But in other spheres of activity the Decembrists were proven to be helpful to the region. Surprisingly but namely for them, the most brilliant specimens of intelligent society, bound some parts of Siberia with success strictly of agricultural nature. Behind many Decembrists, in their pasts, was great economic experience, which was very successfully used in the casemate (resource? Casemate was a room in a wall of a fort from which weapons could be fired from designated places in the fortified wall; also served as a storage place for weapons and more), so in the settlement. So, for example, vegetable gardening, horticulture, floriculture, were substantially developed in the region after the Decembrist’s stay. “In 1829,— relates I. D. Yakushkin,— household manager Pushkin and gardener Küchelbecker were chosen at Rozen’s place. They were both intently engaged in vegetable gardening… All of the harvest was so plentiful that Pushkin, having stored all needed reserves for the casemate, had more opportunity to provide potatoes, beets and the rest for poor residents. Prior to our stay in Chita there were very few vegetable gardens, and those that were there were in the most miserable state.” This is repeated by D. I. Zavalishin, who explains that their stay “in Chita and in Petrovsky Zavod familiarized local residents… with vegetable gardening and with horticulture and floriculture to some extent.” “Before our stay,— he observes,— the number of vegetables used in the region was very limited.”

           To this it is necessary to add other experiments, which were carried out by the Decembrists in the settlement and also yielded significant results. Matvey Murav’ev-Apostol plants potatoes in Viljuisk for the first time, Bechastov “increased the unprecedented cultivation of unfamiliar hemps in the vicinity of Irkutsk.” A. V. Poggio grew cucumbers in Chita first, V. F. Rayevsky did watermelons in Olonka, A. P. Ushnevsky cultivated corn for the first time, V. K. Tuzengauzen set up an orchard in his own home in Yalutorovsky, et cetera.
 

           Together with this, according to the same D. I. Zavalishin, the stay of the Decembrists in Chita and Petrovsky Zavod “developed… improved cattle breeding and poultry farming.” Pershin-Karaksarsky reports that Nicholas Bestuzhev’s initiative pertaining to merino sheep breeding in Selenginsk, “the cultivation of it,— he writes,— went very successfully and would promise complete development if the initiatives of the enterprise would remain in this country longer.”