1837: Russia's Quiet Revolution 0198826354, 9780198826354

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1837

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1837 Russia’s Quiet Revolution PAU L  W.  W E RT H

1

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Paul W. Werth 2021 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2021 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020949424 ISBN 978–0–19–882635–4 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Preface Someone offering a book about Russia in 1837 has some explaining to do. People familiar with the Russian past will recall that Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, was killed in a duel that year. Some perhaps know that Russia’s first railway appeared then as well. But most would be hard-pressed to identify much else of note. Other years in Russian history would seem better candidates for the kind of ‘year book’ that has become so prominent in popular historical works.1 Yet the central task of this book is to demonstrate precisely that 1837, despite initial appearances to the contrary, was exceptionally eventful and consequential for Russian history, and that—exaggerating slightly—one cannot really comprehend Russia without understanding this year. The project grows out of research I have done over nearly three decades, mostly on religious matters, that repeatedly drew my attention to critical shifts occurring in the 1830s. The more I explored diverse realms of Russia’s history, the more compelling I found that initial observation to be. In an ideal world, I might have focused on a quadrennium (1836–39), but neither the word (‘quadrennium’) nor the period (four years) works well from a marketing standpoint, so I concluded that a single year would have to do. Pushkin’s death created a strong argument for 1837, and further exploration revealed that, with some stretching here and there, I could make it work. When it occurred to me that both my home city of Chicago and my undergraduate alma mater (Knox College) were founded in 1837, I knew that fate was kicking me in the pants to get on with the project. Whether there is any merit to it is for the reader to decide.

1  At least three exist for Russia: Wayne Dowler, Russia in 1913 (DeKalb, 2010); Karl Schlögel, Moscow, 1937, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Malden, MA, 2012); and Kathleen Smith, Moscow, 1956: The Silenced Spring (Cambridge, MA, 2017). I propose that there were also important years before the 20th c.

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Acknowledgements Stephanie Ireland, David McDonald, Elizabeth Nelson, Willard Sunderland, and the late Andrew Bell (1963–2017) were enthusiastic about this project when I myself still feared it to be silly and self-indulgent. At an early stage, the Berkeley Russian history kruzhok offered confirmation that the project was indeed worth pursuing, and I thank Clarissa Ibarra for the invitation. Portions of the book bene­fit­ed from discussions at the European University in St Petersburg, the University of Tokyo, the University of Washington, New York University, the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan), Arizona State University (the Desert Workshop in Russian History, Year Three), Ural Federal University (Yekaterinburg), and the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Numerous individual colleagues provided me with ideas, critiques, ma­ter­ ials, answers to questions, and in some cases alcohol: Yoko Aoshima, Nadezhda Balatskaia, Greg Brown, Elena Campbell, David Darrow, Mikhail Dolbilov, Jeff Eden, Catherine Evtuhov, Victoria Frede, Gary Hamburg, Mami Hamomoto, John Hay, James Howard, Hubertus Jahn, Joanna Kepka, Igor Khristoforov, Yanni Kotsonis, Scott Levi, Mariia Lukovskaia, Olga Maiorova, Mark Mazower, Susan McCaffrey, Natalia Mazur, Patrick Michelson, David Moon, Alexander Morrison, Norihiro Naganawa, Ekaterina Pravilova, Stephen Riegg, Jeff Schauer, Benjamin Schenk, Taku Shinohara, Jeff Simpson, Barbara Skinner, Susan Smith-Peter, Darius Staliūnas, Gulmira Sultangalieva, Benjamin Tromley, Ulzhan Tuleshova, Arya Udry, Teddy Uldricks, Elena Vishlenkova, Aleksei Volvenko, Richard Wortman, and Daniil Zavlunov. Several exceptional colleagues read the entire manuscript and must therefore accept greater responsibility for its faults: Andrew Jenks, Jay Johnson, Stephen Lovell, Laurie Manchester, Yekaterina Raykhlina, and William Rosenberg. The sabbatical committee at UNLV, the office of its Provost, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and the Department of History all provided either funds for research and writing or time off for the same. Daniel Werth asked a question critical to Chapter 8. Elizaveta Zoueva sustained me throughout.

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Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations Transliteration and Terminology

xi xiii xv xvii

Introduction1 1. He Fell, Slandered by Rumour

9

2. A Life for the Tsar, an Opera for the Nation

28

3. Philosophical Madness

43

4. In the Flesh

59

5. Provinces Animated

85

6. Guardians of the Benighted

105

7. Think More About Camels

125

8. Orthodoxy Marches West

145

9. A Unicorn, Violent but Submissive

163

10. Northern Phoenix

179

Conclusion200 Index

205

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List of Figures 0.1 St. Petersburg and its environs

xviii

0.2 The provinces of European Russia

6

0.3 The Romanov Dynasty, 1796–1881

7

1.1 Alexander Julius Klünder, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin11 1.2 V. A. Zhukovskii, Pushkin in His Coffin, 30 January 1837

16

4.1 Natale Schiavoni, Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich. Italy, 1838

61

4.2 Route of Grand Prince Alexander Nikolaevich’s Tour, 1837

65

5.1 Title page for Vologda Provincial Gazette, 1 January 1838

93

7.1 The Kazakh steppe and the polities of Central Asia

126

7.2 A Kazakh leading camels during Perovskii’s winter expedition

136

9.1 Friedrich von Martens, Arrival of the First Train from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo on 30 October 1837171 10.1 Pierre Marie Joseph Vernet, Fire at the Winter Palace, 17 December 1837. St Petersburg, 1838

182

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List of Tables 5.1 Number of newspapers in Russia, 1801–47

89

8.1 Numbers of Uniate parishioners, churches, and monasteries in 1827

147

9.1 Railway trips and passengers, 1838–41

172

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List of Abbreviations ChPSS (I and II) GARF GV PSZ RGADA RGIA SPb TsGARK

Z.  A.  Kamenskii (ed.), P.  Ia. Chaadaev: Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i izbrannye pis’ma, 2 vols (Moscow, 1991) Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Moscow Gubernskie vedomosti Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (reference is always to the second series) Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Drevnikh Aktov, Moscow Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv, St Petersburg St Petersburg Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Respubliki Kazakhstan, Almaty

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Transliteration and Terminology When citing sources in notes I use the Library of Congress system of trans­lit­er­ ation, but in the text itself I eliminate soft signs and use ‘y’ when this simplifies pronunciation for non-speakers of Russian (thus ‘Yaroslavl’). I sometimes use common English equivalents for first names in the text; thus ‘Alexander’ rather than ‘Aleksandr.’ For similar reasons of intelligibility, I use older but more familiar spellings of such terms as ‘Kazakhs’ (rather than ‘Qazaqs’) and ‘Khiva’ (even to refer to the entire khanate known as ‘Khvārazm’ in Central Asian sources). The emphasis, in short, is on accessibility, with acknowledgement that this might entail a dose of Russocentrism. All emphases within quotations are in the ori­ gin­al, and dates are by the Julian calendar, twelve behind the Gregorian. In most cases I have converted obsolete Russian units of measure (versts and desiatinas) into (square) kilometres, as well as Réaumur degrees to centigrade.

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St. Petersburg

Li t tle N

Peter and Paul Fortress

Admiralty

Gre

Nevsk

ika

Mo

ii Pros

pekt

et re St ia va ho

N at

eva

Moika 12 (Pushkin’s residence)

k ro Go

Tsarskoe Selo

r

Tsaritsyn Square

Winter Palace

Vasilievskii Island

Pavlovsk

Rive Neva

eva

Bolshoi Theater Catherine Canal

a nt Fo

Anichkov Palace

a nk

Semenovskii Platz

Figure 0.1.  St. Petersburg and its environs. Map by Bill Nelson.

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Introduction Do you not find something grand in Russia’s present situation, ­something that will astonish the future historian? Alexander Pushkin (19 October 1836)1 When the clock struck midnight at the start of 1837, few Russians could have imagined how much was in store for them before the next New Year’s Eve. Two great disasters stood as the year’s bookends. In January, the country lost its greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin, in a duel that killed the bard but also laid the foundation for a cult central to the country’s identity to this day. In December, Russia lost its greatest building, the Winter Palace, in a huge fire from whose ashes the edifice nonetheless rose again, phoenix-like, a mere 15 months later. These two tragedies only begin to account for the drama and dynamism of this remarkable year. The months in and around 1837 gave birth to Russian musical nationalism with the completion of Mikhail Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar, and initiated a flowering of regional life with the creation of a provincial press. Peter Chaadaev’s controversial texts riled society and have conditioned debates about backwardness, national character, and Russia’s place in the world ever since. In its west, Russia advanced an audacious plan to extend its eastern variant of Christianity at the expense of Catholicism, while in the east it prepared the century’s first major assault on an independent Central Asian state. The heir to the throne undertook a massive tour of the empire, with handlers exploiting media to promote his celebrity and forge images that would secure his subsequent rule. The half of Russia’s peasants who were not serfs acquired new bosses in a novel government ministry committed to aggressive reform and enlightened guardianship. And the quintessential symbol of industrial modernity—the steam railway—made its debut as well. The catalogue of the year’s noteworthy occurrences thus extends from the realms of culture, religion, and ideas to those of empire, politics, and industry. The observant reader will note that these events differ in their character, dur­ ation, and significance. Some, such as Pushkin’s death and the palace fire, were chance occurrences. Those implicated in empire building reflect long-term processes that began before 1837 and ended after. Still others, such as Glinka’s opera and the railway, represent moments of metaphorical birth. Inquisitive readers will ask (heads politely cocked to one side) and sceptical ones will demand (arms folded in demonstrable defiance): What unites these disparate events and processes, aside from their chronological coincidence? 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0001

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2 1837 First of all, let us not write off chronological coincidence itself too quickly. Scholarly convention ordinarily demands focus on a single historical issue, thus isolating that one problem or process from the rest of history’s flow. The approach here is different. Embracing the inevitable randomness that characterizes those things that just happen to have occurred in a single year, I seek to show that for contemporaries, matters that we as scholars would not normally combine were actually occurring simultaneously. Multifariousness is precisely what people experienced at the time. But we may go further. This book contends that the 1830s in Russia constituted a period of striking dynamism, innovation, and consequence, and that 1837 was a pivotal year for the empire’s entry into the modern age. Such a thesis may raise eyebrows. Historians traditionally think of the reign of Nicholas I (1825–55) as a time of conservative stasis, when the ‘gendarme of Europe’ secured order beyond Russia and entrenched the autocratic system at home. Similarly, most would see in 1837 nothing beyond an utterly ordinary year. There was no great upheaval, no change in the country’s ruler, no major foreign war, and no grand transformation in the country’s social or political order. The institution of serfdom continued to structure life in much of rural Russia, and autocracy remained immune to serious challenge until 1905. All of this is true. Yet my contention is that a substantial number of modern Russia’s most distinctive and noteworthy features can be traced back to this exceptional but inconspicuous year. Russia became what it did, in no small measure, because of 1837. Indeed, I propose that diverse occurrences in and around 1837 amount to a ‘quiet revolution’—a formulation consciously designed to convey incongruity and even paradox. The revolution in question was not a rapid overturning of an existing political or social order (as in the French or Bolshevik revolutions) but rather a dramatic and wide-ranging alteration in the way something works or is organized, or at least in the ways people contemplate it (think the industrial or price revolution). Russia, I propose, underwent a set of transformations in the 1830s that introduced new institutions, novel conceptions, and unprecedented experiences. The year 1837 thus represents a profound moment of conjuncture, when diverse existing strands of historical development intersected and new ones emerged. The consequences can be traced far beyond 1837 to elucidate key at­tri­butes of Russia in the later tsarist, Soviet, and even post-Soviet eras. Thus while these twelve months stand at the centre of my narrative, the account contemplates the long-term implications of events described and elucidates later manifestations of the tendencies so strikingly present in that earlier moment. I thus offer not a discrete, isolated history of the year 1837, but rather the insertion of that one year into a longer timeline: 1837 in history.2 In order not to exaggerate these transformations, however, and to indicate the ways in which most people at the time experienced these changes without fully grasping their import, I label this revolution ‘quiet’. What occurred in Russia in

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Introduction  3 1837 was significant, at times openly dramatic; a few contemporaries—for ex­ample Pushkin, as revealed in the epigraph to this introduction—sensed that big things were afoot. But there was also a tranquil and discreet character to these processes, featuring less disturbance and bustle than calm and unobtrusiveness. In some cases, the significance of things could only be discerned in retrospect, with 1837 playing a key, if sometimes inconspicuous, role as a point of origin, a pivot, or a noteworthy segment on a longer continuum. In short, even as I propose that 1837 was highly consequential, I recognize that for many at the time that year remained unremarkable. It was at once exceptional and ordinary. I submit further that for all of the diversity of the events I describe, each in its own way played an important role in promoting Russia’s unification. In some cases this function is obvious: the railway network that began in 1837 would eventually connect far-flung parts of the country to an extent unimaginable at the start of the century. The conversion of 1.5 million Greek Catholics to Orthodoxy united two branches of Christianity and bound Russia’s western provinces—part of Poland a mere half-century earlier—more thoroughly with its central ones. The creation of a ministry for state peasants unified administration for an enormous segment of the country’s population and proved a big step in the consolidation of a single peasantry in Russia. In other cases, the effect was more subtle, but no less real. The appearance of provincial newspapers imposed on sundry provinces a shared intellectual experience that paradoxically promoted unity precisely by revel­ling in the distinctiveness of each. The heir’s travels bound diverse subjects, strewn across vast geographical distance, in common affection and enthusiasm. Glinka’s opera offered musical expression that could (aspire to) unite monarch and masses for decades thereafter. Performing a similar function was the fire at the Winter Palace, which generated articulations of solidarity between people and tsar, and a shared commitment to reconstruction. Pushkin’s death united many in grief, and his cult, though it appeared only gradually, served as cultural glue for the late empire and the USSR—as it does still for contemporary Russia. Even the unsuccessful campaign in Central Asia proved part of the intervening steppe’s unification with the Russian ‘mainland’, a key stage in the incorporation of Kazakhs into Russia’s institutional and cultural orbit. In short, among the consequences of Russia’s ‘quiet revolution’ in 1837 was the country’s enhanced integration, the increased unification of its people through diverse institutions and practices, and the promotion of shared experience across vast spaces. The 1830s, in other words, represented a crucial moment in Russian nationbuilding. Even as the empire continued to expand, and as imperial consciousness persisted in framing the thinking of its governing elite, elements of national consciousness also became prominent, and diverse parts of the country—or at least its predominantly Orthodox core—began consolidating into an integrated whole, distinct from more distant and diverse borderland territories. A Russian nation, in short, was emerging within the empire. Thus Pushkin became the national

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4 1837 poet (his cult enhanced by the romantic character of his death), while Glinka—so it seemed to many—gave Russia national music and its own opera. The conversion of Greek Catholics was designed, in part, to consolidate an emerging Russian nation (including Belarusians), and the Winter Palace’s destruction revealed that edifice as belonging to the nation as a whole rather than just the imperial family. Chaadaev’s contemplation of Russia’s place in the world likewise represented an inquiry into the character of the Russian nation. Provincial newspapers, meanwhile, documented this nation as it was coming into being and indeed served as midwives for that process. In the 1830s, then, the nation was becoming an ideological preoccupation for the regime and an inspiration for many thinking Russians. Close attention to 1837, I propose, reveals the embodiment of this nation in specific institutions and practices, from opera and poetry to newspapers and palaces. Even as my central claims rest on the aggregation of the episodes that I explore, each chapter is designed to stand more or less independently as a discrete his­ tor­ic­al sketch that may be enjoyed or censured in its own right. A reader might adore railways but take no interest in religious matters. Another may enthuse over opera but refuse to bother with provincial newspapers. Of course, those who make such exclusions are misguided and deprive themselves of both pleasure and edification. But they are in no way obligated to read all chapters—or for that matter any at all. In writing each sketch, I have assumed that readers might know something about the topic in question, but not a great deal. Specialists may take issue with simplifications designed to keep the text accessible and brief. Upon reflection, they will realize that my humble narrative aspires to enhance readers’ curiosity for each topic, thus inducing them to explore the compositions of actual experts. Many events in Russia in 1837 could have served as the basis for sketches in this book but do not. For example, the scientist Karl von Baer embarked on a trip to Novaia Zemlia, which proved a key moment in the birth of Russian eth­nog­ raphy. Russia was then engaged in a lengthy war of conquest in the Caucasus, and construction began on Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. But the exclusion of these and other episodes does not mean that my choices were random. Some, I can freely admit, attracted me because I knew they would make for a good story (which, for all of the discipline’s conceptual and methodological innovation, remains at history’s heart). Overall, my aspiration was to represent different aspects of Russia: the provinces and borderlands as well as the capital; culture as well as industry; peasants as well as elites; foreign policy as well as domestic developments. This approach permits us not only to observe dynamism in diverse contexts but also to assemble a portrait of the country at this critical moment. The first three chapters embrace culture—literature, music, and ideas—and focus on an intense period extending from the Autumn of 1836 into 1837. The fourth chapter, on the heir’s tour of the empire, takes us to the provinces, where we remain for the next two chapters to contemplate the local press and the reform of state peasants. Two chapters then engage the problem of empire, one in the east

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Introduction  5 (the attempted conquest of Khiva) and one in the west (the mass conversion of Greek Catholics). The last two chapters address building and rebuilding: Russia’s first railway and the Winter Palace. Before beginning our first sketch, three brief tasks remain. One is to recount, with extreme concision and selectivity, what was going on elsewhere in the world so as to situate Russia’s 1837 in a global tableau. In June a young Victoria began her reign in Britain, which would last into the first month of the twentieth century, conferring her name on an entire era. In July one of her subjects, Charles Darwin, began assembling notebooks on variations of animals and plants that eventually produced the theory of evolution. In Spain, the Carlist wars raged, with whole armies engaged in savage conflict. In the New World, Texas had recently declared independence, and Nuevo México experienced popular insurrection (the Chimayó rebellion). The USA’s populist president Andrew Jackson ceded the land’s highest office to Martin van Buren in March, and in October the family-run candle and soap business of Procter & Gamble was founded in Cincinnati. In Asia, the failure of monsoon rains produced disastrous famine in India’s northwest, while the game of cricket was played for the first recorded time on the padang (field) that eventually became the Singapore Cricket Club. China meanwhile faced growing encroachments that would lead to the First Opium War in 1839, fundamentally altering the dynamics of power in East Asia. The second task is to provide some core facts about Russia itself for the uninitiated. The country in 1837 was a near-complete autocracy, ruled by the Romanov dynasty since 1613. The tsar was Nicholas I, who came to the throne in December of 1825. His wife, the empress Alexandra (Prussian Princess Charlotte), had produced seven children between 1818 and 1832. St Petersburg, founded in 1703 by the Peter the Great, had been Russia’s capital since 1712 and had approximately 450,000 inhabitants. Russia’s historical capital, Moscow, was the country’s second largest city and the birthplace of both Pushkin and the heir to the throne, Alexander Nikolaevich. The country as a whole had a population of around 50  million people, which included ethnic Russians but also an extraordinary range of diverse ethnic and linguistic groups. Serfdom was the order of the day for half of the country’s enormous peasant population (we meet the other half in Chapter 6), and would remain in place until 1861. The country’s ‘ruling and predominant’ faith was the Orthodox Christian one, although more than a quarter of its inhabitants adhered to other faiths, from variants of Christianity to separate religions such as Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism. Geographically, the country extended from Norway and Austria to Persia and China, and across the Bering Strait into North America . Finally, a word on the politics of the tsarist regime. While my narrative foregrounds Russia’s dynamism in the 1830s, of the autocracy’s own conservatism there can be no doubt. Shaping Nicholas’s views and indeed casting a long shadow on the 1830s were major challenges to the existing order in Russia and Europe

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6 1837 BARENTS SEA

White Sea

N GRAND DUCHY OF FINLAND

ARKHANGEL

Lake Ladoga

OLONETS

SIBERIA

VOLOGDA

Gulf of Finland ESTAND

YAROSLAVL PSKOV

SK

BELOSTOK

SMOLENSK

GRODNO

VLADIMIR

MOSCOW

KALUGA

MOGILEV

TULA

MINSK OREL

PO D

CH

KIEV

ER

KAZAN ORENBURG

SIMBIRSK PENZA

TAMBOV

V NI GO

VOLYNIA

NIZHNII NOVGOROD

N

VITE B

VIATKA

KOSTROMA

TVER

ZA

KURLAND

VILNA

KINGDOM OF POLAND

PERM

RIA

BALTIC SEA

ST. PETERSBURG NOVGOROD

LIVLAND

KURSK

SARATOV VORONEZH KAZAKH STEPPE

POLTAVA

OL I

KHARKOV

A

B ES

100

200 mi

0 100 200 300 km

ABIA SAR

0

KHERSON

YEKATERINOSLAV

TAURIDE

DON COSSACKS ASTRAKHAN

CASPIAN SEA

Sea of Azov

BLACK SEA

Black Sea

ARCTIC OCEAN Area of Map (Above)

Caspian Sea

R U S S I A N

ALASKA

E M P I R E PA C I F I C OCEAN

Figure 0.2.  The provinces of European Russia. Map by Bill Nelson.

Maria (1819–76)

Olga (1822–92)

Alexandra (1825–44)

Constantine (1827–92)

Nicholas (1831–91)

Alexandra Fedorovna (Princess Charlotte, 1798–1860)

Constantine Alexandra Elena Maria Catherine Olga Anna (1779–1831) (1783–1801) (1784–1803) (1786–1859) (1788–1819) (1792–95) (1795–1865)

Paul I (1754–1801, r. 1796–1801)

Figure 0.3.  The Romanov Dynasty, 1796–1881.

* Rulers in bold

Alexander II (1818–1881, r. 1855–81)

Alexander I (1777–1825, r. 1801–25)

Maria Fedorovna (1759–1828)

Michael (1832–1909)

Nicholas I (1796–1855 r. 1825–55)

Michael (1798–1849)

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8 1837 more broadly. Confusion over the succession after Alexander I’s death in November 1825 offered an opportunity for elite insurgents, subsequently known as the Decembrists, to attempt to impose a new constitutional form of government on the country. Though Nicholas was able easily to disperse the few regiments that mutinied on the morning of 14 December by opening fire on them, the revolt and the subsequent execution of five of its leaders represented a grievous way to start his reign. The insurgents included members of leading noble families, and Nicholas, exhibiting a heightened appreciation for public opinion, fretted about the manner in which the European press would interpret the crisis. The revolt also rendered him highly sensitive to potential threats to his rule, which he sought to combat through intensified surveillance and censorship under a new police force called the Third Section. Adding to this apprehension were revolutions and insurrections in Europe and Russian Poland in 1830–31. The Decembrist revolt itself capped a wave of European rebellion in Spain, Naples, and Greece in 1820–21, which undermined certainty about the stability of the post-Napoleonic order. The July Revolution in France in 1830 brought the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty in favour of the ‘bourgeois’ king Louis-Philippe of Orléans, while Belgium won its independence from the Netherlands through revolution the same year. In Russian Poland, the November Insurrection of 1830–31 required outright warfare for its suppression, adding a nationalist challenge to the tsar’s list of worries. In short, this was a dynamic and uncertain time altogether, and an old regime like Russia’s had good reason to be apprehensive. Yet it could also not afford to be immobile; it needed to exhibit dynamism of its own. Conservatism notwithstanding, Nicholas regarded himself as the con­tinu­ation of Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725), the autocratic reformer who transformed Russia dramatically in the early eighteenth century. With the formalities of introduction behind us, let us turn to the events of 1837. We start with the poet Alexander Pushkin, who as the year began had already become Russia’s leading poet. He was also about to die.

Notes 1. The letter in the original French is in ‘Pis’mo A. S. Pushkina k P. Ia. Chaadaevu’, Russkii arkhiv 2 (1884): 454. It remained unsent. 2. Here I modify the approach to the 19th c. of Jürgen Osterhammel in The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Patrick Camiller (Princeton, NJ, 2014), 47.

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1

He Fell, Slandered by Rumour Let us imagine that it is February 1937 and that we are in the USSR. Our senses are assaulted. On the one hand, we are confronted by Stalin’s Great Terror, in which hundreds of thousands are arrested for fantastical crimes and dramatic show trials provide dubious edification. At the very same time, however, we witness an elaborate celebration. Its organizers declare its object, Alexander Pushkin, to be ‘the great Russian poet, creator of the Russian literary language, and founder of the new Russian literature, who enriched mankind with his immortal creations in artistic language’.1 The poet’s works are published in millions of copies. Gala performances occur throughout the Union. Pushkin is everywhere: printed on posters, painted on lacquer boxes, woven into shawls and rugs.2 This remarkable, all-encompassing commemoration can occur precisely now only because Pushkin managed to get himself killed in a duel exactly one century earlier. The duel, precipitated by the romantic attentions of another man towards Pushkin’s wife, Natalia, occurred on the outskirts of Petersburg on 27 January 1837. The mortally wounded poet was returned to his home, the famous Moika 12, where he expired after two days of agony, still only 37 years old. The next day the newspaper Northern Bee carried a brief announcement of his death expressing its ‘deepest sorrows’ and declaring, ‘Russia owes a debt of thanks to Pushkin for his contributions of 22 years to the world of Letters, a series of the most brilliant and most beneficial successes through compositions of various kinds’.3 In light of censorship and official prohibitions on duelling, the precise circumstances of Pushkin’s death remained a mystery in public discourse for decades. Questions remain even today. Pushkin was of course already famous in Russia in 1837 for his exceptional literary talent. He presumably would have been venerated in some form even had he lived longer. But as it was, the manner of his death proved central to his cult, which in turn became a critical resource for defining modern Russia and uniting its population in the late empire and the USSR. ‘No story has offered the promise of greater national coherence than has Pushkin’s,’ writes Stephanie Sandler,4 and his death helped to produce a cultural mythology that eventually made the poet Russia’s ‘everything’. No history of Russia in 1837 is possible without an account of this episode.

1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0002

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10 1837

Frenchman Went A-Courtin’ Broadly regarded as the father of the modern Russian language, Alexander Pushkin was born in 1799. He was at once of ancient Russian noble lineage and African descent—his great-grandfather, possibly from Abyssinia, had served under the Peter the Great—and he took pride in both. He was in the first class of the famed Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo beginning in 1811, and with the completion of his romantic epic Ruslan and Liudmila in 1820, Pushkin was already earning laud. Exiled that same year for freethinking epigrams, Pushkin spent three years in Russia’s south—the Caucasus, Crimea, and Bessarabia—which provided ma­ter­ial for his Captive of the Caucasus, Fountain of Bakhchisarai, and The Gypsies. By 1824 Pushkin occupied a unique position in Russian letters, with Vasilii Zhukovskii, an older poet (and a central protagonist in the chapters to follow), declaring in November: ‘By the power vested in me I offer you the foremost place on Russia’s Parnassus’. His freethinking having once again gotten him into trouble in 1824, Pushkin was restricted to his mother’s estate, Mikhailovskoe (Pskov province). This seclusion allowed for much productivity and also kept Pushkin at a safe distance from the Decembrist insurrection in 1825, though his personal ties to many of the rebels engendered suspicions about his political sympathies. In 1826, the new emperor summoned the young poet to Petersburg, pardoned him, and became his personal censor. After the completion of his masterful ‘novel in verse’, Eugene Onegin, and as he was finishing his narrative poem, The Bronze Horseman, Pushkin ventured into prose, producing among other works ‘The Queen of Spades’ and The Captain’s Daughter. In his last years, he took growing interest in Peter the Great and also founded a journal called The Contemporary. By meeting the demand for a modern literature in Russian; by completing an epic credited with expressing the spirit of the people in literary form, and by exploiting both old practices like imperial patronage and newer ones involving markets and publics, by the 1830s Pushkin had claimed his place at the head of Russian letters.5 At the centre of the drama leading to the poet’s duel stood his wife, Natalia, whom Pushkin wed in 1831. Just 18 years old at the time of her marriage, Natalia distinguished herself by her exceptional beauty. Dolly Ficquelmont, the Russian wife of the Austrian ambassador, wrote of her in 1832, ‘One could hardly picture a more beautiful woman’—someone who merited lengthy contemplation ‘as a perfect work of the Creator!’ Pushkin himself wrote to Natalia in 1833 from his estate in Nizhnii Novgorod province, ‘The glory of your beauty has reached the priest’s wife here, who certifies that you are ideal in your figure as well as your face’. Admitting that he had fallen senselessly in love with Natalia the first time he saw her, a young contemporary recounted, ‘At the time there was essentially not a single young man in Petersburg who did not secretly pine for Pushkina’. In 1834 the emperor designated Pushkin a

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He Fell, Slandered by Rumour  11

Figure 1.1.  Alexander Julius Klünder, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Lithograph, February 1837. Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo.

