On December 26th 1825 (modern calendar), a group of Russian military officers -- drawn from the flower of the aristocracy -- attempted a coup d'etat in Senate Square, St Petersburg. Known as the Decembrists, they were inspired by the American and French revolutions, the Enlightenment and their experience fighting in the Napoleonic wars.
The Decembrists were the first generation of Russian aristocrats to distinguish between service to the monarch and service to the nation. Many had entered Paris in 1814 after defeating Napoleon and returned with visions of bringing rights and citizenship to a land where a third of the population were serfs. They formed secret societies, initially in St Petersburg and Ukraine.
The most radical advocated a republic; others a constitutional monarchy. All demanded emancipation of the serfs, representative government, the rule of law and an end to caste-based privileges, including their own. A manifesto declared: "All the nations of Europe are attaining laws and liberty. The Russian people deserve both."
The conspirators exploited confusion during a succession crisis: Tsar Alexander I died childless; his brother Constantine had secretly renounced the throne, meaning another brother, Nicholas, would succeed, but this was unknown. The Decembrists led about 3,000 troops to Senate Square. Their designated leader, Sergei Trubetskoy, never appeared. Without orders, the mutineers shivered in their ranks. Nicholas's forces encircled them. After failed cavalry charges and fruitless negotiations, Nicholas ordered cannon fire. At least 1,271 people were killed, including many civilians. By six o'clock it was over. Corpses were shoved into frozen canals; the blood-stained Senate building was hastily replastered.
Five leaders were hanged -- though capital punishment had been suspended in Russia for 50 years. Three ropes snapped; Sergei Muravyov-Apostol deadpanned: "Oh Lord, they can't even hang people properly in Russia." Scores more were sentenced to decades of hard labour and exile in Siberia. Eleven wives followed their husbands into exile, leaving behind titles, fortunes and children.
Alexander Herzen formulated the liberal myth of the Decembrists as self-sacrificing Roman heroes. Leo Tolstoy planned a novel called "The Decembrists" -- as he plunged into their backstory it became "War and Peace". Lenin claimed them for the Soviet revolutionary pantheon. In 1968 Alexander Galich dedicated a samizdat poem asking "Do you dare to come to the square?" -- echoed when eight dissidents protested the Soviet invasion of Prague on Red Square.
A KGB officer later recalled sabotaging dissident commemorations of the Decembrists by staging rival events with brass bands. His name was Vladimir Putin. In May 2025 a Kremlin-sponsored conference relitigated the Decembrists' case, with the justice minister decrying their "lack of honour".
Not drinking, chasing women, or doing drugs won't make you live longer -- it just seems that way.