Military settlement

In 1817 Count Arakcheyev officially became the head of all the military settlements (Russian: начальника военных поселений) in Russia.

It was restricted to use or even touch pots and similar household things inside living parts of the houses.

The peasants had to undergo military training, which caused tardiness and unseasonableness in agricultural activities.

By 1825, Russia had already built military settlements in Petersburg, Novgorod (along the Volkhov River and near Staraya Russa[2]), Mogilev, Sloboda Ukraine, Kherson, Ekaterinoslav and other guberniyas.

These instructions paid little attention to season character of certain works or distance between military settlement and fields to be plowed.

In Saint Petersburg area peasants had been practicing hunting, fishing, small artisan production, trade activities for a long time, because northern soil did not fit for agriculture.

When military settlements had been implemented near Saint Petersburg, all the settlers had been prescribed to grow wheat and other activities out of law, this led to impoverishment of local population and malnourishment.

Military settlements never became an anti-resistance tool in the hands of the government, on the contrary, they turned into resistance hotbeds themselves.

The rebels were demanding from the government to let them be what they had been before the reform, capturing their confiscated lands, beating, and ousting their superiors.

Count Arakcheyev was put in charge of the punitive expedition, which would result in the arrest of more than 2,000 men.

313 people were subjected to military tribunal, 275 of which (204, according to other accounts) would be sentenced to corporal punishment by 12,000 strikes each with metal rods.