‘gentleman of the chamber’ (an honor the poet resented) supposedly so that he could invite the pair—and above all her—to court balls.6 Among Natalia’s many admirers was a certain Frenchman in Russian service, Georges d’Anthès, the adopted son of Baron Louis van Heeckeren, a Dutch diplomat accredited to Petersburg.7 By early 1836 Natalia had turned the young Frenchman’s head, and eventually society began to notice his efforts to court her at the balls and salons of Petersburg’s winter season. ‘Forgetting all delicacy and violating society’s sense of propriety’, recounted Madame Ficquelmont, d’Anthès

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12 1837 began to show Natalia ‘signs of admiration completely inadmissible in relation to a married woman’.8 Nor could Pushkin himself fail to notice, and he increasingly regarded d’Anthès’s impunity as a challenge to both his own honour and that of his wife. In October, Natalia rejected d’Anthès decisively in order to preserve her reputation, and at one point d’Anthès threatened, in Natalia’s presence, to kill himself if she refused to give herself to him. By November 1836, the situation was rife with passion and intrigue. At this moment, on 4 November, Pushkin received an anonymous mock certificate proclaiming his election to an ‘Order of Cuckolds’. In light of what Natalia had by then related, Pushkin immediately suspected d’Anthès and Heeckeren of this despicable stunt, and he accordingly challenged the former to a duel. The two foreigners understood that such a contest would ruin their careers in Russia, and for their part Pushkin’s friends, as they became aware of the situation, made strenuous efforts to effectuate reconciliation (Zhukovskii in particular). The task was devilishly difficult. Pushkin was adamant about protecting his and his wife’s honour, while d’Anthès was open only to a resolution that would not make him look like a coward. (‘Never in my life have I racked my brains like that’, wrote one participant in the effort to resolve the affair.9) A solution—secured only after false starts and extensive negotiation—was for d’Anthès to propose marriage to Natalia’s older sister, Yekaterina, thereby creating the impression that she had been the true object of his affection all along. Yet even this scheme did not put the matter to rest. When the marriage was announced, some in Petersburg society concluded that the Frenchman’s proposal represented a noble act of self-sacrifice designed to save Natalia’s reputation. Other complications threatened to renew the averted duel. Though the precise circumstances remain unclear, it appears that Zhukovskii, otherwise sworn to secrecy on the matter of the duel but lacking any other way of preventing it, appealed for intercession directly to the emperor, who met with Pushkin on 23 November. The emperor apparently managed to assuage the poet’s concerns, and, if we may believe the well-informed Yekaterina Karamzina, Pushkin ‘promised the sovereign, after the history with the first duel, not to fight for any reason’.10 It looked as though the contest had been averted. Alas, it had only been postponed. Pushkin was by no means reconciled with d’Anthès even after the Frenchman married Natalia’s sister on 10 January 1837. He refused to treat the newly-weds as part of his own family, but still encountered them frequently in social settings. Nor did it help that Natalia was visibly jealous of her sister—d’Anthès was after all a dashing fellow much closer to Natalia’s age than was Pushkin. d’Anthès’s advances continued and tongues again started wagging. As Sophia Karamzina wrote, in Pushkin’s presence Natalia ‘pretends that she is not on speaking terms with d’Anthès and does not even look at him, but when her husband is absent she takes up her previous coquetry with downcast eyes and nervous embarrassment in conversation, while he, standing across from her, directs lengthy glances at her and, it seems, forgets completely about his bride’.

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He Fell, Slandered by Rumour  13 Another attempt at reconciliation in mid-January failed, after which d’Anthès’s actions became even more impudent, fuelled in part, apparently, by his know­ ledge of Pushkin’s promise to the tsar not to duel. Between the two interpretations of d’Anthès’s marriage proposal—that it had been a cowardly way to avert the duel, and that it had been an act of self-sacrifice for Natalia’s sake—the latter was gaining the upper hand. This situation became intolerable for Pushkin, who declared that he needed his reputation to be ‘inviolable in every corner of Russia, where my name is known’.11 Few even among Pushkin’s closest circle appear to have fully understood what was occurring and what it meant to the poet. The emperor might have intervened to restrain d’Anthès or to end all the gossip, but instead he chose to admonish Natalia to take more care in protecting her reputation. For Pushkin, this intervention by the tsar was likely the last straw. On 25 January, his earlier promise notwithstanding, he resolved to renew the duel by sending an offensive letter to Heeckeren, in which he accused the adoptive father of instigating all of the son’s ‘wretchedness’ and ‘foolishness’. ‘Like a lewd old woman’, Pushkin averred, ‘you waylaid my wife in every corner, to speak to her about your illegitimate or so-called son’. He demanded that Heeckeren put an end ‘to all these escapades’.12 By directly offending the Dutchman, Pushkin made a proponent of the duel someone who would otherwise have sought to thwart it (again). And by maintaining fuller secrecy this time, he prevented his friends’ intervention (Zhukovskii apparently knew nothing). Once Heeckeren had shared news of the letter with d’Anthès, the latter challenged Pushkin. There was nothing now to prevent the contest from occurring.13

The Duel The duel took place on 27 January on the outskirts of the capital (a monument by a railway overpass marks the spot today). It was clear, windy, and cold that day, and the location, selected for its seclusion, was initially knee-deep in snow. The rules worked out by the combatants’ seconds called for the following: the op­pon­ ents were to stand twenty steps apart, with barriers five steps in front of each and ten steps between them. On a signal, each of the two was to begin walking toward the other and to fire whenever it suited, though without crossing the barrier and without retreating after his shot. The exercise would repeat itself by the same rules until a result was secured.14 Though Pushkin reached the barrier first, d’Anthès took the first shot and wounded his opponent fatally: the bullet passed through Pushkin’s entire body, near the bottom of the right side of his belly, and stopped under the skin on the other side. Not yet dead, the poet propped himself up on his left arm and managed to fire his own shot and injure his opponent, though not seriously. As d’Anthès’s second reported, Pushkin’s wound ‘was too serious to

14 1837 continue’. Having fallen again after taking his shot, the poet ‘half fainted twice and for several moments was in a daze. He regained consciousness completely and did not lose it again. In the sledge, being jolted during the half-mile trip on a very bad road, he suffered without complaint’.15 On the longer trip home from a transfer point to his apartment, the carriage had to stop several times, as Pushkin frequently fainted. He was now sensing the seriousness of his wound.16 Deposited in his apartment at around 6 p.m., Pushkin had to suffer for almost two days before expiring around 2.45 p.m. on the 29th. In the accounts we have of those 45 hours, three central issues appear. One is Pushkin’s tremendous physical suffering and the stoicism with which he endured it. On the morning of the 28th, the family doctor Spasskii described his ordeal as ‘genuine torture. Pushkin’s physiognomy altered; his gaze became wild, and it seemed as though his eyes were ready to leap from their sockets’.17 Pushkin’s friend Alexander Turgenev remarked of that same night that Pushkin ‘screamed frightfully; he nearly fell on the floor in convulsions of suffering’. Later that day Turgenev reported: ‘He is suffering, repeating the words, “My God, my God! What is this?” and clenches his fists in convulsions’. At one point Pushkin even sought to acquire a pistol so that he could end his ordeal by suicide. Yet even as the poet ‘experienced frightful torment’, Spasskii remarked, the ‘uncommon toughness of his soul revealed itself to the fullest’. Zhukovskii concurred: ‘On the whole, from the beginning to the end of his sufferings (aside from two or three hours the first night, when they surpassed every measure of human endurance) he was amazingly tough’. He cited one of Pushkin’s doctors, Arendt, as saying that he had been in thirty battles: ‘I have seen many people dying, but little comparable to this’.18 A second issue is the concern that Pushkin exhibited for his wife. Whatever Natalia’s actions leading up the duel (and views on the matter vary), Pushkin was apparently convinced of her innocence and determined to spare her shock. Even in the carriage ride home, he was already considering how not to alarm her, telling his second, Constantine Danzas, to assure her that his wound was light. When doctors told him that the matter was serious, he asked them not to inform her. He called her to his bed and told her: ‘Don’t worry, you’re not responsible for this’. As doctors attended to him, with Pushkin insisting that Natalia not be present during their inspection of his injury, she suffered terribly in the next room, especially once Pushkin let out a cry of pain. During the worst two hours of his suffering, Natalia had mercifully fallen into ‘a heavy, lethargic sleep . . . as if purposely sent from above’. Yet when he was encouraged to moan in order to ease the suffering, Pushkin replied, ‘No, I shouldn’t moan, my wife will hear it’. Summarizing, Yekaterina Meshcherskaia-Karamzina recounted that ‘amidst the most frightful physical suffering’, the poet ‘thought only of his wife and of what she would feel on account of him. During each intermission between bouts of tormenting pain, he called her and attempted to console her, repeating that he regarded her as innocent in his death and that he never, for one minute, deprived her of his trust

He Fell, Slandered by Rumour  15 and love’.19 The dying man’s friend and fellow poet Peter Viazemskii reported a week after Pushkin’s death that the poet had imposed on his friends ‘the sacred obligation to protect his wife’s name from slander’.20 Finally, Pushkin sought to come to terms with his patron and censor, the emperor. Duelling was a hanging offence, and by 1837 Pushkin had contracted significant debts. The future of his wife and four children was now in doubt, and his second, Danzas, faced prosecution for his participation in the duel. Recall, moreover, that Pushkin had promised the tsar in November not to duel; now, fatally wounded, ‘he sent the good Zhukovskii to ask the sovereign’s forgiveness for having failed to keep his word’.21 When for his part a doctor told Pushkin that he had no choice but to inform the sovereign, the poet initially requested only that Nicholas not prosecute Danzas. Two hours later, the doctor returned with a hand-written note from the emperor encouraging Pushkin to ‘die as a Christian’ and agreeing to take his wife and children into his charge (the exact contents of the note remain unknown).22 Though he said nothing directly about Danzas, the emperor also expressed his desire to cover all of Pushkin’s debts. The tsar’s solicitude for Pushkin’s family after the poet’s death earned renown and praise in both Russia and abroad (which presumably was the intent).23 Although it appeared momentarily that Pushkin was on the mend, his wound eventually overcame him. Having requested cloudberries and having consumed them with satisfaction, he died.24 For two days the body remained in his apartment, during which time throngs came to pay respects. On the night of 30–31 January, instead of being transferred for a funeral service at St Isaac’s Cathedral (to whose parish Pushkin belonged), the body was transferred, secretly and without spectacle, to the church of the imperial stables. A  requiem there occurred on 1 February with large numbers in attendance, despite official efforts to limit the crowd. ‘Anyone and everyone in St Petersburg who thinks or reads thronged to the church where the mass was being sung for the poet’, wrote the diarist (and censor) Alexander Nikitenko that day.25 Two days later the body travelled to Pskov province, again secretly, for interment, at the poet’s request, beside his mother at the Sviatogorskii monastery. Natalia requested that Danzas be allowed to accompany the body in transit, but the emperor refused: Danzas had participated in a duel, which was illegal, and was therefore subject to prosecution. Nicholas specified that Alexander Turgenev, who was not involved in the duel, could accompany the corpse. Nikitenko recorded that his wife, travelling to Petersburg, encountered the body at a depot outside the capital, where gendarmes were scurrying about, eager to get the carriage on its way, with the coffin under straw and wrapped in bast matting. A peasant there explained, ‘You see, some fellow by the name of Pushkin was killed, and they are speeding him away on this post chaise in matting and straw—may God forgive them!—like a dog’. Turgenev was one of a tiny

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Figure 1.2.  V. A. Zhukovskii, Pushkin in His Coffin, 30 January 1837. © The National Pushkin Museum, St Petersburg, Russia.

handful of people present at dawn on 6 February when, after a final liturgy, Pushkin’s casket was lowered into a shallow grave: the earth was ­frozen solid, and the coffin buried properly only after the spring thaw.26 For all that we know about the duel, many questions about Pushkin’s death remain unanswered. We still do not know, for example, who sent the mock certificates to Pushkin in November. Natalia’s attitude in all of this is also a mystery— we have virtually no sources in her own voice. It seems possible that Pushkin actively sought death. In one reading, his spiritual development, discernible in his poems of 1835–6, brought him to a greater belief in, and acceptance of, Providence and his own early demise.27 But it is also true that he continued with literary activity right up until the duel, which implies that he sought redemption rather than death.28 So numerous are the unanswered questions that one interpretation proposes that the true object of Pushkin’s resentment was the emperor himself. In this reading, Nicholas, something of a womanizer, had paid court to Natalia and had secured his desires, leaving Pushkin with only the extreme outlet to which he resorted.29 This version of events helps to explain a number of the drama’s otherwise inexplicable features, but direct evidence for it is scarce. Assessing its viability is something that this author leaves to true Pushkinists, among whom he does not count himself.

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The Immediate Aftermath In print, the reaction to Pushkin’s death was muted. As noted, Northern Bee reported the death the day after it had occurred, but it did so on the second page of the paper, with no headline and no explanation as to how or why the poet had died. A few other papers followed suit. That same day the literary supplement to Russian Invalid printed an obituary by Vladimir Odoevskii that declared, ‘The sun of our poetry has set’. The next day, St Petersburg News concurred: ‘Russian literature has not experienced such an important loss since the death of [Nikolai] Karamzin’ in 1826.30 Neither of these publications could refer to the duel, although it is worth noting—and this can scarcely be coincidental—that on 17 February Moscow News carried a story about a ‘Society Against Duels’ in the Belgian city of Liège, praising its members for their ‘moral restraint’.31 In its first issue of 1837, Pushkin’s own journal, The Contemporary, printed Zhukovskii’s letter to Pushkin’s father, which constituted the first published account of the poet’s death. But here as well, the story began from the moment that Pushkin was brought to his apartment, without any explanation for his dire condition. The real cause of Pushkin’s death was first openly mentioned—and then only in passing— with the publication in April of the verdict of d’Anthès calling for his ejection from the country.32 This is not to say that people were unaware of what had happened. In fact, there was an extensive epistolary production unfolding even as Pushkin lay dying, and its authors actively encouraged broad distribution of their accounts.33 Indeed, letters were so central to the manner in which Pushkin’s death was originally written that the story bears comparison to an epistolary novel.34 As a consequence, many people had a reasonably accurate understanding of what had transpired, including even detailed information on Pushkin’s bodily wounds and suffering.35 Those first weeks and months after January 1837 revealed a concerted effort by various parties to shape the meaning of Pushkin’s death, in part by plumbing the nature of his views while still alive. Lamenting that the ‘mystery’ surrounding the last stage of Pushkin’s life provided endless fuel for misconception, Viazemskii wrote on 14 February to the emperor’s brother, the Grand Duke Michael, that it was incumbent upon Pushkin’s friends ‘to expose all that they know on that account, and thereby to reveal his personality in its true light’. It was especially important for Viazemskii to establish Pushkin’s devotion to the emperor. Concerned that some were inclined to see in Pushkin (and his friends) op­pos­ ition to the government and the order it upheld, he was sure to recount that Pushkin’s words on his deathbed ‘revealed the degree to which he was attached, devoted, and thankful to the sovereign’. The poet was fundamentally apolitical, not a ‘political activist’. ‘He was above all a poet, and only a poet. . . . He was deeply, truly devoted to the sovereign, he loved him with all his heart’. Perhaps Pushkin

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18 1837 had attacked the government in his youth (‘like any young person’), but by taste and conviction he was ‘not a liberal but an aristocrat’. He regretted the fall of France’s old regime, disliked that country’s July Monarchy (after the revolution in 1830), and wrote verse in direct opposition to the Polish insurrection of that same year. ‘Jokes, a certain independence of character and opinion—that is still not liberalism and not systematic opposition’. The best works of his later years—Boris Godunov, Poltava, and History of the Pugachev Rebellion—were all distinctly ‘monarchist’, Viazemskii insisted.36 Writing in the same vein and charged with going through Pushkin’s papers, Zhukovskii reported to the head of the Third Section, Alexander Benckendorff, that there turned out to be nothing hostile to the government and good morality, ‘of which I was certain beforehand, knowing Pushkin’s manner of thought in his last years’. Pushkin’s ‘credo’, wrote Zhukovskii, included ‘decisive conviction in the necessity for Russia of pure, unlimited autocracy’, hostility to the July Revolution, and a fanatical opposition to ‘the Polish revolution’. In short, Pushkin’s friends quickly set out to secure not only his personal rehabilitation after the duel, but also his political rehabilitation—for his sake and their own.37 As the very urgency of these assertions suggest, however, there was another way of interpreting Pushkin’s views. Particularly intriguing in this regard are the remarks of the Prussian ambassador August von Liebermann, who already on 2 February reported to his government that public opinion would compel Nicholas to punish Heeckeren. ‘Pushkin’s death presents itself here as an incomparable loss for the country, as a public calamity. National pride has been riled up all the more by the fact that the opponent, who has survived the poet, is of foreign origin’. Liebermann recounted a great outpouring of emotion on Pushkin’s behalf at his funeral, with many wishing to bear the body or even unbridle the horses and pull the funeral carriage themselves. He added that Pushkin ‘was well-known as an atheist’, and that there were grounds for supposing ‘that a significant portion of the ovations to which Pushkin’s death gave occasion may and should be ascribed to that distinct popularity that the departed acquired among some people in certain layers of society for his ideas of contemporary liberalism’. Liebermann went still further: ‘I know for a fact that under the cover of hot patriotism over the course of several days people in Petersburg are holding highly unusual speeches, asserting among other things that Pushkin represented the only support, the only representative of popular freedoms’. A letter of Heeckeren himself to his government the same day stated that the death had revealed to the authorities ‘the existence of an entire party, of which [Pushkin] was the head’— a ‘reformist’ party. Some foreign newspapers that covered Pushkin’s death similarly drew attention to his opposition, liberal thought, and even atheism.38 The extent to which all of this is accurate remains an open question, though if the matter concerns Pushkin’s views in the 1830s, his friends were probably closer to the mark.

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He Fell, Slandered by Rumour  19 As we shall see, Nicholas was indeed concerned about potential public r­ eactions to Pushkin’s death. But his personal response tended towards indifference. As he wrote in one letter on 4 February, ‘Here everything is quiet, except that Pushkin’s tragic death occupies the public and serves as food for various stupid gossip. He died from a wound for an impudent and stupid challenge that he issued, though, thank God, he died as a Christian’. Four days later he wrote laconically to his brother Michael (the same grand prince to whom Viazemskii had written), ‘Since my last letter nothing important has happened here, except for the death of the famous Pushkin from a wound in a duel with d’Anthès’. Acknowledging that to a point Pushkin had conducted himself as any honourable man would, Nicholas criticized his ‘impudent letter’ to Heeckeren, which had ultimately made d’Anthès ‘right in this matter’. The event, the emperor continued, gave birth ‘to countless rumors, the vast majority of them stupid and among which censure of Heeckeren’s behavior alone is just and warranted; he definitely conducted himself like a vile scoundrel’.39 The emperor thus expressed neither deep emotion at the loss of a great literary talent nor relief that an intellectual resource for political opposition had conveniently disappeared. Pushkin’s death generated interest abroad, all the more in light of foreigners’ prominence in the drama. Unburdened by Russia’s censorship, foreign news­ papers could more openly discuss the duel. True, some of the details were off. The German press reported that Pushkin’s estate Mikhailovskoe was on the banks of the Neva River (it was actually in Pskov province), and that he had been exiled from Russia for his liberal thinking (his exile had been within the country). Some of the details of the duel were inaccurate—for example, that Pushkin died on the spot or fatally wounded d’Anthès. Even Pushkin’s name appeared in curious forms, for example ‘Musin Alexander von Pushkin’ (based apparently on confusion with the prominent noble family Musin-Pushkin). Nor were foreigners always aware of Pushkin’s literary status, as few of his works had been translated. Still, it is noteworthy that foreign publications took an interest, even if it was the duel above all that captured their imagination. There was clearly recognition, as one German paper reported, that ‘Russian literature has suffered a great loss with the death of its renowned poet Alexander von Pushkin’.40 Soon there were also attempts to raise funds for the poet’s family. The emperor had agreed to take them under his protection, but soon the idea appeared that selling Pushkin’s works could also cover those costs. The interior ministry thus notified marshals of the nobility in various provinces in May 1837 about the impending publication and their role in its sale. Given ‘how much the talent of good writers facilitates the perfection of language, cultivates taste, and elevates the sense of elegance’, said marshals were instructed to promote the sale of that forthcoming publication among the nobles in their jurisdictions. ‘One cannot doubt, it seems, that Russians will honor the memory of the great poet and at the same time facilitate help for his children’. Yet to judge by the results in one

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20 1837 province (Kursk), doubt was very much in order: in six of the province’s fifteen districts no nobles at all agreed to the purchase (two other districts failed to respond). By extending the deadline once, the marshal managed to sell 36 of the 40 sets entrusted to him, sending the other four back to Petersburg.41 By 1838 new provincial gazettes (see Chapter 5) could encourage such purchases as well.42 On the whole, though, the enterprise became, to quote Marcus Levitt, ‘one of the most famous failures in Russian publishing’.43 A literary elite already idolized Pushkin as a genius, but a broader cult of Pushkin did not yet exist.

Of Myths and Cults Part of the issue is that state authorities were determined to prevent the poet’s demise from becoming an occasion for protest. They therefore asserted strict ­control over the body and the funeral process. Noting the gendarmes that had appeared in Pushkin’s apartment during the day before the proposed transfer of his body that night, Viazemskii asked Grand Duke Michael in frustration, ‘Against whom was this force mustered, this full military parade?’ That police were needed to maintain order outside the building was undeniable. ‘But what could they fear from us? What intentions, what ulterior motives did they ascribe to us, if they considered us neither madmen nor scoundrels?’44 Head of the Third Section Benckendorff provides something of an answer, commenting on the many who wanted to follow the funeral convoy to the burial site in Pskov province: it was difficult to determine whether these gestures represented veneration for ‘Pushkin the liberal or Pushkin the poet’. Best not to take chances: Fearing that popular expressions of grief ‘might develop into a deplorable spectacle of triumph for the liberals’, Benckendorff asserted the need ‘to adopt secret measures to suppress all honours’.45 He and minister of education Sergei Uvarov—a comrade of Pushkin in earlier days who had since become a foe—moved to block all other forms of public reaction and even had destroyed those portraits of the poet produced for mourning. When the literary supplement to Russian Invalid published the obit­ uary cited earlier (‘The sun of our poetry has set’), Uvarov gave the publisher a dressing down through Petersburg’s head censor: Uvarov, the censor explained, ‘is very, very cross with you. Why this publication about Pushkin? Why this black frame around the news of the death of a person of low rank, without any real position in state service?’ Uvarov objected to the expression ‘sun of our poetry’ (‘For pity’s sake, why such an honour?’) and the assertion that Pushkin had died ‘half-way through his great career’ (writing ‘little verses’ did not constitute ‘a great career’).46 Even the publisher of the Northern Bee, Faddei Bulgarin, received a reprimand for publishing the words quoted at the start of this chapter. On 12 February, the censor Nikitenko remarked, ‘The measure prohibiting the publication of anything about Pushkin is still in effect and the public is very disturbed

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He Fell, Slandered by Rumour  21 by it’.47 In short, the government was determined to ensure that, publicly at least, no one was able to make too much of Pushkin. Nor did people immediately agree on the meaning of Pushkin. The poet had left an ambiguous legacy, and his proximity to the court rendered him suspect in the eyes of the next generation of intellectuals, who were more eager to promote socially conscious art. The result was that for a time two prominent value systems in Russia—a new ‘nihilism’ on the left and government claims to monopoly over Russian intellectual life—shared an aversion to the poet. In his novel Nests of the Gentry (1859), set in 1842, Ivan Turgenev remarked of his protagonist reading a different poet, ‘At that time Pushkin had not yet managed to come back into fashion’.48 Even two decades after the duel, the writer Nadezhda Sokhanskaia could lament, ‘The twenty-first year since the fateful day on which our first great poet died has arrived, and what have we done for his memory? Nothing’.49 Gradually, though, a broader cult of Pushkin began to emerge. A critical stage began in 1855, when Pavel Annenkov’s new edition of Pushkin’s work began to appear. In 1859 the literary critic Apollon Grigoriev made the indelible statement—‘Pushkin is our everything’ (Pushkin—eto nashe vse)—that would encapsulate the poet’s universal veneration in the twentieth century.50 In 1862, Pushkin appeared in the famous Millennium of Russia Monument in Novgorod, as part of a new government effort to include artists and writers in the national pantheon.51 By then graduates of the Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo, Pushkin’s alma mater, had also begun to agitate for the poet’s proper commemoration. Though it took almost two decades, these efforts culminated in the erection in 1880 of a famous monument to Pushkin in Moscow, the poet’s birthplace. Its unveiling drew a crowd of between 100,000 and 500,000 (estimates vary), and an electrifying speech by Fyodor Dostoevsky generated a tumultuous reaction that surprised even the speaker himself.52 The termination of copyright on Pushkin’s work in 1887 generated a flood of new editions, many of them intended for an audience of newly or partially literate masses. The year 1899 brought the centenary of the poet’s birth, by which time almost 7.5 million copies of Pushkin’s works had been printed. This commemoration became an official affair, with the state more actively aspiring to make Russian literature part of official culture. Its success was only partial, but the tsarist regime had in any event recognized the potential unifying nature of Pushkinism.53 The Soviet one would exploit it more fully. Yet to acknowledge that a full-blown Pushkin cult emerged only gradually is not to deny that many of its crucial elements were present early on. We have seen that a literary elite already celebrated Pushkin as a genius during his lifetime, and Nicholas also recognized the poet’s importance by becoming his personal censor. The poet himself laid further groundwork. Especially striking is his most intensely canonized poem of 1836, ‘I have built myself a monument’, which with uncanny prescience established the terms for Pushkin’s shared national admiration. The poem proposed that its author ‘shall not wholly die’ and ‘shall be famous so long

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22 1837 as in this world beneath the moon / Lives even a single poet’. As if predicting the Pushkin cult in its full-blown Soviet incarnation, Pushkin wrote, News of me will pass through the whole of great Russia And every language in her realm will speak my name . . . And long shall I be loved by the people.

As Sandler comments, Pushkin’s prediction of immortality ‘seems proleptically to console his mourners’. The consensus among Russians is that the poem represents Pushkin’s ‘testament’, a work expressing the poignancy of Pushkin’s position as an unappreciated hero addressing posterity.54 The poem seems also to presage the erection of the monument in Moscow, a central moment in the emergence of the Pushkin cult in tsarist years. Indeed, lines from the poem are inscribed on that monument’s base. If Pushkin’s own verse initiated the process of mythologization, then the work of others drove that process on to the next stage. Zhukovskii offered a short poem that gazed intently on the dead poet’s body. Written in melancholy, it fixates on the transition from life to death and also supposes that future readers will want to know specific details and physical attributes. On Zhukovskii’s request, countess Yevdokiia Rostopchina produced two poems in 1838–9, including one, set at a ball, that sought to read the features of Pushkin’s face: his ‘uneven features’, his ‘Southern eyes’, and his ‘exhausted smile’.55 Mirza Fatih-Ali-Akhundov, an Azeri poet and a founder of Azerbaijani literature, likewise offered verse (originally in Persian) ‘on Pushkin, the head of the cathedral of Poets’, thus revealing the bard’s ability to speak across cultural divides.56 Yet undoubtedly the most important poetic tribute was Mikhail Lermontov’s Death of a Poet, possibly written even while Pushkin still lay dying. Lermontov’s angry verse accused above all high society for his loss, as the very first lines attest: ‘The poet has perished!—a ­prisoner of honor / He fell, slandered by rumour’.57 This poem, unpublished but ­circulated in numerous copies, catapulted Lermontov to fame, though it also earned him (like Pushkin earlier) exile to the south, where he himself perished in a duel in 1841. Early tribute took other forms as well. Even before Pushkin’s passing, many came to his apartment to learn of his condition. Most important were his most immediate friends: Zhukovskii, Viazemskii and his wife, and others.58 The antechamber of his apartment was swamped with people as well. The public crowded the street outside the apartment, so that a guards unit was needed to maintain order. Viazemskii recounted that it was ‘impossible to count all of those who came from various directions to inquire about his health during his illness’ (one estimate suggested 4,000 people per day), and after his passing the apartment proved far too small to accommodate all those who wished to pay respects. Sensitive to public sentiment in light of his role in the duel, Heeckeren reported

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He Fell, Slandered by Rumour  23 to his government, ‘Upon Pushkin’s death public opinion has expressed itself more strongly than expected’, and he ascribed these views to ‘the third estate’— that is, ‘men of letters, artists, lesser civil servants, the nation’s big wheel merchant class, and so on’.59 Implicated in the mourning and commemoration were growing aspirations for national expression in Russia, which rendered Pushkin’s death especially timely. It was in the 1830s that the ideal of narodnost—translated variously as ‘nationality’, ‘national character’, ‘folk character’, and other variants—thoroughly took root in Russia. Reflecting a shift in the discursive framework of Russian culture that now defined ‘the people’ (narod) unambiguously as the Russian popular masses, the term narodnost was devised by Viazemskii in 1819 as a translation of the French nationalité, combining the ideas of both ‘national’ and ‘popular’.60 The concept narodnost offered a new way of thinking about the distinctiveness of Russian national character and the ways in which it could be explored and expressed. It also held out the prospect of joining Europe on equal terms. As the critic Nikolai Nadezhdin wrote in 1836, in Europe the idea of narodnost had been made ‘a pinnacle of civilization’. ‘If we truly wish to be Europeans’, he asserted, ‘then we should start by learning from them how to respect ourselves’.61 High culture became one area in which people increasingly aspired to see narodnost embodied. Pushkin himself remarked as early as 1825, ‘For some time it had been customary among us to talk about narodnost, to demand narodnost, to complain of the absence of narodnost in works of literature’. Pushkin was frustrated that ‘no one has thought to define what he means by the word narodnost’, but the poet seems to have accepted the basic premise at its foundation: ‘Climate, faith, and form of rule give each people a particular physiognomy, which is more or less reflected in the mirror of poetry’.62 Endowed with exceptional gifts and romanticized through his death in a duel over love and jealousy, Pushkin could easily quench the thirst of Russia’s young nationalists for narodnost and offer proof of their country’s artistic prowess. His cult thus reflected the emergence of a Russian nation.

