Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
In May 1828 the authorities in eastern Siberia uncovered plans, hatched by the Decembrist Ivan Sukhinov, to stage an armed rebellion among the penal laborers of the Nerchinsk mines. Sukhinov was planning to march on Chita in order to liberate his fellow Decembrists from captivity. Found guilty of the charges, the ringleaders were executed and Sukhinov committed suicide. Yet the conspiracy was a fantasy, conjured into being by the chaotic conditions of penal labor and official fears of exiled revolutionaries directing insurgencies in Siberia. The state's destruction of Sukhinov and his alleged co-conspirators created the fictional memory of a revolutionary hero and a noble, if doomed, rebellion. In their memoirs published in the postreform era, the Decembrists offered contemporaries an inspiring tale of insurgency and martyrdom in Siberia. The “Zerentui conspiracy” articulated new possibilities of revolutionary protest in exile
A Leverhulme Research Fellowship funded the research and writing of this article. My thanks to Ilya Magin, Susan Morrissey, Alexandra Oberländer, Andrew Gentes, Stephen Lovell, Gavin Jacobson, Jonathan Waterlow, Amanda Vickery, and Mark D. Steinberg for their invaluable comments on its earlier drafts. Insightful suggestions from participants in research seminars at Royal Holloway, Reading, Oxford, and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, in late 2012 and early 2013 have much improved my arguments.
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2. Andrew A. Gentes, £xi'/e to Siberia, 1590-1822 (Basingstoke, Eng., 2008), 124-25. On the history of the Nerchinsk mining district from the 1830s to the 1880s, see Vasilii I. Semevskii, Rabochie na sibirskikh zolotykh promyslakh, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1898).
3. The Zerentui mine, headed by Chernigovtsev personally, had already accommodated seven leading Decembrists in 1827. See “Iz proshlogo,” Istoricheskii vestnik 45, no. 7 (1891): 219-28.
4. RGIA, f. 468, op. 25, d. 244 (1828), 11. lob.-2.
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21. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA), f. 410, op. 1, d. 71 (1827 “0 vosstanii“), 1.2. Proximity to the Chinese border proved an ongoing headache for administrators of eastern Siberia with convicts repeatedly seeking to escape the clutches of the Russian state by fleeing to Bukhara. In 1840 seven fugitives were turned over to the Russian authorities, having been detained in Urgi. See RGIA, f. 1286, op. 7, d. 334 (1840 “Po otnosheniiu G. Vitse-kantslera kasatel'no usileniia nakazaniia ssyl'nykh v Sibiri, po sluchaiu chastykh pobegov ikh za Kitaiskuiu granitsu“), 11. 1-11.
22. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Irkutskoi Oblasti (GAIO), f. 24, op. 3, karton 49, d. 297 (1828 “0 povedenii dekabristov na Blagodatskom rudnike“).
23. GAIO, f. 24, op. 3, karton 49, d. 273 (1828 “0 bunte ssyl'nykh“), 1. 2. At that time a number of prominent Decembrists were prisoners of the Blagodatsk mine: Sergei Volkonskoi, Sergei Trubetskoi, Artamon Murav'ev, Vasilii Davydov, Evgenii Obolenskii, Aleksandr Iakubovich, Andrei and Petr Borisov. See GAIO, f. 24, op. 3, karton 49, d. 297,1.33.
24. GAIO, f. 24, op. 3, karton 49, d. 273,1.7.
25. RGIA, f. 468, op. 25, d. 244 (1828), 1.159.
26. Ibid., 1. 52ob.
27. Ibid., 11. 55–57ob.
28. Ibid., 11.158ob., 70ob., 68.
29. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 109, 1-aia ekspeditsiia, 1826, d. 61, ch. 154,11. 1–8.
