The wives of the Decembrists are brief and interesting. And forever and ever: the history of the wives of the Decembrists

On December 14, 1825, in St. Petersburg on Senate Square, the first organized protest in the history of Russia by noble revolutionaries against the tsarist autocracy and tyranny took place. The uprising was suppressed. Five of its organizers were hanged, the rest were exiled to hard labor in Siberia, demoted to soldiers... The wives of the eleven convicted Decembrists shared their Siberian exile. The civil feat of these women is one of the glorious pages of our history.

In 1825, Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya turned 20 years old. The daughter of the famous hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, General Raevsky, a beauty praised by Pushkin, the wife of Prince Major General Volkonsky, she belonged to a select society of people outstanding in intelligence and education. And suddenly - a sharp turn of fate.

At the beginning of January 1826, Sergei Volkonsky stopped in the village for a day to visit his wife, who was expecting their first child. At night he lit a fireplace and began throwing written sheets of paper into the fire. To the frightened woman’s question: “What’s the matter?” - Sergei Grigorievich said: - “Pestel is arrested.” "For what?" - there was no answer...

The next meeting of the spouses took place only a few months later in St. Petersburg, in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where the arrested Decembrist revolutionaries (among them were Prince Sergei Volkonsky and Maria Nikolaevna’s uncle Vasily Lvovich Davydov) were awaiting a decision on their fate...

There were eleven of them - women who shared the Siberian exile of their Decembrist husbands. Among them are ignorant people, like Alexandra Vasilyevna Yontaltseva and Alexandra Ivanovna Davydova, or Polina Gebl, who was severely poor in childhood, the bride of the Decembrist Annenkov. But the majority are princesses Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya and Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya. Alexandra Grigorievna Muravyova is the daughter of Count Chernyshev. Elizaveta Petrovna Naryshkina, née Countess Konovnitsyna. Baroness Anna Vasilievna Rosen, the general's wives Natalya Dmitrievna Fonvizina and Maria Kazimirovna Yushnevskaya belonged to the nobility.

Nicholas I granted everyone the right to divorce their husband, a “state criminal.” However, the women went against the will and opinion of the majority, openly supporting the disgraced. They renounced luxury, left their children, family and friends and followed the husbands they loved. Voluntary exile to Siberia received loud public resonance.

Today it is difficult to imagine what Siberia was like in those days: “the bottom of the bag,” the end of the world, far away. For the fastest courier - more than a month's journey. Off-road conditions, river floods, snowstorms and chilling horror of Siberian convicts - murderers and thieves.

The first - the very next day, following her convict husband - was Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya. In Krasnoyarsk, the carriage broke down and the guide fell ill. The princess continues her journey alone, in a tarantass. In Irkutsk, the governor intimidates her for a long time, demands - again after the capital! - written renunciation of all rights, Trubetskoy signs it. A few days later, the governor announces to the former princess that she will continue to walk the “tightrope” along with criminals. She agrees...

The second was Maria Volkonskaya. Day and night she rushes in a wagon, not stopping for the night, not having lunch, content with a piece of bread and a glass of tea. And so for almost two months - in severe frosts and snowstorms. She spent the last evening before leaving home with her son, whom she had no right to take with her. The baby played with a large beautiful seal of the royal letter, in which the highest command allowed the mother to leave her son forever...

In Irkutsk, Volkonskaya, like Trubetskaya, faced new obstacles. Without reading, she signed the terrible conditions set by the authorities; deprivation of noble privileges and transition to the position of the wife of an exiled convict, limited in the rights of movement, correspondence, and disposal of her property. Her children, born in Siberia, will be considered state-owned peasants.

Six thousand miles of journey behind - and the women are in the Blagodatsky mine, where their husbands mine lead. Ten hours of hard labor underground. Then a prison, a dirty, cramped wooden house of two rooms. In one - escaped criminal convicts, in the other - eight Decembrists. The room is divided into closets - two arshins long and two wide, where several prisoners huddle. Low ceiling, you can’t straighten your back, pale candlelight, the ringing of shackles, insects, poor nutrition, scurvy, tuberculosis and no news from the outside... And suddenly - beloved women!

When Trubetskaya, through a crack in the prison fence, saw her husband in shackles, in a short, tattered and dirty sheepskin coat, thin and pale, she fainted. Volkonskaya, who arrived after her, shocked, knelt down in front of her husband and kissed his shackles.

Nicholas I took away all property and inheritance rights from women, allowing only miserable living expenses, for which women had to report to the head of the mines.

Insignificant amounts kept Volkonskaya and Trubetskoy on the brink of poverty. They limited food to soup and porridge and refused dinners. Lunch was prepared and sent to the prison to support the prisoners. Accustomed to gourmet cuisine, Trubetskoy at one time ate only black bread, washed down with kvass. This spoiled aristocrat walked in worn-out shoes and froze her feet, because from her warm shoes she sewed a hat for one of her husband’s comrades to protect his head from rock debris falling in the mine.

