But that would happen later. Let us return to Dostoevsky’s apartment and his interesting conversation with Suvorin. Dostoevsky would not go to report a bombing at the palace because “the liberals would torment” him. But why wouldn’t the retrograde Suvorin go to save the tsar? He was not afraid of liberal torment, he tormented the liberals himself.
He was afraid of the conservatives. In 1880 certain letters came to Moscow from St. Petersburg. Their recipient was former lady-in-waiting Ekaterina Fedorovna Tyutcheva (sister of now also retired lady-in-waiting Anna Tyutcheva). This is what was in the letters:
“God’s fates sent him to the misfortune of Russia. Even the healthy instinct for self-preservation has dried up in him: the only instincts left are of dull love of power and sensuality..”…“Pathetic and miserable man!.”…“I am pained and ashamed, it sickens me to look at him..”…“It is clear that he has lost his will: he does not want to hear, does not want to see, does not want to act. He only wants to live by the mindless will of the belly.”
The man reviled in those letters was Alexander II, emperor of Russia. The writer was neither a revolutionary nor a liberal, but a key antiliberal and antirevolutionary. Those antitsarist remarks came from one of the most influential Russian officials, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, tutor of the heir to the throne and soon to become head of the Holy Synod of the Church. He was the true head of the retrograde party.
His office had an oversized desk with bronze lions. The desk was always piled with papers and was surrounded by bookshelves. His ascetic face, so like the Grand Inquisitor’s, rose above the desk. The high forehead ended in a bare skull, his ears stuck out, and his nose was beaklike. His constant scornful gaze rattled his interlocutors.
From this office came the ideas that fed all the retrogrades in Russia, then and now. Many statements were attributed to Pobedonostsev: “In Russia all things must be done without hurry. I always tell the coachman, ‘I pay extra to drive slowly.’ That way I know the coach won’t overturn on our terrible roads…. We have a great legend about the spirit of the robber Stepan Razin, trapped in a cliff. Only autocracy and strict laws keep the rebel spirit of the Russian people in that wall. You want reforms? A constitution? Then the cliff will split open and the wild man will come out with a bludgeon into the boundless Russian field. At liberty, our wild man who has not known liberty, is frightening…he will destroy the world around him…and then himself…. Things are simple with a European, it is all in his face. He hates you, you can see it, he loves you, you see that, too. Our muzhik will greet you and then, with the same kind face, grab you by the throat and choke you to death, after which he’ll cross himself.”
Pobedonostsev dreamed of freezing Russia in order to save it. But for that, he needed a leader. When the tsar appointed him tutor of the new heir, Alexander, after the death of Niks, Pobedonostsev said, “I will bring him to the other pole.” And he did.
At the Anichkov Palace, where the heir resided, nothing had changed since the days of Catherine the Great. It was winter, and the conservatory was lit by the cold low sun. Inside the conservatory were marble statues, an Italian fountain with gurgling water, and evergreen trees. Outside there was snow. Anichkov Palace had been the residence for Sasha’s grandfather and father when they were crown princes. His brother Niks should have lived here. But Niks was in the grave, in the Cathedral of Peter and Paul, and the waters of the Neva had probably seeped into the coffin by now. Instead of handsome Niks, he lived here: His Imperial Highness Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich. He was thirty-six, almost the age when his father became tsar.
After February 5, Pobedonostsev came to see him at Anichkov Palace almost daily. Dmitri Milyutin laughingly called Pobedonostsev “the nymph Egeria of Anichkov Palace.” The nymph had counseled a Roman king in law. Of course, there was nothing nymphlike about the skeletal and tall Pobedonostsev. The gigantic heir was so fat he could not see his own boots because of his belly.
Count Witte, the most famous minister of the future tsar’s government, left an intellectual portrait of him: “Of a totally ordinary mind, perhaps even a below average mind, with below average abilities, and a below average education.” The piercingly brilliant Pobedonostsev had no difficulty in “bringing him to another pole,” turning the tsarevich into an embodiment of the National Idea, a colossus of unwavering autocracy.
