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The Character of Pestel's Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Arthur E. Adams
Arthur E. Adams*
Affiliation:
Michigan State College
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Extract

What sort of man was Paul Pestel, the unfortunate and influential Decembrist? What was the character of his mind, and what were the principles of the reforms for which he gave his life in 1826? The answers to these questions were long concealed. On the one hand, the Tsarist Government suppressed Pestel's writings and locked up the records of his mock trial until 1905; and on the other, admiration amounting to hero worship confused the minds of many students for whom any Decembrist was deemed to be a saintly martyr to the cause of freedom.

Alexander Herzen was most responsible for the hero worship. Herzen, at fourteen, was deeply moved by the execution of Pestel and four other Decembrists, and the event gave purpose to his whole life. Thirty years later, he wrote: “Before that altar [the gallows] defiled by bloody rites, I swore to avenge the murdered men, and dedicated myself to the struggle with that throne…. I have not avenged them … but for thirty years I have stood under that flag and have never once deserted it.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1953 , pp. 153 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1953

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References

1 Alexander Herzen, Polnoe sobranie sočinenii i pis'em, Vol. XII: Byloe i dumy (St. Petersburg, 1919), p. 55 Google Scholar, n. 2. See also, VI, 245-47.

2 Syromjatnikov, B., “Političeskaja doktrina ‘Nakaza’ P. I. Pestelja,” Sbornik statej, posvjaščennykh V. O. Kljucevskomu (Moscow, 1909), pp. 681, 700, 706-7, 718.Google Scholar

3 Mazour, A. G., The First Russian Revolution: 1825 (Berkeley, California, 1937), P. 115 Google Scholar

4 Semevskij, V., Potitičeskie i obščestvennye idej dekabristov (St. Petersburg, 1909), p. 625.Google Scholar

5 Kovalevskij, M., “Russkaja pravda Pestelja,” Minuvšie Gody, I (1908), 13.Google Scholar

6 Pokrovskij, M. N., ed., Vosstanie dekabristov: Materialy po istorii vosstanija dekabristov: Dela verkhovnogo ugolovnogo suda i sledstvennoj komissii, kasajuščijsja gosudarstvennykh prestupnikov (Moscow, 1925-1929), IV, 6–7, 89.Google Scholar (Hereafter cited as Vosst. dek.) Also, see Kruglyj, A., “Pestel po pis'mam egoroditelej,” Krasnyj Arkhiv, XVI (1926), 165-88.Google Scholar

7 Semevskij, , op. cit., p. 225.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 500.

9 Vosst. dek., IV, 6–7, 89, 92.Google Scholar

10 Pavlov-Silvanskij, N., Dekabrist Pestel’ pered verkhovnym iigolovnym sudom (Rostov, 1907), p. 2.Google Scholar

11 Vosst. dek., IV, 221.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., IV, 14, 141–45, 204, 206–10, 213-14, 223; Pavlov-Silvanskij, , op. cit., p. 143.Google Scholar

13 Vosst. dek., IV, 91.Google Scholar

14 Ibid.

15 Israel M. Lubin, Zur charakteristik und zur Quellenanalyse von Pestels “Russkaja Pravda” (Hamburg, 1930), p. 18; Pestel, P., Russkaja pravda: Nakaz verkhovnomu vremennomu pravleniju, Ščegolev, P., ed. (St. Petersburg, 1906), Preface.Google Scholar

16 Pestel, , Russkaja pravda, pp. 21–24.Google Scholar

17 Ibid.

18 In Pestel's plan, several volosti would combine to form an uezd (county), and several uezdi would form a gubernija. There were to be fifty gubernii. Pestel, , Russkaja pravda, pp. 24–26, 199–200 Google Scholar; see also P. Pestel, “Konstitucija gosudarstvennyj zavet,” Mil'man, S. S., ed., Krasnyj Arkhiv, XIII (1925), 282.Google Scholar

19 Pestel, , “Konstitucija gosudarstvennyj zavet,” op. cit., p. 282 Google Scholar; Pestel, cf., Russkaja pravda, pp. 60, 65–67Google Scholar.

20 Pestel, , Russkaja pravda, p. 214.Google Scholar

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid, p. 89.

23 Ibid., pp. 36–37, 59.

24 Ibid., p. 231.

25 Ibid., pp. 219, 224–25, 234.

26 In local government, all male citizens of the volost1 were to meet for six days each year in order to elect their representatives to the assemblies of the volost, uezd, and gubernija. Pestel, , Russkaja pravda, pp. 212–17.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., pp. 212–13; Destutt-de-Tracy, cf., A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (Philadelphia, 1811), pp. 49, 77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 The “Konstitucija gosudarstvennyj zavet” is a shortened and extremely concise statement of Pestel's ideas about the central government. According to his testimony, Pestel dictated this small work to BestuŹev-Rjumin in 1825, and the latter transmitted it to the Union of United Slavs, which organization he was trying to draw into the Southern Society. The copy published by Mil'man (Krasnyj Arkhiv, XIII [1925], 280-84) is from one of the copies made by Borisov II, a leader of the United Slavs; see Vosst. dek., IV, 188.

29 Pestel, “Konstitucija gosudarstvennyj zavet,” op. cit., pp. 282—84. 1° this work, which is not the product of Pestel's own clear and logical mind, but a third-hand copy of his dictated words, sentences are run together, punctuation is almost forgotten, capitals are used strangely, and grammar is faulty. I have endeavored both to put this excerpt into coherent English and_ to retain the exact sense of the words.

30 Constitution of 1793, Articles 39–60.

31 Constitution of 1795, Titre VI, Articles 132, 137, 141, 144, 147, 148, 152.

32 Pestel, , “Konstitucija gosudarstvennyj zavet,” op. cit., p. 284.Google Scholar

33 Semevskij, op. cit., p. 602.

34 Pestel, Russkaja pravda, p. 202.

35 Ibid., pp. 204–5.

36 Ibid., pp. 205–6.

37 Ibid., pp. 85–87; Pestel, “Konstitucija gosudarstvennyj zavet,” op. cit., p. 282, paragraphs 5 and 6.

38 Semevskij, op. cit., pp. 627, 630; Vosst. dek., IV, 80, 101, 134-35, 159, 176, 179; Kovalevskij, op. cit., p. 13.

39 Pestel, Russkaja pravda, p. 58; see also, ibid., pp. 240-41, and P. Pestel, “Praktičeskie načala političeskoj èkonomii,” Krasnyj Arkhiv, XIII (1925), 189.

40 Pestel, “Praktičeskie načala političeskoj ekonomii,” op. cit., p. 241; Pestel, Russkaja pravda, p. 56.

41 Pestel, , Russkaja pravda, pp. 238–39.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., pp. 239–40.