Conclusion Apollon Grigoriev was perhaps premature when he declared in 1859, ‘Pushkin is our everything’. But the remark was ultimately prophetic. From 1880 or so, Pushkin has stood unchallenged at the apex of Russia’s hierarchy of culture. As Lydia Ginzburg wrote in the late Soviet era, ‘The love of Pushkin, which is incomprehensible to foreigners, is the true sign of a person born of Russian culture. You can like or dislike any other Russian writer—that is a matter of taste. But Pushkin as a phenomenon is obligatory for us’.63 It is hard to deny Irina Surat’s assertion that Pushkin’s death represents ‘the most significant event of his biography’. Positing that national heroes typically

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24 1837 win their cherished status only in death, Sandler concurs: The poet ‘became Pushkin only when he died in duel’, and his death ‘has fascinated Russians in every generation since 1837’. Its timing was enormously important for making Pushkin the national poet. Pushkin appeared at that moment in the early nineteenth century when post-Napoleonic romantic nationalism made it imperative that every nation have its native genius. Indeed, the cult of artistic genius—with ‘genius’ now encompassing the whole person rather than constituting merely one of his attributes—was a central feature of the era’s Romanticism.64 No doubt the brilliance of Pushkin’s writing was critical to his appointment to this role, but his death in a duel marked by romantic intrigue was also essential to him becoming the most appealing figure. His death ‘was itself a poetic subject’, as the verse of Lermontov and others attest, and was thus ‘especially conducive to the mythmaking process’.65 Which is another way of saying that Pushkin became what he did—not just a great poet but a mythical figure—because of 1837. The assertion may warrant contesting, but I will advance it here nonetheless: Russia’s greatest contributions to world culture have come in the realms of literature and music. This initial sketch has touched on the first of these, so it is time now to address the second. Our transition proves wonderfully seamless, for—as luck would have it—the hero of our second sketch has been described as ‘our musical Pushkin’.

Notes 1. Cited in Stephanie Sandler, Commemorating Pushkin: Russia’s Myth of a National Poet (Stanford, CA, 2004), 87. 2. For accounts of the event, see ibid. 107–18; Karl Schlögel, Moscow, 1937, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Malden, MA, 2012), 144–59; Karen Petrone, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades! Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington, IN, 2000), 113–48; and Kevin  M.  F.  Platt and David Brandenberger (eds), Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda (Madison, WI, 2006), 193–229. 3. L. Iakubovich, Severnaia Pchela 24 (30 Jan. 1837): 94. 4. Sandler, Commemorating, 5. 5. Abram Reitblat, Kak Pushkin vyshel v genii: Istoriko-sotsiologicheskie ocherki o knizhnoi kul’ture Pushkinskoi epokhi (Moscow, 2001), 51–69 (citation at 59). 6. Ficquelmont, cited in Serena Vitale, Pushkin’s Button, trans. Ann Goldstein and Jon Rothschild (New York, 1998), 47–8; letter of 11 Oct. 1833 in I.  L.  Levkovich (ed.), Pis’ma A.  S.  Pushkina k zhene (SPb, 2019), 60; and V.  A.  Sollogub cited in P. E. Shchegolev, Duel’ i smert’ Pushkina: Issledovanie i materialy, 2nd edn (Petrograd, 1917), 55. 7. On their backgrounds, see Shchegolev, Duel’ i smert’, 13–30. After his adoption in 1836, d’Anthès became a Heeckeren as well, but I use his pre-adoption surname to distinguish the two men.

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He Fell, Slandered by Rumour  25 8. Dolli Fikel’mon, Dnevnik, 1829–1837: Ves’ Pushkinskii Peterburg, ed. V.  V.  Savitskii (Moscow, 2009), 355. 9. This was Pushkin’s second, V. A. Sollogub, as quoted in Stella Abramovich, Predystoriia poslednei dueli Pushkina (SPb, 1994), 117. 10. Yekaterina Karamzina to her son Andrei (2 Feb. 1837), in Pushkin v pis’makh Karamzinykh 1836–1837 godov (Moscow, 1960), 170 (Russian) and 300 (French original). 11. Quoted in Abramovich, Predystoriia, 170–1, 178. 12. The letter is in A.  N.  Ammosov, Poslednie dni i konchina Aleksandra Sergeevicha Pushkina so slov byvshego ego litseiskogo tovarishcha i sekundanta Konstantina Karlovicha Danzasa (SPb, 1963), 47–9. 13. My account is based principally on Shchegelov, Duel’ i smert’ and especially Abramovich, Predystoriia. For accounts in English, see Vitale’s idio­syn­crat­ic Pushkin’s Button, and Walter N. Vickery’s, Pushkin: Death of a Poet (Bloomington, IN, 1968). 14. The precise conditions are in Shchegelov, Duel’ i smert’, 143. 15. Duel’ Pushkina s Dantesom-Gekkerenom: Podlinnoe voenno-sudnoe delo 1837 g. (SPb, 1900), 53. 16. P.  V.  Annenkov, Materialy dlia biografii Aleksandra Sergeevicha Pushkina (SPb, 1855), 420. 17. Spasskii in V.  V.  Versaev, Duel’ i smert’ Pushkina: Sistematicheskii svod podlinnykh svidetel’stv sovremennikov iz knigi ‘Pushkin v zhizni’ (Moscow, 1927), 29. 18. Turgenev in Veresaev, Duel’ i smert’, 30, 32; Spasskii, ibid. 29; Vasilii Zhukovskii, ‘Poslednie minuty Pushkina’, Sovremennik 5 (1837): vi. 19. Ammosov, Poslednie dni, 27–8; Turgenev in Veresaev, Duel’ i smert’, 28; Zhukovskii, ‘Poslednie minuty’, esp. iv–viii (citation at vii); Vladimir Dahl and MeshcherskaiaKaramzina in Veresaev, Duel’ i smert’, 35–7. 20. Cited in P. E. Shchegelov, ‘Duel’ Pushkina s Dantesom (Novye materialy)’, Istoricheskii vestnik 94 (Jan. 1905), 175. 21. Yekaterina Karamzina to her son Andrei (2 Feb. 1837), in Pushkin v pis’makh Karamzinykh, 170 (Russian) and 300 (French). 22. Ammosov quotes this note in Poslednie dni (31), but this was based only on Danzas’s recollection of its content. 23. Shchegelov, ‘Duel’ Pushkina’, 954; Abramovich, Predystoriia, 155. 24. Ammosov, Poslednie dni, 37. 25. Aleksandr Nikitenko, The Diary of a Russian Censor, ed. and trans. Helen Saltz Jacobson (Amherst, MA, 1975), 70. 26. Ammosov, Poslednie dni, 38–40, 68; Nikitenko, Diary, 71; Zhukovskii, ‘Poslednie minuty’, vxii–vxiii; Irina Surat, ‘ “Da pristupliu’ ko smerti smelo…” O gibeli Pushkina’, Novyi mir 2 (1999): https://magazines.gorky.media/novyi_mi/1999/2/da-pristuplyuko-smerti-smelo.html. 27. This is Surat’s assertion in ‘ “Da pristupliu” ’. 28. Abramovich, Predystoriia, 158–68, 201. 29. Igor Yefimov, ‘A Duel with the Tsar’, Russian Review 58 (1999): 574–90. 30. Both cited here from M. Venevitinov, Nekrologi Pushkina v nemetskikh gazetakh 1837 goda (SPb, 1900), 5.

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26 1837 31. ‘Obshchestvo protiv deulei v g. Liezhe’, Moskovskie vedomosti 14 (17 Feb. 1837): 95. 32. Severnaia Pchela 81 (12 Feb. 1837): 521. 33. Surat, ‘ “Da pristpliu” ’; Shchegelov, ‘Duel’ Pushkina’, 174. 34. Such is Leslie O’Bell’s contention in ‘Writing the Story of Pushkin’s Death’, Slavic Review 58(2) (1999): 393–406. 35. Irina Reyfman, ‘Death and Mutilation at the Dueling Site: Pushkin’s Death as a National Spectacle’, Russian Review 60 (2001): 72–88. 36. Shchegelov, ‘Duel’ Pushkina’, 173–95 (citations at 177, 183, 189–90). 37. Ibid., citations at 193 and 194. 38. Ibid. 944–72 (citations at 966–9); Venevitinov, Nekrologi Pushkina, 12, 15, 18, 26, 28. 39. Nicholas to Prince Ivan Paskevich and Grand Duke Michael, in Shchegelov, ‘Duel’ Pushkina’, citations at 956–7. 40. Venevitinov, Nekrologi Pushkina (citations at 8, 12, 27). 41. A.  Tankov, ‘Rasprostranenie sochinenii Pushkina v Kurskoi gubernii v 1837 godu’, Istoricheskii vestnik 26 (1886): 630–3 (citations at 631). 42. E.g. Voronezhskie GV 11 (12 Mar. 1838): 62–3. 43. Marcus C. Levitt, Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880 (Ithaca, NY, 1989), 23. 44. Cited in Shchegelov, ‘Duel’ Pushkina’, 188. 45. Cited in Levitt, Russian Literary Politics, 19. 46. Cited in Irina Reyfman, How Russia Learned to Write: Literature and the Imperial Table of Ranks (Madison, WI, 2016), 63. Reyfman interprets this and other evidence to show that Pushkin’s service record, which was indeed far from impressive, was more important to both him and contemporaries than is generally allowed. See ibid. 44–85. 47. Nikitenko, Diary, 70–71 (citation at 71). 48. I. S. Turgenev, Romany (Moscow, 1975), 229. 49. Levitt, Russian Literary Politics, esp. 4–10, 26–33 (citation of Sokhanskaia at 33). 50. Cited in Sandler, Commemorating, 10. 51. Olga Maiorova, From the Shadow of Empire: Defining the Russian Nation through Cultural Mythology, 1855–1870 (Madison, WI, 2010), 66–8. 52. Levitt, Russian Literary Politics; Neil Stewart, ‘Pushkin 1880: Fedor Dostoevsky Voices the Russian Self-Image’, in Joep Leerssen and Ann Rigney (eds), Commemorating Writers in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Nation-Building and Centenary Fever (Basingstoke, 2014), 203–23. 53. Marcus  C.  Levitt, ‘Pushkin in 1899’, in Boris Gasparov, Robert Hughes, and Irina Paperno (eds), Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism (Berkeley, CA, 1992), 183–203. On the larger problem of Pushkin and copyright, see Ekaterina Pravilova, A Public Empire: Property and the Quest for the Common Good in Imperial Russia (Princeton, NJ, 2014), 215–33. 54. Sandler, Commemorating, 21–5 (citations at 22 and 25); Levitt, Russian Literary Politics, 24–5. 55. Sandler, Commemorating, 31–46 (citation of Rostophina at 39). 56. ‘Na smert’ Pushkina: Sochinenie v stikhakh sovremennago Persidskago Poeta’, Moskovskii nabliudatel’ 2 (1837): 297–304 (citation at 300).

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He Fell, Slandered by Rumour  27 Sandler, Commemorating, 31. Most are listed in Ammosov, Poslednie dni, 30. Ammosov, Poslednie dni, 36; Shchegelov, ‘Duel’ Pushkina’, 185, 969. Nathaniel Knight, The Ethnographic Tradition: Science, Empire and Ethnicity in Tsarist Russia, 1725–1870 (forthcoming); Maureen Perrie, ‘Narodnost’: Notions of National Identity’, in Catriona Kelly and David Shepherd (eds), Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution, 1881–1940 (Oxford, 1998), 28–36. 61. ‘Evropeizm i narodnost’, v otnoshenii k russkoi slovesnosti’, in I.  Manna (ed.), N. I. Nadezhdin: Literaturnaia kritika, estetika (Moscow, 1972), 441. 62. A. S. Pushkin: Sobranie sochinenii v 10–i tomakh, vol. 6 (Moscow, 1962), 267–8. 63. Surat, ‘  “Da pristupliu”  ’; Lidiia Ginzburg, ‘Iz zapisei 1950–1970-kh godov’, in Literatura v poiskakh real’nosti: Stat’i, esse, zametki (Leningrad, 1987), 331. 64. Tim Blanning, The Romantic Revolution: A History (New York, 2010), 24–30. 65. Sandler, Commemorating, citations at 2, 8–9. 57. 58. 59. 60.

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2

A Life for the Tsar, an Opera for the Nation For the composer Mikhail Glinka, 1837 started well. The premiere of his first opera in late November the previous year had met, by his own account, with ‘most splendid success’. On 2 January, the day after the opera’s eleventh performance, he informed his mother that the emperor, to whom he had dedicated the work, had spoken with him at length and offered him a position as Imperial Kapellmeister. ‘This public attention exhibited by the Tsar towards my talent is the highest possible reward’, Glinka gushed. Later in 1837, he again wrote to praise the ‘gracious attention of our good Sovereign’ after another long conversation, adding, ‘After this how can one not devote all of one’s powers to his service?’1 By 1842 the opera had premiered in Moscow (where it was performed 378 times over the next half-century), and it became a standard work in the repertoire of the theatres in both capitals and Russia’s provinces as well.2 It opened every ­season of the imperial opera house for the next eight decades, claiming its 600th performance there in December of 1916, on the eve of the revolution that (temporarily) made it ideologically obsolete. Over the decades its final chorus was deployed ritualistically in tsarist pageantry and thus became a staple in the elaboration of a patriotic myth uniting monarch and masses. In an act of ‘epic revisionism’, the opera appeared on the Soviet stage in February of 1939, with a revised libretto rendering the Polish villains even more objectionable than they had been in the original.3 Performed as A Life for the Tsar (Ivan Susanin in the USSR), Glinka’s first opera occupies a unique place in both Russian music and Russian history. Contemporaries asserted its importance almost immediately. As the critic Vladimir Odoevskii wrote ten days after the premiere, ‘Glinka’s opera appeared suddenly, as if from nowhere’, signifying ‘the dawn of a new age in the history of the arts— the age of Russian music’.4 Three days later another critic, Ianuarii Neverov, declared, ‘A start has been made—we have a Russian opera!’5 Later critics largely concurred. Writing on the 50th anniversary of the premiere, a professor at Kazan University credited A Life for the Tsar as ‘the first Russian popular opera’, which in turn generated ‘a series of ensuing operas of the Russian school’.6 The Soviet critics tasked with the opera’s rehabilitation in the late 1930s likewise found that Glinka’s significance was ‘incalculably great’ and that he laid the foundation ‘for the development of a Russian musical school’.7 A Life for the Tsar, in short, 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0003

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An Opera for the Nation  29 represents a watershed—a major event in the history of Russian musical culture, signaling the country’s arrival as a musical power, the mobilization of opera in Russia’s nation-building, and a process of myth-making about these and other issues.

Friday, 27 November 1836: The Premiere The oldest surviving child born into a gentry family of Polish origin in 1804, Mikhail Glinka grew up on the family estate at Novospasskoe in Smolensk province. His uncle maintained a serf orchestra, and by Glinka’s own recollection a clarinet quartet that performed in 1814 or 1815 produced ‘an incomprehensible, new, and delightful impression on me’.8 Glinka maintained this interest in music while residing in Petersburg for some thirteen years (1817–30), where opera in its Western form was then dominant. In 1830, partly for reasons of health, he departed for Italy, spending several years there, with shorter periods in Vienna and Berlin. Music represented a core dimension of his education while abroad.9 Upon his return to Petersburg in 1834, he began work on what was to become A Life. The next two-and-half years were heavily focused on composition and, as rehearsals began in early 1836, his wife Mariia Petrovna complained bitterly that he was neglecting her ‘for his hateful opera’.10 Various people who would assess the opera after its premiere actually participated in the opera’s evolution. Odoevskii, who wrote the review cited at the start of this chapter, heard parts of the opera as it developed and made suggestions on its improvement.11 The emperor, too, attended some rehearsals to ensure that Glinka was satisfied with the performers, and it was probably he who suggested Georgy Rosen, a German from Estland then serving as personal secretary for the heir, as the librettist.12 Once censors had accepted the piece for performance, the date of the premiere was set for 27 November, supposedly the anniversary of the real Susanin’s death in 1613 (more on that below).13 Hype about the opera built up over the course of 1836. People with knowledge of the work wrote to others with anticipation. ‘A genuine musical marvel is being prepared here’, declared the writer Nestor Kukolnik in a letter in April. ‘Hardly another nation may boast of such a folklike opera’. The writer Elena Gan wrote to her parents that spring, ‘A purely Russian dramatic opera, Ivan Susanin, is in preparation here. . . . It is entirely in the Russian manner, and from all quarters I hear great praise for it. Everyone is delighted with this national music’. As summer turned to fall, the semi-official Northern Bee began to carry announcements about ‘Mr Glinka’s new Russian opera, which is impatiently awaited by the public and connoisseurs’. The very day of the premiere itself, repeating that the opera had been awaited ‘impatiently’ and that it was ‘finally’ to be staged, the paper opined: ‘If it makes the same impression on the general public as its many excerpts

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30 1837 have made on connoisseurs who have heard them, we sincerely congratulate our young composer for the success of his first large work’.14 By early November ­people were remarking on the difficulty of getting tickets. Alexander Karamzin, son of the writer Nikolai Karamzin, had heard good things about the opera, but informed his brother: ‘Unfortunately, they say it will be impossible to get seats for the first performance at the end of the month’. Alexander Turgenev confirmed this on the day of the premiere: ‘Everyone is trying to get seats, which have been taken long ago’. Neverov later reported that there was not an empty seat in the house for the first eight performances.15 The premiere occurred at the newly rebuilt Bolshoi Theatre in the capital, with its opening for Glinka’s opera representing, to quote the English visitor Lady Londonderry, ‘a great event and a beautiful coup d’oeil’. Various luminaries attended, including the imperial family, ‘the most distinguished members of St. Petersburg society’ (Pushkin was there, four days after promising the tsar not to fight in a duel), and foreign diplomats, including an embassy from Bukhara.16 Later recalling the day, Glinka found it impossible to describe his feelings as the premiere approached, and he experienced trepidations as the opera unfolded. If the first act went well, then the second, featuring the opera’s Polish villains, generated only silence, which left Glinka ‘extremely chagrined’. However, the appearance of singer Anna Vorobieva ‘dispelled all my doubts about success’, and in the opera’s epilogue she was ‘outstanding, as always, in the trio with chorus’. Immediately after the curtain fell Glinka was summoned to the tsar’s box. As he wrote to his mother the next day, Nicholas ‘took me by the hands, thanked me and conversed with me at length; the Heir, the Empress and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna also favoured me with flattering judgments about my music’. Northern Bee reported, ‘All were enthralled with the sounds of the native, Russian national music; everyone took joyful part in expressing the unanimous delight generated by the opera’s patriotic content’. Glinka reported on 11 December, ‘I am unanimously recognized by everyone as Russia’s first composer’.17 In fact, not everyone viewed the opera so positively. In the most extensive published critique—one often ignored in hagiographic Glinka studies—the publicist Faddei Bulgarin identified numerous problems with the work. He remarked that the overture’s rapid movement from measure to measure ‘on the whole produces a kind of confusion’; that Glinka’s excessive use of choirs proved tiresome; that music and action were sometimes at odds; that the composer relied too much on lower notes; and that the music lacked variety. However delightful its individual parts, Bulgarin concluded reluctantly, ‘the entire opera—forgive me—is boring’. The historical dimension was also problematic to Bulgarin. The Poles in the production were clad inaccurately, while the opera’s ‘sacredly historical content’ would have benefited from greater use of recitative and even dialogue ‘to ensure that the public understands the play’s content entirely and that listeners may flare up in response to the brilliant and impassioned motivations of Susanin and the

An Opera for the Nation  31 good Russian peasants eager to sacrifice their lives for the Tsar’. As it was, Bulgarin concluded, ‘The play’s content has perished in the uninterrupted singing’.18 Bulgarin was a strong proponent of Italian opera, which may have limited his receptivity to Glinka’s effort. He was also Polish, which perhaps placed him at some odds with the opera’s content. But his more negative reaction was not unique. One attendee, Alexander Khrapovitskii, bluntly labelled the opera ‘nonsense and rubbish. Glinka has lost touch with what is Russian but not yet adopted foreign ways, and garbage is the result’. The day after the premiere Sofia Karamzina wrote to her brother, ‘Many arias of the opera are lovely, but on the whole it seemed to me of a mournful tone, a bit monotone, and lacking effect’. She added, ‘As is usual with us, the enthusiasm was cold, with the applause dying and reviving as if by conscious effort’.19 The folk character of the opera—such as it was— rubbed some listeners the wrong way. Odoevskii reported the following remark heard at the premiere: ‘C’est mauvais. You can hear the likes on any street, dans tous les cabarets’.20 An unknown aristocrat famously spurned the opera as ‘the music of coachmen’. Like Bulgarin, several attendees found the work dull. Ivan Turgenev admitted that he ‘did not understand the meaning of what was taking place before my eyes’, and that the opera ‘simply bored me’.21 D. P. Tatishchev, the former Russian ambassador in Vienna, went further and reported, ‘I was so overtaken with boredom at the first performance that I, obedient servant though I am, will not be enticed to a second’.22 Nikolai Muliutin likewise went deliberately to see the opera a second time at the insistence of its boosters, but to no avail: ‘Unfortunately for me, I again was unable to grasp its beauties, and I nearly went to sleep imagining myself at some station among Russian coachmen’. Some in those initial audiences found the piece too long, and Glinka accordingly made some cuts.23 But for all that, many contemporaries praised A Life, in some cases effusively. Odoevskii led the way with his declaration that Glinka ‘plunged deep into the character of Russian melody; enriched by his talent, he proved by means of ­brilliant example that Russian melody—naturally by turns doleful, merry, and daring—can be raised to the level of a tragic style’.24 He also proposed that if there had initially been critics (‘music is that unfortunate art on which everyone considers himself entitled to render judgment’), then by mid-December, ‘the number of these opponents is decreasing with every performance and the applause is intensifying’. Odoevskii’s protégé Neverov reported in one letter, ‘For two weeks now Petersburg has lived in the theater. We cannot get enough of hearing Glinka’s charming opera’.25 Others responded in a similar vein. The writer Nikolai Gogol praised the opera as ‘just the wonderful beginning’, declaring that the unique place of song in Russian culture (‘show me a people that has more songs’, he challenged) created a rich foundation for opera based on national motifs. On 13 December many of Russia’s leading cultural lights—Pushkin, Vasilii Zhukovskii, members of the orchestra, singers, and others—gathered to honour the initial

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32 1837 success of A Life. Odoevskii offered the first toast to Glinka—‘creator of Russian opera, opening a new period in our native musical art’—and the four poets present performed a canon they had written in Glinka’s honor. Russia’s literary elite, then, was solidly behind the opera. For its part, the Directorate of Theaters, accounting for its activities over 1836, highlighted A Life as ‘the most important success of the opera troupe’ that year.26 The scholar Marina FrolovaWalker concludes, ‘No other major Russian work was ever received with such universal acclaim’.27

National Music? As such praise suggests, many people regarded Glinka’s first opera as a national achievement—as a manifestation of narodnost in musical form. Even the visiting Lady Londonderry could comment, presumably based on the remarks of her hosts: ‘the opera was entirely Russian’.28 The proposition that A Life was precisely a Russian national opera—a work that represents ‘a decisive boundary between the past and the future of Russian music’29—long remained the reigning ­interpretation almost from the moment the opera was first performed in 1836. In part, such assertions are related to the music itself. In his memoirs, written in the 1850s, Glinka himself stated that he wanted the opera’s music to be ‘national’. He later described how disenchantment over several years in Italy began pushing him towards Russian music. ‘A longing for my homeland’, he claimed, ‘led me gradually to the idea of writing in the Russian manner’. Glinka’s own experience provided some raw material for such an exercise. He had encountered church music as a child in his native Smolensk province, and from his nurse heard an abundance of folk songs. The serf orchestra of Glinka’s uncle also played Russian music, ‘and perhaps these songs that I heard in my childhood were the initial reason why I later began to cultivate mainly Russian folk music’.30 Glinka’s sister Liudmila later recounted that her brother ‘loved the Russian people passionately and understood them. He knew how to talk to them; the peasants trusted him, obeyed him, and respected him’.31 Yet there is surely mythologizing in such recollections, and a good deal of evidence suggests that Glinka remained quite open to the Italian repertoire into the 1840s.32 Assessing the national character of the music thus proves complicated. Several contemporaries were sceptical of the claim that a new day had broken for Russian music. While cognizant of Glinka’s talent, Bulgarin nonetheless rejected Odoevskii’s assertion that A Life introduced a ‘new element’ into the art of music, and contended that there were in fact no ‘new elements’ in music to be revealed. Such ‘hyperbolic praises’, he thought, were likely to impede the development of talent rather than fostering it. Glinka would undoubtedly succeed, eventually, in producing ‘popular Russian music’, but A Life was only ‘the first step on that long

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An Opera for the Nation  33 and difficult road’.33 Other composers also resisted hagiographic claims on Glinka’s behalf. No doubt in part because his own efforts had now been cast in a shadow, the composer Alexei Verstovskii complained bitterly to Odoevskii shortly after the premiere that his efforts over twenty years ‘to invest the character of National Russian music in European form’ was being dismissed as ‘not worth a dime’. Counseling Odoevskii to listen again to the third finale of his Askold’s Grave, Verstovskii declared, ‘It would shame you and convince you that the Dawn of Russian Music broke for opera in Moscow, not Petersburg. I am the first to idolize Glinka’s marvellous talent, but I will not and cannot renounce my rights to primacy’.34 Likewise, Catterino Cavos, a Venetian in Petersburg who wrote the opera Ivan Susanin (staged in 1815), had also aspired to compose Russian national opera two decades before Glinka. As his biographer Rafael Zotov contended in 1840, ‘Cavos was the first who understood the audience’s needs. He started to study the characteristics and the spirit of the Russian people; he saw that the Russian audience wanted to have something of its own’. Critics have sometimes proposed Cavos’s Susanin as being the absolutely first Russian opera, and Glinka incorporated some of its features into his own work. ‘We now in all fairness admire Mr. Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar’, admitted Zotov, ‘but it would be very unfair if, praising the present, we contemptuously forget the past’.35 The foremost modern musicologists, in the West at least, likewise strike a note of caution. True, Richard Taruskin proposes that Glinka managed to show that the Russian national element could be more than decorative and could serve as the basis for serious musico-dramatic works. And Frolova-Walker concurs that a ‘Russian style’ had now become ‘sustainable over the course of an entire opera, whereas before it had only been used to give local colour to particular numbers’.36 But these same scholars also remark that, substantively, A Life offered no marked advance over the ‘Russianness’ discernible in the works of Glinka’s predecessors such as Verstovskii, and that the opera’s derivations from Russian folk melodies were actually ‘meagre, and therefore equivocal, in comparison even with the works of certain predecessors’. In this regard the work represents ‘simply a continuation of the Russian operatic tradition, perhaps better executed but no closer to peasant life’.37 Further, A Life stands quite firmly within the European musical tradition. Italian influences on Glinka and his work are evident—not surprisingly, given his studies in that country—though those writing about the composer often downplayed them.38 The effects of Glinka’s study with Siegfried Dehn in Berlin immediately prior to his return to Russia are discernible in the opera as well. Even critics at the time took pleasure in observing that A Life was technically and artistically on a par with Western European music. To a Western listener, in short, ‘there is nothing exotic or un-Western to suggest a distinct national identity’. To quote Taruskin, Glinka ‘liberated Russian music’ not by turning way from the West, as the nationalist interpretations would have it, but the opposite: ‘Liberation came from facing and marching, not retreating’. Emphasizing that assessments of

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34 1837 Glinka’s first opera have been heavily conditioned by tendentious invention, Daniil Zavlunov concurs that Glinka’s music is best regarded as ‘part of the Western operatic tradition’, and Glinka ‘not as an outsider but as a cosmopolitan composer fully versed in the Italian branch of that tradition’.39 As was the case for Pushkin, a good deal here depended on timing. We observed in the previous chapter that the 1830s were the moment when the ideal of narodnost—‘nationality’, ‘national character’, or ‘folk character’—thoroughly took root in Russia. Literature was of course one major vehicle for this national expression, but in fact other forms of high culture, including music, emerged as viable candidates as well. In 1828, for example, the music critic Nikolai Melgunov had remarked on the challenge of producing a specifically Russian opera: ‘The person who can write a Russian opera is one who, having saturated himself sufficiently in our folk melodies, will transmute them within himself, and then in their spirit will write his own music, which will be national not because it will remind us of melodies we already know, but because it will conform to our musical demands and feeling’.40 In light of this accumulated thirst for national expression in high culture, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that some contemporaries regarded Glinka’s music itself as fundamentally ‘national’ and ‘Russian’ above all because this is what they wanted it to be.

