When Alexander died and Maiborod's denunciation was found among his papers, Chernyshev was sent from Taganrog to Tulchin [Tulcea], where Wittgenstein's headquarters were located, to arrest Pestel and the others. Passing through Uman, where Volkonsky was located, Chernyshev met with him, and, from his words and several questions, guessed that things were in a bad state. He himself went to Tulchin and found that Pestel had already been arrested and taken from his regimental quarters to Tulchin. Kind Wittgenstein, having known Volkonsky since childhood, warned him of the fate that awaited him. "Be careful," said Wittgenstein, "don't get caught: Pestel is already under arrest and tomorrow we will send him to Petersburg; be careful that you don't get in trouble as well!" Countess Kiseleva, nee Pototskaya, advised Volkonsky to flee abroad; she offered as a guide a Jew who was devoted to the Pototsky family, and who would undertake to accompany Volkonsky to Turkey, from where it would be easy for him to seek asylum in England. Volkonsky refused to flee, saying that he did not wish to abandon his comrades in time of danger. After dining with Wittgenstein, he went to the general on duty with the 2nd Army, Iv. Iv. Baikov, where Pestel was being held, and found Baikov and Pestel having tea. Taking advantage of a minute when Baikov had to go to the window in order to speak with a courier from Taganrog, Pestel hastened to tell Volkonsky that "even if they torture me, they will learn nothing; the only thing that could destroy us is my 'Russian Justice.' Yushnevsky knows where it is; save it, for God's sake!"4
Returning to Uman, Volkonsky took his wife, who was near her time, to her father, Nik. Nik. Raevsky, in the countryside, where she gave birth on January 2, i826, to a son, Nikolay. On January 7 he left his wife with the Raevskys, having told her that he was instructed to go around to all the regiments; he ignored the advice of old Raevsky, who tried to convince him to flee abroad, and set off for Uman. On
the way, he encountered a faithful servant with the news that a special courier had arrived from Petersburg, that the prince's study had been sealed up, and a guard placed at his house. Volkonsky continued his journey, arriving at his quarters in Uman late in the evening, and the following morning was arrested by his division commander Kornilov, the same person who, three weeks earlier, upon returning from Petersburg, had said to him: "Ah! Sergey Grigorevich, I saw the ministers and other such people there who are governing Russia: what a country! one ass sits on top of another and urges on the other asses!"
Taken by the courier to Petersburg, directly to the Winter Palace, brought to the study of Nikolay Pavlovich, he had extremely vulgar abuse and swearwords heaped on him by the most exalted mouth! He was then taken to the Peter and Paul Fortress and imprisoned in the Alekseevsky ravelin. Upon entering the building, on the left were the rooms of the steward Lilienleker, a terrible bribe-taker, who fed those incarcerated miserably; to the right the solitary cells began, of which there were seventeen that round the entire ravelin, in the middle of which was a small courtyard with stunted greenery, and here was buried the false Tarakanova5 (she died after giving birth in December i775, and a made-up story was spread that she had drowned in a flood that took place two years later). In the first cell on the right sat Ryleev; next to him was Prince Yevgeny Obolensky; in the third corner cell was a Greek named Sevenis, who had stolen a pearl from another Greek, Zoya Pavlovich; Volkonsky was placed in the fourth cell; next to him was Ivan Pushchin; further along—although Volkon- sky couldn't recall the exact order—were Prince Trubetskoy, Pestel, Sergey and Matvey Ivanovich Muravyov, Prince Odoevsky, Vilhelm Kukhelbeker, Lunin, Prince Shchepin, Nikolay and Mikhail Alexandrovich Bestuzhevy, Panov, and Arbuzov.
At the interrogations Volkonsky behaved with great dignity. Dibich, who, because of his passionate character was called the "samovar-pasha," at one session had the indecency to call him a traitor; the prince answered: "I was never a traitor to my fatherland, which I wish only good, which I served not for financial considerations, not for rank, but from the duty owed by a citizen!" Volkonsky, as we have said, commanded a brigade made up of the Azov and Dnepr regiments; of the nine officers of the Azov Regiment and the eight from the Dnepr who were brought into the plot by Volkonsky, only one staff-captain from the Azov Regiment, Ivan Fedorovich Fokht, was arrested and tried, and that as a result of his own carelessness; the remaining sixteen completely escaped the government investigation thanks to the firm self-control of Volkonsky at the interrogations.
