Day #49: The Decemberist exiles

---

Today I visited the preserved home of Prince Sergei Volkonsky, one of the Decemberist exiles. These were men and their families who were sent to Siberia as punishment for their involvement in the Decemberist plot to overthrow the Tsar in the late 1800s.

The home very much focused on the experience of Volkonsky's wife Maria, who followed him into exile along with their children, and in fact petitioned the Russian royal family tirelessly to be allowed to live there privately with her husband and family. Maria was used to being a society lady in Moscow, but was banned from attending any society events elsewhere (even in Siberia), so consequently held many parties at her own home. As she was an accomplished and wealthy woman, the result was that her home became one of the centres of society in the Irkutsk region, as the local gentry came to her.

Ostensibly it looks like she enjoyed a similar life in Irkutsk to the one she had in Moscow: the house was large and beautiful, she had elegant rooms for parties where she apparently excelled at playing the piano, she was able to educate her children to a high standard (they all went on to become highly successful and re-integrated into Russian society proper), and she even learned how to grow a winter garden. It looks like a happy life. However there was a very moving quote on one of the displays:

"The first time in our exile I supposed that it would end in 5 years; then I said to myself it would happen in 10 years, then in 15 years, but after 25 years of exile I gave up any hope, I just prayed for my children leaving Siberia".

Nowadays the Russians consider it very romantic that she sacrificed so much because of her husband's crimes, and there is even a statue dedicated to the Decemberist wives.

---