# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 1/Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE
§ 15.
IN Russia, as in Europe, the revolution, and above all the jacobin terror, were followed by a notable decline in aspirations towards enlightenment and liberty. It was not in France alone that reaction occurred, but in Prussia and Austria as well, Frederick and Joseph being replaced by Frederick William and Francis. England exploited the anti-french alliance of the continent for the furtherance of her conservative policy.
In Russia, the aristocrats and the court, speaking French and having enjoyed a French education, made common cause with the reactionary aristocrats of France. Catherine temporarily forbade the printing of Russian translations from Voltaire; the masonic lodges were closed; Radiščev was sent to Siberia. Emperor Paul I, accentuating the reactionary movement initiated by Catherine, went so far as to refuse to tolerate anything French that did not bear the royalist and Bourbon stamp. Unofficial printing establishments were suppressed; the import of foreign books was prohibited; in 1797 the censorship was reorganized; and in addition a religious censorship, which had been unknown throughout the eighteenth century, was introduced in Moscow in 1796 and was subsequently extended throughout the realm. The religious censorship was regulated in accordance with the principles of "the divine law [holy writ], the rules of the state, good morals and literature." It is not difficult to imagine how these principles ​were applied in practice. The use of the words "citoyen" and "société” was forbidden. It need hardly be said that Russia participated in the second coalition against France (1799). In 1798 and 1800, Tsar Paul issued a decree to the following effect: "The supreme power of the autocrat, bestowed on him by God, extends over the church. It is the duty of the entire clergy to comply with the commands of the tsar as divinely appointed head of the church and to do this in all things, in religious matters as well as in civil."
It is true that Paul was already mentally disordered. Reaction, legitimism, and the censorship did not suffice to protect the tsar against the palace revolution, a revolution which his own son made no attempt to hinder! Alexander I, who was born in 1777 and reigned from 1801 to 1825, had been educated by his grandmother Catherine upon Rousseauist principles. Laharpe, the republican, subsequently one of the leading spirits in the Helvetian republic, was from 1782 to 1795 tutor to the princes Alexander and Constantine. The education given to the brothers was characteristic of the half culture which then prevailed at court, the influence exercised by Laharpe and by the entourage in general being superficial and desultory.
As crown prince this pupil of Laharpe the humanist and philosopher of enlightenment promised himself to effect far-reaching reforms. He was an enthusiast for the abolition of serfdom. In 1796, writing to his friend Kočubei, he said: "Incredible disorder prevails in the administration; robbery goes on everywhere; all departments are ill-managed; order seems to have been banished, but the empire recks nothing, striving only after expansion." In the same year, Alexander assured Prince Czartoryski that though he disapproved the excesses of the revolution he wished all success to the French republic. When he ascended the throne, he gave a public pledge to abide by the liberal traditions of his grandmother, saying that it was a sacred obligation to maintain one law for all, and promising to rule "in accordance with the laws and Spirit of Catherine."
Russia overflowed with joy and enthusiasm. Certain steps taken by the tsar encouraged hope. Radiščev was given legislative employment. Alexander furthered the translation of the works of Adam Smith, Bentham, Beccaria, Montesquieu, and similar writers. He was an enthusiast for Pestalozzi, and ​provided money on behalf of the socialistic experiments of Robert Owen. None the less, after a period of vacillation (1801–1811), reaction set in, although down to the year 1820 the emperor continued on occasions to give expression to liberal views, especially before foreigners.
In Alexander's day occurred the restoration in France and the reaction in the other European states, and these experiences exercised a more decisive effect upon his mind than the direct teaching of his tutor. The influence of such men as Owen, Fourier, and Saint-Simon was replaced by that of such men as [[Author:Edmund Burke|Burke], de Bonald, and Gentz. De Maistre visited St. Petersburg and was able to wield immediate influence over Alexander. Chateaubriand likewise inspired St. Petersburg drawing-rooms with a taste for romanticist Christianity. During the reign of Alexander I religious mysticism became widely diffused among the upper circles of society. The mystical writings of Eckartshausen were made known by Lopuhin, and most of them were translated. Translated also were the works of Jung-Stilling and of earlier mystics, such as Madame de Guyon, Swedenborg, Tauler, etc., etc. The main interest of these mystics was in the spirit world, and they displayed full understanding of the various grades of occultism.
The fate of Radiščev was typical of Alexander's mental development. He had Radiščev recalled from exile, but the tragic end of this notable writer and man of fine character offers the severest criticism of the reign that was now opening. Radiščev despaired of the realisation of his ideals.
Ten days after ascending the throne Alexander found on his writing table Karazin's plan for a constitutional monarchy. In fact, the design was extremely unconstitutional, for the constitution was to come into existence through a kind of constitutionalist conspiracy. Karazin was for a time a personal friend of the young tsar, but before long he fell into disfavour. Similar was the fate of constitutionalism.
Throughout the reigns of Alexander and his successors we may say that the question of the constitutionalisation of Russia remained on the agenda. Europe's example in this respect could not fail to produce in all Russians a lively sense of oppression. Nor was the sentiment weakened when the absolutists referred to the horrors of the revolution. None the less, constitutional government was successively established in other European countries, whilst the example of England could ​always be quoted in favour of the thesis that constitutionalism was prophylactic of revolution.
In Russia under Alexander, as everywhere else, the English example exercised notable influence. Alexander's friend Kočubei had been educated in London; Novosilcev, who played an important part in this connection immediately after Alexander became tsar, had lived in London for a considerable time; Sporanskii was a friend of Bentham's brother and had an English wife. Many other members of the official circle were admirers of England.
In the early days of his reign Alexander appointed an unofficial committee to draft plans for a thorough reform of the administration. The labours of the committee were continued for two years, and the tsar took personal part in its deliberations.
In 1804 Alexander commissioned Baron Rosenkampf to formulate a constitution for Russia, while in the following year he established a privy cabinet to supervise liberalising endeavours. In 1807 this cabinet was made a permanent institution, and it lasted until 1829.
Repeatedly and with indefatigable energy Speranskii brought forward constitutionalist plans during the years 1803, 1808, 1809, and 1813. From 1806 to 1812 this statesman was in close personal touch with the tsar. Alexander gave special approval to the mature Introduction to the Code of National Laws, written in the year 1809; but the admirer of Napoleon, infirm of will, could not make up his mind to carry out the scheme. The views of the historian Karamzin, brought forward in 1811; in the form then customary of a memorial (Old and New Russia in Political and Civil Relationships), gained the upper hand.
Speranskii was an able administrator and a philosophically trained publicist. His plans for constitutionalist reform show him to have been a practical politician, one whose aims were realisable in the given conditions. From the position of mathematical teacher at the seminary he rose to that of the most powerful of Alexander's councillors. His sympathies were with the eighteenth-century enlightenment, with Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Rousseau; with Blackstone and the English constitutionalists; and with the philosopher Locke. Through and through a man of the progressive eighteenth century, the Russian influences that moulded him were those of Radiščev and his school.
​From early days it was Speranskii's aim to adapt to Russian conditions the teachings of his French and English exemplars. His demands, far from being revolutionary, were extremely moderate. A gradual development can be noted. In the first plans, those expounded in the memorial of 1802, the effect of foreign influences is more conspicuous than in the later designs; we trace the hand of Rousseau, Montesquieu, and English writers. Rousseau's "general will" becomes the will of the aristocracy. After the English manner, aristocratic privilege is to be transmitted to the first-born son alone; the younger sons are to belong to the people. Speranskii had no thought of a complete liberation of the peasantry. No such liberation was recommended in the plan of 1809. Domestic servants, day-labourers, workmen, and handicraftsmen were to have civil rights; but political rights were to be the exclusive privilege of the two upper orders, of the aristocrats and of the middle class, the latter comprising merchants, burghers, peasant proprietors, and other property owners.
The most characteristic point of Speranskii's proposals, and the one most important to Russia, was his suggestion for the establishment of a "real monarchy," by which he meant a constitutional monarchy, to replace the existing despotism, this change being part of a radical reform of the machine of state. The changes in the administration made by Peter, Catherine, and other rulers, needed, according to Speranskii, to be unified and organically developed; above all, the functions of each office should, he contended, be clearly defined. Speranskii's leading principle was that political power proceeds from the people; but "the people," as he used the term, meant only the upper classes. The monarch was irresponsible, but, like the responsible ministers and all the citizens of the state, he was bound by the basic laws of the community. Speranskii laid great stress upon the maintenance of these fundamental laws which, in accordance with his Rousseauist outlook, seemed to him the essential bulwark of the constitution. A point of special importance was that Speranskii proposed the creation of a parliament which was to be organically associated with the other autonomous representative bodies. The volost (vide supra, p. 34) and its elected council, the volost duma, were to constitute, as it were, the elementary cell of constitutionalism. The electoral councils of the next grade, the circle dumas, were to be elected by the ​volost dumas; the circle dumas were to elect the dumas of the administrative districts; these last, finally, were to elect the state duma. The state duma was to have no legislative power, but it alone could promulgate laws, the government being merely entitled to issue ordinances. The duma could take the initiative in exceptional cases only, when the fundamental law had been infringed by the government. Speranskii's scheme provided for but one chamber. It was the function of the council of state to discuss the affairs of the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive, and above all to discuss proposals emanating from these three branches of the political organism; personal report to the monarch was to be done away with.
A mere outline has been given of Sperenskii's design, but enough has been said to show that it was thought out in all its details and planned to put an end imperceptibly to absolutist despotism. Alexander approved the scheme, but it was never carried out. On the contrary, the tsar's advisers accused Speranskii of a secret understanding with foreign embassies and agents, and of direct treason. Alexander, though he did not believe the accusation, failed to protect Speranskii, who was sent to Siberia.
From time to time in his earlier works Speranskii criticised Russian despotism, but a far more eloquent criticism of this despotism was voiced by his demands for reform, for these all aimed at educating the Russian people so that it might become competent to exercise political initiative in the entire domain of public activity. He knew that there were in reality only two classes in Russia—to quote his own phraseology, the slaves of the tsar and the slaves of the landowners. Although there was a lack of definiteness about his proposals concerning the legislative organism (tsar, council of state, and duma) and its initiative, we must remember that the initiative of the volost was very definitely formulated, and that all his suggestions culminated in a restriction of the imperial initiative. Completed deliberations merely were to be laid before the tsar; the lawcourts were to be placed on an elective basis; foreign policy was to be in the hands of the executive; the aristocracy was to be independent of the crown. Speranskii made a far-reaching distinction between state and people, and he was convinced that the state is in an unhealthy condition when its development either lags behind the political sense of the people or runs unduly in advance of that sense.
​Speranskii's constitution was a plan for a political elementary school, finished in all its details. His reward, like that of his predecessor Radiščev, was banishment to Siberia. After two years he was permitted to return, and subsequently held various ofﬁces in the state service. From 1819 to 1821 he was governor-general of Siberia. In the reign of Nicholas I he was in charge of the work of legal codification. During these later years Speranskii's views underwent modification, so that he drew nearer to his sometime opponents.
Karamzin, in opposition to Speranskii's broadly conceived scheme for representative government, recommended the appointment of fifty benevolent governors with despotic powers. Karamzin went so far as to contend that the tsar had no right to restrict the absolutist privileges inherited from his ancestors. Speranskii, however, was in harmony with Karamzin on one point, for he too had grasped how the institution of serfdom contributes to the strength of absolutism.
In the year 1815, Alexander granted a constitution to Poland, and his regime there as constitutionalist absolutist gave him continued occasion to consider the question of constitutional government for Russia. At the opening of the Polish diet in 1818, the tsar even gave a half promise to establish constitutional government throughout Russia, saying: "You have provided me with an opportunity of announcing to my fatherland what I have been preparing for it for many years, and what it will make a good use of, as soon as the preliminaries for so important a change shall have sufficiently matured." This speech aroused high hopes in Russia, for the Russians had no wish to be less privileged than the Poles; and the tsar commissioned Novosilcev to draft a new scheme. It was commented on and approved by Alexander, presumably in the year 1821, but was still-born like that of Speranskii, which it closely resembled. The tsar's reluctance to initiate these reforms was probably stimulated by the discovery of plots, aiming in 1817 at his assassination, and in 1818 at his imprisonment.
