by Riazanovsky
Yet this approach, in its turn, must be kept within its proper frame of reference. For, while Russian economy and society certainly did develop in the first half of the nineteenth century, the empire of the tsars failed to keep pace with other European countries. Whereas capitalism began to affect Russia, it was revolutionizing Great Britain, Belgium, and France. Russian industry was less important in the total European and world picture in 1860 than in 1800, and it had to be protected by very high tariffs. Although the Russian urban classes rose rather rapidly during the first half of the nineteenth century, they remained extremely weak compared to the bourgeoisie in different countries of western Europe. Whereas the country obtained some steamships and railroads, its transportation system failed to serve adequately either the peacetime needs or the needs of the Crimean War. The Russians' weapons and military equip-
ment proved inferior to those of their European opponents; the Black Sea fleet, composed of wooden sailing vessels, could not compete with the steam-propelled warships of the allies. And, obviously, in the middle of the nineteenth century Russia could afford even less than at the time of Peter the Great to disregard other states and to live entirely as a world apart. This international dimension of the Russian problem brings into clearer focus Alexander I's vacillations, Nicholas I's stubborn refusal to move, and the urgent need of "great reforms."
XXVIII
RUSSIAN CULTURE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Pushkin represents an extraordinary and, perhaps, a unique manifestation of the Russian spirit, said Gogol. I shall add on my own: also prophetic… His appearance helps greatly to illuminate our dark road with a guiding light.
DOSTOEVSKY
Every age, every nation contains in itself the possibility of original art, provided it believes in something, provided it loves something, provided it has some religion, some ideal.
KHOMIAKOV
It has often been noted that the farther east in Europe one goes the more abstract and general political ideals become. The English agitated for the particular and historic rights of Englishmen; the French for the universal and timeless rights of man; the Germans sought freedom in the realm of the "pure" or "absolute" idea… It is also roughly true that the farther east one goes, the more absolute, centralized, and bureaucratic governments become, while the middle groups between an ignorant peasantry and a military state grow smaller and weaker. Moreover, the greater the pressure of the state on the individual, the more formidable the obstacles to his independence, and the greater his social loneliness are, the more sweeping, general, and abstract are ideologies of protest or compensation.
MALIA
In culture, the eighteenth century in Russia had represented a period of learning from the West. The learning, to be sure, continued in the nineteenth century and, in fact, became all the time both broader and deeper. But, beginning with the reign of Alexander I, Russia developed a glorious literary culture of its own, which in time became the accepted standard of excellence in its homeland and a model to be imitated by many writers in other countries. The "golden age of Russian literature" has been dated roughly from 1820 to 1880 - from Pushkin's first major poems to Dostoevsky's last novel - most of it thus falling in the period preceding the "great reforms." While the arts in Russia did not keep up with Russian literature, they too advanced in the first half of the nineteenth century. Music, for example, developed along creative and original lines, leaving far behind the imitative efforts of the time of Catherine the Great. Russian science and scholarship also showed noteworthy progress. If the eighteenth
century had its Michael Lomonosov, the reign of Nicholas I witnessed the epoch-making work of Nicholas Lobachevsky. Moreover, whereas Lomonosov had remained something of a paradox in his age, unique, isolated, and misunderstood, learning in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century gradually acquired a broader and more consecutive character, with its own schools of thought, traditions, and contributions to the total intellectual effort of Western civilization. Even philosophical, political, social, and economic doctrines grew and developed in a remarkable manner in spite of autocracy and strict censorship.
Although people from the lower classes began to acquire prominence on the eve of the "great reforms," Russian culture of the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I was essentially gentry culture. Its tone and charm have been best preserved in magnificent works by its representatives, such as Tolstoy's War and Peace, Turgenev's A Gentry Nest, and Serge Aksakov's family chronicle. Supported by the labor of serfs and confined in a narrow social group - not unlike the culture of the antebellum South in the United States - Russian culture of the first half of the nineteenth century marked, just the same, a great step forward for the country and left many creations of lasting value. The educated gentry, whose numbers grew, continued to enjoy a cosmopolitan, literary upbringing at home, with emphasis on the French language and with the aid of a battery of foreign and Russian tutors. For illustration one can turn to Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy as well as to a host of other reminiscences of the period. Next, the sons of the gentry often attended select military schools before entering the army as officers, where again the French language and proper social manners were emphasized. Also, members of the gentry often collected valuable libraries on their estates, followed with interest developments in the West, and even frequently traveled abroad to learn about western Europe and its culture first hand. More and more of them attended universities, both at home and in foreign countries.
