing to kill the emperor. At the last minute, Yakubovich also decides he cannot shed the blood of Russian soldiers and refuses to lead troops against the Winter Palace. Bulatov, who is supposed to lead his troops against the Peter and Paul Fortress, does not even show up.

The Decemberists are in a race against time. There are several guards regiments in St. Petersburg, and they must win over enough of them to secure the capital before the regime understands what is going on and moves against them. But they learn that the Senate and the Lifeguards have already sworn the oath of loyalty to Nicholas. This painting was based on sketches made later by the emperor himself; it shows the Lifeguards’ first battalion arriving at the Winter Palace that morning—an act of loyalty for which Nicholas will always be grateful.

A battalion of the Moscow Lifeguards regiment comes over to the Decemberist cause, thanks to the efforts of Captains Shepinrovski, M. Bestv, and his brother Alexander Bestv. But the regime is moving much faster than expected. Officers loyal to Nicholas, now aware of the unfolding coup, arrange for the Ismene, Semenovski, and Pavlovski Lifeguards regiments and the Lifeguards’ horse regiment to swear the oath to Nicholas.

700 men of the Moscow Lifeguards regiment leave their barracks and march through the icy streets to Senate Square. Their rallying cry is for Constantine and the Constitution. The men of the Moscow Lifeguards regiment take position in Senate Square near the famous bronze statue of Peter the Great. They are joined by several Decemberist leaders, including Rel and Kovski. Captain Alexander Bestv ostentatiously sharpens his saber on the base of the statue. Officers and men look resplendent in full dress uniform, but Trubitsky, the leader of the coup who is to present the Decemberist manifesto to the Senate, is nowhere to be seen, and the members of the Senate have already gone home. Rel leaves to find him. Crowds of spectators begin to gather around Senate Square; the general mood is one of support for the Decemberists. This watercolor was painted by Carl Ivanovic Kolan, an eyewitness, and is considered one of the most realistic depictions of the day.

Around noon, Count M. Milatovich, governor-general of St. Petersburg and a famous war hero, arrives in the square. He rides straight up to the Moscow Lifeguards regiment and asks who among them was with him at Kulm, Luton, and Bouton, recalling the great battles against Napoleon. He tells the men they have been lied to, that Constantine has renounced the throne, and they must swear the oath to Nicholas. In Trubitsky’s absence, Lieutenant Prince Yugan Abaly becomes the de facto leader of the Decemberists in Senate Square. He tells Milatovich to leave, but the general ignores him. Abaly tries to prick the general’s horse with a bit to drive him away but accidentally stabs the general. Then, Piotra Kovski steps forward and shoots Milatovich at point-blank range. The general, mortally wounded, is carried away by his horse.

The Lifeguards’ Grenadier regiment and sailors of the Guard declare for the Decemberists. They join the Moscow Lifeguards in Senate Square. The Decemberists are gathering a powerful, disciplined force of 3,000 troops in the heart of the Russian capital, but Trubitsky has still not appeared, and there is little leadership. They stand and wait in the freezing cold while the emperor begins to mobilize his own forces. Unbeknownst to the men in Senate Square, Prince Sergey Trubitsky had given up all hope of success early that morning as soon as he heard that the Senate had sworn its oath to Nicholas. Possibly suffering some form of breakdown, he wanders around the city, at one point passing by Senate Square itself. His brilliant military record makes such behavior difficult to understand. A Decemberist later recalled, “His absence had a decisive influence upon us,” and the soldiers too, for with few epaulets and no military titles, no one dared take command.

Meanwhile, exhausted and sick, Rel spends the day in a futile search for Trubitsky before he is forced to retire to bed. The crowd is now several thousand strong, and their loyalties clearly lie with the Decemberists. Some policemen and patrols are even attacked by civilians. When Emperor Nicholas arrives, he and his entourage are pelted with sticks and stones, but guards units loyal to the government are arriving at Senate Square in force and take up positions surrounding the rebels. Soon, they outnumber the Decemberists three to one, though not all are willing to fire on their comrades. In fact, Isaac’s Bridge is deliberately obstructed by troops of the Finnish Lifeguards regiment, whose sympathies lie with the Decemberists. Others, such as General Orof, are outraged by the Decemberists’ actions. He orders his guards’ cavalry to charge the rebels. His men are pelted with stones and timber thrown by the crowd, and the rebels stand firm. Some shots are fired; a few men are hit, and the cavalry withdraws. Several cavalry charges are made that afternoon with no decisive outcome and just a handful of casualties. Still, no Decemberist officer takes charge of the situation; there seems to be no plan at all. It is -10 degrees Celsius, and their men have been standing motionless for hours.

