Pushkin called it “Family enmity among Slavs.” But Europe was not about to accept the atrocities of the family affair.
Muravyev’s bloody exploits outraged European public opinion. The refugee Poles spoke eloquently of the horror. When France, England, and Austria, who had recently put Russia on its knees in the Crimean War, protested against the violence in Poland, it made pacification of Poland even more popular in Russia. The Russian press called Muravyev the “Russian knight” who was “fighting Europe, which wanted to use the Poles for a new humiliation of Russia.”
Herzen called this reaction “patriotic syphilis.”
The pressure from England, France, and Austria continued, and those governments began to issue ultimatums. They demanded amnesty for the rebels, autonomy for Poland, and so on from the “bloody barbarians” (as the French newspapers called the Russians). Gorchakov brushed them off with clever envoys, offering assurances of friendship and fiery promises for the future. Not without some mockery he promised England that Poland would eventually have a constitutional government similar to England’s.
Reading the memoranda from his former enemies, Alexander just sighed. He couldn’t fight. Once again, he had to embrace a Prussia that understood him so well. His “dear uncle and friend” King Wilhelm also held conquered Polish territory and was a willing ally. Soon the tone in Europe changed. No one wanted to fight a Russian-Prussian alliance over Poland. Alexander was relieved by Europe’s betrayal of Poland.
The tsar sternly lectured the French ambassador. “I had wanted to offer Poland autonomy. And what came of it? The Poles wanted to create their own state again. But that would have meant the collapse of Russia.” He chided France for giving refuge to thousands of Polish émigrés.
Privately, while giving lip service to Muravyev’s action, the European Alexander was revolted by his reprisals. He kept trying to rein in the general. Muravyev wrote, “Not only did I receive no approval from St. Petersburg, they used all measures to counter me.”
The tsar’s inner circle—Kostya in the Marble Palace, Elena Pavlovna in the Mikhailovsky Palace, Prince Dolgorukov, chief of the Third Department, Prince Suvorov, governor general of the capital—all felt scornful hatred for the Hangman.
When Prince Suvorov was invited to sign a proclamation for Muravyev’s birthday, he replied, “I don’t honor cannibals.”
Once Poland was back in line, the tsar fastidiously put Muravyev at a distance. He awarded him the title of count and sent him into retirement. The general went back to his estate, where he sat on the balcony in his white uniform, puffing his pipe, putting on weight, and writing his memoirs. It seemed that the fat bulldog with tiger eyes had plunged forever into the political Lethe. But in Russia, one needs to live a long life to get revenge.
In revenge for Poland’s constant rebelliousness, tranquil Finland was allowed a representative institution. The tsar called on the Finnish Seim to write a constitution. The Seim had not met since 1809; the country was run by a Senate under the Russian governor general. Alexander decreed: “If the work of the Seim is successful, this will be the basis for expansion of the experiment.” After 1869, the Seim in Finland met regularly, but Alexander did not need to expand the experiment.
Having squashed sedition (as he considered it) and feeling public approval, the tsar decided that he did not need any new reforms. When Valuyev brought his carefully formulated project for a constitution, the papers were sent to the archives. Valuyev was happy, for he did not want to be seen as a “red” in the eyes of the powerful camarilla.
But the tsar would have occasion to recall the project.
The first year after the emancipation of the serfs was the celebration of the most important jubilee in the nineteenth century—Russia’s millennium. The tsar and his family went to Novgorod. It was there a thousand years earlier that the Varangian princes founded the Russian state. Weary of internecine warfare, the Slavs sent messengers to the militant Varangian princes with an amazing invitation: “Our land is rich and abundant, but we have no order. Come rule over us.”
There are not many parallels to be found in history. But the foreign princes did not become autocrats in Novgorod. “Master Great Novgorod” remained a free republic for almost four hundred years. The Novgorod Veche (assembly of urban dwellers) hired and fired its princes and passed laws. The Great Novgorod Republic was finally destroyed by the willful Moscow tsars, who left only one path for Russia—autocracy.
