Other Decembrists: The Chizhov Case and Lutskii Affair as Signifiers of the Decembrists in Siberia

Abstract

Two, lesser known Decembrists were exiled to Siberia as a result of their involvement in the uprising of 1825. The first, Nikolai Chizhov, was one of a handful of Decembrists sentenced by Emperor Nicholas I's Supreme Criminal Court to exile to settlement (ssylka na poselenie). The second, Aleksandr Lutskii, was like most Decembrists sentenced to penal labour (katorga); however, unlike such well known Decembrists as Trubetskoi and Rozen he was tried by a military court rather than the Supreme Criminal Court and consequently faced much harsher conditions. Historian Aleksandr Margolis has classified Lutskii as one of the 'soldier-Decembrists,' in contradistinction to those 'aristocrat-Decembrists' assigned to Chita and later transferred to Petrovskii Zavod. English-language works on the Decembrists routinely avoid discussion of the 'soldier-Decembrists' or those who were, like Chizhov, exiled to settlement; and among Russian sources Margolis's research is exceptional. Using archival and secondary sources this article expands upon Margolis's work to analyse these individuals' experiences in Siberia. Although both men were atypical of the majority of Decembrists exiled to Siberia, analysis of their experiences highlights the importance of class within the punitive structures of Nicolaevan Russia and elucidates certain administrative procedures which characterized the bureaucratic apparatus.