Today it is impossible to imagine the history of Russia without the Decembrists. Many writers admired them, legends were made about them, and now it is not always possible to understand whether this or that story is real, or is it just a fiction. The history of Siberia of the 19th century is closely connected with the Decembrists. It was they who marked the beginning of the struggle with the feudal-serf system. Although the fate of the Decembrists was tragic in many ways, it became a kind of conductor of revolutionary ideas into the minds of the masses.
The fate of the first convicts
The first Decembrists in Siberia appeared shortly after December 14, 1825, when 110 people from not the lowest classes opposed the current regime at that time. Five of them were executed almost immediately, and some were sentenced to exile and hard labor in Siberia for a period of 2 to 20 years, after which they were forbidden to return. Other participants in the uprising were demoted to soldiers and exiled to indefinite settlement, while still others went to work in the fortress, which in practice turned out to be much worse than hard labor.
Already on July 23, 1826, 8 convicts were sent out of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The path to Irkutsk at that time took 37 days and the Decembrists had to do it on foot. All this time they were chained to a common chain, and each prisoner was assigned his own gendarme. However, upon arrival, the Decembrists in Siberia were in relatively good conditions. The whole point was that Vice Governor Gorlov, who was a member of a Masonic lodge, who subsequently left a lot of Decembrists, worried about them. The chains were removed from them, and the security around the house was weakened, that is, the convicts were actually able to freely communicate with those with whom they would like. At first, they did not even have to serve hard labor because of the sympathy of the high authorities, but this did not last long, because the Irkutsk leadership was put on trial for concessions.
Wives of the Decembrists
Not even the Decembrists in Siberia deserve special attention, but their wives who were ready to give up all the benefits of civilization and abandon the life that they led constantly for the sake of loyalty to their husbands. Such actions could not go unnoticed and were perceived in society not only as fidelity to spouses, but also as an act that received great resonance. This led to the fact that Nicholas I did everything in his power to prevent the restoration of families, even forced the wives, for example, Princess Trubetskoy, to become the wife of the convicted and exiled, and their children born in Siberia should have become factory peasants.
The life of the Decembrists in hard labor
Of course, the Decembrists in exile fell into completely unusual conditions for themselves - they had a very difficult time due to hard work and very poor nutrition, the jailers were cruel and very sorry that they had to monitor the health of the rebels, and it was impossible to handle them as with the rest who did not withstand more than 2 months. In response to bullying, the Decembrists in Siberia for the first time in Russian history held a revolutionary hunger strike.
Chita prison
While the first convicts were already in exile, more than 70 people still remained in the Peter and Paul Fortress and other similar prisons. Over time, they were temporarily transferred to the Chitigsky prison, where there were only a couple of huts, because of which the Decembrists had to live in terrible crowding. But this rallied them and made it possible to get to know each other better, because many of them generally knew each other only in a cap. At this time, they were engaged in earthworks or ground millstone rye. The escape failed, and although the prisoners could not have paper and ink, through their wives they contacted the outside world and carried on rather active correspondence.
The unique mission of the Decembrists was that they carried education to the masses, teaching literacy and sciences to everyone who just wanted to study. At the beginning of the 19th century, the state of education in the Siberian outback was very deplorable, only the basics of subjects were taught, so the arrival of the Decembrists contributed to the popularization of education.