Decembrists Revolt: Liberal Uprising Against Nicholas I
They chose the day of the coronation. As Nicholas I took power, 3,000 soldiers gathered in Senate Square — officers who'd seen Paris, who'd read Voltaire, who wanted a constitution instead of an autocrat. They stood in formation for hours in the freezing cold. Nicholas sent his cavalry. Then his artillery loaded with grapeshot. The square cleared in minutes. Five leaders hanged. Over 100 exiled to Siberia, where their wives voluntarily followed them into the wasteland. For the next thirty years, Nicholas would call them "my friends of the fourteenth" — the officers who nearly ended the Romanov dynasty before it could truly begin. Russia's first liberal revolution lasted one afternoon.
December 26, 1825
201 years ago
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