Senate Square: Decembrists Against Decembrists

Abstract

This article deals with a historical paradox: the participation of former and present members of the secret Decembrist societies in suppressing the St Petersburg uprising on 14 December 1825, Decembrists against Decembrists. Thus, Colonel Vasily Perovsky, a former member of the Union of Welfare, Nicholas’s I adjutant, met Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, who arrived from Warsaw with a letter from Tsarevich Konstantin at the city outpost and then called troops loyal to the emperor to the square. Another adjutant, a member of the same Union, Colonel Alexander Kavelin, brought the young Tsarevich Alexander Nikolayevich (future Alexander II) to the Winter Palace and visited the mortally wounded Governor-General of St Petersburg Count Mikhail Miloradovich on behalf of the emperor. General Sergei Shipov, a member of the Union of Salvation and the Union of Prosperity, commanded the Guards Brigade and tried to prevent the Guards crew from joining the rebels. In a similar attempt, a member of the Union of Prosperity, Colonel Pavel Khvoshchinsky, was wounded in the Moscow Guards Regiment. That day, Alexander von Moller, colonel of the Finnish Guards Regiment, commanded the guards in the Winter Palace, the Admiralty, and the Senate. Officers-cavalry guards members of the St Petersburg branch of the Southern Society I. Annenkov, Prince A. Vyazemsky, H. Depreradovich, D. Artsybashev and a member of the Northern Society A. Muravyov, as well as a member of both secret societies cornet of the Guards Horse Regiment Prince A. Suvorov, participated in cavalry attacks on the rebels. Why and how did these people end up in the ranks of opponents of their comrades in secret societies? Can their actions be explained by something as banal as a betrayal? Did the participants in the uprising accept such an explanation? And how did Nicholas I take the revealed facts of officers’ participation in secret societies who took his side in the confrontation on 14 December? The author of the article puts forward answers to these questions.