Autocracy, despotism and democracy - bet 43

"The unsuccessful conclusion of the Crimean war was connected by the Westerners with God's punishment striking Russia for all her vices and absurdities, by which they understood the existence in the country of serfdom and the despotic character of the State administration. Despotism and serfdom, as the Westerners noted, hindered the normal development of the country, preserving its economic, political and military backwardness." (A.I. Sheparneva, "Krymskaia vojna v osveschenii zapadnikov" (The Crimean war as interpreted by the Westerners), Voprosy Istorii (Questions of History), 2005 (9), p. 37).
173
Hayward, introduction to Chloe Obolensky, The Russian Empire: A Portrait in Photographs, London: Jonathan Cape, 1980, p. 13.
174
Nicholas I had long planned to emancipate the serfs, and was able to improve the lot of the State serfs considerably. Thus L.A. Tikhomirov wrote: "Under Emperor Nicholas I the government undertook a restructuring of the State peasants. The Emperor made a very good choice for the executor of his thought in Count Kiselev, one of the greatest statesmen that Russia has ever given birth to. Thus one of the most remarkable social organizations in our history was created. Lands the size of the whole of Europe were united in the hands of the State, the peasants were abundantly endowed [with them], and the system of repatriations gave an exit to new generations of the farming class. A remarkable system of national provision for the struggle against poor harvests was created. The improvement of the farming culture of 20 million peasants became the object of obligatory and conscious work on the part of the ministry. Moreover, the peasants were personally free, and their communities were ruled by men chosen by themselves. After two decades of effort this extensive organisation was finally put on its feet." ("Pochemy ia perestal byt' revoliutsionerom" (Why I ceased to be a revolutionary), Kritika Demokratii (A Critique of Democracy), Moscow, 1997, p. 26) (V.M.)
175
Polnoe Zhizneopisanie Sviatitelia Ignatia Brianchaninova (A Complete Biography of the Holy Hierarch Ignatius Brianchaninov), Moscow, 2002, pp. 317, 319-320.
176
Eric Hobsbawm writes: "There were 148 outbreaks of peasant unrest in 1826-34, 216 in 1835-44, 348 in 1844-54, culminating in the 474 outbreaks of the last years preceding the emancipation of 1861." (The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848, London: Abacus, 1962, p. 362) Ronald Seth writes: "A Russian historian, Vasily Semevsky, who died in 1916, using official records as a basis, claimed that there were 550 peasant uprisings in the sixty years of the nineteenth century prior to liberation; while a later Soviet historian, Inna Ignatovich, insists, upon equally valid records, that there were in fact 1,467 such rebellions in this period. And in addition to these uprisings serfs deserted their masters in hundreds and thousands, sometimes in great mass movement, when rumours circulated that freedom could be found 'somewhere in the Caucasus'." (The Russian Terrorists, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1966, pp. 20-21) (V.M.)
177
Krivosheev and Krivosheev, op. cit., pp. 10-11.
178
Soloviev, in Krivosheev and Krivosheev, op. cit., p. 17.
179
Archimandrite Constantine (Zaitsev), "Velikaia Reforma Osvobozhdenia Krestian. 1861-1961" ("The Great Reform of the Emancipation of the Serfs. 1861-1961"), Pravoslavnij Put' (The Orthodox Way), Jordanville, 1961, p. 24.
180
Oliver Figes, Natasha's Dream, London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 144-145.
181
This applied also to the production of armaments. The Crimean war had revealed Russian rifles to be very inefficient. Therefore priority had to be given to new armaments technologies and factories. But that required a free labour force instead of the system of forced labour of serfs that was then in operation& For "in the words of a report on the Tula Armory in 1861: 'It would seem to be generally indisputable that only free men are capable of honest work. He who from childhood has been forced to work is incapable of assuming responsibility as long as his social condition remains unchanged.'" (David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, London: Abacus, 1999, p. 241). (V.M.)
182
Hosking, Russia. People and Empire, 1552-1917, London: HarperCollins, 1997, p. 318.
183
Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, London: Penguin, 2002, pp. 181-182.
184
Figes, Natasha's Dream, p. 144. "More than 80% of the small and middle nobility were in debt to the state on the security of their own estates, and this debt would have been unrepayable if it had not been for the reform. The value of the payments for the land cleared many debts." (Krivosheev and Krivosheev, op. cit. p. 20).
185
Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1899-1919, London: Collins Harvill, 1990, pp. 87-98.
186
Lebedev, op. cit., pp. 341-342.
187
Pipes, op. cit., p. 98.
188
Polnoe Zhizneopisanie Sviatitelia Ignatia, pp. 335-336.
189
Volgin, Poslednij God Dostoevskogo (Dostoyevsky's Last Year), Moscow, 1986, pp. 32-33.
