# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 1/Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO
PETER'S REFORMS. THE LINKING UP OF RUSSIA WITH EUROPE
§ 6.
IF as a prelude to our account of Russian philosophy of history and philosophy of religion we are to give a summary of leading historical facts, we must examine the reforms of Peter the Great somewhat fully, for these reforms constitute a notable element in any philosophical contemplation of Russia.
Peter the Great and his reforms! I remember reading in an early history of Peter how the Tsar was on one occasion conversing with Menšikov. Seating themselves at a table and drawing a line across the centre of it, each of them took a louse (his own) and, having placed the insects on the table, they laid bets with one another which louse would first crawl as far as the line. . . .
Peter had merely to continue the reforms initiated by his predecessors. More than one "window towards Europe" had already been opened; but Peter threw open and kept open the other windows and doors of the Muscovite edifice.
He systematised reform. This is not, to say that he did not often enough work without a definite plan; but in the course of a long epoch (Peter reigned for thirty-six years, from 1689 to 1725), an epoch wherein a new generation grew up and the education of yet another was begun, he raised his very self into a system. Profoundly impressed by the need for civilisation, he gained culture for himself as well as for others. He realised that Russia needed new men in addition to new institutions.
In 1696 Peter granted free entry to all foreigners, and in addition he was able to find suitable assistants among his own ​subjects. Besides Nikon and other predecessors who had marched in the same direction, there were plenty of contemporary enthusiasts for reform. Excellent helpers were secured from the Kiev academy, and from the Moscow academy which had been founded shortly before Peter ascended the throne. Posoškov, an original thinker sprung from the people, gave expression to the strong need for extensive "renovation." Among Peter's numerous collaborators, there were some who in certain domains were more notable and more far-seeing than the autocrat; but where he himself lacked competence, far from imposing obstacles to reform, he favoured innovation.
His first and constant care was to provide for the needs of the army and the fleet. The "herd of cattle" (this was Posoškov's critical term for the old Muscovite army) had to be transformed into European regiments. Seamen must be trained; new weapons must be provided for army and navy. For these changes it was essential to acquire knowledge, alike practical and theoretical. Setting a personal example, Peter visited Europe to study as a simple workman, making his first journey for this purpose in 1697.
Notwithstanding initial defeats, his realm soon began to extend, for it was not long before Peter gained victories over Europeans. In 1696 the Russians reached Azov and built their first navy. In 1703 they secured a firm footing on the Baltic. St. Petersburg was founded. By the victory of Poltava, Sweden was weakened and free access was secured for Russia to the more civilized lands on the shores of the Baltic. In Poland, Peter's influence became decisive, and he had ideas of occupying the country for his son. Henceforward Turkey was menaced by Russia. Peter was unable to extend his sway as far as the southern seas, and Azov was regained by the Turks, but in northern waters his dominion was secured, and Russia was permanently linked with Europe.
Money was needed for the new army and navy, and to this end a suitable reform of the entire administration was essential.
The realm was divided into administrative districts (ultimately eleven in number), and was subdivided into forty- three provinces. The governors were assisted by Landrats chosen from the nobility (the German term Landrat was retained). A kind of ministry of state was established to control the administration, but among the ten departments ​a ministry for education was lacking, for Peter was his own minister for education. In the year 1711 a senate was created which replaced the old crown council of boyars. Notable was the attempt to separate the judiciary from the executive. The police was Europeanised.
The bureaucracy became more numerous, the position of its members and the utilisation of their powers being regulated. During the reign of Peter's father, in the years 1681 and 1682, occurred the abolition of the městničestvo, the system by which officials were appointed by right of birth and in accordance with rank. A new nobility of service was introduced. Peter granted to every official personal rank as a noble, so that increasingly the prestige of the hereditary nobility became purely social. Officials were given regular salaries; enfeoffment (kormlenie, "feeding" or "nourishing") ceased. Fourteen grades of officials were established.
From 1719 onwards statistics of population were kept.
New rules of self-government and jurisdiction came into force for the towns. St. Petersburg, in especial, entirely new and in a sense the leading town of Russia, exercised great influence in the matter of urban administration. The town council of St. Petersburg was placed under the direct control of the senate. Russian towns were enriched by a new element, manufacturing industry, in some cases directly managed by the state, but sometimes carried on in factories favoured by the state. Connected with this development was the transformation of the mercantile community into a distinct class, organised in guilds, and possessing legal jurisdiction of its own.
§ 7.
THE institution of these practical reforms made it necessary for the Russians to acquire theoretical principles as well. Peter's second journey to Europe, in the year 1716, nineteen years after the first, was chiefly devoted to science and art. At this time was conceived the plan advocated by Leibnitz of founding an academy. Oxford University conferred upon Peter an honorary doctor's degree, and the Paris academy nominated him one of its members; this recognition from the official representatives of science was fully deserved. Peter vigorously furthered the progress of science and the arts, by summoning foreigners to his court, by commanding ​the translation of important books, and by similar measures. He introduced a more practical alphabet—to Peter himself correct spelling remained a difficulty throughout life. Russian chronology had hitherto dated from the creation but Peter decided in favour of reckoning from the Christian era, introduced the Julian calendar, and transferred the new year from September to January 1st. Under his auspices, art collections and museums were inaugurated, schools were founded, and the first newspaper came into existence in 1703. Co-ordinated efforts at reform were simultaneously made in all domains. The tsar's earnestness as a reformer was manifested above all by the methodical nature of his efforts.
Nor did Peter forget to institute far-reaching reforms in the ethical domain. His chief desire in this direction was to remodel the Old Russian family. Women were to secure the liberty they possessed in Europe; they were to be restored to social life, and therewith in truth restored also to the family, the Asiatic system of seclusion was to be broken down. The Old Russian law of inheritance was likewise modified, the western system of primogeniture replacing the equality of all the children, and the younger members of the family being left to fend for themselves.
The lot of the serf was to be mitigated to this extent, that the sale of individual "slaves" was forbidden henceforward; the family must be disposed of as a whole.
On one occasion, in conversation with the Danish envoy, Peter summed up his own work of reform by saying that it was his desire to make beasts into men. In actual fact, his reform was a revolution, one which dictated a program to the commencing epoch of enlightenment and humanity. Peter had had personal experience of the need for humanisation in the ethical direction, for his own education had been Old Russian. His private and domestic life was revolutionary to a notable extent and was a stumbling-block to the sanctimonious. It must however, be conceded to severe critics that Peter's actions were often unbridled, and that his reformatory revolution was characterised by numerous defects. Much that was needless and much that was hastily conceived was introduced by Peter. On many occasions he insisted upon external trifles (clothing, and the like) in a manner that was despotic rather than reformatory, and in other instances his choice of means was open to criticism, as, for example, ​when he decreed that from thirty to a hundred roubles should be paid for the privilege of wearing a beard.
