History of “Note on Sects Existing in the Perm Governorate” (1827) in the Fate of the Author and His Informants

Abstract

The article studies a history of creation of the “Note on sects existing in the Perm Governorate” (1827), which became the most detailed description of the Ural Old believers of this time. The materials for the note was collected by a Moscow official and writer S. D. Nechaev. He traveled to the Urals during the troubled times after the defeat of the Decembrist Revolt when Emperor Nicholas I was inclined to suspect secret societies’ activities everywhere. Stepan Dmitrievich Nechaev (1792–1860) was also a member of the Union of Prosperity. Usually, investigators were not interested in persons who had left the Decembrist societies before 1821. But Nechaev signed a false statement according to which he had never been a member of such societies. For such acts of perjury, other members of the Union of Prosperity were sentenced to a month's imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Nechaev also had artistic and friendly relations with the Decembrists-writers A. A. Bestuzhev, K. F. Ryleev, V. K. Kyukhelbeker, who played key or prominent roles in the preparation and realization of the armed revolt on 14 December 1825 in St. Petersburg. However the three months spent in the Ural region saved him from prosecution.