At first their intention was simply to make an appeal to Alexander
I to grant self-government to Russia, which at one time he had seemed
disposed to do. Soon they found themselves engaged in a secret conspiratory
movement having for its object the overthrow of Czarism. The story of the
failure of these romanticists, the manner in which the abortive attempt at
revolution in December, 1825, was suppressed, and how the leaders were
punished by Nicholas I--these things are well known to most students of
Russian history. The Decembrists, as they came to be called, failed, as
they were bound to do, but it would be a mistake to suppose that their
efforts were altogether vain. On the contrary, their inspiration was felt
throughout the next thirty years and was reflected in the literature of the
period. During that period Russian literature was tinged with the faith in
social regeneration held by most of the cultured intellectual classes. The
Decembrists were the spiritual progenitors of the Russian revolutionary
movement of our time. In the writings of Pushkin--himself a
Decembrist--Lermontoff, Gogol, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, and many others less
well known, the influence of the Decembrist movement is clearly manifested.
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