After 10 years of unsuccessful attempts to have children, the princely Trubetskoy couple had four daughters and three sons. The Siberian penal servitude, to which the Decembrist’s wife followed her husband, became a brilliant reproductive doctor.
She was the daughter of a French count and the wife of a Russian prince. The first half of her life flew by in the splendor of aristocratic salons, the second stretched among the endless roads of convict Siberia. She chose this fate herself. Perhaps everything could have been different, but the wife of the Decembrist, Princess Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya, never regretted her choice.
1800-1821. Golden Dawn
Catherine Laval (that was the name of the future Princess Trubetskoy) was very lucky - both with her parents, and with the place, and with the time of birth. She saw the light in St. Petersburg, November 27, 1800, in a magnificent mansion on the English Embankment. Catherine's father Jean Francois (in Russian - Ivan Stepanovich) Laval left revolutionary France at the right time, and happily married in Russia - to Anna Grigorievna Kozitskaya, heir to the estates, factories and mines of a family of millionaire miners.
In her childhood and youth, Countess Catherine had everything she could wish for. She received an excellent home education. She had the opportunity to meet with the most prominent people of her time - both in Russia and on trips abroad.
The meeting that determined Catherine’s fate took place in Paris in 1819 (where else to meet Russians if not in Paris - especially in the years following the defeat of Napoleon!). Prince Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy, guard captain, participant in the Patriotic War of 1812, representative of one of the most noble Russian families, to tell the truth, was not particularly handsome. And young Catherine herself could rather be classified as a smart girl rather than a beauty. But spiritual closeness often turns out to be much more important than external beauty... As Zinaida Lebzeltern, Catherine’s sister, wrote in her memoirs, they “ They talked for a long time and gradually became attached to each other. My sister was sweet and kind, the prince was the embodiment of cordiality, modesty and spiritual nobility, they should have suited each other.”
The wedding of Catherine Laval and Sergei Trubetskoy took place in the city of Paris, in the Russian Orthodox Church on Berry Street on May 12, 1821. In the autumn of the same year they returned to St. Petersburg and settled on the Promenade des Anglais, in the house of Princess Catherine's parents.
1821-1825. Time for hope
The happy family life of the Trubetskoy couple was overshadowed only by the fact that neither a year, nor two, nor five years after marriage they had children. Princess Ekaterina Ivanovna repeatedly traveled to European resorts and consulted the best doctors - but in vain.
The healing waters of Baden-Baden were of no use. And not a single European luminary could say why a young, completely healthy and in no need of anything woman could not become pregnant.
Ekaterina Trubetskoy failed to become a mother in the first years of marriage. But she was a faithful friend of her husband - and was well aware of his affairs, secret and open. And Prince Sergei Petrovich continued to have a successful military career, on the one hand, and actively participated in the activities of secret societies, on the other...
1825-1826. Crash. “It will be easy for me to bear everything together with you...”
The regiments that entered Senate Square on December 14, 1825 were swept away by volleys of grapeshot. Everyone who survived was hastily dragged under arrest. The elected head of the guard's performance, Colonel Prince Trubetskoy, was no exception. By the way, he had no chance of dying on the square - since he did not actually appear at the site of the uprising. Afterwards, during the investigation, Trubetskoy said that he had lost faith in the success of their case...
However, we will leave aside what and how Trubetskoy said during the investigation. Our story is primarily about the fate of Ekaterina Ivanovna. Let's just say that in prison, Sergei Trubetskoy was luckier than other Decembrists - he was immediately allowed to correspond with his wife. For six months, from December to July, they wrote each other about two hundred letters each.
On July 12, 1826, thirty-five-year-old Prince Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy, manager of the Northern Secret Society, the recognized head of the military rebellion on December 14 on Senate Square, heard his verdict: “ after deprivation of ranks and nobility, exile to hard labor forever".
On July 24, 1826, twenty-five-year-old Ekaterina Trubetskaya left St. Petersburg. She will never return there again.
1826. Path to the East
Origin, family ties and the proximity of the family to the imperial court played a role - Ekaterina Ivanovna did not face any obstacles on her way to Siberia. Not installed yet.
Ekaterina Ivanovna covered the distance of five thousand miles, despite delays and illness, a little slower than the tsar’s couriers did on courier troikas. Less than 2 months later, on September 16, she was in Irkutsk. She managed to see her husband before he was sent further east, to the Nerchinsky mines.
And then for Princess Trubetskoy, months of most painful waiting and struggle with the imperial bureaucratic machine began - in the person of the Irkutsk governor Zeidler. He had an unspoken decree from Emperor Nicholas to prevent the wives of the Decembrists from following their husbands. Dissuade, and if that doesn’t work, intimidate.
Ekaterina Ivanovna had to sign an extensive paper with a list of prohibitions, which, among other things, stipulated the possibility of meetings with her husband only in the presence of guards, as well as the threat that children born in hard labor would be registered as state-owned factory peasants. But Trubetskoy was not stopped by any threats. In January 1827, she crossed frozen Baikal and came to her husband.
1826-1839. Hard labor and unexpected happiness
The Blagodatsky mine, where Ekaterina Trubetskaya lived until mid-autumn 1827, is the worst corner of the Empire, five hundred miles from Chita, almost on the border with China, remarkable only for its reserves of silver and lead ores. Ekaterina Ivanovna now walked not on the marble floors of her parents’ house - but on paths covered with snow in winter and paths muddy in the spring. She and her friend in misfortune, Maria Volkonskaya, lived in a black hut, where it was difficult to stretch out to her full height. The two former princesses cleaned up themselves, washed clothes, and washed the floors. They prepared food for their imprisoned husbands, and themselves ate bread and kvass, since their spending was strictly controlled by the prison authorities.
Ekaterina Ivanovna could visit her husband only twice a week (and in the presence of security). On other days, she could only see Sergei Petrovich from afar. Trubetskoy did not neglect a single opportunity for a date - she stood for hours in the snow, once her feet were frostbitten, she left the house in a snowstorm and rain... As the family story goes, Sergei Petrovich collected and left bouquets of flowers on the path along which they were taken to work, and Ekaterina Ivanovna picked them up afterwards...
In the fall of 1827, prisoners of the Nerchinsky mine were transferred to Chita, where other Decembrists were kept. In her new place, Ekaterina Ivanovna settled down more comfortably - in her own, albeit small, house. And life became easier for Sergei Petrovich in the literal sense of the word - on August 1, 1828, six-kilogram shackles were removed from all Decembrists. Meetings with her husband Ekaterina Ivanovna were allowed two days later on the third, and from 1829 - not even in prison and under supervision, but in her own home and without prying eyes.
And then an event occurred, which European medical luminaries would be very surprised to learn about. What trips to European resorts and consultations with the best doctors could not help, four years of living in conditions that seemed completely unbearable for a pampered aristocrat helped. On February 2, 1830, the Trubetskoys had a daughter, Alexandra.
In medical terms, the Siberian climate completely restored the reproductive health of the Trubetskoy couple. Then their children were born one after another. The second daughter, Elizaveta - in 1834, son Nikita - in 1835, Zinaida - in 1837, Vladimir - in 1838, Ivan - in 1843, Sophia - in 1844...
Over the years, the Trubetskoys have changed more than one refuge. From September 1830 to 1839, the Decembrists were kept in the prison of the Petrovsky Plant, which is three hundred miles closer to Europe than Chita. There, Ekaterina Ivanovna built the tallest house in the city - two-story and with a balcony from which she could see her husband walking around the prison yard behind a seven-meter fence. Yes, the meetings, of course, continued - at the end of their imprisonment, husbands were generally allowed to live in their wives’ apartments.
1839 – 1854. “If I were destined to relive everything again, I would do exactly the same thing”
At the end of her hard labor and ordeals in Siberian villages, Ekaterina Ivanovna managed (still with the help of influential relatives) to achieve the right to live with her whole family, with her husband and children, in Irkutsk. They lived in a beautiful house with a garden (the last gift that Trubetskoy’s mother gave to her daughter). In general, the usual social life of the provincial town was going on, the Trubetskoy children were growing up, their daughters were getting married... and Ekaterina Ivanovna’s health was getting worse. Frostbitten legs made themselves felt - in the last years of her life Trubetskoy could not walk.
Princess Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskoy died of consumption on October 14, 1854. She was 54 years old. She was buried in the fence of the Znamensky convent in Irkutsk. People still bring fresh flowers to the gravestone.
« For me, my friend, it will be easy for me to endure everything together with you, and I feel, every day I feel more strongly, that no matter how bad things may be for us, from the depths of my soul I will bless my lot if I am with you..» , - Ekaterina Trubetskaya wrote these lines to her husband in the fortress in December 1825. And she kept her word. For life.
Of the 121 Decembrists convicted by the Supreme Criminal Court, only 22 were married. In the Russian noble society of that time, men married, as a rule, somewhere at the age of plus or minus 30 years, and the vast majority of the conspirators at the time of the uprisings (on Senate Square and in the Chernigov Regiment) had not yet reached these years, and therefore simply did not have time start your own family. By the way, later, at a settlement in Siberia, more than 40 Decembrists entered into a legal or civil marriage (we are talking about permanent relationships - of course, tracking down some of their random love affairs is completely hopeless and unnecessary).
After leaving for Siberia, the Decembrist women, like their husbands, lost their noble privileges and switched to the position of wives of convicts: their rights of movement, correspondence, and disposal of their property were limited. The wives of the Decembrists were forbidden to take children with them, and they were not always allowed to return to the European part of Russia even after the death of their husbands. Not all the wives of the Decembrists wanted to share the fate of their husbands; some were not allowed by the emperor himself; some were forced by their relatives. In addition, we must not forget that when entering into a marriage in the Russian Empire of the 19th century, the bride’s parents, if they wished, had every right to force their daughter to marry an unloved person (as happened with Maria Volkonskaya And Natalia Fonvizina, for example), and suddenly being the wife of a Decembrist for such a woman was a chance to get rid of her hateful husband (to be fair, only a few took advantage of such an opportunity). However, among the Decembrists there were also those for whom the sentence of their men became, oddly enough, an unexpected success, providing them personally with the opportunity for family happiness, unattainable under more favorable circumstances.
In general, historians, glorifying the feat of fidelity and love of ten wives and two brides of the “conspirators,” and, as a rule, only Volkonskaya, Trubetskoy, Annenkova, and, at best, more Alexandra Muravyova(whose names and surnames are well known), usually their sisters are not often mentioned ( Bestuzhevs) and widows. Because the very first Decembrists were widows - they had no choice whether to go to Siberia after their husbands or not. There were two such unfortunate people. The criminal court found their husbands guilty (i.e., Decembrists), and soon after they lost them. Even less often do they remember the children of the Decembrists, who after the verdict “in the case of December 1825” became either orphans with living fathers (and not all of them waited for their fathers from Siberia), or, in the case when his mother followed him, lost both parents. Everyone knows that Maria Volkonskaya, leaving for Siberia to join her husband, she was forced to leave her infant son in the care of her relatives Nicholas(he died at two years old). But in fact, there were many more such children of the Decembrists. And there is some ominous symbolism in the fact that as a result of the defeat of the uprising on Senate Square and the performance of the Chernigov regiment, the very first in this sad series became orphans, two little girls - three years old and one year old. They were sisters, their father was
BULATOV ALEXANDER MIKHAILOVICH (1793 - January 10, 1826)
Colonel, commander of the 12th Jaeger Regiment.
