Myths about the Decembrist Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky. Prince Sergei Volkonsky (Decembrist): brief biography Prince Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky

During her lifetime, her life's path was covered with such a trail of romance and heroism as no other wife of the Decembrist. First of all, of course, thanks to the legendary military glory of her father and husband, and acquaintance with Pushkin. But she herself contributed a lot to remaining in the memory of posterity as a tragic figure - a persistent young wife and mother who sacrificed everything in life for the sake of her rebellious husband - first of all, by writing (after returning from Siberia) her “Notes”. All stories about her begin with the fact that she is the youngest of all the Decembrists, and this is what her entire legendary image is built on. But this is not true at all. Yes, at the time of the Decembrist uprising she had just turned 20 years old (she was born on December 25, 1805 according to the old style, according to the new style it is January 6, 1806, which, depending on the circumstances, allows us to consider her a year younger ). But of the 22 wives of convicted members of secret societies, four women were younger than her, three of them were pregnant - Anna Polivanova(nee Vlasieva) (1807-1846), in December 1825 - a pregnant 18-year-old young wife, who gave birth to a son in July 1826, and was widowed two months later, at 19 years old (this is where the real tragedy occurred). Ekaterina Likhareva(nee Borozdina) (1807-1843) - by the way, her cousin on her father's side - she was also 18 years old, she gave birth to a son in May 1826 - later divorced her husband, the Decembrist Vladimir Likharev, and got married a second time. Anastasia Yakushkina(1807-1846) - 18-year-old mother of a 2-year-old son (that is, a Decembrist gave birth to him at 16) - she did not go to Siberia to pick up her husband. And finally Camille Le Dantu - indeed, the youngest of all the Decembrists (1808-1840), the wife of a Decembrist Vasily Ivasheva(1797-1841) - their wedding took place at the Petrovsky plant on September 16, 1831.

VOLKONSKAYA (RAEVSKAYA) MARIA NIKOLAEVNA(12/25/1805 (Old Style) - 08/10/1863)
Its origins are a noble family Raevskikh leads from Galicia, from a numerous and noble Ukrainian, later partially Polished gentry noble family Dunin's (Dunin-Raetsky- branch of this surname). The first of the representatives Raetskikh a nobleman found himself within the boundaries of the Moscow kingdom Ivan who became in his new homeland Raevsky who came to serve the king's father Ivan the Terrible, Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily III, in 1526. Raevsky were related to the ruling house Romanovs – Praskovya Ivanovna Raevskaya(married Leontyev) (?-1641), was one of the Tsar’s great-grandmothers Peter I on the part of his mother, the queen Natalia Kirillovna Naryshkina.

Father of the Decembrist Nikolai Nikolaevich Raevsky(1771-1829) was a famous Russian commander, hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, cavalry general (1813). Over thirty years of impeccable service, he participated in many of the largest military battles of the era. After his heroism at Saltanovka, he became one of the most popular generals in the tsarist army. The fight for Raevsky’s battery is one of the key episodes of the Battle of Borodino. Participant in the “Battle of the Nations” and the capture of Paris. Member of the State Council.
His mother, grandmother of the Decembrist, Ekaterina Nikolaevna(nee Samoilova) (1750-1825), was the maternal niece of the famous His Serene Highness Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin-Tavrichesky(1739-1791), with all the “delicious gingerbread” that follows from this circumstance in the form of huge land holdings in Ukraine (from the first letters of the names of the villages that belonged to it, one could make up the phrase “Leo loves Catherine” - Leo was the name of my grandmother's second husband Volkonskaya) and a large number of souls of serfs, not to mention a huge inheritance after the death of a childless (officially) uncle - which, however, she had to share with her numerous cousins ​​(and no one was left behind).
Grandfather and grandmother Raevsky got married at the very beginning of 1769. Their union was not their personal choice, the wedding was arranged by their father Ekaterina Nikolaevna, who patronized a young, promising (and poor) officer. The bride was 19 years old, the groom Nikolai Semenovich Raevsky– 28. That same year their first child was born, Alexander. In 1770, a young colonel Raevsky voluntarily went into the active army in the Russian-Turkish War. During the capture of Zhurzhi, he was seriously wounded and died in Iasi in April 1771, five months before the birth of his second son (September 14, 1771), named in his honor - Nicholas, father of the Decembrist.

Grandmother Volkonskaya by father, Ekaterina Nikolaevna Samoilova (Raevskaya, Davydova). Portrait by V. Borovikovsky, painted in the 1790s. Samoilova is “a little over forty” here.

Two years after her husband's death, her grandmother Volkonskaya married a second time (now by choice), to Lev Denisovich Davydov(1743-1801), uncle of the famous poet-hussar, partisan Denis Davydov and the famous general Alexandra Ermolova,“pacifier of the Caucasus” . In this very happy marriage, she had three sons and a daughter.
However, sons Ekaterina Nikolaevna from their first marriage, they grew up separately from their mother (who lived her whole life on her Ukrainian estate Kamenka - now it is the regional center of the Cherkasy region), in St. Petersburg, in the house of her grandfather (her father), a senator and privy councilor Nikolai Borisovich Samoilov(1718-1791). According to the custom of that time, brothers Raevsky were enlisted for military service at a very tender age - in 1774, in the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment ( Alexandru was 5 years old Nicholas- 3 years). And the father is in active service Maria Volkonskaya began on January 1, 1786, at age 14. The young guards ensign was assigned to the army of Field Marshal General G. A. Potemkina- his maternal great-uncle. It is clear that under such a start the brothers’ careers Raevskikh From the very beginning it went uphill sharply. The Russian-Turkish War four years later, in 1791, 19-year-old Nikolai Raevsky graduated with the rank of lieutenant colonel and commander of the Poltava Cossack regiment. to his older brother Alexandru he was much less fortunate - he died on December 11, 1790, during the assault on Izmail.

Mother Maria Volkonskaya, Sofya Alekseevna, born Konstantinov(08/25/1769-12/16/1844), from the point of view of the nobility of her ancestors, was significantly inferior to her husband. However, this circumstance was more than compensated for by the fact that on her mother’s side she was the granddaughter M.V. Lomonosova.
Her father, (1728-1808), an ethnic Greek by birth, was the son of a poor Bryansk archpriest, a representative of an humble, placeless noble family Konstantinov(this surname was included in the Nobility Lists of the Kyiv and Chernigov provinces, so for Greek ancestors Volkonskaya Ukraine at one time became a second homeland). However, the noble origin of the son of a provincial clergyman helped him achieve success in life in the very last place. The main condition was his exceptional male beauty, which was mentioned by his contemporaries who knew him. The Decembrist’s grandfather received his education at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, initially intending to make a spiritual career. However, after graduation, in 1750, he entered the Academic University in St. Petersburg. In 1753 he received the title of master. From 1762 he served as a personal librarian Catherine II- until 1773, when he retired after the death of his wife. The Empress herself admitted that she tolerated the presence of this too pompous and vain handsome man solely out of respect for his outstanding late father-in-law Lomonosov- which, by the way, during his lifetime invariably (four or five times) refused Konstantinov in the hand of her daughter - in love with her future husband Elena Mikhailovna(despite the fact that he was 21 years older than the scientist’s daughter) she was able to marry him only after the death of her father.

Maternal grandmother of the Decembrist, Elena Mikhailovna(1749-1772), was the only daughter to survive to adulthood Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov(1711-1765). Thus, Maria Volkonskaya- great-granddaughter of an outstanding Russian scientist. By the way, on this side too, the ancestors of the Decembrist were, contrary to generally accepted opinion, nobles. Mikhail Lomonosov received hereditary nobility (to which he had the right, according to the “Table of Ranks”, since 1751, when he was awarded the rank of collegiate councilor) by decree of the empress Elizaveta Petrovna dated March 1, 1753. So grandmother Volkonskaya on her mother’s side she became a noblewoman at the age of 4, at the same time as her parents. She lived a very short life - she died at the age of 23 while giving birth to her fourth child, a daughter. Anna(the girl survived and lived in the world for at least 92 years - but she never got married). By the way, her handsome husband, a widower at the age of 44, never even tried to marry a second time (although he lived a long time - he died at 80), devoting his life to his son and three daughters. Of which, by the way, none created their own family, except Sofia Alekseevna.

Grandfather Volkonskaya by mother, Alexey Alekseevich Konstantinov. The portrait by V. Borovikovsky was painted in 1808, shortly before Konstantinov’s death. In the picture he is 80 years old.

Parents' marriage Maria Volkonskaya was concluded in 1794, in St. Petersburg, of course, out of love (they met a year earlier there, at one of the balls), which they did not change until the end of their days. And this always caused bewilderment among everyone who knew the spouses closely.

Firstly, Sofya Alekseevna was two years older Nikolai Nikolaevich(the groom was 24 years old, the bride was 26, according to the concepts of that time she was a hopeless old maid), and she was never particularly beautiful (although in secular society she was nicknamed “Maiden of the Ganges,” for some reason they considered her to look like an Indian).
Secondly, the mother of the Decembrist was not an enviable match, both in terms of the nobility of her origin and in terms of wealth. In dowry Sofya Alekseevna received the Ust-Ruditsa manor near Oranienbaum (grandfather’s inheritance Lomonosov, who, again contrary to official historiography, not only died a nobleman, but also had his own serfs - but more on that some other time) in equal shares with his sister Ekaterina Alekseevna(d.1846) - by the way, although this dear aunt Maria Volkonskaya was hunchbacked, the fabulist was in love with her all his life Ivan Krylov(yes, the same one), who unsuccessfully wooed his passion three times, and, ultimately, never married himself (although he fathered an illegitimate daughter from his own cook).
And thirdly - Sofia Raevskaya she had (like her father) such arrogance, stubbornness, arrogance and arrogance, she was so unbearably prim, vain, arrogant and ambitious that for this reason she never had friends and was unloved in the high society of the Russian Empire.
According to her great-grandson Sergei Volkonsky, Sofya Alekseevna was “a woman of an unbalanced, nervous character, in whom temperament took precedence over reason.” To a greater or lesser extent, all her children inherited the mother’s negative character traits.

Spouses Raevsky, parents Volkonskaya. The portrait of the father was painted by the British artist George Dow around 1820 for the “Gallery of Heroes of 1812”. Portrait of mother - brush by V. Borovikovsky, 1813 - on the occasion of receiving Sofia Alekseevna Ladies' Order of St. Catherine (on her shoulder). Here Lomonosov's granddaughter is 44 years old, she is the mother of seven children.

Family Raevskikh contemporaries often called them “the poisonous family.” For the combination of these reasons, the Decembrist’s mother did not have a good relationship with her husband’s relatives from the very beginning (first of all, she could not forgive the mother-in-law of her second marriage, because of which the general Raevsky four co-heirs of her huge fortune appeared) - so much so that half-brothers (by mother) Nikolai Raevsky They were even forced to protect their mother from her. At the same time, the brave general was invariably lenient towards his wife’s antics all his life, not wanting to listen to any reproaches against her, even from those closest to him. Although due to his absurd character Sofia Alekseevna Ultimately, his career suffered, and he was forced to resign prematurely in November 1824.
Since 1816 general Nikolai Raevsky was appointed commander of the 4th Infantry Corps of the 1st Army, whose headquarters were located in Kyiv. There was no civilian governor-general in the Kyiv province at that time, and thus the corps commander turned out to be the highest official in this part of the Russian Empire. During receptions and balls, which Raevsky(according to his official position) gave in Kyiv, his wife behaved like a person of royal blood, demanding from her husband’s subordinates and their wives the same treatment as the ladies of the imperial family (which, of course, the general’s “well-wishers” immediately reported in St. Petersburg).
In addition, although, according to the merits of her husband - a hero of the War of 1812 - Sofya Alekseevna had every right to become a lady of state at the imperial court (in addition, since 1813 she was a cavalry lady of the Order of St. Catherine, which gave her additional advantages for obtaining this status), due to her intolerable behavior in society, such an opportunity was never even was considered. But three out of four daughters Raevskikh(except for the Decembrist) - each at one time - were ladies-in-waiting of the Empress.

Maria Raevskaya. Watercolor by an unknown artist from the early 1820s. The Decembrist's wife here is approximately 15-16 years old. Pushkin saw her like this for the first time.

Maria Volkonskaya was her parents' sixth-oldest child of their seven children (two sons and five daughters, one girl died in infancy). She was born on one of the Ukrainian estates of her father (who was then in temporary retirement). Her childhood was spent in St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Ukraine - the family often moved. Like all children Raevskikh, Maria received an excellent home education. She was an excellent pianist, had a beautiful voice, sang almost professionally and especially loved Italian music. She knew French and English “like her own.” My command of the Russian language was much worse, so I always wrote in French.

Almost two years before her future husband was matched to her, in 1823, hands Maria asked the Polish nobleman, who was at that time the Kyiv provincial marshal (leader of the nobility), Gustav Olizar(1798 - 1865), but was refused by her father for the reason "differences of nationality and religion". My daughter's opinion on this matter Nikolai Raevsky didn't ask. However, he was not interested in her attitude towards the next groom, to whose proposal the general agreed - the prince (1788-1865) wooed Maria Raevskaya in August 1824. For the family Raevskikh, which at that time was on the verge of bankruptcy (the death the following year, 1825, of the rich elderly mother of the general, Ekaterina Nikolaevna Davydova, did not improve their situation, since she allocated an inheritance to her eldest son, at his request, when during the reign of Paul I he was dismissed and left without a means of support, during her lifetime), a refusal to one of the best suitors of the Russian Empire and to a personal friend of the general was completely impossible.

Prince Sergey by origin, both on the paternal and maternal lines, he was a direct descendant of the Chernigov Rurikovich. His father, the prince (1742-1824), in his youth was one of the “Catherine’s eagles”, and in the last years of his life he was the military governor of the Orenburg province. In his youth he was a dashing warrior, participated in almost all the battles of his reign Catherine II, for which he deserved from the commander Suvorov the name of “tireless” and “hardworking”. In old age he became extremely eccentric - there were jokes about his oddities even during his lifetime. On the streets of Orenburg, the military governor was constantly seen walking in a robe over his underwear, and all the orders on the robe: in this form, he sometimes went far, and returned on some oncoming cart.

Prince Grigory Semyonovich Volkonsky, father of the Decembrist. Portrait by V. Borovikovsky, 1806. Here he is about 65.

The prince's mother, née princess Alexandra Nikolaevna Repnina(1757-1834), throughout her life she held high positions at the imperial court, from 1797 she was a cavalry lady of the Order of St. Catherine of the Small Cross, and from 1808 she was a lady of state. For the coronation Nicholas I in 1826 she received the Order of St. Catherine Grand Cross (this order had previously been awarded exclusively to representatives of the royal and imperial dynasties). Obergofmeisterina (“first lady” - that is, she ruled the entire female court staff and the office of the queens) of the three empresses who succeeded each other on the throne. While the interrogation of the Decembrists was going on at the beginning of 1826, and her youngest son was sitting in the Peter and Paul Fortress, she was already in Moscow, where preparations were underway for the coronation Nicholas I. Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, sympathizing with her Obergoffmeisterina, she herself wanted to free her from some, especially tedious, duties, but for Alexandra Nikolaevna violating court etiquette was tantamount to a crime, and therefore she took full part in the preparations for the coronation and in all the events associated with it.

Mother Sergei Volkonsky, princess (princess Repnina) in her youth – 1780s, she is about 25 years old; and in old age - 1820s (about 65). The authors of both portraits are unknown.

The oldest brother Volkonsky, Nikolay(1778-1845), together with the surname of his maternal grandfather, Field Marshal General Repnina(he had no legitimate sons, and the surname passed to the son of one of his daughters), inherited most of his huge fortune. For a year and a half, from 1813 to 1814, he was Governor-General of Saxony with unlimited powers in governance (there were rumors that he was even crowned). From 1816 to 1834 he was Governor-General of Little Russia. The fact that Nikolay Repnin-Volkonsky was married to the granddaughter of the last Hetman of Ukraine, Kirill Grigorievich Razumovsky, Varvara Alekseevna Razumovskaya(which, by the way, patronized the poet Taras Shevchenko), made him, in the eyes of his contemporaries, the unofficial Hetman of Ukraine.

The eldest of the Decembrist brothers, Nikolay Repnin-Volkonsky. Portrait by British artist George Dow. Painted around 1820 for the “Gallery of Heroes of 1812”

Nikita Grigorievich(1781-1834), as well as Sergey, And Nikolay, was an active participant in the Russian-Turkish War and the war with Napoleon. In 1808 Alexander I sent him with a letter to Bonaparte in Paris. However, he was best known as a husband Zinaida Alexandrovna, born princess Beloselskaya-Belozerskaya- hostess of a literary salon, writer, poetess, singer and composer, a prominent figure in Russian cultural life of the first half of the 19th century. It is believed that it was from her Moscow house that she left for Siberia to join her husband. Maria Volkonskaya(actually no, but a farewell evening with the participation of literary and musical bohemia in her honor, which was attended by Pushkin, indeed, took place). It's interesting that the princess Zinaida was a relative at the same time of two of the most famous Decembrists - with the princess Maria they were each other's daughters-in-law (wives of siblings), and Trubetskoy was her cousin, although not by blood - her own aunt Trubetskoy by mother, Anna Grigorievna Kozitskaya, accounted for the princess Zinaida stepmother.

The second eldest brother of the Decembrist, Nikita Volkonsky, and his bohemian wife, Zinaida Volkonskaya(nee princess Beloselskaya-Belozerskaya). The portraits were taken at approximately the same time. The portrait of the prince is by the artist P. Guglielmi, dated to the 1st half of the 19th century (the prince died in 1834). The princess was painted by Orest Kiprensky in 1830.

