Mikhail Pavlovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin (May 23 [June 4], 1801, the selo of Kudryoshki, Gorbatov Uyezd, now Bogorodsky Okrug of Nizhny Novgorod Region — July 13 [25], 1826, Saint Petersburg) was a second lieutenant of the Russian army, one of the leaders of the Decembrist movement, and head of the Vasilkov Council of the Southern Society and of the uprising of the Chernigov Regiment. A native of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, he was executed by court sentence together with four other leaders of the uprising.[1]

Origins and early years

Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin came from an old noble family. His father, Pavel Nikolayevich Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a court councilor, served in the late 18th century as city governor (gorodnichy) of Gorbatov, then retired and lived with his family on the ancestral estate, the selo of Kudryoshki in Gorbatov Uyezd. His mother was Yekaterina Vasilyevna, née Grushetskaya.[1] According to Nizhny Novgorod local historians, it was on the family estate that the future Decembrist first encountered the oppression of serfdom and social injustice.[2]

Mikhail received a home education, attended lectures by professors of Moscow University, and in February 1818 obtained a certificate from the university's Examination Committee with grades of "good" and "very good," which entitled him to promotions in the civil service. Nevertheless, he chose a military career.[1] In 1816 the family moved to Moscow.[3] His contemporaries spoke of him thus: "He received an excellent education, knew French, German, and English… He read a great deal and loved music. He spoke well, but always rapturously" (N. V. Basargin).[2]

Military service and participation in the Decembrist movement

From July 1818 he was a junker in the Chevalier Guard Regiment, and from April 1819 a standard-junker. From March 1820 he served in the Life Guards Semyonovsky Regiment, where he grew close to Sergey Muravyov-Apostol. After the uprising of the Semyonovsky Regiment and its disbandment in December 1820, both officers were transferred first to the Poltava Infantry Regiment and then to the Chernigov Regiment, quartered in Vasilkov, Kiev Governorate. By 1824 Bestuzhev-Ryumin had reached the rank of second lieutenant.[1]

From 1823 he was a member of the Southern Society (according to some sources, from 1822[3]). Together with Muravyov-Apostol he headed the Vasilkov Directorate. He took part in congresses of the Southern Society's leaders in Kyiv and at the estate of V. L. Davydov in Kamenka, and conducted negotiations with the Polish Patriotic Society (1824) and on the merger of the Society of United Slavs with the Southern Society (1825). He was a supporter of restoring Poland's independence. He took part in drawing up the Bobruisk (1823) and Belaya Tserkov (1824) plans for an armed uprising, and in September 1825 he merged the Society of United Slavs into the Southern Society and formed a "cohort of the doomed" for an assassination attempt on Alexander I in Taganrog — the attempt was never carried out.[1]

In December 1825, together with Muravyov-Apostol, he composed the agitational proclamation "Orthodox Catechism," which was read out before the rebel companies of the Chernigov Regiment.[3][4] During the suppression of the uprising, on January 3 (15), 1826, he was captured with weapon in hand near the village of Kovalyovka in Vasilkov Uyezd and taken to Saint Petersburg.[1]

Arrest and Execution

Together with Pavel Pestel, Kondraty Ryleyev, Pyotr Kakhovsky, and Sergey Muravyov-Apostol, Bestuzhev-Ryumin was sentenced to death by hanging. On July 13 (25), 1826, the sentence was carried out at the kronwerk of the Peter and Paul Fortress. According to one version, all five executed Decembrists were buried on Golodai Island (now within the city limits of Saint Petersburg).[3] Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin was 25 years old.

Nizhny Novgorod Memory

The ancestral estate of the Bestuzhev-Ryumins in Kudryoshki was sold off piece by piece after the peasant reform of 1861, and by 1883, according to the recollections of the historian K. N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin — the Decembrist's nephew — the family's connection with the place had ceased entirely. What survives of the manor are five ponds and an eighteenth-century park, described by V. V. Baulina in her book "Gardens and Parks of Gorky Region" (1981) as an example of landscape garden art in need of protection.[2]

In 1991, a bust of the Decembrist was installed in the old park of the former estate in Kudryoshki.[3] In 2026, for the 225th anniversary of Bestuzhev-Ryumin's birth, the Nizhny Novgorod State Regional Universal Scientific Library named after V. I. Lenin opened a virtual exhibition devoted to his life and his ties to the Nizhny Novgorod land.[2]

Sources

  1. znanierussia.ru — Bestuzhev-Ryumin: Biography of the Decembrist and Political Figure
  2. ngounb.ru — The Decembrists and the Nizhny Novgorod Land: On the 225th Anniversary of the Birth of M.P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin (archive)
  3. names52.ru — Bestuzhev-Ryumin Mikhail Pavlovich
  4. ru.wikisource.org — Author:Mikhail Pavlovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin — Wikisource