Colonel Colonel ( ; abbreviated as Col., Col, or COL) is a senior military Officer (armed forces), officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a colon ...

Pavel Ivanovich Pestel (; – ) was a Russian

revolutionary A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates for, a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective to describe something producing a major and sudden impact on society. Definition The term—bot ...

and ideologue of the

Decembrists The Decembrist revolt () was a failed coup d'état led by liberal military and political dissidents against the Russian Empire. It took place in Saint Petersburg on , following the death of Emperor Alexander I. Alexander's brother and heir ...

Early life

Pavel Pestel was born in Moscow on . He came from a

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

family of

Saxon The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...

descent that had settled in Russia during the reign of

Peter the Great Peter I (, ; – ), better known as Peter the Great, was the Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia, Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of Russia, Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned j ...

. His great-grandfather, grandfather, father and uncle had all successively served as director of Moscow's postal mail service, forming a dynasty of sorts. His father Ivan (1765–1843) continued to work his way up through the political bureaucracy to become Governor-General of

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

from 1806 to 1821. Ivan Pestel, together with his associate Nikolai Treskin, the governor of Irkutsk, established a corrupt regime in Siberia and was eventually dismissed. In 1805–1809, Pavel Pestel studied in

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

. In 1810–1811, he was a student at the

Page Corps The Page Corps (; ) was a military academy in Imperial Russia, which prepared sons of the nobility and of senior officers for military service. Similarly, the Imperial School of Jurisprudence prepared boys for civil service. The present-day equiva ...

, from which he would graduate in the rank of

praporshchik (, , ) is a rank used by the Russian Armed Forces and a number of former communist states. The rank is a non-commissioned officer's and is equivalent to in the corresponding navies. It is usually equivalent to warrant officer class 1 or serge ...

. Pestel was then sent to the Lithuanian Regiment of the

Leib Guard The Russian Imperial Guard, officially known as the Leib Guard ( ''Leyb-gvardiya'', from German language, German ''Leib'' "body"; cf. Lifeguard (military), Life Guards / Bodyguard), were combined Imperial Russian Army forces units serving as cou ...

. He took part in the

Patriotic War of 1812 The French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign (), the Second Polish War, and in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 (), was initiated by Napoleon with the aim of compelling the Russian Empire to comply with the continent ...

and foreign military campaigns of 1813-1814. He was seriously wounded while fighting at

Borodino The Battle of Borodino ( ) or Battle of Moscow (), in popular literature also known as the Battle of the Generals, took place on the outskirts of Moscow near the village of Borodino on 7 September 1812 during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. T ...

, and for his actions personally received the

Gold Sword for Bravery The Gold Sword for Bravery () was a Russian award for bravery. It was set up with two grades on 27 July 1720 by Peter the Great, reclassified as a public order in 1807 and abolished in 1917. From 1913 to 1917 it was renamed the Saint George ...

from Field Marshal Kutuzov. Pestel continued to distinguish himself during the following campaign at the battles of

, Kulm, and

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

as an adjutant to

Peter Wittgenstein Louis Adolf Peter, 1st Prince of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Ludwigsburg-Berleburg (; ; ''Pyotr Christianovitch Wittgenstein''; – 11 June 1843), better known as Peter Wittgenstein in English, was a prince of the German dynasty of Sayn-Wittgenstein ...

. After serving in a number of cavalry regiments, he was in 1821 appointed

commander Commander (commonly abbreviated as Cmdr.) is a common naval officer rank as well as a job title in many army, armies. Commander is also used as a rank or title in other formal organizations, including several police forces. In several countri ...

of the Vyatka Infantry Regiment quartered in Tulchin, where the enlightened general Pavel Kiselyov welcomed liberal-minded officers.

Decembrist

In 1816 Pestel became a member of the Union of Salvation and one of the authors of its

charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the ...