Elder sister Volkonsky, Sofya Grigorievna(1785-1868) – lady of state, cavalry lady. She was very similar to her father, from whom she inherited his oddities - in her old age she incredibly developed stinginess and kleptomania, about which there were not even jokes, but legends. Her mother bequeathed to her her house in St. Petersburg, on the Moika River - in which she had been renting an apartment since September 1836 Pushkin, where he died on January 29 (February 10), 1837 after a duel - now it is the Pushkin house-museum. She was married to a distant relative, Pyotr Mikhailovich Volkonsky(1776-1852) - Field Marshal General (1850), Minister of the Imperial Court and Appanages (1826-1852). From 1797 he was the adjutant of the Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich. He was his personal friend until the end of his life Alexandra I, after which it was “inherited” to his younger brother, Nicholas I. During the military campaign of 1813 and 1814. prince Volkonsky was under the sovereign with the rank of chief of the main army staff. It was he who led the military operation to capture Paris by Russian troops. From December 1824 to July 1825 - Ambassador Extraordinary to Paris. In September 1825 he accompanied the Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna in Taganrog, was present at the death Alexandra I(November 19, 1825), was in charge of all preparations and orders for sending his body to St. Petersburg; then was with Elizaveta Alekseevna and after her death (May 4, 1826) he led the cortege that accompanied the empress’s body to St. Petersburg.

The elder and only sister of Sergei Volkonsky, Sofya Grigorievna(watercolor by I. Gau, 1830) – here she is about 45 years old. And her brilliant husband, Pyotr Volkonsky(portrait from the “Gallery of Heroes of 1812”).

No other Decembrist had such “star” relatives, and even in such numbers.

Prince Sergei Volkonsky was, like his wife, the sixth (but youngest) child of his parents (his two older brothers died in early childhood). Enlisted as a sergeant in the Kherson Grenadier Regiment at the age of 7. He began active military service in 1805, at the age of 17, in the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment. Participant in the campaign of 1806-1807 during the Napoleonic wars, the war with Turkey 1806-1812, the Patriotic War of 1812 and the foreign campaigns of Russian troops 1813-1814. Participated in more than 50 (!!!) battles. He particularly distinguished himself at Pultusk (1806), Preussisch-Eylau (1807), Watin (1810) and Kalisz (1813). Promoted to colonel - 09/06/1812, major general - 09/15/1813 with retention in the imperial retinue and awarded the orders of Vladimir 3rd class, George 4th class, Anna 2nd class. with diamond signs, Anna 1 tbsp. and several foreign ones, plus a golden sword for bravery.
He was the owner of 1046 souls of serfs in the Nizhny Novgorod province and 545 souls in the Yaroslavl province; in 1826 they had up to 280 thousand rubles. debt (a consequence of his wasteful, “hussar” lifestyle - first of all, huge gambling debts), in addition, he owned 10 thousand acres of land in the Tauride province and a farm near Odessa.

J.-B.Isabey. Portrait Sergei Volkonsky. 1814 Here he is 26 years old.

The parents' wishes are understandable Maria Volkonskaya to become related to such an influential, noble and wealthy family. In response to the doubts expressed by his daughter regarding the candidacy of the groom, General Raevsky answered: " Who's rushing you? You will have time to make friends... The prince is a wonderful person..." The bride herself, who was 18 years old at the time, was much more worried about the fact that her 37-year-old brilliant groom-general already “he wore false teeth with one natural front upper tooth”.

There is no doubt that Maria Raevskaya she married against her will, never loved her fiance, and then her husband, and could not love him throughout her life (which the Decembrist wrote quite openly about in her “Notes” after returning from Siberia).
At the same time, it is generally accepted that the prince Volkonsky he married her out of great love - his letters to friends on this matter, it would seem, do not raise doubts about his feelings. However, their married life together does not confirm his words, for Sergei Grigorievich this marriage was also forced in some way. The fact is that by the beginning of the 1820s, the prince’s previously brilliant career Sergei began to stall - she was hampered by his scandalous lifestyle, which the entire high society of the Russian Empire knew very well about. Subsequently Volkonsky admitted in his memoirs that for himself and for the social circle to which he belonged, “ general tendency towards drunkenness, riotous living, and youthfulness", “gambling and shameless whoredom.” Duels for any reason, bets for the most absurd reasons, dangerous (primarily for common people) “pranks”, scandalous orgies with actresses and drinking sessions - all this also constituted a large part of the life and interests of the Decembrist.

As a result, for at least 8 years before your wedding Volkonsky was not promoted to the next rank, he was bypassed when distributing positions. Alexander I waited for him to settle down, making it clear to the prince through his relatives that as a first step in this direction he needed to get married. So for Volkonsky matchmaking with the daughter of an old comrade in arms was very convenient in that he was confident in advance of his consent (apparently, the feelings of the Decembrist’s future wife were as little interested in him as they were in her father). Considering the monstrous “hussar” reputation Volkonsky and his huge debts, the parents of a richer and more noble bride could refuse him.

Prince's wedding Sergei Volkonsky And Maria Raevskaya took place in Kyiv on January 11, 1825, in Pechersk, in the ancient Church of the Savior on Berestov. The newlyweds spent their honeymoon in Gurzuf, they were together for the next three months (and this is the entire “experience” of their life together before the arrest of the Decembrist). However, this most romantic period in married life did not bring them closer. The young husband was openly burdened by the newly acquired “shackles”; the young wife took the beginning of the marital relationship very hard and painfully.
Soon Maria fell ill (this is how her pregnancy manifested itself) and with her mother and younger sister Sophia went to Odessa for sea swimming - Volkonsky(apparently with relief - at this time there was a surge in his activity in the affairs of the “Southern Society”) he returned to his service, where in the fall a long-awaited promotion awaited him - he became the acting commander of the 19th Infantry Division (he had previously commanded the 1st th brigade of this division).
The young couple saw each other for the second time only in November - Prince Sergei took his wife to the estate Raevskikh, Bovtyshka(which the Russian owners called “Boltishka”, Kiev province, now Kropyvnytskyi region of Ukraine) – Maria Nikolaevna was in the last stages of pregnancy, and Volkonsky, due to the tense situation due to illness and then death Alexandra I in Taganrog, the authorities did not allow him to go on vacation, and he could not give his wife the attention she deserved in her position. January 2, 1826 Volkonskikh a son was born in Bovtyshka Nikolay. And on January 5, his father, who never saw his first-born, was arrested in Uman (now the regional center of the Cherkasy region of Ukraine), at the division headquarters, interestingly, in connection with the uprising of the Chernigov regiment (to which he had nothing to do). Delivered to St. Petersburg on January 14 and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in No. 4 of the Alekseevsky Ravelin.

Watercolor by P. Sokolov from 1827. Princess Maria Volkonskaya with his firstborn, one-year-old son Nikolai.

About the husband's arrest Volkonskaya She found out only on February 28th - her relatives hid this from her, explaining his absence on an important “business trip” to Moldova. First birth Maria Nikolaevna were very difficult, she slowly recovered, and, perhaps, the news about the imprisonment of Prince Sergei (besides him, both of her brothers were arrested in the Decembrist case - Nikolay And Alexander, - however, they were soon completely acquitted, and their paternal uncle, Vasily Davydov- this one “thundered” to Siberia along with her husband), indeed, could seriously undermine her fragile health.

However, in the future the behavior of the whole family Maria Nikolaevna towards her she was ALWAYS exceptionally cruel, heartless and selfish. Just a year ago she was married to an unloved man, without any interest in whether she herself wanted this marriage. Now the princess Maria forced to break off relations with him - right up to divorce (and her intention to go to Siberia for her husband was met with bewilderment, irony and even ridicule from her relatives), and again Raevskikh They were not at all interested in the opinions of their daughter and sister on this matter. It was probably this behavior, primarily from the parents, that ultimately strengthened the final decision Volkonskaya(which is also like everyone else Raevsky, had a family stubborn “poisonous” character, which clearly manifested itself later) to share the fate of her husband in hard labor. On her part it was a protest and a challenge (supported by the prince’s mother and sister Sergei– general Raevsky wrote in a letter to his eldest daughter Ekaterina, already after Maria Volkonskaya went to Siberia, that when she went, she obeyed not a feeling, but “to the influence of the Volkonsky women, who, with praise for her heroism, assured her that she was a heroine - and she went off like a fool”), the desire to get rid of the obsessive dictates of his brother Alexandra, who in these circumstances became her real jailer (as he wrote at that time in one of his letters to his relatives about the Decembrist: “ She will do and should do only what her father and I advise her...”) and mother, albeit at such a high price.

By the way, her hysterical mother was generally unable to even sympathize with her daughter and son-in-law. Sofya Alekseevna She has always been a wife first, and only a fifth, if not tenth, a mother. It was she who created the cult of her husband in the family, to which she herself and their children unquestioningly obeyed. In his “Notes”, after returning from Siberia, Maria Volkonskaya, mentioning his first birth, which began on January 1, 1826 on the estate Raevskikh, in Bovtyshka, tells how her parents argued about which way it was better for her to give birth - lying on the bed or sitting in a chair. Father's opinion "As always", won – princess Maria I suffered in a chair for almost a day. Her mother, who gave birth to seven children in her life, and, unlike her general husband, had a specific idea about childbirth, even in such a purely female matter, did not dare to challenge the opinion Raevsky, and thereby alleviate the suffering of the giving birth daughter.

If Sofya Alekseevna did not spare her own children for the sake of the authority of her heroic husband, then, of course, she had nothing to do with the feelings and desires of her son-in-law - Decembrist Volkonsky, relationship with him damaged, first of all, the impeccable reputation of her husband. This means that it was necessary to break the connection by any means. Raevskikh and the prince Sergei. This idea runs as a leitmotif through all the letters from relatives. Maria Volkonskaya to Siberia – Sofya Alekseevna managed to create scenes and throw tantrums Volkonsky even at a distance of thousands of kilometers, and in the written account of the unmarried Decembrist sisters, Elena And Sophia– she herself did not deign to correspond with the “wife of a state criminal”, although Maria continued to write to her mother until her death. You can imagine what it cost her - of all her relatives Volkonskaya at the end of each letter to her, only her sister “bowed” to her husband Elena(and after the death of her father, she was the only one in the whole family who continued to correspond with the Decembrist) - for everyone else Sergei Volkonsky died.

As she later mentioned Maria Nikolaevna in her memoirs, when leaving for Siberia, she did not fully understand what kind of life she was dooming herself to in exile. And after realizing this, her family arrogance, vanity and aplomb did not allow her to admit her fatal mistake. Then - the death of her 2-year-old son in January 1828 in St. Petersburg Nicholas, and the next year, 1829, the premature death of his beloved father at the age of 58 (for which the relatives immediately blamed the princess Maria and her husband), finally burned all the “bridges” Volkonskaya back to European Russia - she had no one to return to. The mother herself did not even want to correspond with her; the only letter she wrote to Maria in 1829 (in French, like all correspondence) ended with the words: “You say in your letters to your sisters that it’s as if I died for you... Whose fault is it? Your adored husband... A little virtue was needed not to marry when a person belongs to this damned conspiracy. Don’t answer me, I order you!”

In such irreconcilable opposition of the “poisonous family” to the decision Volkonskaya There was another, very delicate, but perhaps the main motive to follow her husband - financial. Family Raevskikh, as I already mentioned, was actually ruined a year before the Decembrist uprising. Even send the princess Maria They couldn’t afford to go to Siberia to see their husband - they lived exclusively on the general’s pension Raevsky, family estates were remortgaged several times.
On the eve of the civil execution of the Decembrists, which took place on the night of July 12-13, 1826, Prince Sergei Volkonsky(at the request of his wife’s father and brothers, who put enormous pressure on him during the investigation into the Decembrist case - even the only meeting Maria Volkonskaya with her husband in the Peter and Paul Fortress took place in April 1826 only after her direct appeal to Nicholas I, and after Raevsky(behind the back of his daughter and sister, of course) received a promise from the prisoner to force his wife to return home to his son) wrote a will in which he left all his considerable property to his 6-month-old son Nicholas. According to the same will, Maria Volkonskaya was appointed guardian of his heir. In addition, the princess, as a “widow,” retained the right to her dowry and to the seventh part of her husband’s estate (the sum was tidy).
Broke Raevskikh I was perfectly happy with this financial arrangement. The reputation of the eldest brother of the Decembrist, completely unprincipled and cynical Alexandra, allows us to make the assumption that his plans could include managing the property of his baby nephew instead of his sister, due to her “sickness and poor health,” which he constantly mentioned in correspondence with relatives.
The Decembrist’s departure to her husband in Siberia deprived her brother of such an opportunity - also for the reason that his son Nikolai Volkonskaya she left it not with her parents, but with her mother-in-law, in St. Petersburg (although later in letters she asked to give it to Bovtyshka, to their parents - however, from the extensive family correspondence that has survived to this day, it is not clear that they themselves Raevsky insisted on this).

Later, already in Siberia, the Decembrist had financial friction with her mother-in-law, Alexandra Nikolaevna(with whom she usually, unlike her parents, always got along) - firstly, before leaving Volkonskaya from St. Petersburg she ordered that her daughter-in-law be given money only for horses to Irkutsk. In a letter to his mother-in-law dated November 14, 1827 Maria claims that so far, in addition to the money she brought with her, she has received only 1000 rubles from her father. Alexandra Nikolaevna as a response, she sent a convoy with provisions to the Blagodatsky mine (in general, the mother-in-law showered her son and daughter-in-law with parcels, fulfilling any, even the most insignificant, request Maria Nikolaevna. For comparison: the Decembrist’s relatives once sent her 15 bottles of good wine DURING the entire time of her stay in Siberia - they all broke on the road). Secondly, in the first two years Volkonsky greatly delayed what was stipulated in the prince's will Sergei salary Maria Nikolaevna- however, the richest princess also experienced the same problems Ekaterina Trubetskaya– their relatives needed time to figure out exactly how to transfer money and parcels to Siberia for the wives of “state criminals” (who, of course, underwent the strictest checks, and more than one). All these misunderstandings were eventually resolved, and the financial situation Volkonskaya strengthened - later, for eight years (1830-1837), she donated 15 thousand rubles to the Decembrist “Big Artel” - a very large amount for those times. However, in relationships Maria Nikolaevna With Volkonsky Her father intervened, and in the last months of his life he accused the matchmakers of infringing on his daughter’s property rights; the Decembrist was even forced to defend her husband’s relatives. It's gotten to the point where Nikolai Nikolaevich stopped writing Maria- they reconciled only three months later, shortly before his death, the news of which his daughter herself described as follows: “It seemed to me that the sky had fallen on me.”

Older brother Maria Volkonskaya, Alexander Raevsky, who became her jailer after the Decembrists were sentenced. Watercolor from the early 1820s. Here he is about 25 years old.

Death of a General Raevsky left his wife and two unmarried daughters with virtually no means of support - an arrogant mother Volkonskaya had to ask Nicholas I(and through Pushkin) about retirement, since she simply had nothing to live on. In January 1830 Pushkin wrote A. H. Benckendorff: "The General's Widow Raevsky turned to me with a request to put in a word for her... The fact that her choice fell on me already testifies to what extent she is deprived of friends, all hopes and help. Half of the family is in exile, the other is on the eve of complete ruin. The income is barely enough to pay the interest on the huge debt. Mistress Raevskaya petitions for a pension in the amount of the full salary of her late husband, so that this pension will pass to her daughters in the event of her death. This will be enough to save her from poverty...".
A pension, and a considerable one - 12 thousand rubles a year - was assigned. But the humiliation experienced Sofia Alekseevna Due to the hassle of getting it, until the end of her life she could not forgive... that's right, her Decembrist daughter. Who else?
Your days mother Volkonskaya graduated in 1844 in Italy, where she left the Russian Empire forever in 1835 with her two unmarried daughters.

December 22, 1826 Princess Maria leaves for her husband via Moscow, leaving her little one-year-old son in the care of her mother-in-law, without saying goodbye to her parents, brothers or sisters. New Year 1827 Volkonskaya met somewhere in the steppe between Kazan and Irkutsk in the company of a maid and coachmen. She got from Moscow to Irkutsk in 15 days. In Irkutsk, the princess occupied an apartment, from which she left on the same day Ekaterina Trubetskaya. After 8 days, another wife of the Decembrist arrived, Alexandrina Muravyova. 11th February 1827 Volkonskaya, accompanied by the manager of the Nerchinsk plant T.S. Burnashev, arrived at the Blagodatsky mine, where her husband was then located. Sergei Grigorievich she saw the next day, the 12th, in the general barracks where all the Decembrists were kept. Volkonskaya(like all other Decembrist women) were allowed to see her husband twice a week in the presence of an officer. She herself is alone with Trubetskoy settled next to the mine, in a wretched peasant hut.

Despite the very complex motives that prompted Maria Nikolaevna to go to her husband in Siberia (there was definitely no love for him among them), her arrival, according to numerous eyewitness accounts, practically saved him, if not from death, then from illness and depression - in her presence he perked up and gradually recovered (for which I was eternally grateful to my wife for the rest of my life). Scene with shackles Volkonsky, which his wife rushed to kiss when she first met her husband in Siberia - is reliable. But, again, this impulse Volkonskaya was dictated more by compassion and a late-coming awareness of his own sacrifice than by any other reasons.

Subsequently, despite the sincere desire of the spouses to start their life together “from scratch,” and their mutual desire to somehow get used to each other, nothing came of this attempt - they were too different people.
Maria Nikolaevna, apparently, realized this soon (or simultaneously) with two of the most terrible losses for her - the death of her two-year-old son in distant St. Petersburg and the death of her beloved father. And then she decided to fill the terrible void left by them in a purely feminine way - by having children. To this end Volkonskaya began to seek permission "share the conclusion" with her husband - through her mother-in-law (who always supported her in everything, unlike her own mother). She asked her to make sure that the wives of the Decembrists could live with their husbands in their cells.

