The Planned Coup d’état and Provisional Government

Abstract

At their 1823 congress the leadership of the Southern Society had envisaged the use of force in pursuit of their political objectives. Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin, for example, noted in his testimony that ‘the intention of the Society was the introduction into the state of a representative government. The means of attaining this was through the spread of branches of the Society and the use of armed force.’ This was an intention from which, as he stated elsewhere, ‘we never veered’.This chapter explores the Southern Society’s plans for seizing power, and Pestel’s contribution to them. The conspirators’ intentions to do so by violent means brought into sharp focus the intended fate of Alexander I and the imperial family, the issue which above all others most preoccupied Nicholas I and the Investigating Committee. Of interest as well is Pestel’s equally controversial proposal for the ensuing dictatorship of a provisional government and the role in it which he saw for himself. The chapter concludes with an assessment of Pestel’s loss of morale in the wake of his failure to unite the Northern and Southern societies under his leadership. As enumerated by the Investigating Committee, there were three major charges laid against Pestel.