National Subject Matter Such a conclusion was moreover easier to reach in part because the subject matter of Glinka’s opera was incontestably national—even as it throws up complications of its own. A Life for the Tsar was based on an episode during the so-called Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century, when Muscovy had endured extensive crisis, including foreign invasion and the end of the old Riurikid dynasty. Not least of all because of Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, Russians in the early nineteenth century had looked to Muscovites’ response two centuries earlier for examples of national resurgence. The mobilization of a national militia to confront the invading Poles and the convocation of an assembly of the land to select a new tsar (and initiate the Romanov dynasty that would rule until 1917) provided abundant historical material. The peasant Ivan Susanin became a powerful example. A serf of the boyar Michael Romanov in the region of Kostroma, Susanin earned fame for having deceived Polish invaders who had set out to murder the future tsar by leading them astray deep into the forest and then perishing at their hands. The tale enjoyed popularity during the war with Napoleon, and partly on that basis Cavos’s Susanin premiered to resounding success in 1815.41 Three years later the story also appeared in an officially approved textbook published by Sergei Glinka, the composer’s cousin, and in 1823 the future Decembrist Kondratii Ryleev produced a ballad on the topic.42 Zhukovskii had a particular affection for

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An Opera for the Nation  35 the Susanin story, and it was he who suggested the idea to Glinka. As the composer recounted, apparently referring to Ryleev’s version, ‘The scene in the forest impressed itself strongly on my imagination. In it, I found much that was original and characteristically Russian’. Pushkin, incidentally, found the story compelling as well.43 Just as Glinka was composing A Life, the regime was engaged in a concerted ideological campaign to mobilize the national idea as a new source of legitimacy for the dynasty. This project had in fact begun from the first moments of Nicholas’s reign, as the new tsar sought to brand the Decembrists as a contaminant alien to Russia’s true national character.44 Society’s growing fascination with narodnost created further incentives for the regime itself not only to embrace this concept, but to direct its elaboration. The result was a famous triad—Orthodoxy, autocracy, narodnost—that minister of education Sergei Uvarov offered as a core ­element of the regime’s ideology in 1833. A conservative who recognized the need for cautious change in response to the challenges of the nineteenth century, Uvarov strove to identify the attributes that distinguished Russia from Europe and would shield the country from the convulsions engulfing other parts of the continent in the early 1830s. Orthodoxy and autocracy were perhaps straightforward: metonymic constructions that encapsulated the country’s spirit and past. But Uvarov also recognized the potential importance of the newer idea of nationalism for the empire’s future, and thus aspired to harness this principle to the monarchy and to divest it of the elements of democracy and popular representation that it otherwise implied. Uvarov’s narodnost thus represented ‘a preemptive strike’, in which the regime, by declaring devotion to the emperor and adherence to established religion to be the defining features of Russian people, adopted the language of the nation while retaining the structures and mindset of autocracy.45 History was a critical resource in this project: Uvarov promoted the establishment of new chairs in Russian history in the empire’s universities, and in 1837 he conferred an award on a textbook by Nikolai Ustrialov, who focused much of his attention on the Time of Troubles to which the Susanin story belonged. Ustrialov, for his part, explicitly recognized the importance of narodnost and asked rhetorically, ‘Who better than History can identify for us the core elements of Russian narodnost—those basic principles from which our social, civil, and family life has developed?’46 With its emphasis on an important episode in Russia’s past and on the theme of dynastic loyalty, A Life aligned seamlessly with this campaign. It presented the bond between peasant and tsar as close and personal, while also suggesting the virtual impossibility of the Russian peasant living without such a ruler.47 Susanin thus remarks at one point that without a tsar, ‘Rus [medieval Russia] lives as an orphan’. And among the opera’s first lines are ‘a Russian song’ initially sung by a male choir and later by Susanin: ‘I’m not afraid of fear / Nor do I fear death itself / I’ll lay down my life for tsar and Rus’. In accordance with the time, this dynastic

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36 1837 loyalty was cast in a national key, the implication being that devotion to their tsar represented a key attribute of the Russian people. At points, the Russian nation and the people emerge as actors in their own right. Thus a choir of oarsmen sings at one point, referring to the Poles: ‘The enemy has held our land in chains / But Rus rose up—and the enemy / Flees in confusion’. The interdependence of tsar and people are readily evident in the famous ‘Glory’ chorus that constitutes a fervent acclamation of Michael, the first Romanov tsar, and provides the opera its finale: Glory, glory to our Russian tsar! A sovereign-tsar given to us by the Lord! May your tsarist clan be immortal! May the Russian people flourish as a result!48

In short, national and dynastic elements intertwined in the opera, as was the case in Uvarov’s trinity itself. The opera also relied on a stark juxtaposition of Muscovy and Poland, both musically and dramatically, which further reinforced the opera’s ‘national’ character. The Polish villains reveal their dastardly plan when they sing, ‘We shall place Poland high above Rus / Moscow shall be Poland with a Polish tsar’. By seeking to capture the new tsar before the latter has even learned of his election, the Poles seek ‘to establish the rule of Polish honor in Muscovy’. Having led the Poles astray, Susanin instructs them: ‘For the likes of you, Our Rus / is unsuitable and bitter’. He later reports to them a dream: ‘Holy Rus, with her tsar / was boiling with ­glorious triumph’.49 To grasp fully the timeliness of the Russian–Polish opposition, we need only recall that tsarist forces had managed to quell the November Insurrection of 1830–31 a few years earlier, and that shortly thereafter Pushkin had penned an anti-Polish poem, ‘To the Slanderers of Russia’. Yet in an autocratic order any focus on narodnost—with its implicit invocation of popular forms of legitimation—was likely to produce complications. The idea of nationality had, after all, appeared in western European thinking as a way of legitimizing a new social order that was superseding traditional dynastic and confessional foundations for absolutist statehood. Yet somewhat incongruously, the traditional elements of autocracy and Orthodoxy were precisely the two things to which Uvarov sought to hitch the more novel principle of narodnost in his triad.50 Implicated in Glinka’s opera, and perhaps in the Susanin story itself, was thus ambivalence concerning the relationship between people and tsar for a nineteenth-century audience. Of course, the two were understood to be bound in mutual affection. But a tension is immediately apparent in the evolution of the opera’s title. Glinka’s initial designation was Ivan Susanin, a Patriotic Heroic-Tragic Opera, with the opening chorus expressing the ‘strength and carefree fearlessness of the Russian people’.51 Aside from the fact that Cavos’s 1815 work was already

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An Opera for the Nation  37 called Ivan Susanin, the emperor apparently felt that this title put too much emphasis on the peasant at the expense of the tsar and therefore ordered a ­different title. A Death for the Tsar was proposed, but the sovereign found this objectionable as well and apparently identified A Life for the Tsar instead. Rosen composed the libretto to accord with this more tsar-centric conception (against which Soviet accounts have Glinka actively struggling).52 Still, it is intriguing how comparatively absent the monarchist tone is in portions of the original scenario, even as the weakest dramatic presence in Glinka’s scenario is that of the people— the narod itself—whose role actually diminishes as the opera unfolds.53 It seems likely that competing imperatives—monarchist and populist—helped to create something of a muddle. For where exactly was the line dividing patriotism from dynastic loyalty? Indeed, the degree of patriotism was hard to get right. Bulgarin complained that he had expected to find, among other things, ‘patriotic hymns, fiery speech, and songs filled with Russian spirit and holy yore’, but instead ‘we found n ­ othing— neither poetry, nor thoughts, nor style. . . . Disappointing!’54 If at the time few appear to have viewed the patriotism as excessive, later some in the intelligentsia found it to be crude and embarrassing. Although partly motivated by his desire to promote Glinka’s second opera, Ruslan and Liudmila (1842), as the greater of the two, the critic Vladimir Stasov famously wrote to the composer Mily Balakirev, ‘Perhaps no one dishonoured our people so much as Glinka, who, through his music of genius, put forward the base serf Susanin as a Russian hero; that Susanin who is loyal as a dog, narrow-minded as an owl or a deaf grouse and who sacrifices his life in order to save a youngster who ought not to be saved at all, and whom he, it seems, had never even met’.55 So in light of all this, how was A Life significant? The answer is threefold. First, through his seriousness, originality, and technical virtuosity, Glinka ‘made Russian music competitive’. Russia could now join the West on equal footing as a full-fledged participant in international musical traditions.56 In terms of significance abroad, Glinka perhaps even superseded Pushkin, since the composer’s work was immediately accessible there without translation. Here it seems more than coincidental that the first Russian painter to achieve similar international renown—Karl Briullov—did so almost simultaneously with Glinka. The arrival in Petersburg of his The Last Days of Pompeii in 1834 and the international acclaim it had already generated in Italy (where it was painted) induced the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts to organize a gala reception in June of 1836 to celebrate its pupil’s ‘supereminent talent’ and thus to initiate his canonization as a national hero and a ‘world-famous genius’.57 Pushkin, Glinka, and Briullov: literature, music, and art. Cultural accomplishments like these could show that Russia was occupying its rightful place in the world—or, to quote Uvarov, that Russia could be regarded ‘as mature and worthy of advancing not behind, but at least alongside other European nations’.58

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38 1837 Second, the intellectual and ideological convergence of Glinka’s subject matter with both the thirst among Russia’s cultural elite for narodnost in the country’s culture and the regime’s quest for new forms of legitimacy in an age of revolution invested the opera with particular salience. In both respects Glinka’s work ­highlighted the idea of the Russian nation, consistent with the role that opera played in nineteenth-century nation-building more generally. Indeed, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, the rise of nationalism and the growing popularity of opera were parallel phenomena. Music emerged as a marker of national identity comparable to national language and national dress. Despite its cosmopolitan reputation, opera proved suitable both for creating a timeless sense of the nation and for representing and shaping archetypal figures (like Susanin). Protagonists were frequently the people (or at least rulers fighting on their behalf). Regardless of the social strata to which they belonged, audiences could recognize themselves as members of the nation (even peasants now typically represented the country rather than their class), so that opera rehearsed the act of nation-building with each performance. For their part, choirs (prominent in A Life) now came to represent the voice of the people (in contrast to their eighteenth-century role as expressions of individuals).59 As elsewhere in Europe, then, A Life was one of the ways in which a Russian nation was brought into being. Finally, the events surrounding the composition and reception of A Life (and subsequent accounts of them) reveal a process of Glinka’s mythologization—one that began even before the premiere, continued in its aftermath, intensified after the composer’s death in 1857, and reached its apogee in the postwar USSR. Its most stubborn feature is the insistence on Glinka’s essential Russianness and a corresponding removal of his music from its European context.60 By the eve of the twentieth century, writes Marina Raku, Glinka’s person and musical legacy ‘had been mythologized in Russia more than the biography and creative work of any other classic, Russian or foreign’.61 We have seen that a myth-making process (along with exceptional talent) was central to Pushkin’s cult and his elevation to the status of the national poet. A similar process accompanied Glinka’s elevation, eventually, to the status of the Russian composer.

Conclusion The nineteenth-century Russian music critic Hermann Laroche famously remarked, ‘There is no better description of Glinka than “our musical Pushkin” ’—a formulation that was embraced by Glinka’s Soviet handlers as well (the author of the Soviet libretto to Ivan Susanin, declared, ‘Glinka is the Pushkin of Russian music’).62 In essence, goes the claim, what Pushkin did for Russian literature Glinka did for Russian music. No doubt, the myth-making around Glinka over almost two centuries now has been extensive, and the invention frequently tendentious. Glinka’s

An Opera for the Nation  39 legacy for opera is perhaps best regarded as ‘ambiguous’, as furious debates about the relative merits of A Life and his second opera Ruslan and Liudmila in later decades would reveal. But whatever one’s thoughts on that matter, the mythopoeia about the composer began in conjunction with the premiere of A Life at the end of 1836, and he was the first Russian composer to be immortalized in this fashion.63 Though the premiere occurred in November 1836, the opera took its final form and occupied its hallowed place in the Russian musical canon precisely in 1837. Glinka continued to make adjustments to the opera after the premiere, most notably by introducing a new scene (Vania at the monastery gates), which was integrated into a full performance in October and was characterized by Odoevskii as ‘one of the best parts of the entire opera’. It was clear by then that A Life was no flash in the pan. For all of Bulgarin’s criticisms, Odoevskii could now declare that Glinka’s opera ‘has remained on the stage, has had more than twenty performances, and its motifs have become the possession of all classes of the public’. All had understood, he claimed, that the opera represented ‘a new step in art, and with it appears a new, Russian element in opera music’.64 Even as a craze for Italian opera gripped Petersburg, A Life withstood the competition. Hailed as a watershed in 1836, it was in 1837 that A Life became a classic, a work that was here to stay.

Notes 1. Nikolai Findeizin (ed.), Polnoe sobranie pisem Mikhaila Ivanovicha Glinki (SPb, 1907), 16, 20, 26. 2. M. V. K., Ko dniu 50-letiia postanovki v Moskve opery M. I. Glinki ‘Zhizn’ za Tsaria’ (Moscow, 1892), 14. 3. Susan Beam Eggers, ‘Reinventing the Enemy: The Villains in Glinka’s Opera Ivan Susanin on the Soviet Stage’, in Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger (eds), Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda (Madison, WI, 2006), 261–75. See also Marina Frolova-Walker, Russian Music and Nationalism: From Glinka to Stalin (New Haven, CT, 2007), 61–70. 4. Severnaia pchela 280 (7 Dec. 1836): 1117–18. 5. I. M. Neverov in Moskovskii Nabliudatel’, bk 1 (10 Dec. 1836), cited here from Stuart Campbell (ed.), Russians on Russian Music, 1830–1880: An Anthology (Cambridge, 1994), 5. 6. 50-letiie opery ‘Zhizn’ za Tsaria’. Rech’, proiznesennaia professorom Kazanskogo ­universiteta P. N. Zagoskinym 27 noiabria 1886 v Kazanskom teatre (Kazan, 1887), 11. 7. T.  Ratskaia, M.  I.  Glinka, 1804–1857 (Moscow, 1938), 8. See also V.  Tolchain, M. I. Glinka (1804–1857): Kratkii biograficheskii ocherk (Leningrad, 1938), 2–3. 8. Zapiski Mikhaila Ivanovicha Glinki i perepiska ego s rodnymi i druz’iami (SPb, 1887), 5. 9. A basic biography is provided by David Brown, Mikhail Glinka: A Biographical and Critical Study (Oxford, 1974), here 1–74; and a chronicle of the composer’s life by

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40 1837 Alexandra Orlova, Glinka’s Life in Music: A Chronicle, trans. Richard Hoops (Ann Arbor, MI, 1988), here 1–99. 10. Cited in Brown, Mikhail Glinka, 81; Richard Stites, Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia: The Pleasure and the Power (New Haven, CT, 2005), 65. 11. Orlova, Glinka’s Life, 116. 12. Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 392. 13. Orlova, Glinka’s Life, 131–2; Neverov in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 4. 14. Orlova, Glinka’s Life, 124; V. P. Zhelikhovskaia, ‘Elena Andreevna Gan, pisatel’nitsaromanistika v 1835–1842 gg.’, Russkaia starina 53(3) (1887), 741; Severnaia pchela 209 (12 Sept. 1836): 835; ibid. 272 (27 Nov. 1836): 1038. 15. N.  V.  Izmailova (ed.), Pushkin v pis’makh Karamzinykh 1836–1837 godov (Moscow, 1960), 279; Alexander Turgenev to Alexander Bulgakov, cited in Orlova, Glinka’s Life, 136. Neverov in Campbell, Russians on Russian Music, 4. 16. W.  Seaman and J.  R.  Sewell (eds), Russian Journal of Lady Londonderry, 1836–7 (London, 1973), 98; Severnaia pchela 277 (03 Dec. 1836): 1105–6. 17. Zapiski Glinki, 115–16; Polnoe sobranie pisem (letters of 28 Nov. and 11 Dec. 1836), 16, 18; Severnaia pchela 277 (3 Dec. 1836): 1106. 18. Ibid. 291 (19 Dec. 1836): 1164–5; 292 (21 Dec. 1836): 1168. 19. Cited in Orlova, Glinka’s Life, 141; Izmailova, Pushkin v pis’makh, 285. 20. Odoevskii, ‘Novaia russkaia opera: Ivan Susanin’, in G. B. Bernandta (ed.), V. F. Odoevskii: Muzykal’no-literaturnoe nasledie (Moscow, 1956), 127 (originally in Literaturnye pribavleniia k Russkomu Invalidu, 30 Jan. 1837). 21. Frolova-Walker, Russian Music, 84; Orlova, Glinka’s Life, 138. 22. ‘Vyderzhki iz staroi zapisnoi knizhki, nachatoi v 1813 godu’, Russkii arkhiv 7 (1873): 2159. The absence of drama and the dramatically inconsequential nature of most of the opera’s characters is noted by Daniil Zavlunov in ‘M. I. Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar (1836): An Historical and Analytic-Theoretical Study’ (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2010), 90–7. 23. Orlova, Glinka’s Life, 153; Brown, Mikhail Glinka, 88. 24. Cited in Thomas P. Hodge, ‘Susanin, Two Glinkas, and Ryleev: History-Making in A Life for the Tsar’, in Andrew Baruch Wachtel (ed.), Intersections and Transpositions: Russian Music, Literature, and Society (Evanston, IL, 1998), 4. 25. Bernandta, Odoevskii, 120 (originally in Severnaia pchela 287, 15 Dec. 1836); Orlova, Glinka’s Life, 145. 26. Cited in A.  A.  Orlova, Glinka v Peterburge (Leningrad, 1970), 107; Orlova, Glinka’s Life, 145–56, 150. 27. Frolova-Walker, Russian Music, 60. 28. Russian Journal, 98. 29. Yury Keldysh, writing in 1948, as cited in Taruskin, ‘Glinka’s Ambiguous Legacy’, 142. 30. Zapiski Glinki, citations at 7–8, 85. 31. Cited in Brown, Mikhail Glinka, 23. 32. Rutger Helmers, Not Russian Enough? Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in NineteenthCentury Russian Opera (Rochester, NY, 2014), esp. 22–6. 33. Severnaia pchela 291 (19 Dec. 1836): 1164.

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An Opera for the Nation  41 34. Cited (approvingly) in Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton, NJ, 1997), 41–2. 35. Anna Giust, ‘Ivan Susanin by Catterino Cavos and A Life for the Tsar by Mikhail Glinka: Comparing the Incomparable’, Cambridge Opera Journal 30(1) (2019): 60–102 (citations of Zotov at 64 and 66). 36. Taruskin, Defining, 34 and 43; Frolova-Waker, Russian Music, 85. 37. Taruskin, Defining, 31; Frolova-Waker, Russian Music, 77. 38. Daniil Zavlanov, ‘Constructing Glinka’, Journal of Musicology 31(3) (2014): 326–53, esp. 339, 346, 351; Helmers, Not Russian Enough? 26–44. 39. Taruskin, Defining, 43; Zavlunov, ‘Glinka’s A Life’, 13. 40. Cited in Brown, Mikhail Glinka, 45. 41. Wortman, Scenarios, 390–91; Giust, ‘Ivan Susanin’. 42. V. Protopopov, ‘Ivan Susanin’ Glinki: Muzykal’no-teoreticheskoe issledovanie (Moscow, 1961), 12–18; Jennifer Baker, ‘Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar and Official Nationality’, Culture, Theory and Critique 24(1) (1980): 104–6. 43. Cited in Baker, ‘Glinka’s A Life’, 103; Zavlunov, ‘Glinka’s A Life’, 114–15; ChPSS II, 461. On the lineages of the Susanin story leading up to A Life, see Hodge, ‘Susanin, Two Glinkas, and Ryleev’, 3–19. 44. Wortman, Scenarios, 275–9. 45. Nathaniel Knight, The Ethnographic Tradition: Science, Empire and Ethnicity in Tsarist Russia, 1725–1870 (forthcoming), ch. 3. 46. Nikolai Ustrialov, O sisteme pragmaticheskoi russkoi istorii (SPb, 1836), 3. My account here is shaped by Wortman, Scenarios, 379–81; Andrei Zorin, Kormia dvuglavogo orla: Literatura i gosudarstvennaia ideologiia v poslednei tretii VXIII – pervoi tereti XIX veka (Moscow, 2001), 339–74; and two works by Alexei Miller: The Romanov Empire and Nationalism (Budapest, 2008), 139–59; and ‘Istoriia poniatiia natsiia’, in D. Sdvizhkov and I. Shirle (eds), ‘Poniatiia o Rossii’: K istoricheskoi semantike imperskogo perioda, vol. 2 (Moscow, 2012), 7–29. 47. Wortman, Scenarios, 392. 48. ‘Materialy opery “Ivana Susanina” ’, in Mikhail Glinka, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1: Literaturnye proizvedeniia i perepiska (Moscow, 1973), 29–94 (citations at 34, 42, 63, and 830. 49. Ibid., citations at 50, 74, and 78. 50. Zorin, Kormia dvuglavogo orla, esp. 374. 51. Wortman, Scenarios, 391. Intriguingly, in the scenario Glinka initially began writing ‘national’ but before finishing the word crossed it out and replaced it with ‘patriotic’ (otechestvennaia) (Zavlunov, ‘Glinka’s A Life’, 68–9). 52. Protopopov, ‘Ivan Susanin’ Glinki, 20–55; Baker, ‘Glinka’s A Life’, 113–14; Wortman, Scenarios, 391–2; Zavlunov, ‘Glinka’s A Life’, 129–32. 53. Ibid. 80–81, 86, 94–6. 54. Severnaia pchela 291 (19 Dec. 1836): 1168. 55. Cited in Frolova-Walker, Russian Music, 60. 56. Taruskin, Defining, 42–3. 57. Katia Dianina, ‘The Making of the Artist as National Hero: The Great Karl Briullov and His Critical Fortunes’, Slavic Review 77(1) (2018): 122–50 (citations at 122 and 128). His canonization was admittedly anything but a linear process.

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42 1837 58. S. S. Uvarov, Desatiletie Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 1833–1843 (SPb, 1864), 107. On Uvarov’s preoccupation with Russia’s ‘maturity’, see Miller, Romanov Empire, 146–50; and Cynthia  H.  Whitaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education: An Intellectual Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov (DeKalb, IL, 1984), 45–55, 87–94. 59. Krisztina Lajosi, Staging the Nation: Opera and Nationalism in 19th-Century Hungary (Leiden, 2018), 1–32; Philipp Ther, Center Stage: Operatic Culture and Nation Building in Nineteenth-Century Central Europe (West Lafayette, IN, 2014); and Simonetta Chiappini, ‘From the People to the Masses: Political Developments in Italian Opera from Rossini to Mascagni’, in Silvana Patriarca and Lucy Riall (eds), The Risorgimento Revisted: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Italy (New York, 2012), 56–76 (esp. 66–70). 60. Daniil Zavlunov, ‘Glinka in Soviet and Post-Soviet Historiography: Myths, Realities and Ideologies’, in Patrick Zuk and Marina Frolova-Walker (eds), Russian Music Since 1917: Reappraisal and Rediscovery (Oxford, 2017), 244–66. 61. Marina Raku, Muzykal’naia klassika v mifotvorchestve sovetskoi epokhi (Moscow, 2015), 451. 62. Cited in Frolova-Walker, Russian Music, 52 (citation at 62). 63. Taruskin, ‘Glinka’s Ambiguous Legacy’, 142; Zavlunov, ‘Glinka’s A Life’, 329. 64. ‘O novoi stsene v opere “Ivan Susanin,” soch. M. I. Glinki’, in Bernandta, Odoevskii, 147 (originally in Literaturnye priblavleniia k Russkomu invalidu 41 [1837]).

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3

Philosophical Madness Among the stranger literary products of the year 1837 was a text entitled Apology of a Madman. Its contents in fact provide no direct evidence for the mentally deranged state of its author, Peter Chaadaev. The title, therefore, can only intrigue. Why did Chaadaev claim the mantle of ‘madman’? And what was he apolo­ gizing for? The answers tell us something about the censorship regime of tsarist Russia and the manner in which the emperor chose to interpret one particular manifestation of intellectual dissent. But the story surrounding Chaadaev’s intriguing com­pos­ ition tells us a good deal more besides. The text that necessitated the Apology— Chaadaev’s First Philosophical Letter, published in October 1836—represents a fundamental moment in the history of Russian thought. For the Letter not only played a central role in precipitating a grand debate between Westernizers and Slavophiles about Russia’s place in the world (a question still unresolved today), but also, by asserting the idea of Russia’s ‘backwardness’, laid the rhetorical and conceptual foundations for all subsequent philosophies of history in Russia. For Russians then seeking to imagine a Russian nation into being, the letter also repre­ sented a distinct challenge, in that it dismissed as a liability a core attribute of Russia’s distinctiveness—its Orthodox Christianity.1 And in the Apology itself, by positing that Russia constituted a blank slate on which virtually anything could be inscribed, Chaadaev exerted a powerful influence on anyone contemplating broad prospects for Russia’s future, including—paradoxically, given Chaadaev’s con­ser­ va­tism—ideologists of revolution.2 In the famous formulation of Russia’s first socialist Alexander Herzen, the Letter ‘was a shot that rang out in the dark night’.3 The effects were indeed momentous. In 1915, the poet Osip Mandelshtam could remark, ‘The trace left by Chaadaev in the consciousness of Russian society is so profound and indelible that one always wonders unconsciously whether he is not engraved on glass with a diamond’.4 Chaadaev’s interventions in 1836–7 thus gave birth to a particular way of thinking about Russia’s past and future, and we may justifiably assert that the country would not have been the same without them.

Censorship and Madness Born in 1794, Chaadaev exhibited an initial enthusiasm for Enlightenment thought that, along with his military service in the war of 1812–15, might 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0004

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44 1837 otherwise have led him to join the Decembrists. But in 1821, for reasons unclear, he abandoned a promising army career, sold his library, and retreated from soci­ ety to immerse himself in the works of religious writers. Some at the time inter­ preted this withdrawal, on the eve of a likely promotion, as an act of self-sacrifice designed to increase his standing in Decembrist circles, but it may also have been part of a broader Romantic strategy to stage his actions ‘in the style of an isolated, prophetic recluse’, reflecting the same waywardness and errancy that he would ascribe to Russia as a whole.5 In 1823 Chaadaev went abroad to Europe, remain­ ing there until 1826. He came under the influence of certain French conservative thinkers, including the Ultramontane writers Louis de Bonald and Joseph de Maistre, both of whom had spent time in Russia and commented on that country. In Karlsbad, Chaadaev met the famous Friedrich Schelling, whose efforts to rec­ oncile philosophy and religion inspired the young Russian. After returning to Moscow, he remained in almost complete seclusion for another four years, during which he composed eight essays that he entitled The Philosophical Letters, the first of which was dated December 1829. The letters circulated in manuscript for several years before their publication—something far from unusual in Russia at the time—and by one account Chaadaev himself actively gave out the letters ‘left and right’.6 We know that Pushkin, a friend of Chaadaev’s, read the first Letter as early as 1830 and the sixth and seventh probably not long after. Yet it was only with the actual publication of the first Letter in the journal Telescope in October of 1836 that scandal ensued.7 Publication had in fact proved complicated, as several attempts proved abort­ive. But when Chaadaev proposed the project to the journal Telescope in the summer of 1836, its editor, Nikolai Nadezhdin, accepted, eager for new work that would enhance his journal’s visibility (and circulation).8 Chaadaev proposed publishing the third letter first, since it was likely to be the least objectionable to the censor, but Nadezhdin preferred to maintain the letters’ original order. Thus the text appeared in the October issue of Telescope in 1836 as the first in a series of ‘Philosophical Letters to Lady ***’.9 We shall attend to the Letter’s contents shortly, but for the moment two other questions arise. First, who exactly was the ‘lady’ to whom the letters were addressed? This was Yekaterina Panova, who had met Chaadaev in 1827 (her family’s estate was only a few miles from that of Chaadaev’s aunt, where he was then living). The two engaged in deep discussion about religion, and Panova took great interest in Chaadaev’s opinion (when reading serious works, she wrote in 1828, ‘I involuntarily ask myself, what would your opinion be on this score’). Presumably affected by Chaadaev’s own flirtations with Roman Catholicism, Panova found her conscience disturbed by similar inclinations. Her request of Chaadaev for ‘a few words in response’ to this cri de cœur produced eight Philosophical Letters instead.10 In writing his Letters ostensibly in response to Panova, Chaadaev was following an established convention of the ‘familiar letter’,

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Philosophical Madness  45 an epistolary tradition of dissent that had appeared in Russia over the previous century.11 But that the first Letter was in some sense truly a response to Panova is clear from its first two paragraphs, where Chaadaev referred directly to her appeal and predicted that ‘the clouds that now darken your sky will transform into salu­ tary dew, which will grow the seeds that have fallen on your heart’.12 A second question: in light of the scandal that was to ensue, how did this art­icle get past the censor—in this case Alexei Boldyrev, the rector of Moscow University? One of the attempts to publish letters 6 and 7 in Moscow had failed in 1833 precisely because the ecclesiastical censor had found their content objec­ tionable, albeit on theological grounds.13 Himself twice imprisoned for his own oversights, the censor Alexander Nikitenko declared after the scandal broke, ‘It is incomprehensible how censor Boldyrev could have passed it’.14 Standing before the police (and presumably trying to minimize his own responsibility), Chaadaev himself expressed surprise on this score as well.15 One story—probably apoc­ ryph­al—has it that Boldyrev was playing cards when Nadezhdin approached him, and that he signed off on the article right there at the table after the editor, clev­ erly leaving out the more objectionable bits, read it aloud. In the investigation that followed, however, Boldyrev made no such direct accusation against Nadezhdin, though he did claim that the latter had mischaracterized the article’s content and failed to remove objectionable sections. ‘All my guilt consists of negligence and an unfortunate trust in a man who used it for deceit’, declared Boldyrev to a commis­ sion established to investigate the scandal. The commission concurred, for it pro­ posed that the censor had apparently been ‘the victim of his own negligence and unlimited trustfulness in Nadezhdin’.16 But to know precisely what occurred seems virtually impossible. The Letter’s appearance caused ‘a terrible uproar’ in the government’s censor­ ship apparatus and beyond.17 Writing to a subordinate in Moscow, education minister Sergei Uvarov told of ‘the universal indignation generated by the dis­ graceful diatribe’, adding that not only religious powers, ‘but all authorities and especially the highest one were staggered by this incident’. To the emperor, he declared that the Letter’s author ‘insults the holiest of holies and that which is most precious in his country. I feel that it would be difficult to find anywhere else a more direct attack on the past, present and future of the motherland’.18 No less harsh was the opinion of Filipp Vigel, head of the empire’s department for nonOrthodox religions. In a letter to an Orthodox prelate, he reported that his read­ ing of the article ‘aroused in me an indignation that gradually increased and drove me to desperation’. ‘This impious article’, he wailed, contained ‘not a single line that isn’t the most frightful slander, not a single word that isn’t the harshest offense to our national honor. . . . Never, nowhere, in no country, has anyone ever permitted himself such audacity’. War minister Alexander Chernyshev meanwhile fretted that ‘this impudent publication shows that in Moscow there exists a school of thought, imbued with the diabolical ideas developed in the article’.19

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46 1837 The autocracy moved quickly and forcefully to contain the controversy. Uvarov asked the emperor to close Telescope as of 1 January (the emperor made the shut­ down immediate), while also instructing censorship committees throughout Russia ‘not to permit the appearance in the journals of a single article concerning Telescope’. The commission noted previously sought meanwhile to identify those responsible for the scandal. It seemed initially that Boldyrev was in the hottest water. By the censorship statute of 1828, it was indeed the censor who took responsibility for a publication by allowing it into print. Uvarov admitted as much: ‘Even more insane and more guilty’ than the article’s author was ‘the censor, who signed his name under such an abomination’.20 The emperor ordered Boldyrev’s dismissal from service, which deprived him of his right to a pension (although this was later restored). But ultimately Nadezhdin became the primary culprit. He appears to have been genuinely astonished by the harsh reactions to the article, but his efforts to exculpate himself before the investigating committee were rejected as disingenuous, leaving him to seek refuge in repentance: ‘I con­ sider myself inexcusably guilty of printing a wild, absurd, and monstrous article filled with crude slander and offensive insolence’. He was accordingly exiled to the northern province of Vologda.21 What of Chaadaev himself? Here in some ways is the strangest part of our story, for the emperor decided that the Letter could only be explained by its author’s insanity. As he scribbled, ‘Having read the article I find it a pack of arrant nonsense, worthy of a madman’.22 Nor was Nicholas alone in this conviction. Vigel proposed that ‘only madness’ could account for the Letter’s dictums, and the Decembrist Matvei Muraviev-Apostol concurred that only someone ‘who has positively gone out of his mind’ could have written such a thing. Uvarov had ini­ tially discerned ‘systematic hatred’ rather than madness, but he, too, eventually accepted the sovereign’s diagnosis (if one may use that term).23 Chaadaev was informed of his deranged condition on 1 November. Permitted to remain in Moscow, he was placed under medical and police supervision and prohibited from publishing further during his lifetime. According to a report from the head of gendarmes in Moscow, when Chaadaev was informed of his sentence, ‘He became confused and extremely pale, tears poured from his eyes and he couldn’t say a word. Finally, collecting himself and with a trembling voice, he said: “Fair, entirely fair” .’ In a letter to his brother in January 1837, he acknowledged that the government had been lenient and ‘could have acted incomparably worse’.24 The reader is likely getting impatient now: What in God’s name could this Letter contain to cause such a ruckus?

