"This is the most comprehensive English-language account of the Decembrist uprisings, their origins and their consequences to be published for many years. The fresh and nuanced analysis of the Decembrists' historical significances is brilliantly situated in both Russian and European contexts. The concluding section on the Decembrists' Siberian exile, and the extraordinary stoicism of their wives, is particularly graphic and poignant. The monograph is excellently researched and superbly written by an eminent Swedish historian of nineteenth-century Russia, and it will prove an indispensable addition to the literature."--Patrick O'Meara, emeritus professor of Russian, Durham University

"For the Russian revolutionaries of the nineteenth century, Soviet dissidents of the twentieth and even for some among the modern-day Russian opposition, the Decembrist rebels of 1825 were heroes and martyrs, symbolizing the struggle for a 'free Russia.' In this book Rabow-Edling has written an important and accessible new history of Russia's often mythologized 'first revolutionaries', exploring the Decembrists' ideas, their social background, their failed revolt and subsequent repression at the hands of the state. Engagingly written and based on exhaustive research, The First Russian Revolution will be of interest to academic and non-specialist readers alike."--Ben Phillips, lecturer in modern Russian history, University of Exeter

"[A] short yet detailed and nuanced study. . . . As Rabow-Edling makes clear, the Decembrists were patriots imbued with a profound love for their homeland and a sincere desire to serve the common good. Abolishing serfdom was the first step on the road to creating a new Russia, one in which the people would be citizens, not subjects. . . . In 1817, the economist Nikolai Turgenev, who was tried in absentia for his role in the Decembrist movement and escaped punishment by remaining abroad, wrote in his diary that he was 'crushed by the thought that I will not, in my lifetime, see Russia free and governed by a wise constitution.' Two centuries later, millions of Russians are still waiting."
--Douglas Smith "The Wall Street Journal"