Exactly 150 years ago, Count Mikhail Nikolaevich Muravyov (Muravyov-Vilensky), a prominent Russian statesman, public and military leader of the era of the reign of Nicholas I and Alexander II, passed away. Years of life: October 1 (12), 1796 - August 31 (September 12), 1866. The title of count and the double surname Muravyov-Vilensky were granted to him in 1865 in recognition of his services to the Fatherland.
Mikhail Nikolaevich Muravyov-Vilensky was the founder of the home society of mathematicians with training courses (1810), vice-chairman of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society (1850-1857), a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1857). He was a participant in the Patriotic War of 1812 and the War of the Sixth Coalition (1813-1814), a General of Infantry (1856). His civil service is marked by the following milestones: Grodno Civil Governor (1831-1835), Kursk Civil and Military Governor (1835-1839), Member of the State Council (1850), Minister of State Property (1857-1862). Grodno Minsk and Vilna governor-general (1863-1865). Knight of many orders and awards of the Russian Empire, including the highest award - the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called.
He became famous as the leader of the suppression of the uprising in the Northwest Territory, primarily the uprising of 1863, also known as the January Uprising. The January Uprising is a gentry uprising in the Kingdom of Poland, the North-Western Territory and Volyn with the aim of restoring the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eastern borders of 1772, the uprising failed. At the same time, the liberal and populist circles within the empire, Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov was nicknamed "Muravyov-hanger". Indeed, in the fight against the participants in the uprising, Muravyov resorted to intimidation measures - the organization of public executions, to which, however, only direct and irreconcilable participants in the uprising who were guilty of murders were subjected to. Executions were carried out only after careful investigation.
In total, during the years of Muravyov's reign, 128 participants in the uprising were executed, another 8, 2 to 12, 5 thousand people were sent into exile, as well as hard labor or prison companies. These were mainly direct participants in the armed uprising: representatives of the gentry and Catholic priests, the proportion of Catholics among the repressed was more than 95%, which fully corresponded to the general proportion among all the rebels. At the same time, out of about 77 thousand participants in the uprising, only 16% were prosecuted, while the rest were simply able to return home without incurring any punishment.
Mikhail Nikolaevich Muravyov-Vilensky was born into a noble family. He comes from the noble family of Muravyovs, which has been known since the beginning of the 15th century. Birthplace information varies. According to some sources, he was born in Moscow, according to others in the Syrets estate, located in the St. Petersburg province. His father was a public figure Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov, the founder of the school of column leaders, graduates of which were officers of the General Staff, and his mother was Alexandra Mikhailovna Mordvinova. His three siblings also became famous personalities who left their mark on Russian history.
As a child, Mikhail Muravyov received a good education at home. In 1810 he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Moscow University, where, at the age of 14, with the help of his father, he founded the “Moscow Society of Mathematicians”. The main goal of this society was to spread mathematical knowledge in Russia through free public lectures in mathematics and military sciences. At the same time, Mikhail himself gave lectures on descriptive and analytical geometry, which were not taught at the university. On December 23, 1811, he entered the school of column leaders (cadets, future officers of the General Staff, were trained at schools for column leaders in Moscow and St. Petersburg), having brilliantly passed the exam in mathematics.
On December 27, 1811, he was promoted to ensign of the suite of His Imperial Majesty in the quartermaster's department. In April 1812 he went to Vilna in the 1st Western Army, commanded by Barclay de Tolly. Since August 1812, he was at the disposal of the Chief of Staff of the Western Army, Count Leonty Bennigsen. At the age of 16 he took part in the Battle of Borodino. During the battle on the battery of Nikolai Raevsky, he was seriously wounded in the leg by a cannonball and almost died. He was evacuated to Nizhny Novgorod, where, thanks to the care of his father and Dr. Mudrov, he was able to recover pretty soon, but for the rest of his life he was forced to walk with a cane. For the battle on the Raevsky battery, Mikhail Muravyov was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree with a bow.
After recovering in early 1813, Mikhail Muravyov was again sent to the Russian army, which at that moment was already abroad. He took part in the Battle of Dresden under the Chief of the General Staff, on March 16 (28 in a new style), 1813, he was promoted to second lieutenant. In 1814, due to his health condition, he returned to St. Petersburg, where in August of the same year he was appointed to the General Staff of the Guards. He wrote a letter of resignation, which was not accepted by the emperor. Therefore, having slightly improved his health, he returned to the army again.