A participant in the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns, he was awarded the Order of Vladimir, 4th class, for distinction in the battle of Bautzen. with a bow, for the capture of Paris he was awarded the Order of Anna, 2nd class. and a golden sword for bravery, commander of the 12th Jaeger Regiment - 1823. In the fall of 1825 he received a three-month leave and on September 11 arrived in St. Petersburg, where he met with the Decembrists.
Member of the Nordic Society (accepted Ryleev 12/9/1825), at meetings on the eve of the uprising, was elected one of its military leaders, deputy “dictator” of the prince Trubetskoy. According to the plan of the conspirators, he was supposed to raise an uprising in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
On December 14th, according to him, he was a few steps away from Nicholas I(on the side of government troops), having a pair of loaded pistols in his pocket, but did not dare to shoot at the emperor ( "my heart was failing"). On the evening of December 14th he himself appeared at the Winter Palace and surrendered himself into the hands of the authorities. After arrest Bulatov had a meeting with the autocrat. In January 1826 he fell into deep melancholy and, after several days of hunger strike, smashed his head against the walls of his cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress. He died in hospital on January 10, 1826, long before the trial and sentence.
Alexander Bulatov was a widower - a year and a half before the uprising, on June 23, 1824, at the age of 23, his wife died in childbirth, Elizaveta Ivanovna, maiden name Melnikova, leaving him two daughters - Pelageya And Anna. According to historians, it was the sudden death of his beloved wife that prompted Bulatova to participate in the Decembrist conspiracy - he was simply looking for any means to console his grief and forget himself. The eldest of his daughters subsequently married, and the youngest took monastic vows as a nun at the Borodino Monastery under the name Dosithea. From these girls, forgotten by all historians Bulatovs, in fact, we need to start (in chronological order) the story about the wives and children of the Decembrists.
RYLEEVA (TEVIASHEVA, TEVIASHEVA, TEVIASHOVA) NATALIA MIKHAILOVNA (1800 – 31.8.1853).
Wife (from January 22, 1819) of one of the five executed Decembrists, Kondraty Fedorovich Ryleev (1795 – 1826).
She came from a Ukrainian Cossack-elder family in Eastern Slobozhanshchina, which traced its ancestry back to a native of the Golden Horde Vavily Tevyash. Her paternal ancestors were Ostrogozh (by the name of the town) Cossack colonels for 61 years, from 1704 to 1765. Parents Natalya Mikhailovna - retired warrant officer Mikhail Andreevich(1763-1822) and Matryona Mikhailovna, maiden name Zubareva(?-1856), owned part of the Podgornoye estate in the Ostrogozh district of the Voronezh province, where in 1817 he was an ensign of the 11th cavalry company of the 1st squadron of the Moscow Dragoon Regiment Kondraty Ryleev, whose military unit was located near the estate Tevyashevs, in the Podgornaya settlement near the town of Pavlovsk, Ostrogozhsky district, Voronezh province, and met his future wife.
The consequence of meeting Tevyashev there was a solution Ryleeva become his daughters' teacher Natalia had an older sister Anastasia) - Although Mikhail Tevyashev was a very wealthy man, he did not consider it necessary to educate his daughters, unlike his three sons. As a result, the girls Tevyashevs, although they were universally recognized beauties, they remained “without any education, they didn’t even know Russian literacy.” After almost two years of regular training with them Kondraty Ryleev filled these gaps in the girls’ knowledge, with the exception of language - Natalia she never learned to speak French well, which later became a big problem for her in the secular society of St. Petersburg, where, also for this reason, she was not accepted.
The main result of the “education program” (which was to be expected) was the passionate mutual feeling of the young teacher ( Ryleev was then 22 years old) to the youngest of his students ( Tevyasheva was 17) - I must say, at first it was categorically not supported by the parents of both lovebirds. The groom's relatives believed that the bride was poor and he could not support her (his mother could barely make ends meet, and his father Ryleeva, having died in 1813 in Kyiv, left his son a Kiev house, which was seized as a result of a lawsuit brought by the general Sergei Golitsyn against Fyodor Ryleev - manager of his estates. The case dragged on until 1838, and only the daughter Kondratiya Ryleeva, Anastasia, was able to receive her grandfather’s inheritance - 25 years after his death, and 12 years after the execution of her father). The bride's parents also expressed doubts about his ability to arrange the fate of their daughter (in simple words, he was a poor man with no career prospects in the future). However, in June 1818 Ryleev received the long-awaited consent of his mother for marriage. From the bride's father, who showed firmness in his refusal, the Decembrist received consent in a very extravagant way: he raised a loaded pistol to his temple and promised to shoot himself in front of him if he did not give up his daughter for him. The old man gave in - however, making the groom's resignation from military service the last condition of the wedding. In December 1818 Ryleev retired, on January 22, 1819, a wedding took place in Ostrogozhsk, and on May 23, 1820, a daughter was born to the Ryleevs Anastasia. In the autumn of the same year, the family finally moved to the northern capital.
However, despite the fact that the relationship is based Ryleeva and his wife there was sincere mutual love, reflected in many of the poet’s poems (“N.M. Tevyashova”, “Apology to N.M.T.”, “Acrostic”, “Triolet to Natasha” and others), their family life, especially For Natalya Mikhailovna, turned out to be very unhappy.
Firstly, the money that I got Ryleev, his family apparently did not receive it. In addition, 15 thousand rubles (more than a decent amount at that time; with this money one could buy a small estate with land and serfs) received Natalya Mikhailovna as a dowry. Ryleev, being a successful financier and publisher, in his private life he was a real hoarder. He gave his wife almost no cash; the family lived “on credit.” After the death of her husband Natalya Mikhailovna For a long time she was paying off debts to the tailor, blacksmith, carpenter, owners of fruit and food shops, the pharmacist and her daughter’s teacher.
Secondly, Ryleev He had never been distinguished by marital fidelity, and his wife knew about it. Family relations finally deteriorated at the end of 1824. Apparently, one of the main reasons for the poet’s cooling towards his wife was the death of their one-year-old son in September 1824 Alexandra. In secular and literary circles of the capital there were persistent rumors that Ryleev “does not live at home, that he devotes his leisure hours not to his wife, but to others”. In the eyes of his contemporaries he “was not reputed to be a great family man,” “seemed cold towards the family.” The last statements are completely fair, and are fully explained by the fact that he himself Kondraty Fedorovich I never knew parental affection and attention, did not live in a loving, happy family. The fact is that his mother sent her only son (and a late one, she herself was almost 40 years old when he was born, her husband turned 50) to study at the 1st Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg at the age of only 4, 5 years (!), thus making him an orphan with living parents - which, of course, had the most serious (negative) impact on the formation of his character and views. Subsequently Ryleev often reproached his mother for being too early “deprived him of parental affection” - mainly to extract money from her. But the fact is that already about two or three years after his birth, the family of parents Ryleeva practically fell apart. For a very piquant reason. Anastasia Matveevna Ryleeva became the mistress of her husband's illegitimate son, Petra Malyutina. Brother Kondratiya his father was much older than him; there was a difference of about 23 years between them. Unlike their common father, who did not achieve success in his career, and “walked away” his 15 serfs, received as an inheritance, even before birth Kondratiya, Pyotr Malyutin was successful and rich. It was thanks to his intimate relationship with the Decembrist’s mother that the latter received from him as a gift (which, however, was registered as a purchase) the village of Batovo (modern Gatchina district of the Leningrad region). Father Kondratiya, whom traditional historiography paints as a “family monster and despot,” served his wife and bastard son as manager (the village was registered only in her name, which at that time, for a married woman, was a very eloquent scandal), and later, after the death of his a relative inherited a house in Kiev (the same one), left for Ukraine forever. It should be noted that for Ryleeva his mother's relationship with his older brother was never a secret. Moreover, after Pyotr Malyutin died (having spent almost his entire fortune) in 1820, Kondraty Ryleev became the lover of his widow, Ekaterina Ivanovna(1783-1869), the guardian of whose children (his nephews) he was after the death of his brother.
Thus, the future Decembrist last saw his own father at the age of about 4 years, and then only corresponded with him. As for the mother, historians drew attention to a very significant point. She was buried in the cemetery in the village of Rozhdestveno, Tsarskoye Selo district, St. Petersburg province. The son erected a monument over the grave, which has been well preserved to this day. There is a laconic inscription on it: “Peace be to your ashes, virtuous woman. Anastasia Matveevna Ryleeva. Born December 11th day 175, died June 2nd day 1824". Year of birth Anastasia Ryleeva, according to the inscription, consisted of only three digits. Which means, myself Ryleev had no idea what year his mother was born.
Therefore it is not surprising that Kondraty Fedorovich I just didn’t know how to live a family life. Those six years of marriage in which he lived before the uprising on Senate Square (with the exception, perhaps, of the first year and a half), his wife Ryleevs, mostly lived separately. The Decembrist either often left St. Petersburg himself, or sent his wife and daughter to “visit” one of his relatives for a long time.
Memoirs of contemporaries are full of descriptions of appearance Ryleeva, his opinions, actions, poems. However, his wife is mentioned extremely rarely, in passing (by the way, not a single lifetime image of her has survived, and whether there were any). In the eyes of the poet's friends and acquaintances, she was not a like-minded wife, like Ekaterina Trubetskoy, nor a wife or friend, like Alexandra Muravyova, not even an unhappy, romantic wife, abandoned for the sake of “business”, like Maria Volkonskaya. Contemporaries recalled Natalia Ryleeva then as a woman "unsociable", "she avoided dating", how "kind, kind" the mistress of the house, who “she was attentive to everyone” And "with his modest address" inspired “general self-respect.” Naturally, about conspiracy activities Ryleeva his wife had no idea. The events of December 14 and the subsequent arrest of her husband came as a complete surprise to her.
Memoirs of a Decembrist Nikolai Bestuzhev contain the famous scene of the spouses saying goodbye on the eve of decisive events:
“His wife ran out to meet us, and when I wanted to greet her, she grabbed my hand and, bursting into tears, could barely say:
- Leave me my husband, don’t take him away - I know that he is going to his death...
Ryleev... tried to reassure her that he would return soon, that there was nothing dangerous in his intentions. She did not listen to us, but at that time the wild, sad and searching gaze of her large black eyes alternately directed at both - I could not bear this look and became embarrassed. Ryleev was noticeably confused, suddenly she cried out in a desperate voice:
- Nastenka, ask your father for yourself and for me!
The little girl ran out crying<Nastya Ryleeva was then five years old> , hugged her father’s knees, and her mother fell almost unconscious onto his chest. Ryleev put her on the sofa, broke out of her and his daughter’s embrace and ran away.”
Always in the shadow of her husband, not accepted in secular society, lonely and, in essence, not needed by anyone Natalya Ryleeva suddenly received general interest and attention from complete strangers precisely as a result of the arrest and subsequent execution of her husband - we must not forget that none of those hanged on July 13, 1826 in the Peter and Paul Fortress was married and had no children, except Ryleeva.