Notwithstanding the example set by European states, the majority of the aristocracy, like the tsar, had no faith in constitutionalism. Typical of these doubts was the previously mentioned Karazin. In an address delivered in 1816, and again later, after Alexander's Warsaw speech, he energetically opposed the introduction of a constitution. His contention was that ​an autocrat was absolutely indispensable to a great realm, but that a national convention was not requisite. "Our tsars," he wrote, "are not representatives of the peoples, but representatives of Him who rules empires." Thus logically did Karazin formulate the theocratic doctrine of cæsaropapism. In another lecture he publicly denounced the constitutionalists as republicans, and expressed his opposition to the theories of the rights of man and of civil rights.
Whilst Alexander thus failed to fulfil his pledges for the establishment of constitutionalism, he showed himself no less feeble and reactionary in the matter of liberating the peasantry. In 1806 he accepted the dedication of Kaisarov's Gettingen dissertation against serfdom, a question which through the writings of Radiščev, Pnin, Novikov, Polénov, and other opponents, had become more and more acute. The tsar could, indeed, appeal to notable names upon the other side, to Sumarokov, Ščerbatov, and Boltin, for instance. Alexander was urged towards reform, not by Russian theorists alone, but by the example of Europe and of his own European territories. In the Baltic provinces the peasants were liberated during the years 1816 to 1819. Among the Russian aristocracy, warm advocates of this humane (and practical) reform were invariably to be found. Prince Vjazemskii, a noted writer who had translated Novosilcev's draft from French into Russian, conceived the idea of founding a society for the liberation of the peasants. In 1820 he sent the tsar a memorial wherein the liberation of the peasants and the domestic serfs was advocated by himself and his friends on grounds of justice and expediency. In 1818, Kankrin, minister for finance, favoured this reform, but without avail.
The opposing views were voiced by Karazin. In the address to which reference has previously been made, the one in which his opposition to constitutionalism was definitely formulated, he expounded also the divine and ethical justification for serfdom. The great landed proprietors, he said, were "almost" as indispensable to the wellbeing of the peasant villagers as was the monarch to that of his subjects in general. The landlord was a hereditary official to whose care the peasants had been entrusted by the supreme authority; vis-à-vis the state, the relationship of landlord to peasant was that of "governor-general in miniature." He wrote: "Russian landlords are nothing other than vice-gerents of their great tsar, each in the ​domain hereditarily entrusted to him." Karazin remained animated by a kindly spirit. His "governor-general in miniature" was likewise to be the father of the serfs. It was his aim to discover a middle course between the behaviour of the capitalists with their "ubi bene ibi patria," and the maltreatment of the serfs as slaves.
Be it noted, the tsar is the representative of God, and the landlord is the vice-gerent of the tsar. The landlord, therefore is co-representative of God, and the holder of this aristocratic doctrine is, consequently, perfectly logical when he defends serfdom. Men whose views were in other respects extremely liberal, were to be found on the side of Karazin. I may mention Mordvinov, friend and pupil of Speranskii, a cultured statesman who as minister and official in various departments exercised for a time considerable influence upon the tsar. An enthusiastic adherent of Adam Smith, he was a warm advocate of political reforms after the English model. In social matters, however, he was ever the Old Russian reactionary, willing only to enfranchise his peasants at a high price and without granting them any rights in the soil.
Deržavin wrote an inflated Ode to God which is to be found in all the reading books put into the hands of young people in Russia. Here we are told that in poesy we are to be for God, and in politics for serfdom.
Karazin expressed the views of the hardshelled agrarian aristocrat, the man who exploited European constitutionalist doctrines for the beneﬁt of feudalism. In essence his views were shared by many others, liberals not excepted, although these might employ different arguments. Karamzin, for example, maintained the natural necessity of serfdom. "Serfs," he wrote, "can be liberated as soon as it is possible for wolves to be full fed while sheep remain uninjured." In the memorial previously mentioned, the adulator of Russian monarchical absolutism took it upon himself to say that it was less dangerous to the state that men should be enslaved than that they should be granted freedom at an inappropriate time. If enlranchisement should prove necessary, it should be effected without the partition of the soil.
Karamzin is typical, and represents an entire school. In youth he was an enthusiastic admirer of Europe and of European ideas of progress, as we may see in his Letters of a Russian Traveller. He had an ardent appreciation of Robespierre, and ​profoundly deplored his death. But the romanticist sentimentality to which he gave expression in his poetic works, evaporated. He abandoned the ideals of Plato's republic. When he came to write The History of Russia, by Russia he meant the state, and by the state he understood the absolute monarchy. He did not, indeed, go so far as to oppose European influences, but he preferred Muscovite Russia to the Russia of Peter the Great, considering Ivan III a greater man than Peter. "The strength of the state is to be found in the strength of the sentiment of obedience displayed by the people"—such was the political doctrine of the leading historian of the restoration epoch.
Nevertheless, a few reforms were carried out in the earlier years of Alexander's reign. Corporal punishment was mitigated, and torture was abolished. Somewhat later (1817), when the clericalist reaction was already in full swing, slitting of the nostrils was done away with. For a few years the censorship was less severe. Middle and elementary schools were founded, and four universities were created (Dorpat, St. Petersburg, Kharkov, and Kazan). In 1803 the lot of the peasantry was somewhat alleviated. The principal aim of the reforms of Alexander's reign was, however, the improvement of the administration and of the army, in order to increase the functional efficiency of absolutist government. In this connection may be mentioned the establishment of separate ministries, among them a ministry of education (officially known as the ministry of public instruction), in 1802; the foundation of the council of state in 1810; and the formation of the military colonies on the frontier.
By the French revolution, and subsequently by Napoleon, the great power whose bases had been established by Peter was drawn into the field of European politics. The reaction in Europe looked upon Alexander as the guardian of monarchy, and the overthrow of Napoleon in Russia continued Alexander's faith in absolutism. Attention to European concerns and to ​foreign policy, and the laurels gained by the Russian generals on the battlefields of Russia and of Europe, diverted Alexander's attention from domestic weaknesses It may almost he said that the tsar was more at home in Europe than in Russia. Again and again, a strange restlessness drove him from St. Petersburg to Europe. Reactionary Europe, and Metternich above all, acquired a momentous influence over him. Thus it was that Alexander came to inaugurate the reactionary system which inevitably culminated in catastrophe.
In perfect accord with the reactionary spirit of the restoration epoch, Alexander became increasingly affected with religious sentimentalism, and inclined more and more towards clericalism The fact might seem to be sufficiently explained by the diffusion throughout Europe of medieval religious romanticism, but to this strong factor there was superadded in Alexander's case a yet more powerful personal motive. The tsar had had prior knowledge of the conspiracy that culminated in his father's death, and had tacitly assented to the crime. His uneasy conscience urged him ever further along the path of religious reaction. It has been asserted, and maintained even during his lifetime, that he wished to turn Catholic. The assertion is erroneous, but it is true that he hoped to secure absolution from the pope—this Orthodox imperator of the third Rome longed for the absolution of the Roman pope.
Alexander's young wife, Elizabeth Aleksěevna, was bold enough to approve the death of Paul. Three days after the murder the empress wrote: "I preached the revolution like a madwoman, for I had but one wish, that happiness should be restored to unhappy Russia, at any cost." We can imagine the conditions prevailing at the court of St. Petersburg when the empress could see no hope of her husband's delivery from his father's tyranny except by political crime. But liberation was not effected nor was happiness restored to Russia .The crime committed against his father separated Alexander from his wife, and he died without legitimate heirs.
Access to Alexander was secured, not only by serious and religiously inclined philosophers, authors, and politicians, but also by all kinds of religious fanatics. He consorted with sectaries and zealots, Protestant as well as Catholic. Baader, the Catholic romanticist, built his hopes upon Alexander. Jung-Stilling, Quakers, and Moravian Brethren, were among ​his acquaintances. The outlines of the plan for the holy alliance of which he became the head were furnished him by Baroness Krüdener. In courtly and noble circles mysticism of the most varied kinds was at that time prevalent. Some were adherents of Irvingism, advocating a spiritual imitation of Christ; others followed Selivanov of the skoptsy sect (before the war with Napoleon, Alexander had made a pilgrimage to this pope of the skoptsy); Baroness Krüdener, Tatarinova, and others, had adherents. The Bible Society had flourished since 1812. Religious fanaticism was cultivated in many masonic lodges. Notable churchmen, Filaret, for example, participated in this movement; but the official guardians of the church speedily awoke to the danger. Fotii (Photius) Spasskii, a typical religious fanatic, took the field against all those romanticists.
Reaction towards superstition became more and more frequently manifest. From time to time Alexander saw through its pretensions, but he looked on passively, as in the case of the other excesses of his subordinates. It was owing to his weakness in this respect that the real work of government passed into the hands of such men as the war minister Arakcěev, Benckendorff, the censors Magnickii and Runič, etc., etc.
It is psychologically instructive to note that despite his infirmity of will Alexander was strong enough to carry out the most draconian measures. As previously recorded, he had agreed to mitigate the lot of the peasantry, but he subsequently established the notorious military colonies by which he hoped to secure a large army at low cost and to regulate agricultural production with military precision. His detestation of Speranskii became so acute that he would gladly have shot his faithful adviser with his own hand.
The spirit of this reaction is characterised by the fact that Magnickii had pathological specimens taken from the museums and buried in the churchyard. During the years 1821 to 1824 ​liberal professors were dismissed from St. Petersburg university; university students and even the pupils of the higher schools were sent to Siberia; masonic lodges were closed (the lodges closed in 1822 had 2,000 members). The protector of the holy alliance, of Baroness Krüdener, and of all the reaction mystics, passed in the end beneath the spiritual sway of Photius.
Photius, an uncultured man sprung from the peasantry, rough and selfish, became ruler of the court, the vigorous will of the fanatic and ascetic gaining the upper hand over the aimless romanticism of the religious enthusiast. Even Prince Golicyn, chief procurator to the synod, a man of great influence and for many years one of Alexander's intimates, had to yield to the power of Photius. Golicyn, Alexander's "postillon, d'amour," a man who read the gospels for the first time subsequently to his appointment as chief procurator, was deprived of his office; and the sub-department of the ministry of education to deal with religious affairs established in 1817 and entrusted to Golicyn, was abolished, the work being transferred to the synod. "The only minister we have is the Lord Jesus Christ," wrote Photius to a friend. In reality the minister for religion was Count Arakcěev, the lay Photius, as Photius was the spiritual Arakcěev. Arakcěev and Photius represent theocratic cæsaropapism at the close of Alexander's reign; they are the throne and the altar which Photius defended against the revolution. Photius never wearied of prophesying the coming of antichrist. He announced the final revolution in Russia and the world at large, the onset of "universal destruction," for the year 1836, this being his interpretation of the apocalyptic number. Photius himself died in that year. It was characteristic of this fanatic of the Orthodox letter that he should condemn the moral laxity of the emperor but should condone Arakcěev's weaknesses because Arakcěev was friendly to his own lust for power. When Arakcěev's mistress was murdered on account of her cruelty, Photius celebrated a funeral service on her behalf although she was a Lutheran. In a word, Photius' minister was not Christ, but Arakcěev-Photius at the court of Alexander—an eloquent demonstration that morality and fanatical religious faith are two utterly different things.
§ 16.
ALEXANDER'S reaction called into life an opposition which ultimately increased to become a definitely revolutionary movement.
