Did Benkendorf say to the Decembrists that, unlike them, he freed his serfs?

For many years, you can find a text on the network, which is called the appeal of the chief gendarmes to the Decembrists. In this passage, Alexander Benkendorf reproaches the investigation in hypocrisy and claims that he gave free to his peasants. We checked how much this is true.

May 19, 2025 at the St. Petersburg International Law Forum The discussion passed On the topic "Legal ideas of the Decembrists: Pro et contra. History lessons. " The Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation, Konstantin Chuychenko, also took part in it, who complained that participants in the uprising of 200 years ago were not punished severely. Among other things, he said: “The Decembrists were all landowners and owned serfs, but, sorry, none of them freed their serfs. Meanwhile, Benkendorf, the head of the security department, did it. ”

On the network, such a contrast can be found in the form of a monologue of Benckendorf, uttered by him, as claimed, in the first interrogation in the Decembrists' case. This monologue is found, for example, in public in "VKontakte", Blogs in Livejournal And "Zen", As well as on entertainment sites.

Internet users give a story about Benckendorf unchanged. It is alleged that during the investigation in the case of the Decembrists, he gathered all the accused for the first interrogation and made the next speech to them:

“Do you claim that you have risen for freedom for serfs and the constitution? Booking. I ask those of you who gave this very freedom to the serf - but did not drive them out into the street so that they would die like homeless dogs, hunger under the fence, but let go with the ground, lifting and with all help - raise his hand. If there are one, the case will be terminated in their regard, since they really act according to their own conscience. I'm waiting. There is nobody?

How strange ... I released my serfs in Livonia in 1816, and in the Tambov province-in 1818. Everyone came out with the ground, with initial means. I paid for each of them the taxes for five years in advance to the state treasury. And I do not consider myself a liberal or liberator!

It is more profitable for me. These people work better for themselves. I earn on the paraul, sawing the forest and other things for my former peasants. I have already covered all my expenses and got a profit for all this.

And I do not go out to the square with crazy statements or protests against the sovereign or, moreover, against the empire! ..

Since you can’t prove in anything that this is political, we will judge you as rebels and traitors of the Fatherland, with the people of Emelka Pugachev. And now - everyone in the cameras! In one stage, you will go with criminal, bastards! ”

There are a lot of questions to this monologue. Firstly, numerous stylistic inconsistencies are striking in it: the nobleman Benckendorf, speaking to the nobles, uses expanses (“like”, “Emelyki”) and allows insults (calls the Decembrists by scum). In addition, his speech is replete with obvious anachronisms: the words “at the same stage with criminal go” would have said, rather, an investigator of the NKVD, and not Benkendorf. The word "criminal" It has become used As a definition of non -political prisoners only by the end of the 19th century, in the first quarter of a century they were called convicts.

Secondly, c investigative affairs The Decembrists did not record interrogations, which would be present by all the defendants - a total of uprising in Senate Square and about that began shortly after it The riot of the Chernihiv regiment More than 500 people were in prison in different places. Most contained at the same time in the Peter and Paul Fortress - 156 people. A similar collective interrogation would not go unnoticed either in the recollections of the Decembrists or in the documents of the investigative commission.

Thirdly, Benkendorf, assigned The chief of a separate corps of the gendarmes only six months after the first arrests did not have sufficient authority to act with such speeches to the accused. The first interrogations were personally carried out by Nicholas I, and the investigation commission Headed Military Minister Alexander Tatishchev. “Suddenly I saw myself in a brightly lit room, in front of a table covered with a red cloth, near which all the members of our committee in uniforms and regalia sat. General Tatishchev occupied the presidential place, Prince A. N. Golitsyn, generals were located on his left hand: Dibich, Chernyshev, Benkendorf, on the right-Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, Petersburg General Kutuzov, generals: Levashov, Potapov, Hell-Adnitan Adlerberg, ”recalled his first reproduction Decembrist Nikolai Basargin.

But the main question is whether Benckendorf freed the peasants belonging to him. The above monologue states that the future chief of the gendarmes gave a free serf in his estates in the Livonia and Tambov provinces. However, c memories There is not a word Benckendorf about this. In his “Notes” he mentions a visit to one of the estates in 1823: “I went to the Tambov province to visit the lands that my brother and I inherited from my father. I found the peasant there in a state of remarkable prosperity, they honored the memory of our father and asked only about the continuation of their happy life, the benefits of which he provided them to use. ” From this passage it is impossible to draw an unambiguous conclusion about whether the peasants received free, but it is doubtful that Benckendorf would not mention this. As for the peasants of the Livonian province, then in this part of the Russian Empire serfdom and so was canceled In 1819, six years before the uprising of the Decembrists.

In addition, in the same “notes” there is a fragment dedicated to the Decembrists and their ideas for the liberation of peasants. From this passage, we can conclude that Benckendorf was their opponent: “In many provinces, the peasants deceived by the ill -wishers or deceived by false hopes considered it possible to demand freedom and refused to obey their owners.” These lines were written in 1826, after the first interrogations in the case of the Decembrists.

As for the monologue attributed to Benckendorf, this text appeared on the network only in the 2010s. The earliest mention that managed to find “verified” is a publication on the site ”Esdek»In 2010. It states that the fragment is taken from Internet recordings of the writer Alexander Erdimtovich Bashkuev. In 2001 Bashkiev Published The network has a book about Benckendorf, written in the genre of alternative history. In this work there is no indicated passage, but the monologue that has been dispersed in social networks is very reminiscent of the style of a book that is reproducing deliberate anachronisms and is very freely treating historical facts.

Thus, there is no evidence that Benckendorf freed his peasants and talked about this at the first interrogation of the Decembrists. The only mention of this is contained in a passage popular on the network, the authorship of which is attributed to the general unreasonably. In fact, this text most likely belongs to the writer who has invested his thoughts in Benkendorf's mouth.

Photo on the cover: J. Dow and workshop, military gallery of the Winter Palace, Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Fake

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