Important for Ryleeva It turned out to be December 19, 1825 - on this day she, depressed by the arrest of her husband and her complete ignorance of where he was and what happened to him, sent a petition to the highest name: “Most merciful sir! I am a woman, and I can neither know nor judge what exactly and to what extent my husband is guilty; I only know and am convinced in my heart that those who receive the image of God on earth, above all, are characterized by mercy. Sovereign! overwhelmed with grief, with my only young daughter I fall at your august feet; but, not daring to ask for mercy, I pray for only one thing: order the authorities to tell me where he is, and to allow me to see him if he is here. Oh, sir! if I then offer warm prayers to the Almighty for your long and prosperous reign.”.
And although this request “the highest permission... did not follow”, a few hours later in her apartment in the building of the Russian-American Trading Company (as secretary of this organization, Kondraty Ryleev had official housing there) an official appeared, a confidant of a member of the Investigative Commission in the Decembrist case, Prince Alexandra Golitsyna(who was the patron Kondratiya Ryleeva at the beginning of his publishing career, and knew him well personally - in fact, it was he who, having hired the future Decembrist as his “PR agent”, launched his literary career), and told the heartbroken Natalya Mikhailovna about the sovereign's intention to provide her with financial assistance.
Golitsyn it was reported: “She (Natalya Ryleeva) indulges in inconsolable grief, which an elderly friend shares with her<подруга её матери>; has no other acquaintances. With tears of gratitude she listened to the merciful attention of the Emperor. When asked whether she needed anything, according to His Majesty’s permission to provide her with benefits, she answered that she still had 100 rubles left after her husband, that she didn’t care about anything, having only the desire to see her husband, about which submitted the most submissive request personally to His Imperial Majesty at 12 o’clock in the morning; and for this she already thanks God and the sovereign that she received a letter from her husband, but she is saddened that she does not know where he is and what will happen to him. For this she again gave herself up to grief and tears. Her friend is afraid of painful consequences from this.”.
As a result of this note, which apparently fell into the hands of the king, Natalya Mikhailovna received it the same day "highly honored" two thousand rubles (a lot of money at that time) and permission to correspond with my husband. Three days after the first royal gift, a thousand rubles were sent to her from the empress Alexandra Fedorovna. In March 1826 Golitsyn notified Ryleev that the emperor “I most graciously deign to welcome you at a time of two thousand rubles in banknotes.” Total five thousand rubles . For comparison: in the tsarist army of that time, the ANNUAL salary of captains, staff captains, captains and staff captains was 400–495 rubles. Second lieutenants (and it was in this rank that he retired from the army Kondraty Ryleev) received a salary of 236 to 325 rubles per year. Following the emperor and Golitsyn help Natalya Mikhailovna private individuals also began to provide assistance - her position was defenseless “the wife of a state criminal” with his 5-year-old daughter in his arms was extremely touching and even romantic, and evoked sincere sympathy and compassion from complete strangers Ryleeva of people. The death of my husband made Natalya Mikhailovna even more “interesting” in the eyes of both the supreme authorities and Russian educated society. Immediately after the execution Nicholas I assigned to the prince Golitsyna duty to inform him “about the condition of the unfortunate Mrs. Ryleeva”, inform her about her needs. The day after the conspirators were hanged, the Empress Mother Maria Feodorovna, who was then living in Moscow and had not yet received information about the execution, asked the prince Alexandra Golitsyna: “You wrote that Ryleev’s wife is interesting; What’s wrong with this unfortunate woman now?”
The widow of the executed criminal was assigned a pension of three thousand rubles a year; from the moment of her second marriage, her daughter received the same amount annually Anastasia. “Many will probably be extremely surprised when they learn that this sovereign, in relation to the family of the most important of state criminals, extended his generosity much further: the widow of Ryleev, who was then in a very difficult situation, received seven or six thousand rubles of assistance; and not only his daughter, but also his grandson were subsequently admitted, the first to the Patriotic Institute, and the second to the Elizabethan Institute at the expense of His Majesty’s funds.”.
In 1829, a nine-year-old Anastasia Ryleeva was indeed placed in government custody at the Patriotic Institute. To the institute, where Natalya Mikhailovna gave up her daughter, they accepted, according to the rules, first of all the daughters of officers killed in the war. At first Anastasia Ryleeva it wasn't easy. One of the students later recalled that her appearance at the institute caused a murmur, the girls felt “unhappy”: “They gave the daughter of a rebel to us, patriots!” But the institute authorities quickly pacified the anger of the young patriots. The pupils were convinced that “The king is merciful, he forgave, took the orphan into his care”. And consequently, "to offend an orphan" meant violating the royal will and acting unpatriotically.
It should be noted that the "favors" of the emperor, Golitsyna and ordinary “loyal subjects” did not mean for Natalya Mikhailovna renunciation of her husband’s memory - in fact, no one demanded this from her. Already on August 23, 1826, on the fortieth day after death Ryleeva, she organized a “funeral dinner” at her home, which the authorities were well aware of. Moreover, the young widow knew exactly where her husband was buried, despite the fact that the burial place of the executed rebels was considered a terrible state secret.
Ultimately Natalya Ryleeva returned to her homeland, to the village of Podgornoye, Ostrogozhsky district, to her mother (her father died back in 1822), a fairly wealthy widow, and with a permanent boarding house - which, although it looks strange, to put it mildly, her husband provided her by his death. In October 1833 Ryleeva married a second time - to an Ostrogozh landowner, a retired lieutenant G. I. Kukolevsky, having moved to his estate Sudevevka, about 12 versts from Podgorny. In this marriage, apparently, Natalya Mikhailovna was much happier than when married to Ryleev. The couple had two daughters, one of whom lived to adulthood - Varvara (1837-1865)- by the way, at the age of 17 she married a 21-year-old Georgian prince Konstantin Chavchavadze, a year later, at 18, at about the same time, she gave birth to a son Semyon and became a widow. Natalya Mikhailovna died on August 31, 1853, at the age of 53 - three years before the amnesty for the Decembrists, which allowed those who survived to return from Siberia.
As for the only daughter Kondratiya Ryleeva, Anastasia (1820-1890)- after graduating from the Patriotic Institute, on August 31, 1842, at the age of 22, she married a retired lieutenant Ivan Alexandrovich Pushchin. The newlyweds settled on the groom's estate, the village of Koshelevka, Tula province. The couple had nine children, four of whom lived to adulthood. In 1858 daughter Ryleeva was found by her father's friend (and classmate) who returned from Siberia Pushkin at the Lyceum), Decembrist Ivan Pushchin- he owed Kondraty Ryleeva 430 rubles in silver, and now he has repaid his debt to his daughter. In letters to friends about this meeting, he mentioned that his daughter was very similar to her father: “She reminded me of a dead man with the quickness of her gaze and the upper part of her face - apparently a woman with energy...”
Kondraty Ryleev and Anastasia Ryleeva. The daughter, indeed, was very similar to her father.
POLIVANOVA (VLASYEVA) ANNA IVANOVNA (1807 – 1846). One of the youngest Decembrists - in 1825 she was only 18 years old. Decembrist's wife Ivan Yuryevich Polivanov(1798/1799 – 5.09.1826), retired colonel of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment. Member of the St. Petersburg cell of the Southern Society (1824), who participated in the activities of the Northern Society.
Arrested in Moscow - 12/28/1825, taken to St. Petersburg on city guard, 01/2/1826 transferred to the Peter and Paul Fortress ( “Polivanov being sent to be kept under arrest”) in No. 2 of the Anna Ioannovna Bastion, 30.1. shown in No. 8 of the Nikolskaya Curtain.
Convicted of category VII and upon confirmation on 07/10/1826 sentenced to hard labor for 2 years, the term was reduced to 1 year - 08/22/1826. According to the report of Dr. Elkan dated 08/31/1826: “Kept in the local fortress in the curtain between the bastion of Catherine I and Trubetskoy in No. 15, deprived of ranks and noble dignity, Polivanov fell ill with severe nervous convulsive seizures with significant relaxation of the entire body.”, sent to the Military Land Hospital - 09/02/1826, where he died. He was buried at the Smolensk cemetery.
About herself Anna Ivanovna practically nothing is known, except for the fact that the entire period of arrest and investigation in the Decembrist case occurred during her first pregnancy, which she experienced very hard for this reason. The only son of the Decembrist, Nikolai, was born in July 1826, shortly after the Decembrists were sentenced, and lost his father at the age of two months. No details of the further fate of the Decembrist’s widow and his son are known to historians.
TRUBETSKAYA (LAVAL) EKATERINA IVANOVNA (1800 – 1854)
Daughter of a French emigrant, Marseille nobleman Ivan Stepanovich Laval (Jean-Charles-François de Laval de la Loubreriede)(1761 – 1846), count (raised by the king Louis XVIII in 1814 in gratitude for the multi-thousand-dollar “loan” that the Decembrist’s father provided him). Arriving in Russia, he first served as a teacher in the Naval Cadet Corps, under the emperor Alexandra I was a member of the main board of schools. Later he served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and edited the Journal de St. Petersburg".
From the mother's side, Alexandra Grigorievna Kozitskaya(1772 - 1850), the Decembrist was the granddaughter of a Kievite, a representative of the Ukrainian gentry Cossack-elder family, Grigory Vasilievich Kozitsky(1724-1775), cabinet secretary Catherine II, and heiress of “Myasnikov’s millions”, Ekaterina Ivanovna Myasnikova(1746 – 1833), after whom it was named. Great-grandfather Trubetskoy, Ivan Semyonovich Myasnikov(1710 – 1780) was an Old Believer, a Simbirsk merchant and the richest Russian industrialist. Together with his two brothers-in-law (wife's brothers) - Jacob And Ivan Tverdyshev– he owned 15 metallurgical enterprises. Their factories in the late sixties and early seventies of the 18th century smelted 22-23% of copper and 12-13% of iron in Russia. In direct control Myasnikova There were iron-smelting and iron-making enterprises. Besides, Myasnikov owned cloth factories and mills in the Simbirsk governorship. Brothers Tverdyshevs died childless, leaving all their fortune to their younger sister - great-grandmother Trubetskoy. So four daughters Ivan Myasnikova(the Decembrist’s grandmother was the youngest) became heirs to eight factories (the rest were destroyed during Pugachev’s uprising) and 76 thousand souls of serfs - the richest brides of the Russian Empire of their time. When dividing the estate, grandmother Trubetskoy, Ekaterina Ivanovna, received the Katav-Ivanovsky, Ust-Katavsky, Arkhangelsk copper plants and the Voskresensky mining plant, which she successfully managed.
The palace of Ekaterina Trubetskoy’s parents in the center of St. Petersburg, on the English Embankment. She grew up in this house. Now it houses the Constitutional Court of Russia. The story of my parents' marriage is interesting. Ekaterina Trubetskoy.
Her mother, having fallen in love with her future husband, did not want to hear about other suitors. But the grandmother of the Decembrists, Ekaterina Ivanovna(my grandfather had already died by that time), she opposed such an unequal marriage. Then in love Alexandra wrote a most humble request and put it in a special box placed near the emperor's palace Paul I.
Pavel Petrovich wished to understand the petition and demanded clarification from Ekaterina Ivanovna. She said as a reason for refusing her daughter’s marriage that Laval: "not our faith<отец Trubetskoy remained a Catholic until the end of his days> , came from unknown where and has a small rank".
The emperor's resolution was brief: "He is a Christian, I know him, for Kozitskaya the rank is quite sufficient. Get married in half an hour.".
