Spiridov, Mikhail
Spiridov, Mikhail Matveevich
Born 1796; died July 21 (Aug. 2), 1854. Decembrist; major of the Penza Infantry Regiment.
From a family of dvoriane (nobility or gentry), Spiridov served in the people’s volunteer corps in 1812 and took part in campaigns abroad in 1813 and 1814. In September 1825 he was accepted into the Southern Society of Decembrists and became acquainted with the Russkaia Pravda of P. I. Pestel’. On the eve of the Decembrist uprising, Spiridov conducted propaganda among the soldiers and agreed to take part in the conspiracy to kill the tsar. He was sentenced to the death penalty, which was commuted to 20 years of hard labor. He served the sentence in the city of Keksgol’m, the ShlissePburg Fortress, and the Nerchinsk mines. After 1839, he lived in exile in the city of Krasnoiarsk. Spiridov died in the village of Drokino.