Mikhail Orlov

Born Mar. 25 (Apr. 5), 1788, in Moscow; died there Mar. 19 (31), 1842. Decembrist; major general (1814). Brother of A. F. Orlov.

Orlov fought in the campaigns of the Russian Army against Napoleon from 1805 to 1814. In 1814 he devised plans for the revolutionary transformation of Russia, the abolition of serfdom, and the introduction of constitutional government—initially a limited monarchy and then a republic. He came in close contact with members of the Union of Salvation. In 1818 he was admitted into the Union of Welfare. In 1820 he became commander of the 16th Infantry Division. He headed the Kishinev Decembrist organization, which was linked to the Southern Society of Decembrists. At the Moscow congress of the Decembrists in January 1821, he proposed a program of decisive action against the autocracy. In February 1822 he was dismissed as division commander, but the Decembrists still hoped that he would lead the impending uprising. In December 1825 he was arrested. Owing to the protection of his brother, who was close to Nikolai I, he was only dismissed from service and exiled under police supervision to his family estate. In 1831 he took up residence in Moscow, where he enjoyed considerable influence in the circles of oppositional public opinion. In 1833 he published anonymously On State Credit, the first formulation of the bourgeois theory of state credit in world literature.