It is not customary to mention this intimate side of the life of the Decembrists - and it is clear that “dates” between husbands and their wives twice a week for an hour, and even in the presence of a stranger, made their sexual relations impossible.
In addition, the shackles from the Decembrists were removed only on August 1, 1829 (although this circumstance did not stop the nobles, who, first of all, were young men and women with natural needs - which is easily calculated by the dates of birth of their firstborns, For example, Trubetskoy, Davydovs, Muravyov And Volkonskikh in Siberia). Nicholas I whose mother Volkonsky I read his wife's letter, request Maria Nikolaevna soon satisfied: the wives settled with their husbands in a new prison, in the Petrovsky plant (Nerchinsk mountain district), at the end of September 1830 (at Volkonskikh there was cell No. 54). However, the Decembrist gave birth to her first child in Siberia two months earlier, back in the Chita prison. Daughter Volkonskikh Sophia born July 1st, 1830, and died the same day.

At the Petrovsky Plant, the wives of the Decembrists had the opportunity to acquire their own housing - Maria Nikolaevna bought a small house there, in which her son was born on March 10, 1832 Michael(1832-1909), and two years later, on September 28, 1834 - daughter Elena(1834-1916), whom her mother called in the English way "Nellie".

Irkutsk, 1845. Children Volkonskikh – Michael(13 years old) and Elena(11 years)

The children, in the Decembrist’s own words, became the beginning of a new life for her - her husband faded into the background, almost completely disappearing from the pages of her letters - Volkonskaya in the future he mentions him only occasionally, and for completely insignificant reasons.
Not least for the reason that in life Maria Nikolaevna another man appeared - also a Decembrist, Alexander Viktorovich Poggio(1798-1873). Among the Decembrists, not only was there no doubt about their love relationships - many believed that their children Volkonskaya She gave birth not from her husband, but from her lover. And, it must be admitted (but more on this later), that the nature of the extremely (and sometimes even abnormally) close relationships of all family members Volkonskikh And Alexandra Poggio- especially after the amnesty for the Decembrists in 1856 and their return to the European part of the Russian Empire - cannot be explained by any other reasons.
Historian of the Decembrist movement, son of the Decembrist Ivan Yakushkina, Evgeniy Yakushkin This is how he wrote about it in 1855 in personal correspondence (while all the participants in the love triangle were still alive): “There are a lot of rumors that are unfavorable for Maria Nikolaevna about her life in Siberia, they say that even her son and daughter are not Volkonsky’s children... All the children’s affection was focused on the mother, and the mother looked with some kind of disdain at her husband, which, of course, had an impact and on the children’s attitude towards him.”

One way or another, but Volkonsky never showed any emotions in connection with this situation, and, moreover, on his part there was never the slightest doubt about his paternity (at least nothing is known about them).
After in 1835, the emperor ordered that each settler (the Decembrists began to finish their hard labor terms) be allocated 15 acres of arable land in Siberia, he took up farming with great passion, thanks to his money, managing to turn this “hobby” into a profitable business . Ultimately, by the time of his return to the European part of Russia Sergey Grigorievich managed to make a decent fortune.

Irkutsk, 1845. Daggerotypes Maria Volkonskaya(she is 40 years old) and Sergei Volkonsky(57 years old). By the way, there is not a single photograph of them together.

Pupil of the Decembrist A.P. Yushnevsky, doctor N.A. Belogolovy, this is how I recalled this period in the life of the prince Sergei: “Old Volkonsky—he was already about 60 years old—was known in Irkutsk as a great original. Once in Siberia, he somehow abruptly broke with his brilliant and noble past, transformed into a busy and practical owner and simply became simpler, as it is commonly called today. Although he was friendly with his comrades, he was rarely in their circle, and was more friendly with the peasants; in the summer he spent whole days working in the fields, and in the winter his favorite pastime in the city was visiting the bazaar, where he met many friends among the suburban peasants and loved to chat with them from heart to heart about their needs and the progress of the economy. The townspeople who knew him were quite shocked when, walking through the bazaar on Sunday from mass, they saw the prince, perched on the back of a peasant’s cart with piled up bags of bread, carrying on a lively conversation with the peasants who surrounded him, having breakfast right there with them on a piece of gray wheat bread. When the family moved to the city and occupied a large two-story house... the old prince, gravitating more towards the countryside, lived permanently in Urik and only visited the family from time to time, but even here - the lordly luxury of the house was not in harmony with his tastes and inclinations - he did not stay in the house itself, but set aside a room for himself somewhere in the yard - and this room of his own looked more like a storeroom, because various junk and all sorts of agricultural supplies were lying in great disorder in it; It also could not boast of being particularly clean, because the prince’s guests, again, were most often peasants, and the floors constantly bore traces of dirty boots. Volkonsky often appeared in his wife’s salon, stained with tar or with scraps of hay on his dress and in his thick beard, perfumed with the aromas of a barnyard and similar non-salon odors.”

And further – the same author’s memories of Maria Nikolaevna: “But if old Volkonsky, absorbed in his agricultural pursuits and completely devoted to the people, did not gravitate towards the city and was much more interested in the countryside, then his wife, Princess Marya Nikolaevna, was a completely secular lady, loved society and entertainment and managed to make her home the main center of Irkutsk social life. They say she was pretty, but from my point of view as an 11-year-old boy, she could not seem to me anything other than an old woman, since she was then over 40 years old; I remember her as a tall, slender, thin woman, with a relatively small head and beautiful, constantly squinting eyes. She behaved with great dignity, spoke slowly, and in general, to us children, she gave the impression of a proud, dry, as if icy person, so we were always somewhat embarrassed in her presence...”

The question is, what could these two people have in common?

From hard labor to settlement Sergei Volkonsky came out a little ahead of schedule, in 1835, and here's why.
On December 23, 1834, his elderly 77-year-old mother, Princess Alexandra Nikolaevna Volkonskaya- Obergoffmeister of the Empress's court Alexandra Fedorovna. Her funeral was attended by the imperial couple with the heir and the king's younger brother. After the death of the princess, a suicide letter to Nicholas I, in which she asked the autocrat to forgive her youngest son. Forgiveness would mean freedom, which the emperor, who swore that during his lifetime not one of the participants in the “case of 1825” would return from Siberia, could not allow. But he also could not ignore the request of the princess, who faithfully served the imperial house all her adult life (like her late husband). That's why Volkonsky Instead of being released, he received early exile.

Children's illnesses and the sale of the house were delayed Volkonskikh in the Petrovsky plant until the spring of 1837 - only at the end of March they arrived at the place of their settlement - the village of Urik, located 18 kilometers from Irkutsk. Except Volkonskikh Decembrists lived in a settlement in Urik F. Wolf, M. Lunin, A. and N. Muravyov, N. Panov, in Ust-Kuda (eight miles from Urik) - A. and I. Poggio, P. Mukhanov, A. Sutgof. For maintenance Maria Nikolaevna from her own money, the authorities allowed the release of 2,000 rubles in banknotes (versus 10,000 at the Petrovsky plant) per year. She tried twice to increase the amount: she had to teach children, but St. Petersburg refused her this, because “There are no teachers in Siberia, and therefore raising children does not require expenses, but only the care of parents.”(By the way, each wife of the Decembrist was required to keep an “account book”, in which she was obliged to describe in detail how much, from whom and when money she received, and how much and on what she spent. The balance had to converge at any moment of their lives at the settlement - whenever the authorities decide to check it). However, despite the lack of funds, parents did everything to ensure that their children received a sufficient education at home: when in 1846 Michael entered the Irkutsk gymnasium, he was immediately enrolled in the 5th grade.

In January 1845 Maria Nikolaevna received permission to settle in Irkutsk with children. Two years later, she achieved the right to live in Irkutsk and Volkonsky.
Despite the years of general hardship that united the Decembrists and their wives in hard labor into one big “family”, constant material assistance from Volkonskikh less than their family, financially secure comrades in misfortune, in their midst Maria Nikolaevna disliked.
Having suffered so much from her relatives over the years in Siberia, the Decembrist herself remained an organic part of her “poisonous family” - cold, arrogant, ruthless and callous.
Around 1845-1846, she forever quarreled with her closest friend, Ekaterina Trubetskoy- they both wanted to buy a beautiful estate in the Znamensky suburb of Irkutsk, which previously belonged to the governor Zeidler- with a spacious two-story house, a large orchard and access to the Ushakovka River. The richest heiress of industrialists, Trubetskoy, quite expectedly, was able to pay a much larger sum for the estate than Volkonskaya, and ultimately became its owner. Then Maria Nikolaevna broke off all relations with her, and did not forgive her companion in misfortune even after death - she was the only one of the entire Irkutsk colony of Decembrists who did not come to the funeral on October 17, 1854 Ekaterina Trubetskoy, and later never visited her grave.

Suffering all her life from the fact that she was married without her consent to her only daughter Volkonskaya I did exactly the same thing, even worse. 15th September 1850 Elena Sergeevna Volkonskaya, who was two weeks away from her 16th birthday, became the wife of an official on special assignments under the governor of Eastern Siberia N.N. Muravyov-Amursky, Dmitry Vasilievich Molchanov. Maria Nikolaevna made the decision about this wedding a year earlier - it took her all this time to break the resistance of her husband, who was against this marriage - by the way, Alexander Poggio took part in deciding the fate of his daughter Volkonskikh unnaturally large, even for a close family friend, participation (he was also against marriage Elena), which from the outside looked simply indecent.

On the left is the Decembrist Alexander Poggio, on the right is Prince Mikhail Sergeevich Volkonsky. In the photographs they are about the same age, they are somewhere around 60. In my opinion, no genetic examination is needed to see that they are father and son.

The Decembrist’s decision to give her daughter to a man who had a reputation as a gambler and was prone, as those who knew him claimed, to “abominations” (what kind of abominations were meant, historians have not yet been able to unearth), put her at odds with most of the Decembrists (except for all the above reasons , in confrontation Maria Nikolaevna There was something else with the Decembrist community, about which only dull half-hints were preserved in the letters of some Decembrists. From these fragments it is impossible to form an idea of ​​​​the reason for the watershed that arose in connection with the wedding of his daughter Volkonsky(which became only a pretext) between his wife and them. But the break was serious and final, one can say that in the future Maria Nikolaevna in the society of the Decembrists they endured for the sake of their husbands). And the Decembrist’s plans for her daughter’s marriage with Molchanov shared only by the governor-general, whose favorite was the groom, and his wife. The daughter did not resist the will of her mother - she was too young for this.
There is an assumption that in this way Maria Nikolaevna provided for her son Mikhail, who in the same year, 1849, graduated from the Irkutsk gymnasium with a gold medal (but, as the son of a “state criminal,” had no chance of continuing his studies at a higher educational institution), a promising place for his further brilliant career under the Governor-General. Wedding Elena Volkonskaya, as I already wrote, took place on September 15th. And in November of the same year, her older brother Mikhail Volkonsky was appointed to serve as a collegiate registrar in the main administration of the Amur Territory, where over the next seven years he served as an official on special assignments under the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, Count N. N. Muravyov-Amursky. And later he made a truly dizzying career.
It was he, the only son of the Decembrist Volkonsky, August 26, 1856, the day of the emperor's coronation Alexandra II, was sent to Siberia with the Highest Manifesto on the amnesty of the Decembrists. According to the personal decree Alexandra II from the same date Mikhail Volkonsky The princely title that belonged to his father before his conviction in the Decembrist case was returned.

Three years before this happy moment, in 1853, Maria Nikolaevna became a grandmother - her daughter gave birth to a son Sergei(named after his grandfather, the Decembrist). And the next year, 1854, her son-in-law was accused by the richest Siberian industrialist F.P. Zanadvorov in receiving 20 thousand rubles from him as a bribe (a large amount at that time). Ultimately, the matter came to the emperor; was considered first in Omsk, then in the Moscow Ordinance House, then in the State Council. They were also in custody Zanadvorov, And Molchanov.
At my son-in-law's Volkonskikh As a result of all these shocks, progressive paralysis of the legs developed in 1854, caused, as his contemporaries wrote, by “liquefaction of the spinal cord.” Dmitry Molchanov was imprisoned in a Moscow prison, and his young wife, leaving their little son with Maria Nikolaevna in Irkutsk, for months she was torn between Moscow (where at that time a cholera epidemic also broke out) and St. Petersburg, where in the offices of the highest officials of the empire (numerous relatives helped her get to Volkonskikh, who belonged to the highest St. Petersburg nobility) sought not even justice for her husband, but mercy - in prison Molchanova paralysis struck and he went completely mad. Son-in-law Volkonskikh died in Moscow on September 15, 1857 - on the 7th anniversary of his wedding with Elena Sergeevna, released the year before, in a state of absolute vegetable. The bribery case ultimately ended due to his death, as some researchers write, his complete acquittal. The fact that the opponent Molchanova and the culprit of his misfortunes, the industrialist Zanadvornov, was released from prison and did not suffer any punishment (and even made an attempt to attend the funeral of his son-in-law Volkonskikh, but the brother of the Decembrist, Alexander Raevsky, did not allow him to get out of the carriage), make such statements very doubtful. So, was there Molchanov guilty of what he was accused of (especially given his dubious reputation), remained unclear - although all the Decembrists, of course, were on his side - not for his own sake, but, of course, for the sake of Volkonskikh.

Young widow Elena Sergeevna Molchanova (Volkonskaya). The photo was taken in 1857-1858. The Decembrist's daughter is 23-24 years old here.

In 1858 Elena(she was only 24 years old) married a second time, to the secretary of the Russian embassy in Constantinople Nikolai Arkadyevich Kochubey(1827-1868). In this marriage she had two sons: Alexander And Michael. Alexander was a favorite grandson Maria Nikolaevna, he died at the age of three, in 1863, and his death brought the Decembrist to the grave, who died soon after the boy. Second husband Elena Sergeevna For several years he died in her arms from consumption (tuberculosis), so this marriage of the Decembrist’s daughter cannot be called happy. Only her third and last marriage was successful. In 1869 (at age 34) she married Alexander Alekseevich Rakhmanov(c. 1830-?). The Rakhmanov couple had two daughters - Maria And Elena.

Maria Nikolaevna returned from Siberia a year earlier than the rest of the Decembrists. Soon after death Nicholas I February 18, 1855 (the news of which, by the way, Volkonsky met tragically - his wife wrote these days to their son, who was away on duty: “Your father is crying, I don’t know what to do with him for three days now”) the daughter of a Decembrist woman obtained permission for her mother to come to Moscow for treatment - health Volkonskaya, since the 40s, has been constantly deteriorating. The severe Siberian cold caused her acute, sharp pain in the chest (which is why doctors forbade her to go outside in the winter), which were eventually supplemented by heart attacks. So Maria Nikolaevna left Siberia forever in the spring of 1855 (not yet knowing that she would never return there again). In Moscow, she stayed at her son-in-law's house on Podnovinsky Lane, where she helped her daughter care for her slowly and terribly dying husband, and nursed her grandson Sergei.

Return from Siberia under amnesty Sergei Grigorievich(he left Irkutsk on September 23, 1856) the spouses were finally separated in different directions. The Decembrist was prohibited from living in two capitals (Moscow and St. Petersburg), and therefore he rented housing for himself in the Moscow region, occasionally, on visits, crossing paths with his wife in Moscow.

In the spring of 1858, with his daughter, widowed a year earlier, and grandson Volkonskaya I went abroad for water (without my husband). Abroad Elena Sergeevna remarried Nikolai Kochubey. Her father was also present at this wedding, who in October 1858 was allowed to travel abroad for treatment. At the wedding of the Volkonskys' son, Mikhail, which took place in Geneva on May 24, 1859 (he married his distant relative, Princess Elizaveta Volkonskaya(1838-1897), the couple had six children - five sons and a daughter. In general, this branch of descendants Volkonskikh later she completely converted to Catholicism (one of the Decembrist’s grandchildren, Alexander, even became a Catholic priest) and left Russia before 1917), they were also present together. In Italy Maria Nikolaevna visited the graves of my mother and sister Elena.

Prince Mikhail Sergeevich Volkonsky with his young wife, Elizaveta Grigorievna. The photo was taken in 1860, a year after their wedding.

Upon returning to the Russian Empire in the summer of 1859, the couple Volkonsky broke up again - Maria Nikolaevna settled with her daughter and son-in-law in the property Kochubey Voronka estate, Chernigov province (now Bobrovitsky district, Chernigov region of Ukraine), and Sergey Grigorievich after some time he moved to the Fall estate (now the village of Keila-Joa in northern Estonia near Tallinn), owned by his daughter-in-law.

In 1859 in life Volkonskikh a confusing misunderstanding has reappeared in the form of Alexandra Poggio. He, unlike Sergei Grigorievich, did not leave Siberia immediately, staying for some time for gold prospecting (unsuccessful). 05/02/1859 left Irkutsk for the Pskov province, where he settled with his nephew Alexander Iosifovich Poggio(the son of his late older Decembrist brother) in the village of Znamensky, Toropetsk district. Due to a conflict with a nephew who refused to allocate Poggio part of the estate that belonged to him, left Znamensky in December 1859. In the family Volkonskikh he surfaced in the summer of 1861 - in September of the same year Elena Sergeevn and hired him as manager of the Shukolovo estate in the Dmitrov district of the Moscow province, which belonged to her 8-year-old son from her first marriage.

Alexander Poggio and his daughter Varvara. Venice, 1864.

I must say that Volkonskikh Alexander Poggio appeared not alone, but with his wife and daughter. He married back in Siberia, in 1851, a classy lady from the Irkutsk Institute of Noble Maidens, Smirnova Lidia Andreevna(1823-1892) – and, according to rumors, Maria Nikolaevna I was very upset when I learned about this marriage. For spouses Poggio had an only daughter Varvara(1854-1922). Oddities of mutual, now family, relationships Poggio And Volkonskikh, continued in European Russia.

