Attacks on Decembrist Rising in 1825 Highlight What Putin Regime Really Fears

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 14 – Two hundred years ago, on December 14, 1825, a group of Russian army officers rose against the tsarist regime and demanded a constitution. Brutally suppressed, they nonetheless became heroes in Soviet hagiography as examples of the willingness of some Russians to protest tsarist autocracy.

            In Putin’s time, however, they have been subject to increasing attacks by Russian commentators and officials as out of touch “rebels,” Catholics and Lutherans, and their action not as something positive but as retrograde (meduza.io/paragraph/2025/12/11/dekabristy-ne-znali-svoy-narod-oni-myatezhniki-a-takzhe-katoliki-ili-lyuterane-ih-bunt-eto-regress and pointmedia.io/story/6939553ee657f59b666dce83).

            Such attacks should not be dismissed as irrelevant because they in fact highlight what the Putin regime really fears: the possibility of challenges to itself from within the elite – fears that are leading those around Putin to try to ensure that if there is any such rising, the Russian people will not support it but rather rally round those in power.  

             Because the Decembrist rising took place during an interregnum after one tsar had died and another had not yet been crowned, attacks on what they did are likely to intensify given that those around Putin are especially alarmed about the possibility that the situation will get out of hand, not as long as Putin remains in power but after he leaves the scene.