Peter himself remained the barbarian. Still strong in him was the Old Russian Adam, the man who desired to become and was to become the new Adam of enlightenment and humaneness. Peter was the archetype of the transitional Russian of his time. Consider him in his later days as imperator, when, after conquering the Swedes, he publicly danced for joy upon the table, and was hailed by the applause of his people—was not this the act of a barbarian? But was the triumph of the Roman imperators or of the modern European conquerors one whit less barbaric, or in any essential greater, than Peter's frank display of jubilation? Peter, insists the modern European, was barbarian pure and simple. Look at the way in which he personally applied the rack to those sentenced by him; look at the way in which he played the executioner upon his victims! Consider his treatment of his first wife and his dealings with his son Alexis! Agreed. Peter was a barbarian. I make no excuses for him, and apply the term to him in its most literal signification. But I do not for that reason esteem more highly the French or Spanish "culture" of a Ferdinand or a Louis, of the men whose nerves were not strong enough to undertake the immediate supervision of the dragonnades, the inquisitional barbarities, and the various other acts of inhumanity, for which they were none the less personally responsible. These refined barbarians kept hired consciences and executants to do their dirty work.
The lollies and base frivolities of his drunken assemblies, wherein Peter would make fun of the papacy with an oblique aim at the patriarchate, were in part connected with his work as reformer, for the frank barbarian was in truth ingenious in such arts. Peter displayed something stronger than cunning, both in his doings at home and in his relationships with the foreign world. To cite but one instance among many, how keen was the calculation with which he appointed his ecclesiastical opponent Javorskii to be president of the synod.
§ 8.
POLITICALLY and socially, Peter's reforms, taken in conjunction with the success of his policy of conquest, signified the strengthening of absolutism. When at ​length, in the year 1721, Peter assumed the Byzantine title of Imperator, the fullness of power of his reformed absolutism was thereby well characterised. The Moscow tsars, such rulers as John the Terrible, had been absolute or quasi-absolute, but the absolutism of Peter was qualitatively higher. Peter was recognised by Europe; he co-ordinated Russia with the European powers; he made Russia one of the great powers of Europe. At Poltava, Peter broke the might of Sweden. At the very time when Russia was thus becoming predominant in the east, Spain was definitively ceasing to be a world power in the west. Following France, England, and Austria, Russia now took fourth place among the powers of the world, Poland ceasing to count as one of the Slav forces of the east.
In the domestic sphere, too, Peter and his state took a position higher than that which had been occupied by Muscovy.
Peter bureaucratised the organism of state, basing the administration upon the work of expert officials. His father, the second Romanov, had begun this process, but the fuller development and the perfectionment of the bureaucratic machine was the work of Peter.
The duma of boyars was abolished, its place being taken by an advisery council (bližnaja kanceljarija), whose relationship to the emperor was a personal one. The institution was not maintained, and the senate was therefore founded as supreme administrative authority.
In the course of years, administrative reform created a better organism of state, but the backbone of the state was the newly established military system, for in this domain was found the core of Peter's reforms; it was by the militarisation of the state and by military successes that Peter's prestige was sustained at home and abroad.
In the plenitude of his power, Peter had even less thought than his two predecessors of summoning the zemskii sobor. It was his aim, not merely to carry on the administration, but to bring new institutions into being, and the sobor would have been unfitted for this work. The eﬂect of Europeanisation in Russia was to strengthen absolutism. It is true that in the year 1698 a species of sobor was summoned from all classes for the condemnation of the tsarevna Sophia, but the sole aim of this was to shift the tsar's responsibility to ​other shoulders. The failure to summon the sobor and the abolition of the duma characterise the enlightened despotism of Peter in contrast with the earlier Muscovite despotism. Peter understood the situation thoroughly, remaining suspicious throughout life, and not hesitating to avail himself of police help.
Peter Europeanised Muscovite absolutism. He was, we must remember, a contemporary of Louis XIV. We cannot doubt that he had the French ruler's example before his eyes. Both his domestic and his foreign policy display more than one analogy to those of Louis.
His absolutism is manifest in his relationship to the nobility. Obviously he had to work through the nobility, and he therefore imposed new duties on the nobles. The nobleman must serve the new state, and in addition he must learn. In Moscow, office was secured to him by right of birth, rank by his family tree, and there he enjoyed the privilege of free service. Peter endeavoured to raise the nobility to a higher level, and he therefore associated it with the bureaucracy; the bureaucracy was ennobled, the nobility bureaucratised. Unlike his predecessors, he did not aim at weakening the nobility, desiring rather to strengthen it. It was with this end in view that in the year 1714 he introduced majorat upon the western model. The far-reaching significance of the ukase relating to majorat or primogeniture depended upon this, that it spoke of the land as the owner's property independently of service. The result was to enhance the prestige of the nobility.
For these reasons, too, Peter introduced a new, European, order of nobility. The first Russian title of count (graf) was bestowed upon Sěremetev, in the year 1706. At the outset the tsar even endeavoured to have the count's title confirmed by the Holy Roman emperor, but the idea was subsequently abandoned.
Peter was the first Russian ruler to bestow the old princely rank as a title, and this title too was made European. Menšikov, the first of the new princes, who received the title in 1705, was prince of the Holy Roman empire, and several princely titles were bestowed upon Russians by the Holy ​Roman emperor. With the newly conquered territories the baronage was taken over as a working institution.
Peter's absolutism was likewise displayed in the tsar's relationship to the peasantry. By the introduction of the poll tax and of other dues based thereon in place of the land tax the peasant was grievously affected. The entire burden of taxation was laid upon him, the new and oppressive element in the poll tax consisting in its imposition upon all peasants. The nobility, the state clergy, and the ennobled officials, together with persons of academic status and certain special classes, were exempt from taxation.
The introduction of this imperfect and ill-considered system of direct individual taxation was characteristic of the defects of Petrine financial policy. The tsar himself was interested in commerce alone. He had adopted the principles of the mercantile system: his policy of conquest, and above all his desire to make use of the sea, were closely connected with these principles. He initiated the construction of the Ladoga canal, completed in 1732, to connect the Baltic with the Caspian. The desire to favour commerce and manufacture (the time for the export of grain had not yet come) led to the institution of the system of privileges for the benefit of the upper classes and the mercantile community.
Before Peter's reign the state revenue had been about one and a half million roubles. The revenue for the year 1715 was eight and a half million roubles.
Posoškov, a self-taught economist, was profoundly touched by the tragical situation of the peasantry in the days of Peter. Despite his espousal of the cause of the autocrat as against the nobility, he recognised the severities of Peter's absolutism, and desired the establishment of a people's council (narodosovětie). He atoned for his opinions by lifelong imprisonment in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul.
At the close of Peter's reign the inhabitants of Russia numbered thirteen millions.
§ 9.
PETER'S absolutism found its most momentous expression in the reform of ecclesiastical administration. In religious matters Peter was moderately enlightened. He had grasped the weak side of the theological belief in miracle, and aimed at the diminution of its potency, for his work of reform was necessarily founded upon the scientific conception of the universe, a conception diametrically opposed to that of the theologians, although his own views were not so much derived from the philosophers and thinkers of the west as based upon the practical acquirements of Europe.
