Russia A History

by Gregory L. Freeze

  Indeed, journals and publishing circles were the principal foci of secular intellectual activity. As such, they were decidedly noble (dominated by service nobles) and cosmopolitan, housed either in Moscow or St Petersburg. Their audiences, predictably, were also urban and noble; for example, over three-quarters of all subscribers to journals were members of the hereditary nobility. Book readers were less likely to subscribe (hence register their status), but here too the vast majority came from the nobility.

  Significantly, the new cultural activity gradually moved intellectual life towards autonomy from state and monarch. Court patronage did remain as an essential feature of literary and cultural life; until 1783, for instance, nearly all secular publications came from institutional presses, mainly the typographies at the Academy of Sciences and Moscow University. Increasingly, however, these presses left editorial decisions to the literati themselves, for they printed most manuscripts with few changes, especially if the author or translator helped pay the bill. Even this modicum of control vanished in 1783, when Catherine gave private individuals the right to own presses without prior approval.

  That decree effectively neutralized the monarch’s ability to direct and control literature, not because of any ideological conflict, but because writers could now pursue literature independently of the government. In large measure the literati gained this autonomy precisely because they had not posed a threat to the existing structures of authority, whether formal or informal. In fact, the vast majority of writers shared Catherine’s enlightenment vision of the state as the principal agent of improvement and moral direction; few raised basic questions about the existing social order. All concurred with the empress that Russia was part of Europe, that reinforcing this affinity served the best interests of the fatherland and individual. Some dissented, it is true. Most notably, the great journalist and publisher Nikolai Novikov railed against mindless slavishness towards French fashion (‘Voltairianism’) and launched major publication ventures, such as the Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika (‘Ancient Russian Library’) in twenty volumes, to celebrate Russia’s own antiquity and traditional culture. But even he devoted immense attention to translations and adaptations from contemporary French and English letters. For example, the so-called satirical journals of 1769–74 (The Painter, The Drone, Bits of This and That, and others) included pieces purloined directly from Joseph Addison’s Spectator.

  During the 1770s and 1780s, however, the initial concord between writers and empress gradually deteriorated, largely over such issues as French influence and political virtue. Some traditionalist voices, such as M. M. Shcherbatov’s On the Corruption of Morals in Russia, castigated a purported decline of public virtue and respect for fatherland. Others, as in Denis Fonvizin’s play The Minor, raised subtle questions about the erosion of virtue in political leadership. This critical strain reached its most radical expression in the—legal—printing of Alexander Radishchev’s Journey From St Petersburg to Moscow (1790), a scathing attack on Catherine and the Russian social order, serfdom included. The tome outraged the empress, who penned furious rebukes in the margins of her copy, ordered all available copies destroyed, and subjected the author to trial and banishment into Siberian exile.

  Radishchev’s views were quite exceptional, however. Far more common were the moral and spiritualist misgivings that pulsated in the Masonic lodges, especially those of the Moscow Rosicrucians around Novikov and his spiritual overseer, Johann Schwartz, a Rosicrucian from Berlin. During the 1780s the Moscow Rosicrucians grew increasingly distressed over the spiritual and religious decline of cosmopolitan Russia, the soulless fashionability and the frivolity that (in their view) permeated élite society. Novikov himself was a major purveyor of the Encyclopaedist Enlightenment and entertaining literature, but his lodge steadily moved away from the celebration of amusement. Even signs of political engagement can be discerned; in 1785, for example, some Rosicrucians developed connections to the court ‘party’ around the Tsarevich Paul; some even entertained the idea of making him emperor before his mother’s death—apparently on the basis of (false) rumours that Paul was more sympathetic to their moral agenda. Whatever the case, the affinity between Rosicrucianism, Paul, free publishing, and geographic distance aroused growing distrust among Catherine’s officials, with a steady chilling in the relations between ruler and writers.

  The chill had consequences. In 1785, because of the flirtation with Paul and the publication of religious materials (still a monopoly of the Orthodox Church), the state launched a formal investigation of Novikov’s publications that ended in a mild reprimand. Two years later Catherine ordered an empire-wide raid of book stores to impound dangerous, seditious titles. By the early 1790s, once the violent anti-monarchism of the French Revolution had become a disturbing reality, Catherine (and later her successor, Paul) erected a harsh and repressive censorship, greatly restricting the import of foreign books (banned entirely for a few months in 1800), imprisoning eminent figures such as Novikov, and ultimately closing most private presses. By 1800 publishing had declined to a trickle; literary journalism had all but disappeared; and the international book trade was virtually nil. Although recovery came quickly after the new Emperor Alexander I (1801–25) eased restrictions, state and letters now constituted two separate spheres, with only coercive censorship—not common values—providing the old link between them.

