Vreden sever: The Decembrists’ Memories of the Peter-Paul Fortress

Abstract

Although the Decembrist movement was by no means confined to St Petersburg, the northern capital was unquestionably its epicentre. Here from 1814 there were formed the first secret societies from which the movement grew; the initiating committee (korennaia duma) held its meetings in Petersburg; the Northern Society was based here, and the negotiations between the Northern and Southern Societies from 1823 were conducted in Petersburg. Similarly, it was here the publications which reflected Decembrist ideas were published (Son of the Fatherland [Syn otechestva], Champion of Enlightenment and Philanthropy [Sorevnovatel’ prosveshcheniia i blagotvoreniia], Nevskii Observer [Nevskii zritel’], Polar Star [Poliarnaia zvezda], and Mnemosyne [Mnemozina]). Senate Square was the theatre of the uprising of 14 December 1825, and it was across the Neva, in the Peter-Paul Fortress, that the final act of the Decembrist tragedy was played out over seven months until 13 July 1826, when five members of the conspiracy were hanged. And it was from this time that the rest of the convicted Decembrists began their long journey to Siberia from which few would ever return.