Volkonskaya Maria Nikolaevna. Date of birth December 25, 1805 (January 6, 1806) - the day of death August 10, 1863 (57 years old). Princess, daughter of General N. Raevsky, wife of the Decembrist S. Volkonsky, friend of A. S. Pushkin.
There were only 11 women - wives and brides of the Decembrists, who shared the difficult fate of their chosen ones. Their names have been remembered for almost two hundred years. But still, most of the poetry, historical studies, novellas and novels, theatrical performances and films are dedicated to Maria Volkonskaya - one of the most mysterious and attractive women in Russia of the 19th century.
Several generations of historians and simply lovers of antiquity have tried to unravel the mystery of the princess, the riddle of her character and fate. Her name has become legendary. And she herself said: “What's so surprising - 5,000 women voluntarily do the same every year …” Volkonskaya did not need a monument. She fulfilled her wife's duty, perhaps sacrificing her female happiness for this.
The youngest and beloved daughter of a military general of the era of the Napoleonic wars N. N. Raevsky and the granddaughter of M. Lomonosov, Sofia Alekseevna. The Raevskys' house was dominated by patriarchy. The girl admired the sense of duty and the unparalleled heroism of her father and brothers. The family repeatedly heard a story about how, anticipating defeat at Saltanovka, the general ordered his 17-year-old son Alexander to take the banner, grabbed 11-year-old Nikolai by the hand and exclaimed: “Soldiers! My children and I will show you the path to glory! Forward for the Tsar and the Fatherland! - rushed under the bullets.
Severely wounded in the chest by buckshot, he was able to see how his corps defeated three times the enemy forces. An ardent and very impressionable girl only saw a real man like that. (Perhaps this is why she treated A. Pushkin's courtship, who dedicated many tender lines to her, with a fair amount of irony and categorically refused to marry the Polish landowner Count G. Olizar.)
The girl received an excellent education at home, she knew several foreign languages. However, the passion of youth was music and singing. Her amazing voice could be heard. She tirelessly learned arias, romances and sang them brilliantly at parties, accompanying herself on the piano. At the age of 15, Maria already understood and felt a lot.
Her older brothers and sisters influenced the formation of her character. From Sophia she took over pedantry, commitment and passion for reading; from Elena - gentleness, sensitivity and meekness; from Catherine - harshness and categorical judgments; and from Alexander - skepticism and irony. The girl seemed to feel that she would grow up early, and won the hearts of men already at the first balls.
It is believed that Mary did not marry for love, but at the insistence of her relatives. General Raevsky wanted a brilliant and comfortable life for his daughter, he was seduced not only by the title of the groom - Prince Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky, despite his 37 years old, he was already a war veteran, major general, belonged to a noble Russian family, had huge connections at court. But most importantly, he was surprisingly honest, noble and just - a man of duty and honor, which Mary valued so much in her father. It was these qualities that resonated in the heart of 17-year-old Raevskaya.
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After Volkonsky's matchmaking and Maria's stunned words: "Dad, I don't know him at all!" - Raevsky wrote to Volkonsky that evening that she agreed and that they could be considered engaged. The general knew his daughter very well. If she had not felt a heartfelt, emotional attraction to Sergei, she would have responded not with quiet confusion, radiance of her eyes and a hardly restrained smile, but somehow differently, more decisively, sharply, like Gustav Olizar. By the way, Raevsky knew everything about the future son-in-law's participation in a secret society, but he hid it from Maria, although he did not refuse Volkonsky.
Officially, the engagement was celebrated with a large ball, at which the entire Raevsky-Volkonsky family was present. During a dance with Sergei, a dress caught fire on Maria: while dancing the complex figure of a mazurka, she accidentally touched the table with candelabra with the edge of her clothes, and one candle overturned. Fortunately, the misfortune was prevented, but the dress suffered very badly, and the bride was quite frightened - it seemed to her that all this was a very bad omen.
1825, January - on the threshold of her 18th birthday, Maria got married. She escaped from parental care and enthusiastically set up her new home: she ordered curtains from Paris, carpets and crystal from Italy, worried about carriages and stables, servants and new furniture. She lived in anticipation of happiness, but she saw little of her husband, he was all in his own business, came home late, tired, silent. Three months after the wedding, the young princess unexpectedly fell seriously ill. The doctors who moved to the bed determined the beginning of pregnancy and sent the fragile expectant mother to Odessa for sea bathing.