In the Moscow Sloboda. among Russia's western neighbours, and in Europe in general, he had had practical experience of Protestant influences; his advisers, friends, and teachers were almost exclusively Protestants. The influence of Protestantism was especially manifested among the cultured classes, but it was strong also among the masses. This is conspicuous in the field of theology, being represented, for instance, by Theophan Prokopovič, and being shown also in Tveritinov's popular movement towards Protestantism.
Theophan Prokopovič, at first pupil and subsequently teacher at the Kiev academy, studied theology and philosophy in Europe as well. Having espoused the views of Bacon and Descartes, he tended in theology in the direction of Protestantism, expounding his views from the pulpit and in writing. Peter summoned him to St. Petersburg, establishing under his leadership the holy synod, the supreme ecclesiastical authority. It is important to note that Theophan's transference to St. Petersburg did not take place until 1716. Prior to that date, and after his return from Europe in the year 1704, his influence was exercised in the same direction as that of Peter, but outside the monarch's direct sphere of operation.
It was the aim of Peter's ecclesiastical policy to abate the prestige of the hierarchy, which was to be conspicuously subordinated and made serviceable to the imperial power. Peter attained to a clear view upon this matter at a comparatively early date. When the patriarch Adrian died in the year 1700, no successor was appointed. Adrian had been Peter's opponent. For more than two decades the tsar left matters in an interim condition, for the synod was not established until 1721. The ecclesiastical regulations (duhovnyi ​reglament) upon which the synodal constitution and the other church reforms were based, were drawn up by Theophan and revised by Peter in person.
The constitution of the synod was in conformity, not with monarchical patriarchalism, but with the secular system of government by committee. In the regulations a definite reference was made to the papacy, pointing out how this had wrongfully outgrown the control of the temporal power. The analogous usurpation of power by the Moscow patriarchate was censured, and it was decreed that there must be no place for such an evil in the administration of the ecclesiastical committee. The members of the synod had to take oath as follows: "I testify and swear that the monarch of all the Russias is the supreme authority of this ecclesiastical committee."
Peter, supported by Theophan, interpreted the term autocracy in its most literal sense, holding that the church and the hierarchy which governed it were subject to the emperor. "Here is your patriarch," said Peter, tapping his breast, when a deputation of spiritual dignitaries besought him to appoint an incumbent to the patriarchal see. Theophan spoke of his imperial patron as "the anointed" (using the Greek term χριστός). It is unquestionable that electoral powers within the church were greater before than after the days of Peter.
The committee constitution of the synod, in which the lay representative of the emperor, the chief procurator, sat beside the ecclesiastical members, has been commonly regarded as a Protestant institution but this view is not altogether correct
The synod corresponded to the ancient episcopal organisation of the church, but the introduction of a lay element into church administration and the inauguration of the office of chief procurator were Protestant. It is possible that Peter and his contemporaries were influenced by the example of the Protestant national or state churches.
Peter did not venture upon any innovations in the matter of religious doctrine. Although in other respects he was ​tolerant, he supported with his authority Mogila's Orthodox Confession. But the tsar's general outlook in religious matters found expression in the words: "The human conscience is subject to God alone, and no ruler is entitled to constrain any man to change his creed."
Whereas Peter in conjunction with Theophan tended towards Protestantism, Javorskii, the other most notable ecclesiastic of those days, represented the Romanising inclinations of conservative theologians and church politicians. Theophan learned in Jesuit schools and academies to hate Catholicism, but it was there conversely that Javorskii learned to detest Protestantism. Owing to his European education, however, as representative of the patriarchate he was from 1700 onwards an adherent of the Petrine policy, though only in temporal matters, for in religious and ecclesiastical affairs Javorskii was a Romaniser. His principal work (Kamen' Věry—The Stone of Faith), directed against Protestantism, was written during the years 1713 to 1718, but could not be printed until 1728, after Peter's death. Javorskii taught the primacy of the church over the state, and accepted the doctrine of Boniface VIII concerning the two sisters of the church, but without avail. Peter made an adroit use of the refractory churchman on behalf of his own ecclesiastical policy, compelling Javorskii to subscribe the new regulations (which were signed by all the hierarchs in the realm), and actually appointing him first president of the synod.
The significance of Peter's reforms in ecclesiastical administration was underlined by the profound disturbance which affected the raskolniki. They stigmatised Peter as antichrist, and in their hearts the conservatives and the reactionaries were in agreement with this designation, not excepting Javorskii, who compiled a writing upon the coming of antichrist. The conservatives' view of Peter was vividly displayed in a work upon the beard from the pen of Adrian, the last patriarch, wherein to shave the beard was described as a deadly sin. The expectations of the end of the world in 1666 having remained unfulfilled, the apocalyptic chronologers ​revised their calculations, and fixed upon the year 1699. The final destruction was to take place in 1702. Peter returned from his first great journey to Europe a few days before the anticipated coming of antichrist, to be hailed as the expected one.
Peter, were it simply as guardian of Muscovite tradition, was anything but tolerant vis-à-vis the raskolniki. Their propaganda was made a capital offence. It was decreed that they must attend Orthodox churches and must have their children baptized in the Orthodox manner. They were excluded from all public offices, and were not allowed to take oaths. They were compelled to pay double taxes, had extra taxation for wearing a beard, and were forced to assume distinctive dress.
In one respect, a matter of form, Peter's conservative opponents were right. The establishment of the synod was uncanonical and autocratic. It was true that this body was composed of clergy, and that Peter had his ecclesiastical reforms confirmed by the Russian and the Greek hierarchs; but it is demonstrable that, as far as the Russians were concerned, the continuation was the fruit of compulsion, whilst in the case of the eastern patriarchs, no more than two visited St. Petersburg, and this was subsequently, when the synod had already exercised its functions.
§ 10.
THE reforms of Peter and his collaborators secularised theocratic Russia to a considerable extent, so that it is permissible to' speak of a contrast between the Russia of St. Petersburg and the Russia of Moscow. Moscow's civilisation and outlook were thoroughly clericalised and ecclesiasticised; Peter made the state the determinative organ of politics and civilisation. When Peter extolled army reform in the words, "We have emerged into light from darkness," he gave a fairly accurate characterisation of the significance of the new Russia. The medieval Russian theocracy acquired a new head, the state a new centre; St. Petersburg, the seaport capital, replacing Moscow, the midland capital.
A secular and non-theological character was likewise manifest in seventeenth-century literature, even theological literature. Peter had little time to spare for Russian literature, ​but his reforms initiated the tendency which literature followed.
In this connection it is above all necessary to make further reference to Posoškov, an unschooled peasant. A convert from the raskol to the state church, his writings have, indeed, a certain theological flavour, but his interests are in secular reforms of the army and of the administration. Paternal Inheritance was written to promote the better moralisation of family life. Concerning Poverty and Riches (1721–1724) was a practical work by a keen observer, furnishing penetrating criticism of contemporary conditions and advocating a sound program of reforms in all departments of public life.
Considered as a whole, Peter's reforms were of great value to Russia, constituting a natural advance along the lines indicated by previous development. Lomonosov went too far in the deification of Peter ("He is thy god, thy god, O Russia!"), in his personification of the entire evolution of Russia in the figure of the autocrat; but the reforms effected by Peter and his circle were imposing for all their defects.