The tradition of the eighteenth century and the example of progressive and democratic Europe produced in the best and noblest minds an inclination towards an opposition standpoint; the tsar's weakness and vacillation increased the revolutionary tendency. In France the reaction had not ventured upon an attempt to restore absolutism, and was content to achieve constitutional monarchy. Prussia carried out the far-reaching reforms of Stein and Hardenberg, adopted the towns' ordinance, and liberated the peasantry and manufacturing industry. Representative constitutions were introduced in several German states. Norway received a thoroughly democratic constitution; absolutism disappeared in Portugal; the Swiss constitution was revised. It was in Austria and Prussia alone—and in Turkey—that absolutist methods in politics were stubbornly maintained. The Russians of Alexander's day could not fail to note all these changes, and it was inevitable that discontent with reaction should be greatly accentuated because for so long a period the tsar had cherished constitutionalist designs and had given public pledges of reform. Moreover, Poland and Finland were granted constitutions, and in view of their own condition it was natural that the Russians should feel that this implied a slight to themselves. Progressive philosophy, opposition ideas, sociological and political journalism and literature, were widely circulated. The writings of Constant and Bentham, Destutt de Tracy's Commentary on Montesquieu, Montesquieu himself and the eighteenth-century philosophers, were continually read. Works explaining the English and American constitutions were by now accessible; and as a matter of course many Russians were acquainted with European countries and institutions. In conjunction with European literature, Russian eighteenth-century literature, and yet more the newer Russian literature, the early works of Puškin, and Griboedov's comedies (circulated in manuscript). nourished the spirit of oppositions. The writings of Görres, de Bonald, etc., the politicians and sociologists who championed the restoration and the reaction, were likewise known to the Russians, but it will readily be ​understood that they worked by contraries and served to strengthen the opposition tendency.
Everywhere the advanced parties endeavoured to countermine reaction by working for a new revolution; and after the days of the great revolution France remained the classic land and prototype of revolution. The French movement was joined by that of Young Italy, of Young Germany, of Young Europe, and consequently by that of Young Russia as well. Profound was the impression made in Russia by the revolt of the Greeks. In part the interest was in the country which Byron had sung, but in part it was due to the community of creed. Metternich was, however, successful in inducing Russia to withhold any official expression of sympathy with the insurgents. The influence of the Serbian rising was less conspicuous.
It was from Europe, too, that the Russians acquired their knowledge of political secret societies. The way for these had been prepared by the masonic lodges and several of the most notable leaders in the secret societies were freemasons. The first secret political society was constituted towards the close of 1816 or the beginning of 1817. Known at first as the Union of Rescue or as the True and Faithful Sons of the Fatherland, in 1818 it was rechristened the Welfare Society. Its organization was modelled on that of the Tugendbund. Some of the decabrists were intimately acquainted with this German society; others had been adepts in the carbonari leagues and in the illuminate orders. The tsar knew of the existence of the secret societies and was familiar with their rules, but he contented himself with prohibiting all secret societies, and with arranging for more vigorous police supervision. His own uneasy conscience rendered it impossible for him to follow the energetic counsels of Benckendorff and other advisers. After the Welfare Society had been dissolved, a new society was constituted in 1821 consisting of Northern and Southern Sections. In 1825 there came into existence the secret society of United Slavs, which aimed at liberating and federating the Slavs; this body joined the Southern Section. Close relationships were likewise entered into with the Polish secret society known as the Patriotic League. A number at lesser societies whose aims were literary rather than political likewise existed in various towns.
The members of all these societies were aristocrats and ​belonged to distinguished families. Most of them were military officers, chieﬂy guardsmen. From the nature of the case the army and the fleet were more Europeanised and more progressive in point of organisation than any other Russian institution. The officers were the most highly cultured members of the population, especially in the field of natural science, and they therefore were the first to come into conflict with the reaction. Many of them, too, were men who during the Napoleonic wars had had personal experience of Europe and of European acquirements in all domains, men who had faced European armies. The first secret society came into existence when the officers returned to Russia after spending a year and a half in Europe.
At the outset, the aims of all these societies were ill-defined, comprising a mingling of humanitarian philanthropy, the philosophy of the enlightenment, and literary ideas, with designs to work for political and social freedom. By degrees, their aims became clearer; with increasing resolution they looked forward to tyrannicide and armed rising; and at length the revolution broke out in December 1825. The Russian for December being dekabr, these revolutionaries are known as decabrists. It was the initial attempt at a mass revolution in New Russia, though at first a revolution of the aristocracy. The struggle against Napoleon had served to fortify a sentiment of strength and independence, and this culminated in the rising which immediately succeeded the death of Alexander. The political and social ideals of the decabrists are not yet fully known, for it is but quite recently that the issue of their writings and memoirs has begun, that a literary revision has been made of the legal proceedings against them, and that their biographies have been written. The decabrists were aristocrats, men who could not readily escape the prejudices and habits of their caste. Most of them, doubtless, aimed at the establishment of a constitution which should give some form of representative government such as existed in western countries; they desired that electors should have a property qualification; the representatives were to be drawn from the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Some of them made no demand for the liberation of the peasantry; whilst others, if they desired liberation, did not wish the peasants to be assigned any land. Speaking generally, the decabrists favoured political reform, but had no enthusiasm for social reform.
​With the introduction of constitutional government must naturally be associated suitable administrative reforms, and above all reform in judicial and criminal procedure (publicity, trial by jury, the appointment of official counsel for the defence, and so on). Other important requirements were a restriction of the censorship and a remodelling of the conditions of military service. All the decabrists were opposed to the military colonies; the term of service was to be reduced from the twenty-five years then prevalent; corporal punishment was to be mitigated—not abolished.
Most of the political labours of the decabrists, so far as we can judge to-day, remained unfinished, being mere sketches, intended to form the basis of discussion in their meetings. Alexander's death and the peculiar interregnum that followed induced the revolt of December 14, 1825, and by this revolt and its consequences the literary elaboration of their ideas was prevented. When the materials furnished by the evidence given at their trial and the works they subsequently wrote in prison and in Siberia have been sufficiently examined, it may become possible to combine the decabrist fragments to constitute an organic whole.
We possess certain decabrist projects for a constitution. Nikolai Novikov, nephew of the freemason, drafted a republican constitution, but in outline merely. A more finished work is that by Nikita Murav'ev (there were no fewer than seven Murav'evs among the decabrists), of which two separate drafts exist; this is of especial importance because it was known to many of the decabrists and was eagerly discussed. Moreover, Murav'ev's constitution is genuinely republican, or at least the monarch's role is reduced to that of president of the republic. Should the tsar fail to approve the scheme he and his family were to be expelled and a republic was to be proclaimed. Murav'ev's plan was based upon the constitution of the United States. Russia was to be subdivided into thirteen states (thirteen was the original number of the states of the American union) and two territories; these were to be federated to constitute a realm known as the Slavo-Russian empire; four governmental departments only were to be common to all the states, foreign affairs, army, navy, and finance. Moscow was to be the capital. The property qualification of an elector was to be very high; in fact, in Murav'ev's constitution the electors were to be Crœsuses. Serfdom was to be abolished, ​but no land was to be assigned to the enfranchised peasantry, so that the enormous majority of the population would have no electoral rights.
The strongest intelligence among the decabrists and the man with the fullest political culture was Pestel, and his program was the most advanced and the most democratic. The force of Pestel's personality and his influence upon the opposition movement were recognised by the government through the imposition of a death sentence, although Pestel had neither led nor directly prepared the revolt.
Of German descent, Pestel was educated in Dresden, and subsequently had a distinguished military career, not merely showing his bravery in numerous actions (he was wounded at Vilna), but proving himself an energetic and efficient army organiser. Pestel was one of the founders of the Welfare Union, and was subsequently the soul of the Southern Section. He expounded his views in the comprehensive work Russkaja Pravda (Russian Truth, the title of the old collection of laws) and in various lesser writings. His magnum opus remained incomplete, but was designed to furnish guidance for the provisional government during the reconstruction period. It is significant of the decabrist political outlook that in Pestel's view this reconstruction period was to last ten years.
In opposition to the reactionary judgments of the revolution that were then current Pestel proved from a study of the Bourbon restoration that the revolution had been beneficial and necessary, for the restored monarchy had left intact the institutions created by the revolution. On the other hand, as Pestel pointed out, in states where no revolution had taken place the old evils persisted. The existence of Russian absolutism made him a convinced revolutionary and republican. Pestel's analysis of political evolution had led him to the view that constitutionalism is a mere half-measure, a mask for absolutism. Frank autocracy seemed to him preferable to parliamentary government, because absolutism, with its open use of force, leads by the reaction it provokes to speedier and more radical reforms, whereas under constitutional parliamentary government evils are more enduring. It was therefore Pestel's opinion that constitutional monarchy would be a temporary affair, and he-considered that the political task of the day was not the constitutionalisation but the democratisation of the state. "The leading endeavour of our time is to be ​found in the struggle between the masses of the population and aristocracies of every kind, whether based on wealth or birth." For this reason Pestel ardently advocated the liberation of the peasantry, desiring to destroy the aristocracy, the barrier between the tsar and people. He was a sympathiser with socialist doctrine, and Herzen speaks of him as "a socialist before socialism."
It is noteworthy that Pestel desired that the entranchised land of the peasants should become communal property, even where communal property had not previously existed; but half of the land was to be privately held by the peasants.
There is a socialistic ring about Pestel's idea that the poor man's work is his capital. The rich man can live upon capital, can live without labour, and can wait for better times; the poor man cannot wait, but must accept whatever conditions are offered him. The fewer persons there are who live solely by work, that is to say the fewer wage earners there are, the fewer will be unhappy. "But since, however good laws and institutions may be, wage earners will continue to exist, the government must protect them against the arbitrary exactions of the wealthy, and must not forget that the unhappy poor fall sick, grow old, and become unfitted for work, being then unable to earn even their pitiful maintenance."
In Pestel's view the epoch in which he lived was characterised by the opening of the struggle waged by the people against the feudal aristocracy. During this struggle an "aristocracy of wealth" came into existence, and from the social outlook the new aristocracy was worse than the old, for the feudal aristocracy, after all, was dependent upon public opinion, whereas the wealthy were enabled by their wealth, in defiance of public opinion, to enslave the entire population.
Pestel's opinions underwent gradual development towards a more logically libertarian and democratic outlook. At the outset, for example, he advocated a mitigation of the censorship and a reduced property qualification; but in his later writings he was opposed to any property qualification, or to any unequal property qualification, seeing that every Russian should, if the worst carne to the worst, be at least able to find a piece of land to till. At first favouring monarchy, Pestel later became a declared republican. In certain respects he was unable to overcome the influence of aristocratic and absolutist education. For example, he proposed to retain corporal punishment in ​the army, to preserve the indirect system of election, and so on. The sources available to me have not enabled me to ascertain how far Pestel, as member of a secret society, shared the conclusions and views of his associates.
Enough has been said to show that Pestel had given detailed consideration to the chief political and social problems of his day, and that he desired Russian reform to be carried out as an organic whole. He was not satisfied with a constitution, but aimed at a far-reaching internal transformation of men as well as of institutions. His plans, therefore, were something more than constitutionalist and republican; they were democratic and socialist. His socialism was carried to its logical conclusions as we see in his views regarding inheritance and various other matters.
Nevertheless, Pestel shared many of the prejudices of his time. Noteworthy was his preference for political centralisation, which he advocated in opposition to those who favoured federative schemes. Pestel lays great stress upon the state, upon its unity and indivisibility. Unity is to be secured by the linguistic unification of the entire realm. With the exception of the Poles, all the races and tribes inhabiting Russia are, to use his own expression, "to be amalgamated to form a single people." This amalgamation is to involve civilisation as well as language. Complete Russification is essential. Not merely is the Russian tongue to be used exclusively throughout the realm, but the very names hitherto used by the separate nationalities are to be abolished.
This scheme for Russification is to be applied above all to the civilised national sections under Russian rule, to the Finns and to the Germans; the Poles, as already stated, are to constitute the solitary exception. Pestel's attitude towards Poland is politically significant for his own and for subsequent days.
In Alexander's time, Russian Poland was entirely distinct from Russia at once politically and in point of civilisation. Not only did the tsar respect the political constitution of Poland, but he even had thoughts of restoring to that country the provinces that had formerly been Polish. Influential statesmen and publicists were, however, opposed to this plan—such men as Karamzin, and the decabrist Nikolai Turgenev, of whom we shall shortly have to speak as constitutionalist. Prince Orlov, the decabrist, and his friend Dmitriev-Mamonov ​demanded the suppression of the name Poland; Prussian and Austrian Poland were likewise to be annexed to Russia.
Pestel, on the other hand, was in agreement with Alexander upon the Polish question. He was willing to accord the rights of nationality to those peoples alone that were numerous enough to exist as independent states; lesser peoples must be content to sacrifice their national rights to the demands of political utility. Russia, therefore, was to recognise Poland as an independent state, but Russia and Poland were to enter into an "intimate league," and Poland was to have identical forms of government and administration with Russia, all aristocracy, whether feudal or plutocratic, being abolished.
