Written in 1925, a year before her death, for the centenary of the rising, these essays were Larisa Reisner’s first works of history, looking back on this turbulent period in Russia with a Marxist understanding of the past. Translated and introduced by Cathy Porter, the Decembrist writings are full of drama and imagination, building a compelling picture of the lives of the young poets, officers and aristocrats of Russia’s first revolution against the tsarist autocracy in 1825.