100 The Decembrist Revolt
24.3.3: The Decembrist Revolt
On December 26, 1825, Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne after the death of Tsar Alexander I.
Learning Objective
Identify the impetuses for the Decembrist Revolt
Key Points
- A revolutionary movement was born during the reign of Alexander I.
- The background of the Decembrist Revolt lay in the Napoleonic Wars, when a number of well-educated Russian officers in Western Europe during the course of military campaigns were exposed to its liberalism and encouraged to seek change on their return to autocratic Russia.
- Army officers created the Union of Salvation, aimed at the abolishment of serfdom and introduction of constitutional monarchy by means of armed revolt at the next emperor’s succession to the throne.
- The revolt occurred on December 1825, when about 3,000 officers and soldiers refused to swear allegiance to the new tsar, Alexander’s brother Nicholas, proclaiming instead their loyalty to the idea of a Russian constitution and a constitutional monarchy.
- The revolt was easily crushed, and the surviving rebels exiled to Siberia, leading Nicholas to turn away from the modernization program begun by Peter the Great.
Key Terms
- Peter the Great
- He ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from May 7, 1682, until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his elder half-brother, Ivan V. Through a number of successful wars, he expanded the Tsardom into a much larger empire that became a major European power. He led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, westernized, and based on The Enlightenment. His reforms made a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of Russian government trace their origins to his reign.
- Union of Salvation
- The first secret political society of the Decembrists. Founded in 1816 at the initiative of Alexander Nikolayevich Muravyov by a group of young officers of the Russian army who had taken part in the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns of 1813–1814. They aimed at the abolishment of serfdom and introduction of constitutional monarchy by means of armed revolt at the time of next emperor’s succession to the throne.
The Decembrist revolt took place in Imperial Russia on December 26, 1825. Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I’s assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession.
The Decembrist revolt was an aristocratic movement whose chief actors were army officers and members of the nobility. The reasons for Decembrist Uprising were manifold: opposition on part of the nobility to the regime that successfully limited its privileges through its peasant policy spread among a section of young officers with liberal and even radical ideas, along with fears among the nati