Sergei Trubetskoy

Prince Sergei Trubetskoy (1790–1860) was a Russian guards colonel and a leader of the Decembrist revolt. A veteran of 1812–1814, he rose to colonel in 1821 and headed the reform-minded Northern Society.

Chosen the rebels' dictator for the Senate Square rising of December 1825, he lost his nerve and hid in the Austrian embassy instead. Arrested and sentenced to death, he was instead sent to lifelong hard labour in the Nerchinsk mines. His wife Ekaterina was the first Decembrist wife to follow him into exile. Amnestied in 1856, he died in Moscow in 1860.