The heir was best suited for this role. That direct descendant of a Holstein prince (Emperor Peter III) and an Anhalt-Zerb Princess (Catherine II), who thanks to the efforts of so many German princesses had 99 percent German blood, had a very Russian appearance. “He looked like a big Russian muzhik…a sheepskin jacket, long coat, and bast shoes would have suited him; in manner, he was more or less bear-like,” Witte continued.
The tsarevich knew this and he adored everything Russian. His habits were those of a middle-class landowner. He liked to drink and could hold his liquor. He was as anti-Semitic as many Russian landowners. He acknowledged his own limitations and respected intelligent people, so he obeyed Pobedonostsev. But his real comrade was Adjutant General Petr Cherevin, who was the deputy of the chief of the Third Department. Of medium height, neckless, and with the face of a bloodhound, the general was at heart a servant, a batman. He adored Alexander, the next tsar, the real tsar. And even though he owed his career to Alexander II, he considered him a false tsar, a Western tsar. In general, the world was divided into two categories for Cherevin: On one side were the heir and Cherevin who served him, and on the other “various scum.”
He loved sharing the heir’s simple pleasures, fishing, hunting, and drinking. The tsarevna did not approve of the last amusement and tirelessly fought against it. But Cherevin came up with a solution: He had boots made with very wide tops and a pocket for a flat flask that could hold a bottle of cognac. He later recalled, “Maria Alexandrovna was near us and we sat quietly, such nice boys. The minute she moved away, we’d give each other a look—one, two, three!—we’d pull out the flasks, suck on them, and then look innocent again. We used to call it mother of invention.”
They kept up the game even when the heir became tsar.
At home, the tsarevich was nice, simple, kind, and cozy, very moralistic and religious. He had a “wonderful heart, good humor, and fairness,” according to Witte. An excellent family man and monogamous, he hated infidelity and struck out against it, often in a childish way. He never missed an opportunity to tug on the skirts of the mannish suit worn by his aunt Masha, princess of Leichtenberg, who was secretly married to Stroganov. And then he would apologize innocently.
He could not bear his father’s affair with Princess Dolgorukaya.
The heir’s most dangerous trait was his habit of developing crushes. First he adored his brother Niks and was under his influence, then it was his wife. Now it was Pobedonostsev who influenced him. The tsarevna supported this attachment. The presence of the tsar’s favorite in the Winter Palace, her illegitimate children, as well as the dying empress, and the threat of a marriage between the tsar and Dolgorukaya after the empress’s death, hung over the tsarevich and tsarevna. She was happy when Pobedonostsev began gathering the party that Grand Duke Konstantin called retrograde around the heir. It should have been called the nationalist opposition.
Here are a few of the postulates Pobedonostsev instilled in the heir and that the nationalist opposition espoused. They are not forgotten in Russia even now.
“A constitution and parliament are the great lie of our times.”
“The great truth is the autocracy of tsars.”
“Old institutions, old proverbs, old customs are great and the people must value them as the Ark of their ancestors’ covenant.”
“Elections are merely an art with its own strategy and tactics, like the art of war. The crowd listens to whoever shouts loudest and who is best at pretending through banality and flattery to suit the concepts and inclinations popular in the masses. In theory, the voter gives his vote to the candidate because he knows him and trusts him, wherea
s in practice…he does not know him at all, but the voter is told about him in speeches and shouts from the interested party.”
“The winner of an election is, as a rule, the favorite of the well-organized minority, while the majority remains impotent.”
The nationalist party was supposed to protect the rights of the future real Russian tsar, Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich. All the opponents of reform were part of it. In the late 1870s, General P. A. Fadeyev and Adjutant General I. I. Vorontsov-Dashkov wrote a manifesto of the counter-reformers. It was a book called Letters on the Contemporary State of Russia. It juxtaposed “living popular autocracy” to Western constitutions: “The tsar must be an autocratic tsar and not the head of the executive branch.” It criticized the “unproportionately large bureaucratic mechanism, infected with nihilism” and called for the “restitution of pre-Petrine government forms.”