No one could calculate a hard life in advance. One day Volkonskaya and Trubetskaya saw the head of the mines, Burnashev, with his retinue. They ran out into the street: their husbands were being escorted. The village echoed: “The secret ones will be judged!” It turned out that the prisoners went on a hunger strike when the prison guard forbade them to communicate with each other and took away the candles. But the authorities had to give in. This time the conflict was resolved peacefully. Or suddenly, in the middle of the night, shots raised the entire village to its feet: criminal convicts tried to escape. Those caught were beaten with whips to find out where they got the money to escape. And Volkonskaya gave the money. But no one gave her up even under torture.

In the fall of 1827, the Decembrists from Blagodatsk were transferred to Chita. There were more than 70 revolutionaries in the Chita prison. The cramped space and the ringing of shackles irritated the already exhausted people. But it was here that a friendly Decembrist family began to take shape. The spirit of collectivism, camaraderie, mutual respect, high morality, equality, regardless of the difference in social and financial status, dominated in this family. Its connecting core was the holy day of December 14, and the sacrifices made for it. Eight women were equal members of this unique community.

They settled near the prison in village huts, cooked their own food, fetched water, and lit the stoves. Polina Annenkova recalled: “Our ladies often came to me to see how I was preparing dinner, and asked them to teach them how to cook soup. then make a pie. When I had to clean the chicken, they confessed with tears in their eyes that they envied my ability to do everything, and complained bitterly about themselves for not being able to take on anything.”

Visits with husbands were allowed only twice a week in the presence of an officer. Therefore, the favorite pastime and only entertainment of women was to sit on a large stone opposite the prison, sometimes exchanging a word with the prisoners.

The soldiers rudely drove them away, and once hit Trubetskoy. The women immediately sent a complaint to St. Petersburg. And since then Trubetskoy has demonstratively organized entire “receptions” in front of the prison: she sat on a chair and took turns talking with the prisoners gathered inside the prison yard. The conversation had one inconvenience: we had to shout quite loudly to hear each other. But how much joy this brought to the prisoners!

The women quickly became friends, although they were very different. Annenkov's bride came to Siberia under the name Mademoiselle Polina Gebl: “by royal grace” she was allowed to unite her life with the exiled Decembrist. When Annenkov was taken to church to get married, the shackles were removed from him, and upon his return they were put back on and taken to prison. Polina, beautiful and graceful, was seething with life and fun, but all this was like an outer shell of deep feelings that forced the young woman to abandon her homeland and independent life.

A common favorite was Nikita Muravyov’s wife, Alexandra Grigorievna. None of the Decembrists, perhaps, received such enthusiastic praise in the memoirs of Siberian exiles. Even women who are very strict towards representatives of their sex and are as different as Maria Volkonskaya and Polina Annenkova are unanimous here: “Holy woman. She died at her post."

Alexandra Muravyova was the personification of the eternal female ideal, rarely achieved in life: a tender and passionate lover, a selfless and devoted wife, a caring, loving mother. “She was love incarnate” - in the words of the Decembrist Yakushkin. “In matters of love and friendship, she did not know the impossible,” echoes I.I. Pushchin.

Muravyova became the first victim of the Petrovsky plant - the next place of hard labor for revolutionaries after Chita. She died in 1832 at the age of twenty-eight. Nikita Muravyov turned gray at thirty-six - on the day of his wife’s death.

Even during the transition of convicts from Chita to the Petrovsky plant, the women's colony was replenished with two voluntary exiles - the wives of Rosen and Yushnevsky arrived. And a year later, in September 1831, another wedding took place: the bride Camille Le-Dantu came to Vasily Ivashev.

The Decembrist women did a lot in Siberia. First of all, they destroyed the isolation to which the authorities doomed the revolutionaries. Nicholas I wanted to force everyone to forget the names of the condemned, to erase them from memory. But then Alexandra Grigorievna Muravyova arrives and through the prison bars conveys to I. I. Pushchin the poems of his lyceum friend Alexander Pushkin. The poetic lines “in the depths of the Siberian ores” told the Decembrists that they were not forgotten, that they were remembered, they were sympathized with.

Relatives and friends write to prisoners. They are also forbidden to respond (they received the right to correspondence only with access to the settlement). This reflected the same government calculation of isolating the Decembrists. This plan was destroyed by women who connected the prisoners with the outside world. They wrote on their own behalf, sometimes copying letters from the Decembrists themselves, received correspondence and parcels for them, and subscribed to newspapers and magazines.

Each woman had to write ten or even twenty letters a week. The workload was so heavy that sometimes there was no time left to write to my own parents and children. “Do not complain to me, my kind, priceless Katya, Lisa, for the brevity of my letter,” writes Alexandra Ivanovna Davydova to her daughters left with relatives. “I have so much trouble now, and there are so many letters to write to me at this post office that I forcibly chose time for these few lines."

