Fedor Vadkovsky was a Russian Decembrist. He became one of the founders of the Saint Petersburg branch of the Southern Society. Fedor Vadkovsky was sentenced to life imprisonment which was subsequently reduced to 13 years. During his life, he wrote musicalized poems about the Decembrist movement.
Background
Fedor Vadkovsky was born on May 13, 1800, in Pyatnitskoye village near Yelets, Oryol Governorate, Russian Empire (now Izvali village, Lipetsk Region, Russian Federation). He was born in a noble family: his father Fedor Vadkovsky was a senator, mother Ekaterina Vadkovskaya - inborn Countess Chernysheva.
Education
Fedor Vadkovsky received his primary education at the Moscow University Boarding School (1810-1812) and at the Saint Peter's School (1815-1818).
Career
In 1818 Fedor Vadkovsky became a Podpraporshchik in the Semenovsky Regiment, in 1820 he was transferred to the Chevalier Guard Regiment. In 1822 he was promoted to cornet.
In 1823 Fedor Vadkovsky was admitted to the Northern Society, and a year later became one of the founders of the Saint Petersburg branch of the Southern Society (Decembrist societies). He was a supporter of the republic, for the proclamation of which he considered it necessary to "exterminate" the royal family.
In the summer of 1824, Fedor Vadkovsky was removed from the guard and transferred to the Nizhinsky Horse-Jaeger Regiment as a warrant officer for the mockery of the tsar’s family that became known to the government and the text of a political song. He could be among the authors and other propaganda songs composed before the uprising. Despite the supervision, Fedor Vadkovsky continued his revolutionary activity: he considered a project of an underground printing press and multiplied the number of members of society. One of the newly joined members turned out to be the provocateur Sherwood, whose victim was Vadkovsky, who had been arrested in Kursk earlier than his comrades (December 13, 1825).
Fedor Vadkovsky was sentenced to life imprisonment (subsequently, the term was reduced to 13 years). After imprisonment in three fortresses, he was brought to the Nerchinsk mines in 1828. In Siberia, he got close to Sutgof, Pushchin, Kuchelbeker, Obolensky, the Muravyov family. At the Petrovsky Zavod Fedor Vadkovsky was one of the initiators of the establishment of the Decembrist artel (a kind of economic cooperation). Being a capable mathematician and masterful violinist, he lectured on astronomy at the "hard labor academy", played the first violin in an amateur quartet. He musicalized Odoevsky’s poems Slavyanskiye devy (Slavic virgins), which became a popular Decembrist song. Vadkovsky’s satirical song in French called Our Investigative Committee in 1825 (published in 1907), as well as the poems Desires (after 1829) and Song stylized in the folk spirit, explained he agenda of the Decembrists and were widely known among the exiles. Vadkovsky's essay The White Church (1863) based on the stories of fellow witnesses is the most important source on the history of the uprising of the Chernigov Regiment.
In 1839 Fedor Vadkovsky went to the settlement; he made ineffective attempts to engage in grain trade and other small businesses. Since March 16, 1841, he stayed in Oyok. Fedor Vadkovsky died in 1844 of consumption.