page_title: Matvey Dmitriev-Mamonov
section_title: Arrest and Stultification
hierarchical_section_title: Matvey Dmitriev-Mamonov / Biography / Arrest and Stultification
caption_attribution_description: Русский: 218. Домъ на бывшей Мамоновской дачЪ близъ Воробьевыхъ горъ.Français&#160;: Ancien palais du comte Mamonoff près des Montagnes Vorobieff. (Moscow)
context_page_description: Count Matvey Alexandrovich Dmitriev-Mamonov - was a Russian figure of public life and writer, organiser and chief of the Mamonov regiment during the Napoleonic wars, major general, and founder of the pre-Decembrist Russian Order of Chivalry. He held a considerable estate, including the manor Dubrovitsy near Moscow. In 1825 he refused the oath to Tsar Nicholas I and was declared insane. For the rest of his life he stood under trusteeship at Vassilyevskoye manor, which became known as Mamonov's Dacha.
context_section_description: In 1823 the count's valet died, and a new one was employed, the freedman, citizen Nikanor Afanassjev, a former serf of Prince P.M. Volkonsky, the  Chief of the General Staff and one of the leaders of the political police, who had already been the recipient of Gribovsky's denunciation in 1822. In that denunciation he informed him on the unexpected reactivation of the Russian Order of Chivalry "long since deemed defunct" and openly named Mamonov. According to the son of the teacher of Russian literature in the Mamonov household, P. Kicheyev - the new valet rather than fulfilling his role as servant spied upon the count. As he suspected him to be a government agent, the count ordered him flogged. The victim turned to the Moscow Military Governor, Prince D.V. Golitsyn who immediately sent his adjutant to Dubrovitsy. When Mamonov sent him packing, gendarmes and soldiers appeared in the village, arresting the count.
  From that point onwards Alexander I and Arakcheyev took matters in hand personally. As Prince Vyazemsky reports: "he was charged with irregularities in the management of the estate, namely oppression of the peasants not as an absentee landlord, but by the actual management". By imperial prescript Mamonov was placed under house arrest in his Moscow residence. Mamonov answered to D.V. Golitsyn’s threat to put him under trusteeship, with a furious letter, notably stating:
  …You are not empowered to put me under trusteeship and will not dare to do so, for I am neither under age nor insane, as I do not hesitate to submit serfs living in my house to corporal punishment, when in my opinion they deserve it: for the right to flog one’s serfs is immanent to Russian private and public law as handed down to us by our forebears. (…) Your Illustrious Highness must be aware, also in your capacity as citizen of legal age, that you are not allowed to threaten another citizen of legal age and imperial dignitary; and how dare you write something like this to me, a man who is in every respect - with the exception of the Table of Ranks - your superior!
  At the end of his message Mamonov declared himself ready to sort out matters with the governor by a duel. On 28 February he wrote to his old patron I.I. Dmitriev asking him to act as mediator, but he had been in retirement for years and could not help him.
  A medical commission appointed by D.V. Golitsyn declared the count insane. On Golitsyn's request the cabinet decided on 23 June/5 July to put him under trusteeship. According to all accounts Dmitriev-Mamonov was an ordinary snob, eccentric and frondeur, but the government was apprehensive that the combined influence of his money, of his ties to conspirators in secret societies and Orlov’s options, who after all was in command of a division, might be sufficient to trigger an insurgency or even a coup d’état.
  During the Decembrist riots of 1825 the count, held hitherto in Moscow under arrest as suspect but not as insane, refused the oath of allegiance to tsar Nicholas I. From that point onwards cruel "cures" were applied, aimed at either making him relent or to drive him insane. A relative and one of his last trustees, N.A. Dmitriev-Mamonov, reports, that for the first time he was treated harshly and cruelly, proof of which are the straight jackets and strappings which I found thirty years ago with which he was tied to his bed, whereas P. Kischeyev states, that the treatment began by pouring cold water over his head which of course drove the count raving mad.
  Since 1830 Mamonov was kept in strict isolation at Vassilyevskoye manor at Sparrow Hills, which had expressly been purchased from Prince Yusupov. In consequence of the long detention there of Count Mamonov it was named "Mamonovian Dacha" by the Muscovites. "Treatment" and abuse by the turnkeys did not remain without effect: People, who met the count during the 1840-1860 period, remember him as a lunatic suffering from delusions of persecution and grandeur. He died from gangrene caused by the constant wear of perfumed shirts. He was buried at the Donskoy Monastery at Moscow. With him 
caption: The Mamonov Dacha, where the Count lived for the last 30 years of his life in total seclusion, in 1913. He was not even allowed to visit the gardens.
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