That is why in a year of upsets—student riots, fires, and proclamations—Alexander preferred to celebrate the millennium quietly in the land that retained the memory of the once mighty Russian republic.
Alexander was hostage to his achievements. He was bound to the wheel of reform. After all, the emancipated peasants had to be managed by someone. The landowners were not an option. The reforms that had caused him so much anxiety had to be continued. A new local authority had to be created—the zemstvo institutions.
The very word zemstvo, from the word for land, zemlya, was imbued with liberty. Back in Muscovite Russia, important decisions were made by meetings of all the estates, the Zemskoe Assembly, which were assemblies of all Russian landowners. It was appropriate to use the word for land in the name of local organs of self-government, because for the first time the entire land, the whole population, was involved. There were representatives of the nobility, the peasantry, and the urbanites in the assemblies. But the chairmen of the zemstvos were the heads of the local nobility associations, and the zemstvos could deal only with local affairs. State politics were strictly out of bounds.
For the first time in Russia, the state budget was published. Alexander wanted the public to see what money was spent on in the state, formerly a deep secret of the tsars. Now the budget was discussed in the newspapers. The court camarilla kept repeating, “If only the emperor could see this!” They meant Nicholas, of course.
He had to create a new court system. Under serfdom, the landowners were the judges of 20 million serfs. Even the free people did not have much better courts. Bribery was part of the judicial system. There was an almost official joke, “We accept money and we accept your case.” A judge could make a ruling in the absence of both plaintiff and defendant.
In 1864, Alexander signed new judicial bylaws. Russia suddenly had what it had never had: equality of all citizens under the law. In a land of yesterday’s slaves, a jury system was instituted to create a court that was “swift, just, and compassionate,” and equal for all citizens. The independence and glasnost of the judicial system and the competitive trial process stunned contemporaries. The new profession of defense attorney gave rise to famous orators, whose speeches were printed in the newspapers and who were quoted by the whole country. The new Russia was learning democracy in the courtrooms. And the courtroom orators would do a lot to promote the fall of Alexander’s dynasty. Just fifty-three years later, the leader of the victorious revolution would be the advocate Alexander Kerensky.
There was one last reform, perhaps the most important: of the army. There were no more serf recruits, the foundation of the army of Alexander’s ancestors. On January 1, 1874, the universal draft was introduced. It put an end to the burden of military service being on the tax-paying classes, or estates (that is, the peasants and the bourgeoisie). Equality was introduced: Now all the estates had to serve in the army.
Nicholas’s anti-Jewish laws were significantly softened. The tsar repealed his father’s secret instruction barring Jews from government posts. Alexander did not dare do away with the pale of settlement for all Jews. But Jewish merchants of the first guild and craftsmen, Jews with scholarly degrees, and Jewish soldiers who had served the required twenty-five years in Nicholas’s army were given permission to live beyond the pale.
The military reform included a ban on corporal punishment. Whipping was a Russian tradition, a remnant of the good old days. Serfs were whipped, high school students were whipped, wives were whipped. The famous sixteenth-century book Domostroi, o
n how to run a Russian household, had a long list of rules on how to beat a wife so as to teach her a lesson but not cripple “living property belonging to the husband.”
Criminals were flogged, of course. But soldiers were most viciously treated. They were flogged for misbehavior, for sloppiness in uniform (up to 500 blows), for attempting desertion (1,500 blows and 3,000 for a second attempt).
Nicholas, to toughen up his sissy son, had once forced Alexander to watch a whipping. A soldier was being punished for attempted desertion. Nicholas tried to be merciful and commanded that he be struck only 500 times instead of 1,500. The small soldier with high cheekbones sniveled and muttered, “Have pity on me, brothers.” But he knew that they would not, because if they held back, they would be flogged.