Ivan Laval And Alexandra Kozitskaya They were immediately married in the parish church without any preparation. Alexandra Grigorievna brought her husband a huge dowry, about 20 million, including the Voskresensky plant in the Urals, which her husband, through wise management, further increased. In general, it was a very happy marriage, with which my grandmother eventually reconciled Trubetskoy, bequeathing a decent part of his fortune to her parents before his death in 1833. The couple's six children (four daughters and two sons, Catherine born in Kyiv, which was her mother’s hometown, and was the first-born of her parents) grew up in love and luxury, not knowing anything was denied.
With my future husband Ekaterina Laval met in 1819 in Paris (she and her sisters and parents lived in Europe for a long time), and there she married Prince Sergei Trubetskoy May 16 (28), 1820 - the wedding took place in the Russian Orthodox Church on Berry Street. The marriage was definitely a love affair. The groom was a descendant of grand ducal and royal families (on his father’s side Trubetskoy was a descendant of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas, and his mother came from a Georgian royal family). The bride, although she was the daughter of a French count, was of very dubious origin from the point of view of snobs, but she had a very rich dowry.
Ekaterina Ivanovna Laval. Portrait by Cecile Maudette. Paris, 1820. The painting was painted shortly before her marriage. For the princess Catherine her husband's conspiratorial activities were not secret. She was personally acquainted with all his conspirator friends, who freely discussed the affairs of secret societies even in her presence - especially in the last year before the uprising, in a Kyiv apartment Trubetskoy. But terror and violent actions were unacceptable to her, she said Sergei Muravyov-Apostol: “For God’s sake, think about what you are doing, you will destroy us and lay your heads on the block.”
Ekaterina Trubetskaya The first of the Decembrist wives obtained permission to follow her husband to Siberia. Trubetskoy was sent in chains on July 23, 1826, Ekaterina Ivanovna left St. Petersburg on July 27. It should be noted that her parents fully supported their daughter’s decision to share her husband’s fate, and then, in Siberia, Trubetskoys have always been perfectly financially secure thanks to the care of their relatives Ekaterina Ivanovna.
“I really feel like I can’t live without you. I’m ready to endure everything with you, I won’t regret anything when I’m with you.
The future doesn't scare me. I will calmly say goodbye to all the blessings of this world. One thing can make me happy: to see you, to share your grief and to devote all the minutes of my life to you. The future sometimes worries me about you. Sometimes I fear that your difficult fate may seem to you beyond your strength... For me, my friend, everything will be easy to bear with you, and I feel, every day I feel more strongly, that no matter how bad things may be for us, from the depths of my soul I will bless my lot if I'm with you"(From a letter Ekaterina Trubetskoy to her husband in the Peter and Paul Fortress, December, 1825)
In September 1826, she arrived in Irkutsk, and her husband and a party of exiles had already been sent to the Nerchinsk mines, which she did not know about. In Irkutsk Trubetskoy spent 5 months, all this time the governor Zeidler, according to orders from St. Petersburg, persuaded her to return back, not giving her a road ticket for the further journey, threatening, after she renounced her noble title, to be sent after her husband on foot in shackles along the stage. However Ekaterina Ivanovna remained firm in her decision. After some time, she arrived there and Maria Volkonskaya.
Only in February 1827 did the first meeting take place Catherine And Sergei Trubetskoy in the Blagodatsky mine. Together with Maria Volkonskaya for 3 rubles 50 kopecks they settled in a rickety hut with mica windows and a smoking stove. " You lie with your head against the wall - your feet rest against the doors. You will wake up on a winter morning - your hair is frozen to the logs - there are icy gaps between the crowns". Through a crack in the prison fence Ekaterina Trubetskaya I saw my prince, in shackles, thin and haggard, overgrown with a beard, in a tattered sheepskin coat - and fainted.
House of Trubetskoy and Volkonskaya in the Blagodatsky mine The first months in the Blagodatsky mine were the most difficult for them. What was it like for a woman who grew up in luxury in a palace to light the stove herself, carry water, wash clothes, cook food, and mend her husband’s clothes. In September 1827, the Decembrists were transferred to Chita, where conditions became significantly easier. They built a whole street of wooden houses for the wives of the Decembrists and called it Damskaya. And in 1829, the Decembrists were allowed to remove the shackles.
In 1830 the family Trubetskoy an important event occurred, which they, and, first of all, Ekaterina Ivanovna, waited almost ten years. On February 2nd their first child, a daughter, was born. Alexandra. Before this, for nine years, their marriage remained fruitless. None of the best doctors, including European ones, could help Trubetskoy get pregnant. Even Baden-Baden with its medicinal waters did not produce any results. In Siberia at that time there was a boom in the treatment of various diseases with the help of healing springs - there are many references to this in the correspondence of the Decembrists, and Trubetskoy(luckily for me) I also paid tribute to this fashion. Ekaterina Ivanovna, of course, she would never have even known about the healing Siberian waters if her husband had not been sentenced to Siberian hard labor. In general, this is just a case from the series “If there was no happiness, but misfortune helped.”
Total Trubetskoy gave birth to seven children, the last child at 44 years old. Three of them died in early childhood. And two daughters - Elizabeth And Zinaida- had the “pleasure” of seeing Soviet power with my own eyes - the first died in 1918 (in Simferopol), the second in 1924 (in Orel).
At the end of 1839, the period of hard labor for Sergei Petrovich. Trubetskoys received an order to leave for a settlement in the village. Oyok is 30 versts from Irkutsk. The move to a new place was overshadowed by the death of his youngest son Vladimir, who lived only a year. This is the first for the couple Trubetskoy the loss of a child was especially difficult. A year later in Oyok they buried another son, 5-year-old Nikita. It was from this time that health Ekaterina Ivanovna began to cause fears, such that on January 28, 1842, fearing imminent death, Trubetskoy she even wrote a will in which she asked her sisters to take care of their children and husband.
Prince Sergei Trubetskoy after returning from Siberia In 1845, as a result of constant petitions to the authorities of the mother Trubetskoy, countess Laval, her family was allowed to live permanently in Irkutsk - so that the head of the family from time to time came to his wife and children from Oyok (the village was located 30 versts from Irkutsk) - which, however, turned out to be just a formality, and Trubetskoys reunited in a spacious two-story house in Znamensky Suburb, which I bought for them Alexandra Grigorievna Laval. This house previously belonged to the Irkutsk governor Zeidler(yes, the same one who detained Trubetskoy in 1826 for 5 months, trying to dissuade her from further travel to Siberia), and was located near the Znamensky Monastery, across the Ushakovka River, with an extensive garden at the house. In 1908 it burned down in a fire.
This house soon became famous in Irkutsk and the surrounding area thanks to the boundless kindness of its owner. Wanderers, homeless people, and beggars have always found shelter and attention here. About what home Trubetskoy Always “filled with the blind, the lame and all sorts of cripples”, wrote the Decembrist A.N. Sutgof in a letter to the Decembrist I.I. Pushchina.
House Trubetskoy just like home Volkonskikh, was a real center of meetings and communication for the Decembrists who lived in a settlement near Irkutsk. “Both housewives - Trubetskaya and Volkonskaya - with their intelligence and education, and Trubetskaya - with their extraordinary cordiality, were, as it were, created to unite all the comrades into one friendly colony.”, - a student of the Decembrists and a frequent guest in their homes, a doctor, later wrote in his memoirs ON THE. White-headed. Even the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia himself N.N. Muravyov with his wife he visited the hospitable house of the princess, especially since his wife was French by birth, which, of course, brought her closer to the half-French woman Ekaterina Ivanovna.
In addition to caring for children, on the shoulders Trubetskoy She was concerned about the pupils, who seemed to appear spontaneously in her house. The daughter of a Decembrist was raised in their family Mikhail Kuchelbecker, Anna(1834 – ?). Second daughter M.K. Kuchelbecker, Justina(1836 – ?), although she was assigned to an orphanage, she spent most of her time with Trubetskoy. They also raised the son of an exiled settler A.L. Kuchevsky, Fedor, lived the eldest daughter of a poor official Neustroyeva Maria, same age Sasha Trubetskoy, and another friend of the older girls Trubetskoy,Anna(according to unconfirmed sources - sister of the Decembrist Bechasny).
In 1842, the two eldest daughters Trubetskoy, the troubles of their grandmother Laval(who never saw her granddaughters, just like they did her) were accepted into the newly opened Institute of Noble Maidens in Irkutsk, from which they both graduated with gold medals.
Their little brother Ivan, was assigned to the Irkutsk gymnasium, where he also studied with honors - this was reflected in the excellent home education that she gave to her children Ekaterina Ivanovna.
In 1845 Trubetskoys buried their youngest, last child, one-year-old daughter Sophia, whose birth significantly undermined her already poor health Trubetskoy.The following year news came to Siberia about the death of his father Ekaterina Ivanovna, Ivan Laval. These events finally undermined the health of the Decembrist. Rheumatic pain in the joints became constant, she was diagnosed with a hernia, due to which she could not walk independently - she was carried around the house and garden in a wooden chair on wheels. After the death of his mother was reported in 1850, Trubetskoy Consumption (tuberculosis) was diagnosed.
In 1851, the son of a Decembrist came to Irkutsk V.L. Davydova Pyotr Vasilievich(1825–1912), retired lieutenant of the Life Guards Horse Regiment, to meet his parents' friends, and on January 19, 1852, his wedding took place with Elizaveta Sergeevna Trubetskoy. The marital union of the children of the Decembrists thus founded the “Decembrist dynasty.”
After Elizabeth, April 12, 1852, married and eldest daughter Trubetskoy, Alexandra Sergeevna- for the Kyakhta mayor N.R. Rebindera(1810–1865). At the first matchmaking Rebinder was refused. He was a widower, twice the age of his chosen one, and had a twelve-year-old daughter from his first marriage Hope(1840 – ?), who was only 10 years younger than her supposed stepmother. However Trubetskoys They saw in him a worthy, honest and noble person who sympathized with the ideas of the Decembrists, which in itself was in their eyes a sufficient recommendation for accepting him into their family. I. Kazimirsky wrote I.P. Kornilov: “The Kyakhta mayor Rebinder came here the other day. Still young, your age. He is a widower and handsome, clever, educated; a very businesslike and well-intentioned person, of a very serious nature, but very kind in his manners.”. After the wife's wedding Rebinder went to Kyakhta.
Trubetskoy's daughters. On the left is Zinaida, married to Sverbeeva. On the right is Elizabeth, married to Davydov. Trubetskoy this is how he described it in a letter to his wife’s younger sister, Zinaide Lebzeltern(the wife of the Austrian ambassador to Russia) her condition after the departure of her daughters: “...Despite the fact that she wanted their marriage and knew that they were happy, separation from them was very difficult for her... After Lisa left, she began to lose weight, then perspiration began to appear at night, rheumatic pain in the shoulder blades, a dry cough after last spring, which, with great difficulty, managed to lead to expectoration, and which indicated damage to the lungs ... "
Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya died in the early morning of October 14, 1854, from lung cancer. She was almost 54 years old, of which 28 she lived in Siberia. She was buried on October 17 in the fence of the Znamensky Monastery, next to the graves of her three deceased children. The funeral was attended by all the Decembrists living in the Irkutsk colony and the whole of Irkutsk, headed by the Governor General N.N. Muravyov.
