Lunin's reaction to his 1826 sentence in Rosen's memoirs and Svistunov's rebuttal

The memoirs of the Decembrist Andrey Yevgenyevich Rosen contain a curious detail about the Decembrist Lunin. When Mikhail Sergeyevich Lunin, who had confessed under interrogation to proposing the murder of the Tsar on the road to Tsarskoye Selo, heard the sentence read out condemning him to penal servitude in perpetuity, he merely laughed and said: "Fine eternity that is, when I am already over 50."

True, another Decembrist, Pyotr Svistunov, who stood next to Lunin at the moment the sentence was pronounced, denied this recollection: "when they read us the sentence, he did not utter a word of objection, and I, standing beside him, can vouch for it."

There is another odd detail in this recollection: at the time of his sentencing, in 1826, Lunin was 39, not over fifty. As it happens, his eternal sentence was commuted that same year to 20 years, later to 15, and in 1832 to 10.

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Signs of violent death found on skulls from burials beside the royal tombs at Abydos

Guests at a costume party in a Moscow theatre in the early 20th century

Professor Mie Oba proposes Japan as ASEAN's third partner alongside the US and China

Blessing of Animals on 4 October, the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi