Book Launch: The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt of 1825

On 14 December 1825 a group of young Russian army officers led 3,000 troops to Senate Square in St Petersburg, aiming to force the Senate to adopt a liberal constitution and transform the Russian Empire. The Decembrist Revolt – as it came to be known – was suppressed, with a second uprising in the south meeting the same fate. Five leaders were executed, and many others exiled to Siberia.
Why did so many young noblemen risk their lives for regime change, what was their vision for an alternative society, and what were the consequences for participants and their families? This book highlights the often-neglected liberal tradition in Russian political thought and the experiences of Decembrist wives and fiancées, offering a fresh reinterpretation in the light of recent events in Russia.

Susanna Rabow-Edling is a political scientist by discipline but her training was in the subfield of political thought, where political science intersects with history and philosophy. She defended her doctoral dissertation at Stockholm University in 2001, had visiting fellowships at Cornell University and at Stanford University and became an Associate Professor at the Institute of Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES), Uppsala University in 2012. Currently, she is Director of Research and Deputy Director at IRES. Rabow-Edling is the author of four books: Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism (State University of New York Press: Albany, NY, 2006); Married to the Empire. Three Governors’ Wives in Russian America 1829-1864 (Fairbanks, AK, 2015); Liberalism in Pre-Revolutionary Russia. State, Nation, Empire (Abingdon and New York, 2019); The First Russian Revolution: The Decembrist Revolt of 1825.

Discussant:
Patrick O’Meara is Emeritus Professor of Russian and former Master of Van Mildert College, Durham University, where he worked from 2004 to 2011. After studying at Keele and Oxford, he taught in the Russian Department in Trinity College Dublin for 30 years (1974 to 2004). He is the author of three books and numerous articles on the political history of the reign of Tsar Alexander I with a primary focus on the Decembrists. His most recent book is 'The Russian Nobility in the Age of Alexander I' (Bloomsbury, 2019).