By Lynne Ann Hartnett, Villanova University
The women who followed into exile the men of the Decembrist Uprising of 1825 had a strong impact on the sociopolitical scene of Russia. They came to epitomize “political and social martyrdom”. Their model of self-sacrifice would be celebrated by Russian poets and become a hallmark of a revolutionary code of ethics for generations to come.
Eulogy By Dostoevsky
It’s doubtful that the actions of these Decembrist Wives would have enjoyed lasting significance if not for their celebration in Russian literature.
The novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky recounted his encounter with the women who, then, gave him a copy of the New Testament with money stuffed inside. The wives distributed food and clothing to many of the men who passed through the camp.
Years later, Dostoevsky described this encounter as one with living saints. He observed that although the women were “guilty of nothing, they endured for 25 long years everything that their convicted husbands endured”. Dostoevsky said that his meeting with these “great martyrs” served as a source of great spiritual inspiration.
In Crime and Punishment, published in 1866, Dostoevsky introduced the Decembrist Wives to literature by modeling after them the character of Sonya Marmeladova, the saintly, long-suffering prostitute who follows the novel’s protagonist, Raskolnikov, to Siberia after he is sentenced for murder.
Nikolai Nekrasov’s Verse Of Praise
In the early 1870s, Nekrasov wrote an ode to the women that canonized them in liberal and revolutionary circles.
Nekrasov’s poem, “Russian Women”, focuses on two Decembrist Wives: Maria Volkonskaya and Ekaterina Trubetskaya. He describes them as representative of all Russian women, who—through their strength and devotion—empower others to fight and endure for sanctified ideals.
Inspiration for Women
In the 1870s and 1880s, a new generation of Russian women modeled their activism after the Decembrist Wives, and embraced the revolutionary cause as never before. Revolutionary energy surge anew after Alexander II ended serfdom, and instituted reforms in the legal, educational, and military systems, beginning in 1861.
Russian women became directly involved in revolutionary discussion groups. Flocking to the countryside to work as teachers, clerks, midwives, and medical assistants, activist women flouted the tsar by talking to the peasants about inequality and revolution.
While many of the women could initially be seen as peaceful propagandists, intense police scrutiny and government repression pushed them beyond speeches and missives into violent action.
The Case of Vera Zasulich
Five women were banished to hard labor in Siberia after being accused of populist unrest in 1877 and 1878. This was the first time in Russian history that women were sentenced to hard labor for their own political crimes.
After the conclusion of criminal prosecutions against the women, and dozens of their male compatriots—known as the Trial of the 193—the daughter of a nobleman, Vera Zasulich, shot the notorious tsarist official General Fyodor Trepov, the governor of St. Petersburg.
To carry out the assassination attempt, Zasulich posed as a common petitioner, and snuck a revolver into General Trepov’s offices, where she shot and seriously wounded, but did not manage to kill him.
Zasulich expected to be condemned to death, and calmly accepted her fate, never denying her actions. But the jury saw martyrdom in Zasulich’s actions. Zasulich herself romanticized self-sacrifice when she wrote, “There are times…when there is nothing more beautiful and desirable than a crown of thorns.”
Women Take the Lead
Another noblewoman who became a revolutionary terrorist was Vera Figner, who worked as a medical assistant in the Russian countryside for several years to advance the populist cause. Chased out of villages by police, Figner joined two-dozen others in 1879 in a violent terror organization known as the People’s Will.
Determined to cripple the autocracy, the People’s Will resolved to assassinate Alexander II as a step toward mobilizing the struggle for freedom. With hand-held bombs built in Vera’s apartment, assassins—directed by another woman, Sofia Perovskaya—killed the emperor on March 13, 1881.
Sofia Perovskaya, who’d played a principal role in assassinating the tsar, was the first woman in Russian history to be hanged for a political crime. She was strung up—along with four of her comrades—a few weeks later, before a crowd of tens of thousands of onlookers.
Vera Figner, who’d helped to manufacture the bombs that killed the tsar, was condemned to life imprisonment in the notorious Shlisselburg Fortress, outside St. Petersburg. There, she endured decades of solitary confinement in what she called a living grave.
Decembrist Wives: The Guiding Stars
Both women were idealized—and even mythologized—by subsequent generations of Russian revolutionaries. Like many of the other women revolutionaries of her generation, Figner found inspiration for her radicalism in the Decembrist Wives’ sacrifice and martyrdom.
In 1925, on the 100th anniversary of the Decembrist Uprising, she was asked to reflect on the movement’s significance. She focused on the Decembrist Wives rather than the menfolk.
Figner recognized the women as “luminaries who from a distance light up our revolutionary movement”. Without espousing a political ideology or revolution, she said, “Their deprivations, losses and moral suffering unite them with us, women of a later revolutionary movement.”
Common Questions about the Sociopolitical Significance of the Decembrist Wives
In Crime and Punishment, published in 1866, Dostoevsky introduced the Decembrist Wives to literature by modeling after them the character of Sonya Marmeladova, the saintly, long-suffering prostitute who follows the novel’s protagonist, Raskolnikov, to Siberia after he is sentenced for murder.
The Russian poet and social critic Nikolai Nekrasov celebrated and praised two Decembrist Wives: Maria Volkonskaya and Ekaterina Trubetskaya in his poem “Russian Women”. He describes them as representative of all Russian women, who—through their strength and devotion—empower others to fight and endure for sanctified ideals.
In the 1870s and 1880s, a new generation of Russian women modeled their activism after the Decembrist Wives, and embraced the revolutionary cause as never before. Russian women became directly involved in revolutionary discussion groups.