190
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, January, 1881, London: Cassell, pp. 1032-1033.
191
Figes, Natasha's Dream p. 145.
192
Pipes, op. cit., pp. 98-99.
193
Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev), Zhizn' i deiatel'nost' mitropolita Filareta (The Life and Activity of Metropolitan Philaret), Tula, 1994.
194
Philaret, in Bishop Plato, On the Question of Freedom of Conscience, Kiev, 1902.
195
St. John of Kronstadt, Moia Zhizn' o Khriste (My Life in Christ), Moscow, 1894.
196
Victor Afanasyev, Elder Barsanuphius of Optina, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Press, 2000, pp. 216, 217. The old family retainer in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard also believed that the rot set in with "Freedom" (Hayward, in Obolensky, op. cit., p. 13).
197
Lebedev, op. cit., pp. 342-343.
198
Roberts, History of the World, London: Helicon, 1992, p. 612.
199
Nazarov, "Krovavaia mest' slavianskim varvaram" (Bloody revenge on the Slavic barbarians), address to the international scientific conference, 'The Jewish-Bolshevik coup of 1917 as thepreconditionof the red terror and forced starvations',
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rocornews/174447.html.
200
Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station, London: Phoenix, 2004, pp. 256-258, 259-260, 261.
201
M.S. Anderson, The Ascendancy of Europe, 1815-1914, London: Longman, 1985, pp. 350-351.
202
Bakunin, in Julius Braunthal, History of the International 1864-1914, 1966, p. 139.
203
Engels, in Chomsky, Understanding Power, pp. 31-32
204
Wrangel, in Wilson, op. cit., p. 269.
205
Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground, in The Best Stories of Dostoyevsky, New York, 1955, p. 136. Already in the eighteenth century the Scottish philosopher David Hume had argued that "reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will," and reason "can never oppose passion in the direction of the will". For "'tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger" (A Treatise of Human Nature, book II, section 3).
206
Gareth Stedman-Jones writes: "Visions of the disappearance of the state [in Marx] belonged to the 1840s: 1848 dashed these innocent hopes" ("The Routes of Revolution", BBC History Magazine, vol. 3 (6), June, 2002, p. 36).
207
Berlin, "Nationalism", in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, p. 584. In fact, the peasants of Russia were not as poor, comparatively speaking, as is often thought. See the recollections of English travellers in Krivosheev and Krivosheev, op. cit., p. 10.
208
Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx and the Revolutionary Movement in Russia.
209
Dostoyevsky, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij (Complete Works), Moscow, 1914, vol. I, p. 150.
210
Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, Penguin Magarshack translation, p. 585.
211
Dostoyevsky, The Idiot, p. 586.
212
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, 1877.
213
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, August, 1880; Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenij (Complete Works),Moscow, 1984, vol. 26, pp. 151, 169. Cf. Thomas Hobbes: "The papacy is not other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof" (Leviathan).
214
Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, November, 1877, pp. 910-912.
215
Chernov, "Lenin", in Foreign Affairs, January-February, 2012, p. 12.
216
Brianchaninov, Pis'ma, no. 283; translated as "Concerning the Impossibility of Salvation for the Heterodox and Heretics", The Orthodox Word, March-April, 1965, and Orthodox Life, January-February, 1991.
217
Brianchaninov, in Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 339, 340.
218
Zhizneopisanie Episkopa Ignatia Brianchaninova, p. 485. In the last decade of his life the holy hierarch composed notes for an agenda of a Council of the Russian Church that would tackle the grave problems facing her. See http://catacomb.org.ua/modules.php?name=Pages&go=page&pid=1968.
219
Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, p. 349.
220
St. Ambrose of Optina, Pis'ma (Letters), Sergiev Posad, 1908, part 1, pp. 21-22.
221
Bishop Theophan, in Fomin and Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 346, 347.
222
Svetil'nik Pravoslavia (Candlestick of Orthodoxy),Moscow, 1912, pp. 5-6; in "Zhizneopisanie Protoiereia Valentina Amphiteatrova" (Life of Protopriest Valentine Amphiteatrov), Pravoslavnaia Zhizn' (Orthodox Life), 53, NQ 11 (658), November, 2004, pp. 9-10.
223
Monk Boris (Ephremov), "Sergius Nilus", Pravoslavnaia Rus'(Orthodox Russia), N 1 (1454), January 1/14, 1992, pp. 5-9.
224
Solzhenitsyn, Dvesti Let Vmeste (Two Hundred Years Together),Moscow, 2001, volume 1, p. 136.
225
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., pp. 146-148.
226
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., pp. 154, 155.
227
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., pp. 165-166.
228
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., p. 213.
229
Vital, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789-1939, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 403.
