Decembrist

Thus on the death of Alexander I in 1825 the succession of his brother Nicholas I was delayed and confused by doubts over the heir and was marked by the bloody mutinies of the Decembrists; Nicholas died during the Crimean War when a contemporary wrote that his only choice was between abdication and death; his son, Alexander II, was assassinated by terrorists a quarter of a century later.

2003, Catherine O'Neil, With Shakespeare's Eyes: Pushkin's Creative Appropriation of Shakespeare, University of Delaware Press, Associated University Presses, page 81, Many of the Decembrists listed Pushkin's poetry as a source for their "free-thinking," and there were reports of frightened people (Pushkin himself was one of them) hastily burning unfinished poems that had circulated in manuscript.

These liberal revolutionaries, who have gone down in history as the Decembrists, called on the army not to swear allegiance to Nicholas. The Decembrist-led rebels were surrounded by troops loyal to Nicholas on the banks of the Neva River in St. Petersburg.

The word civicism (grazhdanstvennost’) originated in the enlightenment ideal of civic Rome, perceptions of the poet as a patriotic citizen and son of the fatherland, and Decembrist dreams of a republic.

War and Peace grew out of Tolstoy's attempts to write a Decembrist novel, a work that first began to take shape in October 1856, when "The Distant Field" was begun.

Mariia Trubnikova was raised in an atmosphere of pious reverence for Decembrist ideals.