While in Siberia, the women waged a constant struggle with the St. Petersburg and Siberian administrations to ease the conditions of imprisonment. They called Commandant Leparsky a jailer to his face, adding that not a single decent person would agree to accept this position without striving to alleviate the lot of the prisoners. When the general objected that he would be demoted to soldier for this, they immediately answered: “Well, become a soldier, general, but be an honest man.”

The old connections of the Decembrists in the capital, the personal acquaintance of some of them with the tsar, sometimes restrained the jailers from arbitrariness. The charm of young educated women sometimes tamed both the administration and criminals.

Women knew how to support the discouraged, calm the excited and upset, and console the distressed. Naturally, the unifying role of women increased with the advent of families (since wives were allowed to live in prison), and then the first “convict” children - pupils of the entire colony.

Sharing the fate of the revolutionaries, celebrating the “holy day of December 14” with them every year, women came closer to the interests and affairs of their husbands (which they were not aware of in a past life), and became, as it were, their accomplices. “Imagine how close they are to me,” wrote M.K. Yushnevskaya from the Petrovsky plant, “we live in the same prison, suffer the same fate and console each other with memories of our dear, kind relatives.”

The years passed slowly in exile. Volkonskaya recalled: “At the first time of our exile, I thought that it would probably end in five years, then I told myself that it would be in ten, then in fifteen years, but after 25 years I stopped waiting, I asked God only one thing: for him to bring my children out of Siberia.”

Moscow and St. Petersburg became increasingly distant memories. Even those whose husbands died were not given the right to return. In 1844, this was denied to Yushnevsky’s widow, and in 1845, to Entaltseva.

New and new batches of exiles were coming from beyond the Urals. 25 years after the Decembrists, the Petrashevites, including F.M. Dostoevsky, were taken to hard labor. The Decembrists managed to get a meeting with them, help with food and money. “They blessed us on a new path,” Dostoevsky recalled.

Few Decembrists lived to see the amnesty that came in 1856 after thirty years of exile. Of the eleven women who followed their husbands to Siberia, three remained here forever. Alexandra Muravyova, Kamilla Ivasheva, Ekaterina Trubetskaya. The last to die was ninety-three-year-old Alexandra Ivanovna Davydova in 1895. She died surrounded by numerous descendants and the respect and veneration of all who knew her.

“Thanks to the women: they will give some beautiful lines to our history,” said a contemporary of the Decembrists, poet P.A. Vyazemsky, upon learning of their decision.

Many years have passed, but we never cease to admire the greatness of their love, selfless spiritual generosity and beauty.

To Siberia!
It is difficult to say now what motivated the eleven women who decided to take this action. The authorities did not immediately like their decision, and they tried their best to restrain this impulse.

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Princess Trubetskoy, who was the first to obtain permission, was detained in Irkutsk for almost six months by personal order of the Tsar. And all these six months they tried to persuade her to abandon the idea.

With one hundred percent certainty, one cannot refer to either love or the desire to support the political views of the spouses. Among the nobles, marriages were often arranged for convenience and even without the participation of the young people themselves. For example, Princess Maria Volkonskaya was not at all on good terms with her husband before her exile.

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Women were not involved in politics then; they learned about their husbands’ participation in secret societies after the fact. The only exception was Ekaterina Trubetskaya, but no one remembered her during the investigation. In the case of the Decembrists, only two ladies were involved: the sisters of Mikhail Rukevich - Xavier and Cornelia.

They were guilty of destroying incriminating papers after their brother's arrest. For which they were sent to a monastery for a year and six months, respectively. So they were not comrades in the struggle, as happened later.

Of course, there were romantic stories among them. Here we must immediately remember Polina Gebl (Annenkova) and Camille Le Dantu (Ivasheva). Both, by the way, are French, so we can’t talk about some kind of national phenomenon among Russian women. This is how they understood their duty and followed it.

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The first thing these women had to face was deprivation of their position in society. The royal favors did not extend to those who followed the disgraced spouses. They had to live in Siberia as the wives of “convicts” and “exiled settlers,” that is, with very limited civil rights.

Origin, relationships within the class and public interest, of course, had an impact. It would be much more difficult for an ordinary tradeswoman. But this became clear after several years of living in Siberia. Initially, the women were sent into complete uncertainty: no one could guarantee them respectful attitude from local authorities.

The second and most difficult test for most women is the need to separate from their children. The authorities categorically did not allow them to travel to Siberia. Maria Yushnevskaya had to wait four years for a decision. The thing is that her adult daughter from her first marriage was going to go with her. But even in this case, the officials did not cooperate.

As a result, the children were placed with relatives. We must pay tribute to the Russian elite of that time: they were accepted, given an education, and provided for the children of their relatives, but the mother’s heart still experienced such separation extremely hard.

Alexandra Davydova left behind six children. There were six thousand miles between them. To congratulate her on her name day, she had to write almost six months in advance. She could only judge how they were growing up by receiving portraits.

The authorities opposed meetings between relatives and exiles even when hard labor was left behind and the regime of their stay was relaxed. Ivan Yakushkin’s son, Evgeniy, managed to meet his father for the first time only at the age of 27, and for this he needed to go on a business trip.