. He managed to make all the society members agree on the republican program of the Union, thereby laying the foundations for the republican traditions in the Russian emancipation movement. At the same time, Pavel Pestel spoke in support of mass repressions,

regicide Regicide is the purposeful killing of a monarch or sovereign of a polity and is often associated with the usurpation of power. A regicide can also be the person responsible for the killing. The word comes from the Latin roots of ''regis'' ...

and physical annihilation of all the members of the

imperial family A royal family is the immediate family of monarch, monarchs and sometimes their extended family. The term imperial family appropriately describes the family of an emperor or emperor, empress, and the term papal family describes the family of ...

initially. In 1818 Pestel joined a more liberal secret society called the Union of Prosperity without regicide plans. In March 1821 he established and became the leader of the Southern Society of the Decembrists. Pestel advocated merging the Northern Society of the Decembrists with the former and travelled to Saint Petersburg in 1824 to try to make that happen. Starting in 1821, Pavel Pestel worked on a project of social and economic

reforms Reform refers to the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The modern usage of the word emerged in the late 18th century and is believed to have originated from Christopher Wyvill's Association movement, which ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

, which he would later call () and which would be adopted as a political program. The second edition of the manifested further democratization of Pestel's views. It demanded immediate emancipation of the

Russian serfs Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

with their land, limitations of the right to landownership, creation of public and private land-funds, elimination of class privileges, and the granting of political rights to males over 20 years of age. Pestel was a staunch advocate of a

republic A republic, based on the Latin phrase ''res publica'' ('public affair' or 'people's affair'), is a State (polity), state in which Power (social and political), political power rests with the public (people), typically through their Representat ...

and of state centralization. According to his summary of the called "

Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

. State precept" (), a one-chamber People's

Veche A ''veche'' was a popular assembly during the Middle Ages. The ''veche'' is mentioned during the times of Kievan Rus' and it later became a powerful institution in Russian cities such as Veliky Novgorod, Novgorod and Pskov, where the ''veche'' a ...

() would become Russia's

legislative A legislature (, ) is a deliberative assembly with the legal authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country, nation or city on behalf of the people therein. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers ...

body. A Sovereign

Duma A duma () is a Russian assembly with advisory or legislative functions. The term ''boyar duma'' is used to refer to advisory councils in Russia from the 10th to 17th centuries. Starting in the 18th century, city dumas were formed across Russia ...

() was pronounced the

executive branch The executive branch is the part of government which executes or enforces the law. Function The scope of executive power varies greatly depending on the political context in which it emerges, and it can change over time in a given country. In ...

. A Supreme Sobor () was given

judicial The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law ...

powers. In 1825 Pavel Pestel conducted negotiations with the , discussing the possibility of joint revolutionary actions. On 13 December 1825 (the day before the Decembrists came out in open revolt in Saint Petersburg) Pavel Pestel was arrested in Tulchin (in Podolia) in relation to an attempt to assassinate

Emperor Nicholas I Nicholas I, group=pron (Russian language, Russian: Николай I Павлович; – ) was Emperor of Russia, List of rulers of Partitioned Poland#Kings of the Kingdom of Poland, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 18 ...

. He gave evidence against many Decembrists "to save their names for history" and they were detained because of him. But he did not know the real history of the Decembrist societies. For example, there is an opinion now, that just the Ordain of Russian knights, linked to Alexander von Benckendorff, was the main secret organization and not Pestel's Salvation Union. His and Bestuzhev-Ryumin's evidence had the effect of encouraging the members of the Trial Committee (some of them relatives of Decembrists or even the members of secret societies) to hang Pestel and Bestuzhev-Ryumin to stop their evidence.Paul Pestel
He was hanged with four other Decembrists in the

Peter and Paul Fortress The Peter and Paul Fortress () is the original citadel of Saint Petersburg, Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and built to Domenico Trezzini's designs from 1706 to 1740 as a star fortress. Between the first half of the 1700s and early ...

a few months later.

References

External links

''Russkaya Pravda'' - project of Constitution by Pavel Pestel
- in Russian

Encyclopedia of Ukraine The ''Encyclopedia of Ukraine'' (), published from 1984 to 2001, is a fundamental work of Ukrainian Studies. Development The work was created under the auspices of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe (Sarcelles, near Paris). As the ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pestel, Pavel 1793 births 1826 deaths Executed people from Moscow Decembrists People executed by the Russian Empire by hanging Executed Russian people 19th-century executions by the Russian Empire People from the Russian Empire of German descent Russian military personnel of the Napoleonic Wars Prisoners of the Peter and Paul Fortress