About eighty people involved in the Decembrist…

About eighty people involved in the Decembrist revolt had been sentenced to obligatory work in Siberia and perpetual settlement here.

Eleven wives had followed them and settled near the labor camps.

In their memoirs, they note the benevolence and the prosperity of rural Siberians and severe treatment by the soldiers and officers.

A number of Decembrists died of diseases, some had suffered psychological shock and even went out of their mind.

After completing the term of obligatory work, they had been sentenced to settle in specific small towns and villages, where some have started doing business, which is permitted.

After administrative division of the territory, Tobolsk had remained the seat of the Governor-General of Western Siberia until 1833, when Russian general Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky, who had been seriously wounded in the 1828 war with Turkey, had been appointed the military governor of Orenburg.