To begin with, in June 1862 Alexander Poggio moved (with his family, of course) to live permanently with the daughter of a Decembrist, Elena Sergeevna Kochubey, to the Voronki estate in the Chernigov province - as a guest. Where, already together with his wife, he looked after a dying woman in 1863 Maria Nikolaevna. Here it is impossible not to say that to the deathbed of the Decembrist (when Volkonskaya fell ill, it became clear that she would not get up, but she faded away for a long time) her son also arrived Michael with his wife and younger sister Sofya Nikolaevna. But not my husband. According to the official version, Sergei Grigorievich at that time he suffered a severe attack of gout in Estonia, and subsequently he very much regretted that he could not say goodbye to his wife. Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya died on August 10, 1863, at the age of 58, in Voronki, “from liver disease,” and was buried there.

On the right is a photo Maria Volkonskaya with her son - the last one in her life, made less than a year before her death.

About the last years of the Decembrist’s life, her grandson, Sergei Mikhailovich Volkonsky, left these memories: “She looked at someone else’s life from the depths of her past, at someone else’s joy from the depths of her suffering. It was not she who looked sternly, but her suffering looked out from her: you can forget everything, but you cannot destroy the traces. And I think that's the reason why household members, employees, governesses were afraid of her».

And the oddities with Poggio continued after death Maria Nikolaevna. In 1863-1864, he and his family accompanied her daughter’s family, Elena Kochubey, while traveling in Italy. By the way, Alexander Poggio was Italian on his father’s side, so it was doubly interesting for him. After returning to Russia in the spring of 1864, he again went abroad. Lived in Switzerland (where he became close to Herzen) and in Florence. In 1868 he again lived in Voronki. In 1873, terminally ill (having abandoned his wife and daughter in Italy, who never returned to Russia), he again came to Voronki, where he died in the arms of Elena Sergeevna Kochubey June 6, 1873 (well, I don’t know how this can be explained simply by the fact that he was a “close friend of the family”). He bequeathed to be buried next to Maria Nikolaevna- but in fact, next to Volkonsky (Sergey Grigorievich By that time, he had already been laid to rest next to his wife for 8 years) in Voronki, which was done.

It's interesting that the older brother Alexandra Poggio, Decembrist Joseph Viktorovich Poggio(1792-1848), died 25 years earlier, also in the house Volkonskikh, but only in Irkutsk. He stopped with them on the way to the Turka healing waters, two days before his sudden death on January 6 (or 8), 1848.

Last lifetime photo Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky, made a year and a half before his death.

After the death of his wife Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky traveled abroad three more times, where he met, among other things, Herzen, and with Ogarev. I was busy working on my memoirs. From the spring of 1865, he settled with his daughter in Voronki (previously preferring Estonia) so that, as he put it, “to lay down his life next to the one who saved it for him”. There he died on November 28, 1865, two weeks before his 77th birthday. According to the will, the Decembrist was buried at the feet of his wife’s grave under the village church, which was built over the final resting place of the Decembrist and his wife by their daughter. The church was demolished by the Bolsheviks in the 1930s, at which time the graves Volkonskikh And Poggio were lost.

Advertisements

Decembrist Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky is a historical figure familiar to everyone from the school curriculum. The basic facts of his biography are widely known: he was an aristocrat, a prince, Rurikovich, and was related to many famous Russian families and even tsars. His adult life began as a military feat. A hero of the Patriotic War and foreign campaigns, at the age of 24 he became a general, his portrait is in the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace.

Following the military feat came a civil feat. In 1819, he joined the Decembrist conspiracy, was an active participant in Southern Society, and in 1826 he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor and indefinite settlement. During the Siberian period of his life, Volkonsky was known primarily as “his wife’s husband”: Princess Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya, having abandoned nobility, wealth, even her own son, was one of the first to follow him to Siberia.

This textbook nature is the main reason that the personality of the prince. Volkonsky rarely becomes the subject of special attention by historians. There are almost no separate studies about it. His name is always mentioned by historians with respect, but does not arouse much interest.

Meanwhile, sources - correspondence and memoirs of Volkonsky himself, memoirs of contemporaries, official documents - paint a completely different Volkonsky. The early stages of his biography are not only high service to the Fatherland, but also the life of a secular rake-cavalry guard. The biography of Volkonsky the Decembrist is not only a civic feat and the desire to “sacrifice oneself,” but also spying on his fellow conspirators and opening their correspondence. Arrested in January 1826, Volkonsky earned a reputation in the eyes of Emperor Nicholas I as a “complete fool,” “liar,” and “scoundrel.”

The purpose of this article is not to write a detailed and thorough biography of S. G. Volkonsky. Its goal: on the basis of documents, to determine the place of this person in the Decembrist movement. Perhaps this article will also allow us to correct textbook ideas about Volkonsky and awaken research interest in one of the most prominent personalities of the Alexander era.

Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky was born in 1788. By age, he was one of the oldest among the leaders of secret societies, and by origin, one of the most noble.

In the form list “about service and dignity” of Sergei Volkonsky, in the column about origin, it is written laconically: “From the Chernigov princes.” The ancestors of the Decembrist - the notorious Olgovichi in Russian history, as the chronicles called them - ruled in Chernigov and were the initiators and participants in many internecine wars in Ancient Rus'. The Decembrist himself belonged to the XXVI generation of the Rurik family.

On the maternal side, Volkonsky is from the family of Prince. Repnins. His great-great-grandfather was one of the “chicks of Petrov’s nest,” Field Marshal A. I. Repnin, and his grandfather was N. V. Repnin, also a field marshal, diplomat and military man, who signed the Kyuchuk-Kainardzhi Peace Treaty with Turkey in 1774. The maternal grandmother, nee Princess Kurakina, descended from Vel. book Lithuanian Gedemin.

A distinctive feature of many close relatives of Sergei Volkonsky can be defined in one word - “strangeness”.

Historians are well aware of the book. Grigory Semenovich Volkonsky (1742-1824) - father of the Decembrist. He was an associate of P. A. Rumyantsev, G. A. Potemkin, A. V. Suvorov, and his father-in-law N. V. Repnin. According to his service record, he participated in all wars of the late 18th century. In 1803-1816. Grigory Volkonsky - Governor General in Orenburg, then a member of the State Council.

In M. I. Pylyaev’s book “Wonderful eccentrics and originals,” published in 1898, Vol. Grigory Volkonsky is described as one of the most colorful Russian "eccentrics". He was known, for example, for getting up early and first of all going “through all the rooms and venerating each icon,” and in the evening “every night he had an all-night vigil, at which the officer on duty had to be present,” because he “went to the troops in all orders and, at the end of the training, in one shirt he would lie down somewhere under a bush and shout to the passing soldiers: “Well done, guys, well done!” He “loved to wear thin clothes, got angry when they didn’t recognize him, went out to the city, lying on a cart or on firewood." According to Pylyaev, Volkonsky followed the behavior of his friend and patron A.V. Suvorov - he “cribbed at Suvorov.”

The phenomenon of world - and including Russian - "eccentricity" has long attracted the attention of historians and cultural experts.

Thus, Pylyaev defined this phenomenon as “voluntary or forced originality, in the majority due to an excess of life activity and in the minority - on the contrary: life dissatisfaction.” Pylyaev noted that “in the simple class, close to nature, eccentrics are rarely found.” “Freaks” begin “with education” - “and the higher it is among the people, the more frequent and varied the eccentrics are.”

The famous playwright, director and theater critic N. N. Evreinov saw in “eccentricity” a manifestation of a “sense of theatricality”, which “is something natural, natural, innate to the human psyche.” And Yu. M. Lotman approached the issue specifically historically: trying to understand the Russian “eccentrics” of the late 18th century, he argued that in such a “strange” way they tried to “find their destiny, get out of line, realize their own personality.” In his opinion, the “regular state” created by Peter I “needed performers, not initiators, and valued diligence higher than initiative,” however, since the time of Catherine II, the best people of the era have “a thirst to express themselves, to show their personality in its entirety ".

Despite the diversity of these explanations, they do not contradict each other. Indeed, the desire to prove oneself, to “break the ranks”, to prove one’s selfhood - primarily with the help of certain theatrical and shocking forms of life - is inherent in man at all times. It is quite clear that the more highly developed a person is and the more the state seeks to reduce him to the level of a “cog,” the stronger the resistance and the more pretentious the “eccentricities” become.

To this we should only add that the educated aristocrats of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. “originality” never went beyond certain limits and did not develop into political radicalism. In the official sphere, these people were quite adequate executors of the will of the monarch. This is exactly what the Decembrist’s father most likely was - a “strange” man, but at the same time an efficient and successful general, a nobleman and a major official.

The “oddities” and “eccentricities” of Grigory Volkonsky were successfully opposed by his wife Alexandra Nikolaevna (1756-1834). Based on materials from the family archive, her great-grandson S. M. Volkonsky stated:

“The daughter of Field Marshal Prince Nikolai Vasilyevich Repnin, a lady of state, chief of three empresses, a cavalry lady of the Order of St. Catherine of the first degree, Princess Alexandra Nikolaevna was of a dry character; for her the forms of life played a significant role; a court lady to the core, she replaced feelings and motivated by considerations of duty and discipline”, “etiquette and discipline, these are the internal, or perhaps better said, external drivers of her actions.”

Possessing worldly experience, practicality, and a rare gift for getting along with kings, she tried to instill these qualities in her children - sons Nikolai, Nikita and Sergei and daughter Sophia. True, she did not always succeed in this.

Only the eldest of her sons, Nikolai Grigorievich (1778-1845), can be considered fully accomplished - by the standards of that time. “Being by name Prince Volkonsky,” in 1801 he received the Highest command to “be called Prince Repnin” - “so that the famous family would not perish.” Like his father, Prince. Repnin spent his entire life in military service: he participated in almost all wars of the early 19th century, in 1813-1814. served as military governor of Saxony. From 1816 to 1835 he was the Little Russian military governor. True, unlike his father, he was not noticed in “oddities” and “eccentricities”.

Nikolai Repnin was known in society as a liberal, famous for his humanity (he, for example, took the initiative in the story of the ransom of actor M. S. Shchepkin from serfdom), and was respected by his contemporaries. He was a recognized authority for the younger generation of the Volkonsky family. “I consider my brother to be my second father, and he knows all my thoughts and all my feelings,” wrote Sergei Volkonsky in 1826, after his conviction.

But Sofya Grigorievna (1785-1868), the Decembrist’s sister, fully inherited her father’s “oddities”. In 1802, she married a close relative, one of the most influential military men of the Alexander era, Prince. Pyotr Mikhailovich Volkonsky. From 1813 to 1823 P. M. Volkonsky - Chief of the Main Staff of the Russian Army; in November 1825, Emperor Alexander I died in his arms in Taganrog. Under Nicholas I, P.M. Volkonsky was appointed minister of the imperial court and appanages, and became a field marshal general. Naturally, under none of the “crowned brothers” did Sofya Volkonskaya need anything.

However, among her contemporaries, Sofya Volkonskaya was famous primarily for her extreme stinginess. According to the family archive, “her stinginess reached monstrous proportions towards the end of her life and reached the point of painful manifestations of kleptomania: lumps of sugar, matches, oranges, pencils were swallowed up in her bag when she was visiting, with a dexterity worthy of a magician.” “In her house on the Moika, she rented out an apartment to her son. The son was away on leave, and she took advantage of this and moved into his rooms herself. Thus, she managed to live the whole winter in her own house in the apartment for which she received.”

At the same time, she was capable of unexpected generosity:

“She scolded the maid for wasting a match to light a candle when she could have lit it on another candle, and at the same time, without hesitation, she gave a poor relative a gift of twenty thousand.”

“Strange” from the point of view of secular norms was the behavior of Nikita Grigorievich (1781-1841), the middle of the three Volkonsky brothers. He spent the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns under the “person” of the emperor, distinguished himself in the “Battle of the Nations” near Leipzig and in the battle for Paris, and was awarded several orders and a golden sword “For Bravery.”

However, a few years after the war, Nikita Volkonsky, Major General of the Suite and Chief Jägermeister, gave up his career. He chose to dissolve in the rays of glory of his own wife, Princess Zinaida Alexandrovna, née Beloselskaya-Belozerskaya (1792-1862) - poetess and artist, singer and hostess of the famous Moscow literary salon, “queen of muses and beauty”, glorified by Pushkin and Baratynsky. Zinaida Volkonskaya was not faithful to her husband: in the world they talked about her numerous love affairs, including with Emperor Alexander I himself. But despite this, Nikita Volkonsky followed his wife everywhere. Since 1820, he was listed as “on indefinite leave,” and at the end of the 1820s. Following her, he left Russia forever and went to Italy. Apparently, he did not maintain relationships with members of his family.

Apparently, in Italy Nikita Volkonsky converted to Catholicism. He died in the Italian city of Assise; a few years later, Zinaida Volkonskaya reburied his ashes in one of the Catholic churches in Rome.

The first stages of the book's life. Sergei Volkonsky, the youngest child in the family, is very similar to the biographies of his father and older brothers.

In 1796, at the age of 8, he was enlisted as a sergeant in the army, but was considered on leave “until the end of his course of science” and actually began serving in 1805. His first rank in active service was lieutenant in the Cavalry Regiment, the most privileged regiment Russian guard. Sergei Volkonsky took part in the war with France of 1806-1807; His baptism of fire was the battle of Pułtusk.

“From the first day I got used to the smell of enemy gunpowder, to the whistle of cannonballs, buckshot and bullets, to the shine of attacking bayonets and blades of white weapons, I got used to everything that occurs in combat life, so that subsequently neither danger nor work bothered me.” .,” he recalled later.

For his participation in this battle, he received his first order - St. Vladimir, 4th degree with a bow. His service record was supplemented by the battles of Yankov and Hoffa, Lanzberg and Preussisch-Eylau, Welsberg and Friedland. Participated in the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812; stormed Shumla and Rushchuk, besieged Silistria. For some time he served as adjutant to M.I. Kutuzov, Commander-in-Chief of the Moldavian Army. Since September 1811, Volkonsky has been the emperor's aide-de-camp.

Since the beginning of the Patriotic War of 1812, he has been an active participant and one of the organizers of the partisan movement. He spent the first period of the war as part of the “flying corps” of Lieutenant General F. F. Wintsengerode - the first partisan detachment in Russia.

This detachment was subsequently undeservedly forgotten. In public opinion and historiography, General Wintzengerode had to cede the laurels of the creator of the first partisan detachment to D.V. Davydov. However, in 1997, an order from the Minister of War M.B. Barclay de Tolly, dated July 1812 and addressed to Wintzingerode, was published on the creation of a “flying corps.” It was created to “exterminate” “all enemy parties” in order to “take prisoners and find out who exactly and in what number the enemy is coming, revealing as much as possible about him.” The detachment was supposed to "operate in the rear of the French army on its communication line." Under Winzengerod, Captain Volkonsky served as duty officer.

A few months later, after the French left Moscow, Sergei Volkonsky was appointed commander of an independent partisan unit, with whom he “opened... communication between the main army and the corps of cavalry general Wittgenstein.” The troops of General P.H. Wittgenstein covered the direction of the enemy army to St. Petersburg, but after the French abandoned Moscow, the threat of occupying the capital of the empire disappeared. Wittgenstein's actions now had to be coordinated with the actions of the main forces - and Volkonsky successfully coped with this task. In addition, over several weeks of separate actions, Volkonsky’s detachment captured “one general, ... 17 staff and chief officers and about 700 or 800 lower ranks.”

During foreign campaigns, Volkonsky’s detachment again united with the Winzengerode corps and began to act together with the main forces of the Russian army. Volkonsky distinguished himself in the battles of Kalisz and Lutzen, while crossing the Elbe, in the “Battle of the Nations” near Leipzig, and in the assault on Kassel and Soissons. Having started the war as a captain, he ended it as a major general and holder of four Russian and five foreign orders, the owner of an award gold weapon and two medals in memory of the Patriotic War of 1812.

Contemporaries recalled: after returning from the war to the capital, Sergei Volkonsky did not take off his raincoat in public places. At the same time, he “modestly” said: “The sun hides its rays in the clouds” - his chest burned with orders. “Having arrived as one of the first to return from the army after a brilliant service career, for from the rank of captain of the guards for a little over two years I was already a general with a ribbon and all hung with crosses, and I can say without boasting, with obvious merits, in high society I was received cordially , I’ll even say excellent,” he wrote in his memoirs. The St. Petersburg society admired him, his parents were proud. His father respectfully called him in letters “our hero, Prince Sergei Grigorievich.” Dizzying career opportunities opened up for the young general.

But Sergei Volkonsky’s career was not limited only to participation in hostilities. There are many oddities in Volkonsky’s military biography. Shortly before the end of the war, he, a major general in the Russian service, voluntarily left the army and went to St. Petersburg. After returning from the army to the capital, he, again without permission, without taking leave and without retiring, went abroad, as he himself writes, as a “tourist.” He witnesses the opening of the Congress of Vienna, visits Paris, then goes to London. However, it is unlikely that he could move around Europe so freely while on active service. Apparently, at the same time he carried out some secret tasks of the Russian command. Information has also been preserved about what kind of these tasks they were. The strangest episode of his travel abroad dates back to March 1815 - the time of Napoleonic's famous "Hundred Days".

The news of Napoleon's return to France finds Volkonsky in London. According to his memoirs, upon learning that the “damn doll” had “landed in France,” he immediately asked the Russian ambassador in London, Count Lieven, to give him a passport to travel to France. The ambassador refused, saying that a general in the Russian service had nothing to do in a country occupied by the enemy. and reported this strange request to Emperor Alexander I. The Emperor ordered Lieven to release Volkonsky to Paris.

Volkonsky spent only a few days in Paris, occupied by Napoleon - on March 18, 1815 he arrived there, and on March 31 he returned to London. These dates are established from his letter to P. D. Kiselev, sent from London on March 31.