The heir brought the manuscript to his father, and the emperor permitted it to be published, but only abroad.
Opposition was growing. People of passionate conviction took part in the constant meetings at Anichkov Palace, including such ideologues of nationalism as Prince Meshchersky and the columnist Katkov, who promoted the idea of the Great Slavic Empire. At the head of this union of the most conservative elements stood the heir to the throne. But the power behind him was Konstantin Pobedonostsev.
They declared themselves to be the party that protected the foundations of society, the party of order. More and more people with power joined their ranks. Thus began the battle between Anichkov Palace and the Winter Palace. All the officials of St. Petersburg knew about it. That is why Suvorin would not have rushed off to report his suspicions about a bomb at the Winter Palace. His newspaper was the voice of the retrogrades. He would not try to save the tsar, about whom Pobedonostsev had said, “God’s fates have sent him to the misfortune of Russia.”
The liberals were against the emperor because the reforms had stopped and the retrogrades were against him because there had been reforms. But these were politicians, leaders of public opinion. What about the ordinary people, what did they think? They were unhappy, too. “The basic underpinning of that dissatisfaction was obvious: the general economic downturn with individual artificial exceptions,” wrote the contemporary historian Klyuchevsky.
The half-measures of the reforms, and particularly the unfinished agrarian reform, coupled with robber-baron capitalism, had done their work. There appeared “the impoverishment of the masses and general dissatisfaction” that always accompanied Russian reforms. Against the background of this impoverishment, Klyuchevsky continued, “the persistent work of the old guard continued.” The retrograde party tried to persuade the public that all the ills were due to the reforms and that the only way out was back to Muscovite Russia, the reign of Nicholas, and autocracy. They successfully insisted on the favorite Russian contradiction: Forward means going back.
“As a result, the apathy of the days of Nicholas I ceded to general grumbling” and “wan docility to fate was replaced by malicious rejection of the existing order,” wrote Klyuchevsky. War Minister Milyutin wrote in his dairy: “No one supports the government now.”
Fedor Dostoevsky described the situation in Russia as “vacillating on the brink.”
Right after the bomb, the emperor called in the leaders of the military and security ministries. He wanted proposals, but they sat in total confusion and said nothing.
“Saw generals Drenteln and Gurko. Both behave as if they are observers of what is going on. Yet one is chief of gendarmes and the other governor general and commander of the troops! Halfwits!” recorded Valuyev in his diary on February 6.
Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, Kostya, became a frequent visitor at the Winter Palace. The camarilla knew how dangerous his influence could be. An instant rumor spread through the court that he was behind the terrorism. No wonder he was out of St. Petersburg when the bomb went off in the palace. Mme Bogdanovich recorded, “There is always something to take Konstantin Nikolayevich from St. Petersburg whenever something happens.”
From a denunciation to the Third Department: “Protect the tsar from Konstantin’s intrigues, the rebels are in his hands, a screen and weapon for his aims.” All this talk was passed on to the tsar.
In the meantime, the carriage bearing the desiccated Pobedonostsev pulled up at Anichkov Palace every day. He spent time with the heir in his study, after which the tsarevich would go to the Winter Palace. “I see Father every evening,” he wrote in his diary. Anichkov Palace had begun its campaign.
On February 8, the tsar convened a big meeting. The halfwit ministers were still stunned, but the heir spoke loudly. He spoke as one who had the right and power, and Alexander could hear Pobedonostsev in his speech.
He mocked the idea of a constitution, “which someone might propose now. Even in Western states constitutions bring disaster. I asked their ministers in Denmark, and they all complained that because of parliamentary blowhards they cannot accomplish a single beneficial measure. In my opinion, we need to be thinking not about constitutional ideas but something completely different.”
The heir continued: “My idea is very simple. I find that we are in an almost impossible position now. There is no unity in the administration; everyone is going in different direction, not thinking about a common connection.” He said there was a war going on. A war with the barbarians. A la guerre, comme à la guerre. They needed a supreme commander who could unite all power in his hands. They needed a dictator who could deal with the homeland’s enemies.