Pestel does not discuss the position of the other Slavs, although the amalgamation of the Society of the United Slavs with the Southern Section might have offered him a text for such discussion. He gives the name of Slav to Muscovite territory and to the Russian people alone, distinguishing five dialects and five ,"shades" of nationality, namely, Russian, Little Russian, Ukrainian, Ruthenian, and White Russian. The program of the Society of United Slavs aspired to a federal union of the Slav peoples, recognising eight of these, Russians, Serbo-Croats, Bulgarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Lusatian Wends, Slovenes, and Poles. Orlov and Dmitriev-Mamonov designed to effect, not merely the complete reunion of Poland, but a union of the other Slavs with Russia, "the Union of Hungary, Serbia, and all the Slav nations."
Pestel gave the Jewish problem careful consideration. He considered that in Russia and in Poland the jews constituted a state within the state, and desired therefore to break down the peculiarly powerful cohesion of the Jews. To this end, the most learned rabbis and other Jews of exceptional ability were to elaborate a plan in conjunction with the government. Pestel was likewise a pioneer in the "gigantic" design of Zionism. To carry it through, he said, "positive genius for the enterprise" would be essential. The two millions of Russian and Polish Jews were to found an independent state in some part of Asia Minor. "So large a number of men desiring a fatherland ought not to find much difficulty in overcoming all hindrances which might be placed in their way by the Turks."
Other somewhat utopian suggestions are to be found in Pestel's writings, such as his notion that Nizhni Novgorod ​should become the capital. On the whole Pestel's ideas were remarkable, and were distinguished especially by the way in which all the important institutions of a well-ordered democratic state were conceived as comprising an organically united whole. Apart from the exceptions indicated, Pestel's mind was liberal and progressive, this being clearly shown by his views regarding the futility of punishing attempted suicides, regarding the equality of status for illegitimate children, etc. Yet the governmental centralisation to which he aspired would have been no less absolutist than was the "enlightened" tsarism of the preceding epoch. This is especially plain in his views upon religion and the church. Here Pestel is wholly at one with Peter the Great. The clergy are not to form a distinct order, being merely entitled to the exercise of a specific profession; and they must do their work as constituents of the governmental machine. The remodelling of their status in this direction was the aim of his proposed ecclesiastical reforms. Besides demanding that the clergy should be better educated and better paid, Pestel insisted that they ought to lead a truly Christian life, and desired the abolition of monasticism and of monastic control of the white or secular clergy. He prudently recognised that this aim must be secured by a process of gradual change. One of his recommendations was that no one should be allowed to take monastic vows before the age of sixty, or to become a secular priest before the age of forty. In the matter of alien creeds, Pestel held that no member of the clergy ought to be subject to any foreign authority, seeing that the clergy are state servants. Foreign monastic orders being contrary to the spirit of the Orthodox church, could not be tolerated in Russia.
Of course the proposals were mainly directed against the pope and the Catholics. Pestel's attitude towards the church serves also to explain why he desired that Poland and the Polish provinces should be separated from Russia.
Pestel's religious ideas require further study. It was natural that as a Lutheran he should take a progressive attitude vis-à-vis Orthodoxy. Puškin records that Pestel once said, "Mon cœur est matérialiste, mais ma raison s'y refuse."
A more detailed analysis of Pestel's political conceptions would here be out of place, and it is impossible to refer to the writings and sketches of the other decabrists. The only one ​with whom we shall have occasion to deal at some length is Nikolai Turgenev.
It is hardly possible to overestimate the political importance of decabrism. The movement was widespread. After December 14 (old style), 1825, more than a thousand arrests were made, and one hundred and twenty sentences were passed by the supreme criminal court. Among notable writers of the twenties, Rylěev, Bestužev (Marlinskii), Küchelberg. and Prince Odoevskii were decabrists, and Griboedov was closely related to the movement. Puškin, too, for a time displayed decabrist leanings. Spiritually and morally the decabrists constituted an elite in Russian society of that day. This is proved by the literature now becoming known, describing the sorrows, the studies, and the labours of the Siberian exiles. There were brave women among them, who shared their fate.
Almost all the political tendencies of subsequent years, alike theoretical and practical, are foreshadowed among the decabrists. Even the most revolutionary of those conceptions, and above all those of Herzen, may be directly deduced from decabrist political ideals.
Although in later days some of the decabrists (a few of whom lived on into the reform epoch of Alexander II) expressed extremely conservative views, we have to take into account the effects of banishment. From the decabrist memoirs, those of Jakuškin, for example, we learn what a martyrdom the banished men had to endure.
§ 17.
THE leaders of the revolt of December 14th were punished by the new tsar with extreme rigour. Of the one hundred and twenty-one accused, five were to be quartered, among them Pastel and the poet Rylěev, thirty-one guillotined, and the remainder exiled to Siberia, the officers being degraded. The tsar, however, exercised his clemency—and the five principal offenders were merely hanged.
Hardly had the revolution been suppressed in the capital and subsequently in the army, when further revolutionary ​disturbances broke out at home and abroad. Throughout life Nicholas trembled at the spectre of revolution. In his own family he had before him the example of his sister-in-law, the unhappy wife of Alexander I; after her death (1826) he burned her diary with his own hand. The hanging of Pestel did not suffice to erase the memory of his father's death and his brother's guilt. Not many years before Nicholas ascended the throne occurred the rising in Spain in 1820 and that in Piedmont in 1821; during his reign came the July revolution, the Polish revolt, lesser risings in France, and at length the revolutions of 1848. After the Polish rebellion, not merely were the Polish constitution, diet, and national army abolished, but pitiless confiscations of property were carried out, and the university of Vilna was closed.
Tsar Nicholas had a very different education from his two elder brothers. Born in 1796, he was nearly twenty years younger than Alexander, and he was not yet five years old when the latter began to reign. There seemed no probability that he would ever be tsar. Not until it became clear that Alexander would have no legitimate offspring was Constantine induced to renounce the succession. Nicholas' tutor was General Lamsdorf, a rough man who made use of corporal punishment as one of the principal means of education. The prince's only keen interest was in the army. Strict subordination, unquestioning obedience, were Nicholas' system. In his psychology men were mere machines, or at most, animated slaves. "I regard the whole of human life a service," he said on one occasion. The anti-revolutionary mission of Russia therefore began with the reign of this "supreme lord of the narrow world," as Frederick William IV termed him. Žukovskii the poet, tutor to the next tsar, who was in Paris during the February revolution, in his letters to the heir to the throne eloquently pointed the moral that in the universal deluge Russia was the ark of salvation, not for herself alone, but for the rest of the world. Žukovskii hoped that the reigning tsar would keep his country remote from the European plague, would isolate it from the infection by building a Chinese wall. It was the unmistakable design of Providence that Russia should continue to constitute a separate and entirely independent world.
In European policy, Nicholas, like Alexander, was, therefore, protector of legitimism. He was the declared opponent of Louis Philippe, condemning as unlawful the French monarch's ​election and investiture by the bourgeoisie. It was in this spirit that in the year 1849 he sent troops to assist in suppressing the revolution in Hungary. In 1853 he ordered Serbia to dismiss the premier Garašanin (senior) because that statesman had been a pupil of Kossuth and Mazzini. Metternich's policy in Austria and Germany was a delight to Nicholas. He was not without objections to Napoleon III, but he accepted this coup d'état. Metternich, in turn, sought and found in Nicholas a protector against the revolution, of which he had himself been regarded as the chief opponent, and the Austrian chancellor came to terms with Russia in order to keep Germany and Italy dependent. In Europe Nicholas was admired by all conservatives and reactionaries, and by some actually worshipped, as for example by his brother-in-law Frederick William IV, who said: "I thank God upon my knees for having vouchsafed to me the profound grief I experience at the death of Tsar Nicholas, for having vouchsafed to me to be the tsar's faithful friend in the best sense of the word. "Nicholas, for his part, was devoted to the kings of Prussia, highly esteeming Prussian accuracy and orderliness. He preferred Germans in the army and in the administration.
With Nicholas began the "plague zone which extended from 1825 to 1855" (Herzen). Reaction became a carefully considered police system, the tsar in person assuming the office of chief superintendent of police, for this was the literal significance of the foundation in 1826 of the famous "third section of the departments under his majesty's immediate supervision," which down to the year 1880 was devoted to the attempt to gag Russia intellectually. The notorious Benckendorff, who had secured the tsar's favour through his zeal in the suppression of decabrism, was appointed chief of this institution. Later he also became chief of the gendarmerie, consecrating all his energies to the work of repression.
In this sketch it would be difficult to give an adequate idea of the abominable stupidity and provocative brutality that characterised reaction under Nicholas. For the utterance of liberal ideas conflicting with the official program, leading men were simply declared insane. This happened to Čaadaev and to a number of officers inclined towards revolutionary notions. In one case Nicholas had the death announced of certain Engelhardt whose sentence had in reality been commuted to imprisonment for life; his wife was compelled to ​wear mourning; and the very number of his grave in the churchyard was entered in the records. When the poet Ševčenko and his associates were sentenced in 1847 as members of the slavophil Cyrillo-Methodian Union, the tsar aggravated the punishment in the case of Ševčenko, to whom the use of writing materials was denied. In his diary the poet complains that while the pagan Augustus permitted Ovid to write, this indulgence was forbidden to himself by the Christian ruler. Not merely was the tsar chief officer of police, but in his own exalted person he revised the sentences of the courts. In the year 1837 two Jews were condemned to death in Odessa because, from fear of the plague, they had attempted to escape across the frontier. Nicholas commuted the death penalty as follows: "The convicts are to run the gauntlet—a thousand men—twelve times. God be thanked, with us the death penalty has been abolished, and I will not reintroduce it." This is but one among numerous instances of the theocratic sovereign's power of self-deception and of his cruelty—for who had proposed that the decabrists should be quartered, and who had commuted their punishment to hanging? In the year 1838 a student named Sočinskii gave the director of the surgical academy a box on the ear. He was sentenced to run the gauntlet—five hundred men—three times. Nicholas revised the sentence thus: "To be carried out in the presence of all the students of the academy. Subsequently the offender, instead of being sent to Siberia, is to spend ten years, wearing fetters, in the disciplinary battalion at Kronstadt." It is hardly necessary to add that though there was no capital punishment, the men thus sentenced died under the blows of the soldiers.
The severities of Nicholas were hardly credible. The wives of the decabrists who followed their husbands to Siberia were not permitted to return to Russia after the death of these; those among the decabrists who lived on into the reign of Alexander II received amnesty from that ruler. Only to one like Nicholas was it possible to have sane men declared insane, or to inflict upon Dostoevskii and the Petraševcy the tortures of a death sentence. Herzen, too, and some of his acquaintances, suspected of Saint-Simonism, were arrested. They were condemned to death in the first instance, but by the tsar's clemency the sentences were commuted, first to imprisonment and subsequently to exile.
Here is an additional contribution to the psychology, ​perhaps it would be better to say the psychopathology, of Tsar Nicholas. A young man named Poležaev wrote a satire upon contemporary student life. The work was circulated in manuscript, and a copy fell into the hands of the emperor, who was especially incensed at the strictures upon the church and political institutions. He sent for the author and compelled him to read the composition aloud to himself and the minister for education. After a severe reprimand, wherein the writing was stigmatised as a product of decabrist sentiment, Nicholas kissed his victim upon the forehead and dismissed him with the sentence that he was to serve at the front, the minister's advocacy averting a worse issue. The tsar granted the offender the privilege of writing to his sovereign in order to recount progress of the right path. Poležaev availed himself of this privilege to beg for pardon, or at least for a mitigation of punishment, but his petitions were disregarded, and his biographers tell us how the unhappy man was tantalised, how in his despair he took to drink, and how finally in 1837 he died of consumption, at the age of two and thirty years. We learn from Poležaev's verses what the age of Nicholas seemed to reflective minds.
Reforms, properly speaking, were unknown in the reign of Nicholas. Much was done to safeguard order, and especial attention was devoted to the army. Under the guidance of Speranskii, legislation was codified in 1833, a new criminal code was issued (1845), and the ministry of the state domains was founded (1837). In 1839, in order to promote the efficiency of centralisation, the village replaced the volost as the administrative unit.