Little is known about what Volkonsky did in Paris during the Hundred Days. He himself very carefully mentions his notes that for the second time in Paris he was no longer as a “tourist”, but as an “official,” and that on his trip he was supplied with money received from his brother-in-law, Prince. P. M. Volkonsky, then chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army. It is also known that his stay in the enemy capital did not go unnoticed by Russian society; Voices even began to be heard that he had gone over to Napoleon's side. In a letter to his friend Kiselev, he was forced to justify himself: “I do not take into account the opinion of those who judge me, without having the right to do so and without hearing my justification,” “for me, as lawyers, all the Russians who were with me in Paris."

Sources contain information that the main task that Volkonsky carried out in Paris was the evacuation of Russian officers who did not have time to leave for their homeland and remained, as it were, captive of Napoleon. In “Notes,” Volkonsky names four: three chief officers and the later famous court physician Nicholas Arendt, who remained in France with the sick and wounded Russian military and therefore did not have time to leave the city.

It should be noted that it was unlikely that these people stayed in Paris by chance - otherwise the Russian command would not have sent a Russian major general, a close relative of the chief of the General Staff, to the city occupied by the enemy. Most likely, they also carried out special tasks in the French capital - and if exposed, they were in danger of big trouble.

In other words, after the end of the war, General Volkonsky acquired experience in carrying out “secret assignments” by “secret methods.” And this experience later turned out to be invaluable for the Decembrist Volkonsky.

Despite his brilliant military career, Sergei Volkonsky “remained in family memory as a man not of this world.” Volkonsky’s private behavior in the pre-war, war and post-war years seemed no less, if not more “strange” to his contemporaries than the behavior of his father. At the same time, for Volkonsky himself, such behavior was very organic: in his later memoirs, the description of these “oddities” is given almost more space than the description of famous battles.

In everyday life, Sergei Volkonsky implemented a very specific type of behavior, called “hussar” by his contemporaries. This type also fell into Pylyaev’s “classification”:

“The distinctive character trait, spirit and tone of the cavalry officers - no matter whether they were young people or old men - were daring and youth. The motto and guidance in life were three old sayings: “you can’t avoid two deaths, you can’t avoid one,” the last penny is on the edge ", "life is a penny - the head is nothing!" These people, both in war and in peace, sought dangers in order to distinguish themselves by fearlessness and daring.”

According to Pylyaev, the cavalry officers were especially distinguished by their “daring”.

And if the “eccentricities” of Grigory Volkonsky were, in general, peaceful and harmless to others, then the “joys” of his youngest son posed a significant social danger. Sergei Volkonsky - quite in the spirit of Pylyaev - admitted in his memoirs that he himself and the social circle to which he belonged were characterized by a “general tendency to drunkenness, to a riotous life, to youth.”

The lifestyle of the young reckless officer was, according to the same memoirs, as follows:

“Daily manege exercises, frequent squadron and occasionally regimental reviews, shift parades, a little rest in single-family life; walking along the embankment or along the boulevard from 3 to 4 hours; lunch with the general gang in a tavern, always sprinkled over the edge with wine... by the gang to the theatre".

The way of thinking was not much different from the way of life: “Forgotten books did not leave the shelves.”

Volkonsky recalled how, during the years of his life in St. Petersburg, he and another future Decembrist M. S. Lunin (who, by the way, was among Pylyaev’s “eccentrics”) “lived on the Black River together. In addition to the hut we occupied, on the bank of the Black River opposite our premises there was a tent in which there were two live bears on a chain, and we had nine dogs, the cohabitation of these animals, which frightened all passers-by and passers-by, worried them a lot and frightened them all the more because one of the dogs was trained according to a word quietly spoken to her: “Bonaparte” - to rush at a passerby and tear off his cap or hat. We often amused ourselves with this, to the extreme displeasure of passers-by, and our bears frightened passers-by."

It should be noted that, according to Pylyaev, the Black River was a favorite place for cavalry guard “fun” - and St. Petersburg townsfolk tried to avoid this area. During the wars of the early 19th century. Volkonsky did not abandon his “pleasures”: in 1810, the prince was even expelled from the Moldavian army for his behavior.

Neither the Patriotic War, nor foreign campaigns, nor even receiving the rank of general forced Volkonsky to abandon his “violent” behavior. Arriving in France after the end of the war, he incurred huge debts - and left without paying off his Parisian creditors and merchants. The French applied to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and personally to Emperor Alexander I to repay the debt. Volkonsky was wanted in Russia and abroad, he evaded payment in every possible way - and all this gave rise to a large amount of official correspondence.

As a result, his mother was forced to pay her son's debts. And Volkonsky, a major general and war hero, not without some pride, reported in 1819 to the army authorities that the payment of his debts was “taken into her care” by his “mother”, “the State Lady of the Palace of Their Imperial Majesties, Princess Alexandra Nikolaevna Volkonskaya” . Subsequently, his mother regularly paid his debts.

At the end of the 1810s. The military career of Sergei Volkonsky, which had begun so brilliantly, abruptly slowed down. Until his arrest in 1826, he was not promoted to the next rank; he was bypassed when distributing positions.

According to the service record, from 1816 to 1818 Sergei Volkonsky was the commander of the 1st brigade of the 2nd Ulan division. When this brigade was disbanded in August 1818, the prince was not given a new brigade - he was “appointed to serve under the divisional commander of the same division.” In November 1819, his brother-in-law, P. M. Volkonsky, asked the sovereign to appoint him “chief of the Cuirassier regiment,” but received a “decisive refusal.”

The reason for the prince’s career failures, according to most researchers, is that even then he showed signs of “freethinking.” N.F. Karash and A.3. Tikhantovskaya sees the background of the imperial “displeasure” in something else: in the fact that Volkonsky “was not forgiven for being in France during Napoleon’s return from Elba.” (However, as noted above, Volkonsky most likely carried out a special assignment from the command there). Volkonsky was also “not forgiven” for the fact that in Paris - after the Bourbon restoration - he tried to intercede for Colonel Labedoyer, who was the first to go over with his regiment to Napoleon’s side and was sentenced to death for this.

However, Volkonsky discovered “freethinking” later, while the events in France, of which he was a witness and participant, took place much earlier. It seems that in this case the reason for the tsar’s anger at the general should be sought elsewhere.

Sergei Volkonsky was well known to both Alexander I and his associates: the tsar called his aide-de-camp “Monsieur Serge” - “unlike other members” of the Volkonsky family - and closely monitored his service. However, the emperor clearly did not like the “hussarism” and “pranks” of “Monsieur Serge” and his friends: Volkonsky describes in his memoirs how after one of the “pranks” the sovereign did not want to greet him and his fellow cavalry guards, how “he was very dry” with him after his expulsion from the Moldavian army.

Obviously, the emperor expected that the major general would settle down after the war, but this did not happen. “In the old years, not only did the young cornet play pranks, but there were cavalrymen who did not stop playing pranks even in the ranks of generals,” Pylyaev quite rightly notes. Most likely, the prince’s career failures were a consequence of this.

At the end of the same 1819, the life of Sergei Volkonsky changed dramatically: he joined the Union of Welfare. Offended by the emperor for his own failures in service, he did not accept the position of “consistent” under the divisional commander and went on indefinite leave, intending to visit abroad again.

Having accidentally found himself in Kyiv at the annual winter contract fair, he met his old friend Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov there. Orlov, a major general and chief of staff of the 4th Infantry Corps, had long been a member of a secret society, and his Kiev apartment was a meeting place for people of liberal beliefs and those simply dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs.

What Volkonsky saw and heard in Orlov’s apartment struck the imagination of the “guards naughty man.” It turned out that there was a “different track of actions and beliefs” than the one on which he had walked until that time:

“I realized that devotion to the fatherland should take me out of the stuffy and colorless life of a zealot for shagism and servile courtiership,” “from that time a new life began for me, I entered into it with a proud sense of conviction and duty, no longer a loyal subject, but a citizen and with firm intention to fulfill my duty at all costs solely out of love for the fatherland"

A few months after visiting Orlov’s apartment, Volkonsky ended up in Tulchin, at the headquarters of the 2nd Army. There he met Pavel Pestel. “Common dreams, common beliefs soon brought me closer to this man and harmed the close friendly relationship between us, which resulted in my joining a secret society founded several years before,” Volkonsky wrote in his memoirs.

Formally, Volkonsky was accepted into the secret society by Major General M.I. Fonvizin. In his testimony at the investigation, Sergei Volkonsky claimed that his first liberal ideas arose in 1813, when he marched as part of the Russian army through Germany and communicated “with various private individuals of the places where he was.” Then these thoughts were strengthened in him in 1814 and 1815, when he visited London and Paris. This time his social circle included Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, and members of the English opposition.

Of course, the prince was right: in post-war Europe, liberal ideas were so widespread that few young Russian officers did not sympathize with them. Sympathy for these ideas is evident, for example, in Volkonsky’s post-war letters to P. D. Kiselev. In a letter dated March 31, 1815, describing Napoleonic “Hundred Days,” he notes:

“The doctrine that Bonaparte preaches is the doctrine of the constituent assembly; let him only keep what he promises, and he will be established forever on his throne.” “Bonaparte, who became the head of the Jacobin party, is much stronger than is supposed; only after Once they are well prepared, you can start a war, which will be waged against him with persistence, because you will see that if there is a war, it must become a people’s war.”

However, from general discussions about the Bourbons, Bonaparte and the fate of world history, it is very far from a revolutionary way of thinking and, even more so, a way of action. In addition, as can be seen from the same letter, the main “liberal” for the future Decembrist in 1815 was Emperor Alexander I:

“The liberal ideas that he proclaims and which he seeks to establish in his states should make him respect and love him as a sovereign and as a person.”

And there are no documents indicating that by 1819 Volkonsky’s opinion about the “liberalism” of the Russian monarch had changed.

Most likely, it was not liberal ideas that led Volkonsky to the conspiracy. By the beginning of the 1820s. “hussar behavior,” which Volkonsky valued very much in the early stages of his career, became widespread - and from “eccentricity” it turned into a behavioral cliche, almost the norm. Subsequently, Volkonsky claimed that his life before the conspiracy was completely colorless and was no different from the life of most of his “colleagues, peers: a lot of empty things, nothing practical.” In the secret society, Volkonsky found a different way, in the words of Yu. M. Lotman, “to find his destiny, to break ranks, to realize his own personality.” This method, much more dangerous than “daring and valor,” was more worthy for a true son of the Fatherland.

“My entry into the secret society was received cordially by other members, and from then on I became a zealous member of it, and I will say in all honesty that in my own eyes I realized that I had entered the noble path of civil activity,” Volkonsky will write in his memoirs .

From the beginning of 1820, a dramatic change took place in Volkonsky. He ceases to be a “scamp” and a “rake”, abandons the idea of ​​traveling abroad, and, having received the 1st Brigade of the 19th Infantry Division of the 2nd Army under his command in 1821, he meekly accepts a new assignment. The prince leaves for his place of duty - in the remote Ukrainian city of Uman. Now Volkonsky’s pride is not hurt even by the obvious fact that the appointment to command an infantry brigade is a clear career demotion. Service in the cavalry and, accordingly, in the lancers was more prestigious than in the infantry. And in 1823, according to Volkonsky’s memoirs, Emperor Alexander I already expressed “pleasure” that “Monsieur Serge” had “settled down” and “left the bad path.”

Changes are also taking place in the personal life of Sergei Volkonsky. Traditional secular love of women is giving way to serious feelings. In 1824, Volkonsky proposed to Maria Nikolaevna Raevskaya, the daughter of the famous general, hero of 1812. Volkonsky asked Mikhail Orlov, who by that time was already married to Raevsky’s eldest daughter, Ekaterina, to “intercede” for him with the bride’s parents. At the same time, the prince, in his own words, “positively expressed to Orlov that if my relations and participation in a secret society, known to him, were an obstacle to obtaining the hand of the one from whom I asked consent to this, then, although with a reluctant heart, I would rather refuse this happiness, rather than betray my political convictions and duty for the benefit of the fatherland."

General Raevsky thought for several months, but in the end agreed to the marriage.

The wedding took place on January 11, 1825 in Kyiv; The groom's father was his brother Nikolai Repnin, and the best man was Pavel Pestel. Subsequently, Repnin will claim: an hour before the wedding, Volkonsky suddenly left - and “was away for no more than a quarter of an hour.”

Repnin was sure: on the wedding day, his brother, under pressure from Pestel, “signed” loyalty to the ideas of the “gang of the Southern Union.”

However, modern researchers are not inclined to believe in the existence of such a subscription: for Pestel, of course, the honest word of a friend would have been enough. The legend according to which Raevsky obtained from his son-in-law the exact opposite subscription - that he would leave the secret society - is also not credible. Apparently, for Volkonsky it would really be easier to give up personal happiness than to sacrifice his hard-won selfhood.

Having entered into a conspiracy, Major General Sergei Volkonsky, who by that time was already 31 years old, completely fell under the charm and power of the adjutant of the commander-in-chief of the 2nd Army P.H. Wittgenstein, 26-year-old captain Pavel Pestel. At the time of his acquaintance with Volkonsky, Pestel was the head of the Tulchinsky administration of the Union of Welfare, and since 1821 he was the recognized leader of the Southern Society, the chairman of the Directory that led the society. Together with Pestel, Volkonsky begins to prepare a military revolution in Russia.

Meanwhile, while actively participating in the conspiracy, Volkonsky did not have any “personal views.” If the revolution had won, the prince himself would have gained nothing from it. In the new Russian republic, of course, he would never have achieved supreme power, would have been neither a military dictator nor a democratic president. He could count on a military career: becoming a full general, commander-in-chief, governor-general or, for example, minister of war. However, he could achieve all these positions without any conspiracy and the associated mortal risk, simply by patiently “serving in the sovereign’s service.”

Moreover, if the revolution had won, Volkonsky would have lost a lot. The prince was a large landowner: at the time of his arrest in 1826, he was the owner of 10 thousand dessiatines. land in Tauride province; no less, if not more, land belonged to him in the Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl provinces. There were more than 2 thousand serf “souls” on his Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl estates. His mother and brothers also owned large fortunes. According to the agrarian project of Pestel's "Russian Truth", the duty of the new government was to take away "half the land without any retribution" from landowners with more than 10 thousand dessiatines. In addition, after the revolution, all peasants, including those belonging to the participants in the conspiracy, would become free.

All this did not stop Volkonsky. And although no political texts written before 1826 by the prince’s hand have survived, we can safely say that his views turned out to be very radical. In the secret society, Volkonsky was known as an unambiguous and tough supporter of “Russian Truth” (including its agrarian project), radical reforms and the republic. With his active assistance, “Russian Truth” was approved by the Southern Society as a program. Despite his personal sympathy for Emperor Alexander I, which did not fade over the years, Volkonsky also shared “intentions at the start of the revolution... to encroach on the life of the Sovereign Emperor and all persons of the august family.”

Unlike many of the main participants in the conspiracy, Prince. Volkonsky did not suffer from a “Napoleon complex” and did not imagine himself as an independent political leader. Having entered into a conspiracy, he immediately recognized Pestel as his unconditional and only boss. And he turned out to be one of the closest and most devoted friends of the Chairman of the Directory - even despite the fact that Pestel was much younger than him in both age and rank, and had much more modest military experience. Decembrist N.V. Basargin argued during the investigation that Pestel “took possession” of Volkonsky “by advantage of his abilities.”

In 1826, the Investigative Commission easily found out what Volkonsky was doing in the conspiracy. The prince negotiated joint actions with the Northern Society (at the end of 1823, at the beginning of 1824 and in October 1824) and with the Polish Patriotic Society (1825). True, these negotiations ended in failure: the southern conspirators failed to reach an agreement with either the Northern or the Polish Patriotic Societies.

In 1824, on behalf of Pestel, Volkonsky traveled to the Caucasus, trying to find out whether a secret society existed in the corps of General A.P. Ermolov. In the Caucasus, he met the famous raider Captain A.I. Yakubovich, who had recently been transferred from the guard to the active army. Yakubovich convinced the prince that the society really existed - and Volkonsky even wrote a written report about his trip to the southern Directory. But, as it turned out later, the information received from Yakubovich turned out to be a bluff.

The prince, together with V.L. Davydov, headed the Kamensk council of the Southern Society, but this council was distinguished by its inactivity. Volkonsky participated in most of the meetings of the conspiracy leaders, but all these meetings had no practical significance. During the investigation, the prince admitted: the majority of participants in the Southern Society were confident that it was he who had the “greatest means” to start a revolution in Russia. Indeed, under Volkonsky’s command there was a real military force - and a considerable force. In the summer of 1825, when the commander of the 19th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General P. D. Kornilov, went on a long vacation, Volkonsky began performing the duties of a division general - and performed them until his arrest in early January 1826. But in December 1825 This division remained in its quarters.

However, Volkonsky had a range of responsibilities in the secret society, in which he was much more successful. The Investigative Commission did not pay much attention to this activity, but it was precisely this activity that mainly determined the prince’s role in the Decembrist conspiracy.

There is a fragment in the Prince's Notes that always baffles commentators:

“Among my comrades in the adjutant wing was Alexander Khristoforovich Benkendorf, and from that time we were at first quite acquainted, and later in close friendship. Benkendorf then returned from Paris at the embassy and, as a thinking and impressionable person, saw what kind of gendarmerie in France. He believed that on an honest basis, by electing honest, intelligent people, the introduction of this branch of spying could be useful for both the Tsar and the Fatherland, he prepared a project for drawing up this administration, invited us, many of his comrades, to join this cohort. , as he called, good-thinking people, and I was among them. The project was presented, but not approved. Alexander Khristoforovich implemented this idea upon the accession of Nicholas to the throne, in full conviction that I am sure that its actions will be to protect against oppression. , for protection in time from errors. His pure soul, his bright mind had this in mind, and then, as an exile, I must say that throughout my exile, the blue uniform was not for us the faces of persecutors, but people protecting us too. , and everyone from persecution."