The commander of the Lifeguards’ Grenadier regiment, Colonel Nikolai Sturer, arrives to order his men back to barracks. Kovski shoots him, inflicting another fatal wound. The Metropolitan Bishops of St. Petersburg and Kiev approach the troops and tell them it is their Christian duty to swear the oath to Nicholas, but they are mocked and chased away. The emperor is deeply alarmed by the situation in Senate Square. Though many comment on his calm demeanor, he later confides to his younger brother, “The most amazing thing about this story is that you and I were not shot.” The short winter day is ending; Nicholas fears that if the standoff continues into the night, the crowds will turn hostile. He now has 32 guns of the guards’ artillery at his disposal. He sends General Suanet to tell the rebels to lay down their arms or they will be fired upon. It’s a bad choice of emissary; Suanet is despised by the troops, and they tell him to get lost.

As dusk falls, the guns are wheeled forward. The first volley is blank rounds; the next is fired over the heads of the rebel troops but hits several people in the crowd. The troops stand firm. The next volley of grape shot is fired directly into their packed ranks; scores go down under this murderous fire. The troops break ranks and head out onto the frozen Neva River. M. Bestv tries to organize them for an attack on the Peter and Paul Fortress, little more than 1,000 meters away across the ice, but as they form up, they come under more artillery fire. Cannonballs smash the ice; many drown while the rest escape as best they can. After a standoff lasting several hours, the military revolt has been ruthlessly crushed by Russia’s new emperor. The official death toll is just 80; eyewitnesses claim it is much higher. The Decemberist leaders, who all survived the bloodshed in Senate Square, are rounded up and arrested that night, and the following day, the Decemberist uprising in St. Petersburg is over. The revolt in the south has yet to begin.

On December 13, 1825, in Tula, Ukraine, the day before the St. Petersburg revolt, Pavo Pestl, a leading figure of the Southern Society, is denounced by one of his officers and arrested. The Southern Society’s plans for an uprising are thrown into chaos. Sergey Murav, Apostol takes over as leader. He receives news of the disastrous uprising in St. Petersburg but decides to go ahead with the planned rising in the south. On December 29, he is arrested himself but quickly freed by fellow officers. The next day, he leads two companies of the 29th Chernihiv regiment into Vasilov, where they seize money, weapons, ammunition, and supplies. Three more companies, more than 400 men, join the rebels. The next morning, a revolutionary manifesto written by Murav of Apostol and Lieutenant M. Bestv Rumin is read out to the troops in the question-and-answer form of a religious catechism. The document calls for an uprising to end autocracy, serfdom, and conscription.

Question: What does our holy law order the Russian people and army to do?
Answer: To repent of our lengthy servitude and stand against tyranny and wickedness, vowing that in heaven and on earth there shall be only one Emperor: Jesus Christ.

By January 1, Murav of Apostol leads a force of 17 officers and 1,100 men. He attempts to march on Jir to link up with units of the 5th Infantry Division, whose officers are sympathetic to the Decemberist cause, but his route is blocked by government forces. Then, on January 3, at Ovka, his force is intercepted by troops under General Gar. Murav of Apostol hopes the opposing troops will join him; instead, they open fire with grapeshot. A few men are killed, but most quickly surrender. 895 men and six officers are taken prisoner, including Murav of Apostol, who is badly wounded. His brother Holit and another Decemberist officer, Anastasia Kusmint, take their own lives to avoid capture. The Decemberist uprising in the south is over, crushed in just five days.

