Elena Arkadyevna Dobrynina,
Irkutsk Regional Historical and Memorial Museum of the Decembrists, Irkutsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Decembrists’ Commemorative Rings: The History of Their Creation and Existence
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2025-6-16
This article focuses on the history of the creation and use of commemorative items made from shackled iron. The tradition of making and wearing commemorative rings appeared long before the first half of the 19th century. Shackle rings, as souvenirs, appeared later. The Decembrist story associated with iron rings is the most famous and iconic, as it has facets reflecting several categories of memory: hard labor, shackle, sacrificial, kindred, symbolic. The ring is a symbol of imprisonment, the ring is a memory of punishment, the ring is an emblem of suffering. All this is directly related to the so-called Decembrist shackle rings. The Decembrists were kept in shackles in the fortresses where they were held before being sent to Siberia, which did not correspond to their class status. Shackles, irons, fetters − that’s what the Decembrists called their bonds. Shackling in iron was one of the measures of influence on prisoners, which created a specific psychological situation. Many Decembrists, freed from their shackles in 1828, decided to preserve the memory of the terrible ordeal and therefore tried to find fragments of the removed glands, from which they began to make various souvenirs: rings, crosses, etc. Six Decembrists were engaged in making rings from shackled iron: Nikolai and Mikhail Bestuzhev, Petr Gromnitsky, Alexander Yakubovich, Petr Mukhanov, Nikolai Panov. It is difficult to recreate the circle of owners of rings, crosses and other shackle souvenirs, since the owners of such rarities could be many people from among relatives, friends and acquaintances of the Decembrists. Currently, the Decembrist rings made of shackled iron are kept in several museums in Russia, as well as in private collections. The Irkutsk Museum of the Decembrists is the owner of two legendary rings.
Publishing: 28/12/2025
The article has been received by the editor on 10/11/2025
How to cite: Dobrynina E.A. The Decembrists’ Commemorative Rings: The History of Their Creation and Existence // Historical Courier, 2025, No. 6 (44), pp. 227−242. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2025/ISTKURIER-2025-6-16.pdf]
Links: Issue 6 2025
Keywords: Decembrists; shackles; ring; signet ring; cross; memory; emblem; Petrovsky Zavod; Irkutsk; museum