N. Bassargin (1800-1861)

Nikolai Bassargin was the last to have arrived to Yalutorovsk. He was a lieutenant of the Life Guard, a senior adjutant of the headquarters of the 2d Ukranian Army, an active member o the most radical ‘Southern Society’. Nikolai Bassargin was sentenced to a symbolic political death penalty , that is he had to mount the scaffold and to put his head on the executioner’s block, and then be exiled for a life-long penalty servitude. After 10 years of penalty servitude Bassargin settled in Yalutorovsk. He would look for a job, and at last was given a humiliating service as a clerk at the Yalutorovsk court. In Yalutorovsk Bassargin married Olga Mendeleeva, a sister of a famous researcher. Being a widely-educated person Bassargin spent a lot of time on economic and social studies in Siberia. He more than once outlined a special meaning of Siberia in future development of the country. Nikolai Bassargin was the last to leave Yalutorovsk in 1857. He spent his last years in the village Vreevo in the Vladimir region. Bassargin died in 1861, a few months before the abolition of the serfdom against which he had struggled all his life.