Puşkin ve Dekabristler (Pushkin and the Decembrists)

Abstract Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837) is one of the poets who gave a lot of support to revolutionist Decembrists showing social, political and literary activities in the first quarter of the 19th century in the Russian Empire. Decembrists who were composed of military officers and intelligentsia had founded secret societies since 1814. They fought against autocracy, czarism, and serfdom along with defending freedom enthusiastically. Decembrists regarded Pushkin as their poet, who solidified their hope and faith with his poems and they know all his ideological poems. As national consciousness rose to its peak by the Patriotic War of 1812, patriotism, strong desire for freedom and equality took place in the works of the Great Russian poet Pushkin as well as in the works of the Decembrist poets like Kondratiy Fyodorovich Rileyev, Wilhelm Karlovich Kyuhelbeker, Fyodor Nikolayevich Glinka and Aleksandr Ivanovich Odoyevski. Despite being very close friend with almost all Decembrists, Pushkin, was not a member of any secret society and he did not participate in Decembrist Revolt, though his poems constituted by the common ideology which was shared by his friends. In this article the relationship between Pushkin and Decembrists before and after the revolt together with Pushkin's poems which criticize czarism will be analyzed.