At a later date, the slavophils spoke of Peter and his reforms as unpatriotic, unrussian, Moscow and Muscovite Russia being contrasted with St. Petersburg and Europe, but this was unhistorical exaggeration. Europe, too, had to experience revolutionary reforms, more far-reaching than the reforms of Peter. Accurate historical analysis will increasingly show that the reform movements at the close of the seventeenth century were logically determined by the previous course of evolution.
§ 11.
THE need for Peter's reforms is sufficiently proved by the continuance, or rather the consolidation, of these reforms by his successors, for the changes subsequently attempted in this or that branch of the administration were built upon the foundations laid by Peter.
Under the rule of the empresses and the shadow emperors we observe a continuous oscillation in the constitution of the council of state essential to the renovated absolutism. ​Catherine I established a "supreme privy council"; under Anne, a "cabinet" came into existence; under Elizabeth, this body yielded before the Petrine "senate."
These changes were dependent upon the instability in the relationships between the autocrat and the aristocracy. Given a higher position by Peter, but constrained to service and subordinated to the tsar, the aristocracy endeavoured to consolidate its dominion. In the year 1730 Anne adopted the "magna charta" of the Dolgorukis and their associates, the real power passing into the hands of the supreme privy council. Theophan, however, organised the party of the "people of intermediate rank" against the verhovniki (magnates), and petitioned for the re-establishment of the aristocracy—the Orthodox prince of the church becoming the mouthpiece of the absolutists and the tool of the Lutheran favourites. Dissension was sown between the Russian magnates and the German, and autocracy was reinstated by the violent deeds of Biron and his confederates. The example of Sweden had great influence in St. Petersburg during the eighteenth century, and the Swedish oligarchy had triumphed in the year 1726.
The autocracy was maintained. Although the new dynasty of the Romanovs had become extinct in the male line, the foreign sovereigns who were now raised to the throne were able to exercise unrestricted sway. Women of notoriously loose character could reign without opposition, and those only among the tyrants who were mentally disordered were suppressed after the Asiatic manner by family conspiracies and palace revolts.
The example set by Peter in the case of his son Alexis found imitators. John VI was imprisoned in Schlüsselburg, and was ultimately murdered, although a lunatic. No better was the fate of Peter III. likewise mentally disordered, who was deposed by his consort Catherine II, and died four days later, the cause being officially announced as hæmorrhage from the bowel and brain disorder. A similar destiny awaited Catherine's son, Paul I, who had also become insane. The terrorist assassins of Alexander II had a whole series of illustrious teachers. In the eighteenth century even such men as Voltaire considered the doings of Catherine purely "domestic affairs."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Boyar Roman Jur'evič Zahar'in | Boyar Roman Jur'evič Zahar'in | Boyar Roman Jur'evič Zahar'in | Boyar Roman Jur'evič Zahar'in | Boyar Roman Jur'evič Zahar'in | Boyar Roman Jur'evič Zahar'in | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nikita | Nikita | Nikita | Nikita | Nikita | Nikita | | | | | | | Anastasia | Anastasia | Anastasia | Anastasia | Anastasia | Anastasia |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nikita | Nikita | Nikita | Nikita | Nikita | Nikita | | | | | | | Anastasia | Anastasia | Anastasia | Anastasia | Anastasia | Anastasia | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Filaret 1619–1633 | Filaret 1619–1633 | Filaret 1619–1633 | Filaret 1619–1633 | Filaret 1619–1633 | Filaret 1619–1633 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | m John IV (Ivan the Terrible) | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael 1633–1645 | Michael 1633–1645 | Michael 1633–1645 | Michael 1633–1645 | Michael 1633–1645 | Michael 1633–1645 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Alexis 1645–1676 | Alexis 1645–1676 | Alexis 1645–1676 | Alexis 1645–1676 | Alexis 1645–1676 | Alexis 1645–1676 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Sophia | Sophia | Sophia | Sophia | Sophia | Sophia | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | | | | | | | | | | | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 |
| Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Theodore 1676–1682 | Sophia | Sophia | Sophia | Sophia | Sophia | Sophia | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | John V 1682–1689 († 1696) | | | | | | | | | | | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | Peter I, the Great 1689–1725 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Catherine m Leopold of Mecklenburg | Catherine m Leopold of Mecklenburg | Catherine m Leopold of Mecklenburg | Catherine m Leopold of Mecklenburg | Catherine m Leopold of Mecklenburg | Catherine m Leopold of Mecklenburg | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | m Catherine I 1725–1727 | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Anne 1730–1740 | Anne 1730–1740 | Anne 1730–1740 | Anne 1730–1740 | Anne 1730–1740 | Anne 1730–1740 | | | | | Alexis (by Evdokija Lopuhin) | Alexis (by Evdokija Lopuhin) | Alexis (by Evdokija Lopuhin) | Alexis (by Evdokija Lopuhin) | Alexis (by Evdokija Lopuhin) | Alexis (by Evdokija Lopuhin) | | | Anne m Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp | Anne m Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp | Anne m Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp | Anne m Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp | Anne m Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp | Anne m Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp | Elizabeth 1741–1761 | Elizabeth 1741–1761 | Elizabeth 1741–1761 | Elizabeth 1741–1761 | Elizabeth 1741–1761 | Elizabeth 1741–1761 |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | | | | | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | | | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | | | | | | | | | | | | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | Anne m Antony of Brunswick | | | | | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | Peter II 1727–1730 | | | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 | Peter III 1761–1762 |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | m Catherine II of Anhalt-Zerbst 1762–1796 | | | | | | | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Paul I 1796–1801 m Sophia Dorothea Augusta of Würtemberg (Maria Theodorovna) | Paul I 1796–1801 m Sophia Dorothea Augusta of Würtemberg (Maria Theodorovna) | Paul I 1796–1801 m Sophia Dorothea Augusta of Würtemberg (Maria Theodorovna) | Paul I 1796–1801 m Sophia Dorothea Augusta of Würtemberg (Maria Theodorovna) | Paul I 1796–1801 m Sophia Dorothea Augusta of Würtemberg (Maria Theodorovna) | Paul I 1796–1801 m Sophia Dorothea Augusta of Würtemberg (Maria Theodorovna) | | | | | | | | | | | | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | John VI 1740–1741 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Alexander I 1801–1825 | Alexander I 1801–1825 | Alexander I 1801–1825 | Alexander I 1801–1825 | Alexander I 1801–1825 | Alexander I 1801–1825 | Constantine | Constantine | Constantine | Constantine | Constantine | Constantine | Nicholas I 1825–1854 | Nicholas I 1825–1854 | Nicholas I 1825–1854 | Nicholas I 1825–1854 | Nicholas I 1825–1854 | Nicholas I 1825–1854 |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Alexander II 1855–1881 | Alexander II 1855–1881 | Alexander II 1855–1881 | Alexander II 1855–1881 | Alexander II 1855–1881 | Alexander II 1855–1881 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Alexander III 1881–1894 | Alexander III 1881–1894 | Alexander III 1881–1894 | Alexander III 1881–1894 | Alexander III 1881–1894 | Alexander III 1881–1894 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nicholas II | Nicholas II | Nicholas II | Nicholas II | Nicholas II | Nicholas II | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
The Europeanisation of Russia in respect of civilisation and of political and military concerns, was continued by Peter's successors. In the reign of Anne, Russian armies entered Europe for the first time, besieging Dantzig in 1734. Under Elizabeth these European campaigns were continued during the Seven Years War, whilst subsequently Russia fought against France. In Elizabeth's reign Finland was occupied as far as the river Kymene (1743). Of especial importance for Russia was the annexation of Poland (first partition 1772, second partition 1793, third partition 1795).