And finally, the attitude of relatives, family and society as a whole towards the decision of the wives of the Decembrists was completely ambiguous. General Raevsky told his daughter Maria Volkonskaya before the poisoning: “I will curse you if you do not return in a year.”

Maria Poggio's father, Senator Andrei Borozdin, in order to keep his daughter from taking rash steps, petitioned for Joseph Poggio to be imprisoned alone in the Shlisselburg fortress. There he spent eight years. The senator set a condition for his daughter: he would be transferred to Siberia only after their divorce.

On the contrary, the Laval family supported Ekaterina Trubetskoy in her decision to follow her husband. Her father even gave her his secretary on the trip. The latter could not stand the journey and abandoned her in Krasnoyarsk.

High society was also divided: some commented with bewilderment on this act in salons, but at the same time, Volkonskaya’s farewell in Moscow was attended by many famous personalities, including Pushkin.

Sentence

To explain how life was for the women who followed their husbands to Siberia, it is necessary to remember the verdict. For participants in the December uprising and members of secret societies, it turned out to be unprecedentedly strict.

A total of 121 people were tried. Five leaders - Pestel, Ryleev, Muravyov-Apostol, Bestuzhev-Ryumin and Kakhovsky - were sentenced by a specially created Supreme Criminal Court to quartering, an execution that had not been used in Russia since the time of Emelyan Pugachev. Thirty-one people - to beheaded.

For Russia at that time, these were practically mass executions. For example, during the reign of Catherine II, only four were sentenced to death: Pugachev, Mirovich and two participants in the plague riot of 1771.

For the rest of the Decembrists, the sentences were very varied, but, as a rule, it was hard labor, demotion to the army and exile to Siberia. All this was accompanied by the deprivation of the nobility, all awards and privileges.

Emperor Nicholas I commuted the sentence and the death penalty was replaced with hard labor and exile. Everyone was lucky except those sentenced to quartering; instead of a painful execution, they were simply hanged. The way this execution took place (three Decembrists failed and had to be hanged again) suggests that they did not know how to carry out a death sentence in Russia at that time.

The authorities and the new tsar were so frightened by the appearance of the Decembrists, the demands of the republic and civil rights, that in response they tried to intimidate the aristocracy as much as possible so that seditious thoughts would not take hold in their minds.

Women of that time passed into the class of men and the deprivation of nobility automatically extended to the entire family. But the king had mercy here too. Women were retained nobility and property rights, and they were also given the opportunity to divorce state criminals. Somehow, by default, it was assumed that the spouses would do just that.

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Probably, Nicholas I thought that this was a very graceful step: in one fell swoop he showed “mercy” and deprived the Decembrists of their last anchor - their family. However, there was no wave of divorces. Instead, a slap in the face: several women decided to follow their husbands to Siberia.

Ladies Street

The wives became the bridge that connected the prisoners with the rest of the country with their letters. They also sought a softening of the contents and certain concessions. In essence, these women performed, successfully and for free, the same functions as the army of lawyers today. They could also be called the first human rights activists in Russia. But then, going to Siberia, they hardly thought about this.

They understood one thing - it would be very difficult in everyday life and morally, but they had no idea how much. Today, various “prepper” communities are quite popular. From their point of view, the wives of the Decembrists, who for the most part grew up surrounded by serf servants, would have received an extremely low rating for survival.

In the inventory of Elizaveta Naryshkina’s property, which barely fit on three sheets, one can find many “important” things for ordinary life: 30 pairs of women’s gloves, 2 veils, 30 nightgowns, dozens of pairs of stockings, and so on and so forth. A useful thing—a copper samovar—causes a happy smile. It is only unknown whether they managed to get him there and whether the lady knew how to handle him.

Perhaps, by modern standards, their difficulties were not so terrible. They themselves did not consider that they were doing something heroic. Alexandra Davydova, having already returned from Siberia, once said: “What heroines? It was the poets who made heroines out of us, and we just went after our husbands...”

But imagine for a moment the state of the young ladies who knew how to play music, embroider on a hoop and discuss the latest literary novelties, with a heap of things completely out of place in the north, who suddenly found themselves in a small peasant hut, where at first there was not even a stove and they had to use the hearth.

It was especially difficult for the first who were able to break into Siberia: Trubetskoy and Volkonskaya. By that time, the state supported their husbands with 20 rubles a month (a meager amount at that time). They say that this amount was determined personally by Nicholas the First.

The wives themselves regularly reported their expenses to the authorities, and they ensured that the money was not spent “to excessively alleviate the lot of prisoners.” To hand over things, it was necessary to bribe the guards. The only thing that was not forbidden was feeding.

You just had to cook it yourself. For many women, this became, as they would say now, a completely new challenge. The ladies had to fetch water themselves, chop wood and start a fire. And if everyone soon learned to cope with vegetables, then cleaning the poultry became a difficult task, and there was no talk of slaughtering the chicken.

