The Praetorian Oplivn 269A comparable number were killed or injured in the second insurrection,
staged in the south independently by elements of the Chernigov regiment
under the leadership of S. I. Murav'yev-Apostol. Since there is an excellent
recent account of this uprising,^87 we need not consider it here, merely noting
that its uagic outcome was eve11 11101 e p1 eJi1.:1auit: ii1a11 ii1a1 ul iiie 11smg i11 ihe
capital.
Why did the 'first Russian revolution' fail? This question would be keenly
debated, especially in opposition circles, over the next century. Gradually
a consensus developed that the reason lay in the Decembrists' reluctance to
involve the narod (common people) in their action, and that this attitude could
be explained by their social exclusiveness. Their aims, so the argument ran,
were noble and progressive, but their conduct was not sufficiently 'democratic';
Russia could be freed only by a revolution of the masses, not by a coup d'etat
engineered on their behalf by disenchanted elements of the upper class.
Advocates of this view seldom asked themselves whether joint action by
officers and men was feasible, given the conditions in Alexander's army, or
how much participation by soldiers would have been necessary for success.
The whole 'Decembrist movement' from 1814 on-itself a term of question-
able accuracy-was seen outside its armed-forces context, and in this way the
thrust of historical inquiry became skewed. Today we should have learned
(although myths die slowly) that military coups may indeed be successful, at
least in the short term, and that mass uprisings are likely to produce repressive
authoritarian regimes. In other words there is no necessary correlation betweeen
a revolutionary movement's social comprehensiveness and the quality of its
result. The latter will be determined rather by the state of the society that is
overturned. When examining the Russia of 1825 we cannot but be struck by its
unreadiness for a successful revolution, even of the limited Praetorian type.
In the tsarist empire progressive-minded officers faced even tougher
obstacles than their counterparts did in Naples, Piedmont, or the Iberian
peninsula, to say nothing of the German states. The power of the monarchy
was still absolute, its hold over the machinery of government as yet unweakened,
its image untarnished by military defeat. By and large the dvoryanstvo believed
that the maintenance of serfdom was essential to their own and the country's
well-being. The educated elite was wafer-thin and unused to organization; and
the mass of the people, being generally illiterate, could scarcely be expected to
comprehend the conspirators' aims, let alone support them actively. Soldiers,
it is true, were more amenable than peasants to propaganda, or to what is now
called 'political mobilization'; but the 'Decembrists" ideas on army reform-
they envisaged a conscript force on the French revolutionary pattern along
with various material alleviation'>~~-would probably not have satisfied the
rank and file, even if they had known of them and been able to voice their
R^7 Luciani, Societe, pp. 228-St; cf. l\famur. Fint ll11\\. Hern/., pp. t81-202, 248 (casualties).
8R Prokof'yev, Bor'bo, pp. 109-78.