Education
University education, as well as secondary education in state schools, became more readily available after Alexander I's reforms. With the creation of the Ministry of Education in 1802, the empire was divided into six educational regions, each headed by a curator. The plan called for a university in every region, a secondary school in every provincial center, and an improved primary school in every district. By the end of the reign the projected expansion had been largely completed: Russia then possessed 6 universities, 48 secondary state schools, and 337 improved primary state schools. Alexander I founded universities in Kazan, Kharkov, and St. Petersburg - the latter first being established as a pedagogical institute -
transformed the "main school," or academy, in Vilna into a university, and revived the German university in Dorpat, which with the University of Moscow made a total of six. In addition, a university existed in the Grand Duchy of Finland: originally in Abo - called Turku in Finnish - and from 1827 in Helsingfors, or Helsinki. Following a traditional European pattern, Russian universities enjoyed a broad measure of autonomy. While university enrollments numbered usually a few hundred or less each, and the total of secondary school students rose only to about 5,500 by 1825, these figures represented undeniable progress for Russia. Moreover, private initiative emerged to supplement the government efforts. It played an important part in the creation of the University of Kharkov, and it established two private institutions of higher education which were eventually to become the Demidov Law School in Iaroslavl and the Historico-Philological Institute of Prince Bezborodko in Nezhin. Finally, it may be noted that the celebrated Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo, which Pushkin attended, was also founded during the reign of Alexander I.
The obscurantist purges of the last years of Alexander's rule hurt Russian universities, especially the one in Kazan. But Magnitsky and his associates held power only briefly. The many educational policies under Nicholas I that proved to be noxious rather than beneficial to Russian schools and learning were of greater importance. During the thirty years of Official Nationality, with Uvarov himself serving as minister of education from 1833 to 1849, the government tried to centralize and standardize education; to limit the individual's schooling according to his social background, so that each person would remain in his assigned place in life; to foster the official ideology exclusively; and, above all, to eliminate every trace or possibility of intellectual opposition or subversion.
As to centralization and standardiza
tion, Nicholas I and his associates did everything in their power to introduce absolute order and regularity into the educational system of Russia. The state even extended its minute control to private schools and indeed to education in the home. By a series of laws and rules issued in 1833-35, private institutions, which were not to increase in number in the future except where public schooling was not available, received regulations and instructions from central authorities, while inspectors were appointed to assure their compliance. "They had to submit to the law of unity which formed the foundation of the reign." Home education came under state influence through rigid government control of teachers: Russian private tutors began to be considered state employees, subject to appropriate examinations and enjoying the same pensions and awards as other comparable officials; at the same time the government strictly prohibited the hiring of foreign instructors who did not possess the requisite certificates testifying to academic competence and exemplary moral character. Nicholas I himself led the way in
supervising and inspecting schools in Russia, and the emperor's assistants followed his example.
The restrictive policies of the Ministry of Education resulted logically from its social views and aims. In order to assure that each class of Russians obtained only "that part which it needs from the general treasury of enlightenment," the government resorted to increased tuition rates and to such requirements as special certificates of leave that pupils belonging to the lower layers of society had to obtain from their village or town before they could attend secondary school. Members of the upper class, by contrast, received inducements to continue their education, many boarding schools for the gentry being created for that purpose. Ideally, in the government's scheme of things - and reality failed to live up to the ideal - children of peasants and of lower classes in general were to attend only parish schools or other schools of similar educational level, students of middle-class origin were to study in the district schools, while secondary schools and universities catered primarily, although not exclusively, to the gentry. Special efforts were made throughout the reign to restrict the education of the serfs to elementary and "useful" subjects. Schools for girls, which were under the patronage of the empress dowager and the jurisdiction of the Fourth Department of His Majesty's Own Chancery, served the same aims as those for boys.
The inculcation of the true doctrine, that of Official Nationality, and a relentless struggle against all pernicious ideas constituted, as we know, essential activities of the Ministry of Education. Only officially approved views received endorsement, and they had to be accepted without question rather than discussed. Teachers and students, lectures and books were generally suspect and required a watchful eye. In 1834 full-time inspectors were introduced into universities to keep vigil over the behavior of students outside the classroom. Education and knowledge, in the estimate of the emperor and his associates, could easily become subversion! As already mentioned, with the revolutionary year of 1848 unrelieved repression set in.
Still, the government of Nicholas I made some significant contributions to the development of education in Russia. Thus, it should be noted that the Ministry of Education spent large sums to provide new buildings, laboratories, and libraries, and other aids to scholarship such as the excellent Pulkovo observatory; that teachers' salaries were substantially increased - extraordinarily increased in the case of professors, according to the University Statute of 1835; that, in general, the government of Nicholas I showed a commendable interest in the physical plant necessary for education and in the material well-being of those engaged in instruction. Nor was quality neglected. Uvarov in particular did much to raise educational and scholarly standards in Russia in the sixteen years during
which he headed the ministry. Especially important proved to be the establishment of many new chairs, the corresponding opening up of numerous new fields of learning in the universities of the empire, and the practice of sending promising young Russian scholars abroad for extended training. The Russian educational system, with all its fundamental flaws, came to emphasize academic thoroughness and high standards. Indeed, the government utilized the standards to make education more exclusive at all levels of schooling. Following the Polish rebellion, the Polish University of Vilna was closed; in 1833 a Russian university was opened in Kiev instead. The government of Nicholas I created no other new universities, but it did establish a number of technical and "practical" institutions of higher learning, such as a technological institute, a school of jurisprudence, and a school of architecture, as well as schools of arts and crafts, agriculture, and veterinary medicine.