At the end of Catherine's reign the population of Russia numbered 36,000,000.
In matters of civilisation and diplomatic intercourse Russia became closely associated with her neighbours Prussia and Austria, relationships with the two chief powers of the weakly German realm being promoted by Russia's hostility to Sweden on the one hand and Turkey on the other. Prussia, in particular, exercised an attractive influence upon Russia. From early days, eastern Prussia had had common interests with Russia against Poland and Lithuania. The policy of Peter III, "the monkey imitator of Frederick the Great," was no more than a temporary accentuation of a normal tendency, which persisted for a century after the two states had become contiguous in the reign of Catherine&nbspII. It was Prussia and the lesser princely houses of the German north which provided the Russians with emperors and empresses alter the dying out of the Romanovs in the male line.
In home affairs Europeanisation was promoted by, the further annexation of European territories. Poland was European, was Catholic, so that the contrast between Europe and Russia was transported into Russia, was incorporated into Russian absolutist administration. This, too, was merely a reinforcement of a previous trend, for heretofore the Lutheran Baltic provinces had already supplied higher officials, soldiers, and politicians tinctured by European culture.
The influence of the European territories was extremely noticeable in social institutions and legislation, especially in the laws for the administration of the towns, those dealing with the mercantile classes, and the like.
Asiatisation advanced pari passu with Europeanisation. ​The occupation of Siberia involved close relationships with China, a commercial treaty with that country being signed in the reign of Peter II. In 1783 Crimea was annexed, the movement towards the Black Sea involving Russia in wars and alliances with the Turks. Before long, contact with Persia began. It will readily be understood that these extensive Asiatic developments affected Russian civilisation. Asiatic influences similar to those which had acted upon Muscovy during the Mongol regime, had their place also in the development of the Russia of St. Petersburg.
§ 12.
CATHERINE II took a lively part in the cultural development of Russia, by promoting the growth of science and literature. She herself was an author and a protagonist in literary feuds. Catherine endeavoured to improve the educational system, favouring in especial the education of women. She actually appointed her friend Princess Daškova president of the academy, an appointment justified by success.
When a princess of no more than fifteen years old, Catherine had read Cicero and Plato. Voltaire and Diderot were her friends; Montesquieu's works, "the breviary of sovereigns" ("Were I pope, I would canonise him!") were her literary and philosophical favourites; Locke and other revolutionary thinkers were not unknown. to her. "Liberty, thou soul of all things" is but one of the many sayings with which this despot charmed her subjects and her European admirers. She did not hesitate at times to describe herself as a republican.
During Catherine's reign the aristocracy was continually thinking of a constitution or of some form of representation by estates. As early as 1762, Count Panin, envoy in Sweden, submitted a plan based upon the Swedish model, which was, however, practically ignored. Later, from 1780 onwards, Panin elaborated a new design, drafted by D. I. Fonvizin, his secretary, and received with approval by Paul and certain leading members of the nobility. It was based upon the theories of natural law and the social contract, and foreshadowed the liberation of the peasants. For the time being the "fundamental laws" were to concern the aristocracy, ​who were to have joint powers of government exercised through an elected senate with legislative faculty. The tendency of the scheme was to restrict absolutism.
Publicist literature of the years preceding the French revolution was full of ideas about liberty and plans for realising it; it displayed an acquaintance with European affairs and political writings, and was obviously inspired by a dislike to the native despotism. Catherine had a keen intelligence, and was far-seeing enough to recognise that administrative reforms were essential to the security of a Russia continually enlarged by fresh annexations in Europe and Asia. In order to regulate the entire realm in a homogeneous manner, in 1767 the celebrated "commission of deputies" was summoned from all parts, including Siberia. The deputies, numbering five hundred and sixty-four, held two hundred sittings, and did much good work, while perpetrating some absurdities. In the Book of Instructions, which the empress compiled for the commission from the works of Montesquieu, Beccaria, and others we are told that "Russia is a European state." In 1768 the commission was prorogued, and was never resummoned, notwithstanding Diderot's recommendation. In actual experience Catherine could not put up with even a consultative parliament, although its members were chosen exclusively from the aristocracy.
In 1768, Desnickii, professor at Moscow, who had attended the lectures of Adam Smith, submitted to the empress a planfor reorganising the senate to constitute of it an elected body, with consultative powers and a certain voice in legislation. Associated with this change, there was to be a reform of the entire administration. For years the empress had entertained thoughts of some such reform of the senate, having studied the English constitution and read Blackstone and other English authors, but the plan was never realised. The historian Ščerbatov likewise wrote in favour of the English constitution.
In order to appease the aristocracy, the empress granted the charter of 1785. As a class the aristocracy was accorded a considerable degree of autonomy (the right to hold assemblies of the nobles, the right to elect marshals, etc.); aristocrats were freed from state service and from taxation; corporal punishment was abolished; the peasant was made exclusively subject to his lord. Thus did enlightened des​potism seek support from the nobility at the cost of the peasantry.
Pugačev's revolt (1772–4775) showed that the peasantry suffered from a sense of oppression. Nor did the peasants stand alone in their discontent. General Bibikov, who suppressed the rising, declared that it was not Pugačev that mattered but the dissatisfaction that was widespread throughout Russia. Catherine herself had an uneasy conscience. Upon her initiative there was founded in the year 1765 the "Free Economic Society" which, in understanding with the empress immediately began to study the question of liberating the peasants, published prize essays, etc.
On the other hand the empress did not forget to regulate the administration. Russia was divided into fifty administrative districts; political and legal organisation was perfected; the towns were granted charters giving them a certain administrative and judicial autonomy.
Commerce and industry were vigorously promoted.
Catherine, like the enlightened absolutists in Europe, was a thorough-going utilitarian. In the year 1764, when need was pressing, church property was confiscated, although now and at all times the rights of the church, of the hierarchy, were preserved. The raskolniki, who under Peter II, Anne, and Elizabeth, had been oppressed in Petrine fashion, were more gently handled, notwithstanding their share in Pugačev's rising, for the semblance of provocative measures had to be avoided. Schismatics were admitted to public office.