This group of women, and the wives of the Decembrists essentially lived together, as a small community, was greatly helped by the fact that among them was the Frenchwoman Polina Gobl (Annenkova). She grew up in a simple family, ended up in Moscow as a milliner, and was able to do many things that representatives of high society had not encountered. It was Gobl who taught her friends many everyday skills. But they even took lessons from the servants. For example, Muravyova was taught to cook by her own serf-cook.

Since 1827, all Decembrists were kept in the Chita prison. The conditions for the convicts were not bad, but the fact that they came to their husbands did not mean anything at all. At first, visits were rarely allowed and only in the presence of an officer.

In order to obtain permission to travel to Siberia, women were required to sign a receipt to renounce “family life.” They were allowed to live with their husbands in prison only in 1830, after being transferred to the Petrovsky Plant. And this issue was discussed at the very top. After this, the women, involving all their relatives, literally flooded Moscow and St. Petersburg with pitiful letters, lobbying the authorities to seal the cracks in the cells and enlarge the windows.

They often found themselves in dangerous situations due to some naivety. Volkonskaya, the youngest of them, once caused sharp displeasure from the convict authorities because she gave shirts to criminals. Another time, she gave them money to escape. The prisoners were caught and beaten with whips to find out where they got them from. If only one person had confessed, it would have ended with the arrest of the woman herself. Fortunately, no one ever gave her away.

The wives of the Decembrists spent most of their time serving their husbands and their comrades, cooking, washing, mending clothes and trying to talk to them through the high fence. For the latter, one had to wait for hours until the guards took the convicts out into the street.

After moving to Petrovsky prison, the women had a little easier time. They were waiting at home on a small street, which was called Damskaya, the opportunity to see their husbands more often, and then even live together. All they had to do was somehow improve their life.

It was not easy to do this. Almost everything needed had to be ordered from the capitals, ordered through relatives, and then waited six months or a year. In addition to everyday life, the wives of the Decembrists took on the functions of lawyers and defenders not only of their husbands, but also of all other prisoners.

They organized correspondence, both official and secret, because all letters that went through local authorities were opened. They wrote to the relatives of those Decembrists who abandoned them. Help was sent through women. They consoled and reassured the weak, helped the poor, and even organized cultural life, organizing musical evenings and performances.

And of course, they gave birth, raised children who appeared in Siberia, helped their husbands who, after leaving hard labor, were engaged in agriculture, opened their own business or worked in specialties acquired in Siberia or “in a previous life.”

There are many reasons why the wives of the Decembrists followed them, and today they argue about this even more fiercely than in past centuries. But one thing can be said for sure: it was they who helped their husbands and their comrades survive hard labor and exile, protected them from the abuses of local authorities and created more or less decent living conditions.

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The action of these women became a feat in the name of love. Girls from noble families, who received an excellent upbringing and education, left the luxury of secular drawing rooms to follow their husbands to Transbaikalia, who were sentenced to hard labor for preparing an uprising on Senate Square. the site recalls the fates of the five wives of the Decembrists, who sacrificed everything for the sake of their loved ones.

Ekaterina Trubetskaya (née Laval)

In 1871, Nikolai Nekrasov completed work on the first part of the poem “Russian Women”, in which he spoke about the fate of Ekaterina Trubetskoy (née Laval), the granddaughter of a famous millionaire, who exchanged all material wealth for the opportunity to be with her beloved husband. Ekaterina Ivanovna became the first wife of the Decembrists to follow her husband to Siberia.

Catherine's father was an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ivan Laval. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Catherine’s parents were Foreign Ministry employee Ivan Laval and his wife Alexandra, daughter of millionaire Ivan Myasniky. Their mansion on the English Embankment was one of the centers of cultural and social life in St. Petersburg in the 20s of the 19th century.

When their eldest daughter Catherine was 19 years old, she met Prince Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy, a hero of the Patriotic War of 1812. The sympathy of the young people received the approval of their parents, and soon the wedding took place. But the newlyweds did not have long to enjoy family happiness. In December 1825, after the death of Alexander I, armed troops came to Senate Square with the aim of an uprising. The Decembrists were led by Sergei Trubetskoy.

This act decided the fate of the prince and his wife. After the uprising, he was detained and taken to Zimny, where he was personally interrogated by Nicholas I. The news of the arrest shocked Ekaterina Ivanovna, although her husband did not hide his political convictions. She wrote to him at the Peter and Paul Fortress:

“The future doesn’t scare me. I will calmly say goodbye to all the blessings of this world. One thing can make me happy: to see you, to share your grief and to devote all the minutes of my life to you. The future sometimes worries me about you. Sometimes I’m afraid that your hard fate may seem to you beyond your strength...”

Soon the Decembrists were put on trial. Trubetskoy was sentenced to eternal hard labor in Siberia. Catherine obtained permission from the emperor to follow her beloved into exile. She agreed to renounce everything she had - a noble title, a rich inheritance, just to be able to follow Sergei. In the face of such pressure, officials retreated - in January 1827 she went to the center of the convict Transbaikalia.