Prince Volkonsky remained with his division in Uman, and when he occasionally came to visit his wife, he asked her more than he himself said. Maria wrote later: “I stayed in Odessa all summer and thus spent only three months with him in the first year of our marriage; I had no idea of the existence of a secret society of which he was a member. He was 20 years older than me, and therefore could not have confidence in me in such an important matter."
At the end of December, the prince brought his wife to the Raevsky estate, Boltyshka, near Kiev. He already knew that Colonel P. Pestel was arrested, but he did not know about the events of December 14, 1825. General Raevsky informed his son-in-law about this and, sensing that the arrest might affect the prince, invited him to emigrate. Volkonsky immediately refused such an offer, because flight for the hero Borodino would be tantamount to death.
Maria's birth was very difficult, without a midwife on January 2, 1826, she gave birth to a son, who, according to family tradition, was named Nikolushka. Maria herself then almost died, childbirth fever kept her in the heat and delirium for several days, and she hardly remembered a short meeting with her husband, who left the unit without permission to see his wife and son. A few days later he was arrested and taken to St. Petersburg for the first interrogations. But Maria did not know about it. The disease tenaciously held her in its arms for several months.
Meanwhile, events developed quite rapidly. The investigation into the case of the rioters was in full swing. They arrested and then released the sons of Raevsky. The old general went to Petersburg to plead for his relatives, but only incurred the wrath of Emperor Nicholas 1. Only after returning to Boltyshka in April, Raevsky informed his daughter about everything, adding that Volkonsky was "locked up, shamed" and so on - he did not repent before the emperor and did not name the conspirators. And of course, her father immediately announced to her that he would not blame her if she decided to dissolve the marriage with the prince.
One can only imagine what it was like to hear all this for a young woman exhausted by a long illness. Father hoped that she would submit to the will of her parents (brother Alexander frankly said that she would do whatever her father and he said), but everything turned out the other way around. Maria rebelled. No matter how they tried to dissuade her, she left for St. Petersburg, achieved a meeting with her husband in the Alekseevsky ravelin, became close to his relatives, consoling them and bravely awaiting the verdict.
But then Nikolushka suddenly fell ill, and Maria was forced to hastily go to her aunt, Countess Branitskaya, in whose care her son was. In her aunt's estate, she was imprisoned from April to August. Throughout this time, she was deprived of news of her husband. But these months have not been in vain. In mental loneliness, thinking about Sergei, Maria seemed to be born again. It seemed that all the enormous energetic power of the Raevsky family poured into this fragile woman. It took the young princess tremendous spiritual work to determine her attitude to the perfect Sergei, to understand him, to come to the only conclusion: no matter what awaited him, she needed to be near him.
This decision is all the more valuable because Volkonskaya suffered for it. If A. Muravyova, E. Trubetskaya and other wives of the Decembrists were not shackled by such tough domestic shackles, were free to communicate with each other, found support from friends, relatives, everyone sympathizing with the rebellion, then Maria was forced to fight alone for her bold choice, to defend him and even go into conflict with the closest, loved by her people.
1826, July - the defendant was sentenced. Prince Volkonsky was sentenced in the first category to 20 years of hard labor and exiled to Siberia. As soon as it became known, Maria and her son went to St. Petersburg. She stayed at her mother-in-law's house on the Moika (in the same apartment where Pushkin died 11 years later) and sent a petition to the emperor to let her go to her husband. She wrote to her father: “Dear papa, you must marvel at my courage to write to crowned heads and ministers; what you want is a necessity, misfortune has revealed in me the energy of determination and especially patience. The pride started to speak in me to do without the help of another, I stand on my own two feet and it makes me feel good."
A month later, a favorable response was received, and the very next day, leaving the child to her mother-in-law, she went to Moscow. How strong was the rejection of her actions by her relatives that Mary left her first-born to an unfamiliar woman who did not lift a finger to save her son! Well, she made up her mind to this too, confident that she was right: "My son is happy, my husband is unhappy, - my place is near my husband." What mental strength and will one had to possess to make such a decision! (A total of 121 people were exiled to Siberia, and only 11 women won the right to visit their husbands.)
In Moscow, Maria Nikolaevna stayed for several days with Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya, who gave a famous evening in her honor, which was attended by Pushkin, Venevitinov and other famous people of Russia. And on the eve of the new year, 1827, when balls were going on in the neighboring houses, glasses were clinking, the young woman left Moscow. It seemed to her - forever. She told her father that she was leaving for a year, for he promised to curse her if she did not return … The old man felt that he would never see his daughter again. Little Nikolenka and General Raevsky died literally one after another within two years.
