300 The Military Settlementswin the soldiers' confidence by behaving in exemplary fashion, and then to
spread their ideas in casual conversations with those whom they felt they could
trust. The message was one of restraint until the 'appointed hour'. The agita-
tion, conducted on a man-to-man basis, did not have any significant impact
until the summer of 1825; then it made some headway, especially in the south,
but was soon nullified either by betrayal or by the conspirators' premature and
fateful decision to act. How did the soldiers respond? Even the most sym-
pathetic seem to have retained a certain prudent scepticism towards these
approaches from above. This was quite understandable: after all, if the plot
failed it was they who would suffer the heaviest penalties, and the risk of
exposure was enhanced by the lackadaisical attitude which many secret society
members took towards security. In the event some 2,400 men were sent to the
Caucasus for their part in the two insurrections of December 1825, of whom
nearly 200 first had to run the gauntlet.^17 During the investigation those
soldiers who were questioned naturally tried to play down the extent of their
participation in the movement, and this has to be allowed for when evaluating
their evidence. Nevertheless Private F. N. Anoychenko was probably telling
the truth when he acknowledged that, as he had understood it, the con-
spirators were planning 'a revolt (bunt) against the tsar's power' and that he
had held back from sharing this information with his comrades 'from fear lest
someone might see me and tell the authorities'.^18
Nicholas l's purge of the army, coupled with the customary expectation that
the accession of a new ruler would lead to improvements, helped to reduce
manifestations of discontent among both officers and men. The outbreak of
two major wars, against the Persians and the Turks, followed in 1831 by a
campaign against Polish rebels, also diverted soldiers' attention from their
own grievances. Even so in 1829 military settlers in Slobodskaya Ukraina
mounted one of the best organized, but least known, protests: at Shebchinka
men of the Serpukhov Utans, many of them former 'single-homesteaders',
offered stout resistance to the troops sent to restore order in their village. This
was stormed, at the cost of over 100 casualties among the defenders; 50 men
were put on trial.^19
By comparison the great uprising which broke out two years later in the
north-western settlements was less rational in its aims and less self-controlled;
indeed it displayed archaic and savage features reminiscent of the seventeenth-
century stre/'tsy outbreaks. Typically, the mood of violence gave way rapidly
to one of contrition. The revolt suggests that the settled soldiers were coming
to share peasant ways of thought and action; the artillerymen are said to have
shown themselves particularly vindictive.^211
17 Beskrovnyy, Potentsial, pp. 231-2; Odintsova, 'Soldaty-Jekabristy'.
IH VD vi. 215-19; Fedorov, Soldarskoye dvizheniye, pp. 189-90, gives a more positive evalua-
tion.
'~ Yevstaf"yev, Vo.n-tani_1•£', pp. 93-4; lkskrovnyy, Potentsiul, p. 234.
20 Ushakov, 'Kholernyy bunt', p. 152. A full a~.:ount of the uprising is given by Yevstaf'yev,
Vosstaniye, pp. 113-202.