A Letter The answer is far from simple. ‘Paradox’ is the central motif that intellectual his­ torians offer to characterize Chaadaev’s thought, and as one scholar adds, ‘on

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Philosophical Madness  47 crucial matters, Chaadaev remained taciturn’.25 We may start by proposing that in labelling his work ‘philosophical letters’, Chaadaev was almost surely gesturing to Voltaire’s famous collection of the same name a century earlier. Just as Chaadaev’s letters followed a three-year voluntary exile in Europe, so did Voltaire’s come on the heels of a three-year refuge in England (1726–9). And just as Voltaire sought to inject English values into France, Chaadaev advocated deeper Russian engage­ ment with Europe. Yet there the similarities end, for Chaadaev’s argument counters Voltaire’s opposition to organized religion, received ideas, and providential readings of history. As Dale Peterson contends, Chaadaev’s composition was a combative work ‘intended to countermand in Russia the cultural appeal of a pernicious French model’.26 Religion—specifically Catholicism—stands at the centre of Chaadaev’s account, and for him constitutes the central source of Europe’s cultural unity and civilizational attainments. He emphasized that Christianity contained a funda­ mentally historical component that had shaped human experience by producing ideas that directed society towards the attainment of larger goals. These notions represented ‘the product of immense intellectual work of eighteen centuries’, through which the European peoples had advanced ‘hand in hand’. Despite ‘momentary deviations’, they were destined ‘always to come together on one and the same path’. For fifteen centuries, they had all prayed to God in one language, submitted to one spiritual authority, and shared one conviction. For all of the imperfections of European society, ‘a partial realization of the Kingdom of God there is incontestable’. For Chaadaev, then, Western Christianity represented both a powerful source of moral and spiritual growth over centuries and, for all of the diversity of Europe’s peoples and for all of the disruptions of the Reformation, an extraordinary source of unity.27 The problem was that Russia had been entirely excluded from this process because it was alien to this western Christian tradition. ‘Forced by a fatal destiny, we proceeded to seek the moral code which was to constitute our education in miserable Byzantium’—and moreover at precisely a moment when it had removed itself from ‘the universal fraternity’. Thus, ‘we were torn away from the common family’, and, ‘isolated in our hermitage, we saw nothing of what was occurring in Europe’. The consequences were rueful: truths long recognized by other peoples ‘are only being discovered among us now’, and assimilated only with difficulty: ‘One had to beat into our heads with a hammer those things that became habit and instinct for others’. For Chaadaev, Russians constituted an exception in relation to other peoples: ‘We belong to those nations that appar­ ently do not constitute a necessary part of humanity, but rather exist in order to provide, in time, some kind of lesson to the world’.28 Absence, errancy, and transience—these were Russia’s principal afflictions. Whereas other all peoples had experienced a period of intense and passionate activity that produced their collective memories and their guiding ideas, ‘We have nothing comparable. At the start we had wild barbarity, then crude superstition,

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48 1837 and after that the harsh, degrading dominion of conquerors, the traces of which have not been entirely erased from our way of life to this day’. Chaadaev com­ pared Russians to ‘illegitimate children, without inheritance and without connec­ tion to those people who came before us’; and (unfavourably) to American Indians, among whom ‘there are people of amazing profundity. Now I ask: where are our sages, our thinkers?’ Russia, in Chaadaev’s account, was an intellectual wasteland: ‘Across the entirety of our social existence we have done nothing for the general good of people; not one useful thought has grown in our fruitless soil; not a single great truth has come from among us. We have thought up nothing by ourselves and of those things thought up by others we have taken only deceitful exterior and useless luxury’. Everything in Russia was transient, and Russians themselves were like nomads. To quote Ingrid Kleespies, for Chaadaev ‘Russian identity is envisioned in a metaphysical vein as rootless, homeless, and per­man­ ent­ly, though fruitlessly, on the move’.29 It is not hard to see how this could upset people. True, there were a handful of conditionally positive responses—enough for Chaadaev himself to remark at the start of the uproar, ‘The cries of indignation and praise have gotten so strangely mixed up here that I understand nothing’.30 Nadezhdin himself obviously saw merit in the piece, as he explained in a footnote to its publication (referring to the whole body of letters, which he expected to print in due course): ‘The loftiness of the subject, the depth and breadth of the perspective, the strict consistency of the conclusions, and the energetic sincerity of expression confer on [the letters] a special right to the attention of thinking readers’.31 Herzen remarked that ‘only people who have thought a lot and experienced a lot’ could produce such a text.32 Pushkin also accepted and praised Chaadaev’s social critique: ‘Our public life is a sad thing’, he wrote to the author. ‘You have done well to say that loudly’. But on the whole the reaction was negative. Pushkin, for one, pivoted to a critical mode in that same letter, faulting Chaadaev’s historical arguments—for example, his failure to appreciate Peter the Great and his glib equation of the Russian and Byzantine churches—and thus concluded: ‘As to our historical nullity, I decisively cannot agree’.33 Nikitenko acknowledged that the letter ‘was beautifully written’, but also protested that it painted Russia ‘in the most dismal colours’, treating its politics, morals, and even religion ‘as an absurd, monstrous exception to the general laws of humanity’. Police in Moscow reported that the article produced ‘general indignation, accompanied by the exclamation: “how could they allow its printing?” ’. Authorities at Moscow University reportedly had to restrain its stu­ dents from challenging Chaadaev to a duel.34 The author’s younger relative Mikhail Zhikharev was probably correct to propose that only ‘an enlightened minority’ found the article ‘highly noteworthy’, and even those people ultimately regarded it as false. They at least were prepared to engage in calm and scholarly refutation, whereas the majority exhibited ‘the most infuriated and hateful ani­ mosity’. Ultimately, ‘there was not a single person who was unconditionally

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Philosophical Madness  49 sympathetic and completely in agreement’. Herzen, for his part, proposed that perhaps ten people in all ‘loudly and hotly applauded the author’.35 There are indeed indications that in mobilizing against the Letter, the govern­ ment was actually following society’s lead. In the historian Mikhail Lemke’s for­ mulation, ‘Everyone expected, and many thirsted for, reprisals against the author, the publisher, and the censor’.36 Initially, Chaadaev presumed that the govern­ ment would defy such sentiments. As he wrote in a letter just as the controversy was igniting, ‘Happily, our government is always more sensible than the public; I have good reason to hope that something other than the noisy shouts of swine will dictate its behavior’.37 But such confidence was misplaced. Dmitrii Sverbeev, an acquaintance of Chaadaev, recounted that given the ‘frightful indignation’ that it induced in the public, the article ‘could not fail to draw the government’s attention’.38 Perhaps even the idea of insanity itself did not originate on high. When on 22 October 1836 the head of Russia’s political police Alexander Benckendorff drafted a directive to Moscow governor-general Dmitrii Golitsyn, it included the observation that residents of the ancient capital ‘immediately com­ prehended that such an article could not be written by a fellow Russian in full possession of his faculties, and therefore—as rumors have come to us—they not only did not direct their indignation towards Mr Cheodaev [sic], but, on the con­ trary, express sincere regret about the derangement that has befallen him’.39 It is hard to say whether Moscow society actually offered such expressions of concern; probably the regime was simply telling people there what to think. But it is note­ worthy that Chaadaev himself wrote in the Apology, ‘In essence, the government merely fulfilled its duty’; its measures ‘did not supersede by much the expectations of a significant circle of people’.40 To be sure, the government had its own reasons for dissatisfaction. Uvarov’s horror was especially great, for two major reasons. First, as minister of education, he was responsible for what got published in the country, and the censor was under his authority. He thus admitted to the head of the Moscow Educational District, Sergei Stroganov, ‘I feel deeply humiliated by the fact that such an article could have been published while I was in authority’, adding in a postscript that if anything praising the Letter were subsequently to appear in print, ‘I would be left with no choice but to don a hair shirt and perform public penance’. To the emperor. Uvarov likewise admitted, ‘I fell into despair at the fact that this article could have been published during my administration’.41 Second, there was a matter of ideological competition. As Chapter 2 demonstrated, Uvarov was the architect of a novel triad that sought to integrate the principles of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and narodnost into an ideological framework for the country’s further advance into the nineteenth century. This framework offered its own theory of history that shared certain attributes with Chaadaev’s but nonetheless drew quite different conclusions. If for Chaadaev Russia’s exceptionalism represented a liability that had alienated it from the course of European history, then for Uvarov it reflected

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50 1837 Russia’s unique attributes that warranted preservation as an antidote to the corruptions of the West. Presumably it was Uvarov’s insistence that led the inves­ tigative commission to conclude that the only truly important fact in the scandal was ‘the publication of such an article at the same time that the higher govern­ ment is expending all of its efforts on animating the popular spirit and elevating everything relating to the fatherland’.42 The Letter also exposed the government’s deep sensitivity to foreign opinion. In fact, some people initially assumed that the author could only be a foreigner. Telescope published the Letter anonymously, and while Nadezhdin’s footnoteintroduction had stated that the author was ‘one of our compatriots’, it also con­ veyed that all the letters had been written originally in French.43 Thus Vigel, initially supposing the author was a foreigner or at least a non-Orthodox believer claiming to be a Russian (so as ‘to abuse us more conveniently’), was intensely pained to learn ‘that this fiend, our inexhaustible reviler, was born in Russia from Orthodox parents’.44 Implicit in these remarks was the proposition that foreigners were out to get Russia, and that their press always sought to censure the tsar’s domains. Uvarov made this explicit when be proposed to Nicholas that it might be desirable ‘to print a refutation, addressed not to our country, where the indig­ nation cannot fail to be universal, but sooner for those abroad, thirsting for all kinds of slanderous escapades’.45 The emperor and others apparently thought it best to say nothing at all, and therefore no such refutation appeared. However, this did not prevent critical foreigners from making hay with the matter. The French Marquis de Custine was happy to report on the episode, ironically noting the emperor’s ‘merciful impassibility’ in labeling Chaadaev a ‘madman’ rather than a criminal. ‘In Russia’, wrote the Frenchman, ‘a tsar’s word of condemnation is today’s equivalent of a papal excommunication in the Middle Ages!!’46

Apology or Apologia? As we have seen, Chaadaev promised not to publish anything after the First Letter. But he did not pledge to refrain from writing.47 Indeed, even before the crisis had passed, he put pen to paper and produced, once again in French, Apology of a Madman. By all indications—and the title suggests as much—Chaadaev wrote the work in early 1837 when he was still restricted to his home and under medical supervision. He did not complete the text, ending the second section just after indicating that geography would be its main focus. The text was first published posthumously in France in 1862, though the manuscript, like the Letters before it, circulated among readers. A critical question concerns the relationship between the Letter and the Apology. One line of analysis proposes that Chaadaev’s views had significantly evolved between the late 1820s and 1837, and that the Apology represents a partial

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Philosophical Madness  51 recantation of the earlier work. To some degree this is almost certainly true. Big events had intervened, perhaps most importantly the July Revolution in France (1830), which undermined Chaadaev’s faith in traditional Europe as it succumbed to a rising bourgeois tide (every day he found new grounds for indignation about ‘the volcanic eruption of all the filth accumulated by France’); and the November Insurrection in Russian Poland (1830–31), which he characterized as an ‘insane enterprise’ challenging Russia’s territorial integrity with designs on its western provinces (‘a vital question’ for Russia).48 Partly under Pushkin’s instigation, Chaadaev had taken greater interest in Peter the Great, which also affected his view of Russia’s past (he had not expected to find Peter ‘either such a giant or so attractive to me’).49 In this line of reasoning, to quote Andrzej Walicki, the scandal ‘induced Chaadaev to redefine his current views of Russia in order to justify himself to the authorities and, to a lesser extent, to public opinion’.50 Another line of analysis treats the Apology sooner as a clarification of the arguments contained in the Letter and thus not reflective of a fundamental intellectual reorientation. For some, the two texts constitute parts of a comprehensive approach to contem­ porary reality rooted in Hegel (rather than Schelling), one focusing on Europe and the other on Russia. For others, there was a mystic element referring to Russia’s special religious mission in history underlying both works, with the seeming dif­ ference between Chaadaev in the late 1820s and 1830s being ‘above all external’.51 Either way, continuity between the two texts would explain why Chaadaev might still seek to publish the Letters in 1836 (why seek an outlet for views that had already been abandoned?). In this reading, then, the later text was an apologia rather than an apology—that is, a formal defence of opinion, rather than a regret­ ful acknowledgement of offence. Chaadaev himself makes it hard to embrace either of these two interpretations unequivocally. When the storm broke he tried to deny responsibility for the publication, placing the onus on Nadezhdin (‘the injudicious vanity of one journalist’) or on circumstance (‘Somehow a translation of one of my letters came into the hands of Telescope’s editor’).52 But this attempt to place distance between himself and his composition surely says more about his desire to shift blame at the end of 1836, when he was in serious trouble, than it does about his inclinations earlier that year, when Nadezhdin held out the attractive prospect of printing his cycle. Chaadaev is also coy about whether and to what extent his views had changed between the early and mid-1830s. In a letter to Sergei Stroganov, head of Moscow’s censorship committee, in November 1836, he boldly declared, ‘I am far from renouncing all of the ideas laid out in the given composition; among them are ones that I am prepared to sign in blood’. But then he acknowledged that the article contained ‘many things that I of course would not say now’, and went on to admit that he desired ‘to offer a retort to my article myself, that is to consider the same question from my current point of view’.53 This leaves unclear how much he continued to subscribe to the Letter. Perhaps even he himself did not know. To his

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52 1837 brother, he wrote in February 1837 that ‘maybe’ the views of the Letter’s author had changed over the previous six years, and ‘maybe’ his present way of thinking ‘completely contradicts his earlier opinions’.54 But only ‘maybe’. He refused to say definitively. Maybe not. Nor do things become clearer when we turn to the Apology itself (whose unfin­ ished status only complicates matters further). At points Chaadaev contends that the public had failed to grasp the nature of his original intervention, and it is indeed worth emphasizing that this was only one of eight letters that arguably constituted an organic whole. The ‘catastrophe’ that unfolded, ‘having thrown to the wind the work of an entire lifetime’, was the result of a ‘sinister cry’ in a certain segment of society. He admitted that his article was ‘caustic, if you wish’, there was ‘impatience’ and ‘harshness’ in its expression, and perhaps he had excessively extolled the West’s attainments. But he did not apologize for the essence of its content, and asserted that it was ‘worthy of a reception completely different from the howling that greeted it’. Nor was it at all hostile to his fatherland. On the con­ trary, there could be no question of his patriotism: ‘More than any of you, believe me, I love my homeland, wish her glory, and am capable of appreciating the ele­ vated qualities of my people’. Rather than loving his homeland ‘with eyes closed, with bowed head, and with closed lips,’ Chaadaev declared, ‘I love my fatherland as Peter the Great taught me to love it’. Thus, Chaadaev acknowledged that his Letter suffered from some exaggeration—in its indictment of a ‘great people’ whose only guilt consisted in being located at the edge of the civilized world; in its failure to give proper due to the Eastern church; and in its refusal to acknowledge the ‘powerful nature of Peter the Great’ and the ‘grandiose genius of Pushkin’— but he also averred that ‘the caprices of our public are astonishing’. They happily embraced Gogol’s 1836 play Inspector General, whose satire dragged Russia through the mud, yet reacted with howls of pique to the Letter, which had been read and reread hundreds of times without censure before publication, ‘moreover in the original [French], which was much harsher than the weak translation that was printed’.55 In short, this was not an apology, just as his characterization of himself as a ‘madman’ reeks of irony. At the same time, the Apology undoubtedly adopted a different tone and offered conclusions distinct from those in the Letter. Russia’s exclusion from the historical processes unfolding in the West, Chaadaev now contended, gave the country a remarkable opportunity to determine its own destiny. Indeed, Peter the Great had brilliantly revealed how to do this in the previous century. He freed Russia from ‘all those survivals of the past’ that hindered advancement; he opened Russians’ minds ‘to all the great and wonderful ideas that exist among people; he gave us the West completely, as the centuries had formed it’. It was because Russia was ‘a blank piece of paper’—precisely because it was one of those nations whose own past did not dictate its future path—that Peter could inscribe the words ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ and thus determine, with those strokes, Russia’s cultural

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Philosophical Madness  53 and civilizational belonging. There were no native obstacles—no sufficiently strong indigenous traditions or recollections—to impede assimilation of the West’s attainments: ‘Nothing prevents the rapid realization of all the blessings that Providence has designated for humanity’. ‘The past is no longer under our con­ trol, but the future depends on us’. The result was that those who read the Letter and saw a sorry future for Russia were wrong. ‘I consider our position a happy one, if only we are able to assess it correctly’. Russia’s position even endowed the country with a mission: ‘I have the deep conviction that we are called to resolve a large portion of the problems of social order, to perfect a large portion of the ideas that appeared in older societies, to answer the most important questions that occupy humanity.56 To a much greater extent than in the Letter, then, the emphasis here was on opportunity and possibility, with the example of Peter showing that Russia was not condemned to remain in its present condition, but on the contrary might now contribute to solving the world’s problems. Perhaps it makes most sense, following Dale Peterson, to regard the Apology as ‘an addendum to the first letter’ that summarizes the ultimate historical argument of the entire, unexpurgated cycle.57 This is not to say that the Apology is merely a synopsis of the seven unpublished letters. Chaadaev’s thinking had clearly evolved, as we have seen, and ideas that would appear in the 1837 text are dis­ cernible in his letters in the mid-1830s. Thus writing to Peter Viazemskii in 1834 and insisting on the need to publish the Letters in Russia rather than abroad, he posited a mission for Russia that anticipated the Apology: ‘We [Russians] to some degree represent a court of jurors, established to consider all the most important of the world’s problems. I am convinced that with us lies the task of resolving the greatest problems of thought and society, for we are free from the pernicious influence of superstitions and prejudices filling the minds of Europeans’. To Alexander Turgenev a year later he remarked, ‘Russia has been called to an immense intellectual matter: its task is the eventual resolution of all the questions raising argument in Europe’—that is, ‘eventually to provide the solution to the human enigma’.58 Yet it appears that what had ultimately changed were not Chaadaev’s a priori philosophical convictions, but rather the conclusions about Russia that he drew on their basis.59 Part of the issue is that the intellectual terrain in Russia itself was shifting. The years since Chaadaev completed the Letters had seen both the proclamation of Uvarov’s triad and the beginnings of Slavophilism, the conservative utopian thought that insisted on Russia’s distinctiveness and castigated Peter the Great for having sought to Europeanize the country. Chaadaev witnessed this shift, and his intellectual outlook was shaped accordingly. In that same letter to Turgenev in 1835, he referred to a ‘strange intellectual process’ then observable: the elab­or­ation of ‘a concept of nationality’ that was likely to be ‘a completely artificial creation’, lacking any real foundation. At a moment when all peoples were fraternizing, when local and geographical distinctions were being erased, ‘we again focus on

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54 1837 ourselves and return to jingoism’. In the end, he proposed, ‘we should seek the foundations for our future in an elevated and profound evaluation of our present condition in relation to the present century and not in some past that constitutes nothing other than a phantasm’. Such sentiments may help explain why Chaadaev wished to see the First Letter published when the opportunity arose in 1836: even if already anachronistic, it could serve to counter this new intellectual trend, which he regarded as ‘a genuine calamity’.60 Similar concerns appear in the Apology itself. There, Chaadaev noted the exist­ ence of a ‘new school’ that sought to destroy the creation of Peter the Great and retreat back to the monastery. These were ‘fanatical Slavs’ offering ‘new-baked patriotism’, ‘bizarre fantasies’, and ‘retrospective utopias’.61 ‘You now understand whence that storm that broke out over my head, and you see that we are experi­ encing a genuine revolution in our national thought, a passionate reaction against enlightenment, against the ideas of the West—against the enlightenment that has made us who we are’. Nor was Chaadaev referring to Uvarov and his triad: ‘In this case the incitement comes not from above’—Nicholas’s enthusiasm for Peter the Great was too great for that—but instead ‘belongs entirely to the country’ (i.e. to society). Here Chaadaev was referring to the Slavophilism that was then emer­ ging to become a permanent feature of Russia’s intellectual terrain, and his assess­ ment was decidedly negative: ‘Whoever seriously loves his country can only be deeply distressed by this apostasy of our foremost minds from everything to which we owe our glory and greatness’.62 Essential at this point was not a national egoism seeking inspiration in a hermitic past, but rather the recognition that Providence had placed Russia beyond such narrowly national interests and instead entrusted to it the concerns of humanity as a whole. The task now was not to reject Catholicism, but to complement its social character—its inclination to enter the world and to master social life—with the ascetic Christianity preserved by Orthodoxy.63 The Apology, then, served not only to clarify the Letters’ larger system of ideas, but also to articulate a new sense of mission for Russia that Chaadaev, somewhat paradoxically, counterposed to an emerging Slavophilism with a mission of its own. It was both apology and apologia at once.

Conclusion There are grounds to conclude that Chaadaev’s views acquired significant circulation in Europe indirectly. Here the Marquis de Custine and his famous (and crit­ic­al) account of the tsar’s domains in 1839 merit attention. For if the precise nature of the contact between Chaadaev and Custine remains a matter of some mystery, it does appear that Chaadaev’s ideas made an impression on the Frenchman and thus shaped his account. We saw that Custine commented on Chaadaev’s fate (though without naming him explicitly). And surely the Russian’s voice (and his

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Philosophical Madness  55 tone) is discernible in the Frenchman’s assertions that Russia had been ‘separated from the West by its adherence to the Greek schism’; and that its ‘entirely political religion’ had deprived it of the civilization that it now demanded ‘from nations formed by Catholicism’; and that long wavering between Europe and Asia, Russia had failed ‘to make its mark by its works on the history of human intellect, because its national character is eclipsed by borrowed decorations’. Custine’s work proved a huge publishing success, going through numerous editions and transla­ tions—with as many as 200,000 copies sold within three years of its publication in 1843. To the extent that Chaadaev’s ideas inflected Custine’s work, they gained broad purchase among European readers.64 Yet the effect was of course greatest in Russia itself. It is even possible that the Letter’s publication helped to make more of Pushkin and Glinka than would other­wise have been the case. Here the chronology warrants emphasis: Chaadaev’s Letter was published in October of 1836. A Life for the Tsar premiered at the end of the next month, just as the conflict leading to Pushkin’s death in January was escalating. There was of course ample reason to hold both Pushkin and Glinka in high regard. But is it not likely that the opera and the poet earned even greater veneration because they could be mobilized to refute Chaadaev? Did their works not serve as incontrovertible evidence of the kinds of cultural attainments that the Letter so forcefully denied to Russia? ‘We have never yet considered our history from a philosophical point of view’, remarked Chaadaev in the Apology.65 To have done so was his principal contribu­ tion: Whatever people thought about his particular conclusions, everyone was compelled now to think about the historical process—the deeper mechanism of history’s unfolding—in ways they had not before. And whether they viewed it as a good thing or bad, everyone now had to contemplate the larger meaning of Russia’s backwardness. For some this meant ‘catching up’ with the West. For ­others it suggested a mission for Russia, one that converted the country’s position vis-à-vis Europe into an advantage. Such alternatives constituted a core compo­ nent of the split between Slavophiles and Westernizers that would do so much to frame Russian thought from this point forward. Perhaps such a split would have occurred without Chaadaev’s intervention, but it is hard to imagine that it would have looked the same. Chaadaev was ultimately the catalyst. It was he who raised these questions in 1836–7, and thinking people in Russia (and thinking people abroad who study them) have been grappling with them ever since.66

Notes 1. Patrick Lally Michelson, ‘Slavophile Religious Thought and the Dilemma of Russian Modernity, 1830–1860’, Modern Intellectual History 7(2) (2010): 256; Beyond the Monastery Walls: The Ascetic Revolution in Russian Orthodox Thought, 1814–1914 (Madison, WI, 2017), 46–9.