Volkonskaya Maria Nikolaevna rushed alone through endless snowstorms, severe frosts, courageously endured searches and "all kinds of suggestions" of officials. Overtaking the exhausted convicts along the road, she understood what humiliations her husband had to go through, who had suffered not for some machinations, but for a cause of honor. And when, having achieved a meeting with Sergei Grigorievich, the princess saw him emaciated, in chains, she fell on her knees in front of him and kissed the shackles, paying tribute to his suffering. This act became a textbook symbol of the wife's complete separation of her husband's fate.
The Siberian life of the Decembrist's wife was just beginning. It will take another 30 years before the pardon decree comes and the Decembrists will be allowed to leave for the European part of Russia. Until 1830, the wives of the Decembrists lived separately from their convict husbands. But after they were transferred to the Petrovsky plant, Volkonskaya demanded permission to settle in the prison. To their little prison closet, and a year later to the house outside the prison. Where guests gathered in the evenings, read, argued, listened to the music and singing of Maria Nikolaevna.
The presence of devoted women was a great support for the Decembrists thrown out of their usual life. Of the 121 exiles, not even two dozen survived. As far as the funds allowed, the Decembrists carried out charitable activities, came to each other's aid in difficult days, mourned the dead and rejoiced at the appearance of a new life. The colony of exiles did a lot of good deeds in the Irkutsk province.
Life continued in distant Siberia. There the Volkonskys had three children. Daughter Sophia (1830) died on her birthday - Maria Nikolaevna was very weak. But son Michael (1832) and daughter Elena (Nellie, 1834) became a real consolation for their parents. They grew up under the strict supervision of their mother and received an excellent education at home.
When in 1846 the tsar ordered to send children to state educational institutions under a false name, Maria Nikolaevna was the first to abandon this "strange" undertaking, proudly saying that "children, whoever they are, should bear the name of their father." But she brought up Mikhail and Elena as well-meaning citizens, loyal to the throne, and did everything in her power to restore their position in society. Having shared her fate with her husband, the princess remained far from the ideas of the Decembrists.
During the years of exile, the spouses have changed a lot. Memories of contemporaries often diverge when characterizing their union. Some believe, referring to letters and archives, that in the heart of Volkonskaya Maria Nikolaevna only the "disgraced prince" reigned. Others, citing the same archival data as an example, assure that Mary, staying with her husband, did not love him at all, but resignedly carried her cross, as befits a Russian woman who swore allegiance to him before God. For many years, Mikhail Lunin was secretly in love with Maria. But more often they call the name of the Decembrist Alexander Viktorovich Poggio.
Their contemporary E. Yakushkin wrote that, having become domineering over the years and remained the same decisive, Maria Nikolaevna, deciding the fate of her daughter, “did not want to listen to anyone and told Volkonsky's friends that if he didn’t agree, she would explain to him that he didn’t has no right to forbid, because he is not the father of her daughter. Although it didn’t come to that, the old man finally gave in.” The children felt the inner alienation of their parents, they loved their mother more, her authority was much higher than that of her father.
It just so happened that for the long 30 years of "Siberian captivity" and after returning from exile, the Volkonsky spouses remained together, despite the gossip, idle talk, weariness of years, the apparent dissimilarity of characters and views. In 1863, while in the estate of his son, the seriously ill Prince Volkonsky learned that his wife had died on August 10.
He suffered from the fact that lately he could not take care of her and accompany her for treatment abroad, because he himself could hardly move. He was buried (1865) in the village of Voronki, Chernigov province, next to his wife, according to his will, laid at the feet of her grave. And in 1873, again according to the will, Alexander Poggio rested next to them, having died in the arms of Elena Sergeevna Volkonskaya (in his second marriage - Kochubey).
After the death of Volkonskaya Maria Nikolaevna, notes remained remarkable for their modesty, sincerity and simplicity. When the princess's son read them in the manuscript to N. A. Nekrasov, the poet jumped up several times during the evening and with the words: "Enough, I can not" ran to the fireplace, sat down to him, grabbed his head with his hands, and cried like a child. He was able to invest the feelings that gripped him in his famous Trubetskoy and Volkonskaya poems dedicated to the princesses. Thanks to Nekrasov, the pathos of duty and dedication with which the life of Volkonskaya Maria Nikolaevna and her friends was full was forever imprinted in the minds of Russian society.
V. Matz