Volkonsky's portrait from the Military Gallery of the Winter Palace, by George Dawe
Leo Tolstoy
Prince Nikolai Vasilyevich Repnin
Prince Nikita Grigorievich Volkonsky
Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky was born on December 19, 1788, in Moscow City, Russian Federation. He was a grandson of Field Marshal Nicholas Repnin, a leading statesman of Catherine the Great's reign. The three brothers Sergey, Nikita Volkonsky, and Nikolay Repnin distinguished themselves during the Napoleonic Wars.
Sergei Grigorievich received his education at home and in the boarding school of Abbot Nicholas in Saint Petersburg (1802 or 1803-1805.).
Sergei Grigorievich was promoted Major General after the Battle of Großbeeren and Battle of Dennewitz. He was wounded in the Battle of Eylau. He was the only general still in active service who took part in the Decembrist conspiracy of 1825, an attempt to achieve liberal reform by preventing the accession of Tsar Nicholas I. Following the failure of the revolt, he was found guilty and sentenced to beheading, which was eventually commuted to katorga.
Sergei Grigorievich went to toil in the mines near Irkutsk and spent 30 years as a political exile in Siberia. His wife Maria Rayevskaya followed him to Siberia. Their tribulations and hardships have been seen, in a later Russian tradition, as the stuff of high Romantic legend. Nikolay Nekrasov described them in a long poem.
On succeeding to the throne in 1856, Alexander II allowed Sergei Grigorievich and other old Decembrists to return from Siberia. In the late 1850s, Sergey Volkonsky traveled in Europe, where he met Alexander Herzen and other young liberals. Sergey and Maria spent the rest of their lives in the village of Voronki (Little Russia), which was owned by their daughter.
(Russian edition)
1992Until the end of his life, Sergei Grigorievich remained faithful to the ideas of the emancipation of the peasantry and personal freedom, which were reflected, in particular, in the outline of 1861, Remarks on the Great Question of Liberation from Serfdom of the Landlord Peasants. Treated the news of the abolition of serfdom enthusiastically, and condemned the reforms of the 60s for their halfness.
Princess Zenaǐde Wolkonsky was his sister-in-law. He was married to Princess Maria Volkonskaya.
Prince Nikolai Vasilyevich Repnin (22 March 1734 - 24 May 1801) was an Imperial Russian statesman and general from the Repnin princely family who played a key role in the dissolution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Prince Nikita Grigorievich Volkonsky (9 July 1781 - 6 December 1844) was a Russian general from the Volkonsky family. He took part in the Napoleonic wars and later converted from Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism.