I must not omit to mention that under Nicholas the use of the rod in punishment was abolished, the lash taking its place (1845). Humanitarian considerations, however, were not solely determinative, for those chastised with the rod were no longe fit for military service.
Some of the changes introduced in this reign were beneficial. For example, educational reform was forced upon the Jews, and thereby some of the Jews had opened to them the path to general culture.
Naturally, the reaction under Nicholas was based upon the state church, just as happened in Austria and Prussia, and quite in accordance with the teachings of de Maistre, de Bonald, ​Görres, Gentz, and the various other theorists of the anti-revolutionary restoration and reaction.
All independent thought was to be inexorably suppressed; higher education was to be reduced to the minimum of essential knowledge; philosophy and literature, attempts at general culture and at the attainment of a philosophic outlook upon the universe, were to be stifled in the germ. Count Uvarov, minister for education from 1833 to 1849, addressing the governing committees of the schools, announced his advent to ovvice in the following terms: "It is our joint task to secure that the culture of the nation shall be carried on in the unified spirit of Orthodoxy, autocracy and patriotism." Yet more thoroughly did Uvarov, in the course of the same year formulate this trinitarian doctrine as "the main principle of the social stem of education," writing as follows: "Amid the rapid decay of religious and civil institutions in Europe, amid the widespread diffusion of revolutionary ideas, it becomes our duty to establish the foundations of the fatherland so firmly that they cannot be shaken. We must find a basis from which right conduct can spring; we must discover energies which will develop the distinctive characteristics of Russia, and will ultimately enable our country to assemble the sacred heritage of nationality into a compact whole, to which we must anchor our salvation. How fortunate is it that Russia has preserved ardent faith in those saving principles in default of which right conduct is impossible, without which an energetic and worthy life is unknown. A Russian devoted to his fatherland is as little willing to permit the subtraction of a single dogma from our Orthodox faith as he would be to allow the theft of a pearl from the crown of Monomachus. Autocracy is the main condition of Russia's political existence. In conformity with these two national bases is the third basis, equally important and equally strong—patriotism."
The official program of reaction—Orthodoxy, autocracy, and patriotism—had thus been formulated. To the present day this program constitutes the alpha and omega of official political wisdom; it is the program of the Russian theocracy, which declares the tsar's will a divine revelation, and deduces bureaucratic politics and administration from God's will thus revealed. In the first section of the fundamental law of 1832 (it became section 4 when the law was re-edited in 1906), autocracy is defined in the following terms: "The tsar of all the ​Russias is an autocratic and absolute monarch. God himself commands us to obey the tsar's supreme authority, not from fear alone, but as a point of conscience." The theocratic relationship of the tsar to the church is thus defined: "The Russian tsar, as a Christian sovereign, is supreme protector and defender of the dogmas of the Greco-Russian faith and supervisor of Orthodoxy and of good order in general throughout holy church. In this sense he is spoken of as the head of the church" (Fundamental Law of 1906 Section 64).
Similarly Filaret, authoritative exponent of church doctrine under Alexander II, redefined the divine mission of the tsar in the sense of the Stoglav, saying: "God has given us the autocratic tsar after the image of His own universal dominion."
Peter the Great had proposed to establish at the academy a chair of natural law. Under Nicholas, in the year 1849, legal proceedings were taken against Solucev, professor at the university of Kazan, because he had deduced the principles of law from the healthy human reason instead of from the gospels.
To Peter, the church was no more than means to an end, and he was little concerned about his subjects inner convictions. The same may be said of the empresses who succeeded Peter, for even under Catherine II reaction remained incomplete. In the reign of Alexander I closer supervision of the schools and of literature had begun; and attempts had been made at the radical extirpation of Voltairism. Nicholas, however, was the first tsar to adapt his mentality to religion (though not; indeed in every respect!) that he might be enabled to exploit the church effectixely for his own ends. At his court there was no place for Krüdener and other prophets; Photius was to rule men's minds. Even Photius was not a persona grata to Nicholas, and no long time elapsed before the tsar dismissed Arakčeev. The autocrat was strong enough to assume for himself the rôles of Photius and Arakčeev. There can be no doubt that his firmness of will contributed to make him appear the born autocrat.
By religion Nicholas chieﬂy understood fear of the Lord; the Lord was conceived by him as an anthropomorphic being, simultaneously God and tsar. In the training colleges for cadets the priests were to suggest to their pupils that the greatness of Christ had been displayed above all in His submission to the government, in the way in which He had shown Himself ​to be "an example of obedience and discipline." To the army recruits, who had to look forward to a term of service lasting twenty-five years, the chaplains preached: "God chooses men for all professions as He wills. You are chosen and destined for the military career by the will of God. . . . God wills that you shall serve God and the great tsar as soldiers. . . . Before you were born, it was God's determination that you should become warriors."
Military discipline prevailed in the schools. Count Protasov, a cavalry general, was appointed chief procurator of the synod in 1836 and held office until 1855. Army discipline was introduced into the seminaries. "I know only the tsar," was his favourite saying. Nevertheless he found place in the curriculum for the "revolutionary" natural sciences, since as a soldier he recognised their value.
Nicholas desired in good earnest to realise Uvarov's formula. Russia had the advantage over Europe of possessing the only true faith, and uniformity of religious belief was to prevail. The outcome of this ecclesiastical policy was the adoption of harsh police measures against the raskolniki and other sectaries, such as the dukhobors; and it was the same policy which induced the enforcement of religious uniformity.
Enough has been said to show how Nicholas and his devoted assistants were likely to receive the fierce protest which Čaadaev issued in his Philosophic Essay (1836) renouncing, in the name of religion, Uvarov's formula and Russian theocracy in its entirety.
§ 18.
HARDLY had Nicholas become tsar when he abolished the chair of philosophy at Moscow university. Driving past the university on one occasion, looking very serious, he pointed to the building and said. "There is the wolf's den." The less developed universities were dealt with in accordance with this estimate. A fuller activity had begun at the universities during the liberal epoch of Alexander I, with the issue of the studies' ordinance of 1804, although even then the police outlook towards these institutions was not abandoned. In 1835 Uvarov reorganised the universities in conformity with his general program, making the study of theology and ecclesias​tical history obligatory in all faculties. In 1850, owing to the alarm inspired by the revolution of 1848, certain disciplines, and notably the study of European constitutional law, were banished from the university as deleterious; whilst philosophy was reduced to courses upon logic and psychology which had in future to be delivered by theologians, the pretext given for the change being "the blameworthy development of this science by German professors." The historian Granovskii was not permitted to lecture on the reformation. The number of students was restricted to three hundred. The object of universities was announced to be, "the education of loyal sons for the Orthodox church, of loyal subjects for the tsar and of good and useful citizens for the fatherland." Not until the days of Alexander II. were these and other reactionary measures abrogated. Nevertheless, even during the reign of Nicholas one new university was founded, at Kiev in 1833, for these "wolves' dens" were indispensable to the civil administration and the army.
Reform of the higher schools (1847) was effected in conformity with the restrictions imposed on the universities. The study of classical tongues was discontinued lest youth should be corrupted by the reading of Greek authors who had written in republics. In this connection we may refer to a European example of the same way of thinking. Napoleon III held the like view of Greek authors, and Nicholas might have appealed to the French emperor for support. But reaction in Russia works and thinks from day to day only. In 1854 classical studies were partially reintroduced, the idea being that Greek and Latin fathers of the church would inspire refractory youths with due veneration for the official program.
The history of recent Russian literature is filled with stories of the oppression which great writers had to suffer under Alexander and still more under Nicholas. The work of Griboedov, Puškin, Lermontov, and Gogol was hindered in every possible way. Banishment was a frequent penalty. Books were mutilated by the censorship. Newspapers were suppressed, among them an opposition journal edited by Rylěev and Marlinskii, and entitled "Poljarnaja Zvězda" (Polar Star, a name chosen later by Herzen for his organ). In the "Moskovskii Telegraf," Polevoi adopted an opposition standpoint from 1825 onwards, and was able to continue his journalistic_advocacy of liberal ideas down to 1834, but this ​"Revue des décabristes" was in the end suppressed by Uvarov. I record, not in jest but in earnest, that this minister for education and president of the academy of sciences expressed a strong desire that Russian literature should cease to exist. Almost all notable authors suffered during the reign of Nicholas. I have previously referred to Čaadaev and Ševčenko. Bělinskii was unable to print his first drama. Puškin was informed of the tsar's exalted disapproval.
Puškin's aristocratic inclinations led him astray not infrequently. and he experienced a shortsighted pleasure when Polevoi's newspaper was suppressed, for he regarded the Moscow journalist as "unduly jacobin." Polevoi was one of the non-aristocratic raznočincy (unclassed, plebeian—§ 22). In 1845 the tsar seriously thought of having obstacles imposed to the entry of the raznočincy into the higher schools.
The events of 1848 caused intense anxiety to Nicholas, and a regular witches' sabbath of reaction was inaugurated. The members of the Petraševcy group (the two Dostoevskiis, Pleščeev, Durov, etc.) were all prosecuted; measures were taken against Saltykov; Ostrovskii, Turgenev, Kirěevskii, Homjakov, and Herzen, successively fell into disfavour—Turgenev's offence being an obituary notice of Gogol! It was forbidden to mention the very name of Bělinskii, and those who wished to refer to him had to employ circumlocutions!
Censorship was developed to an almost incredible extent. There were twenty-two distinct censorships. Criticism of the government and of ofﬁcial proceedings was absolutely prohibited. Even those who at a later date were considered pillars of reaction, even such men as Bulgarin, were now suspect as revolutionaries; Pogodin suffered the same fate; to the ultra-reactionaries, Uvarov actually seemed insufficiently reactionary, and he had to resign his position as minister for education. Upon a ministerial report which concluded with the word "progress," Nicholas wrote the comment, "Progress? What progress? This word must be deleted from official terminology."
Such intensity of reaction was only possible because society ("society" still meaning the aristocracy alone) had completely abandoned the enlightened and humanitarian ideas that culminated in the decabrist revolt. Nicholas I was possible because such men as Prince Vjazamskii and Puškin had become ​afraid of "jacobinism," and because Gogol had been able to torment and starve himself back into Orthodoxy.
§ 19.
UNDER Alexander and Nicholas, Russian national consciousness continually expanded, increasing finally to a highly developed chauvinism, of which Uvarov's program was the expression.
The development of Russian national consciousness dates back to the eighteenth century. In opposition to the reforms of Peter, and in opposition to the favouring of foreigners characteristic of the court, Russian peculiarities were defended against foreign influences by historians and other writers, by Tredjakovskii, Lomonosov, .Sumarokov, L'vov, Lukin, Ščerbatov, and Boltin. There was a natural reaction against the extravagances of Gallomania, and antifrench feeling was accentuated in the struggles against the French republic and the Napoleonic empire. The Frenchified Russian aristocracy became alienated from the regicides. and Russian authors lost the taste for French literature and philosophy. The strengthening of national feeling in Russia was analogous to what was taking place in Germany, the movement being intensified in both countries by linguistic changes, by the purification of the native tongue. In Russia, as in Germany, there was a reaction against French supremacy.
For the Russians the problem of the written language was one of peculiar importance. Only through the reforms ​of Peter did the Russian vernacular come into its kingdom in the literary world, for hitherto the old ecclesiastical language had been the vehicle of literature. The new written tongue made its way against the authority of the church. Whilst conservative writers continued to cling to the ecclesiastical language, and to write in a stilted scholastic style, progressive authors, those affected by European influence, gave expression to their thoughts in the folk speech. Old Russia and New Russia were thus respectively manifested in a linguistic dualism, which was further displayed in the differences between the Slavonic alphabet used in ecclesiastical writings and the new alphabet introduced by Peter. In many authors we find a mingling of tongues and styles. It is often said that it was Karamzin's merit, in opposition to Šiškov, to have secured the literary dominance of the Russian tongue, but this assertion involves a chronological error. The modern literary language was already employed by such writers as Fonvizin. It is an important fact that literature and language should have undergone so notable a growth during the first half of the nineteenth century.