The events described here can presumably be attributed to 1811 - it was then that Sergei Volkonsky became the aide-de-camp of Alexander I. Information about exactly what project Benckendorff submitted to the Tsar in the early 1810s has not survived. Benckendorff's later project on the creation of a secret police, dating back to 1821, is known. However, it is unlikely that Volkonsky is confusing the dates in this case: from the beginning of 1821, he served in Uman and during this period he could not personally communicate with Benckendorff, who served in the capital.

Historians have tried to comment on this fragment of Volkonsky’s memoirs in different ways. For example, M. Lemke argued that the reason for such an enthusiastic review was that after 1826 Benckendorff provided his convict friend with “minor services,” while he could have caused “major troubles.” Modern commentators on this fragment draw a different conclusion: Volkonsky, having been sent to hard labor, retained memories of Benckendorff, his colleague in the partisan detachment, a brave officer, and did not know “what changes the position of his comrade in arms had undergone.”

However, it is difficult to agree with such statements: almost the entire conscious, including the Decembrist, life of Sergei Volkonsky refutes these statements. Book Volkonsky was and remained a staunch supporter of not only the secret police in general, but also their methods of work in particular. This was greatly facilitated, on the one hand, by the experience of participating in partisan actions, which, of course, were impossible without “secret” methods of work. This was also facilitated by the “secret orders” of the Russian command, which Volkonsky had to carry out.

In the secret society, Volkonsky had a fairly clearly defined range of responsibilities. Under Pestel, he was something like the chief of the secret police, ensuring primarily the internal security of the conspiracy.

In 1826, Volkonsky’s fate was greatly complicated by the fact that, as stated in the verdict, he “used a counterfeit seal of the field auditor.” This point in the sentence was the most difficult for his family and friends to come to terms with. “What tormented me most was that I read in the printed verdict that my husband had forged a false seal in order to open government papers,” Princess M.N. Volkonskaya wrote in her memoirs. Maria Volkonskaya can be understood: after all, a conspiracy is a noble, albeit criminal, matter; The purpose of the conspiracy is the benefit of Russia, understood in a unique way. And a general, a prince, a descendant of Rurik, forging state seals - this in the minds of his contemporaries did not fit in with the image of a noble conspirator.

However, in 1824, Volkonsky actually used a fake seal when opening the correspondence of army officials. “This seal... of the chairman of the Field Auditorium was made by me in 1824,” the prince testified during the investigation. This seal was used at least once: in the same year, Volkonsky opened a letter from the head of the Field Auditorium of the 2nd Army, General Volkov, to Kiselev, then a major general and chief of army staff. In the letter, he wanted to find information concerning M.F. Orlov, who had just been removed from his post as commander of the 16th Infantry Division, and his subordinate, Major V.F. Raevsky. The “case” of Orlov and Raevsky, participants in the conspiracy, who were engaged, in particular, in promoting revolutionary ideas among soldiers, could lead to the disclosure of the entire secret society.

Volkonsky followed not only government correspondence. In the same year, the prince opened a letter from his comrades in the conspiracy, the leaders of the Vasilkovsky council S.I. Muravyov-Apostol and M.P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, to members of the Polish Patriotic Society. Muravyov and Bestuzhev, on behalf of the Directory of the Southern Society, began negotiations with the Poles about joint actions in the event of the outbreak of a revolution.

In September 1824, Muravyov and Bestuzhev, eager for immediate revolutionary activity, wrote a letter to the Poles asking them to eliminate Tsarevich Konstantin Pavlovich in the event of the outbreak of the Russian revolution. And they tried to convey the letter to the Poles through Volkonsky. “I took this letter, but not to hand it over,” Volkonsky testified. “Prince Volkonsky, having read this paper and consulted with Vasily Davydov, instead of giving this paper... presented it to the Directory of the Southern Region. The Directory destroyed this paper, stopped Bestuzhev’s relations with the Poles and handed them over to me and Prince Volkonsky,” - Pestel argued during the investigation.

Naturally, Volkonsky’s personal relations with Muravyov-Apostol and Bestuzhev-Ryumin were severed. During the investigation, Volkonsky testified that “for some time now he has ceased to have faith in the words of the heads of the Vasilkovsky council.”

At the end of 1825 - beginning of 1826, Sergei Muravyov led an uprising of the Chernigov regiment. To have at least a minimal chance of victory, the leader of the rebellion needed the support of other military units, those where the participants in the conspiracy served. However, he did not even try to turn to General Volkonsky, who commanded the division, for help.

For the purposes of the secret society, Prince. Volkonsky also used his family and friendly connections with the army authorities, with the highest military and civilian figures of the empire. And there were many of these connections: it is unlikely that any other conspirator could boast of such a representative “social circle.” Volkonsky had been friends with the chief of staff of the 2nd Army, Major General Kiselev, since his youth; friendship, as already mentioned, connected Volkonsky with Lieutenant General A.H. Benckendorf, then chief of staff of the Guards Corps. The “mentor” and patron of the conspirator was his brother-in-law P. M. Volkonsky. “Close acquaintance” connected Volkonsky with Lieutenant General I. O. Witt, the head of the southern military settlements, in 1825 a well-known informer on the Decembrists. Volkonsky was well known to all members of the imperial family.

According to the prince’s memoirs, in 1823, during the Highest Review of the 2nd Army, he received a “cautionary hint” from Emperor Alexander I - that “much was known in the secret society.” Pleased with the condition of Volkonsky’s brigade, Alexander praised the prince for his “work.” At the same time, the monarch added that it would be “much more profitable” for “Monsieur Serge” to continue to deal with his brigade than to “manage” the Russian Empire.”

In the summer of 1825, when the first denunciations against the southern conspirators appeared and the threat of discovery loomed over the secret society, Volkonsky received a similar “warning” from one of his closest friends, the chief of army staff P. D. Kiselev. Kiselev then said to Volkonsky: “It’s in vain that you got entangled in a bad matter, I advise you to remove the pin from the game.”

In November 1825, Volkonsky learned about the serious illness and subsequent death of Alexander I several days earlier than the highest ranks in the 2nd Army and the capitals. Already on November 13, 1825, 6 days before the death of the emperor, he knew that the position of Alexander I was almost hopeless; Couriers from Taganrog passing through Uman to St. Petersburg informed him about this. It should be noted that the couriers, of course, did not have the right to disclose this information. However, Sergei Volkonsky's brother-in-law, P. M. Volkonsky, who by that time had already been removed from the post of Chief of the General Staff, but had not lost the trust of the emperor, was one of those who accompanied Alexander I on his last journey and was present at his illness and death. Apparently, this is precisely what should explain the strange “talkativeness” of secret couriers.

On November 15, Volkonsky told P.D. Kiselev about this - and subsequently a special investigation was even organized on this matter. When the tsar died, Volkonsky informed Kiselev that he had sent “an official located at the division headquarters, a young man, efficient and modest, under the guise of inspecting training teams in the 37th regiment, to travel the entire distance between Merchant and Bogopol and, if he learns something remarkable, about then I should come with a notification." A fragment of Volkonsky’s letter eloquently testifies: the prince also had his own secret agents in the army.

Naturally, Volkonsky shared this information with Pestel, his immediate superior in the secret society. Back in the summer of 1825, Pestel came to the conclusion that it was necessary to start the revolution as soon as possible. In the second half of November, the chairman of the Directory begins preparations for decisive action: he tries to agree on a joint speech with S.I. Muravyov-Apostol, gives the order to hide “Russian Truth” for the time being. During these same anxious days, Volkonsky compiled a special code for correspondence with Pestel. It is not known for sure whether this cipher was used.

November 29, 1825 Pestel, together with Volkonsky, draws up the “1 January” plan, well known in historiography, for the immediate revolutionary action of Southern society. According to him, the uprising was started by the Vyatka regiment, commanded by Pestel. Arriving at the army headquarters in Tulchin on January 1, 1826, the Vyatka people should have first of all arrested the army leadership. Then an order had to be given to the army for an immediate advance and movement towards St. Petersburg. Naturally, in this regard, Volkonsky was assigned one of the central roles. The 19th Infantry Division became the striking force of the future campaign. S. N. Chernov’s assumption that Volkonsky could have been offered overall command of the rebel army is not without foundation.

However, this plan was not implemented: two weeks before the expected speech, Pestel was arrested. Volkonsky was not ready for independent actions in the conspiracy - and therefore refused the opportunity to raise his own division in rebellion and forcefully release the chairman of the southern Directory from arrest.

On January 14 of the same year, Prince. Volkonsky was brought to St. Petersburg and brought for questioning to the new Emperor Nicholas I. “Sergei Volkonsky is a complete fool, as we all have known for a long time, a liar and a scoundrel in the full sense, and here he showed himself to be the same. Without answering to anything, he stood as if stupefied, “He was the most disgusting example of an ungrateful villain and a stupid person,” - this is how the emperor characterized the prince following the results of this interrogation.

Of course, Nicholas I was very irritated by the events of late 1825 - early 1826. - and this irritation remained in him even after many years. However, there was also a certain amount of truth in the king’s words. From the very beginning to the end of the investigation, Volkonsky successfully played the role of a “fool” and martinet.

According to M.I. Pylyaev, the peculiar “code” of the Russian “military rake” included frankness during interrogation: “The culprits confessed at the first request... it was a shame to lie.” Outwardly, during the investigation, the prince behaved completely in accordance with this code. “I have the honor to present the sincere and without any eclipse of the truth answers I made,” “I am ready for any additional information and would like to protect myself from criticism of denial - and earn trust in my testimony, thereby wanting to give a sense of the extent of my guilt,” - such or Many of Volkonsky’s answers to written questions from the investigation begin with similar words.

At the same time, Volkonsky wanted to take as much blame as possible. “I attribute the rooting of these (liberal - O.K.) thoughts in my mind... to the conviction of my own mind... Having adopted the above-stated way of thinking in those years when a person began to be guided by his own mind, and continuing my participation in them with various changes thirteen years - I cannot attribute blame to anyone - except myself, and I was not guided by anyone’s suggestions, and, perhaps, I should bear responsibility for the dissemination of them,” - this is how Volkonsky answered the clichéd question about the origin of his own “liberal” thoughts.

However, Volkonsky could not take on everything: he was not the main character in Southern society; he simply did not know about many things, especially those relating to the early periods of the conspiracy. And most of his testimony is a mockery of the Investigative Commission skillfully disguised as “frankness.” Thus, during one of the first interrogations, on January 25, 1826, Volkonsky, as the chairman of the Kamensk administration, was asked about the nature of the conspirators’ hopes for military settlements, supposedly prepared for a revolutionary uprising. To this question, Volkonsky gave the following answer: “From these inquiry points I learn that I was one of the managers of the Kamensk separate government, and I can also assure that I did not receive instructions from anyone to act on the settled troops.”

They also asked Volkonsky whether he had managed to discover a secret society in the Caucasus. He answered, in particular, that from the Caucasus he took out from the Caucasus “a map of explanations compiled by Yakubovich on one sheet of the Caucasian and Trans-Kuban regions, with the designation of the old and new lines and with a brief statement about all the peoples living in that region,” as well as a “general map” of Georgia with “some topographical corrections.”

From the answer to the same question, the investigation learned that “in the French dialect” the prince “actually by hand (sic!)” wrote “some... remarks about the Caucasus region and thoughts... about the best way to bring these peoples to education ".

During the same interrogation on January 25, investigators asked: “What were the main features of the constitution under the name “Russian Truth”, written by Pestel?..”

To this, the prince answered without a shadow of a doubt that “the work under the name of “Russian Truth”” was “never communicated to him, neither in writing, for preservation or transmission, nor by reading or oral explanation...”. At the next interrogation, in February 1826, he would confirm his words: “I have no information about the meaning of the composition of “Russian Truth” - nor who wrote it.”

The investigators were surprised and did not believe the prince: they had a lot of testimony about the friendship and commonality of thoughts of Pestel and Volkonsky. And at the beginning of March 1826, the prisoner again received a question about the contents of “Russian Truth”.

Only the third time did Volkonsky finally “remember” the essence of Pestel’s ideas. In his presentation they looked like this:

“The main features of these were that at the start of the revolution by armed force, in St. Petersburg and the Southern government at the same time, to begin by establishing a temporary government in the capital and promulgating the abdication of the highest persons from the throne, convening representatives to determine the type of government, and, finally , both now and subsequently, in order to explain through conversations and the influence of members of society that the best model of government is the United American States, with the abolition so that private government would be the same across regions, and would not be divided into different types according to provinces... If the above explanations contained what was known to the committee under the work of “Russian Truth”, then I was aware of that; but as I believed, this work contained a complete summary of the details of what was meant in the question points, i.e. That is, according to the Constitution of the so-called “Russian Truth” (sic!), I had the right to claim that this work was unknown to me.”

Naturally, this presentation had little in common with Russkaya Pravda. Pestel, in particular, did not intend to convene any “representatives to determine the type of government” after the victory of the revolution; he did not plan to give post-revolutionary Russia a form of government similar to the North American States.

All these verbose testimonies, written, moreover, with a huge number of spelling errors, made a difficult impression on the investigators. They tried to frighten the prince: on January 27, the “Highest Resolution” was announced to him, that if he does not show the true and complete truth in his answers, he will be chained.

And Volkonsky “promised to open everything with sincerity and conscience.” Unless, of course, his memory fails him - since “it is difficult to suddenly remember the circumstances that happened within five years, with annual changes in them.”

However, to subsequent questions he again answers verbosely, indistinctly, illiterately - and often not at all about what he is asked about. It should be noted that neither the texts written by Volkonsky before 1826, nor his Siberian letters, nor memoirs give the impression of mediocre graphomania. Contemporaries who knew Volkonsky remembered him as a man of clear mind and good memory.

The life of Sergei Volkonsky after the verdict is the topic of a separate study. Here I will allow myself only a few comments that complement the idea of ​​the personality and character of the Decembrist.

In July 1826, S. G. Volkonsky, deprived of ranks, orders and nobility, was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor (in August of the same year the hard labor term was reduced to 15, then to 10 years) with subsequent settlement in Siberia. Neither his mother, the court lady, nor numerous influential relatives could do anything to alleviate his fate. Almost until the very end of the investigation, they did not know whether the emperor would spare the life of the criminal general.

According to the diary of Alina Volkonskaya, the Decembrist’s niece and the daughter of his sister Sophia, on July 13, the day the verdict was announced, Sergei Volkonsky’s mother “cried a lot... hardly slept.” She even planned to go to Siberia after her son. But, according to the grandson of the Decembrist S. M. Volkonsky,

"It was a hysterical outburst, or perhaps a simple outpouring of words. Going to visit her son in the fortress was much easier than going to Siberia; however, the old princess refrained from doing so. She wrote to her son that she was afraid for her strength, and did not want him either subject to such shock." In addition, according to Alina’s diary, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna “begged” the Decembrist’s mother to “take care of herself.”

Among the “comforters” of the old princess was not only Empress Maria, but also Emperor Nicholas I. “The Emperor asked his grandmother to console herself, not to mix family matters with business affairs - one will not interfere with the other,” we read in Alina’s diary.

Of course, the relatives were shocked by the cruel sentence against Sergei Volkonsky. However, they all fulfilled the Highest command - and were quickly consoled. Moreover, on the occasion of the coronation, Alexandra Nikolaevna Volkonskaya received the diamond insignia of the Order of St. Catherine. Her sons also received awards: Prince. Repnin became a holder of the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky with diamonds, and Nikita Volkonsky, who is on “indefinite leave,” became a holder of the Order of St. Anne, 1st degree.

Rumors circulated for a long time that “Princess Volkonskaya... allowed her son to be sent to hard labor in cold blood and even danced with the sovereign himself the day after the sentence.” However, there were other judgments: the lady of state “decided not to leave her position at court, so as not to irritate the emperor, and hoped, while remaining with him, to seize an opportune moment to ask for the forgiveness of the culprit.”

The only one of the entire large Volkonsky family who allowed herself to publicly disagree with the verdict was Princess Zinaida. According to intelligence data received by the III Department in the summer of 1826, in her Moscow salon she “spewed” “evil abuse” at “the government and its servants” - and was simply ready to “tear the government apart.” Maria Volkonskaya went straight from her salon to Siberia - and her farewell was in the nature of a demonstrative expression of disloyalty to the authorities. Soon Zinaida Volkonskaya converted to Catholicism; In many ways, this step was also a manifestation of political disloyalty. Unlike many other family members, Zinaida Volkonskaya constantly wrote letters to her convicted relative that “burned with affection and greetings.” As a result, secret police surveillance was established over Zinaida Volkonskaya, which, however, did not extend to her husband Nikita. At the end of the 1820s. she was simply forced to leave Russia.

Sergei Volkonsky himself took the verdict calmly. According to his future comrade in Siberian exile A.E. Rosen, at the time of the ceremony of civil execution the prince was “especially cheerful and talkative.” Apparently, the former general had little idea of ​​what awaited him. 10 days after the verdict was announced, he was already sent to the place where he would serve his sentence. He fully realized everything that had happened only after arriving at hard labor: first at the Nikolaev salt plant, and then at the Blagodatsky mine, which was part of the Nerchinsk mining plant.

The conditions in which Volkonsky found himself in hard labor were truly difficult. Moreover, for the Decembrists - young, healthy men, former officers - it was not the work in the mine itself that was difficult. It’s just that the life of the convicts was organized in such a way as to completely destroy their human dignity. According to S.N. Chernov, local prison authorities, who received general instructions from the emperor about the maintenance of prisoners, embroidered “cruel patterns according to the authorities’ outline.”

