The Decembrist movement, their revolt are considered one of the most remarkable pages of Russian history in the first half of the 19th century.
In 1825, on December 14, guards regiments were withdrawn to Senate Square . The first was the Moscow Regiment. The first revolutionary troops were led by brothers Alexander and Mikhail Bestuzhev, Dmitry Shchepin-Rostovsky.
The rebels built a battle square (quadrangle). Thus, they could repel attacks from all sides.
At the hour of decisive action, the nobility of revolution, Trubetskoy elected as the leader of the uprising, was broken. Without going to the soldiers on the square, he betrayed them, and ideas, the entire movement of the Decembrists.
New regiments approached the rebels. In total, about 2350 people arrived. However, the gathering began to occur after more than two hours after the start of the uprising. An hour before its end, the Decembrists elected Prince Obolensky as the new leader.
Nicholas 1 was afraid of the onset of darkness and the activity of the accumulated people. An order was issued to shoot buckshot. At the same time, surrounded by rebellious soldiers.
The first volley of buckshot was given above the soldiers - along the dotted rooftops of neighboring houses of mobiles. The soldiers answered him with rifle shots. However, then ranks rang under the buckshot, and the soldiers began to flee. Shooting at the running soldiers began from the royal cannons. Mikhail Bestuzhev tried to build troops on the ice of the Neva. The soldiers lined up. However, the cannonballs broke the ice - people fell and drowned.
By the night of December 14, the uprising was defeated. The investigation attracted more than 600 people. Nicholas himself interrogated many of the rebels. Five (Pestel, Muravyov-Apostol, Ryleyev, Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Kakhovsky) were sentenced to quartering. Then the punishment was replaced by hanging.
The reasons for the movement of the Decembrists, which grew into an uprising, were a thirst for the struggle against serfdom and autocracy. The revolutionary-minded officers believed that slavery was an evil for a Russian person, and that only being free would a person really be a person.
The noble revolutionaries lacked coherence, decisiveness, the necessary revolutionary activity. Despite the fact that the plan for the coup in the country was worked out in great detail, the most necessary effective force of any revolutionary undertaking was missing - the people. The Decembrist movement was not supported by the masses of the people - the nobles were afraid of their activity. Moreover, the people themselves were on the side of the revolutionaries.
The Decembrist movement was defeated. Thus, the victory of the autocracy over the revolutionary forces ended.
The significance of the Decembrist movement in the history of Russia is very great. Despite the defeat of the uprising, revolutionary ideas did not die out. The activities of the Decembrists had a huge impact on the development of the advanced socio-political position in Russia.
The role of the movement in the development of the cultural and social life of the people is undoubted. The ideas of the Decembrists brought up generations of writers, artists, poets, public figures, scientists. Indisputable is the high appreciation of the human appearance of the nobility revolutionaries: selflessness, culture, humanism.
The ideas of the Decembrists were picked up by the next generation. Thus, the foundations of the movement towards revolution in Russia were laid precisely on the Senate Square. The feat of the nobles awakened the people. The slogans of the Decembrists against serfdom and autocracy became the slogans of future revolutionaries who participated in the liberation movement in Russia.
Almost all the noble revolutionaries who participated in the uprising on Senate Square were young. Their patriotism, love of the motherland contributed to decisive action. After the suppression of the movement, many went to hard labor. Thirty years later, the survivors returned to die homeland. Through all these decades, the Decembrists carried an unquenchable hatred of autocracy and serfdom.