Two years after her death, when an amnesty was announced for the Decembrists, Sergei Trubetskoy At first he refused to use it to return to the European part of the Russian Empire - he did not want to leave his wife’s grave forever. Friends and family had difficulty convincing him to leave Siberia for the sake of his only son - Ivan Trubetskoy turned 13 years old, as the heir of his father (the Decembrist was returned all the rights of the nobility, except for the princely title, which, however, his son received), he needed to receive an education corresponding to the position in his family’s society. Interestingly, after returning from Siberia Sergei Trubetskoy with his daughter's family Alexandra Rebinder donkey in Kyiv. Six months before his own death, he buried his eldest daughter - Alexandra Sergeevna died in July 1860, aged only 30, from consumption. The prince himself died on November 22, 1860, at the age of 70, the day after the birthday of his beloved wife.
PS. The title illustration shows the final frame from the film “Star of Captivating Happiness” (Lenfilm, 1975, director Vladimir Motyl), dedicated to the fate of the Decembrists and their wives.
In 1820, Catherine Laval met the captain of the imperial guard, Prince Trubetskoy. They married on May 12, 1821 in Paris. At the end of 1824, the prince in Trubetskoy, appointed adjutant to the governor-general of Kyiv and the surrounding regions, went to his destination. His wife accompanied him. But by the end of 1825 they asked for leave and came to St. Petersburg, from where they were then supposed to return to Kyiv. On the night after the Decembrist uprising (December 14, 1825), Prince Trubetskoy was arrested. His wife did not know that he was at the head of the conspiracy, and did not even for a moment admit that the charge brought against her husband could be just.
But later a note was received from Prince Trubetskoy, he wrote: “Don’t be angry, Katya... I lost you and ruined myself, but without malicious intent. The Emperor orders me to tell you that I am alive and will remain alive.” Now there were no more doubts or hopes.
As the sovereign promised, Prince Trubetskoy’s life was spared; he was sentenced to life. The sentence was carried out. The survivors were shackled and sent to Siberia.
Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya was the first of the Decembrist wives to turn to Nikolai with a request to allow her to follow her husband.
Her father, the French emigrant Count I.S. Laval, was known throughout aristocratic Petersburg. Selected St. Petersburg society gathered in his luxurious mansion on the Embankment of England, which has survived to this day.
Balls were given here, and in that hall, shortly before December 14, 1825, Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich danced the mazurka together with the daughter of Count Laval, Ekaterina Ivanovna.
On December 14, 1825, Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich became Emperor Nicholas I, and Catherine Ivanovna’s husband was sentenced to eternal hard labor...
Having received permission to travel, Trubetskoy left for Siberia on July 24, 1826, the day after her husband was sent to hard labor. On this day, the last striped barrier of the St. Petersburg outpost closed behind her, a motley strip fell, as if cutting off her entire previous life.
She was accompanied on the road by her father's secretary, Mr. Vaucher. He looked in surprise at the possessed young woman, who was in such a hurry that she could barely close her eyes during short stops. When her carriage broke down about a hundred miles from Krasnoyarsk, she got into a folding cart, went to Krasnoyarsk and from there sent a carriage for her companion, who could not endure the difficult journey on a cart along the bumpy Siberian road.
When E.I. Trubetskoy reached Irkutsk in September 1826, her husband was still within the Irkutsk province. Zeidler still did not allow his wife to visit him on the grounds that “with the current distribution among factories, they can have communications through other means and even receive and send their trusted people and find ways to deliver letters and do similar unauthorized acts, which are beyond The strictest supervision is not worth the opportunity to warn.”
We must pay tribute to the insight of the Irkutsk governor. Indeed, Ekaterina Ivanovna, while in Irkutsk, had already entered into “illegal correspondence” through a Doukhobor sectarian, established a connection with the famous Siberian merchant E.A. Kuznetsov, who later became one of the most reliable intermediaries in the illegal relations of the Decembrists; handed over the letters to K. Vosha, who returned to St. Petersburg.
The wives of the Decembrists who followed their husbands were placed in a special, exceptionally difficult position in Siberia.
Lavinsky was the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia at that time. Hard labor was subordinate to him, and he was worried about rumors that had spread that their wives were going to go there after their husbands. Princess Trubetskoy, Princess Volkonskaya and Muravyova, née Countess Chernysheva, have already received permission to travel. Such high representatives of aristocratic St. Petersburg had never before been in hard labor, and Lavinsky, naturally, was faced with the question of what conditions the wives of convicts should be placed in Siberia and how to behave with them. To clarify the questions facing him, Lavinsky came to St. Petersburg.
He turned for advice to the Chief of the General Staff, Adjutant General Diebitsch, and informed him of his thoughts on this matter. Dibich knew that this question was occupied by Nicholas I himself, and on the same day, on the morning of August 31, 1826, he reported Lavinsky’s considerations to the tsar.
The king responded unusually quickly. He ordered the immediate and secret creation of a special committee to discuss the issue, which met that same day at seven o'clock in the evening.
The very next day, Lavinsky urgently sent the Irkutsk governor Zeidler for information and implementation of extremely strict rules regulating the position of the wives of the Decembrists in hard labor and in exile.
Trubetskoy, the first to leave St. Petersburg for Siberia to join her convicted husband, had a particularly difficult time: she had to sign a document that for many years to come determined the existence of herself and the wives of the other Decembrists, the existence of their husbands and all Decembrists.
Governor Zeidler was the first to apply the instructions received from St. Petersburg to her and behaved especially firmly and persistently with her. Zeidler understood perfectly well that if he failed to dissuade Trubetskoy from going to her husband, he would thereby open the way to Siberia for other wives of the Decembrists. Trubetskoy, and after her Volkonskaya, had to show - and showed - enormous willpower, perseverance and courage in order to break through this wall erected by Nicholas I between the Decembrists and their loved ones.
Seeing that the horrors of hard labor and future difficult living conditions did not frighten Trubetskoy, Zeidler said he was sick, and Trubetskoy could not get a meeting with him for a long time.
Trubetskoy waited patiently. Five months have passed since her arrival in Irkutsk, and Zeidler still did not let her go. Her husband continued to write to her from hard labor, never ceasing to hope for her arrival. Finally Zeidler accepted her. Seeing that no arguments could break Trubetskoy’s will, he announced to her that he was allowing further travel, but only in stages, together with convicts, under escort. At the same time, he warned Trubetskoy that during the stages people were dying like flies: five hundred people were sent, but no more than a third reached the place.
Trubetskoy didn’t stop either...
Zeidler could not stand it and finally gave permission. It was January 19, 1827. Trubetskoy left that day and soon arrived at the Great Nerchinsky Plant.
Trubetskoy arrived first. Seeing through a crack in the prison fence her husband, a former prince, in shackles, wearing a short sheepskin coat belted with a rope, she fainted. You have to imagine Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskoy, a gentle, sensitive woman, in order to understand the confusion that arose in her soul.
Trubetskoy saw her husband twice a week - in prison, in the presence of an officer and a non-commissioned officer, they could not convey to each other even a thousandth of what they felt. On other days, the princess took a bench and climbed up the slope of the hill, from where she could see the prison yard - so she was sometimes able to look at Sergei Petrovich at least from afar.
Once, in the bitter cold, Trubetskaya came on a date with her husband in worn-out boots and had a severe cold in her feet: from her only new warm boots, she sewed a hat for Obolensky so that the ore that fell while working in the mine would not get on his hair.
The princess often went by cart to Burnashev, with a report on their daily expenses. She returned back with purchased provisions and bags of potatoes. People they met always bowed to her...
In the middle of 1845, the girls' institute of Eastern Siberia was opened in Irkutsk, where the Trubetskoys placed their two youngest daughters in the first year of opening, and then they moved to live in the city, in Znamensky Suburb, where they bought a house for themselves.
“Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya,” writes the Decembrist Obolensky, was not pretty in face, but nevertheless she could charm everyone with her kind character, pleasant voice and intelligent, smooth speech. She was educated, well-read and acquired a lot of scientific knowledge during her stay abroad. Her acquaintance with representatives of European diplomacy, who visited the house of her father, Count Laval, had a significant educational impact on her.
Therefore, at that moment when Ekaterina Ivanovna decided to follow her husband to Siberia, she was forced to overcome not only the strength of family affection, but also the resistance of loving parents persuading her to stay and not commit madness. She not only lost all this magnificent society, with its balls and luxury, with its foreign voyages and trips to the Caucasian “waters,” her departure was a challenge to all these “members of the royal family, the diplomatic corps and the St. Petersburg elite.” Her decision to go to Siberia divided, split this brilliant society into those who openly sympathized with her, those who blessed her secretly, those who secretly envied her, and those who openly hated her.
Six months after Trubetskoy left St. Petersburg, the path to hard labor was open. She opened it not only for herself, but also for all the wives of the Decembrists who came to Siberia after her.
Prince Trubetskoy was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, after which he had to settle forever somewhere in Siberia. He spent 13 years in hard labor, after which everyone was sent to a settlement, but not to one place, as it had been before - they were separated and resettled in different areas, more or less distant from each other.
Trubetskoy often corresponded with her relatives, but neither her father, Count Laval, nor her mother - in general, none of her relatives made an attempt to visit her in exile. In addition to the two boys who died in childhood, Trubetskoy had four more children born in Siberia.
Everything experienced during the years of hard labor and exile had a heavy impact on Trubetskoy’s health. She was ill for a long time and on October 14, 1854, she died in the arms of her husband in Irkutsk. She was struck down by a serious illness. Deep mental fatigue, a cold, the hardships of endless roads and relocations, longing for the homeland and parents, the death of children - everything that this amazing woman suffered, who knew how to remain outwardly calm and cheerful in difficult moments of her life, had an impact. She was buried in the fence of the Irkutsk Znamensky Monastery.
Having walked hand in hand with her husband the difficult twenty-eight-year path of hard labor and exile, Trubetskoy only two years did not live to see the day when the Decembrists and their wives were finally allowed to return to Russia.
Trubetskoy Ekaterina Ivanovna (1800-1854), princess, née Countess De Laval, wife of the Decembrist S.P. TrubetskoyEkaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya was the daughter of the French emigrant Count I.S. De Laval, who in Russia was more often called simply Laval. After the Great French Revolution, many aristocrats, fleeing the guillotine, moved to the Russian Empire. And the subsequent years in France were not calm - there were too many political storms and wars during this period of French history. Laval remained in hospitable St. Petersburg. He taught at the Naval Cadet Corps. The count married A.G. for love, but not without benefit. Kozitskaya, on her mother’s side, was a representative of the wealthy merchant family of the Myasnikovs and the owner of a large fortune.
Parents of Ekaterina Trubetskoy Jean-Francois Laval and Alexandra Kozitskaya
The De Laval family owned a luxurious palace on the Promenade des Anglais in St. Petersburg, where magnificent balls for high society, literary and musical evenings were often held. 
Laval House in St. Petersburg
The count raised his daughters as French girls, and as soon as political circumstances allowed, he took them to France to better know the homeland of their ancestors.
Katasha (as Catherine's relatives affectionately called her) during a trip met in Paris with Prince Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy, a hero of the War of 1812. The girl immediately charmed him. According to the recollection of Zinaida, Ekaterina Ivanovna’s sister, “before her marriage, Katasha outwardly looked elegant: of medium height with beautiful shoulders and delicate skin, she had the most beautiful hands in the world... She was less beautiful in face, since thanks to smallpox, his skin, roughened and darkened, still retained some traces of this terrible illness... By nature cheerful, in conversation she revealed sophistication and originality of thought, it was a great pleasure to talk with her. She was nobly simple in her manner. Truthful, sincere, passionate, sometimes hot-tempered, she was generous to the extreme.”.
