Iushnevskii, Aleksei Petrovich

Born Mar. 12 (23), 1786, in Podol’sk Province; died Jan. 10 (22), 1844, in Oekskaia Sloboda, Irkutsk Province. Decembrist.

Of noble birth, Iushnevskii studied at Moscow University. In 1805 he entered the Collegium of Foreign Affairs. In 1816 he was assigned to the headquarters of the Second Army as an official “with diplomatic duties”; he directed the settling of Bulgarian immigrants in Bessarabia. He became quartermaster-general of the Second Army in late 1819 and an active civil councillor in 1823.

Iushnevskii, a member of the radical wing of the Decembrists, was a confirmed republican, a supporter of regicide, and a member of the Union of Welfare. He helped organize the Southern Society of Decembrists and in 1822 became a member of its administrative body, the Directory. He helped compile the Russkaia Pravda of P. I. Pestel’. Iushnevskii was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to life at hard labor, a term that was eventually shortened. He served his sentence at the Shlissel’burg Fortress, the Nerchinsk Mine, and Petrovskii Zavod (now Petrovsk-Zabaikal’skii). In 1839, Iushnevskii became a penal settler, and he and his wife, M. K. Iushnevskaia, took up pedagogical work.