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56 1837 2. Andrezj Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought (Notre Dame, IN, 1989), 108–9. 3. Aleksandr Gertsen, Byloe i dumy, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1969), 441–2. 4. Cited in David Budgen, ‘Pushkin and Chaadaev: The History of a Friendship’, in Richard Freeborn and Jane Grayson (eds), Ideology in Russian Literature (New York, 1990), 7. 5. Ingrid Kleespies, A Nation Astray: Nomadism and National Identity in Russian Literature (DeKalb, IL, 2012), 64, 73. 6. A. I. Reitblat, ‘Pis’mennaia literatura v Rossii v XIX veke: Ee sotsio-kul’turnye funktsii i chitateli’, in Damiano Rebecchini and Rafaella Vessena (eds), Reading in Russia: Practices of Reading and Literary Communication, 1730–1930 (Milan, 2014), 79–97; Vera Mil’china, Rossiia i Frantsiia: Diplomaty, literatory, shpiony (SPb, 2006), ­citation at 464. 7. Kleespies, Nation Astray, 49–52, 61–74; Budgen, ‘Pushkin and Chaadaev’, 7–46; S. D. Gurvich-Lishchiner, P. Ia. Chaadaev v russkoi kul’ture dvukh vekov (SPb, 2006), 26–8; Mikhail Gershenzon, P. Ia. Chaadaev: Zhizn’ i myshlenie (SPb, 1908), 7–64, 133; Raymond  T.  McNally, Chaadayev and His Friends: An Intellectual History of Peter Chaadayev and His Russian Contemporaries (Tallahassee, FL, 1971). 8. Nathaniel Knight, ‘Nadezhdin, Chaadaev, and the Ethnographic Turn’ (unpub­ lished MS), 5. 9. For the publication history, see ChPSS I: 690–91. A facsimile of that publication is at 640–76, with the French original at 86–106. 10. The two letters (1828 and 1829) are in ChPSS II, 436–9 (cit­ations at 436, 438), also 602. 11. Dale Peterson, ‘Civilizing the Race: Chaadaev and the Paradox of Eurocentric Nationalism’, Russian Review 56 (1997): 556–8. For more on the genre: William Mills Todd, The Familiar Letter as a Literary Genre in the Age of Pushkin (Cambridge, MA, 1976). 12. ChPSS I, 643. On the truly epistolary character of the First Letter, see Gershenzon, Chaadaev, 66–70. 13. The resolution of that censorship committee of 31 Jan. 1833 is in ChPSS-I, 536–8. 14. Aleksandr Nikitenko, The Diary of a Russian Censor, ed. and trans. Helen Saltz Jacobson (Amherst, MA, 1975), 65. On Nikitenko’s own oversights, p. xvi. On censor­ ship more generally, see Sidney Monas, The Third Section: Police and Society under Nicholas I (Cambridge, MA, 1961), 133–96. 15. Mikhail Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy i literatura 1826–1855 gg. (SPb, 1909), 418. 16. Cited in Knight, ‘Nadezhdin’, 9; ChPSS II, 560–61. 17. Nikitenko, Diary, 65. 18. Uvarov to head of Moscow educational district, Sergei Stroganov (27 Oct. 1836), ChPSS II, 531; Richard Tempest, ‘Madman or Criminal? Government Attitudes to Petr Chaadaev in 1836’, Slavic Review 43(2) (1984): 282. 19. ‘Pis’mo F. F. Vigelia k Mitropolitu Serafimu o stat’e Chaadaeva v zhurnale “Teleskop” ’, Russkaia starina 1 (1870): 162–5 (citations at 162–3); ChPSS II (Chernyshev to Uvarov, 24 Oct. 1836), 530–31. 20. Cited in Tempest, ‘Madman’, 282; ChPSS II (Uvarov to Stroganov), 531.

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Philosophical Madness  57 21. Knight, ‘Nadezhdin’, 9. Nadezhdin’s prolix testimony is in Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, 430–41 (citation at 441). On the results of the investigation, see also 444–7; and Knight, ‘Nadezhdin’, esp. 3. 22. Cited in Peterson, ‘Civilizing the Race’, 556. 23. ‘Pis’mo Vigelia’, 163; Kamenskii, ‘Paradoksy Chaadaeva’, ChPSS I, citation at 24; Tempest, ‘Madman’, 282–5 (citation at 282). 24. Peterson, ‘Civilizing the Race’, 556; Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, citation at 418; ChPSS II (Chaadaev to Mikhail Chaadaev, Feb. 1837), 119. 25. G. M. Hamburg, ‘Petr Chaadaev and the Slavophile–Westernizer Debate’, in George Pattison, Randall A. Poole, and Caryl Emerson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought (Oxford, 2020), 122. Even titles reflect the preoccupation with ‘paradox’: Walicki’s chapter in Slavophile Controversy is entitled ‘The Paradox of Chaadaev’, as is Kamenskii’s introductory article to ChPSS, using the plural: ‘Paradoksy Chaadaeva’. Peterson’s subtitle meanwhile raises the ‘Paradox of Eurocentric Nationalism’. 26. Peterson, ‘Civilizing the Race’, 557–8 (citation at 558). 27. ChPSS I, citations at 666–7 and 672. 28. Ibid., citations at 646, 652, 653, 661–2. 29. Ibid., citations at 649, 652, 659, 660; Kleespies, A Nation Astray, 48. 30. ChPSS II (Chaadaev to Maria Bravura, Oct. 1836), 110. 31. ChPSS I, 641. Knight proposes that the two were actually kindred souls intellectually, while Alexei Miller suggests that Nadezhdin wished to publish the letters in order to polemicize against them subsequently. Knight, ‘Nadezhdin’, 12–14; Miller, The Romanov Empire and Nationalism (Budapest, 2008), 144. 32. Gertsen, Byloe, 442. 33. ChPSS II, 460–62. See also Budgen, ‘Pushkin and Chaadaev’, 30–33. 34. Nikitenko, Diary, 65; Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, 409–10 (citation at 413). 35. Mikhail Zhikharev, ‘Petr Iakovlovich Chaadaev: Iz vospominanii sovremennika’, Vestnik Evropy 5 (Sept. 1871), 31; Gertsen, Byloe, 443. 36. Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, 411. He also remarks that the letter ‘initially agitated and incited not administrative spheres but society’ (p. 442). 37. ChPSS-II (Chaadaev to Sof ’ia Meshcherskaia, 15 Oct. 1836), 109. 38. Cited in Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy. 39. Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, 413–14. 40. ChPSS I, 523. 41. ChPSS II (Uvarov to Stroganov), 532; (Uvarov to Emperor), 528. 42. Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, 411, 446. 43. ChPSS I, 641. 44. ‘Pis’mo Vigelia’, 163. 45. ChPSS II, 529–30. Uvarov repeated these concern in his letter to Stroganov, when he wrote that ‘the creators of slanderous fabrications abroad [might] latch on to this and throw it back in our faces’ (p. 532). 46. Le Marquis de Custine, Russie en 1839, vol. 4 (Paris, 1843), 370–4. 47. He supposedly changed the promise given to police from ‘write nothing’ (nichego ne pisat’) to ‘publish nothing’ (nichego ne pechatat’). See Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, 420.

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58 1837 48. On France: ChPSS II (Chaadaev to Turgenev, Oct./Nov. 1835), 94. On Poland, see Chaadaev’s own unpublished ‘Neskol’ko slov o pol’skom voprose’, in ChPSS I, 512–15 (citations at 512, 514). Chaadaev also approved of Pushkin’s anti-Polish poem of 1831, ‘To the Slanderers of Russia’, calling it ‘especially amazing’ (cited in Budgen, ‘Pushkin and Chaadaev’, 27). 49. ChPSS II (Chaadaev to Alexander Turgenev, late 1836/early 1937), 116. 50. Walicki, Slavophile Controversy, 104–5. 51. The first: Janusz Dobieszewski, ‘Pëtr Chaadaev and the Rise of Modern Russian Philosophy’, Studies in East European Thought 54 (2002): 25–46. The second: Gershenzon, Chaadaev, citation at 105. 52. ‘Apologie d’un fou’, in ChPSS I, 302; ChPSS II (Chadaaev to his brother Mikhail, Feb. 1837), 118. 53. ChPSS II, 113–14. 54. Ibid. 119. 55. ‘Apologie’, ChPSS I, citations at 289, 299, 302. One may question whether the transla­ tions was in fact so ‘weak’; Pushkin, for one, approved of it. ChPSS II (Pushkin to Chaadaev, 19 Oct. 1836), 460. 56. ‘Apologie’, ChPSS I, citations at 292, 299–300, and 301. 57. Peterson, ‘Civilizing the Race’, 560. 58. ChPSS II (Chaadaev to Viazemskii, 9 Mar. 1834), 88–9; (Chaadaev to Turgenev, 1 May 1835), 92. 59. Such is Gershenzon’s view in Chaadaev, 146–8. 60. ChPSS II (Chaadaev to Turgenev, 1 May 1835), 91–2. See also Gershenzon, Chaadaev, 133–6; Peterson, ‘Civilizing the Race’, 560–61. 61. ‘Apologie’, ChPSS I, 294, 296, and 298. 62. Ibid. 297. 63. Gershenzon, Chaadaev, 156–60, 165–8. On Chaadaav’s divergence with Slavophilism, see also 170–81. 64. Custine, Russie, vol. 4, 318–19. George  F.  Kennan, The Marquis de Custine and His Russia in Europe in 1839 (Princeton, NJ, 1971), vii, 38–41, 62–3, 95; Michael Cadot, ‘Čaadaev en France: quelques remarques préliminaires’, Revue des études slaves 55(2) (1983): 256–76. 65. ‘Apologie’, ChPSS I, 298. 66. For more on the resonance, see Robin Aizlewood, ‘Revisiting Russian Identity in Russian Thought: From Chaadaev to the Early Twentieth Century’, Slavonic and East European Review 78(1) (2000): 20–43.

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4

In the Flesh Russians did not typically express gratitude for being sent to Siberia. But on 3 June 1837 the heir to the throne, 19-year-old Alexander Nikolaevich, wrote to his father from Tobolsk ‘to thank You, dear Papa, for Your idea of sending me to this distant and curious region, which none of us has seen previously’.1 In order to familiarize his son with the country he would eventually rule, Nicholas arranged an extensive tour for him—an excursion of almost 20,000 km that took the heir across vast segments of the world’s largest country. Extensively choreographed and featuring novel forms of publicity and intense emotional expression, the excursion provided critical formative experiences for heir and country alike. Imperial travel of this sort was not entirely new in 1837. Muscovite tsars had traversed the country on pilgrimages to monasteries and religious sites. Peter the Great became the first Russian sovereign to travel abroad extensively, while Catherine the Great famously sailed down a portion of the Volga River in 1767 and visited new acquisitions in the Russian south two decades later. In 1824 Alexander I travelled for over two months to distant points in the Volga and Ural regions, and it was in the south of Russia—in Taganrog—that he died in 1825. And in an effort to forge a sense of connectedness with his people, Nicholas himself traversed many provinces, even breaking a rib and collarbone in a carriage accident in Penza province in 1836. Yet the heir’s trip in 1837 was distinctive for several reasons. Lasting over seven months and encompassing some 30 provinces on two continents, his was simply the longest trip in Russia by a tsar or heir to that point. The prince also became the first member of the ruling Romanov family to visit Siberia, which by then had been part of Russia for over two centuries. It was also the first time that an heir to the throne had travelled in this fashion as part of his education, and it was only now that Alexander Nikolaevich faced the people alone, independently of his father. The periodical press meanwhile offered the monarchy new opportunities (and new imperatives) to bolster its legitimacy by fostering the heir’s celebrity and focusing charismatic affection on his person through intense sentimentalist rhetoric. The voyage finally gave tsarist subjects the opportunity to engage with the monarchy directly and viscerally. Indeed, for many people in diverse parts of Russia, 1837 was unforgettable because they had seen the tsarevich in the flesh.

1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0005

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60 1837

Preparation Born in Moscow in 1818, Alexander Nikolaevich became heir once his father had vanquished the Decembrist rebellion. Indeed, the very afternoon that Nicholas dispersed the rebels, in a ceremony designed to demonstrate the importance of primogeniture for the imperial house, he brought his 8-year-old son before a Guards battalion, whose officers, at the emperor’s command, rushed to kiss his hands and feet. In 1834, as the first heir to reach the age of majority (16 years) under the succession law of 1797, the prince participated in a new ceremonial oath that made the maintenance of autocracy a filial obligation and reinforced dynasty as a central theme of the monarchy. His exploration of Russia in 1837— followed in 1838–9 by a tour of Europe—represented the culmination of his education. In devising the trip, Nicholas replicated elements of his own three-month tour of the empire in 1816, though at the time few could have foreseen that he was to become emperor (his older brother, Constantine, remained the legal heir right up until the confused succession in December of 1825). It was his mother, the dowager empress Maria Fedorovna, who organized the two tours—one of Russia (1816), the other of Europe (1816–17)—as the capstone of Nicholas’s education, just as they would become for her grandson.2 Nicholas accordingly took in­spir­ ation from his mother’s instruction for that trip, incorporating elements of it into his own directives for Alexander Nikolaevich. ‘The Heir’s trip’, wrote Nicholas to those tasked with executing it, ‘has a dual goal: to get to know Russia to the extent possible and to make him visible to his future subjects.’ Admonishing the heir himself, he remarked, ‘Parting for the first time with your parents’ roof, you in some sense submit yourself to the judgment of your subjects, in a test of your intellectual abilities’. The heir should examine all things equally, ‘since everything useful should be equally important to you; but at the same time you need also to know the ordinary, to comprehend the true state of things’. In terms of behaviour, the father proposed, ‘naturalness, simplicity, and tenderness with everyone should incline and bind everyone to you’. People would greet the prince with ‘genuine joy’, Nicholas predicted, ‘but do not be blinded by this reception and do not regard it as something that you have deserved, [for] they will receive you as their Hope’. The emperor’s letters to his travelling son supplemented the instruction and frequently invoked the trope of ‘hope’ and ‘pledge’ to characterize the people’s putative attitude towards the grand prince who would rule them one day. He warned also that the heir was likely to encounter much that would seem amusing. Referring to Nikolai Gogol’s famous play (at whose 1836 premiere Nicholas ‘applauded and laughed a great deal’) the prince’s father predicted, ‘You will see not one but many who are similar to those in The Inspector General, but be careful and don’t show in people’s presence that they strike you as funny’.3 Also shaping the voyage’s character—indeed, accompanying the heir as he travelled—were prominent intellectuals of the day. The poet Vasilii Zhukovskii, whom we have already met, had been appointed the heir’s tutor in 1825 and thus

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In the Flesh  61

Figure 4.1.  Natale Schiavoni, Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich. Italy, 1838. Courtesy of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo by Pavel Demidov.

played an important role in the trip’s realization. Elaborating on its purpose in a letter to the empress a few days after the tour began, Zhukovskii compared it to reading a book: ‘That book is Russia, but the book is animate, one that will itself get to know its reader. That getting to know is the main goal of the current trip’. Acknowledging that the heir’s party was sometimes moving too quickly to reap

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62 1837 any ‘practical information about Russia’s condition’, the poet averred that the trip’s ‘main benefit is entirely moral’—the ‘benefit of deep, indelible impression’ on the young prince as he completed his education and ‘begins his active life’. For Zhukovskii, then, the trip represented a kind of Bildungsreise—a formative ex­ped­ ition designed to stimulate the future tsar’s humanitarian potential.4 Also present was another tutor, Constantine Arseniev, a leading statistician of the day and proponent of Adam Smith. Having previously authored an extensive description of Russia’s towns over the previous two centuries, Arseniev composed a guide to the ‘noteworthy objects’ that the heir would encounter in his travels, which focused primarily on towns, trade, and manufactures (these had figured prominently during Nicholas’s own tour of Britain in 1816–17). It was probably also he who proposed that each locale offer the heir an exhibition of local industry and crafts.5 Among the other teachers, friends, and retainers joining the travel party was the heir’s aide-de-camp Semen Yurievich, whose letters to his wife represent a crucial source for our narrative.6 Thus the trip was designed to have moral as well as practical effect, reflecting both the literary sentimentalism and new forms of knowledge characteristic of the age. Many matters required attention as the heir’s departure approached. Roads and bridges required urgent repair, and indeed the start of the trip was delayed by several days for this reason. Local doctors were instructed to ensure that the route did not feature ‘measles, scarlet fever and any contagious or epidemic diseases’. The head of Poltava province wrote with worries that the best building in the town was inadequate to receive such an august guest (even proper furniture was absent), and the city had no money for improvements. Among the greatest logistical tasks was mobilizing horses. Consisting of eleven carriages, the party required 57 horses at each postal station every 20–30 km. During travel, wrote interior minister Dmitrii Bludov to governors, ‘there cannot be any stoppages or difficulties so that in general the trip will be completed with every possible convenience and tranquility for HIS HIGHNESS’. Smaller stations needed to locate extra animals, though Petersburg insisted that the prince’s carriage itself always be pulled only by postal horses, ‘well broken in, mild and not afraid of flame, should His Highness deign to travel at night with torches’.7 To service its twenty stations for the heir, Smolensk province requisitioned 997 private horses to supplement the postal ones, while officials in Penza province, confronted with continuous rains generating ‘uncommon mud’, had to mobilize extras as well. While the prince’s conveyance usually required six horses, in the upper Volga precipitation brought the road to such a state ‘that eight horses could barely pull the carriage’.8 For their part, local authorities took steps of their own. Provinces learned of the impending visit only by circular dated 30 March, which gave those near the start of the trip less than a month to prepare by the time they had received it. Places added to the itinerary at the last minute had only a few days. Initially not on the route, Tver was thus ‘emptiness and boredom, boredom and emptiness’ in

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In the Flesh  63 late April, but then sprang into action when news of its inclusion arrived: ‘Suddenly, on 1 May, Tver comes to life, becomes excited, stirs, boils with people’.9 Worries about the heir’s perception of their provinces agitated governors. Anxious about the hovels punctuating Orenburg, the governor-general there organized the repair of some houses and the demolition of others.10 Trying to limit embarrassment, the Orthodox consistory in Viatka instructed its subordinates to remove from churches ‘the mentally ill and those susceptible to fits’, and to ensure that singing occur ‘with appropriate reverence and harmony’, and without haste ‘or disorderly movements or head-turning’.11 In a similar vein, the governor of Tula proudly sent to Petersburg instructions to underlings enjoining them to promote the appropriate ‘reverence and order’ and to ensure that crowds not hinder carriages’ movement, ‘at the same time removing drunkards and those in outrageous clothing’.12 Such sartorial restrictions were indeed enforced: The heir’s suite learned in Kostroma province, for example, ‘that peasants and those without good clothes are not being permitted to show themselves and are even locked in their houses’.13 The most enthusiastic in his preparations—or at least the most ardent in broadcasting them—was Viatka governor Kirill Tiufiaev. With pride he wrote to Petersburg of his plans to ensure that villages and towns feature ‘cleanliness, tidiness and order’; that houses and fences be repaired and, in cities, painted (‘but with the removal of excessive variegation’); ‘and that under no pretext livestock roam streets, squares, and roads’. Illuminations of the city were to observe ‘de­corum and safety’, and everyone—‘without exception, of any age or sex, wherever they wish’—would have ‘complete freedom to delight in beholding His Imperial Highness’, but with the added admonition ‘that they be in clean and tidy dress’. Tiufiaev further proposed shifting a local religious holiday, featuring the procession of a miracle-working icon, by a few days so that the prince could witness the spectacle. Presumably governors everywhere were doing the same, but Tiufiaev’s decision to report his efforts earned him only the emperor’s ire. What exactly Nicholas found so objectionable is unclear, though apparently he wanted his son to see the country as it actually was (‘the true state of things’), not as local bosses might spruce it up to be. He thus underlined three times the phrase ‘that they be in clean and tidy dress’ (adding ‘!!!’ in the margin), and commanded on the matter of the holiday: ‘sternly prohibit any change of time’. The interior minister accordingly conveyed to Tiufiaev the emperor’s ‘stern reprimand for your ill-advised and inappropriate directives’, insisting that he was to do nothing beyond what he had been instructed to do.14 But the order to desist came too late. Alexander Herzen (then in exile in Viatka) recounts that Tiufiaev was indeed busy before the visit taking ‘the most savage measures for the heightened entertainment of his “Highness” ’. The gov­ ern­or had ordered the repair of wooden sidewalks along the heir’s route, and when an old widow in the town of Orlov had proved too poor to undertake that work, local authorities ripped the floor out of her house in order to accomplish

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64 1837 the task. The widow had protested, and attempts to silence her failed.15 Indeed, as he passed through the territory the young prince encountered rumors that measures by Tiufiaev and his subordinates ‘have been very drastic and have dissatisfied many people, which is all the more regrettable in that my passage, which ought to be a joy for everyone, has instead become a burden’. The emperor wrote to his son that he himself had learned of these ‘stupidities’ too late to intervene. ‘But there is no evil without good, for [this] serves you as proof of what I have said to you more than once—i.e., how hard it is for us to prevent our best intentions from being fouled up by the stupidities of those who execute them’. Tiufiaev was dismissed a few weeks after the heir’s departure.16

On the Road The heir’s sojourn was extensive. Departing from Petersburg on 2 May, he initially visited a series of towns and monasteries in central Russia, and then moved northeast through Kostroma and Viatka into the northern Urals, before crossing into Siberia. The tour then went to the southern Urals, the Volga region, provinces south of Moscow, and the region to its west, where some of the most im­port­ant Napoleonic battles had occurred a quarter-century earlier. He then retired to Moscow for more than two weeks, to explore Russia’s historical capital. In an emotional reunion after three months of separation, the empress joined him on 3 August, and the trip continued on 9 August, as Alexander visited new sites to the east of Moscow. In late August, the imperial family converged on Voznesensk (Kherson province) for ten days of manoeuvres and parades to commemorate the 25th anniversary of 1812 with prominent foreign guests, and then spent time in Odessa and Crimea. The heir joined his father in sailing to Gelendzhik and Anapa (on the Black Sea coast) before returning to Kerch while his father visited the South Caucasus. He travelled back through Crimea and then to parts of Ukraine, joining his father yet again in October at Aksai, a Don Cossack settlement near Rostov. From there the two made their way rapidly north through Novocherkassk, Voronezh, and Moscow, returning finally in December to Petersburg (where the Winter Palace burned down a few days later—see Chapter 10).17 The distances covered were staggering, and the schedule tight. For example, on 1 June the heir left Tiumen in the morning, crossed the Tura River—at that point 7 km wide because of the spring thaw—and later had to traverse the Tobol River along with seven ferry crossings over gulfs created by the river’s expansion, as well as the Irtysh River. Still, that day the suite covered almost 275 km, arriving at Tobolsk at midnight.18 When the heir arrived in Moscow—and his trip was still far from over—Metropolitan Filaret could justifiably declare, ‘Travelling around the country of Russia, you have already extended farther than any of the tsars’.19

Gelendzhik

Anapa

Aksai

Novocherkassk

D on

Voronezh

Lipetsk Saratov

Penza

Vo

Syzran

Simbirsk

Chistopol

CASPIAN SEA

Ka

ma

Orenburg

Magnitnaia

Aral Sea

Verkhneuralsk

Cheliabinsk

Kurgan

Irtysh

Yalutorovsk

Tobolsk

Tiumen

Tura

Yekaterinburg

Nizhnii Tagil

Zlatoust

Perm

Bugulma

Uralsk

Buzuluk

Buguruslan

Kazan

Izhevsk

Glazov

l

Figure 4.2.  Route of Grand Prince Alexander Nikolaevich’s Tour, 1837. Map by Bill Nelson.

Kerch

Perekop

Taganrog

Riazan

Tambov

Tula

Ivanovo Nizhnii Suzdal Novgorod Vladimir Volga

Kostroma

Viatka

a lg

BLACK SEA

Kharkov

Yekaterinoslav

Poltava

Simferopol Bakhchisarai Yalta Sevastopol Alupka

Odessa

Voznesensk

Orel

Kursk

Briansk

Moscow

Kaluga

Viazma

Uglich Kaliazin Tver Rostov

Rybinsk Yaroslavl

Orlov

Ura

Kremenchug

Kiev

Dniep

er

Smolensk

Novgorod

Oka

St. Petersburg

Tobol

BALTIC SEA

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66 1837 The travel could be taxing and annoyances frequent. As it entered the steppe from the Urals, Zhukovskii reported, the party lunched ‘with a frightful multitude of flies’ and later slept ‘with a great multitude of cockroaches’. In Perm, large crowds produced such clouds of dust that the tsarevich ‘was compelled to enclose himself in his greatcoat and pull his service cap down further over his face’. Rain could be a welcome antidote. Yurievich noted that a short but strong downpour as the entourage left Perm allowed them ‘the pleasure of driving those [next] two days without dust’. But if a modest rain happily cleared the air, then a heavy one impeded mobility by mucking up the road. On the approach to Kasimov, a downpour engulfed the heir’s carriage in a swampy embankment, and some time elapsed before locals could haul it out. In August Yurievich complained that the entourage had barely made it to Vladimir, as ‘the road was exceedingly loathsome and moreover, on account of its solid wooden foundations, extremely jolting’. The heir’s attempt to visit Chuguev, near Kharkov, proved to be almost impossible: ‘Such mud that it’s hard even to imagine: on every step of the way the horses stop. This is no longer road travel but mud travel [ne puteshestvie, a griazeshestvie]’.20 Portions of the trip were dull and hot. Three days of driving on the approach to Orenburg included nothing but hot, open steppe. ‘Imagine’, Yurievich wrote, ‘a naked plain, boundless steppe, without life, without people, without as much as a shrub of greenery’. Zhukovskii concurred: ‘Not a bush, not a drop of water. Everything empty and covered with feather grass’. After two insufferable nights ‘in stuffy rooms, filled with flies and similar insects’, Orenburg appeared as ‘an oasis in the Kazakh steppe’. Yet just after that city began ‘one of the most difficult legs of the trip in terms of distance, a sandy steppe road and unbearable heat’, as the party moved west towards Uralsk, where almost everyone in the heir’s suite ‘greedily threw ourselves into the Ural River’. Later, in July, Moscow proved almost as hot, and after banquets, walks, and presentations ‘we truly had not felt such fatigue in the [previous] three months of our travels’.21 Just the quantity of new impressions was enough to exhaust. Fewer than two weeks into the trip, Yurievich wrote from Kostroma, ‘By evening in cities we all lack use of our legs and our minds. There are so many topics, so many new faces, that one can’t arrange it all in one’s head, one can’t bring order to one’s ideas’. Indeed, it had become apparent fairly early in the trip, to some at least, that the resulting acquaintance with Russia would be superficial. Zhukovskii wrote to the empress already on 6 May that he did not expect ‘a big harvest of positive [and] practical information about Russia’s condition; for that we are travelling too fast, we have too many objects for inspection, and our itinerary is overly predetermined’.22 Precise activities varied from place to place, but in most instances the heir’s arrival at a town was followed immediately by a visit to its main cathedral. The heir and his entourage would then visit local institutions such as schools, hos­ pitals, prisons, military installations, charitable institutions, monasteries, and factories. Each town was to offer an exhibition of local industry and crafts, an

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In the Flesh  67 important aspect of the heir’s knowledge of the country. In exile in Viatka, Herzen was charged by the local governor with organizing the exhibition and was the one to walk the tsarevich through.23 The visit also included meals with local dignitaries, while typically the town’s merchants and sometimes coachmen had the priv­il­ege of offering bread and salt in a ritual of hospitality. The heir showed himself to ordinary subjects from balconies or windows, almost always to tears of joy, expressions of raptures, sighs, and yells of ‘hooray!’ Countless lanterns and lampions provided impressive illumination at various stops. Thus in Perm on 23 May, as the heir’s entourage approached, ‘The whole city lit up with thousands of lampions and lanterns. . . . From the heights of the bell tower of the main cathedral Perm appeared as a fire lost at sea’. At Kremenchug, the bridge across the Dnieper River was illuminated, and on each side several barrels had been ignited and released onto the water, ‘which with the reflection of the flames on the Dnieper produced a majestic and rather pleasant spectacle’.24 The heir commented frequently and approvingly on illumination in his letters. A staple event during the heir’s voyage in provincial capitals was the ball. These were huge events for local society, offering the intoxicating prospect of dancing in the company of royalty. Alexander reported to his father from Tobolsk that many had come from as far away as Tomsk (some 1,600 km away) to attend the ball, which turned out to be better than the heir and his entourage had expected.25 The ones in Kazan and Kharkov were likewise both ‘excellent, magnificent’.26 The ball in Odessa, where the imperial family and many foreign guests had converged in early September, proved an especially impressive affair. Yurievich could only speculate about what it had cost, adding that the empress ‘was wearing more diamonds than I had ever seen on her’. (Even so, the ‘Russian beauties’ in places like Penza and Riazan had spoiled Yurievich, so that in Odessa, by contrast, ‘there was not one decent female face at the ball’).27 Other balls were less impressive but still respectable affairs. The ball in Yekaterinoslav was ‘quite good’ for that city, reported Yurievich, as locals were able to decorate and illuminate a hall ‘quite well’ and fill it with ‘female topknots’ [Khokhlachki]28 from surrounding areas; ‘some of them had very good dress, while others, it seems, in their mothers’ wedding dresses performed contra dances terrifically’. In Orenburg the military governor assembled an immense gallery amidst a Kazakh encampment in which all the ingredients a European-style ball suddenly appeared, and the prince danced past midnight with the ‘Orenburg beauties’, of which there were many more than Yurievich had expected. ‘This festive occasion was unique, a real steppe event’, declared the heir.29 Some balls left more to be desired. The ball in Kaluga, Yurievich reported, was ‘not brilliant compared to the others, though very earnest’. Nor did the one in Voronezh merit any awards. The heir’s entourage was surprised by an invitation in Viatka, as the province had few nobility. It turned out that local merchants had organized the event, which had its curiosities: ‘A few dressed-up merchants’ wives

