Sergei Grigorievich Volkonsky

By birth, Volkonsky belonged to the old Russian nobility. The son of General-in-Chief Prince Grigory Semyonovich Volkonsky, associate of Rumyantsev and Suvorov. During the Patriotic War, the character of the future Decembrist was formed. In no way distinguished in his early youth among the frivolous youth of the guards, Volkonsky, as he participates in heroic events, reconsiders his attitude to life. Outwardly, he succeeded in everything: at the age of twenty-five he was already a general and was in the retinue of Alexander I, and in 1816 he was appointed commander of a brigade. But his inner dissatisfaction grew. In extremely interesting and truthful notes, written many decades later, Volkonsky gives precious details about the large and small events of 1812, of which he was a witness and participant. In 1813-1814 for the battles near Lutzen, Leipzig, Kraon, he received several military awards, including the St. George Cross, and the rank of Major General. In 1819 he joined the secret political society "Union of Welfare" in Tulchin, and in subsequent years became one of the leaders of the Kamensk council of the Southern Society of Decembrists. In January 1826 Volkonsky was arrested in Uman, sent to Petersburg and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The only general in active service who took a direct part in the revolutionary movement of the Decembrists, Sergei Volkonsky, was sentenced to death, which was then commuted to twenty years of hard labor. His wife, the daughter of the hero of the Patriotic War NN Raevsky, glorified by the poet NA Nekrasov in "Russian Women", followed him to Siberia. Only in 1856, after thirty years in prison and in the settlement, was the exiled allowed to return to European Russia. One of the few surviving participants of the former heroic era, he lived out his life, surrounded by deep respect from the best part of Russian society.

The portrait of Volkonsky, executed from life in 1822, by order of Nicholas I was removed from the gallery intended for placement and only many years later, already at the beginning of the 20th century, took its rightful place in it.