Decembrists Revolt: Liberal Uprising Against Nicholas I

They chose the day of the coronation. As Nicholas I took power, 3,000 soldiers gathered in Senate Square, officers who'd seen Paris, who'd read Voltaire, who wanted a constitution instead of an autocrat. They stood in formation for hours in the freezing cold. Nicholas sent his cavalry. Then his artillery loaded with grapeshot. The square cleared in minutes. Five leaders hanged. Over 100 exiled to Siberia, where their wives voluntarily followed them into the wasteland. For the next thirty years, Nicholas would call them "my friends of the fourteenth." Russia's first liberal revolution lasted one afternoon. The Decembrist Revolt of December 14, 1825, was organized by reform-minded military officers who had served in the Napoleonic Wars and returned home from Western Europe appalled by Russian autocracy and serfdom. They formed secret societies modeled on Masonic lodges and planned to seize power during the succession crisis following Alexander I's death. The confusion over who would inherit the throne, Nicholas or his brother Constantine, provided the opportunity. But the conspirators were disorganized, their plans leaked, and most of the units they expected to join them stayed in their barracks. The 3,000 troops who did gather in Senate Square refused to swear allegiance to Nicholas but had no coherent plan beyond standing there. Nicholas negotiated for hours before ordering grapeshot fired into the ranks. The revolt collapsed by nightfall. Five leaders, including the poet Kondraty Ryleev and Colonel Pavel Pestel, were hanged in July 1826. Over 120 were sent to Siberian labor camps, and their wives' voluntary exile became a legendary act of devotion that Nekrasov immortalized in poetry. The Decembrists became martyrs for the Russian liberal movement, and their failed revolt convinced Nicholas I to build the most repressive police state in Europe.