Prince Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy
The novel turned out to be swift. In May 1821, Prince Trubetskoy and Countess Laval got married in Paris. After their honeymoon, the newlyweds returned to St. Petersburg.
S.P. Trubetskoy in 1816 became one of the founders of the first Decembrist society, the Union of Salvation, and took part in the activities of the Union of Prosperity. In 1822, he was considered one of the leaders of the Northern Society of Decembrists, but on the day of the uprising, December 14, 1825, he did not appear on Senate Square, fearing possible bloodshed. He was arrested in the building of the Austrian embassy, where the Trubetskoys were hidden on the night after the uprising on December 14 by relatives - Ekaterina Ivanovna's sister Zinaida and her husband, the Austrian diplomat Lebzeltern.
The day after the prince’s arrest, Ekaterina Ivanovna received a note from her husband. He wrote: “Don’t be angry, Katya... I lost you and ruined you, but without malicious intent. The Emperor orders me to tell you that I am alive and will remain “alive”.”. Ekaterina Ivanovna answered: “I really feel like I can’t live without you. I’m ready to endure everything with you... I won’t regret anything when I’m with you. The future doesn't scare me. I will calmly say goodbye to all the blessings of this world.”.
Monument to the Trubetskoy family in the Petrovsky plant (now Petrovsk-Zabaikalsky), sculptor L.A. Rodionov
Trubetskoy was sentenced to lifelong hard labor in the first category. Ekaterina Ivanovna was the first of the Decembrist wives to obtain permission to share her husband’s fate. The day after Trubetskoy was sent to Siberia, she followed him. In Irkutsk she was lucky enough to see her husband, but the meeting was very short. The Irkutsk governor Tseidler did not give her permission to continue her journey for several months, persuading her to return home.
Trubetskoy did not give in to persuasion and threats; she wrote a letter to Zeidler, explaining the reasons for her decision: “The feeling of love for a friend made me desire with the greatest impatience to unite with him; but with all that, I tried to calmly consider my situation and reasoned with myself about what I had to choose. Leaving my husband, with whom I was happy for five years, to return to Russia and live there with my family in all outward pleasure, but with a murdered soul, or out of love for him, abandoning all the blessings of the world with a clear and calm conscience, voluntarily betraying myself humiliation, poverty and all the innumerable difficulties of his woeful situation in the hope that by sharing his suffering, I can sometimes, with my love, ease his grief at least a little? Having strictly tested myself and made sure that my mental and physical strength did not allow me to choose the first, but my heart strongly attracted me to the second.”.
Zeidler, realizing that Ekaterina Ivanovna would not change her decision, announced to Trubetskoy that she would continue on her way "on a tightrope", together with criminals, and gave her a travel permit to go to the Nerchinsk mines, having previously signed a subscription to renounce all rights. "A woman with less hardness, - wrote A.E. Rosen, - she would have hesitated, made arrangements, slowed down the matter with correspondence with Petersburg, and thus would have kept other wives from making a long, futile journey. Be that as it may, without diminishing the merits of our other wives who shared the imprisonment and exile of their husbands, I must say positively that Princess Trubetskoy was the first to pave the way, not only long and unknown, but also very difficult, because the government gave orders to reject her in every possible way from the intention of uniting with her husband".
At the end of January 1827, Ekaterina Ivanovna arrived at the Bolshoi Nerchinsky plant, located next to the Blagodatsky mine, where the Decembrists worked. She settled in a cramped, cold hut with M.N. Volkonskaya. Their life was spent in difficult, unusual household chores.
House of Ekaterina Trubetskoy and Maria Volkonskaya in the Blagodatsky mine
The only joy was rare visits with their husbands. A year later, the Decembrists were transferred to Chita, and the women who shared their fate settled there. Active, warm-hearted Ekaterina Ivanovna took an active part in caring for the prisoners and conducted their correspondence. In 1830, a special prison for the Decembrists was built in Petrovsky Zavod, and wives received the right to live with their husbands in their cells. Ekaterina Trubetskaya spent nine long years in prison at the Petrovsky plant. Decembrist E.L. Obolensky noted in his Notes: “Among all the vicissitudes of fate, their family happiness was based on such a solid foundation that nothing could subsequently shake it. The event of December 14 and the departure to Siberia is only an occasion for the development of those powers of the soul with which Ekaterina Ivanovna was gifted and which she so beautifully used to achieve the high goal of fulfilling her marital duty.”.
In 1839, the Trubetskoys were transferred to a settlement, first in the village of Oyok, and then in Irkutsk. In Siberia, Ekaterina Ivanovna had eight children, four of whom died at an early age.
Despite all the trials and vicissitudes of fate, Ekaterina Trubetskaya did not refuse help to anyone; unfortunate and disadvantaged people found shelter and food in her house.
Trubetskoy House-Museum in Irkutsk
Ekaterina Ivanovna strove to give her children a good education. When the Women's Institute opened in Irkutsk, she secured the right for her younger daughters to study there. The Trubetskoys' youngest daughter, Zinaida Sergeevna Sverbeeva, lived until 1920, and even received a pension from the Soviet government.
Ekaterina Ivanovna Trubetskaya retained meekness, kindness and peace of mind until the end of her days. She was everyone's favorite. A.E. Rosen characterized E.I. as follows. Trubetskoy: “... she is not beautiful in face, not slender, of average height, but when she speaks - so that your beauty and eyes - she simply captivates with her calm, pleasant voice and smooth, intelligent and kind speech, everyone would listen to her. The voice and speech were the imprint of a kind heart and a very educated mind from discriminating reading, from traveling and staying in foreign lands, from getting close to famous diplomats.”.
She did not live only two years before the amnesty of 1856. October 14, 1854 E.I. Trubetskoy died after a debilitating illness and was buried in the cemetery of the Znamensky Monastery in Irkutsk. S.P. Trubetskoy wrote to his wife’s sister: “She calmly left this world, leaning on my chest, so that I didn’t even notice her last breath.”.
Monument to the wives of the Decembrists in Irkutsk
The husband survived Ekaterina Ivanovna by six years. He died in 1860 in Moscow, where he lived with his son. At the funeral of S.P. Trubetskoy gathered the surviving Decembrists and students who carried the coffin in their arms from the Nikitsky Gate to the Novodevichy Convent.
“I really feel that I can’t live without you. I’m ready to endure everything with you, I won’t regret anything when I’m with you.
The future doesn't scare me. I will calmly say goodbye to all the blessings of this world. One thing can make me happy: to see you, to share your grief and to devote all the minutes of my life to you. The future sometimes worries me about you. Sometimes I’m afraid that your difficult fate may seem to you beyond your strength... For me, my friend, everything will be easy to endure with you, and I feel, every day I feel more strongly, that no matter how bad it is for us, from the depths of my soul I will be the lot I will bless mine if I am with you."
From a letter from Ekaterina Trubetskoy to her husband
to the Peter and Paul Fortress, December 1825
Ekaterina Trubetskaya was born half French. She was born on November 27, 1800 in the family of the French emigrant Jean-Charles-François de La Valle, who fled to Russia from the Great French Revolution and took the name Ivan Stepanovich here, and the wealthy merchant heiress of Myasnikov's millions, Alexandra Grigorievna Kozitskaya, owner of two estates in Penza and the Vladimir provinces with twenty thousand serf souls, a large mining plant in the Urals and gold mines. The Laval family was reputed to be incredibly rich; their capital was estimated at 2 million 600 thousand silver rubles. At one time, Alexandra Grigorievna lent 300 thousand francs to King Louis XVIII of France, who was in exile, for which Laval was later thanked royally: in 1814, Ivan Stepanovich was elevated to the title of count of the Kingdom of France, passing on to all his descendants.
In Russia, he began as a simple teacher in the Naval Cadet Corps, then served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the head of a department for 30 years, becoming a fairly prominent diplomat. In the table of ranks since 1800, Laval occupied class IV, possessing the court title of chamberlain, and in 1819. moved to III grade, receiving the civil rank of Privy Councilor. Surely his wealthy merchant wife had a hand in these promotions of the foreign husband. Just in 1800, the first-born appeared in the family - Katasha, as Ekaterina Ivanovna’s relatives affectionately called her, and service ranks gave the right to hereditary nobility.
The childhood and youth of Catherine, the eldest of Laval's three daughters, was carefree and happy. Brought up among luxury, from an early age she saw herself as the subject of attention and care of both her father, who loved her dearly, and her mother. Katerina Ivanovna was considered an enviable bride; many noble suitors sought her hand. Although she was not known as a particularly beautiful woman, she “fascinated everyone with her kind character, large expressive eyes, pleasant voice and intelligent, smooth speech.” She was a very educated and well-read young lady, knew languages, sang well, and played the piano excellently. Her acquaintance with representatives of European diplomacy, who often visited their home, had a significant educational impact on her.
The pompous mansion of her parents on the Promenade des Anglais in St. Petersburg towered like a real palace. Granite lions at the entrance, antique columns, exquisite interiors inside - high stucco ceilings, floors lined with marble mosaics from the palaces of the Roman emperors Nero and Tiberius. The Lavals have collected a priceless artistic treasury - paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, antique marble statues, Greek vases with thousands of years of history, a collection of Egyptian antiquities, porcelain dishes with monograms, a home library of 5 thousand books on history, philosophy, economics, art - this center of cultural life St. Petersburg was famous far beyond the borders of the Russian Empire. Not a single salon in the northern capital hosted such magnificent balls, social events, diplomatic receptions, performances and celebrations, literary and musical evenings with the participation of famous artists, and exquisite dinners for 300-400, or even 600 people. Guests were received on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the entire St. Petersburg elite, headed by Emperor Alexander I, stayed here, Zhukovsky, Karamzin, Griboyedov, Pushkin, Vyazemsky read their works here.
Best of the day
At the Christmas ball in 1818, Katasha dances with Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, the future Emperor Nicholas I. Young and carefree, they chirp cheerfully in French, joke, talk about ancient Roman literature, English traditions and Russian epics. The Grand Duke is fascinated by this sweet girl, he is gallant and polite as ever, and calls her “The most enlightened girl of high society.” None of these two then imagined that balls would not be the only place and reason for their meetings.
In the spring of 1820, the Lavals will travel from St. Petersburg to Paris, the historical homeland of the father of the family, and there Katerina will meet her fate.
She first heard about the honored hero of the Patriotic War of 1812 from her Parisian cousin Tatiana, and already before meeting him she knew that Prince Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy fought valiantly, had many orders and awards and two battle wounds. At first, the young princess did not like Trubetskoy at all; this was not the kind of gentleman she dreamed of.
He was 10 years older than her, secretive and withdrawn, with ugly facial features, lanky and unable to dance. But gradually their acquaintance developed, they were interested in talking about everything.
The prince was struck by her intelligence and spiritual qualities; for the first time he met such an educated and inquisitive woman. And she fell in love for the first time. Contemporaries recalled that the love of the Trubetskoy spouses was mutual and passionate; a magnificent wedding in May 1821 was a natural consequence of their deep feelings. “In this way their fate was arranged, which subsequently so sharply outlined the high character of Katerina Ivanovna and, among all the vicissitudes of fate, established their family happiness on such solid foundations that nothing could shake it later.”
