“The Petrashevtsy were a group of young people who gathered in the 1840s around the official and writer Petrashevsky: utopian socialists and democrats striving to restructure autocratic and serf-owning Russia,” who aimed to do so in words but practically accomplished almost nothing. They met on Fridays at Petrashevsky’s or someone else’s from the circle, most often at the poets Pleshcheev’s or Durov’s, and discussed pressing issues, read poetry, and showed interest in theater and music. They didn’t even create a secret society. They didn’t have time. But almost a quarter of a century later, after the uprising on Senate Square, Nicholas I still feared the free-thinking youth. For their talks, for their dreams of a bright future for their people, for reading the “forbidden” works of their idol Belinsky, 23 dreamers—each just over 20 years old—were arrested by denunciation and went through almost the same fate as the Decembrists.

They were held for eight months in the cells of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Then came the military court… All but one were sentenced to death by “shooting.” In our time, Tsar Nicholas I would have made a good producer or director of horror films. However, the humiliating ritual of civil execution was not invented in the Winter Palace. It existed in various countries, was especially popular in France, and survived into Soviet times. Trials of enemies of the people, for example, were conducted almost the same way. Only the directors were different, as were the sets and the performances themselves. Here is how a contemporary of the Petrashevtsy described the events of the morning of December 22, 1849: “A multitude of people moved toward Semenovsky Square (now Pionerskaya Square — the square between Zagorodny Prospect, Marata Street, Zvenigorodskaya Street, and Pod’ezdny Lane in St. Petersburg), where troops of the St. Petersburg garrison lined up in columns. They formed a parallelogram around a wooden platform with an entrance staircase. The platform was draped in mourning cloth. The city police cordoned off the square to hold back the masses gathering. Around eight in the morning, the condemned were brought out of the fortress. Each was accompanied by a private of the internal guard, and horsemen followed on either side of the carriages. The procession was led by a detachment of gendarmes riding with drawn sabers. Near the scaffold, the condemned were taken out of the carriages and lined up. With anxiety, they looked at each other’s gaunt, pale faces after eight months apart. They greeted and whispered among themselves… Before leading the condemned onto the scaffold and announcing their sentence, they were marched past the ranks of soldiers. A priest led the way… The condemned climbed the shaky steps of the scaffold. Behind them, the guards immediately lined up on the platform… Two executioners appeared in colorful old-fashioned costumes. After the auditor read each death sentence unclearly and hastily, the condemned were dressed in their death shrouds—white coarse linen shrouds with hoods and long sleeves. The priest ascended the scaffold holding the Gospel and a cross.” The first to be led to execution were Petrashevsky, Grigoriev, and Mombelli. Soldiers led them off the scaffold and tied them to posts dug in front of three graves. Hoods were pulled over the faces of the Petrashevtsy. Through the thin fabric, all sentenced to death could see how the platoon of soldiers lined up opposite took aim with their rifles on command. The tension was so terrible that Grigoriev went mad… The next trio—Dostoevsky, Durov, and Pleshcheev—were next. Standing together on the scaffold, they prepared to stand by the posts over the open graves. “I managed… to embrace Pleshcheev and Durov, who were nearby, and say goodbye to them,” Dostoevsky wrote to his brother a few hours later. — They waited about 10 minutes for the condemned to repent—none of the 23 publicly repented. The command was given: “To the charge!” Soldiers prepared to fire…

At that moment, a carriage rushed onto the square, from which an officer emerged. He announced the confirmation—royal pardon—to all: the death sentence was replaced by penal servitude and deprivation of all rights. At that very moment, the drum roll sounded, and the aimed rifles suddenly rose barrels up. The civil execution of the Petrashevtsy. Executioners in old colorful caftans climbed the scaffold, ordered the doomed to kneel, and began breaking their swords above their heads. Then blacksmiths came out to the middle of the platform carrying a heavy bundle of leg shackles. They threw them onto the wooden floor of the scaffold at Petrashevsky’s feet and began slowly shackling him. For a while, he stood calmly, but then suddenly, with a nervous, jerky movement, he snatched a heavy hammer from one of them and, sitting on the floor, fiercely began to nail the shackles onto himself.” The gruesome spectacle continued. Wagons drawn by teams of three horses approached the scaffold. The “condemned” were dressed in official sheepskin coats and ushanka hats and taken away from the square. The “pardoned” Petrashevsky, sentenced to indefinite penal labor in the mines, was ordered to be immediately taken to Siberia, straight from Semenovsky Square—to Irkutsk. The others were sent back to the dungeons for now. Nicholas was not satisfied with the fake “shooting.” All expenses for the “civil execution”—for the shrouds, shackles, eight swords broken over the heads of state criminals, for digging graves—had to be reimbursed by the departments to which the Petrashevtsy belonged. Three thousand rubles per person. Only for the scaffold, built by the peasant Fedotov, the tsar paid out of his own pocket. Even now, not everyone understands why this theater of the absurd was needed, with a priest holding his cross and Bible, with costumed executioners and blacksmiths with shackles. After all, hundreds of others like the Petrashevtsy, “enemies of the throne” unwilling to accept autocracy, were sent beyond the Urals without much publicity. The same dictionaries and encyclopedias assure that the young people became sadly famous only because there were many writers and scientists in the circles. These scenes entered one of Dostoevsky’s most famous novels—The Idiot. And the sense of inevitable death that drove Grigoriev mad was given by the writer to his strange Prince Myshkin. The day after the “execution” of the Petrashevtsy, newsboys earned well. Townsfolk snatched their papers to read the vividly gruesome description of the civil execution. It is assumed that it was staged for one purpose—to intimidate other free-thinkers. So that they would be silent, dare not think or write about freedom of speech, about the liberation of peasants, about some republic, democracy, parliamentarism. After all, at the same time, a revolution was raging in France. Why did Russia need it? No one knew that only six years remained until the end of the Nicholas era and eleven until the event for which the Decembrists were sent to penal servitude—the liberation of the peasants. Petersburg and Moscow were still discussing the gruesome spectacle called “civil execution,” while the “condemned” were already being taken to penal servitude.

Source:

https://history1752.su/petrashevcy-zhizn-posle-kazni/