The First Russian Revolution - by Susanna Rabow-Edling (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

One of the Best Books of 2025: History at the Financial Times

Looking two hundred years in the past, an enlightening study of the neglected liberal tradition in Russian political thought with resonance for today.

On December 14, 1825, a group of young Russian army officers led three thousand troops to Senate Square in St. Petersburg, aiming to force the senate to adopt a liberal constitution and transform the Russian Empire. The Decembrist Revolt--as it came to be known--was suppressed, with a second uprising in the south meeting the same fate. Five leaders were executed, and many others exiled to Siberia. Why did so many young noblemen risk their lives for regime change, what was their vision for an alternative society, and what were the consequences for participants and their families? This book highlights the often-neglected liberal tradition in Russian political thought and the experiences of Decembrist wives and fiancées, offering a fresh reinterpretation in the light of recent events in Russia.

Review Quotes

"The year 2025 marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the Decembrist uprising, and Rabow-Edling provides a new overview of the revolt, extending from the ideas and plans motivating the insurgents through the insurrection itself to the Decembrists' trial and punishment. Written more for a broad audience than a scholarly one, the book ultimately seeks to aid in imagining political futures for contemporary Russia. The result is a lucid and informed account, though one that pushes few interpretative boundaries and focuses more on the experience of the Decembrists than on their legacy."-- "The Russian Review"

"The Decembrist Revolt of 1825 has come to be overlooked by the subsequent greater upheavals and revolutions that convulsed Russia. Rabow-Edling . . . has written an accessible reappraisal of the country's 'first revolutionaries, ' many of whom were young nobles pushing for a more liberal regime, the harsh repression they suffered, and the lasting impact they had on Russia."-- "Financial Times, "Best Books of 2025: History""

"[A] short yet detailed and nuanced study. . . . As Rabow-Edling makes clear, the Decembrists were patriots imbued with a profound love for their homeland and a sincere desire to serve the common good. Abolishing serfdom was the first step on the road to creating a new Russia, one in which the people would be citizens, not subjects. . . . In 1817, the economist Nikolai Turgenev, who was tried in absentia for his role in the Decembrist movement and escaped punishment by remaining abroad, wrote in his diary that he was 'crushed by the thought that I will not, in my lifetime, see Russia free and governed by a wise constitution.' Two centuries later, millions of Russians are still waiting."
--Douglas Smith "The Wall Street Journal"

"For the Russian revolutionaries of the nineteenth century, Soviet dissidents of the twentieth and even for some among the modern-day Russian opposition, the Decembrist rebels of 1825 were heroes and martyrs, symbolizing the struggle for a 'free Russia.' In this book Rabow-Edling has written an important and accessible new history of Russia's often mythologized 'first revolutionaries', exploring the Decembrists' ideas, their social background, their failed revolt and subsequent repression at the hands of the state. Engagingly written and based on exhaustive research, The First Russian Revolution will be of interest to academic and non-specialist readers alike."--Ben Phillips, lecturer in modern Russian history, University of Exeter

"This is the most comprehensive English-language account of the Decembrist uprisings, their origins and their consequences to be published for many years. The fresh and nuanced analysis of the Decembrists' historical significances is brilliantly situated in both Russian and European contexts. The concluding section on the Decembrists' Siberian exile, and the extraordinary stoicism of their wives, is particularly graphic and poignant. The monograph is excellently researched and superbly written by an eminent Swedish historian of nineteenth-century Russia, and it will prove an indispensable addition to the literature."--Patrick O'Meara, emeritus professor of Russian, Durham University

"This is a fresh, knowledgeable, readable and timely addition to the literature on the Decembrists. It is written from a modern perspective and informed by recent as well as older scholarship. Rabow-Edling has provided a welcome reappraisal of the Decembrist Revolt to mark the bicentenary of this key moment in Russian political and intellectual history."--Derek Offord, emeritus professor and senior research fellow, University of Bristol

About the Author

Susanna Rabow-Edling is associate professor of political science and senior research fellow at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden. Her books include Liberalism in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: State, Nation, Empire.