  Reign of Paul (1796–1801)

  Catherine the Great succumbed to a stroke on 17 November 1796. Her final years were marked by bitterness and political repression, but without any fundamental retreat from the tenets of enlightened absolutism. Her love-affairs, always semi-public, took on the aura of scandal, while unpopular favourites such as Platon Zubov garnered unwonted influence on public policy. The legislative fervour of her earlier reign was gone, and Catherine’s self-construction as a reforming ruler could not adjust to the new political antinomies of revolution and legitimacy. Her son, Paul I, shared none of her commitments to reform and progress; indeed, most accounts describe him as being openly hostile to his mother and everything that she stood for. His five-year reign saw the enactment of numerous decrees that distanced Paul from the powerful families at court, and ultimately turned them against him. His most noteworthy act was to decree, in 1797, that serfs could be forced to work no more than three days per week of corvée—a nominal attempt to curb abuses that had seen some landlords forcing their peasants to work five or six days on estate lands, leaving very little time for them to work on their own fields. This decree apparently had little effect on actual practice, but it deepened the gulf between Paul and his magnates. The unpopular repression of literati and some political figures, as well as the less than successful direction of Russia’s initial clashes with Napoleon, convinced leading court parties that Paul had to be removed. With the tacit agreement of his son and successor, the future Alexander I, a small conspiracy of military leaders and Masonic lodge members arrested and quickly murdered Paul in the bedroom of the newly constructed Michael Castle, on the night of 11 March 1801.

  In many respects, the preceding decades had fulfilled the agenda of the Petrine era and set a new one for the nineteenth century. Thus Peter still cast a long shadow over the entire eighteenth century: so much that Peter had decreed but had been unable to implement actually came into existence in the decades that followed his reign. In that sense, his successors not only claimed lineage to Peter to legitimize their power, but also attempted to realize (if in modified form) his ambitions. Much else, however, was new—the changes in noble status, the territorial gains in the south, and the far-reaching acculturation of élites in the two capitals. At the same time, many other issues were still unresolved, most notably the powder keg of serfdom and the role of the Westernized nobility. These and other problems would be the centre of attention in the coming decades of the nineteenth century.

  6. Pre-Reform Russia 1801–1855

  DAVID L. RANSEL

  The regime began the century in a reformist sp
irit and met the challenge of the Napoleonic invasion, but thereafter abjured far-reaching reform and, especially, the emulation of Western models. By the 1850s it faced a disaffected élite at home and, as the Crimean War demonstrated, could no longer compete militarily with the European great powers.

  IF the murder of Tsar Paul in 1801 brought instant relief to the political élite of Russia, it did not have the same healthy effect on the new ruler, Alexander I, son of the murdered tsar. Alexander was himself a conspirator, for he had authorized the overthrow of his father, if not his assassination, and the new tsar initially expressed despair about the killing, feelings of incompetence about ruling, and stark fear that he too might be killed. The recent series of executions and overturns of European rulers had made royalty insecure everywhere in Europe. And Russia had its own tradition of rebellion, including at least nine violent changes of regime in the preceding 120 years. Alexander was understandably concerned not to offend powerful persons at court or in the armed forces. His fears may have deterred him from articulating any plan of political action other than a vague promise to rule in the manner of his grandmother Catherine the Great, whom most nobles remembered fondly for her readiness to protect their interests. The new ruler’s failure to establish a clear political or social programme encouraged groups within the political élite to work out their own proposals for change.

  Early Efforts at Reform

  The first concern of governing élites was to establish a framework of legality, by which they meant protection of the person and property of nobles. Tsar Paul had assaulted their security time and again. Beyond this, the leadership understood that Russia’s administrative and social institutions needed reform. During the eighteenth century, most Russian nobles had become Europeanized and the best educated among them regarded themselves as members of a wider European society. They could not remain unaffected by the revolutionary changes occurring in Europe and the challenge these changes presented to the dynastic and feudalist regime that they led. Opinions about how best to meet that challenge coalesced in three groups at court.

  Initially the most important was the group near Alexander who had plotted and carried out the overthrow and assassination of Tsar Paul. The principal leaders were a military man Count Peter Pahlen and a civil servant Nikita Panin. They hoped to impose constitutional limitations on tsarist power and may even have obtained Alexander’s agreement to such a reform before the coup d’état. Their aim was to prevent a recurrence of the despotism that they had just ended. At first, Alexander appeared to be frightened of these men, fearful perhaps that if he did not do their bidding, they would turn on him as they had on his father. To counter their influence he summoned to St Petersburg friends from his youth in whom he had more confidence. This group of advisers became known as Alexander’s ‘young friends’ or ‘the unofficial committee’.