Science and Scholarship
With the expansion of higher education, science and scholarship grew in Russia. Mathematics led the way. Nicholas Lobachevsky, who lived from 1793 to 1856 and taught at the University of Kazan, was the greatest Russian mathematician of that, or indeed any, period. The "Copernicus of geometry" left his mark in the history of thought by formulating a non-Euclidian geometry. Starting from an attempt to prove the old Euclidian axiom that on a given plane it is possible to draw through a point not on a given line one and only one line parallel to the given line, and proceeding by trying to refute other alternatives, Lobachevsky found his task impossible. He then faced the consequences of his discovery and went on to postulate and develop a non-Euclidian geometry, within which the Euclidian scheme represented but a single instance. While Lobachevsky's revolutionary views received scant recognition from his contemporaries either in Russia or in other countries - although, to be exact, he was not quite alone, for a few Western scholars were approaching similar conclusions at about the same time - they nevertheless represented a major breakthrough in the direction of the modern development of mathematics and the physical sciences. Several other gifted Russian mathematicians of the first half of the nineteenth century also contributed to the growth of their subject.
Astronomy too fared exceptionally well in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1839 the celebrated Pulkovo observatory was constructed near St. Petersburg. Directed by one of the leading astronomers of the age who was formerly professor at the University of Dorpat, Frederick William Jacob Struve, and possessing the largest telescope in the world at that time and in general the most up-to-date equipment, Pulkovo quickly became not only a great center of astronomy in Russia,
but also a valuable training ground for astronomers from other European countries and the United States. Struve investigated over three thousand double stars, developed methods to calculate the weight of stars and to apply statistics to a study of them, and dealt with such problems as the distribution of stars, the shape of our galaxy, and the absorption of light in interstellar space, a phenomenon which he was the first to establish. Struve's associates and students - in fact, several other members of the Struve family - further expanded the study of astronomy in Russia.
Physics and chemistry also developed in the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. Russian contributors to these branches of knowledge included an early experimental physicist in electricity and other fields, Professor Basil Petrov, who was on the staff of the Medical-Surgical Academy and taught himself physics, and a distinguished chemist, Professor Nicholas Zinin. Zinin worked and taught in Kazan and St. Petersburg and established the first prominent school of Russian chemists. He is perhaps best remembered as a pioneer in the production of aniline dyes.
The natural sciences in Russia grew with the physical, their practitioners including such luminaries as the great Baltic German embryologist Academician Charles Ernest Baer. As in the eighteenth century, the natural sciences were enriched by some remarkable expeditions and discoveries. Russians continued to explore Siberia and traveled repeatedly from the Baltic "around the world" to Alaska. They discovered numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean, which, however, the Russian government did not choose to claim. And in 1821 an expedition led by Thaddeus Belingshausen discovered the antarctic continent.
The humanities and the social sciences p
rogressed similarly in Russia in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Oriental studies, for example, profited both from Russia's proximity to much of Asia and from Uvarov's special patronage. They became established in several universities and made important contributions to knowledge, ranging from pioneer descriptions of some Central Asiatic peoples to Father Iakinf Bichurin's fundamental work on China. Indeed the Russian Orthodox mission in Peking served from the time of Peter the Great to the revolutions of 1917 as an institute of sinology.
The writing of history was developed and gained a new public. Nicholas Karamzin, who must be mentioned more than once in connection with the evolution of the Russian language and literature, also became the first widely popular historian. His richly documented twelve-volume History of the Russian State, which began to appear in 1816 and which was left unfinished in the account of the Time of Troubles when the author died in 1826, won the enthusiastic acclaim of the educated public, who enjoyed Karamzin's extremely readable reconstruction of the colorful Russian past. The historian, to be sure, tried to edify as well as entertain: he argued
throughout his work that autocracy and a strong state made Russia great and must remain inviolable. In 1811 Karamzin had expressed similar views more succinctly in his secret Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia given to Alexander I to counteract Speransky's reformist influence. In Russian universities new chairs were founded in history. The hard-working Michael Pogodin, a proponent of Official Nationality, became in 1835 the first professor of Russian history proper at the University of Moscow, to be succeeded in 1845 by a much greater scholar, Serge Soloviev, the bulk of whose work, however, belongs to Alexander II's reign.