In February 1827, in the Blagodatsky mine, Catherine was finally allowed to see her husband. Their meetings were rare, but it was they who allowed Trubetskoy not to lose heart.

In 1832, Trubetskoy's term of hard labor was reduced to 15 years, and in 1835 - to 13. In 1839, the family settled in the village of Oyok. By that time, Sergei Petrovich and Ekaterina Ivanovna had already given birth to five children.

Maria Volkonskaya (née Raevskaya)

Maria, on the side of her mother Sofia Konstantinova, was the great-granddaughter of Mikhail Lomonosov. The girl's father was General Nikolai Raevsky, a powerful man, accustomed to keeping everything under his control. According to a number of historians, it was her father who insisted on her marriage to the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, Prince Sergei Raevsky, believing that this party would bring “a brilliant future, according to secular views,” for his daughter.

Despite the fact that at the very beginning the relationship between the young people was not easy, Maria loved her husband. Her letters, which she wrote to him while apart, have been preserved. She addressed them only as “My dear, my beloved, my idol Serge!”

When the Decembrist uprising occurred, Maria was pregnant and preparing to give birth. At first, her family carefully hid from her that her husband had been arrested. By the way, Volkonsky was the only active-duty general who took direct part in the Decembrist movement.

When Maria found out about what had happened, she wrote to him in the Peter and Paul Fortress: “I learned about your arrest, dear friend. I don’t allow myself to despair... Whatever your fate, I will share it with you, I will follow you to Siberia, to the ends of the world, if necessary - don’t doubt it for a minute, my beloved Serge. I will share the prison with you if, according to the sentence, you remain in it.”

After the verdict was passed, Maria faced a difficult question: to stay with her son or follow her husband to Siberia. And she made a choice in favor of her husband.

In one of her letters, she told Volkonsky: “Unfortunately for myself, I see well that I will always be separated from one of you two; I can’t risk my child’s life by taking him everywhere with me.”

Leaving her son with her father, she went to Siberia. She followed her husband to the Blagodatsky mine, where he was serving hard labor, to the Chita prison, to the village of Urik. Since 1845, they lived as a family in Irkutsk. The Volkonskys had three more children, two of whom survived - Mikhail and Elena. Years later, their daughter became the wife of Dmitry Molchanov, an official under the East Siberian governor-general. And son Mikhail rose to the rank of Privy Councilor and Deputy Minister of Public Education Ivan Delyanov.

Blagodatsky mine. The house where princesses M.N. Volkonskaya and E.I. Trubetskaya lived. 1889. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

For her children and grandchildren, Maria Nikolaevna wrote “Notes” in French, in which she described the events of her life from 1825 to 1855.

Alexandra Muravyova (née Chernysheva)

“Her external beauty was equal to her spiritual beauty,” recalled Baron Andrei Rosen, one of the participants in the Decembrist movement, about Alexander.

The daughter of the actual secret adviser to Count Grigory Chernyshev linked her fate with Nikita Muravyov, who was one of the main ideologists of the Decembrist movement. The fragile girl with the face of an angel suffered difficult trials, which later brought her to the grave.

By the time her husband was arrested, she was expecting her third child. Muravyov's sentence struck her like a bolt from the blue: hard labor for 20 years.

Despite the warnings of her relatives, she was determined to follow her convicted husband, even if this meant leaving her children. Having received permission to go to Siberia in 1826, she went to the Chita prison.

Separation from her children was very difficult for her, which she repeatedly wrote about in letters. A series of deaths of loved ones undermined her already poor health: she learned of the death of her little son, in 1828 her mother died, and in 1831 her father died. Her two daughters, who were born at the Petrovsky plant, did not survive either.

“I’m getting old, dear mother, you can’t even imagine how many gray hairs I have,” she wrote six months before her death.

“Her external beauty was equal to her spiritual beauty,” contemporaries wrote about her. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

In the fall of 1832, she caught a cold and died three weeks later. She was only 28 years old.

Elizaveta Naryshkina (née Konovnitsyna)

“Naryshkina was not as attractive as Muravyova. She seemed very arrogant and from the first time she made an unpleasant impression, she even pushed you away from you, but when you got close to this woman, it was impossible to tear yourself away from her, she riveted everyone to her with her boundless kindness and extraordinary nobility of character,” she wrote about her Jeannette-Polina Gobl, a Frenchwoman who fell in love with the Decembrist Annenkov and became his wife.

Watercolor by N. A. Bestuzhev (1832) “My portrait is too flattering, but nevertheless I look like him.” Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

The only daughter of General Pyotr Konovnitsyn met her future husband, Colonel Mikhail Naryshkin, at one of the balls in 1823. Already in 1824 they got married. And in 1825, events occurred that changed the course of history. Her husband, who was a member of a secret society, was arrested for participating in the preparation of the uprising and placed in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Mikhail Mikhailovich was deprived of his ranks and nobility and exiled to hard labor for 20 years (later the term was reduced to 8 years). Elizabeth, being the Empress's maid of honor, asked Maria Feodorovna for permission to go after her husband, and, having received approval, went to the Chita prison.