The battle for the Raevsky battery
In 1814-1815 he was sent to the Caucasus twice with special assignments. In 1815, he returned to teaching at the school of column leaders, which was led by his father. In March 1816 he was promoted to lieutenant, and at the end of November 1817 to staff captains. Like many officers who took part in the overseas campaign of the Russian army, he succumbed to revolutionary activity. He was a member of various secret societies: "Sacred Artel" (1814), "Union of Salvation" (1817), "Union of Prosperity", was a member of the Root Council, one of the authors of its charter, a participant in the Moscow Congress of 1821. However, after the performance of the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment in 1820, Mikhail Muravyov gradually retired from revolutionary activities, but his brother Alexander Nikolaevich Muravyov became a participant in the Decembrist uprising.
In 1820, Mikhail Muravyov was promoted to captain, later to lieutenant colonel and joined the emperor's retinue in the quartermaster department. Soon he retired for health reasons, after which he settled in the estates of Luzintsy and Khoroshkovo of the Smolensk province, where he began to lead a landlord's life. During a two-year famine, he managed to organize a secular canteen, which provided food for up to 150 peasants every day. He also prompted the nobility to turn to Count Kochubei, the Minister of Internal Affairs, with a request for assistance to local peasants.
In January 1826, the newly made landowner was arrested in the case of the Decembrists and even imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but was quickly released with a certificate of acquittal on the personal order of Emperor Nicholas I. In July of the same year, he was enlisted in the civil service and re-assigned to the army. In 1827, he presented to Nicholas I a note on the improvement of local judicial and administrative institutions and the elimination of all forms of bribery in them, after which he was transferred to serve in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Since 1827, he began his period of long civil service in various positions. On June 12, 1827 Muravyov was appointed vice-governor and collegiate councilor of Vitebsk. On September 15 of the following year, he became governor of Mogilev, while at the same time he was promoted to the rank of state councilor. During these years, he opposed the abundance of anti-Russian and pro-Polish-minded elements in the state administration at all levels, having established himself as an ardent opponent of Poles and Catholicism. At the same time, he tried to influence the current situation not with the help of dismissals, but by reforming the system of education and training of future officials. In 1830 he prepared and sent a note, in which he substantiated the need to expand the Russian education system in all educational institutions of the Northwestern Territory. On his direct submission, in January 1831, an imperial decree was issued, which abolished the Lithuanian Statute, closed the Main Tribunal and subordinated all inhabitants of the region to general imperial legislation. In legal proceedings, the Russian language was introduced instead of the Polish language.
In January 1830 he was promoted to the rank of actual state councilor. During the uprising of 1830-1831, he was the Chief of Police and Quartermaster General under the Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army, Count P. A. During this period, he was involved in the organization of civil administration in the Belarusian lands and the conduct of investigative cases over the Polish rebels. On August 9, 1831, Mikhail Muravyov was appointed civil governor of Grodno, and in December of the same year he was promoted to major general. As governor of Grodno, Muravyov earned himself a reputation as an uncompromising fighter of sedition, a "truly Russian person", and an extremely strict administrator. During this period, he made the maximum amount of effort to eliminate the consequences of the 1830-1831 uprising, as well as to Russify the governed province.
By the decree of Emperor Nicholas I of January 12, 1835, Mikhail Muravyov was appointed military governor of the city of Kursk, as well as the civil governor of Kursk. He held this post until 1839. Sergei Ananiev, a researcher of the political biography of Muravyov-Vilensky, would later write that the main achievement of Muravyov while he was in the post of Kursk governor should be considered the strengthening of audit control in the province and the establishment of the administrative sphere. While in Kursk, Muravyov managed to establish himself as an implacable fighter against covetousness and arrears.
In 1839, the ministerial period of Mikhail Muravyov's service began. The future earl on May 12, 1839, was appointed director of the Department of Taxes and Duties. On August 9, 1842, he became a senator, received the rank of privy councilor. From October 2 of the same year - the manager of the Land Survey Corps with the rights of the chief director, as well as the trustee of the Konstantinovsky Land Survey Institute. On May 21, 1849, he was awarded the rank of lieutenant general. January 1, 1850 - Member of the State Council. On August 28, 1856, Muravyov was awarded the rank of General of Infantry. In the same year, Mikhail Muravyov was appointed chairman of the Department of Appanages of the Ministry of the Court and Appanages, on April 17, 1857, he became Minister of State Property. Working in these positions, he made numerous expert and auditing trips, in which he was characterized by the people who knew him as a principled, tough and incorruptible official.