As the campaign against French influences developed, a preference for all that was German became established. Moreover, the Frenchified Russians had their attention strongly drawn to Germany by the writings of Madame de Staël (1810), and subsequently by those of Benjamin Constant and others. German literature and philosophy spontaneously aroused a feeling of respect, and a similar respect was inspired by English literature, above all by the works of Byron. The spirit of French classicism was replaced by the spirit of Teutonic romanticism. It was especially in philosophy that German influence was predominant. If Russia had been French under Catherine and had still been French under Alexander, it became German under Nicholas. German ideas were adopted, even though the German language made little headway.
In spite of.this influence, and indeed with the assistance of German romanticism, Russian national sentiment continued to grow. Just as the European romanticists extolled the middle ages and the Old Teutonic epoch, so in Russia did a cult of Old Russia arise.
It was not by any chance coincidence that at the time when Fichte was writing his Address to the German Nation, Šiškov in Russia should have been railing against French influences, and against Frenchmen, whom he regarded as ​a combination of tiger and ape. From Alexander, Šiškov secured political preferment owing to the publication in 1811 of his work Considerations upon Love of Country, and he took the place of Speranskii. In 1824 he was appointed minister for education, being guided in this position by the principle that knowledge "in default of faith and simplemindedness" (Šiškov was a defender of serfdom) was injurious to the nation. Universal education would do more harm than good, and the immoderate diffusion of scientific culture was likewise deleterious. Even Filaret's catechism fell under the ban of Šiškov's censorship because the quotations from Holy Writ were in the Russian vernacular instead of church Slavonic.
Numerous writers vied with Šiškov in the idealisation of Old Russia. Karamzin, generally recognised as the chief of Russian historians, voiced the praises of oldtime tsarism and aristocracy. Deržavin, Zagoskin, Marlinskii, Polevoi in his later phase, together with the previously enumerated adversaries of Gallomania—all glorified Russia as contrasted with the west. The discovery in the year 1800 of the twelfth-century saga, The Lay of Igor's Raid, strengthened this tendency in poesy and imaginative literature. No long time elapsed before Russian national sentiment waxed so intense that Polevoi was able to Russify Turgot's phrase "patriotisme d'antichambre," and to speak of kvaspatriotiozm.
The west contributed in no small degree to this intensification of Russism. To Europe, Russia seemed interesting and new, and speedily secured admirers. Peter, the first tsar not merely to visit Europe but to make a cult of European ideas and institutions, became an object of wonder and admiration. Catherine, as already stated, was even more greatly admired, notably by Voltaire and Herder. Klopstock sang the praises of Alexander I, who was regarded by Madame de Staël as the "miracle of Providence," and many joined with these writers in acclaiming the saviour of France and Europe. Not merely was Russia interesting to Europeans, but, by a not unnatural illusion, she loomed with a false grandeur in the minds of the civilised and hypercivilised inhabitants of Europe, whose Rousseauism led them to imagine that in uncivilised Russia they had discovered the simple natural conditions for which they yearned.
​We must never forget that in the west Rousseau as well as de Maistre had passed sentence of death upon western civilisation. Rousseau's hostility to civilisation had gained wide acceptance. It was not surprising that the Russians should adopt these ideas also from their teachers and masters. For this reason not reactionaries alone, but men of progressive inclinations as well, sermonised about the "corruption" of the west.
To a certain degree, Russian national sentiment was intensified by the awakening national feeling of the western and southern Slavs. Slavism or panslavism struck roots in Russia as elsewhere—not in official Russia, but to some extent among the intelligentsia and among the common people. As far as the last were concerned, this arose solely from religious sympathy with the Orthodox southern Slavs, struggling for liberation from Turkish dominion.
Alexander I aimed at the partition of Turkey. Constantinople, the cradle of Russian Christendom, was to become Russian. This design, however, was frustrated by Napoleon.
But Napoleon, in his turn, was shattered against Russia, against the third Rome. In the political field, as well as in the domain of civilisation, Russian sentiment turned against France as the home of the revolution, and Alexander became leader of the holy alliance.
This strengthening of national sentiment must be taken into account by those who wish to understand, not merely the origin of the reaction under Alexander and Nicholas, but also the wide diffusion, the intensity, and the duration of the movement. We shall see, on the other hand, how love for the peasantry became associated with this Russism. The true Russian essence was discovered in the peasant, in the man of the common people, and a distinction came to be drawn between the folk and the nation. Democratic and socialistic influences were here at work, for the people were contrasted with the upper classes, with the aristocracy, the intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie, and even with the state.
§ 20.
DESPITE the reactionary increase of chauvinism and exclusivism in the economic field, Alexander and Nicholas were compelled to promote the Europeanisation ​of Russia. Agriculture, and still more industry, had to seek models in Europe. To some extent reaction positively favoured this Europeanisation, in so far as "Enrichissez-vous, messieurs" is the doctrine of every reaction.
Commerce had had its importance even in Old Russia, in the Russia of Kiev and of Novgorod. In the realm of Muscovy, and above all in the capital, trading considerations were dominant in the organisation and spread of home industry and of manufacture. On into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries foreign trade consisted mainly in the export of natural products (honey, bees-wax, furs, and the like, but also linen and hempen textiles), the compensatory imports being European manufactures (arms, textiles, commodities of art and luxury, wines, etc.). In the year 1653, goods to the value of more than one million roubles were imported by way of Archangel, and it must be remembered that at that time the purchasing power of money was far greater than now. In the days of Muscovy the import of Europeans had already begun, and the inconsiderableness of the exports was in part dependent upon the fact that European merchants and handicraftsmen were settling in Moscow.
Peter energetically supported the development of manufacturing industry, which had been initiated by the mercantile classes, and this resulted in the growth of what are often termed "artiﬁcial" manufactures—meaning manufactures fostered by the state, and especially to supply the needs of the army.
In the reign of Peter the originators of manufacturing enterprise were mainly merchants, but a few of them were landowners. Labour was recruited from among the serfs, and here the noble landowners with private factories on their estates had an advantage, for their workmen belonged to them as serfs, whereas the owner of an ordinary factory had to procure labourers from a landowner. It is true that Peter made the adscription of serfs to the factories possible, but during the eighteenth century the number of the factories owned by nobles as hereditary property increased, more especially seeing that the state did so much to protect the nobles, in their manufacturing enterprises as well as in other ways.
The obrok relationship of many of the serfs was favourable to the growth of a class of factory workers. The peasant who paid obrok, a yearly sum due on account of the utilisation ​of land placed at his disposal by his lord, had more personal freedom than the peasant liable to the corvée.
A class of free operatives early came into existence side by side with those who remained serfs, so that at the opening of the nineteenth century about one half of all operatives were freeman. The employment of free workmen was more profitable to the entrepreneur, and for this reason the liberation of the peasantry became a demand of those who desired the strengthening of manufacturing industry.
In proportion as manufacture developed under Alexander, and in proportion as European technical skill found place in the factories, the opposition between agriculture and industry, and also the reciprocal dependence of agriculture and industry, forced themselves on the attention. Down to the present day, agrarianism and industrialism have continued to find exclusive champions. In Russia, as in the west, there were protectionists and free-traders, and members of both parties advocated the maintenance of serfdom. In conformity with his general foreign policy, Alexander adhered to the continental system, but Russian conditions and the increasing need for manufactured articles unobtainable in Russia gave the impulse towards a more liberal tariff policy. Simultaneously, Russian manufacturing industry underwent modifications in a similar direction, the operatives being more and more generally recruited from among the free and comparatively mobile elements in town and country. In 1825, fifty-four per cent. of the workmen were engaged by free contract.
Under Nicholas I, industry made rapid progress, Moscow and its environs becoming the centre of the growing industrialisation and capitalisation, especially as regards textiles. Nicholas declared that serfdom in Russia prevented commerce and industry from flourishing as they might otherwise have done. He had derived this opinion from Storch, his teacher in political economy, the most notable adherent in Russia of Adam Smith. It is significant of the political condition of the country that Storch's leading work, Cours dc l'économie politique, could not be published in Russian, although the tsar shared the author's views. For a long period the official tendency in political economy had been to favour the agrarian outlook on industry, for it was still held that agriculture was a "natural," manufacture an "artiﬁcial" source of popular well-being, and manufacture therefore was no more than ​tolerated. None the less, manufacturing industry underwent notable expansion during Alexander's reign.
The development of home industries long proceeded side by side with that of industries pursued in factories. Some of the home industries were devoted to the satisfaction of everyday needs, but others were a domestic form of industrial enterprise. Not until the introduction of modern machinery and until the growth of railway communication, with its facilitation of exchange of commodities, was the parallelism of development between home industry and large-scale manufacture disturbed. The time when this change began coincided with that in which Nicholas was preparing for the liberation of the peasantry.
§ 21.
THE reaction under Alexander and Nicholas was incompetent to arrest the development of modern Russian literature and journalism.
Romanticist sentimentalism and mysticism, replacing Voltairist classicism, accommodated themselves in the persons of their most notable exponents, Karamzin and Žukovskii, ​to the system of general reaction, but willingly or unwillingly the more vigorous minds took another direction, negating the principles of the official and social reaction.
The lyricism of the epoch, finding expression in the works of Puškin and the so-called Pleiad, was a sign of the times. Forbidden political activities, men were turning their attention more and more inward, and this gave rise to reflective, analytic, and critical lyricism. It was characteristic that these moods should secure their most effective expression in verse, for modern prose—the novel—originated later. Besides Puškin, we have such notable poets as Batjuškov, Venevitinov, Barjatynskii, Jazykov, and Rylěev. Their poems are concentrated thought, philosophy in lyric form. Far-reaching analysis and criticism of life and its relationships had begun. Griboedov's The Misfortune of being Clever (1822–1823) is a penetrating critique of the Alexandrine age. Beside Griboedov the satirist may be placed the fabulist Krylov, who likewise after his manner probed the wounds of society. Puškin, more than all, in his Oněgin (1823–1831) held up a mirror to his time.
The leading writers of the new school were more or less closely associated with the decabrist revolt. Rylěev atoned on the gallows for his endeavour to be a poet and citizen. Marlinskii, and in especial Griboedov, were privy to the plot. Puškin, directly questioned by Nicholas as to whether he had participated in the decabrist rising, returned a definite answer in the affirmative.
This peculiar analytical school of literature, known as "accusatory," continued under Nicholas. Puškin's analysis was carried forward by Gogol in The Inspector-General (1836) and Dead Souls. Lermontov belonged to the same school (A Hero of our Time, 1840). The tsar, who permitted The Inspector-General to be staged, laughed heartily at the play, although he might well have fitted on the cap.
Under Nicholas, in addition to Puškin and Gogol, the other great representatives of the newer Russian literature were growing to maturity, and began to become known towards the close of the reign: Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, Turgenev, Gončarov, Ostrovskii, Nekrasov, Grigorovič, and Pisemskii.
During the reaction whilst Alexander I and Nicholas were on the throne, the peculiarly Russian criticism typified by the writings of Bělinskii developed side by side with ordinary literature. In the reign of Nicholas, political and sociological ​journalism began. To sum up, that which is commonly spoken of as modern Russian literature, the Russian literature that is generally recognised as part of world literature, took its rise under Alexander and Nicholas. Today, with inexact chronology, Russians continue to speak of "the forties," of the "idealists of the forties." If Russian literature be esteemed for its characteristic realism, we have to admit that a factor in the development of this realism was the practical trend of the reaction under Alexander and still more under Nicholas.
Herzen describes the age of Nicholas as an extraordinary period of outward slavery and inward freedom. It cannot be denied that this inward freedom which, as we shall see, was extolled by the slavophils, and which even men of the west admire, was to a degree the outcome of that political abstinence which absolutism enforces. The "superfluous man," who plays so notable a part in the Russian literature of succeeding reigns, was born under Nicholas, if not before.
§ 22.
IT is characteristic of Nicolaitan Russia that under the theocratic oppression of Uvarov's system there germinated the philosophic and political ideals and tendencies which persist and are undergoing further evolution to-day. Through alienation from France, those Russians who longed for culture had their faces directed towards Germany, and French enlightenment was amplified by German science and philosophy. Politically, in fact, the Russians had exchanged bad for worse. But Nicholas and his henchmen of the Uvarov type were incompetent to understand that the Berlin lectures of a Schleiermacher or of a Hegel and his disciples (which the Russians might attend with exalted approval), that acquaintance with German literature and philosophy, would have a more persistent effect than acquaintance with the writings of Voltaire.