The tsarevich recalled how after the first attempt on the emperor’s life in 1866, General Muravyev (the Hangman) was given extraordinary powers, and he dealt with the nihilists.
The ministers were silent. But the tsar spoke. He did not agree. They must continue thinking. Everyone left in their original confusion. “This morning there was a lengthy but almost resultless conference with the tsar…. The tsarevich, ministers—military, court, internal affairs, chief of gendarmes, and me,” recorded Interior Minister Valuyev in his diary on February 8.
But that evening a letter from the heir was delivered to the Winter Palace. Full of filial gratitude for being allowed to speak, Sasha stubbornly proposed forming a punitive commission. It was not hard to guess who had dictated the letter to him.
The decisive night fell. It’s unlikely that the emperor got any sleep. It was a miserable night in the life of rulers—when you have to tell yourself what you least want to hear. The reprisals did not work. The fourteen executions, the trials, the exile—nothing came of it. It had not worked. Freedom below and autocracy above was not feasible. It was the path to perdition. There was only one way out, and that was to create harmony. Freedom below and above. They needed reform above, reform of the regime. But that would be a turn toward a constitution. Otherwise nothing would work. Kostya was right when he repeated the words of Count Geiden. That liberal bureaucrat wrote: “Autocracy today is the path to revolution. The only possibility of preserving the monarchy is to limit it.”
Alexander had to make a decision. It is hard to betray your father’s testament, but he had to reject the tight fist holding Russia. That meant overcoming the opposition of the halfwits that included the court, the ministers, his son—all of whom expected more reprisals, his father’s fist. But that was the usual fate of a great tsar in Russia. The writer Pososhkov put it brilliantly in the sixteenth century: “When it’s uphill, the tsar has to drag ten himself. Downhill, there are millions.”
Alexander came up with a way, a devious, eastern path. He needed someone to execute it. A devious, clever man, not tied to the court. He was surrounded by confused halfwits. Yet sometimes, the right man appears in a key historical moment, and there was such a man available. His name came to Alexander that night.
The next morning all the ministers were recalled to the Winter Palace. Once again they discussed what to do, and once again, there were more vague speeches, to which the tsar listened attentively. And th
en to the astonishment of the rest, the emperor announced that he was going to do what he had rejected the day before: He was establishing a Supreme Administrative Commission for the War on Sedition. It would have extraordinary powers, and the chairman would have power that only sovereigns had in Russia. All the highest institutions in the state, including the Third Department and the Gendarme Corps, would be responsible to him.
Thus, a dictator was being appointed. They all believed that Alexander had given up and was accepting the heir’s proposal. They froze in anticipation of the dictator’s name. They were stunned when they heard it: General Count Loris-Melikov.
He was Armenian, one of the most brilliant generals of the Balkan war. But he had fought in the periphery, in the Caucasus, so that he was basically unknown in St. Petersburg.
From Valuyev’s diary: “February 9: In the morning another command to be at the palace. A change in the tsar’s views (as Count Adlerberg surmises, as a result of yesterday’s letter from the tsarevich); a Supreme Commission is being established here. To be headed by Count Loris-Melikov. The tsar’s will was announced unexpectedly for everyone. The unexpected impression was expressed on every face.”
The members of the Supreme Administrative Commission were senators, generals, and officials of all rank responsible for preserving order. Among them were two people very close to the heir—member of the State Council Senator Pobedonostsev and Deputy Chief of the Third Department Major General Cherevin. Everyone at the first meeting decided that the unknown General Loris-Melikov was merely a pseudonym and that the heir would be in charge.
Even the simple heir thought so. On February he wrote in his diary, “Today Count Loris-Melikov took on his new position; may God grant him success, strengthen and guide him!” The tsarevich was triumphant.
Now everyone in St. Petersburg was interested in the Armenian who did not even keep a house in the capital. He had to rent an apartment on aristocratic Bolshaya Morskaya Street.
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