His family had long been associated[citation needed] with the Imperial Russian Navy: one of his ancestors, Avtonom Dubasov, had participated in the capture of a Swedish galley in 1709.

The government troops occupied the railway stations, State Bank, telegraph, post office, telephone exchange, and water supply.

On 11 December Fyodor the Admiral issued a decree, which made homeowners personally liable for "letting" the insurgents shoot at the government troops from roofs and windows of their houses.

Concern at the reliability of the infantry conscripts who made up the bulk of the permanent garrison of Moscow, had initially placed constraints on Dubasov's repression of the rising.

Upon the arrival of the Leib Guards of the Semyonovsky Regiment to Moscow on 15 December Fyodor Dubasov ordered his troops to take control over all the railway stations in the capital (except for the Kursky Rail Terminal).

Dubasov turned to the citizens of Moscow with an appeal to seize armed resistance, assist the police, and hand over the rebels.

On 20 December the Cabinet of Ministers issued funds in the amount of 100,000 rubles for Dubasov to distribute among the suffering population.

On 23 April 1906 a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party Boris Vnorovsky-Mishchenko made an attempt on the life of Fyodor Dubasov by throwing a bomb under his carriage.

He was involved in building the Church of the Saviour on the Waters in St Petersburg in memory of the Russian sailors killed in the Russo-Japanese War.