page_title: Personality and reputation of Paul I of Russia
section_title: Historiography
hierarchical_section_title: Personality and reputation of Paul I of Russia / Opinions and historiography / Historiography
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster from Lieutenant Kijé film (1934)
context_page_description: Paul I was Emperor of All Russia between 1796 and 1801, when he was deposed and assassinated in a palace coup. During his lifetime contemporaries, both at home and abroad speculated as to his mental health, and modern historians have continued to do so. Paul succeeded to the throne on the death of his mother, Catherine the Great, and almost immediately launched a campaign to revoke her legacy. Paul appears to have borne a great hatred for his mother and her acts as Empress, on account of both his upbringing—a lonely one spent mostly away from court—and the fact that Paul held her responsible for the overthrow and death of his father, Peter III, from whom she had taken the throne. As a result, Paul revoked many of her decrees from the day of his accession, and at the same time, he denigrated her memory and promoted that of Peter. Where Catherine had generally worked with the Russian nobility and treated them sympathetically, Paul distrusted them as a class. He believed them to have become weak and disorganised to need strict treatment; as a result, he revoked many of their privileges and treated them harshly.
context_section_description: A petty tyrant, regular outbursts of intense rage, with the "salient feature" of his policy being to reverse his mother's policy where he could. Atkin sums up Paul's problem in that he "had an unhappy talent for making even his wisest moves appear ill-considered". Ragsdale suggests that Paul's problem with the army was that he overly focussed on superficial details rather than broad reorganisations, which contemporaries called the "Gatchina spirit": "parades and manoeuvres, uniforms and equipment, awards and punishments, in short with the minutiae of army life, and a corresponding neglect of weightier matters likely to prove decisive in war: morale, professional training [and] technical progress". Paul's changes were nether revolutionary nor swiftly imposed, argues Waliszewski, but his policies have been summarised as "instability and capriciousness". While Wortman suggests that hos reign was an "embarrassment" for his successors.
  Ragsdale also argues that it is not impossible that certain of his intimates, such as Count Pahlen, manipulated Paul and events surrounding him so as to create the impression of bizarre behaviour as a way of subtly paving the way for the eventual coup, although he notes that there is little that can be done about that. McGrew argues that "even if Paul was not the monster his detractors claimed he was, it is doubtful he deserves the approving tone which marks some recent writing", as even some of those who sympathised with him at the time criticised him. Historian David R. Stone argues that Paul's edicts over round hats and cravats, for example, were "small matter that symbolized a larger shortcoming". It is also likely that Paul believed that his policies, while hated by those they were directed at, were, in fact, improving people's happiness. If nothing else, says Ragsdale, "there is no denying that the man was bizarre and that his conduct was radically imprudent".
  The historian John W. Strong says that Paul I has traditionally had "the dubious distinction of being known as the worst Tsar in the history of the Romanov dynasty", as well as there being a question about his sanity, although Strong concludes that such "generalisations ... are no longer satisfactory". Anatole G. Mazour called Paul  "one of the most colourful personalities" of his dynasty. Russian historians have traditionally been dismissive of Paul on account of his eccentricities. I. A. Fedosov called him a "crazy despot [who] threatened to discredit the very idea of absolutism". Dixon argues that Paul was no more absolutist than Catherine had been; for her too, "consensus had to be achieved on her terms".  Paul's reign was an object lesson, suggest Ryeff, and regardless of his good intentions, in the need for security and calm, rather than his brand of arbitrary government. MacKenzie and Curran summarise the significance of Paul's campaign against his mother's legacy as demonstrating the dangers of autocracy in irresponsible hands, and the nobility realised that "autocratic power could destroy privileges as well as grant them". A "frivolous petty tyrant", suggest McGrew, while Duke argues that Paul's "anecdotal" brutality have caricatured him. Grey has argued that while his domestic policy may have been rational in intention, it was anything but in its execution. Professor Bernard Pares has called Paul "essentially a tyrant". Historian Lindsey Hughes says that Paul's reign contrasted sharply with his "laid back" predecessor.
  McGrew, like Rostochpin at the time, argues that Paul was let down by his subordinates, who were "either venal or incompetent". He also blames personal qualities, however, describing his rages as tantrums that made him appear a "small-minded martinet who might order but could never lead".
  For Dixon, Paul's reign exemplifies the importance of the individual in history, in how easy it was for Paul to dismantle so much of Catherine's work in such a short space of time. Conversely, for Marc Raeff, Paul's reign demonstrates the danger of failing to institutionalise the bureaucracy, as there was an inherent risk i
caption: Poster for the 1934 film Lieutenant Kijé
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