Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/123

Rh belonged to distinguished families. Most of them were military officers, chieﬂy guardsmen. From the nature of the case the army and the fleet were more Europeanised and more progressive in point of organisation than any other Russian institution. The officers were the most highly cultured members of the population, especially in the field of natural science, and they therefore were the first to come into conflict with the reaction. Many of them, too, were men who during the Napoleonic wars had had personal experience of Europe and of European acquirements in all domains, men who had faced European armies. The first secret society came into existence when the officers returned to Russia after spending a year and a half in Europe.

At the outset, the aims of all these societies were ill-defined, comprising a mingling of humanitarian philanthropy, the philosophy of the enlightenment, and literary ideas, with designs to work for political and social freedom. By degrees, their aims became clearer; with increasing resolution they looked forward to tyrannicide and armed rising; and at length the revolution broke out in December 1825. The Russian for December being dekabr, these revolutionaries are known as decabrists. It was the initial attempt at a mass revolution in New Russia, though at first a revolution of the aristocracy. The struggle against Napoleon had served to fortify a sentiment of strength and independence, and this culminated in the rising which immediately succeeded the death of Alexander. The political and social ideals of the decabrists are not yet fully known, for it is but quite recently that the issue of their writings and memoirs has begun, that a literary revision has been made of the legal proceedings against them, and that their biographies have been written. The decabrists were aristocrats, men who could not readily escape the prejudices and habits of their caste. Most of them, doubtless, aimed at the establishment of a constitution which should give some form of representative government such as existed in western countries; they desired that electors should have a property qualification; the representatives were to be drawn from the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Some of them made no demand for the liberation of the peasantry; whilst others, if they desired liberation, did not wish the peasants to be assigned any land. Speaking generally, the decabrists favoured political reform, but had no enthusiasm for social reform. Rh