The men were lined up in two rows, to form a gauntlet. They called it the green street. The soldier was bare to the waist. The drummer set a beat; the soldier was led down the gauntlet, his hands tied to two rifles. Two soldiers led him, and they led him slowly, so that each man could strike him with a rod as hard as he could. Screaming louder than the drum, the wretch begged for mercy, but the blows fell. His skin hung in strips. He staggered and collapsed. They lifted him up. He had no back, only naked, bloody flesh. He fell once again and could not get up. He no longer begged. It was over. His bloody corpse was laid on a cart and two soldiers dragged it through the rest of the line, so that the prescribed number of blows could be struck on the slurping, bloody mess that had been the soldier.
The new tsar remembered Bonaparte’s popular phrase, “A whipped soldier loses the most important thing—his honor!” Along with corporal punishment, he also banned branding.
Now, in the newly liberated country, the only anomalous feature was autocracy itself.
CHAPTER 6
An Awakened Russia
The first fifteen years of Alexander II’s reign saw an unprecedented stirring in Russia’s spiritual life. It was a Russian Renaissance—a feast of spirit and intellect, the birth of great literature and a time of turbulence and success in science. In the 1860s, Mendeleyev published his Periodic Table of the Elements, and science became fashionable. Materialism and scientific thought were de rigueur. Darwin was the idol of the young generation, which was delighted by the concept of man’s descent from the apes. The fury of the clergy only added to their delight. All of Darwin’s major works were instantly translated.
It was in the 1860s that Petr Boborykin coined the term intelligentsia (modeled on the Western intellectuals). The great Russian intelligentsia was born in the days of Alexander’s great reforms and great hopes. At first it was called the raznochinnaya intelligentsia, meaning that the intellectuals came from all estates and strata of society. It was a roiling mixture of people from every walk of life (clergy, merchants, bourgeoisie, minor officials), primarily those in “white-collar” positions, who became writers, journalists, teachers, and scientists.
They proudly hailed a new era, and they replaced the nobility as the avant-garde of Russian society. A required characteristic of the intelligentsia was opposition to the regime. The Russian intelligentsia would be the hotbed of all the Russian revolutions to come, and of international anarchism, and the modern use of terror.
Russian literature played an enormous role in developing the revolutionary fervor of the intelligentsia. After the Revolution of 1917, the literary critic Semyon Vengerov would write, “The revolution must thank our literature, which constantly called for revolution.”
“If you write, don’t be afraid, if you are afraid, don’t write.” That was the slogan of the new Russian literature. It would remain the call in Russia for more than a century, right up until Gorbachev’s perestroika, yet the period of Alexander’s reforms saw a flourishing of literature that was never to be repeated.
When the dam of Nicholas’s taboos was broken, great literature ruthlessly criticizing society was unleashed on a society that was unaccustomed to hearing criticism. Coupled with writers came the equally celebrated literary and social critics, who explained the stern condemnation of the books. Literary heroes seemed to step from the pages into life, becoming “realer than real” and role models for readers.
Ivan Goncharov wrote the novel Oblomov, in 1859, when he was middle-aged. It was slightly autobiographical and a bit of a grotesque parody of himself. He was a typical landowner, heavyset, well groomed, always rather sleepy and with lethargic gestures. The novel’s plot is simple: The landowner Oblomov, a bachelor (like the author), spends his entire life on his favorite couch. He sleeps, eats, and dreams there. Handsome, intelligent, refined, Oblomov is totally incapable of action. His entire life is apathy, fear of action, enjoyment of indolence. His estate, Oblomovka, is the perfect match for its owner. The main activity its residents start preparing for in the morning is the afternoon nap. The main event is the midday meal. The only loud sounds interrupting the tranquility of Oblomovka come from the kitchen. Oblomov’s life is the apotheosis and poetry of indolence that devours talents, love, and life itself.