In Europe, Catherine was greatly admired. Voltaire wrote a panegyric history of Peter, and extolled Catherine as "benefactress of the human race" and as "saint," even comparing her to the mother of God. The flatterer went so far as to declare that her autocracy was the ne plus ultra of statecraft. Herder, who had had opportunity in Riga of studying the empress and Russia, was full of admiration for ​Catherine's reforms. I may recall his enthusiasm for Russia's great civilising task, an enthusiasm to which he gave free expression in his diary when journeying from Riga to Europe in 1769. He looked forward to a rejuvenescence of the hoary civilisation of Europe. Russia was to become the leader of culture and to make Europe happy with a second renaissance. Ukraine would become a new Greece. Herder was by no means blind to the errors and defects of the Russians, but he considered that they were animated by a sense of the good, which was notably manifest in their imitative capacity. Peter the Great and Catherine II were to him ideal figures; they were predestined to make a nation of elemental greatness out of the Russian barbarians—of course in accordance with the prescriptions of the works on political education which Herder intended to write in order to win the empress' favour.
Such flatteries, and others yet more gross, were customary at that epoch; but Catherine could make a very adroit use of fulsome praise, and was glad to pay for advertisements of the kind.
§ 13.
PETER'S reforms were mainly of a practical character, but, since practice must be based on theory, practical needs necessitated a theoretical foundation. Nor was it sufficient to transplant individual Europeans to Russia and to send Russians to study in Europe; it was essential that schools and other means of culture should be provided at home. The plan for the foundation of the academy originated with Peter; and in the year 1726, shortly after his death, it was carried out by his widow. The Livonian peasant girl, unable to read or write, was a faithful patron of the new institution. The initial aims of the academy were of a practical nature, for it had a printing establishment and other workshops, but it tended more and more towards theoretical activities. The first university (1747), somewhat primitive, was an offshoot of the academy; the first academic gimnazija (higher school) was founded as early as 1726. The university ​of Moscow came into being in 1775. The first students and professors at the universities and gimnazijas were Germans.
But the higher schools in the capitals were not the only nurseries of culture. Society, atoo, promoted its diffusion, and this not in the capital alone, for during the second half of the eighteenth century there rapidly developed a cultured society in the provinces, which was of the first importance to Russian civilisation of that date.
In conformity with the aristocratic character of eighteenth-century Russia, the work of education was likewise aristocratic. Higher and middle schools only were founded. Even now, public elementary schools can hardly be said to exist, although Peter had thoughts of reform in this direction also.
The Russians, like their sovereign, energetically furthered the sprad of westem culture, and after Peter's death a number of notable men carried forward the work. Lomonosov and Kantemir, the former of whom may be termed the Peter of Russian literature, sprang from the Moscow academy. Natural science, technology, and history, were the leading subjects of original study; legal and political enlightenment was sought ready made in Germany.
The influences encouraged by Peter were mainly Dutch and German, and Lomonosov drew inspiration from the same sources. But already during the reign of Elizabeth, the court and the aristocracy became French in spirit through the cultural and political primacy of France; the common people were excluded from all share in higher civilisation. The spread of the French tongue was so general that as late as the first half of the nineteenth century many Russians spoke better French than Russian, and there were some who never learned Russian at all. Puškin, for example, was an accomplished French scholar, and wrote at first in French. This is true also of Lermontov. We find Gallicisms in the earlier works of Tolstoi. Quite a number of writers made use of French as well as Russian—Herzen, for instance.
This predominance of French influences among the Russian aristocracy runs parallel with the spread of the same influences ​among the Polish and European aristocracies. At the same epoch Frederick the Great had his French Academy in Berlin, and wrote in the tongue of Voltaire. At the court of Vienna, German poets had to be translated into French.
French exercised its influence mainly in the social and political spheres, and above all in the field of diplomacy. German was the language of culture. It was not spoken, but German authors were thoroughly studied in the original.
We cannot do justice to the effect of these two European tongues without taking into account the personal influence of Frenchmen and Germans in Russia. The annexation of the Baltic provinces was followed by the entry of German barons into the administration, and subsequently by the entry of Swedes, Finns, and Poles. From France came the persons needed by the court and the aristocracy—physicians, actors, teachers of language, of dancing, etc. During the revolution, some of the émigrés came to Russia. From German sources were mainly derived professors, tutors, craftsmen, and merchants. Thus in one way and another, during the eighteenth century, Russia, official and socially decisive Russia, became Europeanised in speech. Europe and the Frenchified court and nobility of Russia grew aloof from and became contrasted with the Russian peasant and the Russian clergy. It was in the academics and the schools that German influence was predominant.
Owing to this Gallicising movement, prerevolutionary and revolutionary French literature made its way into Russian drawing-rooms and studies (of these latter, there were few). Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot, Holbach, Morelly. Mably, etc., were as much read in St. Petersburg as in France, and the political sentiment of St. Petersburg was almost identical with that of Paris. It must not be forgotten that in France the revolution was initiated by the aristocracy and the middle classes, and it was only when the movement was well advanced that the rural population, the peasantry, came to participate in it. The course of development in Russia was analogous. The aristocracy became imbued with the French and German philosophy of enlightenment. Popular revolt was the outcome of poverty and distress (Pugačev), but the life and general outlook of the common people made them hostile to the apostles of the enlightenment. Similar were conditions in France, and they are similar everywhere even to-day, above all in Russia.
​Taking a broad view of the history of civilisation, we are concerned here with the great movement of the eighteenth century, the endeavours towards rebirth which affected all the nations of Europe, endeavours whose insignia were enlightenment and humanitarianism. This movement, the natural continuation of the humanist renaissance and the religious reformation, permeated Russia as well, and it was during the reign of Catherine II that French and German enlightenment became naturalised in Russia.
To Petrine New Russia, freemasonry was of especial importance as organiser of European civilisation and as zealous propagator of humanitarian ideals. From about 1731 onwards lodges were established in St. Petersburg, and subsequently in Moscow and the provinces. In 1747 they began to receive attention from the governmental police department, but they were tolerated and even favoured, and there was no mystery about their meetings. Novikov was a leading freemason, and in his Lexicon of Russian Authors we can study the history of the Russian enlightenment.
Freemasonry and the freemasons, Novikov in especial, are of great importance in relation to the development of Russian civilization. The ideas of the enlightenment were deliberately and unceasingly propagated in the lodges. Participation in the ritual of the churches was natural to the Russians, and for those among them who had been spiritually estranged from the church by the study of Voltaire and other French philosophers the ritual of freemasonry provided a welcome substitute. We must remember that the Russian freemasons were not properly speaking freethinkers either in religion or philosophy. They inclined rather to regard Voltairism with horror, and in political views were conservative. Lopuhin, in especial, was not merely hostile to the revolution, but was opposed to the French and to French civilisation in general, and favoured the maintenance of serfdom.
There was another direction in which the masonic lodges ​affected Russian life, namely by paving the way for the development of political secret societies. These had at first unmistakable resemblances to lodges, and among the decabrists were a number of ear-members of lodges and sons of freemasons.
It was inevitable that the spread of the ideals of enlightenment and humanitarianism, as preached not by the freemasons alone but by eighteenth-century philosophy and literature in general, should lead in Russia to the question of serfdom becoming foremost in all theoretical and practical thought. It was impossible that Pugačev's revolt should pass without notice. Catherine said that it would be better to grant freedom to the serfs than to leave them to secure freedom by force.