According to documents, state criminals who ended up in the Blagodatsky mine were under constant surveillance; they were forbidden to communicate not only with each other, but also with anyone other than the prison guards. Almost all their belongings, money and books brought from St. Petersburg were taken away from them; they were not even allowed to have a Bible with them. The convicts were “put to work” along with other convicts, and at the same time they were strictly watched “so that they behaved modestly, were obedient to the guards assigned to them and did not deviate from work under the pretext of illness.”

The ore bailiff kept a special secret diary, where he “noted... in great detail how the criminals carried out the work, what they said while doing it,... what kind of character he showed, whether he was obedient to the authorities placed over him and what the state of his health was.” . Twice a day, before and after “employment,” a “proper search” of the criminals was carried out. From the barracks to the mine and back they moved with a special escort - a “reliable” non-commissioned officer and two privates. Convicts could leave their cells only if accompanied by a sentry with a fixed bayonet.

“Since my arrival in this place, I have been subjected without exception to the work specified in the mines, I spend my days in painful exercises, and my hours of rest are spent in a cramped dwelling, and I am always under the strongest supervision, the measures of which are stricter than during my imprisonment in the fortress , and therefore you can imagine what needs I endure and what a cramped position I am in in all respects"; “Physical labor cannot make me despondent, but heartbreak, of course, will soon destroy my mortal body,” Volkonsky wrote to his wife from the Blagodatsky mine.

The hard labor immediately undermined the health and psyche of the state criminal: Volkonsky began to experience deep depression, accompanied by an acute nervous breakdown. His “vigor” and “talkativeness” quickly passed away, and there was no desire to stand out from the general mass of convicts. “When performing work, he was obedient, showed a quiet character, did not say anything contrary, was often thoughtful and sad,” - this is how the prison authorities characterized the convict.

“Masha, visit me before I go to my grave, let me look at you at least one more time, let me pour out all the feelings of my soul into your heart.”

These lines from his letter eloquently testify: it was the hope that his wife would soon arrive in Siberia that made it possible for Volkonsky to survive the first terrible months of hard labor.

Maria Volkonskaya became the wife of Sergei Grigorievich at the age of 19, before the wedding she practically did not know her future husband and agreed to the marriage only at the insistence of her father. After the wedding, the Volkonskys almost did not live together: the affairs of the service and the secret society forced the prince to leave his wife for a long time.

In January 1826, 5 days before Volkonsky's arrest, his wife gave birth to a son, Nikolai. The birth was difficult, and her relatives, fearing for her health, hid from her for a long time the truth about the situation in which her husband suddenly found himself. However, having learned the truth, Maria Volkonskaya decided to share hard labor and exile with her husband. And, despite the protests of her father and mother, in November 1826 she was already in the Blagodatsky mine. When she arrived, he felt better, but only for a while. Soon after her arrival, Maria Volkonskaya informed her husband’s family that “he is nervous and powerless to the extreme,” “his nerves have been completely upset lately, and the improvement that I was so happy about was only short-term,” he expresses “complete submission” and “concentration in yourself," "a feeling of religious repentance."

According to S. N. Chernov, “the painful experiences of the unfortunate Volkonsky take on a religious connotation. He could seek solace in religion, in a conversation with a priest, in a church service. But it is here that he apparently cannot get anything.” The position of a prison chaplain in the Blagodatsky mine was most likely simply not provided for.

By September 1827, Volkonsky’s illness worsened, and the prison authorities drew attention to it. He was found "the thinnest of all and rather weak." When transferred to a new place of hard labor, in the Chita prison, he was allowed to take two bottles of wine and a bottle of vodka with him on the road. Alcohol on the way was supposed to replace medicine, since during the move “there will be no medical help in case of need for medicine.”

On September 29, 1827, Volkonsky and his comrades arrived at a new place of hard labor - the Chita prison. The regime for keeping prisoners here was much more humane. The prison authorities turned out to be “more liberal”: prisoners were even allowed daily meetings with their wives. The prisoner's health quickly recovered, and with it his old habits and character traits were restored. “I cannot complain about his health..., as for his mood, it is difficult, one might say almost impossible, to find in anyone such clarity of spirit as his,” M. N. Volkonskaya wrote to his relatives. There was a small vegetable garden in the courtyard of the prison - and Volkonsky first became interested in gardening.

In Petrovsky Zavod, the new prison where the Decembrists were transferred from Chita in September 1830, there was no hard labor as such: criminals were not forced to go to work, those who had families could live in the prison with their wives. The Volkonskys had two children at the Petrovsky plant - a son, Mikhail, and a daughter, Elena.

Here Volkonsky was still engaged in “agriculture”. And even before his prison sentence expired, the fame of the extraordinary vegetables and fruits that he grew in his greenhouses began to spread throughout Siberia.

In 1834, Volkonsky's mother died. After her death, a letter was found in her papers with a dying request to the emperor to forgive her son. A royal decree followed to release Volkonsky from hard labor; For another 2 years he lived in Petrovsky Zavod as an exiled settler.

In the spring of 1837, the Volkonsky family moved to the village of Urik, Irkutsk province. Maria Nikolaevna is seeking permission to live in Irkutsk in order to be able to teach her son Mikhail at the Irkutsk gymnasium. In 1845, Volkonsky himself received permission to live in Irkutsk, but he practically did not use this right. He still lives in Urik, only occasionally visiting his family in Irkutsk. He now has a completely different life - a “farmer” and a merchant.

It is obvious that as the life of state criminals in hard labor and settlements became normalized, relations in the Volkonsky family worsened.

Contemporaries and historians are unanimous in the fact that, having shared the exile of her husband, Maria Volkonskaya accomplished a “feat of selfless love.” Having abandoned her parents and child, who died 2 years later, “she decided to fulfill that duty, that duty that required more sacrifice, more selflessness,” wrote the Decembrist Rosen.

Zinaida Volkonskaya dedicated a famous prose poem to her relative, which, in particular, contained the following lines: “Oh, you who came to rest in my home, you whom I knew for only three days and called my friend!.. You have eyes. ", hair, complexion like that of a maiden born on the banks of the Ganges, and, like her, your life is marked by duty and sacrifice."

And a contemporary who remained unknown, a witness to Maria Volkonskaya’s departure to Siberia from the Moscow salon of Zinaida Volkonskaya, noted that the future exile herself saw in herself “a deity, a guardian angel and a comforter” for her husband. And she doomed herself to sacrifice in the name of her husband “like Christ for people.”

But, as her grandson, S. M. Volkonsky aptly noted, “where the princess was actually going, what she was dooming herself to, no one knew, least of all she herself. And yet she rode with some kind of delight... And only in Nerchinsk, eight thousand miles from her home, did she see where she had come and what she had doomed herself to, and the surrounding desert gradually took possession of her soul.”

Finding out the details of Maria Volkonskaya’s personal life in Siberia is as thankless as it is hopeless. Research opinions on this matter are divided, and it is unlikely that identifying the truth in this matter is so important for a historian of the Decembrist movement. The son of the Decembrist Yakushkin, Evgeniy, who visited Siberia in 1855, noted that the marriage of the Volkonskys, “due to completely different characters, was supposed to subsequently cause a lot of grief to Volkonsky and lead to the drama that is now playing out in their family.”

“There are a lot of unfavorable rumors about Maria Nikolaevna about her life in Siberia,” notes Evgeny Yakushkin, “they say that even her son and daughter are not Volkonsky’s children... All the children’s affection was focused on the mother, and the mother looked with some kind of disdain on her husband, which, of course, had an impact on the children’s attitude towards him.”

In 1850, the question arose about the marriage of the Volkonskys’ 15-year-old daughter Elena. Volkonsky did not like her fiancé, the Siberian official D.V. Molchanov; he spoke out strongly against this marriage. But “Maria Nikolaevna... told her husband’s friends that if he did not agree, then she would explain to him that he had no right to prohibit, because he was not the father of her daughter. Although it didn’t come to that, the old man finally gave in." The fate of Elena Volkonskaya ultimately turned out to be broken: Molchanov was put under investigation for financial abuse, then became seriously ill and soon died.

Sergei Volkonsky's lifestyle in the settlement did not at all correspond to the lifestyle of his wife. After finishing his prison sentence, he received a large plot of land, and devoted all his energy to cultivating it. A contemporary recalls:

“Having arrived in Siberia, he somehow abruptly broke ties with his brilliant and noble past, transformed into a busy and practical owner and just became simpler, as they usually call it today. Although he was friendly with his comrades, he was rarely in their circle , but mostly made friends with the peasants; in the summer he spent whole days working in the fields, and in the winter his favorite pastime in the city was visiting the bazaar, where he met many friends among the suburban peasants and loved to have a friendly conversation with them about their needs and the progress of the economy." .

Volkonskaya “was a completely secular lady, she loved society and entertainment and managed to make her home the main center of Irkutsk social life.” In the secular society surrounding Volkonskaya, her husband very quickly acquired a reputation as an “eccentric” and an “original”: “The townspeople who knew him were quite shocked when, walking through the market on Sunday from mass, they saw the prince, perched on the beam of a peasant’s cart with piled up bread bags , carries on a lively conversation with the men who surrounded him, having breakfast with him on the spot with a crust of gray wheat bread. “Volkonsky often appeared in his wife’s salon, stained with tar or with scraps of hay on his dress and with his thick beard perfumed with the aromas of a barnyard or similar non-salon odors. ", "in general, in society he represented an original phenomenon, although he was very educated."

By the end of his stay in Siberia, the exiled settler Sergei Volkonsky, through his own labor, had collected a decent fortune - and again managed to “find his destiny, get out of line, realize his own personality.”

And in August 1855, when news of the death of Nicholas I reached Siberia, Maria Volkonskaya left Irkutsk. He leaves because, apparently, the spouses’ coexistence is simply becoming impossible. A few days after her departure, the new Emperor Alexander II issued a manifesto in which he announced a pardon for the surviving Decembrists. In September 1856, having given up “farming”, Sergei Volkonsky also left Siberia.

After returning from Siberia, Volkonsky lives mainly in Moscow, with his daughter, and travels abroad several times with “the highest permission.” He closely follows political news; his particular interest is in the preparation of peasant reform. Now he places all his hopes in this “holy cause” on the new Tsar - Alexander II. “The Tsar and the Tsar are the only way out for this holy cause, the liberation of landowner peasants from serfdom,” he writes in “A Note on Serfdom,” compiled in the late 1850s. At the same time, he begins to write his memoirs, which, however, he does not have time to finish.

Volkonsky did not agree with many provisions of the peasant reform - in particular, he was categorically not satisfied with the liberation of peasants without land. However, he accepted the very fact of the abolition of serfdom in 1861 with delight and tears. “The fact that in their (Decembrists - O.K.) time was secret has now become obvious,” writes the grandson of the Decembrist S. M. Volkonsky.

Sergei Volkonsky died on November 28, 1865, outliving his wife by 2 years. Until the last days of his life, according to his son Mikhail, he retained “an extraordinary memory, witty speech, an ardent attitude towards issues of domestic and foreign policy and participation in everything close to him.”



The pseudonym under which the politician Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov writes. ... In 1907 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the 2nd State Duma in St. Petersburg.

Alyabyev, Alexander Alexandrovich, Russian amateur composer. ... A.'s romances reflected the spirit of the times. As then-Russian literature, they are sentimental, sometimes corny. Most of them are written in a minor key. They are almost no different from Glinka’s first romances, but the latter has stepped far forward, while A. remained in place and is now outdated.

The filthy Idolishche (Odolishche) is an epic hero...

Pedrillo (Pietro-Mira Pedrillo) is a famous jester, a Neapolitan, who at the beginning of the reign of Anna Ioannovna arrived in St. Petersburg to sing the roles of buffa and play the violin in the Italian court opera.

Dahl, Vladimir Ivanovich
His numerous stories suffer from a lack of real artistic creativity, deep feeling and a broad view of the people and life. Dahl did not go further than everyday pictures, anecdotes caught on the fly, told in a unique language, smartly, vividly, with a certain humor, sometimes falling into mannerism and jokeiness.

Varlamov, Alexander Egorovich
Varlamov, apparently, did not work at all on the theory of musical composition and was left with the meager knowledge that he could have learned from the chapel, which in those days did not at all care about the general musical development of its students.

Nekrasov Nikolay Alekseevich
None of our great poets has so many poems that are downright bad from all points of view; He himself bequeathed many poems not to be included in the collected works. Nekrasov is not consistent even in his masterpieces: and suddenly prosaic, listless verse hurts the ear.

Gorky, Maxim
By his origin, Gorky by no means belongs to those dregs of society, of which he appeared as a singer in literature.

Zhikharev Stepan Petrovich
His tragedy “Artaban” did not see either print or stage, since, in the opinion of Prince Shakhovsky and the frank review of the author himself, it was a mixture of nonsense and nonsense.

Sherwood-Verny Ivan Vasilievich
“Sherwood,” writes one contemporary, “in society, even in St. Petersburg, was not called anything other than bad Sherwood... his comrades in military service shunned him and called him by the dog name “Fidelka.”

Obolyaninov Petr Khrisanfovich
...Field Marshal Kamensky publicly called him “a state thief, a bribe-taker, a complete fool.”

Popular biographies

Peter I Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich Catherine II Romanovs Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Lomonosov Mikhail Vasilievich Alexander III Suvorov Alexander Vasilievich

(1742-1824) - cavalry general, Orenburg Governor-General, member of the State Council. Born in Moscow in his father’s house on Volkhonka on December 8 (20), 1788, two days after the Russian troops captured the Turkish fortress of Ochakov. He enlisted as a sergeant in the Kherson Grenadier Regiment on June 1, 1796, and after several “transfers” to different regiments, he was appointed captain in the Ekaterinoslav Cuirassier Regiment in December 1797. He spent his adolescence in the privileged Jesuit boarding house of Abbot Nicolas, where only children from noble families were accepted to study. He began active service on December 28, 1805 as a lieutenant in the Cavalry Guard Regiment.

In the fall of 1806, during the beginning of the second war between Russia and the French on the side of the Fourth Coalition, he was assigned as an adjutant to the retinue of the Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal M.F. Kamensky, with whom he soon arrived at the theater of military operations in Prussia. However, after a few days, the young prince was left without a place, since the old general, not wanting to fight Napoleon, voluntarily left the troops entrusted to him. This happened on December 13 (25), 1806. On the same day, he was taken under his wing - also as an adjutant - by Lieutenant General Alexander Ivanovich Osterman-Tolstoy, under whose command the next day - December 14 (26), 1806 - he received baptism of fire in the Battle of Pultusk. Then, during the battle, the Russians managed to successfully fight off the enemy. Interestingly, exactly 19 years later, on the same day, the Decembrist uprising took place on Senate Square in St. Petersburg.

Patriotic War

In 1812, he was under Emperor Alexander I, with the rank of aide-de-camp, from the opening of hostilities until the emperor’s return to the capital; was in actual battles, in the 2nd Western Army, at Mogilev and Dashkovka; in the detachment of Adjutant General Baron F.F. Wintzingerode (dates according to the old style): July 28, near Porechye; August 1, at Usvyat; 7 - at Vitebsk; 31 - in the battle near Zvenigorod and September 2, on the river. Moscow, near the village. Orlov; On October 2, under the city of Dmitrov, and for his distinction in this battle, he was awarded the rank of colonel. On August 14, while in the flying detachment of Adjutant General Golenishchev-Kutuzov, he was in actual battles: when crossing the river. I scream, in the battle of Dukhovshchina and near Smolensk, from where he was sent with a partisan detachment, he acted between Orsha and Tolochin and opened communication between the main army and the corps of Count Wittgenstein, took many prisoners, including General Corsen; was also involved in crossing the enemy across the river. 

In 1813, he corrected the position of duty officer in the corps of Baron Wintzingerode, was with him on a foreign campaign and was in actual battles: on February 2, near Kalisz, where he was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th class; April 16 and 18, in avant-garde affairs near the city of Weinsenfelsk, April 20 - in the general battle of Lutzen; was during the retreat from the city of Lutsen until the Russian troops crossed the river. Elba, for which he was awarded the Order of St. Anne, 2nd degree, decorated with diamonds, and the Prussian Order “Pour-le-Mérite”, and for distinction in the battles of Gross-Beeren and Dennewitz he was promoted to major general on September 15. He distinguished himself near Leipzig and was awarded the Order of St. Anne, 1st class, and the Austrian Order of Leopold, 2nd class. He fought in France in 1814 and was awarded the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle, 2nd class, for his distinction at Laon. In 1816 he was appointed brigade commander of the 2nd Lancer Division, and in 1821 he was transferred to brigade commander of the 19th Infantry Division.

Achievement list

• June 1, 1796 - assigned to serve as a sergeant in the Kherson Grenadier Regiment.
• July 10, 1796 - transferred as a staff fourier to the headquarters of Field Marshal Count Suvorov-Rymniksky.
• August 1, 1796 - adjutant in the Aleksopolsky infantry regiment.
• September 10, 1796 - regimental quartermaster in the Staroingermanladsky Musketeer Regiment;
• January 31, 1797 - renamed captain.
• November 15, 1797 - transferred to the Rostov Dragoon Regiment.
• December 15, 1797 - transferred, still as a captain, to the Ekaterinoslav Cuirassier Regiment.
• December 28, 1805 - transferred to the Cavalry Regiment with the renaming of captains and lieutenants.
• December 11, 1808 - promoted to headquarters captain.
• September 6, 1810 - appointed aide-de-camp to His Imperial Majesty.
• October 18, 1811 - promoted to captain.
• September 6, 1812 - for distinction rendered in the campaign of 1812, he was promoted to colonel.
• September 15, 1813 - for the distinction rendered in the campaign of 1813, he was promoted to major general and remained in the retinue of His Imperial Majesty.
• 1816 - appointed commander of the 1st brigade of the 2nd Uhlan division.
• April 20, 1818 - transferred as brigade commander to the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Hussar Division.
• August 5, 1818 - appointed to serve under the divisional commander of the 2nd Hussar Division.
• January 14, 1821 - appointed commander of the 1st Brigade of the 19th Infantry Division.
• July 18, 1826 - by the highest order he was excluded from the lists as sentenced to death, instead of which it was ordered, deprived of ranks and nobility, to be exiled to hard labor for 20 years, and then to a settlement.

