On the Decembrists – The Economist:

‘It was a wintry night in St Petersburg and revolution was in the air. A piercing wind whipped off the frozen Neva river as, before dawn, the conspirators hurried to Senate Square, close to the Winter Palace. They drew up their troops beneath the stern stare of Peter the Great’s bronze statue; the gilded spire of the Admiralty pierced the inky sky. Before long the imperial cavalry would arrive, and the cannons, and the tsar. “We are going to die, brothers!” exulted one of the rebels. “Oh, how gloriously we are going to die!” Though barely remembered in the West, that fateful day 200 years ago—December 26th 1825 in the modern calendar—was a hinge in time. Had the conspirators prevailed, their country’s history, and the world’s, might have been drastically different. As it was these men, known as the Decembrists, were transmuted into myth. As with many myths, interpretations of theirs vary. To Russia’s authorities, then and now, they were traitors. To admirers, they are champions of the flickering hope that another Russia is possible.’

(…)

‘As Yuri Lotman, a historian, observed, the Decembrists represented a new psychological type. They were the first generation of Russian aristocrats to distinguish between service to the monarch and to society and the nation. They had earned their honour and dignity, they believed, not been granted them from above. Still, at first they hoped the tsar, Alexander I, would oversee reform of his downtrodden empire. But though he espoused liberal plans, even enacting a few on the empire’s fringes, he backtracked.’

(…)

‘In hindsight, the ensuing drama is doubly poignant. First, because many Decembrists didn’t expect to succeed. Rather they thought it was their duty to Russia—and each other—to make a stand. “There may be little prospect of success,” conceded Ryleyev, but “a beginning must be made.” They saw themselves as tragic actors on the stage of history, hoping for vindication by posterity rather than immediate victory.’

(…)

‘So much for hypotheticals. In reality, the Decembrists were undone by haste and disorganisation. Their leader, Sergei Trubetskoy, didn’t show up. His courage is unlikely to have failed (he was a hero of the battle of Borodino); perhaps he foresaw that the amateurish plot would lead to a bloodbath and crackdown. Without orders, the mutineers shivered in their ranks in ten degrees of frost. Overall they numbered around 3,000. Nicholas’s much larger force encircled them.’

(…)
‘“Give orders that this place should be swept by cannons,” Nicholas was advised, “or resign the throne!” Four artillery pieces were duly brought forward. No one moved. First came warning shots, at which the rebels shouted “hurrah!” Then grapeshot was loaded; it is said that the gunner refused to fire, so an officer did instead. As blood oozed across the snow, dazed insurgents tried to flee across the Neva. Some drowned when cannons smashed the ice. At least 1,271 people were killed, including many civilians.
By six o’clock it was over. The bullet-ridden Senate building was hastily replastered. Bloodstains were covered with fresh snow. Corpses were shoved into frozen canals. And the conspirators were rounded up.’

(…)

‘It is never completely dark during the “white nights” of a St Petersburg summer. In the milky light of a July morning, the five were led to the gallows. Three of the ropes snapped. “Oh Lord, they can’t even hang people properly in Russia,” deadpanned Muravyov-Apostol after his tumble. New ropes were fetched.’

(…)

‘Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a one-time oligarch who spent a decade in a Siberian camp, invoked them at his show trial in 2005. Alexei Navalny inherited their civic nationalism and sense of mission, and finally their martyrdom. Conversely, in May 2025 the Decembrists’ case was relitigated at a Kremlin-sponsored conference in St Petersburg. The justice minister decried their “lack of honour”, arguing that their punishment was too lenient. The main lesson was that “the Russian state cannot afford to be weak.” Were the Decembrists anything more than glorious failures? In the short term the regime they loathed grew more draconian. As often in Russia’s past, reckons Andrei Zorin, a historian (and the playwright’s son), the actions of “the purest and most noble people” inadvertently set back reform. Anti-Putin protests have likewise led to crackdowns and war.
From one point of view the men of 1825 were hopeless dreamers, too aloof or naive to see that Russia’s size and history mean it is doomed to eternal misrule.'

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Read the article here.

I guess, most people nowadays don’t want to be tragic actors on the stage of history. Many of them are tragic actors, without knowing it, which makes them probably double tragic.

And yes, a beginning must be made. But the beginning of what?

Anyhow, eternal misrule is a bit much. But misrule for the next decades to come, sounds reasonable to me.