The Decembrist revolt or the Decembrist uprising (Russian: Восстание декабристов) took place in Imperial Russia on 26 December [O.S. 14 December] 1825. Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I's assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession. Because these events occurred in December, the rebels were called the Decembrists (Dekabristy, Russian: Декабристы). This uprising, which was suppressed by Nicholas I, took place in the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg. In 1925, to mark the centenary of the event, the square was renamed as Decembrist Square, but in 2008 it reverted to its original name.

In 1816, several officers of the Imperial Russian Guard founded a society known as the Union of Salvation, or of the Faithful and True Sons of the Motherland. The society acquired a more Liberal cast after it was joined by the idealistic Pavel Pestel. After a mutiny in the Semenovsky Regiment in 1820, the society decided to suspend activity in 1821. Two groups, however, continued to function secretly: a Southern Society, based at Tulchin, a small garrison town in Ukraine, in which Pestel was the outstanding figure, and a Northern Society, based at St Petersburg, led by Guard officers Nikita Muraviev, Prince S. P. Trubetskoy and Prince Eugene Obolensky. The political aims of the more moderate Northern Society were a British style constitutional monarchy with a limited franchise, the abolition of serfdom and equality before the law. The Southern Society, under Pestel's influence, was more radical and wanted to abolish the monarchy, establish a republic and redistribute land: taking half into state ownership and dividing the rest among the peasants.

Yuri Alexandrovich Shaporin (Russian: Юрий (Георгий) Александрович Шапорин; November 8 [O.S. October 27] 1887 – 9 December 1966) was a Russian Soviet composer. His first name is also rendered or Iurii or Yury.

Shaporin was born in Hlukhiv in Ukraine, Russian Empire. His father was a painter and his mother a pianist. He received his secondary education in Saint Petersburg. He first studied philology at the Kiev University. He went on to study law at the Saint Petersburg University.

He then turned to music, starting his studies at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1913. His teachers there included Nikolay Sokolov (composition), Maximilian Steinberg (orchestration), and Nikolai Tcherepnin (conducting). He graduated as a composer and conductor in 1918.

After the Bolshoi Drama Theater was established in 1919, he participated, serving as its musical director until 1928. He then worked with the Russian State Pushkin Academy Drama Theater —also known as the Alexandrinsky Theater— until 1934. During this period he composed a significant amount of theater music.