Attendance at German universities began in the eighteenth century, for it was natural that German professors and academicians summoned to Russia should induce some of their students to visit Germany. At the German universities the Russians studied various disciplines, devoting themselves above all to the officially demanded economic, legal, and technical culture, mining being the most important subject under ​the last head Widespread was the inﬂuence of Haxthausen, who visited Russia in 1843 to examine the Russian mir and Russian economic conditions in general. Apart from their theoretical studies, it was inevitable that Russian students in Germany should be influenced by German philosophy and literature and by the political tendencies dominant in academic and cultured society. The philosophy of Kant and of Fichte had little direct inflluence in Russia, but the influence of Schelling and of Hegel was extensive. It was especially owing to the thoroughness of its theory of cognition, to its moral earnestness, and to its bearings upon ethics and practical conduct, that German philosophy owed its power in Russia. Schnelling's aesthetics played a part in the development of Russian literary criticism; and Schelling and Hegel, with their philosophy of history, did much to promote the foundation of Russian philosophy of history.
Especially notable was the success in Russia of the Hegelian left and, as we shall see, of Feuerbach.
German poets, too, had far-reaching influence. The writings of Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, and those also of E. T. A. Hoffmann and others, in conjunction with the writings of the German philosophers, positively revolutionised Young Russia. As Turgenev phrased it, the intelligentsia plunged out of its depth into the "German sea" of philosophy; and he shrewdly characterised the practical needs of Young Russia with the words: "In philosophy at that time we sought everything in the world except lucid thought."
In the circle of the Moscow Schellingites Odoevskii and his associates founded in the year 1824 "Mnemozyna," the first Russian philosophical periodical, which came to an untimely end owing to the decabrist rising.
The Hegelian left influenced progressive Russians in the direction of new France. Apart from this, intimate relationships with France had still continued, and widespread knowledge of the French tongue facilitated the influence of French philosophy and literature. The effect of French socialism was powerful. Saltykov gives the following account of French influence in Russia towards the close of the forties (1846–1847): "From France, not of course from the France of Louis Philippe and Guizot, but from the France of Saint-Simon, Cabot, Fourier, Louis Blanc, and above all George Sand, we derived a faith in humanity; France irradiated to us the ​conviction that the golden age lies not in the past but in the future."
Saltykov did not stand alone in his day as pupil of European socialists. Annenkov the critic wrote similarly concerning the powerful leaven of French socialism among the younger Russians. Identical, too, were the accounts given by J. J. Panaev, A. P. Miljukov, and other writers. From 1845 onwards there gathered round the publicist Butaševič-Petraševskii a circle of authors who became known as the Petraševscy. To this group belonged Dostoevskii, Bělinskii, Pleščeev, Apollon Maikov the poet and his brother Valerian the critic, Danilevskii, subsequently noted as a slavophil, and many others. The abolition of serfdom, the enfranchisement of literature and journalism, and the reform of judicial procedure, were standing topics of lively discussion. Petraševskii was an enthusiastic disciple of Fourier and Saint-Simon.
The socialisation of literature was likewise indicated by the increasingly democratic tone of books and periodicals. In former days writers had belonged almost exclusively to the aristocracy, but now their ranks were recruited from the middle classes as well. Sons of impoverished nobles, sons of priests, ofﬁcials, and merchants, became men of letters; and there were even a few proletarian authors, as for instance Polevoi. This democratisation of literature and journalism was deliberate, as we learn from Marlinskii as well as from Polevoi, and above all from Bělinskii.
The democratisation of literature and journalism had, further, peculiar social significance for Russia, inasmuch as it led to the constitution of the intelligentsia as a distinct caste. Down to our own day the definition of this concept remains an unsolved problem of Russian criticism and philosophy, but its first denotation was the oppositional intelligentsia.
In those days the influence in Russia of English philosophical thought was small. As has been shown, English con​stitutionalism helped to form the views of the decabrists and their predecessors. Moreover, the Russians were interested in the parliamentary reform of 1832, and still more in the Chartist movement. But not until a later generation did English philosophy come into its own in Russia. Carlyle was the first philosophic writer whose works were widely known. But long before this the influence of Byron had been considerable.
§ 23.
UNDER pressure of reaction a remarkable development occurred in the literary movement of opposition and revolution.
As a matter of course the schools and still more the universities were unsatisfactory to young men and were detested by them and but few of the professors were able to act as leaders of youth or to form the mind of the rising generation. Doubtless among the students progressives were in the minority, but at the outset the troops of opposition and revolution were mainly recruited from academic youth. It has been characteristic of absolutism, and was above all characteristic of Russian absolutism, that students should play so prominent a role in all forms of opposition and revolution.
The insufficiency of the universities and of all other instruments of culture, in conjunction with the pressure of absolutism, resulted at an early date in making self-culture an integral constituent of the progressive programme. During the reign of Alexander, and still more during that of Nicholas, there originated in loose association with the universities a number of literary salons and small circles. Here persons with like sentiments, or at least similar aims, forgathered. Here theoretical problems were vigorously discussed, and before long political and social topics were eagerly considered. These circles were at the same time centres of propaganda. A natural growth from the masonic lodges and secret societies, the circles for self-culture subsequently developed into revolutionary committees.
​Down to the present day, Russian literature contrasts with that of the west by the way in which it abounds in self-tutored men. Nor was it by chance that such men were conspicuous during the epoch of the Alexandrine and Nicolaitan reaction—men like Polevoi and Bělinskii, the last-named being the writer to develop literary criticism into a weapon of opposition and revolution.
From the opening of the movement, the propaganda of progressive ideas was a leading aim of journalistic and critical literature, reviews coming to exercise great influence side by side with newspapers, and the leading aim of this literature being to popularise philosophy and new ideas.
Pari passu with the increase in reaction, the democratic literary opposition evolved into a revolutionary movement. Clandestine literature came into existence both at home and abroad. Works were circulated in manuscript, thousands of copies being made of Griboedov's comedies, for example, before Nicholas allowed them to be printed. Subsequently, secret presses were installed at home, and printing and publishing establishments came into existence abroad, the first of these being the Russian printing house founded in London by Herzen in the year 1853. Prohibited foreign works and Russian writings printed abroad were by an organised system clandestinely imported into Russia.
In this connection a word may be said concerning the suggestive method employed in the literature of opposition. In the earlier newspapers of Russia and in the novels and other books of that day we must read much between the lines. Veiled incitations are ofttimes more effective than plain language. Absolutism is not merely brutal, but stupid as well. Moreover, alike in St. Petersburg and Moscow reactionary journalism and literature were in every respect inferior to the literature and journalism of the progressives.
A movement of emigration was associated with the growth of clandestine literature. Emigration must be regarded as a permanent Russian institution. In Old Russia, during the days of the petty princes, we should speak rather of the persistence of a nomadic tendency; but in the realm of Muscovy the political character of the movement had already become ​apparent, as is evidenced by the case of Kurbskii. Reaction during the eighteenth century induced many Russians to emigrate, whilst in the nineteenth century the suppression of the decabrist rising was followed by a great increase in emigration. By its repressive measures (which failed to pay, even in the economic sense) the Russian government induced legions of Russians to take refuge in Europe, where they became Europeanised and were educated to be instruments of the revolution.
Atter the suppression of the decabrist revolt, constitutional government and the liberation of the peasantry remained the political ideals of the liberal opposition. N. J. Turgenev may be considered a representative of this political liberalism. Born in 1789, Turgenev was educated at Göttingen university and completed his political and administrative culture under Stein, to whom he had been recommended by the government. His Attempt to Formulate a Theory of Taxation, published in 1818, attracted wide attention. Judgment was passed on him by default for participation in the Welfare Society and in the decabrist movement, a death sentence subsequently commuted to one of imprisonment for life being passed upon him. Restored to civil rights by Alexander II, he paid two brief visits to Russia, but spent the rest of his life in Europe, dying in 1871. He advocated the constitutionalist ideas of the decabrists in countless French and Russian writings. Of his detailed memoirs the greater part remains unpublished. His relationship to the decabrists and his share in the movement requires further critical investigation.
His principal work, La Russie et les russes, was published in three volumes in 1847. Here Turgenev gives a history of his participation in the decabrist movement, writes a detailed criticism of the Russian administration, and formulates a scheme of essential reforms. He displays intimate knowledge of western literature and institutions, those of England, France, and Prussia. We note his familiar acquaintance with the plans of Speranskii, and we observe that he is in advance of that statesman in that be vigorously advocates the liberation of the peasantry. Turgenev pleads for the summoning of the zemskii sober, which is to be granted legislative authority. The liberated peasants are to be given small plots of land. Living in Paris from 1833 onwards, he had become acquainted with the socialist or communist movement, and was unfavour​able to it, though he recognised its importance, at least for Europe. He did not desire any organisation of labour in Russia; constitutional government would suffice. The zemskii sobor was to have but one chamber, for the Russian aristocracy was not so important as the English; suffrage was not to be universal. In addition, Turgenev demanded certain essential administrative reforms, especially as regards the administration of justice, the abolition of corporal punishment, local self-government, etc. As political writer, Turgenev was a man of many-sided culture, and was well versed in progressive and in reactionary literature. During the reign of Nicholas, he was the most efficient of the opposition publicists, was, it may be said, the only man of statesmanlike intelligence among the opposition before Herzen took the field.
§ 24.
A MORE detailed account must be given of Nicholas' attitude towards serfdom. In political questions the emperor was a man of firm will, but as far as this social problem was concerned he displayed a vacillation strongly recalling the characteristics of his brother Alexander. As early as 1826 a privy committee was appointed to consider the matter, but nothing was done, although further privy committees were instituted in subsequent years. In 1841, and later, certain legal and administrative changes were made favouring the peasants, but the reforms remained almost without practical effect because they were so ill-conceived that the landowners were able to paralyse their working or even to turn them to advantage. Still, an attempt was made to reduce to written specifications the penal powers of the landlords, and it was forbidden to separate a sort from his family or to sell him apart from the land.
Nicholas recognised the seamy side of seridorn. Speaking ​of the large landowners, he remarked in the year 1847 that the aristocracy had rights in the soil but not in the men upon the soil. The alleged right to treat men as chattels had been secured solely through craft and deception on one side and ignorance on the other, and it was on account of serfdom that Russia was devoid of industry and commerce. It is recorded that upon his death-bed Nicholas commended the task of liberation to his son.
The reasons for the vacillation and indecision displayed by Nicholas are readily comprehensible. The tsar recognised that the foundation of his absolutism was serfdom. Count Uvarov, too, had made this exceedingly plain when he declared slavery to be the basis of aristocracy. According to Uvarov's conception of politics, autocracy, monarchy itself, had the same historic basis as the right to hold men in serfdom. Everything that had existed before the days of Peter had passed away, serfdom alone excepted, and to tamper with serfdom would be to shatter the entire edifice. Uvarov uttered warnings against any attempt to diminish the rights of the nobles over the serfs. Were this done, the aristocracy would become discontented and would seek compensation. The only source of compensation, said this tsarophil aristocrat, was to be found within the sphere of autocracy.
Other landowners, some of them friendly to the peasantry, recognised that there was an intimate connection between slavery, aristocracy, and tsarism. Such a landowner was Kiselev, who often discussed the matter with the tsar. Upon sentimental and rational grounds Kiselev favoured the liberation of the peasantry, but considered that it was essential to avoid allowing liberation to lead to democratisation. As regards the problem whether the enfranchised peasant should or should not be granted rights in the land, he recommended a middle course. The peasant should be given personal freedom, and in return for enfeoftment with a moderate area of land should have to perform definitely specified services. Kiselev recommended this plan because he considered that to liberate the peasants without giving them land would serve merely to create a class of proletarians, whereas to liberate them and at the same time to grant them absolute possession of the land they tilled would "destroy the independence of the nobility and would establish democracy."