The newlyweds returned to St. Petersburg in the fall of 1821. Soon Trubetskoy received the rank of colonel of the Preobrazhensky Regiment and Saint Anne of the 2nd degree - an order awarded to “those who love truth, piety and fidelity.” He left combat service back in 1819, moving to the administrative position of senior adjutant at the main military headquarters.
Sergei Petrovich did not hide his political activity from his wife. He introduced her to like-minded people - meetings of the secret society were often held in Trubetskoy’s office in the Laval house; under Catherine, there were open conversations about the need to reorganize the socio-political structure in Russia; a lithographic press was kept in her bathroom, which was used for the propaganda needs of society. The conspirators chose Trubetskoy as their leader, the dictator of the impending uprising. Of course, Ekaterina Ivanovna was worried about the fate of her husband and his friends; one day she said to Muravyov-Apostol: “For God’s sake, think about what you are doing, you will destroy us and lay down your heads on the block.” She, who since childhood could not stand the sight of blood, endlessly convinced her husband that for true Christians terror was unacceptable, happiness based on the blood and misfortunes of others was immoral. To one degree or another, the relatives knew about Trubetskoy’s plans: so Catherine’s mother, Countess Alexandra Grigorievna, personally embroidered the rebel banner with silk, but the dictator did not need it.
On December 14, 1825, Colonel Trubetskoy did not go to Senate Square. And not because he was cowardly. The former military officer understood perfectly well that the forces were not equal: by giving the command “Pli”, he would inevitably doom the rebels to death, and he did not want bloodshed; he considered the uprising premature and poorly prepared; moreover, there was a split and confusion in the ranks of the leaders. It is known from history textbooks that the Decembrist uprising was brutally suppressed. From the report of an official of the Ministry of Justice S.N. Korsakov: “There were 1,271 people killed on the day of the uprising on December 14, including: 1 general, 1 staff officer, 17 officers, 93 soldiers of the Moscow Regiment, 69 of the Grenadier Regiment, 103 sailors of the Guards Naval Crew, 17 Horse Guards. 39-"in tailcoats and greatcoats", 9 - "female", 19 - "minors" and 903 - "mobs". The Emperor ordered that the corpses be removed by morning. That night, many ice holes were made on the Neva, into which they lowered not only corpses, but also but, as they stated, there were also many wounded, deprived of the opportunity to escape from their expected fate."
On the day of the uprising, Trubetskoy was hiding in the house of his brother-in-law, the Austrian ambassador Count Ludwig Lebzeltern, where he was arrested on the night of December 15. Nicholas I did not sleep a wink for two days, personally interrogating the conspirators in the Winter Palace. At first, Sergei Trubetskoy denied his involvement in the conspiracy. But when he was presented with indisputable evidence found during a search in Laval’s house - a synopsis of the “Manifesto to the Russian People” and Nikita Muravyov’s draft constitution - he allegedly fell to his knees before the sovereign and begged for forgiveness and mercy (as Nicholas I wrote in his diaries), however, Trubetskoy himself denied this shameful fact.
Probably, Nicholas I did not forget his youthful sympathies for Catherine Laval, since, interrogating Colonel Trubetskoy, he mentioned her: “What a name, Prince Trubetskoy Guards Colonel, and in what business! What a sweet wife! You ruined your wife!” And already on December 15, 1825, the emperor let Katasha know that her husband would survive.
Letter from S.P. Trubetskoy's wife, E.I. Trubetskoy, from the Winter Palace,
“My friend, be calm and pray to God!.. My unfortunate friend, I destroyed you, but not with evil intentions. Don’t complain about me, my angel, you alone still tie me to life, but I’m afraid that you will have to drag out unhappy life, and perhaps it would be easier for you if I didn’t exist at all. My fate is in the hands of the sovereign, but I have no means of convincing him of sincerity. The sovereign stands next to me and orders me to write that I will be alive and well God save you, my friend. Forgive me.
Your eternal friend Trubetskoy."
In total, 579 people were involved in the Decembrist case, 79% of them were soldiers of the tsarist army. The Peter and Paul Fortress could hardly accommodate all those arrested. The Investigative Committee conducted an investigation for 6 months, collecting documents and confessional evidence. On June 1, 1826, the Supreme Criminal Court was established to sentence defendants. Trubetskoy was convicted as a state criminal of the first category and sentenced to death by beheading for the fact that “he intended to commit Regicide and agreed with the proposal of others; he proposed the imprisonment of the EMPEROR and the IMPERIAL FAMILY during the occupation of the Palace; he ran the Northern secret society, which had the goal of rebellion, and agreed to be called the head and leader of a military rebellion, although he did not personally act in it.” Immediately after the announcement, the sentence was commuted, the emperor granted Trubetskoy life, with the deprivation of all awards, ranks and nobility and exile to eternal hard labor in Siberia.
Even before the verdict was pronounced, Ekaterina Trubetskaya, brought up in patriarchal traditions, firmly decided to share the fate of her husband if he remained alive. She achieved a royal audience. The meeting of old acquaintances took place in the house of the Governor-General, only now the former Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich was the sovereign of all Rus', and Catherine Laval was the wife of a state criminal. The Emperor tried in every possible way to dissuade her from the reckless idea of going to Siberia, threatening her with the loss of noble privileges, property rights, all sorts of difficulties and deprivations, and a lifelong ban on returning to central Russia. “Why do you need this Trubetskoy, huh?! From now on, princess, you are free, no longer bound by the bonds of a marital union with the convict Trubetskoy. We want it that way. We command it!” And she persistently insisted that she agreed to any conditions, just to always be with her husband. It is not known what influenced Nicholas more - the firmness of Trubetskoy’s intentions, his long-standing sympathy for her, or the memory of the services to the crown of the Russian Empire of her grandfather, the former Secretary of State of Catherine II Grigory Vasilyevich Kozitsky - but under her pressure, Nicholas I gave Trubetskoy written permission to follow husband to hard labor. “Well, go, I will remember you,” the emperor admonished her, and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna added: “You are doing well that you want to follow your husband. If I were you, I would not hesitate to do the same.”
Ekaterina Trubetskaya was the first of the Decembrist wives to leave for Siberia on July 24, 1826, the very next day after her husband was sent to hard labor. Her parents supported her decision, equipped her for the journey, Countess Laval provided her with money, and her father assigned his secretary Karl Vaucher to accompany her. Seeing off his daughter, Count Laval cried, Katasha consoled him, asked for forgiveness, and convinced him that her duty was to be with her husband in difficult days for him. Having gone into the unknown into an icy convict land, she will never see her parents again.
On the way, Ekaterina Ivanovna caught a bad cold, in the Krasnoyarsk region her carriage broke down, and she had to transfer to post horses. Vaucher gave up, citing illness, he returned to St. Petersburg (after which he left Russia forever), and nothing could stop her in her desire to make her exiled husband happy. After 7 weeks and more than 5 thousand miles of travel in Irkutsk, a new test awaited her. The Emperor really did not forget about her. Irkutsk officials received a secret order, approved by them, to reason with the wives of the convicts with all care, to use all possible suggestions and persuasion in order to detain them in Irkutsk and send them back to Russia. The Irkutsk governor Zeidler created all sorts of obstacles for her, not allowing her to move on. In the fall of 1826, Sergei Trubetskoy was doing hard labor at the Nikolaev Distillery near Irkutsk, but she was not allowed to see him for more than a month. Their short meeting took place on October 8, 1826, when eight Decembrists were gathered in Irkutsk for further transfer to the Nerchinsk penal servitude. She miraculously made it in time for dispatch. The exiles' horses had already started moving, but Sergei Petrovich jumped out of the cart; the spouses' embrace was tender, tears flowed from both eyes, he again asked her for forgiveness.
Ekaterina Trubetskaya spent four tedious months in Irkutsk. Despite the fact that she had permission signed by the tsar, the local authorities harassed her in a natural way, not allowing her to proceed further, and refused to receive her under various pretexts. Then she entered into correspondence with officials.
"Dear Sir Ivan Bogdanovich!
Your Excellency already knows my desire to share the fate of my unfortunate husband, but, having noticed that Your Excellency used all efforts to turn me away from such an intention, I consider it necessary to present to you in writing the reasons that prevent me from agreeing with your opinion.
The feeling of love for a Friend made me desire with the greatest impatience to unite with him; but with all that, I tried to calmly consider my situation and reasoned with myself about what I had to choose. Leaving my husband, with whom I was happy for five years, to return to Russia and live there in every external pleasure, but with a murdered soul, or out of love for him, abandoning all the blessings of the world with a clear and calm conscience, voluntarily surrendering myself to humiliation and poverty and to all the innumerable difficulties of his sad situation in the hope that, sharing all his sufferings, I can sometimes, with my love, ease his sorrow even a little? Having strictly tested myself and made sure that my mental and physical strength would in no way allow me to choose the first, and my heart strongly attracts me to the second... But if my feelings for my husband were not like that, there are even more important reasons that would force me to decide on this. Our Church considers marriage a sacrament, and nothing can seriously break the marriage union. A wife must always share the fate of her husband, both in happiness and in misfortune, and no circumstance can serve as a reason for her to fail to fulfill her most sacred duty... These reflections lead me to an even greater desire to fulfill my intention, for, remembering that deprivation of everything by laws, what the world values is a great punishment, very difficult to endure, but at the same time the thought of the eternal benefits of the future life makes voluntary denial of all this sacrifice pleasant and easy to the heart... The hope of soon being together with my husband makes me feel the deepest gratitude to the Emperor, who eased the grief of my unfortunate Friend, allowing him to have joy in his wife...”
Perhaps it was these arguments of Ekaterina Trubetskoy that had the desired effect; officials did not dare to trample on the laws of God. On January 19, 1827, Zeidler accepted her. Without hesitation, she signed a renunciation of everything, agreeing to lose her title of nobility and property rights to serfs, accepting that children born in Siberia would become state-owned factory peasants. Zeidler threatened to send her to Nerchinsk in a convoy along with convicts - “they go in groups of five hundred people and die like flies along the way,” and did not guarantee her any safety among criminals who would have every right to consider her one of their own. But Trubetskoy is adamant: “I am ready to overcome these 700 miles that separate me from my husband, step by step, shoulder to shoulder with convicts, but you will not detain me any longer, I ask you! Send me away today!” According to the order, she handed over all the funds, valuables and jewelry for storage to the treasury according to the inventory and on January 20, 1827, she went to the Nerchinsky mines, the then center of the convict Transbaikalia, which was known as a hellish place.
In Nerchinsk, Princess Trubetskaya will meet Princess Volkonskaya, who also went to hard labor to share the fate of her husband, and from then on they will become best friends for many years. They will be forced to sign many more forms imposing regulations on their behavior: not to seek meetings with their husbands in any way, except for those allowed on strictly appointed days, no more than two days later on the third, not otherwise than in a prison cell in the presence of a prison officer ; on dates, speak only Russian; do not give your husbands any things, money, papers, ink, and do not accept anything from them, especially notes and letters; not to leave anywhere from their place of stay... Once again they agreed to all the conditions. Finally, in February 1827, the princesses reached the Blagodatsky mine - the place of hard labor for the 8 Decembrists, which consisted of one street with squalid houses. For 3 rubles 50 kopecks they rented a rickety hut with mica windows and a smoking stove to live in. “You lie with your head against the wall - your feet rest against the doors. You wake up in the winter morning - your hair is frozen to the logs - there are icy cracks between the crowns.” When, through a crack in the prison fence, Trubetskaya saw her prince for the first time in many months, shackled, emaciated and haggard, overgrown with a beard, in a tattered sheepskin coat - she fainted.