  The young friends included men who had grown up with Alexander, or associates of these men. Unlike Alexander, all of them had spent time abroad and acquired a comparative measure of Russia’s development. They were well aware of Russia’s need for administrative and social reform if the country were to compete successfully with the Western powers. Among the young friends were Adam Czartoryski, a Polish aristocrat and later acting Minister of Foreign Affairs for Alexander, Pavel Stroganov, a mathematician who had studied in Switzerland and in France and had joined a Jacobin club in Paris, Viktor Kochubei, another well-educated member of the Russian upper class and for most of the 1790s Russian envoy to the Ottoman government, and Nikolai Novosiltsev, at 40 the oldest of the ‘young friends’, scion of a large landholding family, and a cousin of Pavel Stroganov. In contrast to the other political groupings, these men were not interested in placing restrictions on the power of the monarch but in using his supreme authority to bring Russia closer, socially and economically, to the West. This meant promoting economic development under an enterprising middle class and doing something about serfdom, which these men considered a disgrace and an anachronism. Such aims prompted worried conservatives to refer to these advisers as the ‘Jacobin gang’.

  With the support of his ‘young friends’ and his increasing popularity with the public (the result of a series of decrees overturning his father’s despotic rules affecting the nobility and the armed forces) Alexander soon began to feel more secure on the throne, sufficiently so to dispatch the assassins. Within two months of the coup d’état, he forced Pahlen to retire to his estates in the Baltic region and, a few months later, ordered Panin into internal exile as well.

  A third group with which the new ruler had to contend was the ‘old men’ of the Senate. The Senate was Russia’s highest administrative and judicial institution and the seat of the leading noble families. During the reign of Catherine II, senators had opposed constitutional projects and relied upon the favour of the empress and their own command of slow-acting collegial institutions to keep policy under their control and to protect their interests. In not following the constitutionalists of their own time, they sacrificed the opportunity to institutionalize the legislative process and thus lost the chance to make law something other than the mere declaration of the monarch’s will, whether expressed orally or in writing. This choice left them defenceless against Paul, who saw the leading institutions as an obstacle to Russia’s moral and social regeneration. Now the old men of the Senate at last understood the importance of constitutionalism and proposed new powers for the Senate, including rights to represent the public, propose taxes, nominate candidates for high administrative posts, co-opt new members of the Senate, and to question tsarist decrees not in conformity with established law or practice (a right of remonstrance similar to that of the French parlement). This programme of conservative constitutionalism, which aimed at limiting abuse of power by the sovereign and protecting the political and economic position of the high nobility, encountered stiff opposition from both the ‘young friends’ (who saw it as a barrier to social reforms) and the bureaucratic conservatives (who regarded it as a recipe for governmental paralysis of the kind that led to the revolution in France).

  The best that the ‘old men’ of the Senate could obtain was the right to receive reports from top government departments and the right of remonstrance, both of which were announced in a decree on the reform of the Senate in September 1802. The more important, at least potentially, was the right of remonstrance; but it proved hollow: the first time the senators invoked this right, Alexander berated them for their effrontery and abruptly withdrew it. At issue was a decree about military service that violated earlier pronouncements about the nobility’s freedom from required service (first issued in 1762 and renewed in 1785). The Senate initially agreed to the decree but then impulsively decided to oppose it. The procurator general (administrative head of the Senate), though favouring a larger constitutional role for that body, disagreed with its action and urged Alexander to reject it. Alexander himself treated the whole process with contempt. One might well ask what kind of basic rights the tsar would recognize if he was willing to grant and withdraw them on a whim. As for the rest, no one seemed to be aware that an important principle of government was at stake; this episode seemed to show that Russian leaders had no understanding of what legal order was.

  The rejection of the Senate’s demands was a sign that constitutional reform was not on the agenda, despite the rhetoric of the emperor and his associates. The Senate would have had to be a key institution in such a reform but, instead of gaining in stature, it quickly descended to an institution of secondary importance. Its administrative leadership was supplanted by government ministries, established in 1802 to replace Peter’s collegial boards. The Senate was left as merely the highest appellate court of the land.

  If reform was to occur, it had to be limited to changes in social and economic relationships and not touch the political order. Here the role of the ‘young friends’ was important. Above all, they wanted change in Russian serfdom. The impulse was not new with them: Catherine the Great had intimat
ed eventual abolition of the serf order in Russia thirty-five years earlier in her ‘Instruction to the Legislative Commission of 1767’. Her son Paul took the first step towards regulating relations between serfs and masters in an edict limiting corvée labour (barshchina) to three days a week (1797). Alexander and his young friends supported such reform, spoke of the need to abolish serfdom, but in the final analysis proposed small changes that did not threaten the established social order. They imposed a ban on the advertisement of serfs for sale and issued a law on Free Cultivators (1803), whereby landlords—with the approval of the emperor—could free whole villages of serfs on the basis of agreements negotiated with the peasants. But this transaction, which required the voluntary participation of the landlord and payments on the part of the peasants, resulted in fewer than 50,000 manumissions by the end of the reign—an infinitesimal percentage of the tens of millions of serfs. Somewhat greater progress was made in the Baltic provinces of Estland, Lifland, and Kurland, where local nobles agreed to regulate serf obligations and grant the peasants rights to their lands. These were steps towards what would be a full-scale emancipation of the serfs in the Baltic provinces in the years 1816–18.