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68 1837 (half of them even fashionably); and two or three wives of servitors in Viatka . . . stood in a half circle in a rather decently illuminated but not very high room in the home of a local merchant; their husbands, merchants and officials, on the opposite side’. Then the music started. ‘The musicians, amateurs and lovers of drink, were kept under guard in the gallery to keep them from running off to the drinking house’.30 Recalling the event later in life (and undoubtedly drawing on Russian literature’s tendency by then to portray the provincial ball as the height of ineptitude and unbearable triviality), Herzen was dismissive: ‘The ball was stupid, awkward, excessively poor and excessively gaudy’.31 Even so, the heir danced two quadrilles with local ladies, and at the time Herzen (perhaps mindful of the likely perlustration of his correspondence) expressed far less contempt. As he wrote to his beloved then, ‘Just now coming from the ball, where the heir was present. . . . Congratulate me: the prince was very satisfied with the exhibition, and the entire suite paid me a mass of compliments, especially the famous Zhukovskii, with whom I spoke for an entire hour’.32 But the many balls also took their toll. Even early in the trip, Yurievich complained, ‘We are persecuted with invitations to balls; everywhere we encounter deputies of the nobility from various provinces with invitations’. Circumstances sometimes offered an excuse to decline. The nobility of Vladimir, eager to host like most cities, was disappointed to learn that the heir would visit the town during the Dormition Fast, which excluded festivity. Other balls were unavoidable. As the party went through the provinces of Kazan, Simbirsk, Penza, and Tambov, the number of balls increased significantly. Yurievich wrote to his wife: ‘Just back from the ball in Tambov. And it’s precisely that: ball after ball! Isn’t it fun? How sick I’ll be eventually of these balls! We have entered into a region of balls: there’s one almost every day, no time to come to one’s senses; there’s no time to do any work, no time because of these balls even to write about balls’.33 The heir’s receipt of petitions along the way—one of his major tasks—allowed him to encounter a whole range of people and problems. Some 16,000 petitions were submitted during the trip, and it was Yurievich’s job to process them, which clearly began to wear on him. The sheer quantity was perhaps bad enough—‘with so many petitions there is no time to bring them into order’—but beyond this it was often an immense task just to make any sense of them. Most petitions involved requests for material aid, and these were forwarded to governors, who each received 5,000 rubles for distribution to the poor of his province. More ser­ ious requests were sent to Petersburg, and in some cases the tsarevich contacted his father directly on behalf of supplicants.34 Thus he helped secure Herzen’s transfer from Viatka, if not to one of the Russian capitals, then at least to Vladimir.35 Yurievich got the heir to intercede for a landowner in Tambov province whose son had been exiled to Siberia ‘for mischief ’,36 and the governor-general of Western Siberia induced the heir to intercede in a few cases as well. The heir gathered a series of petitions from sectarians in Kungur, in the Urals, and sent

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In the Flesh  69 them directly to his father, noting that while the dissenters were undoubtedly objectionable, ‘they may be brought to extremes by local authorities, who often attempt to execute the government’s good intentions crudely and carelessly’. Probably at Zhukovskii’s prodding, the heir even raised the case of a few repentant Decembrists in the Siberian town of Kurgan, though he remained more suspicious of Poles exiled after the November Insurrection of 1830–31 (‘They are, as You know, Poles in their souls, they do what is demanded of them, but it’s not possible to penetrate their hearts’). The emperor agreed to some of the heir’s requests, for which Alexander ‘could not find words to thank You, dear Papa’. Indeed, upon receiving his father’s letter in one case he joyfully embraced others in his suite; Zhukovskii called that moment ‘one of the happiest in my life’, though the poet incurred the emperor’s ire as a result: In June, several in the travel party received medals from Petersburg commemorating the tsar’s twentieth wedding anniversary, but Zhukovskii received ‘a slap in the face’ by getting none.37

This Is Russia The heir’s suite enjoyed some cities more than others. Near the bottom of the list were towns in the northern Ural region, against which Arseniev’s guidebook (and in-person commentary) probably prejudiced the travellers. ‘To this day’, it declared, ‘Viatka remains an unimportant provincial city, having neither factories nor mills’; and Perm ‘cannot compare to the better provincial cities; it is poorer than Yekaterinburg’ (a mere district town at the time). Yurievich wrote with pleasure on 19 May as the suite prepared to leave Viatka—‘boring, doleful, without nobility, but filled with political exiles and criminals and sneaks. We leave Viatka without regret and without reminiscences’.38 The heir was bothered that a large number of cantonists blinded by an eye disease had been sequestered in a separate building when he came to visit the local hospital. ‘In general, by my observation the people in this province are poorer, less educated, [and there is] a mass of destitute people, a frightful multitude of cripples.’ Perm, at least in Yurievich’s estimation, was even worse: ‘it is a poor city—worse than all the provincial capitals we have seen and worse than many Great Russian district towns’. The heir liked Nizhnii Novgorod, but Yurievich did not: ‘The society here is neither large nor distinguishes itself in any particular way. It’s amazing that even the trade fair [for which the city was famous] has not made it splendid’. Odessa was fine as a city, but the convergence there of the imperial family and numerous guests brought price-gouging: ‘The residents of Odessa, all of them mercenary, rose up on speculation at the expense of the arrivals; the prices for everything went up frightfully’.39 Other towns earned more positive assessments. The area around Yekaterinburg came across as a ‘truly golden region of Russia’ with many settlements and

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70 1837 fac­tor­ies that were in some cases even larger than provincial cities.40 The heir enjoyed Kazan immensely, and Siberia decidedly exceeded expectations. ‘Our conception of Siberia was completely false’, wrote Yurievich to his wife, adding a few days later, ‘Siberia, or at least the part that we saw, is the best region and the richest out of all that we have seen on our trip’. The heir apparently shared this positive impression. Riazan also made a powerful impression on both the heir’s suite and the empress, who had visited the city a short time earlier (‘I will never forget Riazan’, she declared). Kharkov, too, came across as an excellent city that ‘teems with life in all respects’, having trade, a university, and ‘everything, they say, for even the most capricious life’. It—apparently rather than Kiev—represented ‘the southern capital of Russia or Russian Ukraine’.41 Especially in the east, the itinerary included territories with substantial nonRussian populations. They figured prominently in the visit to Orenburg province, where the heir, ‘in conversation with non-Russians, went into petty detail about their life and culture’; and in Kazan, where Tatars and others were presented to the heir as representatives of their peoples. Nogais, Armenians, German colonists, and Tatars greeted the heir in the south.42 Some of these non-Russians earned admiration from the heir’s party. The prince praised Bashkirs for their fine per­ form­ance at regimental exercises in Orenburg, where without even knowing Russian they executed commands flawlessly (‘Truly well done!’). And Yurievich was intrigued by the various camel races, horse competitions, snake charming, and walking on swords that Kazakhs offered. Non-Russian specialties like kumys (fermented mare’s milk) that were initially dismissed (Alexander called it ‘very vile’ in a letter to his father) later earned some acceptance (‘I am beginning to get used to kumys’).43 For the heir, German colonists on the lower Volga represented a bright spot, as they had retained ‘that venerable German tidiness’ and had ‘the brightest pastors’. And as concerns Ukrainians, Yurievich noted in Poltava with apparent surprise, ‘Among the inveterate topknots we found many educated ­people and even one poet’.44 But in many cases non-Russians inspired something between pity and contempt. ‘By my observations’, the heir wrote to Nicholas, the Votiaks (a Finnic ­people in Viatka province) ‘are less educated than the rest and stupid’. The ‘slovenliness and savagery’ of their homes amazed him, and ‘they don’t even know how to count paper money, so it’s hardly surprising that people deceive them’. Echoing these sentiments, and commenting on their departure from Viatka province and the Finnic peoples there, Yurievich wrote, ‘How sick we are already of those stupid and savage creatures! It’s as if we had gone to the savage Americans’. The heir found even Kazakh sultans to be ‘frightful freaks’, although he reportedly smiled when two Kazakhs in national costume presented themselves in flawless Russian (one of them had been among tsarist forces in Paris in 1814). Presented with a pair of Voguls in Tobolsk, Alexander declared the man to be ‘rather strapping’, but his female companion was ‘a most frightful freak—small, black, with a flat face, two slits instead of eyes—in short a beast rather than a person’. Bashkirs turned

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In the Flesh  71 out to be ‘frightful freaks’ as well, ‘especially in new Cossack uniforms’. True, the heir found the wives of one Kazakh sultan to be ‘quite nice-looking’, but Yurievich countered this by proposing that one of the reasons why the women at the Orenburg steppe ball looked so good was because they came ‘after the ugly Kazakh women we had seen’. As on leaving Viatka province, so too with Orenburg: ‘How sick we are of those Bashkirs and Kazakhs’. Even arriving in the multi­nation­al city of Kazan was a relief: ‘Here again is something native, Russian, despite the large numbers of Tatars and the Tatar name of Kazan’.45 Such reactions reflect a growing awareness of a core Russian national territory—one that could include Tatars—in contrast to more distant and alien borderlands. Indeed, the trip forcefully revealed the country’s religious diversity. In Orenburg. the mufti greeted the prince on behalf of all the region’s Muslims and requested that Allah give him ‘the eagle’s eyes, the lion’s heart, and the serpent’s wisdom’. The mufti’s speech pleased the prince greatly. Together with his father, Alexander also examined a mosque and the khan’s grave in Bakhchisarai (Crimea) after meeting with Muslim nobles. Not long after, they received a delegation of Mennonites. But sectarians were the main cause of concern. They actively petitioned for redress from persecution, and several, as prominent industrialists and merchants, enjoyed substantial authority regionally. Alexander explained: ‘The whole region is under their influence, for they are wealthier than everyone else, and they attract others as a result’. In Uralsk, Alexander concluded that ‘all evil’ among the Cossacks there was rooted in their inveterate attachment to dissent. His father agreed that sectarians’ ‘willfulness’ could not be tolerated, ‘but to persecute them while they are peaceful is equally unjust and unwise’.46 As for Orthodoxy itself, the tsarevich did not shy from criticism. At one end were the comparatively harmless peculiarities of religious life in rural Russia. On his father’s birthday (25 June), the heir reported that the suite was on the road and thus attended Mass in a village church, where they found ‘the complete opposite of the solemnity at Peterhof ’: The church was ‘very poor’, and there were ‘two singing sextons, like I had never heard before; they howled at the top of their voices hitting whichever notes’. More substantively, he found local church authorities overly aggressive in their persecution of sectarianism. In Volsk, on the Volga, the cross had been removed from an impressive sectarian chapel (‘which creates a rather strange appearance’). The Orthodox hierarch in the area ‘is a complete fanatic’, which would only damage the cause: ‘The results of persecuting people for their faith is well known, and already now they [sectarians] are beginning to consider themselves martyrs’. Considering the issue more broadly, Alexander complained about the quality of the Orthodox clergy: ‘This is our main problem: a deficit of good priests’, which was especially baleful on the Volga, ‘where every simple schismatic is smarter than our priests’.47 Historical sites also figured prominently in the itinerary. One key destination was Kostroma and the Ipatievskii monastery, ‘precious to all Russians’ in light of the accession of the first Romanov to the throne there in 1613. The cloister

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72 1837 ‘occupied the Grand Prince’s attention for a long time’. Kostroma also afforded an opportunity to meet the descendants of Ivan Susanin, the local peasant who purportedly saved the first Romanov tsar from the Poles and was the subject of Glinka’s opera (see Chapter 2). The prince in fact visited many places associated with past Romanovs: in Poltava he attended the church in which Peter the Great had given thanks to God for his victory over the Swedes in 1709. He arrived in Rybinsk 74 years to the day (8 May) after Catherine II had visited, being sure to view the chair, preserved in the cathedral, on which she had sat then. In Kazan, he examined the galley on which she had sailed from Tver. In Taganrog he met the confessor of his uncle Alexander I, who died in that city in 1825, and visited the house in Belev (Kaluga province) where that tsar’s wife, Elizabeth Alekseevna, died the next year.48 Given the 25th anniversary of 1812, sites associated with the Great Patriotic War commanded singular attention. Military officials joined the trip for expert explanations of battle sites, and around Smolensk old-timers who had witnessed the battles provided recollections. The tsarevich ‘greedily examined the locale, repeating what he had been taught in his courses’. The survey indeed made an impression on his young mind. As he wrote to his father from Smolensk, ‘I cannot express to You, dear Papa, the particular feeling with which one examines these places, where so much blood was shed because of a single man of ambition, who will surely report to God for his actions’. There were horrors to be encountered as well. In a ravine near the settlement of Krasnoe, ‘one may still see the burial mounds that are sagging from the bodies’ putrefaction, and bones are visible’. The heir placed a stone in a monument that was then being built to commemorate the battle and later, on his name day (30 August), received the village of Borodino itself as a gift from his father.49 The prince’s native Moscow and its environs proved rich in historical material for the heir’s exploration. Monasteries, in particular, served to link the past, present, and future by situating the heir within a historical process extending back into Russian antiquity. In the Novospasskii monastery, for example, the heir encountered a family tree of Russian princes, from Saints Vladimir and Olga with all their progeny. ‘The tsarevich proceeded slowly under the canopy of his ancestors in the temple as if thus attaining at the end of that genealogical chain the bright link that was intended for him’. In the Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin itself, he passed by the graves of illustrious hierarchs closely associated with his medieval predecessors and then exited the temple ‘filled with its past and with himself promising so much for Russia’s future’. On the way to the famous TrinitySergius Lavra in Moscow’s environs, the heir ‘recalled the famous events that occurred on that road at various periods of time’. In a special memo prepared for the heir, the historian Mikhail Pogodin meanwhile contended that Muscovites themselves represented the country’s history: As Orthodox folk greeted the prince and yelled hooray, wrote Pogodin, ‘Let Him [the heir] look into those faces, let

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In the Flesh  73 Him take in those sounds: in them He will hear and will read our History, more clearly than in all chronicles’.50 The trip of course made history as much as consume it. Of particular significance was the heir’s installation as honorary ataman of the Don Cossacks in October, which established a rite for all future heirs to the throne. After father and son had ceremonially entered Novocherkassk, Nicholas transferred the mace, the central symbol of the ataman’s authority, to his son, commenting to the gathered Cossacks, ‘May this serve as proof of how close you are to my heart’. The event was designed to enhance the direct personal tie between Cossacks and imperial family, but it also came in response, one may presume, to the fact that certain members of the Cossack elite had demonstrably ignored the promulgation of a new statute for that population in 1836. Nicholas’s remark the next day on reviewing 20 Cossack regiments (‘These are peasants, not an army’) and his injunction for the Cossack leadership to pay more attention to their horses (‘I fear that neglect of this important matter may leave me without Cossacks’) likewise suggests that the relationship was more complicated than public accounts would have us believe.51 Industry and manufactures were objects of inspection as well. The locks and canals at Vyshnii Volochek—a key piece of Russia’s transport infrastructure— earned the prince’s heed, as did the armaments factory at Tula, which he studied in great detail.52 In Tver he examined boots, leather, chemicals, sugar, glass, and— it’s hard not to be envious—‘various sorts of nails’. In matters of industry the Urals stood out. Alexander visited the Izhevsk factory and commented on the quality of the armaments produced there. Labour costs were low (many workers were serfs), and immediate access to forest gave Izhevsk an advantage over Tula. He gave a pipe a few hits with a hammer, helped to make a bayonet, and in general surveyed the factory ‘with exceptional attention and curiosity. He went into all details of the work, giving out awards to the workmen who drew his attention’. At the nearby Votkinsk factory (where he helped to make an anchor), the prince acknowledged, ‘The place where they work is a complete hell, and those people, like oxen, carry hot iron about’—but not without also noting that they were ‘rather tempestuous’ and deployed ‘uncommon wiliness’ to filch a fair amount of product. The heir took a special side trip to the Demidov enterprise at Nizhnii Tagil—one of the country’s largest factories some 160 km off the heir’s main route—and even descended more than 75 m into a malachite mine (where, incidentally, Russia’s first industrial railway was already functioning). The next day he checked out armaments factories even further north, and a gold mine in the en­vir­ons of Yekaterinburg.53 In all, then, the heir saw multiple dimensions of the country. Though the party moved too quickly to investigate any place intimately, many of the country’s fundamental attributes—the diversity of its towns, peoples, and religions; its history and industry; its mud and swollen rivers—revealed themselves on this epic tour.

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74 1837 Yet one major feature of Russian life largely evaded attention or at least commentary: serfdom. True, the heir reported to his father on crown peasants—serfs of the imperial family itself—who had endured the imposition of a new administration (to be addressed more fully in Chapter  6).54 But unlike an earlier (allegorical) travelogue that openly confronted serfdom’s evil—Alexander Radishchev’s famous Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (1790)—the accounts here had virtually nothing to say on the matter, even indirectly. For the moment, at least, servile labour remained a given, though it is noteworthy that precisely this ruler, the future Alexander II, would initiate the abolition of serfdom within the first years of his reign. Perhaps his journey somehow helped to convince him of that necessity?

Celebrity and Emotion For most towns and settlements, the visit was a huge affair. For example, no Romanov since Peter the Great had visited the town of Kasimov, which was accordingly ecstatic to receive the heir. A letter from Izhevsk indicated what such a visit meant: as the day arrived, each resident came alive with the thought: ‘He’ll be here today! We will see Him! The poetry of those words is clear to everyone, in particular to the residents of distant towns, where such an occurrence is a bright page, a [whole] epoch for placid provincial life’. Voronezh couldn’t believe its luck in welcoming both the prince and his mother, along with grand princess Maria Nikolaevna: ‘1837 will never be forgotten by the residents of Voronezh’.55 The visit had special resonance for Siberia. ‘This event’, wrote the governorgeneral, ‘is most memorable for our region and is unique in its chronicles from the time of its joining with Russia’. Everywhere on his route through Siberia, wrote the civil governor, ‘the Heir was accompanied by crowds of people, even on the roads, out of a strong aspiration to delight in seeing His High Person with their own eyes’. Zhukovskii’s diary concurs: ‘People are gathering from all directions’, it recorded about the road leading to Tiumen.56 Because only Siberia had been deprived of this attention for a quarter-millennium, wrote a celebratory account, ‘no part of Russia recalls with such rapture or exhibits gratitude with such burning zeal for the visit of the Heir to the Throne, as does massive, thinly populated, and distant Siberia’. Every one of the several days in 1837 when young Alexander was present ‘contained a year’s worth of expectation and hope, every morning the residents of Siberia hurried to find out and debate about the approaching great event, unprecedented for Siberia’. On the appointed day, 31 May, the residents of Tiumen and outlying settlements, ‘Russians and Tatars, Christians and Mohammedans, rushed out, hurried out to the road that was to be sanctified by the Sovereign Heir’s procession’. The heir himself sensed something distinct about his reception in Siberia. From Tobolsk, he wrote to his father, ‘The delight

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In the Flesh  75 with which they have received me everywhere here has definitely struck me. The joy is genuine, on all faces one can see the feeling of gratitude to their Sovereign for not forgetting his distant subjects’. And in a phrase that was widely reported (and repeated) in the press, the heir noted of Siberia’s residents, ‘They say that until now Siberia has been a distinct country and has now become Russia’. The author of the celebratory account cited above concurred: the visit showed that for the emperor ‘the residents of Siberia and Russia constitute one indestructible link and that in his concern for the well-being of his subjects there is no distinction between the one country and the other’.57 Virtually everywhere, the entourage encountered huge crowds eager to behold the tsarevich. In Yaroslavl, as the suite cruised along the Volga, ‘hundreds of small boats full of men and women darted around the Grand Prince’s cutter, covering the Volga over a large expanse. Tens of thousands of people covered the high bank of the Volga’. A similar scene unfolded on the Kama River in Perm, with ‘thousands of small boats’ carrying the town’s residents ‘in their holiday attire’ and encircling the heir’s cutter. In Kasimov, too, crowds encircled the heir on one side of the river as his carriage made its way through town and then got on boats to enclose him as a ‘dense wall’ on the other side as well.58 Exceptional crowds appeared in Kostroma, where the heir arrived on the shore of the Volga and ‘could hardly make it to his carriage, and his carriage could hardly make it through the impenetrable crowd to the cathedral’. ‘Frequently, pathetic female cries and moans mingle with incessant “hurrahs!” ’ The heir recounted that as he crossed the Volga ‘the people greeted me with incredible enthusiasm, many went into the water up to their waists, men and women alike’. A stroll in a Kostroma garden with finer society was overrun by ‘riff-raff ’: ‘The people—men and women, old and young—climbed across the fence and inundated them’. One witness remarked of the scene in Kostroma: ‘The city filled in from all environs; the whole crowd squeezed in as if on Noah’s Ark. . . . I have never seen such commotion in my entire life. That whole mass of people was burning with amazing enthusiasm’. In Perm, the wooden sidewalks cracked apart under the weight of crowds running to the town’s cathedral with hopes of seeing the heir. Tula received ‘an incredible confluence of people’, with whole streets appearing ‘as a sea of heads, animated by the single desire to get a glance of the Sovereign Traveler’. A ‘sea of heads’ agitated before the heir’s quarters in Murom as well. In Kazan, in order to see the prince, Russians and Tatars ‘climbed by throngs into big trees, pushing and shoving in such a way that some fell from their aerial engagements’. Simbirsk, Yurievich wrote, ‘was boiling today with popular, Russian, genuine Russian love for its Guest; we in effect had to fight with that love’ to get in and out of the churches. And whereas to a point men had been the larger source of such thronging, in some places women produced such a crush, recounted Yurievich, ‘that I will long remember the fair sex in Saratov and especially Penza upon the Grand Prince’s exit from church: a genuine battle!’59

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76 1837 At points local enthusiasm produced physical danger. Recounting the un­pre­ce­dent­ed ‘frenzy’ with which the residents of the upper Volga town of Kaliazin greeted him, Alexander recalled as he prepared to cross the river, ‘So many people assembled that the ferry began to submerge in the water, so I decisively thanked God when I had gotten out of that frightful Kaliazin’. Commenting more generally on the phenomenon of crowds, Yurievich wrote, ‘One cannot describe the terror, I think one can say, with which the people here [Kostroma] and everywhere on our path throng towards the Grand Prince. The challenge is to get just a half-step away from them—any more than this is impossible; and our poor bodies and legs will long remember Russia’s love and attachment to the tsarist heir’. The suite sometimes looked forward to the travel through the forest, ‘where there are fewer people’.60 People could not get enough of their tsarevich. In Tver and Perm, enraptured subjects stood night and day beneath the windows of his quarters, ever hopeful that he would show himself again. In Tiumen, the square where the heir received bread and salt upon his arrival ‘was completely full of people, crowding to the point that all windows, balconies, all roofs and buildings, all fences—in a word, everywhere one could stand and everything one could hold on to was covered by people’. Yet Zhukovskii insisted that this was not slavishness. Describing popular enthusiasm in the upper Volga region, he remarked that in the crowd’s expression ‘there was not a trace of fawning; on the contrary, there was a kind of purehearted feeling, instilled by ancestors and preserved as a pure and holy tradition by descendants’. In Siberia his diary tersely recorded ‘three nuances’ characterizing the people’s meeting with the heir: ‘sincerity, simple curiosity, gratitude’.61 Popular devotion was intense. Bells greeted the heir in each city. People loudly yelled ‘hooray!’ In many places people fell to their knees in greeting. Muslims yelled ‘Allah!’ (‘signifying by this their prayer for the Sovereign’). As the party left Zlatoust to loud cries of ‘hooray’, the daughters of German master tradesmen spread flowers on the road before them. When the prince sought to depart Poltava, a military regiment of Caucasus mountaineers ‘threw themselves behind him as an entire regiment’ and offered performative horse-riding and shooting around his carriage for another 2 km, until they finally received the order to return to the city. In Novgorod, as the heir landed after crossing the river from the Yuriev monastery on the opposite shore, the people, ‘in joyous rapture and not knowing how to express it’, started to unhitch the horses from the prince’s carriage with the idea of pulling it themselves, ‘but they were stopped by HIS HIGHNESS’s expression, with gracious thanks, of the desire that they not do this’. The same occurred in Tver. In Kostroma the enthusiasm was so great that local police had to use fire hoses to control the crowd’s ‘wild rapture’.62 The tsarevich’s charm and charisma drove the enthusiasm. As Yurievich described in the early stages of the tour, ‘Our Grand Prince delights us; it is amazing how he is able to charm people everywhere with his manner, his spontaneous courtesy, and his dignity’. A letter from Tver concurred: meeting with the nobility

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In the Flesh  77 there, the heir ‘charmed [everyone] with His greeting and threw a seed of love and devotion into the heart of each’. In part it was the prince’s modesty, tinted with populism, that proved so winning. Nobles offered to serve as oarsmen for crossing the Volga to Kostroma, but when the prince learned that his father had relied on ordinary rowers, he did the same. Likewise in Murom, the prince chose a boat manned by city residents for the river crossing, leaving his suite to deploy a cutter with experienced sailors provided by ministry of transport. At a stop in Yaroslavl province, Alexander entered, not the fine house that had been prepared for him, but ‘the worst house of that village’, in which seven small peasant children were eating cabbage soup for lunch. The heir tried the soup himself and gave the father 150 roubles. The heir’s charm was captured musically in a polonaise composed by Mikhail Glinka for the prince’s visit to Smolensk in July: Alexander was ‘captivating Russians with tenderness’.63 Displays of generosity also endeared subjects. In each province Alexander left money for the local poor and retired soldiers. There were also occasions for extraordinary expressions of munificence. In one case, the tsarevich’s entourage stopped to change horses, and when no one emerged from nearby houses to greet him, the heir went into two of the houses, asked some questions of the pro­pri­et­ resses, and then provided a pleasant shock (presumably) by giving each of them 50 roubles. In another case, encountering Votiak women who typically attached coins to their ceremonial headwear and discovering that two of them had no money for this decoration, the heir gave each 10 roubles for that purpose. And at the Votkinsk factory, after participating in producing an anchor, the young Alexander gave the workers 1,000 rubles for vodka, which surely aided the cause of popular monarchism in this corner of Russia. The heir gave out various gifts— gold watches, rings, snuff-boxes, etc.—to local dignitaries or those who provided services or lodging. Whole towns could benefit. Within a month of the heir’s visit to Vladimir, the city was granted special tax advantages for ten years designed to attract agents of trade and industry, presumably (in part) because the young Alexander had reported that the city ‘was among the poorest in its own province’.64 In all of this, the heir’s trip produced a tremendous outpouring of emotion. The heir cut an entirely different figure from that of his father, as Herzen recounted based on their encounter in Viatka: ‘The heir’s expression had none of that narrow severity, that cold, merciless cruelty which was characteristic of his father’. He instead inspired love, tenderness, and rapture. A ‘letter from Tver’ reported, ‘The eyes of all present were directed to the Tsarevich and filled with tears of joy, reading on His face a pledge for all that is beautiful and elevated’. In Tobolsk, the gov­ern­or reported, ‘I myself was a witness of the tenderness and tears with which prayers were lifted to the Almighty for having granted a successful trip to His Highness’. In Kostroma, by one account, ‘All the ladies melted from tenderness’, while old folks, having ‘masterfully’ used ‘squeals and elbows’ to secure a place on the square, ‘poured out enough tears that I think they could have washed all the dust off the square had they not dried their eyes with handkerchiefs’. In Viatka,

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78 1837 ‘the rapture was indescribable. . . . Tears of tenderness sparkled in many eyes’. Such feelings were mutual, as the heir expressed growing attachment to the country he would rule. Already in Tver, just days into the trip, he noted the ‘amazing joy’ with which the local population greeted him, and asked rhetorically, ‘After this how can one not love and not respect our kind Russian people?’65 These emotions— especially those of ‘rapture’ and ‘tenderness’ [vostorg and umilenie]—were emerging as core rhetorical resources for a regime determined to focus charismatic endearment on the institution of monarchy as an antidote to constitutional schemes like those advanced by the Decembrists. Rooted in Orthodox religious discourse, they offered popular grounding for monarchical rule and were most pronounced in events and ceremonies involving the heir.66 A striking feature of the heir’s journey was its coverage in a periodic press eager to enhance the aura of celebrity surrounding the young prince. Northern Bee, a mouthpiece for the regime, was the most prominent organ in this regard, but other papers such as St Petersburg News, Moscow News, and Russian Invalid carried numerous articles on the matter as well. And though an extensive provincial press had not yet appeared—its conception in 1837 is the subject of the next chapter—a small handful of papers in regional capitals, most prominently Herald of Odessa and Lithuanian Herald, carried news of the journey beyond the capital. For the most part, these regional papers reproduced materials from Northern Bee and similar papers, but in doing so they made information available to a wider circle of readers, and in the latter case the heir’s tour was reported in Polish as well as Russian. Newspapers followed the journey extensively, allowing readers to know where the august traveller was each and every day, the raptures and ecstasy that he generated, and the various objects and sites that he encountered. They also instructed readers on the meaning of the heir himself—his status as a ‘pledge’ for the future and the country’s ‘hope’—while also highlighting for the public Russia’s achievements in trade and industry. In some manner, accounts of the travel introduced readers to the country in which they lived, since it highlighted and expounded on the meaning of the places on the heir’s itinerary. At times, this coverage dominated the papers, representing the principal news item of the day. Indeed, the press made something of a cult of the heir. Reports from early in the trip also instructed those towns and people later on the itinerary how they were supposed to act when the prince arrived in their neck of the woods. A measure of the impact that the heir’s trip had made is revealed by local efforts at preservation and commemoration. The town of Kasimov kept the cutter on which the heir sailed across the Oka River in a specially constructed pavilion, complete with an inscription written by Zhukovskii. The cup from which the heir had drunk tea in a nearby village also became the object of solicitous preservation. Tiumen kept a similar cutter, featuring an inscription by the heir himself, his entire suite, and the lucky citizens of the city who accompanied him on his crossing of the Tura. In 1897, a resident of Slobodskoi (Viatka province) lamented that

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In the Flesh  79 no objects had been preserved from the tsarevich’s visit 60 years earlier and openly envied the town of Glazov, which had a cutter and a chapel with inscriptions ‘that every literate person reads! . . . How important that is for nurturing children’s patriotic feelings!’ Nobles in several provinces meanwhile gathered money for charitable institutions as a mode of commemoration, and these were given billing in the press. Even elements of scam appeared. Herzen recounts that at one stop in Viatka province the tsarevich ate a peach and left the pit on the windowsill. A scheming local—‘the district assessor, notoriously a dissolute character’—collected the pit and then cut the same out of five other peaches. Then ‘he approaches one of the most important ladies and offers her the pit, gnawed by royalty; the lady is in rapture. Then he approaches a second and a third: all are in ecstasy’—though of course ‘each doubts the genuineness of her own pit’.67 Aspects of commemoration went even further. The citizens of Tiumen declared the day of the heir’s visit an annual city holiday that included processions, food, toasts, and fireworks. They named the town square where a Romanov first put his foot on Siberian soil after the heir: the Alexander Square. They christened as ‘Tsarist Street’ the thoroughfare on which the heir made his entrance into the ­centre of town. And they placed memorial inscriptions on buildings and rooms in any way connected with the visit. In Penza, local Lutherans, nearing the completion of a new church when the heir visited, acquired permission to call the new temple the Alexander Evangelical-Lutheran Church to commemorate the visit. Merchants in Tver meanwhile sought to memorialize the heir’s visit by sponsoring improvements to the city gates. The heir’s ‘unforgettable trip’, the local newspaper intoned, ‘will leave in Tver an instructive recollection of itself in the city’s beautification’.68

Conclusion As the heir arrived in Moscow in late July, with much travel still ahead, Metropolitan Filaret remarked to him that the trip ‘should leave you with wisdom encompassing the most enormous of the world’s kingdoms’. Had this occurred? Some expressed doubts about the trip’s success. Zhukovskii had quarrelled with the heir on several occasions along the way (the reasons are not clear) and also felt the trip had been too rushed. He later expressed dismay that his educational efforts had not been more successful. A young companion, Joseph Vielgorskii, likewise reported somewhat cryptically that others were unhappy with the trip, in part because of its haste. A month after its completion, he related, the heir was thinking about the journey ‘as much as about the Chinese language’.69 But the emperor, for his part, discerned intellectual growth. ‘With pleasure I see’, he wrote on 1 June, ‘that you view matters with curiosity, you feel their benefit for you, and you are getting used to assessing them properly’. The close contact with Russia, the heir wrote, ‘is for me a most important and striking lesson, and I can truly say

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80 1837 that I feel in myself a new strength to take up the occupation that God has designated for me’. To one of his teachers at the end of the trip he reported, ‘With my own eyes and up-close I acquainted myself with Mother Russia and learned to love and respect her even more’.70 In the end, the trip was significant for several principal reasons. First, it strengthened Nicholas’s dynastic scenario, by bringing the heir—a key rep­re­sen­ ta­tive of the imperial family and the country’s future ruler—into direct contact with his subjects. The dynasty had been profoundly threatened in 1825, so such steps to ensure a clean succession to Alexander II attained heightened significance. Second, the tour played a role in establishing key elements of Alexander’s rule. Indeed, his ‘scenario of love’, by which the monarchy claimed popular support without granting constitutional reforms, essentially began with the tour, which Zhukovskii described evocatively as a love affair between him and subjects culminating in ‘a national betrothal with Russia’. Alexander, remarks Richard Wortman, was ‘the first Russian heir brought up to believe that the people’s approval constituted an important moral basis of autocratic rule’. The tour served to reinforce that idea.71 Third, the trip united diverse people and provinces in intense attachment to the future sovereign. Perhaps some were actually indifferent. But on the whole the evidence points to an extraordinary experience that was broadly shared by people in various parts of Russia’s vast empire. That common experience served to integrate and connect, especially given that, for all of the encounters with non-Russian peoples that the trip entailed, the journey concentrated on the ethnically Great Russian lands of the central provinces and western Siberia, and thus contributed to the nation’s emergence. One final point of significance: Even if only superficially, the trip permitted both heir and reading subjects to discover Russia’s provinces in all their multifariousness. As chance would have it, a mighty instrument for that same purpose— provincial newspapers—was just then in the midst of creation.

