SPERANSKY AND THE DECEMBRISTS 311of the five to be hanged for his active role - wrote that in the course
of one of his conversations with Ryleev he expressed the fear that they
might not find support among influential leaders and government
officials. To this Ryleev answered: "Do not worry, we have people in
the Senate and in the Council of State. I shall tell you, but ask you to
keep it quiet and not to tell it to anyone, Ermolov and Speransky are
ours." When some time later Kakhovskii checked again with Ryleev
whether it was true that Speransky was "ours", Ryleev said: "Oh, he
surely will be ours, we are working on him through Batenkov." 1
As appears from Ryleev's statement, Speransky's participation and
collaboration after a successful revolt was only hypothetical. Actually,
none of the conspirators had approached Speransky directly or enlisted
his support. 2 Even Batenkov, who was supposed to have sounded him
out, maintained that Speransky would not go along. He insisted that
one could not count on Speransky, for the simple reason that it was
too difficult to find out what "our old man really thought." 3 The
special investigation concluded that the evidence did not indicate that
Speransky was ever approached by the Decembrist leaders or even
knew that he had been considered for membership in a provisional
revolutionary government. All the sources available to this day support
this conclusion of the Committee. As the accused Decembrists eventually
told everything quite truthfully, there is no particular reason to doubt
the testimony of Batenkov himself who was in the best position to know.
And Batenkov stated very clearly that ~e felt: " ... there is no need of
Speransky," and did not divulge to him the plans the Decembrists
had concerning him.4
The question arises why was Speransky's name mentioned for the
provisional administration to be established by the Decetpbrists? Our
analysis of his political plans, philosophy, and ideology has shown that
he could hardly have been called a revolutionary or even a radical
reformer. Even Muraviev's moderate "constitution" for the Northern
Society would have been too extreme and uncongenial to Speransky. In
the years following his exile, he had become if anything more cautious
1 Vosstanie dekabristov, I, p. 374.
2 Semevskii, Politicheskie i obshchestvennye idei dekabristov, p. 493. On the basis
of the documents published so far, it does not seem that all Decembrists were en-
thusiastic about Speransky's participation in the movement or even in their provision-
al administration. There was much distrust of him, perhaps a lingering carry-over
from the pre-1812 feelings against him.
3 Ibid., p. 495.
4 "Prilozhenie k dokladu sledstvennoi kommissii ... ," Russkii Arkhiv (1875), No.
3, p. 435: also, Oreus, "G. P. Batenkov - istoriko biograficheskii ocherk," Russkaia
Starin a, (1889), p. 314.