In St. Petersburg, the Decemberist leaders are interrogated by Emperor Nicholas in person before they are sent to the Peter and Paul Fortress. The emperor gives instructions on how each prisoner is to be treated, whether they are to be kept in shackles and treated severely or more gently. He despises them all. Trubitsky he describes as a repellent example of an ungrateful scoundrel. Nicholas sets up a commission to investigate the plot and its origins. 579 suspects are arrested and subjected to repeated interrogations, long periods of solitary confinement, hunger, and cold. Many confess freely, revealing details of secret societies and names of co-conspirators. A few resist defiantly. Colonel Bulatov, who was to have led the attack on the Peter and Paul Fortress, is so racked by guilt that he kills himself in his cell. There are no trials as such. Five months later, the commission returns its verdicts to the emperor: 290 are acquitted, 289 are guilty, with 121 judged to be the greatest offenders. A supreme criminal court is formed to carry out sentencing according to 11 categories of guilt devised by M. Speransky, the man the Decemberists had hoped would lead their new government. Those found guilty of minor crimes are demoted and sent to fight in Russia’s long-running war in the Caucasus, along with the regiments that joined the Decemberists.

31 of the Decemberists found guilty of the most serious crimes—conspiracy, rebellion, desiring the emperor’s death—are to be executed by beheading, but Nicholas shows mercy and commutes their sentence to hard labor for life in Siberia. Before they depart, officers are stripped of their rank and noble privileges and ceremonially disgraced. Their greatcoats are burned, and their swords snapped in half. This is the punishment handed out to Nikita Murav, who drafted the Northern Society’s Constitution for a new liberal Russia, and to Prince Sergey Trubitsky, the Decemberist vanishing leader whose life is only spared because of his family name. Five Decemberists will not be spared: Perakowski, Sergey Murav, Apostol, M. Bestv Rumin, Pavo Pestl, and Krati. A public death for the chief instigators and conspirators will be their lawful revenge for disturbing the public peace, Nicholas writes to members of the commission. All five are sentenced to death by quartering, a brutal punishment involving public dismemberment. “God and the Sovereign have decided my fate; I must die and die a shameful death,” he writes in a final letter to his wife.

On July 13, 1826, Nicholas commutes the sentence to hanging, but the execution of the five Decemberists by the ramparts of the Peter and Paul Fortress is badly botched. As the men are hanged, ropes break, and three men fall to the ground. “What a miserable country; they can’t even hang us properly,” remarks one survivor. Spectators appeal for mercy; according to tradition, a man who survives a hanging should be spared. Instead, more rope is found, and the second time there is no mistake. More than 80 Decemberists were eventually sent to Siberia; a few were accompanied by their wives, who voluntarily renounced their own noble privileges to be with their husbands.

Conditions in Siberia were not as extreme as might be imagined. Their hard labor was mostly farm work. Wealthy prisoners were sent money from home, which they used to buy supplies. For active young men, boredom was the greatest enemy. They took up hobbies, played chess, and painted. These watercolors were painted by Nikolai Bestv, who on the 14th had led the Imperial Guard sailors to Senate Square. Some formed their own academy, sharing their knowledge and going on to teach local children and set up schools.

They remained hopeful of a pardon, but it proved a 30-year wait. Only in 1856, after the death of Emperor Nicholas, was an amnesty announced for surviving Decemberists, among them Prince Sergey Trubitsky, who returned to Russia and is seen here photographed in 1857. The December uprising seemed to have been a total failure: a wildly optimistic operation, poorly planned, chaotically executed, doomed from the beginning. The loss of life was thoughtless and unnecessary, but the Decemberists had mounted the first organized political revolt in Russian history. As such, their impact would prove far-reaching. The recent conspiracy, wrote the British resident minister in St. Petersburg, “failed from want of management and want of a head to direct it and was too premature to answer any good purpose. But I think the seeds are sown which one day must produce important consequences.”

Emperor Nicholas was never interested in reform. The issues of serfdom and a constitution would be around for decades to come for those who took up the cause of reform, including Russia’s liberal intelligentsia and future revolutionaries. The Decemberists were an inspiring example of action in the face of tyranny. The father of Russian socialism, Alexander Herzen, was their great champion. He named his political journal Polar Star after Rel’s own. On the cover of its first edition, the five Decemberist martyrs. In time, the Decemberist aims—the abolition of serfdom, a constitution, even the overthrow of the Tsar—were achieved, but their brand of 19th-century liberalism was soon overtaken by events in Russia. The Communists never completely approved of the aristocratic December