Prince Sergey Grigoryevich Volkonsky (; – ) was a Russian major general and

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

from the aristocratic

Volkonsky The House of Volkonsky, also spelled Volkonski or Wolkonsky and later times Wlodkowski is an ancient Russian princely family, part of the Russian nobility. History The family claims descent from the Rurik dynasty, in particular from the Princ ...

family.

Life

Sergey Volkonsky was a grandson of Field Marshal

Nicholas Repnin Prince Nikolai or Nicholas Vasilyevich Repnin (; – ) was a Russian statesman and general from the Repnin princely family who played a key role in the dissolution of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; the leading figure in the Repnin Sejm, ...

, a leading statesman of

Catherine the Great Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...

's reign. The three brothers Sergey, Nikita Volkonsky and Nikolai Repnin-Volkonsky, distinguished themselves during the

Napoleonic Wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

. Princess Zenaǐde Wolkonsky was his sister-in-law. Serge Wolkonsky, a theatre director and critic, descended from his son Michail. Volkonsky was promoted Major General after the

Battle of Großbeeren The Battle of Großbeeren occurred on 23 August 1813 in neighboring Blankenfelde-Mahlow, Blankenfelde and between the Prussian III Corps (German Empire), III Corps under Friedrich von Bülow and the Franco-Saxon VII Corps (Grande Armée), ...

and

Battle of Dennewitz The Battle of Dennewitz () took place on 6September 1813 between French forces commanded by Marshal Michel Ney and the Sixth Coalition's Allied Army of the North commanded by Charles XIV John of Sweden, Crown Prince Charles John of Sweden, Fr ...

. He was wounded in the

Battle of Eylau The Battle of Eylau (also known as the Battle of Preussisch-Eylau) was a bloody and strategically inconclusive battle on 7 and 8 February 1807 between Napoleon's and the Imperial Russian Army under the command of General Levin August von Be ...

. He was the only general still in active service who took part in the Decembrist conspiracy of 1825, an attempt to achieve liberal reform by preventing the accession of Tsar Nicholas I. Following the failure of the revolt, he was found guilty and sentenced to beheading, which was eventually commuted to

life in prison Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life imprisonment are co ...

. Prince Volkonsky went to toil in the mines near

Irkutsk Irkutsk ( ; rus, Иркутск, p=ɪrˈkutsk; Buryat language, Buryat and , ''Erhüü'', ) is the largest city and administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia. With a population of 587,891 Irkutsk is the List of cities and towns in Russ ...

and spent 30 years as a political exile in

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 ...

. His wife, Maria Rayevskaya, followed him to Siberia. Their tribulations and hardships have been seen, in a later Russian tradition, as the stuff of high Romantic legend. Nikolay Nekrasov described them in a long poem.

Oleg Strizhenov Oleg Aleksandrovich Strizhenov (; 10 August 1929 – 9 February 2025) was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor. He was awarded People's Artist of the USSR in 1988. Biography Strizhenov was born in Blagoveshchensk in 1929. His family moved ...

played the part of Volkonsky in the 1975 Soviet film ''

The Captivating Star of Happiness ''The Star of Captivating Happiness'' () is a 1975 Soviet historical romance. The title is an allusion to a line from the poem '' To Chaadayev'' by Alexander Pushkin. It is a drama with the dedication "to the women of Russia". Plot The story is ...

''. On succeeding to the throne in 1856, Alexander II allowed Volkonsky and other old Decembrists to return from Siberia. In the late 1850s, Sergey Volkonsky travelled in Europe, where he met

Alexander Herzen Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (; ) was a Russian writer and thinker known as the precursor of Russian socialism and one of the main precursors of agrarian populism (being an ideological ancestor of the Narodniki, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Trudo ...

and other young liberals. Sergey and Maria spent the rest of their lives in the village of Voronki (

Little Russia Little Russia, also known as Lesser Russia, Malorussia, or Little Rus', is a geographical and historical term used to describe Ukraine. At the beginning of the 14th century, the patriarch of Constantinople accepted the distinction between wha ...

), which was owned by their daughter. The memoirs of Sergey Volkonsky were published in 1902. File:P.F. Sokolov 031.jpg, Pyotr Sokolov. Portrait of Sergey Volkonsky File:Бестужев Н. Волконский С.Г. с женой в камере в Петровской тюрьме.jpg,

Nikolay Bestuzhev Nikolay Alexandrovich Bestuzhev (Russian: Николай Александрович Бестужев; 13 April 1791, Saint Petersburg – 27 May 1855, Novoselenginsk) was a Imperial Russian Navy, Russian Navy officer, writer, inventor and portra ...

. Volkonsky S. G. with his wife in Petrovsky prison (1830)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Volkonsky, Sergei Decembrists 1788 births 1865 deaths Sergei Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath Internal exiles from the Russian Empire Military personnel of the Russian Empire