Monarchy, and above all absolute monarchy, is no more ​than a manifestation of aristocracy. However absolute his power, the tsar is merely par inter pares, and in ultimate analysis, as Uvarov clearly indicates, loyalty is nothing but loyalty upon conditions.
Nicholas was well aware of this, hence his Alexandrine vacillation in these ostensibly humanitarian designs, which were in truth the outcome of economic considerations. For his dread of democracy, Kiselev was rewarded with the title of count, and a prudent calculation led Nicholas to favour the interests of the nobles. During his reign a system of entail was established (1845), and it was characteristic of Nicholas that he was exceptionally free-handed in the distribution of the princely title.
The peasants likewise understood the motives actuating their sovereign, and the consequence was that, side by side with the philosophic and political opposition of the progressive aristocracy, a social opposition came into existence, the opposition of "Orthodox" Russia, the opposition of the mužik.
Among the peasantry there arose a movement against the aristocratic great landlords, a movement that was not simply revolutionary, for it had definite social aims. During the reigns of Alexander I and of Nicholas there was persistent ferment among the peasantry, and it is unquestionable that many peasants sympathised with the liberal opposition and with the revolutionary movement. This is especially clear as far as the decabrist rising is concerned. The peasants were influenced by the opposition sentiments of the intelligentsia and the aristocracy, but their own economic and social distresses were yet more potent causes of discontent. Year after year, in the most widely separated districts, landowners were killed by the peasants, their mansions burned.
​In addition, there were incessant mutinies. The military colonies on the frontier, reintroduced by Alexander I, could not be maintained. The troops and many of the officers were frequently in revolt, and it is further noteworthy that from time to time the soldiers rose against their officers as aristocrats.
In addition to these active symptoms of discontent, the serfs sometimes adopted methods of passive resistance, and a number of suicides occurred, officially recorded as instances of "sudden death."
Finally, during the reign of Nicholas, serious labour troubles began. There had been disturbances in the labour world in earlier reigns, in those of Catherine II, Paul, and Alexander I; but under Nicholas they became far more extensive. In 1845 the first anti-strike law was promulgated. Nicholas' government watched with concern the increase of the proletariat, but the industrial interests of the capitalists and those of the state itself prevailed over the political fears of the police and the administration. In Russia, as in Europe, there were frequent attempts to prevent the establishment of new factories and thus to hinder an increase in the number of operatives, but the state was compelled to found factories of its own, and had often to support manufacturing industry in defiance of the aristocratic and agrarianising aims by which it was animated.
The intelligentsia, influenced by French socialist ideas, sympathised with the revolting mužiks. The eyes of Nicholas and his advisers might have been opened when, in 1848, the Petraševcy created the Fourierist league; but Nicholas contented himself with sending Dostoevskii and the others to the scaffold, and surprising them at the last minute by commuting the death sentence to one of administrative exile.
§ 25.
THE final outcome of theocratic policy and of the reaction under Alexander I and Nicholas I was the downfall of Sevastopol. Six years after the overthrow of the revolution in Hungary, Russia's sometime associates in the holy alliance made common cause with Turkey, which Alexander had desired to destroy.
It is not difficult to understand the effect which the Crimean defeat exercised upon theocratic power, an effect resembling that caused upon medieval minds by the failure of the crusades. Just as in earlier days Christians and Christianity had proved too weak to conquer their hereditary enemies, so now were Russian theocracy, Russian Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationalism, compelled to capitulate to "degenerate Europe."
Orthodoxy, the essential basis of theocracy, was, indeed, in evil case if judged by its power over the Orthodox emperor-pope. Nicholas, like his brother Alexander, failed to fiind adequate consolation in the official creed. We learn from the testimony of his physicians that he harboured thoughts of suicide, and although he did not carry these into effect, during his last illness he hastened the end by thwarting medical assistance. His courtiers, who were playing cards when informed of his death, continued their game undisturbed.
No more in life than in death did Nicholas find moral help in his state church and its religion—unless we are to regard his cruelty and despotism as Christian manifestations. Was his private life Christian? Was his relationship to his mistress Nelidov, Christian? What are we to think of his confiscation of the estates and castles of the Polish aristocracy?
By the collapse of their traditional diplomacy and militarism, aristocratic, officialdom and the court, hitherto content with veneer, were compelled to devote serious attention to internal affairs. What happened to absolutist Austria in 1859 and 1866, what happened to France in 1870 and 1871, happened now to Russia. The defeat at Sevastopol resulted from the bad equipment of the army, and from defects in leadership and military training. Russia's enemies were provided with modern artillery and small arms against the obsolete weapons of the Russians. The range of the Russian rifles was from 300 to 450 paces, that of the European rifles was 1,200 paces. The ​Russians had to fight steamboats with sailing vessels. In the days of the first Napoleon the Russians had been able to meet their enemies on comparatively equal terms, but now their schools were behind the age and their technical knowledge was consequently deficient. The army had been severely affected by deficiencies of administration. Bravery on the battlefield does not suffice to secure victory. For this end, highly trained officers and men, improved instruments of offence and defence, and an adequate supply of food, medicines, and stores of all kinds, are no less essential. There must be foresight. The history of the Crimean War teaches us how the inward corruption of theocratic obscurantism had affected army administration. When we study that history we realize the truth of Bělinskii's dictum concerning the whole regime of Nicholas 1, that it was "a corporation of enthroned thieves and brigands."
A comprehensive survey of the entire period of reaction under Nicholas and his predecessors fills us with astonishment at the incapacity of the Russian reactionaries. We recognise how little they were competent even to promote their own interests, how unable they were to attain to so much as a partial grasp of Russia's historical evolution or to secure an organic picture of their country in its relationships with the world at large. Nicholas never ceased to regard revolution as the product of agitation, as the work of isolated demagogues and secret societies. His advisers took the same view. The crown and the government held that it was enough to enforce police methods of repression, mechanically imitating reactionary Europe. Nicholas followed the petty example of Metternich and his anti-revolutionary reaction, and followed it with identical results.
* ↑ This punishment had no longer been applicable to women since 1757.
* ↑ In judging the relative power of the various states we must recall the statistics of population. In 1798, when the armies of Tsar Paul under the command of Suvarov were being equipped for the campaign in Europe, the inhabitants of European Russia numbered 38,000,000, and of Asiatic Russia 5,000,000. At this time the population of France was 26,000,000, of Great Britain and Ireland 11,000,000, of Prussia 6,000,000, of Poland 9,000,000, of Austria 16,500,000 (or with the Netherlands and Lombardy 19,500,000), and of Turkey 23,000,000.
* ↑ The alliance personally entered into by the three monarchs of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, has its objects defined in the pact of September 26, 1815. We are told that the three sovereigns will be guided solely by the prescriptions of the Christian religion, namely by the principles of justice, Christian love, and peace. Since we learn from Holy Writ that all men are brothers, the monarchs will in future behave as brothers,and will regard their subjects as members of a single nation. "The monarchs consider themselves to be no more than plenipotentiaries of divine providence, privileged to rule three branches of the same family, and they recognize no other sovereign than God, Christ, the living word of the Almighty."
* ↑ Sergii Murav'ev-Apostol wrote an Orthodox Catechism. His brother, Nikita Murav'ev, outlined a Freeman's Catechism. Several of the decabrists wrote memoirs, and some compiled historical and other studies. Their correspondence is of considerable interest.
* ↑ We find that as early as 1730 offenders fit for military service were sentenced to the lash, the unfit to the rod!
* ↑ It may be recalled in comparison, that in Austria under Metternich the Zillertal Protestants were driven from their homes.
* ↑ Readers who desire to gain a more detailed picture of Russian civilization during the reign of Nicholas, must refer to the official journals of the period and to those that were officially permitted. I must content myself here with a reference to "Majak" (The Lighthouse). which championed Uvarov's ideas from 1840 to 1850. The editor. General Buraček, mathematician and designer of ships, wished to favour an education that should promote the spirit of Russian nationalism; western ideas were to be resisted or corrected, for European notions conflicted with the gospels. In his view, the west was a prey to Roman heathenism, and from this antichristian spirit had sprung revolutions, freethought, the reformation, and the papacy. The kingdom of God, the realm of the easterns, would rise gloriously upon the ruins of the western world. In conformity with this spirit, the periodical published contributions from gardeners and other simple men of the people. who displayed their genuinely Russian "mind-intelligence" (um-razum) in stories of apparitions and the like. The newer Russian literature was practically united in its condemnation of this organ of pure Russian patriotism. Puškin as well as Lermontov, and, it need hardly be said, Bělinskii, were opposed to it. But a few authors such as Zagoskin, were delighted with "Majak."
* ↑ Kvas is a cheap effervescing beverage brewed from rye and malt ("champagne de cochon").
* ↑ The following figures give a fairly accurate picture of the growth of large-scale industry in Russia:— Year. Number of Factories. Number of Workmen. Value of Manufactures in Millions of Roubles. 1765 262 38,000 5 1801 2,423 95,000 25 1825 5,261 202,000 46 1854 9,944 460,000 160 1881 31,173 770,000 998 1893 22,483 1,400,000 1,760 1896 38,401 1,742,000 2,745 According to another statistical table, compiled to 1861, the figures are:— Year. Number of Factories. Number of Workmen. 1762 984 — 1796 3,161 — 1815 4,189 172,882 1843 9,944 466,579 1861 14,148 522,500
* ↑ Petraševskii, writing under the pseudonym of Kirillov, published a Dictionary of Foreign Terms. This non-committal title was to cover a species of progressive political encyclopædia. but the completion of the work was prevented by the arrest of Petraševskii and his friends. Petraševskii died in Siberia, but his comrades survived and returned to Russia.
* ↑ In this sense the Russians frequently speak of the entry of the raznočincy (plebeians) into literature. Glěb Uspenski. gives a casual definition of a raznočinec as "one who stands outside the professions and classes." In the dictionaries we are told that the raznočinec is "one without personal nobility belonging to no guild, and exempt from taxation."
* ↑ Renowned are the circles of Stankevič and Herzen, the former originating ear y in the thirt es, the latter about 1842. The circle of Sungurov may likewise be mentioned. The members of this group were accused of forming "a secret society associated with the decabrists." The legal proceedings against Sungurov and his comrades lasted nearly two years (1831–1833) and terminated quite à la Nicholas in the sentencing of the accused, some to quartering, some to hanging, and some to shooting, the punishments being then commuted to imprisonment.
* ↑ At most this assertion must be modified by a reference to I. G. Golovin, who left Russia in 1844 and wrote against absolutism. His numerous historical works attracted some attention in their day, being rich in anecdotal details, and displaying the weaknesses of the court and the aristocracy; but in political matters Golovin was conservative. To socialism and subsequently to nihilism he was far more strongly opposed than was Turgenev. Among his works may be enumerated: La Russie sous Nicholas I, 1845 (English translation, Russia under the Autocrat Nicholas the First (2 vols., London, 1846) ; Russia under Alexander II, 1870; Secrets of Russia, 1882; Russian Nihilism, My Relationships to Herzen and Bakunin, 1880.
* ↑ Paul created four princes; Alexander I, three; Nicholas, sixteen; Alexander II and Ill, none.
* ↑ In the archives of the ministry for home affairs during the reign of Nicholas we find reports of 547 jacqueries in the years 1828 to 1854. Another computation gives the following figures:— Period. Jacqueries. 1826–1834 . . . . . . . . . . 41 1831–1834 . . . . . . . . . . 46 1835–1839 . . . . . . . . . . 59 1840–1844 . . . . . . . . . . 101 1845–1849 . . . . . . . . . . 172 1850–1859 . . . . . . . . . . 137 —— Total . . . . . . . . 556 Without exaggeration, 200 could certainly be added to this total During the years 1855–1859, 152 landowners (among them 21 officials) were murdered, whilst there were 175 attempted murders.
* ↑ In the year 1841 for example, 1,622 such cases are enumerated, a very high figure for Russia and for that day. We are expressly told that after the liberation there was a notable decline in the frequency of suicide.
* ↑ In 1834, there occurred a great strike in Kazan, an acute manifestation of a struggle between the workmen and the factory owners which had been chronic since 1796. There were disturbances in 1817, 1818, 1819, 1820, 1823, and finally in 1834.
* ↑ Cf. statistical data in § 68.