The trips included:

• 1806 - against the French in Old Prussia, correcting the post of adjutant under Field Marshal Count Kamensky; of the same year, in December, being in this rank under Count Osterman-Tolstoy, he was in battles: December 12, near Nasielsk, 13 - near Strekochin, 14 - in the general battle of Pultusk, where he received the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class, with a bow;
• 1807 - in the same position he was in actual battles: January 21 and 22, at Yankov; 25 - in the rearguard action under Gough and Landsberg; 26 and 27 - in the general battle of Presisch-Eylau, where he was wounded by a bullet in the side and awarded a gold insignia established for this battle; in the same year, while holding the post of adjutant to the commander-in-chief of the foreign army, Baron Bennigsen, he was in battle: May 24, at the village. Wolfsdorf, 25 - at ss. Deppen and Ankendorf, 29 - in the general battle of Heilsberg and June 2, in the general battle of Friedland; awarded a golden sword with the inscription “for bravery”;
• 1810 - while under the commander-in-chief of the Transdanubian Army, Count Kamensky 2, he crossed the Danube and was in battles against the Turks: while under Count Lanzheron, from May 24 to 30, he was during the taxation, bombardment and conquest of the territory. Silistria; under the commander-in-chief of the Transdanubian Army, June 112 and 12, near the city of Shumla and in many other matters at this fortress, as well as in a separate detachment of Lieutenant General Voinov in an expedition to the Balkan Mountains, in the battle of Eski-Istanbul; under the commander-in-chief - from July 9, during the blockade and siege of the region. Rushchuk; On August 26, in a general battle near the village. Batina and again during the siege of the city. Rushchuk until September 8, 1810;
• 1811 - with the rank of aide-de-camp to His Imperial Majesty, he was under the commander-in-chief of the Transdanubian Army, Infantry General Golenishchev-Kutuzov; was in actual battles: August 26 and 27, September 7, 10, 17, 23 and 25, at the village. Mala Slabodzee; October 1, in the corps of Lieutenant General Markov, while crossing the Danube and October 2, in the battle during the occupation of the vizier’s camp;
• 1812 - during the Patriotic War, he was with the Emperor, in the rank of His Majesty's adjutant, from the opening of hostilities until His Majesty's return to the capital; was in actual battles, in the 2nd Western Army, at Mogilny and Dashkovka; in the detachment of Lieutenant General Wintzingerode: July 28, near Porechye; August 1, at Usvyat; 7 - at Vitebsk; 31 - near the city of Zvenigorod and September 2, on the river. Moscow, near the village. Orlov; On October 2, under the city of Dmitrov and for his distinction in this battle, he was awarded the rank of colonel; On August 14, while in the flying detachment of Adjutant General Golenishchev-Kutuzov, he was in actual battle: when crossing the river. Vopl, in the battle of Dukhovshchina and near Smolensk, from where he was sent to a partisan detachment, acted between Orsha and Tolochin, and opened communications between the main army and Wittgenstein’s corps; was also involved in crossing the enemy across the river. Berezina and in pursuit of him from Lepel to Vilna;
• 1813 - corrected the position of duty officer in the corps of Count Wittgenstein, was with him on a foreign campaign and was in actual battles: February 2, near Kalisz, where he was awarded the Order of St. George 4th class; April 16 and 18, in avant-garde affairs under the city of Weissenfeulier; 20 - in the general battle of Lutzen; was during the retreat from the city of Lutsen until the Russian troops crossed the river. Elba, for which he was awarded the Order of St. Anne, 2nd class, decorated with diamonds, and the Prussian Order of Merit; the same year, during the truce, with the entry of Russian troops, under the command of Baron Wintzingerode, as part of the army of Northern Germany, led by the Swedish Crown Prince Karl-John, he held the post of duty officer in the corps of the Russian imperial troops and was in actual battle: August 11, in a general battle 5 versts from Berlin, near the village of Gross-Berene; 24 - when knocking out the enemy from a fortified camp near the city of Wittenberg; 25 - in the general battle of Dennewitz; 26 and 27 - while pursuing the enemy to the village of Torgau, for which he was awarded the rank of major general and the Swedish Order of the Military Sword, in his buttonhole; October 5, 6 and 7, in the general battle of Leipzig, where he was awarded the Order of St. Anne 1st class. and the commander's cross of the Austrian Order of Leopold; then he participated in the pursuit of the enemy from Leipzig to the city of Kassel and from there to the city of Bremen, and then was on a campaign to the Rhine;
• 1814 - January 12, was in battle while crossing the river. Rhine near Dusseldorf; February 2, during the assault and conquest of Soissons; 22 - in the battle of Craon; 25 and 26 - in the battle of Laon, where he was awarded the Order of the Prussian Red Eagle;
• 1815 - was on a trip abroad.

Decembrist

In the first quarter of the 19th century, Volkonsky occupied a mansion on the embankment of the Moika River, 12. The only general in active service who took direct part in the Decembrist movement. In 1819 he joined the “Union of Welfare”, in 1821 - the Southern Society. From 1823, he headed the Kamensk administration of this society and was an active participant in the Decembrist movement. On January 5, 1826, he was arrested in the case of the uprising of the Chernigov infantry regiment, brought to St. Petersburg and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Convicted of the 1st category, deprived of ranks and nobility. On June 10, 1826, he was sentenced to “cut off his head,” but by the Highest Confirmation of July 10, 1826, the death sentence was commuted to 20 years of hard labor in Siberia (on August 22, 1826, the term was reduced to 15 years, in 1832 - to 10) . The portrait of Volkonsky, executed from life in 1823, by order of Nicholas I, was excluded from those intended for placement in the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace and only many years later, already at the beginning of the 20th century, took its rightful place in it.

Siberia

He served hard labor at the Blagodatsky mine, in the Chitinsky prison, and at the Petrovsky Plant. In 1837, at a settlement in the village of Urik near Irkutsk. Since 1845 he lived with his family in Irkutsk. This is what Nikolai Belogolovy recalled about him:

Old Volkonsky - he was already about 60 years old at that time - was known in Irkutsk as a great original. Once in Siberia, he somehow abruptly broke with his brilliant and noble past, transformed into a busy and practical owner and simply became simpler, as it is commonly called today. Although he was friendly with his comrades, he was rarely in their circle, and was more friendly with the peasants; in the summer he spent whole days working in the fields, and in the winter his favorite pastime in the city was visiting the bazaar, where he met many friends among the suburban peasants and loved to chat with them from heart to heart about their needs and the progress of the economy. The townspeople who knew him were quite shocked when, walking through the market on Sunday from mass, they saw how the prince, perched on the beam of a peasant cart with piled up bread bags, was having a lively conversation with the peasants who surrounded him, having breakfast right there with them on a piece of gray wheat bread.

In the estate of the Decembrist Volkonsky in Irkutsk (Volkonsky Lane, 10) in 1970 it was opened

Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky

S.G. Volkonsky. Portrait sent
Vladimir Leonidovich Chernyshev, associate professor of NTU “KhPI”, Kharkov.

Volkonsky Sergei Grigorievich (1788-1865) participant in the war with the rank of colonel; Decembrist: was a member of the “Southern Society”, a Freemason; on December 14, 1925 he was a major general. By court verdict, he was deprived of ranks and nobility, served a sentence in Siberia - 20 years of hard labor; from August 1836 on the settlement.

Married, had two children. Volkonsky Sergei Grigorievich (1788 - 1865, village of Voronki, Chernigov province) - Decembrist. He came from an old princely family. He received his education at home and in the private boarding school of Abbot Nicolas in St. Petersburg. Enlisted in the army in 1796. In active service, Volkonsky since 1805. Distinguished himself during the war against Napoleonic army in 1806 - 1807 and in the Turkish campaign of 1810-1811, receiving a golden sword for bravery and becoming an aide-de-camp of Alexander I. Participated in the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns of 1813 - 1815, was promoted to major general and awarded many orders. A member of several Masonic lodges, a wealthy landowner and owner of more than 20 thousand peasants, who had a brilliant military career, Volkonsky joined the Union of Welfare in 1820, and in 1821 became a member of the Southern Society. Supporter of "Russian Truth", Volkonsky "agreed both to the introduction of republican rule and to the extermination of all members of the imperial family." But under various pretexts he refused to take decisive action: he did not arrest Alexander I in 1823 during a review in Bobruisk and did not raise the division he commanded to revolt in 1825. Much later, in “Notes,” Volkonsky explained that, in his opinion, Russia must be placed “in terms of citizenship on a level with Europe and contribute to its rebirth, similar to the great truths expressed at the beginning of the French Revolution, but without the hobbies that plunged France into the abyss of anarchy." He was convicted in the first category, but the death penalty was replaced by 20 years of hard labor, subsequently reduced to 9 years.

In Siberia, he organized material support for poor comrades and made friends with local peasants, providing them with medical and other assistance. In 1856 he was amnestied, came to Moscow, traveled abroad several times, and then settled on his estate. The author of Notes, remarkable for their historical and cultural value, Volkonsky retained his democratic convictions about the need for civil freedom in Russia until the end of his life.

Book materials used: Shikman A.P.

Volkonsky Sergei Grigorievich, Decembrist, Major General (1817).

Military He began his service in 1805 in a cavalry regiment. Participant in the campaign of 1806-1807 during the Napoleonic wars, the war with Turkey 1806-12, the Fatherland, the war of 1812 and abroad. Russian hikes troops 1813-14. Participated in more than 50 battles. He particularly distinguished himself at Pultusk (1806), Preussisch-Eylau (1807), Watin (1810) and Kalisz (1813). Since 1820 secret society of the Decembrists - “Union of Welfare”, from 1821 - South. Society of Decembrists. Together with V.L. Davydov he headed the Kamensk administration of Yuzh. about-va. Established connections with Sev. Society of Decembrists. In 1825 he participated in negotiations with representatives of the secret revolutionary Polish society on the development of plans for joint action. After the Decembrist uprising of 1825, he was arrested and sentenced to death, commuted to hard labor. In 1827, his wife Maria Volkonskaya, daughter of the hero of the Fatherland, the war of 1812, voluntarily went to the place of hard labor. from the cavalry of H. N. Raevsky. In 1856 V. returned from Siberia. Until the end of his life he remained faithful to revolutionary views. He sharply criticized the reforms of the 60s. for their half-heartedness.

He approved of the views of A.I. Herzen and N.P. Ogarev, whom he met in the late 50s - early. 60s Abroad. Materials from the Soviet Military Encyclopedia in 8 volumes, volume 2 were used.
Father - member of the State Council, cavalry general Prince. Grigory Semenovich Volkonsky (25.1.1742 - 17.7.1824), mother - kzh. Alexandra Nikolaevna Repnina (25.4.1756 - 23.12.1834) daughter of Field Marshal Prince. N.V. rub. debt, in addition, he owned 10 thousand acres of land in the Tauride province and a farm near Odessa.

VOLKONSKY

Sergei Grigorievich, Prince. (12/8/1788 - 11/28/1865). Major General, commander of the 1st Brigade of the 19th Infantry Division of the 2nd Army.

Member of the Welfare Union (1819) and the Southern Society, from 1823 he headed together with V.L.

Sent in chains to Siberia - 7/23/1826 (signs: height 2 arshins 8 1/4 vershoks, “clean face, gray eyes, oblong face and nose, dark brown hair on head and eyebrows, light beard, has a mustache, medium-sized body, right leg in the shin has a wound from a bullet, wears false teeth with one natural front upper tooth"), the term was reduced to 15 years - 8/22/1826, delivered to Irkutsk - 8/29/1826, soon sent to the Nikolaev Distillery, returned from there to Irkutsk - 6.10, sent to the Blagodatsky mine - 8.10, arrived there - 10.25.1826, sent to the Chita prison - 20.9.1827, arrived there - 29.9, arrived at the Petrovsky plant in September 1830, the term was reduced to 10 years - 8.11.1832. At the request of his mother, he was released from hard labor and sent to settle in the Petrovsky plant - 1835; the highest decree allowed him to be transferred to live in the village. Urik, Irkutsk province - 2.8.1836. where he arrived - 26.3.1837, in 1845 he finally moved to Irkutsk. According to the amnesty on August 26, 1856, the nobility was returned to him and his children and allowed to return to European Russia, the children were given the princely title - August 30, left Irkutsk - September 23, 1856. The place of residence was determined to be the village of Zykovo, Moscow district, but he lived almost constantly in Moscow, from October 1858 to August 1859, in 1860-1861, from 1864 abroad, from the spring of 1865 he lived in the village. Funnels of the Kozeletsky district of the Chernigov province, where he died and was buried with his wife.

Brothers: Nikolai Grigorievich Repnin-Volkonsky (1778 - 1845), general of the cavalry, with the highest permission, added the name of his grandfather, Field Marshal N.V., to his surname. Repin, who left no heirs in the male line, in 1826 the Little Russian military governor, Nikita (1781 - 1841), retinue major general, sister Sophia (1785 - 1868), married to the Minister of the Court and Appanages, Prince. P.M. Volkonsky.

VD, X, 95-180; GARF, f. 109, 1 exp., 1826, d. 61, part 55.

Materials used from Anna Samal's website "Virtual Encyclopedia of the Decembrists" - http://decemb.hobby.ru/

ON THE. Bestuzhev. S.G. Volkonsky with his wife in the cell,
allocated to them in Petrovskaya prison. 1830

Memoirs of a contemporary

Old Volkonsky - he was already about 60 years old at that time - was known in Irkutsk as a great original. Once in Siberia, he somehow abruptly broke ties with his brilliant and noble past, transformed into a busy and practical owner, and simply became simpler, as it is commonly called today. Although he was friendly with his comrades, he was rarely in their circle, and was more friendly with the peasants; in the summer he spent whole days working in the fields, and in the winter his favorite pastime in the city was visiting the bazaar, where he met many friends among the suburban peasants and loved to chat with them from heart to heart about their needs and the progress of the economy. The townspeople who knew him were quite shocked when, walking through the market on Sunday from mass, they saw how the prince, perched on the beam of a peasant's cart with piled up bags of bread, was having a lively conversation with the peasants who surrounded him, having breakfast right there with them on a piece of gray wheat bread. When the family moved to the city and occupied a large two-story house, which later always housed governors, the old prince, gravitating more towards the village, lived permanently in Urik and only visited the family from time to time, but even here - the lordly luxury of the house was not so was in harmony with his tastes and inclinations - he did not stay in the house itself, but set aside a room for himself somewhere in the yard - and his own room looked more like a pantry, because various junk and all sorts of agricultural supplies were lying in great disorder in it ; It also could not boast of being particularly clean, because the prince’s guests, again, were most often peasants, and the floors constantly bore traces of dirty boots. Volkonsky often appeared in his wife’s salon, stained with tar or with scraps of hay on his dress and in his thick beard, perfumed with barnyard aromas or similar non-salon odors. In general, in society he represented an original phenomenon, although he was very educated, spoke French, like a Frenchman, greatly grading, he was very kind and with us children, always sweet and affectionate; There was a rumor in the city that he was very stingy. Since I will hardly have to return further to old Volkonsky, here, by the way, I will tell you my last meeting with him, which took place several years after the amnesty, in 1861 or 1862. I was already a doctor then and lived in Moscow, passing my doctor’s exam; One day I receive a note from Volkonsky asking me to visit him. Returning to Russia after the amnesty, traveling and living abroad, meetings with surviving relatives and friends of his youth, and the reverent honor with which he was greeted everywhere for the trials he endured - all this somehow transformed him and made the spiritual decline of this troubled life unusually clear and attractive. He became much more talkative and immediately began to vividly tell me about his impressions and meetings, especially abroad; political issues again occupied him greatly, and it was as if he had abandoned his agricultural passion in Siberia, along with all his surroundings there as an exiled settler.

Belogolovy N.A. From the memories of a Siberian about the Decembrists.

In the book: Russian memoirs. Featured Pages. M., 1990.

Volkonsky Sergei Grigorievich (1788-1865). Participant in the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns of 1813-1814, commander of the infantry division of the 2nd Army, major general, member of the Welfare Union and one of the leaders of the Southern Society. Supporter of the abolition of serfdom and the establishment of a republican system in Russia. Sentenced to 20 years of hard labor in Siberia.

Pushkin's meetings with Volkonsky date back to May 1820 and early 1821 during the poet's visit to Kyiv. They resumed in Odessa. “Pushkin writes Onegin and occupies all his friends with himself and his poems,” Volkonsky reported to P. A. Vyazemsky in June 1824. The Decembrist’s friendly disposition towards the poet can be seen from his letter dated October 18 of the same year, in which he reports Pushkin, who was in Mikhailovsky exile, about the upcoming engagement to M.N. Raevskaya and simultaneously expresses the hope that the poet will choose ancient Novgorod and Pskov as the “subject of his literary creations.”

Volkonsky was instructed by the leadership of the Southern Society to accept Pushkin as a member of the society, but he, “recognizing his great talent, foreseeing his glorious future and not wanting to expose him to the accidents of political punishment, refrained from fulfilling the assignment assigned to him.”

L.A. Chereisky. Contemporaries of Pushkin. Documentary essays. M., 1999, p. 127-128.

Read further:

Essays:

Notes. Ed. 2nd. St. Petersburg, 1902;

Letters to P. D. Kiselev. 1814-1815.- “Katorga and exile”, 1933, book. 2.

Literature:

Decembrist uprising: Materials. M., 1953. T. 10;

Volkonskaya M.N. Notes. Chita, 1960.