After completing revision trips, he decided to start working on the issue of abolishing serfdom in the country. As a result, at the end of 1857, Muravyov submitted to the Secret Committee for Peasant Affairs a note he had prepared entitled "Remarks on the procedure for the liberation of peasants." Mikhail Muravyov advocated a gradual change in the agrarian system in the country, so that it would not meet sharp resistance at all levels. Later, he became an opponent of the project of the abolition of serfdom, officially adopted in Russia. The project prepared by him was different from the project that was personally supported by Emperor Alexander II. This became the reason for the growth of tension between them, in the end, Alexander II essentially accused his minister of secretly opposing the policy pursued in Russia on the peasant issue. On January 1, 1862, Muravyov resigned from the post of Minister of State Property, and on November 29 of the same year, the post of Chairman of the Department of Appanages. Due to poor health at a fairly respectable age, at that time he was already 66 years old, he finally retired, now planning to spend the rest of his days in the peace and quiet of a measured life on the estate.
However, Mikhail Muravyov's plans for a quiet old age were not destined to come true. In 1863, the January Uprising spread to the Northwest Territory, which began in the Kingdom of Poland. According to the official terminology of the legislation of the Russian Empire, the uprising in the Kingdom of Poland was interpreted as a rebellion. As the situation in the Northwestern Territory became more and more tense, Chancellor Gorchyakov strongly recommended that the Russian emperor replace the inactive Vladimir Nazimov as governor-general of the region with the time-tested and experienced Mikhail Muravyov. As a result, the tsar personally received Muravyov at his place, and already on May 1, 1863, he became the governor-general of Vilna, Grodno and Minsk and concurrently the commander of all the troops of the Vilna military district. He had the powers of the commander of a separate corps in wartime, and was also the chief commander of the Mogilev and Vitebsk provinces. Later, the Grodno historian Orlovsky wrote that, despite his venerable age (66 years), Muravyov worked up to 18 hours a day, starting to accept reports at 5 in the morning. Without leaving his office, Mikhail Muravyov now ruled 6 provinces.
January Uprising of 1863
After arriving in the Northwest Territory, Muravyov took a number of consistent and rather effective measures aimed at ending the uprising. His approach to solving the problem was the conviction that the harder he took up the suppression of the uprising, the fewer casualties and the sooner he would be able to suppress it. One of the first measures he proposed was the imposition of high military taxes on the estates of local Polish landowners. The rationale for the high taxes was the idea that since the Poles have the money to carry out the uprising, they must provide money for its suppression. At the same time, the estates of the Polish landowners, who were noticed in actively supporting the rebels, were taken away from them in favor of the state. As a result of these actions alone, Mikhail Muravyov managed to deprive the rebels of additional financial support. In the course of the military operations carried out, the troops subordinate to the governor-general managed to localize the partisan detachments in the province, forcing them to surrender to the authorities.
The suppression of the January Uprising did not end the activities of Mikhail Muravyov in the Northwest Territory. Being a fairly experienced statesman, he understood perfectly well that in order to prevent such uprisings in the future, it was necessary to radically change life in the region, to return it, as the Governor-General himself said, to the “old Russian” path. Possessing very broad powers this time, Muravyov began to implement in the region much of what he had conceived back in 1831. He consistently pursued a policy of thorough Russification in the region, which, according to the terminology and concepts of that time, was in no way opposed to the local Belarusian culture, on the contrary, including it as one of its constituent parts. The Governor-General treated the Belarusians in accordance with the prevailing concept of the three branches of the Russian people at that time and vigorously supported the emancipation of Belarusians from Polish cultural domination. Ultimately, thanks to all his activities and the implementation of a number of fundamental and effective reforms, Mikhail Muravyov was able to put an end to the Polish-Catholic domination in the socio-economic, social, cultural and educational spheres over the Orthodox Belarusian peasant majority of the North-Western Territory.
The residence of Mikhail Muravyov in Vilna was the Governor-General's Palace, which remained his home until his dismissal from office. This happened at his personal request. On April 17, 1865, in recognition of his services as governor-general, he was awarded the title of count with the right to write the double surname Muravyov-Vilensky. At the same time, the emperor was given the right to choose his successor himself. Thus, Konstantin Petrovich Kaufman, who would later become famous as a hero of Turkestan, became the governor of the North-Western Territory.
In April 1866, Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky was appointed chairman of the Supreme Commission in the case of the attempt on the life of the emperor by Dmitry Karakozov. However, he did not live up to the execution of the accused, having died on August 31 (September 12, new style), 1866 in St. Petersburg, where he was buried at the Lazarevskoye cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. At his funeral, the Perm Infantry Regiment was on guard, under the patronage of Count Muravyov. The Russian Emperor Alexander II also took part in the farewell ceremony, who accompanied his subject on his last journey.
Monument to Count M. Muravyov-Vilensky, erected in Vilna in 1898
