9 January — Grand Duchess Yekaterina Pavlovna, the fourth daughter of Paul I Petrovich and Maria Fyodorovna, died.
1 February — the Kyrgyz of the Great Horde entered into Russian subjecthood.
3 July — the sloop Vostok, under the command of Captain 2nd Rank Fyaddey Fyaddeyevich Bellingshausen, head of the Antarctic circumnavigational expedition, and the sloop Mirny, under the command of Lieutenant Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev, departed from Kronstadt. The expedition’s result would be the discovery of Antarctica. On 24 July 1821 the ships would successfully return to Kronstadt.
6 September — Thomas Blanchard patented a lathe.
8 July — St Isaac’s Cathedral was laid in St Petersburg.
In the summer, after manoeuvres near Krasnoye Selo, Emperor Alexander dined at his brother Nicholas’s. The young couple already had a son, Alexander, and Alexandra Fyodorovna was pregnant with their eldest daughter, Maria. Twenty-three-year-old Nicholas commanded the Second Guards Brigade. He believed the meaning of service lay in outward discipline and in training soldiers in the Prussian manner. The Guards hated him. Alexander said that he felt unwell, was thinking of abdicating the throne, and that Nikolai Pavlovich would have to assume the dignity of monarch.
In August Pushkin arrived in Moscow from the countryside, having shaved his head. Once, at the Bolshoi Theatre, he took off his wig and began to fan himself with it like a fan. Then he slid off his chair onto the floor and sat at the feet of the people next to him; then he pulled the wig down like a cap. And so he sat on the floor for the entire performance. In October Pushkin quarrelled with Tolstoy-the-American. They met at the card table. Tolstoy cheated; Pushkin pointed it out to him. “Yes, I know that myself,” Tolstoy replied, “but I don’t like people pointing it out to me.” They were going to fight a duel, but there was no duel.