30. Sukhinov maintained that he had intervened, after “Murav'ev-Apostol’ had given me strict orders to murder and destroy him,” to save the life of the regiment's commander Gebel', something Gebel’ roundly rejected in his own account of the revolt. Sukhinov was, he declared, “a criminal, an unfortunate led astray by thoughtlessness … forgive me magnanimously, my sovereign, my crime. I am not a murderer or a barbarian. If I am guilty, then it is only of following the orders of Murav'ev-Apostol'. This was my only error.” Sukhinov's petition did not reach St. Petersburg until sometime in May 1825 and was received unsympathetically by Nicholas I. These details emerge in lu. Oksman's extensive commentary accompanying Solov'ev's article. See V. N. Solov'ev, “Zapiski o 1.1. Sukhinove,” in lu. Oksman, G., ed., Vospominaniia i rasskazy deiatelei tainykh obshchestv 1820-kh gg. 2 vols. (Moscow, 1933), 2:41–43 Google Scholar; lu. Oksman, G., ed., Vosstanie dekabristov (Moscow, 1929), 6 :108 Google Scholar. Expressions of remorse, gratitude, and petitions to Nicholas for clemency were common among the Decembrists. See Barratt, , ed., Voices in Exile 19 Google Scholar; Murav'ev, A. N., Sochineniia ipis'ma (Irkutsk, 1986), 263, 288Google Scholar.
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32. Oksman, “Poimka poruchika 1.1. Sukhinova,” 70.
33. Mikhil F. Shugurov, “0 bunte Chernigovskogo polka,” Russkii arkhiv 1902, no. 2: 298-301. On the testimony of the Chernigov Regiment's other insurgents, see “Vosstanie Chernigovskogo polka v pokazaniiakh uchastnikov,” Krasnyi arkhiv 13 (1925): 1–67 Google Scholar.
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39. RGIA, f. 468, op. 25, d. 244 (1828), 11.76-79. The anticipation of an amnesty was, in the years immediately following the Decembrists’ arrival in eastern Siberia, widespread. See Barratt, , ed., Voices in Exile 227 Google Scholar
40. Nepomniashchii's second testimony on the same day comprised a similar denial of his earlier statements. He said that he gave his earlier testimony “in order to spare himself further questioning.” RGIA, f. 468, op. 25, d. 244 (1828), 11.61ob.-62ob., 69ob.
41. Ibid., 1.63ob.
42. Ibid., 1.148ob.
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101. See, for example, Klivenskii, M. M., ed., Dekabristy: Khrestomatiia (Moscow, 1926), 149–50Google Scholar; Barvins'kii, V., “Do biografii poruchika I. I. Sukhinova,” Dekabristi na Ukraini (Kiev, 1926), 1:167–70Google Scholar; Kubalov, B., “Sibir’ i samozvantsy: Iz istorii narodnykh volnenii v XIX v.,” Sibirskie ogni 1924, no. 3:155 Google Scholar. On the centenary celebrations of the uprising, see Trigos, , Decembrist Myth in Russian Culture chaps. 3–4 Google Scholar.
102. Nechkina, , ed., “Zagovor v Zerentuiskom rudnike,” 258 Google Scholar.
103. In passing, Nechkina did note that Zavalishin had responded with skepticism to the events in Zerentui but the overwhelming tone of her commentary endorsed the existence of the conspiracy. Nechkina, , ed., “Zagovor v Zerentuiskom rudnike,” 263 Google Scholar.
104. Ibid., 276.
105. Gessen, , Zagovor dekabrista Sukhinova 13–14 Google Scholar.
106. Ibid., 55. Sukhinov promptly disappeared from Soviet accounts of the Decembrists in the 1930s and 1940s, presumably because the story of rebellion and heroic suicide in Siberian labor camps became a problematic topic as the gulag expanded. He reappeared only in Nechkina, M. V., Dvizhenie dekabristov, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1955), 2:435–36Google Scholar and in glasnost-era publications such as Dvorianov, V. N., V sibirskoi dal'nei storone … (Ocherki istorii politicheskoi katorgi i ssylki. 60-e gody XVIII v.—1917g.) (Minsk, 1985), 49 Google Scholar.
107. Gessen, , Zagovor dekabrista Sukhinova 11 108 Google Scholar. Steinberg, Mark D. and Sobol, Valerie, “Introduction,” in Steinberg, and Sobol, , eds., Interpreting Emotions 5 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original
108. Mark D. Steinberg and Valerie Sobol, “Introduction,” in Steinberg and Sobol, eds., Interpreting Emotions, 5. Emphasis in the original.