The Wives and Charity
The Wives
When it comes to the impact of the Decembrists, one of the things engrained in Russian history is the actions of their wives. They serve as a figurehead for their selfless and loyal behavior by leaving their status and home behind to follow their husbands into Siberia. While history rightly praises and remembers them for it, “this act was by no means the first of its kind; after 1825, wives and, indeed, whole families of revolutionaries followed their kin into Siberia regularly”.1 Still, signing your life away is never easy, and the wives of the decembrists made the most of it for themselves and their families.History
In the early years, the Decembrist wives lived separately from the men who had years of hard labor to complete before they were free. Their arrival, however, “destroyed the isolation of the Decembrists, because, unlike their husbands, they retained the right to communicate with family and friends and became voluntary secretaries to prisoners” making life easier on the Decembrists than what it might have been without them.2 This correspondence with family provided benefits in the form of help and gifts abroad. Something dearly needed in their abrupt circumstances. Formerly noblewomen, here, they all lived like peasants and did everything for themselves: farming crops, making their own clothes, “washing floors, mending their husbands' linen and eating only kasha and black bread”.3 Revolutionaries of their time, the wives held strong for their husbands in hopes of amnesty, but when none came, did everything for their children. Not only their children but also the children in the region by helping provide an education through group teaching sessions.Even without doing anything, their presence here as elite women with prisoner’s wife status left an impression. This “completely new type of behavior for women” that was not seen before in Irkutsk came from “higher, refined education” that “put them above all class prejudices”.4 Aside from tending to the home and children, the wives pursued their own interests adding to the culture of the area. Maria Volkonskaya, the wife of Prince Volkonsky, had an indoor garden in their house called the Winter Garden that way it could exist through the harsh Siberian winters, and it still exists today in the Volkonsky House Museum. This was likely because “M. N. Volkonskaya was also attracted to naturalistic observations,” and she would “[collect] Siberian flora herbarium and [pick up] mineralogical collections”.5 Wives such as Madame Trubetskaia worked in giving medical aid to the locals to the betterment of the overall health of the region. They were a voluntary blessing because of their “act of devotion,” and Russian history and its people pride themselves in their behavior as Russian women.6
Legacy
The wives have served as inspiration and role models since their actions during exile as sporting ideal behavior: loyal, selfless, devoted, loving, pure, and hardworking. It is no surprise that they enjoy a lot of fame from a romantic point of view as both writers and historians relish in how the Decembrist wives’ “goal was not personal fulfillment in their daily lives but service to others”.7 Maria Volkonskaya, in particular, has been found to inspire artists because of her status and character. One such artist is the most celebrated poet in Russian history, Alexander Pushkin. Having had a one-side love for her, Pushkin romanticizes her person, someone willing to go against her family and follow her husband no matter what, and develops characters based around that. Famously, she is said to be the inspiration for Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, a woman that refuses her love once reciprocated in order to stay loyal to her husband, and Poltava, a dedication and story which “concerns a young girl who also incurred the displeasure of her family to join the man she loved, a man who was much older than herself and a traitor to his tsar”.8 Oddly enough, “although Kochubey’s youngest daughter was in reality named ‘Motrya’, Pushkin chose to call her ‘Maria’”.9 The dedication in Poltava by Alexander Pushkin is as follows:To you — but can the somber muse’s
Voice ever hope to touch your ear?
And could your modest soul perceive
The aspirations of my heart?
Or will a poet’s dedication,
As once upon a time his love,
Extend to you and lack reply,
To pass you by still unacknowledged?
But recognize, at least, those sounds
That were, at one time, dear to you;
And think, that on our day of parting,
Wherever fickle fate may lead me,
Your melancholy wilderness,
The last I’ll hear of your sweet voice,
Shall be my only treasured idol,
My soul’s one solitary love.10
Clearly, the Decembrist wives contributed in ways to the impact of the Decembrist exiles and the region surrounding Irkutsk of equal importance as their husbands. With everything they gave up for something they were not obligated to do, they embody the true spirit of the legacy.
