"A terrible, dark fate befalls anyone here who dares to raise their head above the level prescribed by the imperial scepter."
Alexander Herzen, "On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia," 1851
The 200th anniversary of the Decembrist uprising (in today's terms—a rebellion) was marked at the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. It should have been at the Investigative Committee, rhyming with the Investigative Commission, which sentenced five participants of the conspiracy to be quartered, later commuted to hanging. Three fell from the gallows due to the poor quality of the ropes, likely made by a domestic manufacturer. The injured Sergey Muravyov-Apostol delivered his verdict to the executioners, once again confirming the need for modernization and reforms in Russia: "Poor Russia! We can't even hang properly!"
"This Plague"
Nevertheless, the choice of department and participants for another—historical—trial of the Decembrists was impeccable. The event was primarily discussed by state lawyers, now defending the new version of autocracy from Western contagion ("this plague"—a definition from Nicholas I's manifesto), as well as TV personalities and PR specialists responsible for the updated interpretation of December 14, 1825. In fact, they had nothing to add to the five-year-old documentary and another feature film—"Union of Salvation," so they talked more about the incorrect Soviet romanticization of the Decembrists. Everything is clear: an attempted coup d'état (as stated in the film "The Decembrist Case"); far removed from the people (how is Lenin's interpretation in "In Memory of Herzen" different from the Ministry of Justice's?); the first color revolution (according to the comments); the defining influence of the West. And the message of the "Union of Salvation"—don't go walking on the square, children from good families. For those older, Alexander Galich's recommendation from a poem, prophetically linking the Decembrist uprising and the march of eight demonstrators against the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, could be used:
"...They should be treated, treated,
Go to the sour waters..."
The last circumstance—the identification of Western influence, probably gathered such a diverse service to the regime, from Mikhail Shvydkoy to Konstantin Ernst, precisely at the Ministry of Justice, the citadel of the fight against "foreign agents." However, Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko expressed it more complexly:
"...Now often by analogy they try (who? — A. K.) to equate the Decembrists with foreign agents. Well, they were not foreign agents, and they were not agents of foreign influence, they were subjects of foreign influence..."
The difference between a subject and an agent is clarified in further explanations: the subjects themselves were Catholics and Lutherans, spoke poor Russian, and did not know the people.
This is about the heroes of 1812, the patriots of Russia, those whose plans and documents were written in Russian, unlike the doctrine of "Orthodoxy-autocracy-nationality," which defines the ideological basis of today's regime, written in French. But, essentially, it is correct—education and enlightenment, as well as foreign languages and confessions, are harmful. Here, however, it is worth asking: what nationality were our Russian emperors and empresses, and in what languages did they communicate? Scratch any "amperor," for example, Nicholas I himself—how much Russian blood will there be? Grandmother Sophia Augusta Frederica, mother—Sophia Dorothea Augusta, wife—Frederica Louise Charlotte, great connoisseurs of the solid and homespun Russian people...
"Everything that was developed by Alexander the First stalled, and if not for the uprising, these essentially ready transformations would have been implemented faster, evolutionarily", continued the minister. Everything that was developed by Alexander under the pernicious influence of the Swiss tutor La Harpe, and then Mikhail Speransky, was successfully stopped long before Senate Square—in any case, Speransky was exiled back in 1812.
And in the future, any democratic (liberal! This word was used in denunciations and vilification in those years, as it is today) preferences the emperor could give to Poland and Finland, but not to the metropolis.
About the nature of the "ready transformations" Pushkin composed "his novellas" back in 1818—after the again "filled with liberalism" (according to Vladimir Nabokov) speech of Alexander in the Sejm in Warsaw:
"...From joy in bed
The child jumped:
"Is it really true?
Is it not a joke?
And the mother to him: "Hush! close your eyes;
It's time to sleep at last,
Having listened to how the tsar-father
Tells tales..."
A Pushkin-like accurate description of authoritarian modernization, which ends with tales from the "wandering despot," "bald dandy, enemy of labor." The movement and performance of the Decembrists, captivated by the ideas of republicanism, popular representation, and the abolition of slavery, albeit not in its most radical form (except for Pestel's views), were provoked by the halt of reforms.
Is it necessary to remind that, according to a quite plausible legend, revealing Pushkin's character, "our everything," upon learning of the death of Emperor Alexander, rushed from Mikhailovskoye to St. Petersburg, intending to stay with Kondraty Ryleev, who was hanged several months later. But a hare crossed the road—a bad omen—and the poet returned to the estate. Otherwise, he would have, at best, ended up "in the depths of Siberian mines," not being even a member of any societies. Pushkin honestly informed Nicholas that he would have been among the rebels, who humiliated the poet for the rest of his life, not without pleasure, including reading Pushkin's correspondence with his wife.