Together with their husband they came with all the hardships of life. When they were allowed to settle in Kurgan in 1833, the Naryshkins turned their home into a real cultural center.

Their union, based on support and respect, inspired many. When Mikhail Naryshkin died in 1863, Prince Obolensky wrote in his obituary:

“He entered into marriage with Countess Elizaveta Petrovna Konovnitsyna and in her he found that fullness of sympathy, which in life is expressed by complete harmony - and aspirations, and life goals, and hopes, and desires. And the Caucasus with its formidable strongholds, and Siberia with its deserts, everywhere they were together, and everywhere their heartfelt life, making up for the shortcomings of one with the fullness of the other, was expressed in pure love, reflected in the entire structure of life.”

Mikhail Mikhailovich was deprived of ranks and nobility and exiled to hard labor for 20 years. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Maria Yushnevskaya (née Krulikovskaya)

Maria Kazimirovna was one of the oldest “wives of exiled convicts.” Her marriage to Alexei Yushnevsky, one of the organizers and leaders of the Southern Society of Decembrists, was her second. Their acquaintance occurred when the pretty Pole was still married to the landowner Anastasyev. Despite the fact that she had a daughter, she decided to divorce in order to connect her life with Yushnevsky.

Like other wives of the Decembrists, Maria corresponded with relatives and friends of the exiles. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

After the Decembrist uprising, Alexey Petrovich was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress on January 7, 1826. The death sentence imposed on him was commuted to lifelong hard labor (later the term of hard labor was reduced to 20 years - approx.)

Maria decided to go after her husband. She wrote letters addressed to Benckendorff until she was allowed to travel in 1828. The only condition was that she had to go without her beloved daughter from her first marriage. Yushnevskaya agreed.

She spent almost 10 years with her husband in the Petrovsky Plant, later they lived near Irkutsk. The couple took children into the house, mostly merchant children.

The memories of one of them have been preserved:

“Yushnevsky’s wife, Marya Kazimirovna, was a pretty, plump old woman of short stature; She did not interfere in our education, but we did not particularly like her, because she was strictly concerned about our manners and was easily irritated by all our mistakes. She was Polish and a devout Catholic, and her most frequent visitors were two priests who came on foot from Irkutsk more than once a week.”

Her husband died in 1844. After his death, Maria still lived in Kyakhta, Irkutsk, Selenginsk, until in 1855 she received permission to return to live in European Russia.

The uprising took place back in 1825 on Senate Square. A case of uprising was opened and about 600 people were put under investigation. Many were sentenced to death, while others were sent into exile in Siberia. 11 wives voluntarily went to fetch their husbands.

The women were of different ages, origins and social status, but they all had one thing in common: supporting their husbands in exile. The wives were deprived of all their privileges for deciding to follow the Decembrists. Relatives of the wives of the Decembrists also had different points of view, some were dissatisfied and condemned their action, while others, on the contrary, provided support.
Upon arrival in Siberia, the wives of the Decembrists settled near the places of imprisonment of their husbands. Each of them found something to do, they sewed and repaired clothes, treated both the Decembrists and the local population. A hospital was organized at the expense of the wives. After some time, it was easier for the Decembrists to be taken into account and transferred to a settlement.
The first woman who decided to follow her husband to Siberia was called Ekaterina Trubetskoy. Her decision was supported by her parents and all possible help was provided from them. A day after her husband was sent into exile, she followed him to Irkutsk in the fall of 1826. There they tried to dissuade her from this decision, but Catherine did not give up. And only in 1827 she managed to see her husband. In the same year, the Decembrists were transferred to Chita, and special houses were built for their wives. The street of these houses was called “Damskaya”.

Ekaterina Trubetskaya

The youngest of the Decembrist wives was Maria Volkonskaya, who was 18 years younger than her husband.

Maria Volkonskaya

Anna Rosen accompanied her husband into exile along with their recently born son. At her husband's request, she followed him only when the child grew up. Anna gave her son to be raised by her sister and went to Siberia. Soon a second son was born, who was named Kondraty. When moving to Kurgan from Chita, Anna gave birth to a third son, they named him Vasily. They lived in Kurgan for 5 years, Anna was engaged in raising her sons and medicine. After the amnesty, they lived in Ukraine, and lived together for about 60 years, despite all the difficulties that befell them. They died within four months of each other.

Anna Rosen

Praskovya Annenkova was not married, but was already expecting a child from her future husband. When her daughter was born, she left her to her future mother-in-law and went to her husband in Siberia. In 1828, Praskovya and her husband got married.

Praskovya Annenkova

Elizaveta Naryshkina wrote letters to the relatives of the Decembrists at night, since they did not have such a right. Besides her, other women also wrote; it was difficult work, since they had to write a lot of letters, about 10-20 a week. It happened that they simply forgot to write letters to their family and friends. In addition, the wives of the Decembrists constantly asked the administration to ease their imprisonment.