Charity
It is known that “charity in its various manifestations occupied a huge place in the activities of Decembrists in Siberia”.11 They occupied a significant amount of their free time doing this public service as they know had none of their previous social obligations from when they lived in Moscow. Their charitable behavior also only added to their fame in the region. The Decembrists, named that in Siberia, brought advanced knowledge through education and organized medical treatment and helped the surrounding area do better because of it. Indeed, this group of exiles “were the true benefactors of the whole land” who “helped the poor, treated and gave the sick medicines for their money”.12Education
Being former elites, the Decembrists and their wives had access to a good and thorough education and were a very educated populace despite their current status. This made them the region’s best access to a higher level of learning and chance to become better educated. This made “the Decembrist’s stay in Siberia had an extensive educational impact,” of which they made sure to live “as living examples of everything kind, pure and beautiful and maintain a profoundly thankful memory for these voluntary exiles”.13 For, in Siberia, there were no available institutions beyond a high school level and were hardly any at that level either. If youth wanted to learn, there was no access for them to do so until the Decembrists and their wives were exiled to the Irkutsk area. The Decembrists came to a place where “thirsty for enlightenment, the youth remained without education, contented with only the current literature, constricted by the censorship” and revolutionized it with their abstract thoughts and untamed push for knowledge seeing their current predicament.14 They saw an opportunity, and even if that were not teachers by formality, they tried their best and “responded to this demand and were even in a small way charitable with education and teachers”.15 Some of the exiles went above and beyond to provide education to the surrounding population. One such man is Yakushkin. He was the founder of higher education, and his work as a wonderful teacher was masterful by comparison to anyone else in the area. Most importantly, “he combined his pedagogical activity with works of studies on the region and compiled a textbook of geography as a basic school guide, which was well-developed with local materials” for many students to come after his passing.16 Education would forever improve for the better thanks to their charitable contributions to learning.Medicine
Education was not the only charitable contributions of the Decembrists and their wives. They also created strides in terms of bringing medicine and organized medical distribution to the part of Siberia that they occupied. Their work could not have been more significant and valuable to their new home. The exile may have been a punishment for them, but they made the most of it by rewarding those who lived their with their expertise. Here is a scholar’s words on how important their introduction of organized medicine was:They were just very intent on helping out because that is what they were capable of. The Decembrists, such as Gorbachevsky in Petrovsky, “devoted himself entirely to caring for the local population” and like “ Entaltsev, in Yalutorovsk and Shakhovsky, and in Turuhansk was also engaged in medicine, acquiring for the poor people their medications”.18“Great service was performed by the Decembrists in the field of medicine. Here some of them, indeed, proved indispensable, since in many settlements in Siberia there were no physicians. According to Rozen, Siberia had one doctor to each forty thousand inhabitants at distances of about two hundred and fifty miles apart. Among the Decembrists were several trained doctors, including Dr. Wolf. Others possessing some knowledge of medicine were Mikhail Küchelbecker, Zavalishin, Madame Trubetskaia, Artamon Muraviev, M. Muraviev-Apostol, Naryshkin, and Madame Yushnevskaia. These persons did much to promote or organize medical aid among the natives, the Tunguses and Buriats. Küchelbecker organized a small hospital in his home at Barguzin. The work of these men was highly appreciated not only by the inhabitants of the settlements in which they happened to live, but also by people from neighboring villages”.17
Even beyond education and medicine, the exiles strongly believed in helping the village people in whatever they came to them for. They were representatives of the people in Siberia and of the very spirit of charity. To cite some examples, Puschin and Obolensky went out of their so that “for any man or woman who was a poor peasant they never refused to write a letter to the soldier son, to compose an application, grievance or petition,” and “Raevsky was a continuous and invariable representative and mediator for the peasants before local authorities”.19 Overall, charity done by the Decembrists and their wives was a huge part of their importance and their legacy in Irkutsk to history and the inhabitants who were living there. They may have lost important years of their life away from Moscow and family, but they gave back the years of other people’s lives in return. For that, they have made a large imprint on history in eastern Russia.
1 K. Turton (2010), Keeping It in the Family: Surviving Political Exile, (1870–1917), Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne Des Slavistes, 52(3/4), 391.
2 "Декабристы в Сибири," Отдых на Байкале, туры 2018 - Байкал Профи Тур, Иркутск, http://www.baikalvisa.ru/irkutsk/dekabristy_siberia/.
3 Karen Rosenberg, "To Irkutsk With Love," (The New York Times, February 05, 1984), https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/05/books/to-irkutsk-with-love.html.
4 T A. Перцева, "Влияние декабристов на формирование культурных традиций в Иркутске: причины, природа, последствия," ИЗВЕСТИЯ Иркутского государственного университета, (Серия «История», 11, 2015): 89.
5M. K. Азадовский (1991), Страницы Истории Декабризма, (Иркутск: Восточно-Сибирское Книжное Издательство), 98.
6 Turton, 391.
7 Rosenberg, "To Irkutsk With Love."
8 Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Eugene Onégin & Four Tales from Russias Southern Frontier: A Prisoner in the Caucasus ; The Fountain of Bahchisaráy ; Gypsies ; Poltáva, trans. Roger Clarke, comp. Roger Clarke, (Ware, Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth Editions, 2005): 278.
9 Ibid.
10 Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Poltava, trans. Ivan Eubanks, Pushkin Review 11 (2008): 129-71. < http://www.pushkiniana.org/vol11-newtranslations/22-eubanks-translation11.html>.
11 Азадовский, 86.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 83.
14 Ibid., 82-83.
15 Ibid., 83.
16 Ibid., 96.
17 A. G. Mazour (1967), The first Russian revolution 1825: The Decembrist Movement. Its origin, development, and significance, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
18 Азадовский, 92.
19 Ibid.