In Russia as in the west there were practical no less than humanitarian grounds for the liberation of the peasantry. Russia needed more intensive agriculture; for the enhanced national expenditure and for the more refined tastes of the Gallicised nobility, more and more money was requisite. For fiscal reasons, therefore, the peasants must be freed, and must be trained so that their labours might be more productive. Europe set the example to Russia. In Austria, serfdom was abolished in the royal domains under Maria Theresa and Joseph II; Frederick the Great aimed at similar reforms in Prussia, though with little result; in France, enfranchisement was effected in 1789 (the work was actually begun in 1779) by an extremely radical measure, the landowners being dispossessed without compensation.
Radiščev was a typical representative of advanced Russian thought in the days of the French revolution. His education had been mainly German, for he was at Leipzig university from 1766 to 1771, but his political ideals were derived from those of French thinkers. In addition to Herder and Leibnitz, his teachers had been Rousseau, Mably, Raynal, the encyclopædists, and Voltaire. The form of his most notable work, Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, was borrowed from Sterne. The contents are thoroughly Russian, splendid realistic descriptions of men and things, with enthusiastic propaganda on behalf of French ideals of freedom. The book was published in 1790. Catherine promptly had the author haled before the courts and sentenced to death—the same Catherine whose Book of Instructions of the year 1766 had been interdicted in the France of Louis XV. Radiščev's sentence was commuted to banishment, and he remained in Siberia until the accession of Paul I.
​The Journey is unquestionably a bold work, and above all it is the political credo of a thoroughly cultured man, of one who in thought and feeling had attained to an exceptional grasp of the significance of the eighteenth century. In a brilliant ode, The Giant, Radiščev apostrophises the eighteenth century, blood-stained, mad, and yet wise. With reasoning based upon natural law he proves the bloody and mad doctrine of wisdom, the right of revolution. To Catherine in her passion it seemed that Radiščev was a more dangerous revolutionary than Pugačev, for the former aimed not merely at the abolition of serfdom (writing "the peasant is, dead in law"), but demanded a representative constitution and far-reaching liberties (freedom of the press, etc).
In Siberia, Radiščev, an enlightened opponent of mysticism, wrote an essay upon immortality, maintaining, in opposition to Helvetius, Holbach, and Lamettrie, the possibility and probability of immortality.
Under Alexander I, Radiščev was again given an appointment; but in 1802, when no more than fifty-three years old, suffering from nervous breakdown, he committed suicide by taking poison.
Next to Radiščev, Pnin, poet and prose writer, was in that day the most zealous and notable opponent of serfdom. While Radiščev, following Rousseau, regards slavery as essentially a form of theft, Pnin, taught by the French constitution, dwells rather upon the favourable aspects of private property, desiring that the Russian peasant shall become a proprietor. Excellent is Pnin's demonstration that the liberation of the peasantry is a logical consequence of the generally acclaimed enlightenment.
The poet Sumarokov was the leader of the social reactionaries. In the year 1766, the empress, anonymously and through the instrumentality of the Free Economic Society, offered a prize for an essay upon the question whether it was more advantageous to society that the peasant should own land or should own nothing but personal property, and how far in either case it was desirable that his rights should extend. Sumarokov responded in a vigorous writing that there could be absolutely no doubt as to the nobleman's exclusive ownership of the soil. "The canary bird would be better pleased to have no cage, and the dog would prefer to be without a chain. But the bird would fly away, and the dog would bite. One is therefore necessary for the peasant, the other for the noble."
​The political ideals of constitutionalism, or at least of a restriction of absolutism, prevailed throughout society, and even flatteries of the good autocrat, Byzantine in their servility and couched in the style of Fénelon's Télémaque (first translated in 1747), furthered criticism and endeavours towards liberty, for the adulation of autocratic ideals and virtues challenged rejoinder. Among Fénelon's numerous imitators, Heraskov the novelist may be mentioned. Until Catherine II took to suppressing tendencies towards freedom, this writer had displayed liberal sentiments; but when reaction followed upon the French revolution, Heraskov, too, became an opponent of the republic and of French philosophy.
Condorcet tells us that "reason and tolerance" was the device of Voltaire. The spirit of Voltaire, the spirit of the encyclopædists and the philosophers of the enlightenment in general, had in Russia as in Europe been directed against the church and ecclesiasticism. Many translations from Voltaire were published during the decade 1760 to 1770. Four editions of Candide appeared between 1769 and 1793. In St. Petersburg. Moscow, and provincial towns, this author's writings were not read merely, but positively devoured. His criticism of superstition, priestly dominion, monasticism, the perversities of official morals and politics, set Russia ablaze. The Russian imitators of Voltaire and the French devoted most of their energies to invectives against the church, the priests, and the monks; they renounced belief in miracle; and mostly advocated natural religion in the sense of dcism and free thought.
The Russian enlightenment was not exclusively rationalistic. As in the west, so here, there was a vigorous mystical movement, directed primarily against Voltairism, but also against official ecclesiasticism. This tendency dominated the freemasons (Martinism) and wide circles among the cultured. Rousseau and his religious ideas found many adherents, in addition to those who followed Voltaire and the encyclopædists, as we have learned already in the case of Radiščev.
§ 14.
IT was inevitable that the spread of European ideas of freedom should have evil consequences as well as good. Deplorable half culture and moral laxity soon became general, and earlier and rougher customs came to be regarded in an ideal light. There were excellent men enough, of outstanding intelligence and honourable character, like Radiščev; but the bulk of the aristocracy was half educated, whilst the court was immoral, a compost of unbridled sexuality, boorishness, and cruelty, and its example was contagious (cf. Herzen's A Brothel Tragedy). Fonvizin's comedies (Brigadier, 1766, The Minor, 1782), and their satire upon half culture, are descriptions far from exaggerated of the state of so-called good society in the days of Catherine.
It was inevitable that these cultural contrasts should be manifested in the work of administration. For example, Elizabeth abolished capital punishment, but introduced the knout. Publicists and historians, no less than Fonvizin and the politicians, noted the imperfections of contemporary Russian civilisation, for the contrast between the old Russia and the new, between the peasantry and the nobility, was too glaring to escape observation.
​The first historians after the close of Peter's reign were foreigners, Germans for the most part. This was advantageous on the whole, for as Europeans they could display in a strong light the foreign elements in Russian development. It is true that their treatment of the subject was by no means impartial; and their comparison between Russia and Europe from the outlook of eighteenth-century history and philosophy was of little value. Writing as German patriots, they tended to lay especial stress upon the barbarism of the Old Slavs and Old Russians, and to extol the civilising influence and the state. The constructive talent of the Teutonic Varangians.
The publication of these German theories aroused a spirit of contradiction among the Russians, who inclined to insist upon the moral value of Old Russian life and institutions.