Elizaveta Naryshkina

Decembrist's wife- a faithful wife who is ready to share grief and misfortune with her husband and will never leave or betray him.

The wives of the Decembrists are sometimes called "Decembrists".

The expression is associated with the Decembrist uprising, famous in Russian history, which occurred (December 14, old style) in 1825. As you know, the uprising was suppressed and Emperor Nicholas I brutally punished the rebels, sending most of them into exile in Siberia. 121 participants in the December uprising were found guilty. 23 Decembrists were married.

The history of this uprising was described by the famous Russian historian (1841 - 1911) in the "Course of Russian History" ().

Eleven women went to Siberia with their husbands (fiancés). Some of them were ignorant, like Alexandra Vasilievna Yontaltseva and Alexandra Ivanovna Davydova, or Polina Gebl, who was poor in childhood, the bride of the Decembrist I.A. Annenkov. But most of the wives of the Decembrists belonged to the nobility and they had something to lose - princesses Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya and Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya, Alexandra Grigorievna Muravyova - daughter of Count Chernyshev, Elizaveta Petrovna Naryshkina, nee Countess Konovnitsyna, Baroness Anna Vasilievna Rosen, general's wives Natalya Dmitrievna Fonvizina and Maria Kazimirovna Yushnevskaya.

Nicholas I granted everyone the right to divorce their husband, a “state criminal.” However, the women refused this offer. They abandoned luxury, left their children, relatives and friends and followed their husbands to hard labor. Voluntary exile to Siberia received loud public resonance. Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya was the first to set off. In Krasnoyarsk, the carriage broke down and the guide fell ill. The princess continues her journey alone, in a tarantass. In Irkutsk, the governor intimidates her for a long time, demands once again a written renunciation of all rights, Trubetskaya signs it. A few days later, the governor announces to the former princess that she will continue to walk the “tightrope” along with criminals. She agrees... The second was Maria Volkonskaya. Day and night she rushes in a wagon, not stopping for the night, not having lunch, content with a piece of bread and a glass of tea. And so for almost two months - in severe frosts and snowstorms.

For the disobedience of the Decembrists' wives, they were placed in terrible conditions - deprivation of noble privileges and transition to the position of the wife of an exiled convict, limited in the rights of movement, correspondence, and disposal of their property. Their children, born in Siberia, will be considered state-owned peasants. Even those whose husbands died were not given the right to return. Thus, in 1844, this was denied to Yushnevsky’s widow, and in 1845, to Entaltseva.

Few Decembrists lived to see the amnesty that came in 1856 after thirty years of exile. Of the eleven women who followed their husbands to Siberia, three remained here forever - Alexandra Muravyova, Kamilla Ivasheva, Ekaterina Trubetskaya. The last to die was ninety-three-year-old Alexandra Ivanovna Davydova in 1895. She died surrounded by numerous descendants and the respect and veneration of all who knew her.

Described (1812 - 1870) in his book “The Past and Thoughts” (1868).

“Thanks to the women: they will give some beautiful lines to our history,” said a contemporary of the Decembrists, poet P.A. Vyazemsky, having learned about their decision to follow their husbands to Siberia.

The Russian poet (1821 - 1877) wrote the poem "" (1871-1872), dedicated to the wives of the Decembrists. The first part of the poem "" describes the journey to Siberia of Princess Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskoy (1800-1854). The second part of the poem "" describes the journey to Siberia of Princess Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya (1805-1863).

List of Decembrist wives who followed to Siberia with their husbands (grooms):

Volkonskaya Maria Nikolaevna (1805-1863), wife of Sergei Gennadievich Volkonsky.

Muravyova Alexandra Grigorievna (1804-1832), wife of Nikita Mikhailovich Muravyov

Trubetskaya Ekaterina Ivanovna (1800-1854), wife of Trubetskoy, Sergei Petrovich

Polina Gobl (1800-1876), bride of Annenkov Ivan Alexandrovich

Camille Le Dantu (1808-1840), bride of Vasily Petrovich Ivashev

Davydova Alexandra Ivanovna (1802-1895), wife of Vasily Lvovich Davydov

Entaltseva Alexandra Vasilievna (1790-1858), wife of Andrei Vasilievich Entaltsev

Naryshkina, Elizaveta Petrovna (1802-1867), wife of Naryshkin Mikhail Mikhailovich

Rosen Anna Vasilievna (1797-1883), wife of Rosen Andrei Evgenievich

Fonvizina Natalya Dmitrievna (1803-1869), wife of Fonvizin Mikhail Alexandrovich

Yushnevskaya Maria Kazimirovna (1790-1863), wife of Alexei Petrovich Yushnevsky

Bestuzheva Elena Alexandrovna (1792-1874), sister of the Bestuzhevs

Monument to the wives of the Decembrists

The monument to the eleven wives of the Decembrists was erected in the park near the historical Zavalny cemetery in the city of Tobolsk in 2008.

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