Painting by Semyon Levenkov "Decembrists"
The term "Nicholas reaction" is the most accurate description of what happened during the deaf decades in Russia, and it was not the Decembrist uprising that was the cause of "not progress, but regression" (according to the Minister of Justice). A time came when, according to Pyotr Vyazemsky, "The people became dumb and fell asleep to the voice... Now even from tradition it has been deduced that a minister can have his own opinion." The head of the III Department, Leonty Dubelt, himself in his youth close in views to the Decembrists, and then due to forced idleness joined his antagonists from the noble idea of improving the system from within, recorded in his diary:
"...Why do the French and other Western nations rave?.. Because they have no land, that's the whole story. Take away our peasants and give them freedom, and in a few years, the same will happen..."
All the same "charms of the whip," "yoke with rattles and a whip." All the same—for centuries, according to the effect of the rut left by Gogol's Russian troika, rushing in a vicious circle—justification of autocratic power, the benefits of absolute submission to it up to sacralization, fear of political enlightenment and European ideas and institutions. Cultivation of unanimity and generally renunciation of thought, appeal to "traditional values," the special mission of the "state-forming people" and its religion. The harshest eradication of Western influence and praise of Asianism by historians from power.
How is it with Nikita Muravyov in "A Curious Conversation":
"...Question: Why did these veches (people's assemblies. — A. K.) cease, and when? Answer: The reason for this was the Tatar invasion, which taught our ancestors to submit to their tyrannical power..."
From the draft Constitution:
"...The experience of all nations and all times has proven that autocratic power is equally disastrous for rulers and societies... Blind obedience can only be based on fear and is not worthy of either a reasonable ruler or reasonable executors..."
"In Any Other Country..."
If you read the documents of the Decembrists, you can find not "Catholics and Lutherans, poorly speaking Russian," but deep political philosophers, forerunners of the modern type of thinking, including constitutional, serious economists, in many respects ahead of their time, for example, Nikolai Turgenev. And indeed, the Decembrist Constitution resembles today's Basic Laws of democratic states:
"...1. The Russian people, free and independent, are not and cannot be the property of any person or any family. 2. The source of supreme power is the people, who have the exclusive right to make basic provisions for themselves. 3. The government of Russia is statutory and federal..."
When, in what century, in what year were these words written:
"...We have some kind of craving for general enlightenment; not for that which is acquired in schools (and in colleges after 9th grade for those who did not pass the OGE. — A. K.), but for that which makes a person capable of judging the civil state of their homeland..."
The craving for enlightenment is not needed by the state—whether on January 3, 1819, when Nikolai Turgenev wrote about civic self-awareness, or in December 2025. What we need is something else—the maximum possible distancing from independent thinking and immersion in one's personal life (it can no longer be called private—the state invades it with both boots). Osip Mandelstam insightfully wrote about this eternal contradiction in the equally fateful, as 1825, year nineteen seventeen:
"...The living voices are still agitated
About the sweet liberty of citizenship!
But the blind heavens do not want sacrifices:
Labor and constancy are more important..."
The most accurate sociological observation of the behavior patterns of the common man.
Nikolai Turgenev on the same day in January 1819 gives in his notes a lesson in the history of political and legal doctrines. Everything is explained here about the Decembrists and the type of thinking that was then and is today contemptuously called liberal (the quote is long, but important in the context of our conversation):
"...And the Russians now want to participate in the fate of enlightened Europe, want to know not only about its prosperity, its disasters, but also about the causes of this prosperity and these disasters. The last war had a decisive influence on Russia in this regard. Peter the Great made us go along with Europe... The events of 1912, 13, 14, and 15 brought us closer to Europe; we... saw the goal of the life of nations, the goal of the existence of states; and no human force can turn us back..."
Here is the explanation of the meaning and pathos of Decembrist thinking and movement. Still—"foreign agents." Since then, generation after generation, our compatriots go out to the square "at the appointed hour," and generation after generation "law enforcers" drive them from the squares, and generation after generation thoughts are nurtured about the adoption of the Constitution, that is, political freedoms and a truly republican system, and generation after generation this movement towards modernization is stopped by the state. And the Russian cycle repeats itself again.
The conference at the Ministry of Justice had the status of "scientific-practical." The reasoning of PR specialists and officials cannot be called science. But the practical conclusion is obvious—this "plague" must be suppressed.
The retrial of the Decembrists took place.
* * *
...When three Decembrists fell from the gallows, Alexander Khristoforovich Benkendorf, who six months later would become the chief of gendarmes, unable to bear this sight, pressed his face to the horse's croup. It seemed that the case had freed at least three unfortunate ones from execution. But no—they were taken to be hanged again. Then Benkendorf (Benkendorf!) exclaimed: "In any other country..." And broke off mid-sentence.
How many times and how many decades and centuries later this phrase was repeated and will be repeated by our compatriots with different intonations and for different reasons. Here it is, our enduring traditional value...
* The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation considers Andrey Kolesnikov a "foreign agent."