Wives of the Decembrists

Dimensional life of Russia overturned in 1825, December 14. On this day there was an uprising of the Decembrists. It was brutally suppressed, 579 participants were involved in the investigation. Five were sentenced to death, 120 people were exiled to Siberia for labor. After the end of the trial, all those sentenced were declared political criminals and officially dead.

"Political death" meant then the legal loss of absolutely all the rights of a citizen of the country. Wives of the Decembrists had to decide their fate. They could file for divorce or keep a marriage. Women were also given the opportunity to go after men for hard labor. Two were filed for divorce.

Modernity knows the names of eleven women - the companions of the first Russian Decembrist revolutionaries - who followed their men to hard labor in Siberia. They did not belong to secret societies, did not take part in the uprising, but did a heroic deed.

The feat of the wives of the Decembrists not only reflected their love and devotion to their husbands. The progressive public of that time appreciated their deed, giving it a broad social and political significance. Having voluntarily followed "state criminals", the wives of the Decembrists, like their husbands, spoke out against serfdom and the autocracy, not being afraid to lose their blessings and privileges.

It should be noted that Nicholas 1 created all kinds of obstacles for the departure of the wives of the Decembrists. One of the most stringent conditions was the abandonment of children in European Russia.

Ekaterina Trubetskaya was the first to go to her husband's house. For half a year in her Irkutsk, she was detained by Zeidler (the local governor), who executed a secret tsarist order and did everything possible to make her come back. Trubetskoy had to sign several obligations, which deprived her of simple human rights. Zeidler said the princess's trip to her husband could take place only at the stage, next to the convicts. However, Ekaterina Trubetskaya was adamant. As a result, she went to her husband.

At the beginning of 1827, Alexander Murav'ev and Maria Volkonska came to Siberia, Nerchinskoye mines after Trubetskoi . From this moment the first arriving wives of the Decembrists began their social activities. By the end of the year, other women came to the mines: Alexandra Yentaltseva, Anna Rosen, Alexandra Davydova, Natalia Fonvizina, Elizaveta Naryshkina, Kamilla Ivasheva, Praskovya Annenkova, Maria Yushnevskaya.

Convicted "state criminals" were forbidden to write letters. Wives of the Decembrists established communication between the prisoners and their relatives. In the name of women came printed publications, including foreign ones.

Women who came to Siberia lived simply. They had to cook themselves, wash, burn the stove. It was in these conditions that the young aristocrats could understand the whole value of life.

The wife of Nikita Muravyova, Alexander, ignoring the danger, brought and transferred Pushkin's works dedicated to Pushchina ("My First Friend", "To Siberia"). If she had found poems during the search, she would be in jail.

Alexandra Muravieva did not live long in Siberia. In the winter, running to the apartment to children from the camera of her husband, she caught a cold and died soon.

The settlement and two more wives (Trubetskoi and Ivasheva) did not return. Three women were widowed; They received permission to return after the general pardon of 1856. Two wives went to the Caucasus with their husbands (Naryshkina and Rosen). Three women with the released - returned after an amnesty in the European part of the country (Annenkova, Volkonskaya, Fonvizina).

The Decembrists and their wives returned politically after thirty years of exile. They have carried their hatred of serfdom and autocracy through all these years.