The Kyakhta Museum of Local Lore is one of Russia’s few museums to have a collection dedicated to the Decembrists. One of the most remarkable exhibits in this collection is a light horse-drawn two-wheeled carriage that was known as a “sidekecha” among the Chinese.

The carriage was donated to the museum by Innokenty Dmitriyevich Sinitsyn in 1925 to mark the centenary of the Decembrist Revolt. Innokenty Sinitsyn was a Kyakhta merchant of the first guild and a hereditary honorary citizen. He engaged in the wholesale tea trade and barter trade with China.

The carriage was designed by Mikhail and Nikolay Bestuzhev. They used the drawings of Konstantin Torson.

In September 1839, the Bestuzhev brothers arrived at Selenginsk to where they were exiled as participants of the Decembrist Revolt. Both Russians and Buryats gave them a very warm welcome. When local citizens got to know them better, they started turning to the brothers for help and advice. The Decembrists were willing to share everything they had.

Mikhail Bestuzhev wrote,

His brother Nikolay, known among Selengin residents as “a source of intelligence, knowledge, and goodness”, wrote in his diary,

Former officers, noblemen, and Decembrists, they were extremely talented people who did everything themselves and did not see any work as below their dignity. They contributed to home improvement, cattle breeding, and farming.

In Selenginsk, they set up locksmith’s, carpenter’s, watchmaker’s, shoemaker’s, tailor’s, and jeweler’s workshops and successfully trained local citizens in these crafts. Being talented and educated people, even in exile, the Bestuzhev brothers managed to contribute actively to the life of their new region.

Their two-wheeled traveling carriage was lightweight and small. It was well-suited for traveling along the region’s narrow mountain roads. Such carriages were widely used and became widespread not only in Buryatia but throughout Siberia.