A new stage of her life begins, full of difficulties and hardships. She, who had grown up in luxury in a palace with well-trained governesses and nannies, now lit the stove herself, carried water, washed clothes, cooked food, and darned her husband’s clothes. She gave all her warm clothes to the prisoners, sewed a hat from her warm shoes for one of the convicts - so that his head would be protected in the adit from crumbling rocks, but she herself walked in shoes so worn out that as a result her feet were frostbitten and then hurt for a long time. All the money was confiscated from the wives of the criminals, the authorities gave them such meager sums for “living” that the aristocrats almost became beggars. To save money, they gave up dinners so that they could send hot lunches to the prison every day. “We limited our food: soup and porridge - this is our everyday table; dinner was cancelled, Katasha, accustomed to her father’s refined cuisine, ate a piece of black bread and washed it down with kvass.” The first seven months of life in the Blagodatsky mine were the most difficult - there was not enough money, food, warm clothing, and there was no medicine. After prison visits, women immediately shook out their clothes - the prison was infested with bedbugs. But they did not lose heart and did not give up, they supported their convicts with all their strength and capabilities.
From the memoirs of the Decembrist E.P. Obolensky: “The arrival of these two tall women, Russian at heart, high in character, had a beneficial effect on all of us; with their arrival, we formed a family. Common feelings turned to them, and their first concern was us. With their arrival, the connection Our family and those close to our hearts received the beginning, which then did not stop, to deliver to our relatives the news that could console them in complete uncertainty about our fate, but how can we calculate everything that we owe them for so many years? , which they were dedicated to caring for their husbands, and with them about us? How not to remember the improvised dishes that were brought to us in our barracks of the Blagodatsky mine - the fruits of the labors of princesses Trubetskoy and Volkonskaya, in which their theoretical knowledge of kitchen art was subordinated complete ignorance of the application of theory to practice. But we were delighted, and everything seemed so tasty to us that it is unlikely that the bread half-baked by Princess Trubetskoy would not have seemed tastier to us than the best work of the first St. Petersburg baker."
During supervised dates, Ekaterina Ivanovna could not openly talk to her husband about her feelings and experiences. In order to see him more often, she climbed the slope of the hill from which the prison yard was visible, and secretly walked behind the convoy when the prisoners were taken to work or for walks. Prince Trubetskoy picked flowers on his way, made a bouquet and left it on the ground, and the unfortunate wife came up to pick up the bouquet only when the soldiers could not see it.
The Nerchinsk penal servitude soon ended. In September 1827, the Decembrists were transferred to Chita, where living conditions became much easier. After the peasant hut of the Blagodatsky mine, Trubetskoy had real mansions - a whole street of modest wooden houses, called Damskaya, was built for the wives of the Decembrists.
Surely Nicholas I more than once regretted that he allowed Ekaterina Trubetskoy, and then other wives, sisters, and mothers of “friends of December 14th” to go to Siberia. The Decembrists were not completely isolated from the outside world. The wives corresponded on behalf of the exiles; Trubetskoy sometimes had to write up to 30 letters a week, since she was personally acquainted with many relatives and friends of the convicts; they subscribed to magazines and newspapers for them, wrote letters and complaints to higher authorities - right up to the Tsar and the chief of gendarmes Benckendorf, insisting on improving the conditions of their husbands' detention. Every day the wives came to the prison to talk through the fence with the prisoners and cheer them up. One day, a guard soldier hit Ekaterina Ivanovna with his fist, trying to drive her away - this almost caused an uprising in the prison, and the women immediately wrote a complaint to St. Petersburg. After this, Trubetskoy demonstratively organized “receptions” in front of the prison: she brought a stool, sat on it, and took turns talking for a long time with the prisoners through the fence. Commandant of the Nerchinsk mines, General S.R. Leparsky said more than once: “I would rather deal with three hundred state criminals than with ten of their wives. I have no law for them, and I often act against instructions...”
On August 1, 1829, a joyful event occurred: taking into account Leparsky’s petition, the emperor allowed the 6-kilogram shackles to be removed from all Decembrists. A master of all trades N.A. Bestuzhev made keepsake jewelry from shackles for all women - bracelets, crosses, wedding rings for spouses; later he would write: “And weren’t we ashamed to lose heart when weak women rose to the beautiful ideal of heroism and selflessness?
In Chita, a real miracle happened in the Trubetskoy family. For Catherine, who had been sick since childhood, the clean Siberian air turned out to be more healing than the warm waters of Baden-Baden, where she went more than once for treatment. In 1830, after nine years of marriage, their first daughter, Sashenka, was born. The young parents were immensely happy. Then their children will begin to appear one after another.
In 1830, the Decembrists were transferred to a new prison specially built for them at the Petrovsky Plant. The wives obtained permission to live with their husbands in prison cells. On September 28, 1830, Ekaterina Trubetskaya wrote to her mother in St. Petersburg: “This life from date to date, which we had to endure for so long, cost us all too much for us to decide to undergo it again: it was beyond our strength. Therefore, we are all in prison for four days now. We were not allowed to take the children with us, but even if we were allowed, it would still be impossible due to local conditions and strict prison rules. After we moved into the prison, we were allowed to leave it to look after take care of the housework and visit our children... I live in a very small room. It is so dark in it that at noon we cannot see without candles. There are many cracks in the walls, the wind blows from everywhere, and the dampness is so great that it penetrates to the bones. Physical suffering, "that this prison can cause seems insignificant to me in comparison with the cruel necessity of being separated from my child and with the anxiety that I feel all the time that I do not see him."
Trubetskoy's letters from Siberia were read by the high society of St. Petersburg with tears in their eyes; they were copied by hand and read out in salons as literary works.
At the end of 1835, by decree of the emperor, the end of hard labor for 10 exiled Decembrists was announced and their transfer to a settlement. Ekaterina Trubetskaya asks Nicholas I for permission to move with her husband and children to Western Siberia. The Tsar, not finding tearful lines of repentance and apology in her letter, refused this request. He also will not allow Trubetskoy to come to St. Petersburg in 1846 to say goodbye to her dying father.
The Trubetskoy family was sent to settle in Oyok, a small Buryat village 32 kilometers from Irkutsk. The settlers were allocated 15 acres of land “so that they could feed themselves.” At the settlement, Prince Trubetskoy, having begun to engage in agriculture, became closely acquainted with the peasants and their way of life, he became interested in the situation of the peasantry and issues of volost administration. Sergei Petrovich is also involved in gardening, often goes hunting, keeps a diary of observations of birds and natural phenomena, and even participates in the development of gold mines.
And Ekaterina Ivanovna found solace and joy in raising children, teaching them to read and write, languages, music, and singing. In total, she had 9 children in Siberia, to her great sadness, five of them died at a young age, leaving three daughters alive - Alexandra, Elizaveta and Zinaida, and the youngest son Ivan. In addition to their own children, the Trubetskoy family raised the son of the political exile Kuchevsky, two daughters of the Decembrist Mikhail Kuchelbecker, and two children’s educators lived with them. There was enough room for everyone in this hospitable and hospitable house. During the period of residence in Irkutsk, the Decembrists described Ekaterina Ivanovna as follows: in a simple dress, with a large embroidered white collar, a wide braid laid in a basket around a high tortoiseshell comb, in front, on both sides, long, curled curls, radiant eyes, sparkling with intelligence, shining with kindness and God's truth.
In 1845, the first Girls' Institute in Siberia opened in Irkutsk, and Trubetskoy obtained permission to settle with her children in Irkutsk so that her older girls could attend the institute. The old Countess Laval helped her daughter a lot for the last time before her death, sending funds to buy a spacious - fourteen rooms - house overlooking the Angara in the Znamensky suburb of Irkutsk, next to the monastery. By coincidence, this house previously belonged to Governor Zeidler, the same one who many years ago did not allow her to see her exiled husband. Soon Sergei Petrovich received permission to live with his family in Irkutsk.
All the beggars and cripples of Irkutsk knew the Trubetskoys' house. Ekaterina Ivanovna, who experienced firsthand what hunger and deprivation are, never refused a piece of bread to those in need, she provided all possible assistance to poor peasants, was a faithful parishioner of the Znamensky Monastery, and did not spare donations for the church. The entire surrounding population came to her for medicine - she distributed medicines received from St. Petersburg to the sick. The Trubetskoy house, like the Volkonsky house, became one of the main centers of culture in Irkutsk; the Decembrists and all the local nobility - officials, merchants - gathered here with pleasure. “Both housewives - Trubetskaya and Volkonskaya, with their intelligence and education, and Trubetskaya - with their extraordinary cordiality, were, as it were, created to unite all the comrades into one friendly colony; the presence of children in both families brought even more animation and warmth to the relationship.” Many contemporaries called Ekaterina Ivanovna the personification of inexhaustible kindness, an amazing combination of a subtle mind and a kind heart.
Ekaterina Trubetskaya did not live to see the Tsar's Manifesto on amnesty for the Decembrists only 2 years. She died on October 14, 1854, she died of a severe lung disease early in the morning in the arms of her husband. For the first time in Irkutsk such a crowded funeral took place, the entire city - from the poor to the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia - came out to see off their princess on her last journey. "...on the day of the funeral, her coffin was carried in their arms by the nuns of the monastery, to which she had done a lot of good. These poor girls never wanted to allow someone else to take their place at the coffin..." She was buried in the fence of the Znamensky Monastery next to untimely departed children. Poor Katasha was deeply regretted by her children, friends, and all those to whom she did good.
With the death of the princess, the Trubetskoy house was orphaned and stood as if dead. Old Trubetskoy grieved over his loss and did not appear in public at all. After the Amnesty Manifesto, the old prince did not want to leave Irkutsk; he agreed to leave only in the name of the need for the further education of his son Ivan, who in 1856 was only 13 years old. Before leaving, Trubetskoy sobbed until he lost consciousness at his wife’s grave. He, unconscious, was put in a cart and taken away from Siberia forever. He died in Moscow at the age of 70 on November 22, 1860. His funeral turned into a real political demonstration. About a hundred students who participated in the funeral carried his coffin in their arms 7 miles to the Novodevichy Convent. The authorities, out of fear, called in a company of soldiers - even on his last journey, Trubetskoy recovered under escort.
Could Ekaterina Trubetskaya have acted differently? After all, no one forced her, in the prime of her life, to dress in mourning, renounce all the benefits and luxurious life available to her since childhood, and voluntarily go into the unknown to the ends of the world for her convict husband. By decree of the government and the Synod, the wives of the Decembrists were recognized as widows and could remarry while their spouses were alive, since their husbands were considered “political dead.”
The answer was found in one of her letters to Nicholas I: “I am very unhappy, but if I were destined to relive everything again, I would have done the same thing...” She could not imagine any other way, it was a conscious choice. Ekaterina Trubetskaya was born the same age as the century and became the face of her century, going down in history as the first aristocrat to go to hard labor in Siberia for her husband. She endured with dignity all the trials that befell her as a woman. She kept her wedding vow of fidelity, bearing the difficult cross of her fate with dignity and humility.