230
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., pp. 218, 219, 220.
231
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., pp. 177-178.
232
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., pp. 167-168.
233
Solzhenitsyn, op. cit., pp. 197, 198.
234
Pobedonostev, in Cohen and Major, op. cit., p. 627.
235
Dostoyevksy, The Diary of a Writer, March, 1877, II, 3; translated by Boris Brasol, Haslemere: Ianmead, 1984, pp. 648-651.
236
Hosking, Russia: People & Empire, London: HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 391-392.
237
Seth, The Russian Terrorists, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1966, pp. 28-29.
238
Seth, op. cit., pp. 30-31.
239
Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 342-343.
240
David Magarshack, introduction to The Devils, London: Penguin, 1971, pp. x-xi.
241
Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, pp. 273-274.
242
Lopukhin, Istoria Khristianskoj Tserkvi v XIX veke (A History of the Christian Church in the 19th Century),St. Petersburg, 1901, vol. II, pp. 47-48.
243
Golicz, "The Russians Shall Not Have Constantinople", History Today, September, 2003, p. 39.
244
Figes, Crimea, London: Allen Lane, 2010, p. 9.
245
Leontiev, "Pis'ma o vostochnykh delakh - I" (Letters on Eastern Matters - I), in Vostok, Rossia i Slavianstvo (The East, Russia and Slavdom), Moscow, 1996, p. 354. Cf. Mansel, Constantinople, p. 248: "Wellington revealed the great truth: 'The Ottoman Empire stands not for the benefit of the Turks but of Christian Europe.' Metternich pronounced the preservation of the Ottoman Empire in Europe 'a political necessity for Austria'."
246
For example, "when in the eighteenth century the Orthodox in Syria complained to the Porte of Catholic propaganda, the following decree was issued: 'Some of the devilish French monks, with evil purposes and unjust intentions, are passing through the country and are filling the Greek rayah with their worthless French doctrine; by means of stupid speeches they are deflecting the rayah from its ancient faith and are inculcating the French faith. Such French monks have no right to remain anywhere except in those places where their consuls are located; they should not undertake any journeys or engage in missionary work" (in Fr. Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1963, p. 284).
247
Leontiev, "Pis'ma o vostochnykh delakh" (Letters on Eastern Affairs), Vostok, Rossia i Slavianstvo, op. cit., p. 362.
248
St. Theophan's Life, in Archimandrite Nicon (Ivanov) and Protopriest Nicholas (Likhomakov), Zhitia Russkikh Sviatykh (Lives of the Russian Saints), Tutaev, 2000, vol. 2, p. 716.
249
Lopukhin, op. cit., pp. 136-137.
250
Sir Geoffrey Hosking, Russia. People and Empire, 1552-1917, London: HarperCollins, 1997, p. 369.
251
The famous Serbian Bishop Nikolai (Velimirovich) was inclined to deny the very existence of Pan-Slavism, saying that it was invented by the Germans: "Who thought up Pan-Slavism and spoke about it to the world? The Pan-Germanists! Yes, it was precisely the Pan-Germanists who thought up Pan-Slavism and sounded out about it to the whole world. Man always judges about others from himself. If Pan-Germanism exists, then why should Pan-Slavism not exist? However, this analogy, however much it may appear to represent the rule, is inaccurate in this case. Pan-Germanism existed and exists, while Pan-Slavism was not and is not now. Everybody knows that there is a Pan-German party in both Germany and Austria. We know that there exists Pan-German journalism, and pan-German clubs, and German literature, and pan-German organizations, and German banks. But in the Slavic world, by contrast, there exists nothing of the kind. As a Slav, I would have known about it, and as a free man I would have spoken about it all openly. However, in the Slavic world there exists something which is somewhat different from the Pan-Slavic spectre - a feeling, only a feeling, which is to be found more often in literature than in politics - Slavophilism. This is the same feeling of blood kinship and sympathy that exists in Italy towards the French, which is far from political Pan-Romanism, or the same feeling of kinship that exists in the United States towards the English and in England towards the Americans, although here also it is far from any kind of fantastic Pan-Anglicanism. It is a sentimental striving for kin, a nostalgia of the blood, a certain organic fear of being separated from one's own. And if in this Slavophilism the penetrating note of love is just a little more audible than in Romanophilism or Anglophilism (and I think that it is audible), then this is completely natural and comprehensible. People who suffer are closer to each other than people who are lords. We Slavs, first of all as Slavs, and secondly as oppressed slaves, love and strive towards those who suffer from the same injustice, from the same arrogant pride, from the same disdain. Who can understand a slave better than a slave? And who is more likely to help a sufferer than a sufferer?..." (Dusha Serbii (The Soul of Serbia), Moscow, 2007, pp. 572-573).