As soon as the book was published, the young critic Nikolai Dobrolubov wrote “What Is Oblomovism?” The novel became more than famous; its eponymous hero was turned into a symbol. The critic explained that Oblomov and Oblomovism were the curse of Russian life. Russia was the den of a somnolent bear, where all change ended with the bear rolling over and going back to sleep. Oblomovs were everywhere. Inactivity and well-meaning chatter were the hallmarks of Russian life. “If I see a landowner expounding on human rights and the need to develop personally, I know from his first words that he is Oblomov. And when I am in a circle of educated people hotly sympathizing with the needs of humanity and for many years telling the same stories about bribery and all kinds of illegal acts—I find myself thinking that I have been transported to old Oblomovka…. Who will at last move them from their spots with the all-powerful word ‘Forward!’?” wrote Dobrolubov.
Aesopian language, euphemism, and writing in code were required by Alexander’s censorship. Young people, who had quickly learned to read between the lines, understood the real meaning of the article: The absence of political life, that is, autocracy, was turning Russia into a land of Oblomovism. Enough chatter, enough bold speeches; now was the time for bold actions, new people, people of action to lead us forward into the new life.
The young men of action appeared soon enough. Unlike their fathers, who were satisfied with Alexander’s reforms, the sons demanded new, radical reforms and violently rejected all the values of the past. In 1862, Ivan Turgenev published his novel Fathers and Sons. The novel’s hero, Bazarov, was the new type, a man of action. He was a doctor. He served science, which, unlike art, was useful. He was obsessed with utility. Gleefully, to the dismay of the “fathers,” he denounced “useless art,” “useless great poetry,” he rejected all the previously accepted concepts, ideals, and even norms of behavior. He was a nihilist. The critics quickly picked up the term, making it a byword in Russian society, which immediately turned into two camps, pro and contra the nihilist Bazarov.
In the mouths of the retrogrades, nihilist became more than a pejorative, it was another word for revolutionary. The court whispered that Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich was a nihilist. But the new young men bore the title proudly. One in particular, the critic and essayist Dmitri Pisarev, adored Bazarov and considered himself a nihilist.
Pisarev was a seminal figure of those turbulent times. A wunderkind who could read and write at the age of four and speak foreign languages, he became maniacally obsessed with negation. As sometimes happens with thinking young people, he pushed the idea to its ultimate point, that is, to the negation of his own existence and to madness.
He was hospitalized in a mental institution, where he attempted suicide twice before escaping. He was taken to his family estate, where his health was eventually restored, but his tendency toward the most determined negation remained.
What was once considered illness now made Pisarev famous. The thirst for renunciation was mig
hty in the new era, a time of general criticism and angry young men. Pisarev became the bard of nihilism. Like the fictional Bazarov, Pisarev harped on “utility.” He formulated the basic dilemma facing humanity: “feed the hungry” or “enjoy the marvels of art—and spend money on it.” He compared a “society that has hungry and poor people in its milieu and yet develops the arts” to a hungry savage who ornaments himself with precious stones. He concluded that only that which is useful has the right to exist. He denounced the sacred cows of Russia, the great Pushkin and Lermontov, for their “useless poetry,” and praised scientific tomes.
In an essay on Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Pisarev painted his own picture of the world. “The vast majority of organic creatures enter the world as if it were a giant kitchen where cooks are constantly chopping, eviscerating, and roasting each other. Finding itself in such strange society, the young creature goes directly from its mother’s womb into a pot and is eaten by one of the cooks. But before the cook can swallow his dinner, he himself is already in a pot, with the unchewed food still in his mouth.”
The young understood the message of their favorite essayist: The world in which they lived was irrational and cruel, and it had to be changed immediately.
Yet another child of Alexander’s perestroika was Russian satire. Dostoevsky described it in his diary. “Russian satire seems to be afraid of good deeds in Russian society. Upon encountering such a deed, it becomes anxious and does not calm down until it finds somewhere deep in that deed a scoundrel. Then it rejoices and shouts: ‘It’s not a good deed at all, there’s nothing to be happy about, see for yourselves, there’s a scoundrel in it!’”
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