Prince Ščerbatov was not troubled because the first Russian princes were foreigners, perhaps Germans; but he championed Old Russian simplicity. One of his writings was devoted to the criticism of the reforms of Peter and his successors. This work, The Corruption of Russian Morals, is all the more interesting seeing that its author was an aristocrat and conservative, but had had a European education, and exhibited strong leanings towards rationalist liberalism. Ščerbatov was among the most zealous advocates of representative government and the restriction of absolutism. He recognised that since the days of Peter, the Russians had made social and political advances, but held that their progress had been achieved at the cost of moral backsliding. He was sufficiently logical to blame Catherine and her life as well as Peter's reforms. In contrast with the innovations, he extolled as an ideal to which the the Russians should return the morals of prepetrine Old Russia.
Ščerbatov did not stand alone as critic. His noted opponent Boltin the historian and general, criticising the Histoire de la Russia ancienne et moderne issued in 1783 by Le Clerc, a French physician in Russia, was the first to attempt a logical and detailed demonstration that the defects which foreigners, and above all the French, were accustomed to point out in the ​Russians, existed also among these foreigners, and often in greater degree. In the history of Europe, Boltin was able to point to not a few indications of barbarism. Urging his countrymen not to be too ready to esteem the foreign and the new, he insisted upon the superiority of prepetrine morals and institutions. Like Ščerbatov, Boltin was a conservative. He defended autocracy (an institution not unknown in the Europe of that day!). He displayed no enthusiasm for the humanitarians' demand that the peasantry should be enfranchised. It seemed enough to him that the power of the landlords should be maintained, a power to be benevolently exercised and strictly limited by law.
Both these adulators of Old Russia, Ščerbatov and Boltin, were Voltairians, and this is an instructive instance of the perplexing contrasts between Old and New Russia. The raskolniki had defended Old Russia against Peter. At the close of the eighteenth century, in the camp of the liberal friends to reform, the contrast between the old and the new was philosophically formulated, preference being given to the new. Catherine's morals were too loose for the taste of prince and general, but they supported her reactionary tendencies in politics.
* ↑ In Peter's reign a new designation was found tor the nobility. The old names dvorjanin (literally, courtier) and bojar were replaced by caredvorec (approxirnately, tsar's man) and by the Polish szlachta (nobleman).
* ↑ In Muscovy the descendants of the princes had naturally become very numerous, and had consequently lost prestige before the days of Peter, princes were noble by race merely, not titular princes. The princely families were the offspring of Rjurik, and also of Lithuanian, Tatar, and other princes. In contemporary Russia a prince without office or wealth is less regarded than a count or even a baron.
* ↑ This oath was abolished in 1901, but section 65 of the state fundamental law runs as follows: "In the government of the church, autocratic authority works through the instrumentality of the holy directing synod, constituted by that authority."
* ↑ The way in which the Russians obtained admittance into the Catholic schools of Poland and of Europe is worthy of mention. To secure an entry they had to make outward profession of Catholicism, returning to the Orthodox faith when they went back to Russia. Both Theophan and Javorskii had constrained their consciences to this hypocrisy.
* ↑ I think, for example, of Jers Sčetinnikov (a popular satire upon Moscow judicial procedure during the fifteenth, sixteenth. and seventeenth centuries), and of the writings of Frol Skobčev and others, wherein a natural outlook and a natural style, unaffected by theology, find expression.
* ↑ The social significance of the rising is incontestable. At the outset it was directed against the officials, and during the rebellion 1,572 landlords were killed. The Cossacks participated in the leadership, and it may be remembered that the southern Cossacks had already rebelled against Peter. In their campaigns under Hmelnickii the Cossacks symbolised their program by three gallows, upon which a noble, a jew, and a dog had respectively been hanged. The hetmanship of the Cossacks was abolished by Catherine in 1764.
* ↑ That is to say, peasants male and female to the number of about 2,000,000 were transferred from the church to the state, their lot being alleviated thereby.
* ↑ The view of certain Russian historians that the modern history of Russia begins with Catherine is, in my opinion, erroneous.
* ↑ The juristic faculty of Moscow university had at first but one professor, the number being subsequently increased to three. On several occasions the number of students sank to one.
* ↑ In 1724 there were no secular elementary schools and 46 church schools, from which ecclesiastical seminaries developed in the course of the eighteenth century.
* ↑ Novikov was imprisoned in 1792, and the lodges were threatened. Emperor Paul set Novikov at liberty. As crown prince he had been on intimate terms with the freemasons, and it is probable that Catherine looked askance at the friendship. Toleration was re-extended to freemasonry by Alexander I in the year 1805.
* ↑ Catherine sent Novikov to be examined by the archbishop of Moscow, who reported to the empress that it was his prayer that the Russian church and the world at large might contain such Christians.
* ↑ I may mention in this connection Heraskov (the earlier works), the brothers Eminov, Rahmanin, Dmitriev-Mamonov, Čulkov, Popov, the brothers Ismailov, L'vov, and Zahar'in—and, of course, Radiščev.
* ↑ A few instances only need be given from the days following Peter. Consider Anne's relationship with Biron. Elizabeth was properly speaking illegitimate, and was secretly married to Razumovskii. Catherine I and Elizabeth were addicted to drink. Catherine&nbspwII, whose grandson Nicholas I described her as a "crowned whore," from early in her reign made a male harem of the court, and this naturally involved enormous expenditure. During the years from 1762 to 1783, the family of Orlov received from Catherine "the Great" (as she was named by the Prince de Ligne) 17,000,000 roubles and 45.000 "souls." The moral corruption issuing from Catherine and her lovers can be readily imagined. A few figures will suffice. During the twenty-tho months in which he was the favourite, Vasilčikov, lieutenant in the guards, received 100,000 roubles in cash, presents valued at 50,000 roubles, a palace costing 100,000 roubles and furnished for 50,000 roubles, 7,000 souls, and an allowance of 20,000 roubles. In the course of two years Potemkin was given 37,000 souls, and the money value of his other gifts was 9,000,000 roubles. To Zavodskii, during eighteen months, were given 9,800 souls, 15,000 roubles in cash, presents worth 80,000 roubles, furniture to the value of 30,000 roubles, and an allowance of 10,000 roubles. Zorin, a Serb, received in one year an estate valued at 600,000 roubles, 500,000 roubles in cash, presents worth 200,000 roubles, a post in Poland with a salary of 12,000 roubles. Korsakov, an officer in the army, was given during sixteen months presents to the value of 150,000 roubles, 4,000 souls, 100,000 roubles to pay off his debts, a further sum of 100.000 roubles, 2.000 roubles a month as travelling allowance, and a palace. Upon Lanskoi were bestowed jewelled breast-pins costing 80,000 roubles, and 30,000 roubles for the discharge of his debts.
* ↑ It is characteristic of the conditions of the day, conditions still prevailing, that Radiščev's book was seized in the year 1790, and that Ščerbatov did not venture to have his work printed. Both were first published in London in 1858. Radiščev's Journey could not be circulated by the Russian book trade until 1905. Tatiščev, promoter of culture and champion of autocracy, had a similar fate with the work he wrote in 1733, entitled Discussion Concerning the Value of Science, and it was not published until 1882.