One day, during a confrontation between Volkonsky and Pestel, Pavel Vasilevich Golenishchev-Kutuzov, who in his youth was among the assassins of Paul I, said to him: "I am amazed, gentlemen, that you could decide on such a terrible business as regicide?" Pestel answered: "I am amazed at the amazement of your excellency; you should know better than us that this wouldn't be the first time!" Kutuzov not only turned pale, but turned green as well, while Pestel, turning to the other members of the commission, said with a smile: "It has happened in Russia that people were awarded Andreevsky ribbons for this!"
Of the numerous members of the supreme criminal court only four were against capital punishment; Admiral Mordvinov, Infantry General Count Tolstoy, Lieutenant General Emmanuel, and Senator Kushnikov. As for Speransky, having taken part in the conspiracy, he agreed to everything and did not oppose capital punishment.6
Volkonsky was sent to the Nerchinsk mines, and you can read about the sojourn in this horrible place in the Notes of Pr. Yevgeny Obolensky. You can imagine what he endured at hard labor, where the officer in charge, Timofey Stepanovich Burnashov, once threatened to beat him and Prince Trubetskoy with a lash. He was joined by his wife, Princess Maria Nikolaevna, whom he had married at the beginning of 1825. The 17-year-old beauty did not want to marry a 38-year-old man; she yielded only to the advice and urging of her parents, but, once having married, throughout her entire life she behaved like a true heroine, earning the admiration of her contemporaries and posterity. Her parents did not want to let her go to Siberia; she went, having escaped their watchfulness, and left behind her baby son (who died soon after). Arriving in Irkutsk, she was overtaken by a courier bringing her a letter from Benkendorf, who, in the name of the sovereign, tried to convince her to return, which she refused to do. The Irkutsk authorities presented her with the regulations concerning wives of convicts, where it was said that the factory authority could use them for private jobs, and might force them to wash floors. She announced that she was ready for anything—she had come to be with her husband and never to part from him again. In August 1827, Volkonsky and his comrades were transferred from the Nerchinsk mines to a fortress especially built for them at the confluence of the Chita and Ingoda rivers (and where the city of Chita is
now located), and where they found many Decembrists who had been brought from the Petersburg fortress. There were 75 people in all at Chita. They organized their household in common; it was decided that each one would contribute five hundred paper rubles annually; but, in order to relieve the burden of payment on poor comrades, Volkonsky, Trubetskoy, fon Vizin, and Nikita Muravyov each gave up to three thousand a year; Vadkovsky, Ivashev, Lunin, Svistunov, and several others also gave more than the assigned amount; the affluent ones pooled their resources together for books and journals for common use. In August 1830 they were all taken to the Petrovsky factory settlement, 400 versts7 from Chita, and afterward, little by little, scattered about Siberia. In December 1834, Volkonsky's mother died, and on her deathbed she asked the sovereign to lighten her son's fate; he was allowed to live at Petrovsky as a settler and not a convict, i.e., live not in the fortress, but in his wife's house. In 1836 he was transferred to the settlement of Urikovskoe, 19 versts from Irkutsk. Several years later he was allowed to live in Irkutsk itself as a Urikovskoe settler, and he remained there until 1856. The Russian government, which knows how to execute, exile, and punish fiercely and incoherently, did not know how to forgive; they would not allow Volkonsky to live in Petersburg, and they only allowed him to spend time in Moscow because of the serious illness suffered by his in-law Molchanov. The years had taken their toll; Sergey Grigorevich had aged and he suffered from gout, but he was still in good spirits and took a lively part in everything happening around him; everything noble found an echo in him, and the years-long suffering did not diminish the limitless goodness in his heart, the distinctive feature of this attractive man, who in his venerable old age had preserved all the warmth of his exalted youthful feelings. In August 1863 he lost his wife, and this blow struck him inexpressibly. Since that time his health began to fail, he lost a leg, and, on November 28, 1865, at the age of 78, he quietly died in his daughter's arms in the village of Voronki, in Koze- letsk region of the Chernigov province.