“In Word and Deed”: Exiled Siberian Decembrists as Servants of the Russian Empire, 1826 - 1860

Historians of the Decembrists have long examined the uprisings of 1825 and 1826 and their preludes but have emphasized less the nobles’ Siberian exile. Moreover, studies of the Decembrists’ social and cultural activities focus mostly on the nobles’ experiences in European Russia, largely ignoring their pursuits while in Siberia. This dissertation fills lacunae in Decembrist studies by examining in the English language the Siberian experiences of the exiled nobles.

This dissertation demonstrates that the Decembrists in Siberian exile engaged in activities that served the Russian Empire, but not necessarily the tsarist authorities. Through their production of knowledge about Siberia, the Decembrists raised interest among readers in the European Russian metropole and allowed them to imagine the distant region and its people as part of the Russian Empire. Furthermore, the exiles often made policy recommendations based on the knowledge they acquired in Siberia. However, the Decembrists also demonstrated in their writings the failings of government policies toward the region and its people, thus undermining the tsarist authorities in their readers’ eyes.

This dissertation moreover argues that despite its brutality, the Siberian exile system is not unusual within the context of global history per se. European empires had long used the practice of criminal transportation to remove undesirables from their metropoles and to populate their colonies with a labor force for resource extraction. Moreover, like the Decembrists, exiles often served as cultural intermediaries between the metropole and the colony.