Notes 1. L.  G.  Zakharova and L.  I.  Tiutiunik (eds), Venchanie s Rossiei: Perepiska Velikogo Kniazia Aleksandra Nikolaevicha s Imperatorom Nikolaem I (Moscow, 1999), 52. 2. Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 247–59, 269–70, 357–62. Nicholas’s 1816 trip had gone straight south from Petersburg through Vitebsk and Mogilev to the Black Sea, Crimea, and then back through Voronezh and Tula to Moscow. See ‘Puteshestvie Ego Imperatorskogo Vysochestva Velikogo Kniazia Nikolaia Pavlovicha po Rossii i za granitsei, 1816–1817’, Russkii arkhiv 2 (1877): 182–205. 3. Venchanie, 21, 24–6, 130; Wortman, Scenarios, 363–4; Aleksandr Nikitenko, The Diary of a Russian Censor, ed. and trans. Helen Saltz Jacobson (Amherst, MA, 1975), 64.

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In the Flesh  81 4. S. S. Tatishchev, Imperator Aleksandr II: Ego zhizn’ i tsarstvovanie, vol. 1 (SPb, 1903), 73, 74. On Zhukovskii and the heir, see Wortman, Scenarios, 343–51; Sara Dickinson, Breaking Ground: Travel and National Culture in Russia from Peter I to the Era of Pushkin (Amsterdam, 2006), 218–29; and two articles by Damiano Rebecchini, ‘V. A. Zhukovskii i biblioteka prestolonaslednika Aleksandra Nikolaevicha, 1828–1837’, in A. S. Ianushkevich (ed.), Zhukovskii: Issledovaniia i materialy, vol. 2 (Tomsk, 2013), 77–136; and ‘Reading with Maps, Prints, and Commonplace Books; or How the Poet V. A. Zhukovsky Taught Alexander II to Read Russia’, in Rebecchini and Rafaella Vessena (eds), Reading in Russia: Practices of Reading and Literary Communication, 1730–1930 (Milan, 2014), 129–42. 5. Ukazanie vazhneishikh primchatel’nostei na puti Ego Imperatorskogo Vysochestva Gosudaria Naslednika Tsesarevicha (SPb, 1837). The description of towns appeared in the interior ministry’s journal in 1832–4. See Evgenii Pertsik, K. I. Arsen’ev i ego raboty po raionirovaniiu Rossii (Moscow, 1960), esp. 50–81; and Susan Smith-Peter, Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Leiden, 2018), 84–9; ‘Defining the Russian People: Konstantin Arsen’ev and Russian Statistics before 1861’, History of Science 45 (2007): 47–64. On Nicholas in Britain: Natal’ia Potapova, Tribuny syrykh kazematov: Politika i diskursivnye strategii v dele dekabristov (SPb, 2017), 225–33. 6. ‘Dorozhnye pis’ma S.  A.  Iur’evicha vo vremia puteshestviia po Rossii Naslednika Tsesarevicha Aleksandra Nikolevicha v 1837 godu’ [henceforward ‘Iur’evich’], Russkii arkhiv 4 (1887): 441–68; 5 (1887): 49–72; 6 (1887): 171–216. 7. RGIA, f. 1284, op. 22, otdel 1, stol 1, d. 31 [henceforward ‘RGIA, “O puteshestvii” ’], ll. 20, 33, 52, 124–24ob., 138–9, 145–7. 8. RGIA, f. 1281, op. 3 1838, d. 57, ll. 16ob.–17; d. 32, l. 18ob; Litovskii vestnik (1 June 1837), 345. 9. ‘Pis’mo iz Tveri’, in Litovskii vestnik (4 June 1837). 10. Iu  D.  Garan’kin (ed.), Orenburgskii gubernator Vasilii Alekseevich Perovskii: Dokumenty, pis’ma, vospominaniia (Orenburg, 1999), 174. 11. A. A. Zamiatin, Shestidesiatiletie so vremeni poseshcheniia g. Slobodskogo gosudarem imperatorom Aleksandrom II Nikolaevichem, buduchi eshche naslednikom prestola (Viatka, 1897), 3. 12. RGIA, ‘O puteshestvii’, l. 157. 13. RGIA, f. 1284, op. 22, otdel 1, stol 1, d. 55 (Kavelin to the emperor, 20 May 1837), l. 3. 14. RGIA, ‘O puteshestvii’, ll. 232–3ob., 235ob., 238–9ob. 15. Aleksandr Gertsen, Byloe i dumy, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1969), 250–51. The account is confirmed in RGIA, f. 1284, op. 22, otdel 1, stol 1, d. 55, ll. 2–3ob. 16. Venchanie, 42, 133; RGIA, f. 1284, op. 22, otdel 1, stol 1, d. 55. 17. Compact accounts: Tatishchev, Imperator, 73–90; Rafael Mikhailovich Zotov, Tridtsatiletie Evropy v tsarstvovanie Nikolaia I, pt 1 (SPb, 1857), 246–57; Wortman, Scenarios, 362–9. The final itinerary (from which there were only minor deviations) is Marshrut dlia Ego Imperatorskogo Vysochestva Gosudaria Naslednika Tsesarevicha (SPb, 1837). 18. Egor Rastorguev, Poseshchenie Sibiri v 1837 godu Ego Imperatorskim Vysochestvom Naslednikom Tsesarevichem (SPb, 1841), 13.

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82 1837 19. Cited in Odesskiii vetsnik, 65 (14 Aug. 1837), 790. 20. Garan’kin, Orenburgskii, 175; Aleksandr A. Dmitriev, Poseshchenie Permi naslednika tsesarovicha Aleksandra Nikolaevicha v 1837 g. (Kazan, 1887), 5; Iur’evich, no. 4, 457; no. 6, 214; A.  Mansurov, ‘Naslednik Tsesarevich Aleksandr Nikolaevich v gorode Kasimove v 1837 godu’, Russkii arkhiv 2 (1888): 476. 21. Garan’kin, Orenburgskii, 175; Iur’evich, no. 4, 466–7; no. 5, 49–50, 66; Venchanie, 102. 22. Iur’evich, no. 4, 448; E. E. Liamina and N. V. Samover, Bednyi Zhozef: Zhizn’ i smert’ Iosifa Viel’gorskogo (Moscow, 1999), 152. 23. Gertsen, Byloe, 252. 24. Dmitriev, Poseshchenie Permi, 3; RGIA, ‘O puteshestvii’, l. 506ob. 25. Venchanie (journal entry, 2 June 1837), 58. Iur’evich agreed that it has ‘very good and was no even worse than the one in Yaroslavl’ (Iur’evich, no. 4, 461). 26. Iur’evich literally used the same two words to describe both balls (no. 4, 53; no. 6, 212). 27. Iur’evich, no. 6, 180–81. 28. This was the female form of Khokhly (‘topknots’), a derogatory term for Ukrainians. 29. Iur’evich, no. 4, 468; Venchanie, 68. 30. Iur’evich, no. 5, 59 and 61 (citation at 61); no. 4, 451. 31. Gertsen, Byloe, 252. On provincial balls in literature: Anne Lounsbery, Life is Elsewhere: Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces, 1800–1917 (Ithaca, NY, 2019), 29, 41, 67–8, 92. 32. Herzen to N.  A.  Zakharina (18 Mar. 1837), in . M.  K.  Lemke (ed.), A.  I.  Gertsen: Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, vol. 1 (Petrograd, 1919), 431. 33. Iur’evich, no. 4, 452; no. 5, 56–7; N.  S.  Stromilov, Puteshestvie gosudaria naslednika tsesarevicha Aleksandra Nikolaevicha po Vladimirskoi gubernii v 1837 godu (Vladimir, 1888), 8–9. 34. Iur’evich, no. 4, 454, 458–9, 463. 35. Gertsen, Byloe, 252. 36. Iur’evich, no. 5, 53. 37. Venchanie, 50, 61, 70, 121, 142; Tatishchev, Imperator, 82; Litovskii vestnik 63 (6 Aug. 1837), 507–9; Dickinson, Breaking, 221–2; Timur Guzairov, ‘Stsenarii i nepredskazuemost’: Vpechatleniia i razmyshleniia uchastnikov puteshestviia po Rossii 1837 g’, Imagologiia i komparativistika 8 (2017): 72–4 (citation at 73). 38. Ukazanie primechatel’nostei, 38 and 48; Iur’evich, no. 4, 450. 39. Venchanie, 42, 59, 111–14; Iur’evich, no. 4, 455; no. 5, 69; no. 6, 180. 40. Iur’evich, no. 4, 459. 41. Zotov, Tridtsatiletie, 254; Iur’evich, no. 4, 462, 465; no. 6, 212–23; Litovskii vestnik 53 (2 July 1837), 420. 42. Ibid. 61 (30 July 1837), 491; 55 (9 July 1837), 440; 95 (26 Nov. 1837), 771. 43. Iur’evich, no. 4, 467; Venchanie, 62, 68; P. L. Iudin, ‘Tsesarevich Aleksandr Nikolaevich v Orenburgskom krae v 1837 godu’, Istoricheskii vestnik 46 (1891), 179. 44. Venchanie, 77–8.; Iur’evich, no. 6, 213. 45. Venchanie, 43, 57, 60, 62; Iudin, ‘Tsesarevich’, 178; Iur’evich, no. 4, 453, 468; no. 5, 49, 52. 46. Iudin, ‘Tsesarevich’, 176; Venchanie, 50, 71, 139; Litovskii vestnik 82 (13 Oct. 1837), 667; 84 (19 Oct. 1837), 684.

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In the Flesh  83 47. Venchanie, 75 and 77. 48. RGIA, ‘O puteshestvii’, l. 359, 521ob.; Litovskii vestnik 44 (1 June 1837), 345, 347; 55 (9 July 1837), 440; 64 (10 Aug. 1837), 515; 93 (19 Nov. 1837), 756. 49. Iur’evich, no. 5, 61–4 (citation at 62); Venchanie, 91, 94, 98; Zotov, Tridtastiletie, 253; Tatishchev, Imperator, 87. 50. Litovskii vestnik 74 (14 Sept. 1837), 597–9 (citation at 599); A.  N.  Murav’ev, Vospominania o poseshchenii sviatyni Moskovskoi Gosudarem Naslednikom (SPb, 1838), citations at 13 and 83; Mikhail Pogodin, Istoriko-kriticheskie otryvki, kniga 1 (Moscow, 1846), 158. 51. Wortman, Scenarios, 369; Litovskii vestnik 95 (26 Nov. 1837), 772; A.  A.  Volvenko, ‘Svedeniia o poseshchenii v 1837 g. Voiska Donskogo’, Vestnik arkhivista 3 (2016): 121–33 (citations at 127, 130). 52. Tatishchev, Imperator, 75, 83; Litovskii vestnik 44 (1 June 1837), 344; 60 (27 July 1837), 483. 53. Litovskii vestnik 45 (4 June 1837), 354–5; 50 (22 June 1837), 396; 51 (25 June 1837), 403; 54 (6 July 1837), 431; Venchanie, 44–7 (cit­ations at 44 and 47), 89. 54. Ibid. 74, 76. 55. Mansurov, ‘Naslednik Tsesarevich’, 476; Litovskii vestnik 54 (6 July 1837), 430; 74 (14 Sept. 1837), 596. 56. RGIA, f. 1281, op. 3 (1838), d. 117, l. 19; RGIA ‘O puteshestvii’, l. 417ob’. ‘Dnevnik V. A. Zhukovskogo’, Russkaia starina 110 (1902): 319. 57. Rastorguev, Poseshchenie, 3, 7, 8, and 31; Venchanie, 52–3; Odesskii vestnik no. 53 (5 June 1837), 621; Litovskii vestnik 56 (13 July 1837), 450. 58. Iur’evich, no. 4, 444; Mansurov, ‘Nalsednik Tsesarevich’, 477; P.  I.  Mel’nikov, ‘Dorozhnye zapiski na puti iz Tambovskoi gubernii v Sibir’’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii P. I. Mel’nikova (Andreia Pecherskogo), vol. 12 (SPb, 1898), 367. 59. Iur’evich, no. 4, 446, 449; no. 5, 54, 56; Venchanie, 38; Dmtriev, Poseshchenie Permi, 5; RGIA, ‘O Puteshestvii’, l. 446ob; Arkadii Kornilov, Pis’ma A. P Kornilova, 1834–45 gg. (SPb, 1884), 145; Nikolai Dobrynkin, ‘Gosudar’ Naslednik Tsesarevich Aleksandr Nikolaevich v gorode Murome v 1837 g’., Vladimirskie GV 33 (19 Aug. 1883), 2. 60. Venchanie, 34; Iur’evich, no. 4, 446, 448. 61. Mel’nikov, ‘Dorozhnyia zapiski’, 367; Litovskii vestnik 45 (4 June 1837), 354; Rastorguev, Poseshchenie, 11; Tatishchev, Imperator, 76; ‘Dnevnik Zhukovskogo’, 319. 62. Litovskii vestnik 40 (18 May 1837), 314; 45 (4 June 1837), 354; 54 (6 July 1837), 429; 56 (13 July 1837), 450; Pis’ma Kornilova, 145; RGIA, ‘O puteshstevii’, ll. 288–288ob., 507ob.–508. 63. Iur’evich, no. 4, 447; Litovskii vestnik 45 (4 June 1837), 354, 356; ibid. 68 (24 Aug. 1837), 550; Tatishchev, Imperator, 78; RGIA, ‘O puteshestvii’, ll. 340, 358ob.; Dobrynkin, ‘Gosudar’ Naslednik, 2; Wortman, Scenarios, 333. 64. N.  P.  Bekhterev, ‘Vysochaishie poseshcheniia Viatskoi gubernii’, Stoletie Viatskoi Gubernii: Sbornik materialov k istorii Viatskogo kraia, vol. 2 (Viatka, 1881), 842, 845; Stromilov, Puteshestvie gosudaria, 18; PSZ, no. 10530 (04 Sept. 1837): 737; Venchanie, 110. See also Iur’evich, no. 5, 69. 65. Gertsen, Byloe, 252; Litovskii vestnik 45 (4 June 1837), 354; 50 (22 June 1837), 397. RGIA, ‘O puteshestvii’, 409; Pis’ma Kornilova, 145; Venchanie, 31.

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84 1837 66. Richard Wortman, The Power of Language and Rhetoric in Russian Political History: Charismatic Words from the 18th to 21st Centuries (New York, 2017), 32–40. 67. Mansurov, ‘Nalsednik Tsesarevich’, 478; Rastorguev, Poseshchenie, 10–11, 20, 23–4 (citation at 20); Zamiatin, Shestidesiatiletie, 7; Litovskii vestnik 96 (30 Nov. 1837), 779; 99 (10 Dec. 1837), 803; Gertsen, Byloe, 253. 68. Rastorguev in Poseshchenie Sibiri, 19–30; Penzenskie GV, supplements 7 (18 Feb. 1838) and 10 (11 Mar. 1838); Tverskie GV 12 (25 Mar. 1839): 98–9. 69. Litovskii vestnik (13 Aug. 1837), 524; Guazirov, ‘Stsenarii’, 66, 7–71; Wortman, Scenarios, 357; Liamina and Samover, Bednyi Zhozef, 237–8. 70. Venchanie, 49, 137; Bekhterev, ‘Vysochaishie poseshcheniia’, 833. 71. Wortman, Power of Language, 38; Scenarios, 346.

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5

Provinces Animated Most people would find it astonishing—impossible even—that a pig should give birth to puppies. Yet this is precisely what happened in 1839. As Mogilev Provincial Gazette reported in an article appropriately entitled ‘An Unusual Occurrence in Nature’, the sow in question had borne, in addition to four piglets, ‘a pair of little dogs, which entirely have the form and external appearance of ordinary puppies’. ‘And most curious of all’, the paper added, ‘is that their little faces in some measure resemble those of a pig’.1 Before 1837, news of such an amazing episode might well have remained among only a small circle of local people. But a government decree in June of that year altered the situation fundamentally by authorizing the publication of provincial newspapers. The implications of this development were great indeed. Not only could these new gazettes bring tidings of such an ‘unusual occurrence’ to countless readers (including inquiring minds almost two centuries later). More crucially, they induced Russia’s provincial residents to explore local history and curiosities, and thus to cultivate affection not only for their own individual provinces but also for the value of provincial life more generally. Indeed, the appearance of provincial newspapers starting in January of 1838 represents a pivotal moment in the history of the Russia’s press and life beyond its two capitals. Established in 1775 by Catherine the Great, most Russian provinces were artificial creations in the sense that they appeared suddenly for administrative purposes and thus had neither ethnographic coherence nor history as distinct units. Even where regional identities had already emerged, there is little evidence that residents identified strongly with their provinces, and in the 1830s Russian literature was beginning systematically to represent the provinces—more ac­cur­ate­ly, their towns—as indistinguishable in their shared lack of both the ap­pur­ten­ances of the capitals and the authenticity of the peasant village.2 The gazettes took matters in a fundamentally different direction. They not only gave such provincial inhabitants the opportunity to participate directly in intellectual life, thereby laying the foundations for a civil society on the local level and creating a forum for the exchange of useful information on agriculture and trade; they also played a critical role in the emergence of provincial consciousness—an awareness that continues to shape Russians’ affinities beyond the capitals to this day. Marrying unity with diversity, newspapers furthermore linked the provinces with one another by granting them a common intellectual experience and connecting them horizontally, even while inducing their inhabitants to explore and celebrate the distinctiveness

1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0006

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86 1837 of each. For multiple reasons, then, the appearance of Russia’s provincial newspapers constitutes a watershed in the country’s history.

The Birth of Provincial Gazettes The bulk of Russia’s existing provinces in 1837 appeared in a reform in 1775, partly in response to the massive Pugachev rebellion that began two years earlier. Seeking to strengthen and energize local officialdom, the reform created roughly 40 provinces to replace the larger units existing previously, with another ten appearing by Catherine’s death in 1796. Each province was initially to have 300,000–400,000 inhabitants, with subunits—districts—having 20,000–30,000 residents each. The towns that could serve as provincial capitals were comparatively easy to identify, and by 1840 they ranged in population from 40,000 to 55,000 for larger centres such as Vilna, Kazan, Kiev, Astrakhan, Tula, and Voronezh; to 10,000–20,000 for smaller ones like Perm, Orenburg, Viatka, Smolensk, Vladimir, and Riazan.3 District towns proved harder to establish, above all because of Russia’s small urban population, but this task, too, was accomplished.4 Here we might add that even in the mid-nineteenth century the inhabitants of Moscow and Petersburg constituted less than 2 per cent of the country’s population, and in Moscow open country began within view of the Kremlin walls.5 In no small measure, then, the provinces were Russia. Provincial residents of various stripes represented one segment in a reading public that was emerging in Russia in the 1830s. To be sure, literacy rates in Russia remained conspicuously low—a reasonable estimate is 5 per cent, or around 2.5 million people, and probably few of those were active readers. The overwhelming majority of the population consisted of peasants, most of whom did not yet see utility in literacy and lacked opportunities for schooling even if they did. But things were also changing. Catherine II had set out deliberately to engineer Russians of a ‘middling sort’ as part of a larger project to enlighten and Europeanize Russia, and by the 1830s this group was coming into being.6 Appearing was a thin but growing layer of literate subjects that included provincial gentry, parish clergy, merchants, scribes, doctors, and teachers. The staff of provincial administration was growing rapidly under Nicholas I, and in the mid1830s, the country had over 200,000 school pupils and over 16,000 gymnasium students. In 1835, 42.5 per cent of Orthodox priests had a seminary degree, while some provincial nobles became enthusiastic readers as the expansion of print culture provided new material for consumption, with periodicals occupying a prominent place on their lists.7 ‘Book publishing in Russia constantly grows and multiplies’, wrote Nikolai Nadezhdin (the publisher of Chaadaev’s Letter) in 1836. The interests of newer readers were being served by enterprising periodicals like Northern Bee and Library for Reading, which took conscious heed of their

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Provinces Animated  87 provincial consumers.8 In short, as Abram Reitblat contends, the 1820s–1830s constituted a major ‘breakthrough’ in the spread of reading in Russia. A national reading public was taking form, and if many such readers were in the two capitals, some at least could be found beyond. ‘In Russia’, one author remarked in 1834, ‘a writer achieves glory in the hinterlands, on the steppe, in Saratov’.9 Provincial newspapers were by no means entirely new in 1837. A first attempt had occurred in Tambov province in 1788, where the poet Gavrila Derzhavin, then serving as governor, promoted a paper as a way of increasing administrative efficiency, providing news about ‘important people’ travelling through the province, and combating price-gouging by publishing price lists for various goods. Fortynine issues were published before Derzhavin’s departure ended the experiment.10 A few provincial newspapers appeared in the 1810s–1820s in the university towns of Kazan and Kharkov, as well as in the trade centre of Astrakhan.11 None of these private papers lasted long, each succumbing either to government interference or to the death of its editor.12 A newspaper in the capital of the Caucasus, Tiflis, likewise lasted only from 1828 to 1831. More successful were newspapers in the cities of Odessa and Vilna, which began in the late 1820s and mid-1830s and continued for decades thereafter.13 But the larger picture is clear: even in the mid1830s, newspapers in Russia’s provinces were very rare. Incentive for the decree concerning provincial newspapers in 1837 came from two directions. On the one hand, almost a decade earlier, in 1828, finance minister Georg Ludwig Cancrin proposed such papers throughout the empire as a way of promoting trade and industry. Instinctively cautious, the emperor agreed in October of 1830 to this idea ‘as an experiment’ in six provinces,14 although only one of them—Yaroslavl—actually managed to publish a paper, starting in March 1831. Distributed to 230 government entities in the province, along with 315 private subscriptions (including 21 peasants), the paper published statistics on industry and trade, as well as various official news and decrees. Its success gave grounds to expand the project in 1837.15 On the other hand, projects of provincial reform in the 1830s created incentives as well. Reacting to the fragmented and chaotic character of provincial administration during a cholera epidemic in 1830–31, the interior ministry produced a major reform in 1837 that clarified the relationship of governors to diverse parts of the administration and enlisted the directorate of each province as a collegial body with advisory powers.16 Historians disagree about the results of this reform,17 but among its features were provisions for newspapers in 42 provinces of European Russia, with the goal of improving administrative efficiency: the publication of important information by provincial directorates would reduce the need for cumbersome correspondence and thus streamline governance. It bears emphasis that the newspapers were designed to provide information not just to government agencies, but ‘in general to each and everyone’—that is, to private persons as well. An official segment of the gazettes was to carry materials

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88 1837 most directly relevant to administration, such as decrees, directives, and announcements of various kinds. An unofficial part, or supplement, would offer a wider range of information such as prices and other economic data, descriptions of factories and similar enterprises, reports on navigation, as well as materials of broader interest such as weather reports, obituaries, accounts of natural phenomena, and ‘various historical information on the province worthy of curiosity’.18 In some sense, then, the statute presumed a readership among the economically active, though the references to ‘curiosity’ and ‘each and everyone’ suggests that the intended reader was anyone literate. Indeed, when questions arose about the newspapers’ price (see below), the committee of ministers in Petersburg remarked that from the experiment’s outset, in 1830, ‘a most modest price was established so as to promote the dissemination of those gazettes and to give people of all estates the opportunity to receive them’.19 There were undoubtedly challenges getting the newspapers off the ground. When the interior ministry instructed provinces in August 1837 to assess their printing presses in preparation for the start of publication in January, some reported problems with equipment and/or personnel, while others were ready to begin. Olonetsk province wrote that it had taken two months to produce a single bronze provincial seal at the nearby cannon factory, which made it impossible to print that image on each separate article in the paper’s official section, as required. The province added that it needed an editor, since the work would require ‘a proper purity of artistic style in the composition of articles and the selection of topics’. Vladimir province reported that it had no one with the requisite know­ ledge of printing. Problems with its printing press delayed the appearance of Mogilev province’s newspaper by six months, and perhaps for similar reasons Tver province did not begin publishing until 1839. In the initial stages several papers—for example, those in Perm province and Belostok oblast—were scarcely able to muster an unofficial section at all.20 The matter of price also proved problematic. The 1830 statute had specified a price of 10 rubles for each subscription, which was confirmed by the interior ministry in December of 1837. Several provinces wrote that the cost of paper and printing press, when viewed against the small numbers of likely subscribers, would render it impossible to publish at that price. Because the ministry had informed them of the price too late (only in the last days of December), certain provinces had already set their prices higher, in some cases as high as 25 rubles. There was a catch-22: provincial directorates needed more subscribers to make the papers engaging, but, as the governor of Perm wrote, private subscriptions ‘depend on whether the supplements are interesting’—which itself depended on the editorial staff, which in turn required more money. To a point the interior ministry sympathized: it allowed tariffs already published for 1838 to remain in place but also required governors to justify, with ‘painstaking analysis’, any de­part­ ure from the centrally established price for 1839. When interior minister Dmitrii

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Provinces Animated  89 Table 5.1.  Number of newspapers in Russia, 1801–47. Place

1801

1825

1831

1838

1847

Petersburg Moscow Provinces

1 1 –

9 2 –

15 5 3

15 3 46

17 4 47

Source: A. I. Stan’ko, Russkie gazety pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Rostov, 1969), 31.

Bludov observed a short time later that Podolia province had already specified a higher price (16 rubles) in its call for subscriptions for 1839, he drew the line. The empire’s committee of ministers allowed that those required by law to subscribe to the newspapers—officials and entities elsewhere in the province—could be charged slightly more, but insisted that the price for private persons be set ‘by no means higher than 10 rubles per subscription on the precise basis of the Statute of 1830’.21 Petersburg was determined to make the gazettes accessible to the public. For all these challenges, within a year or two newspapers had begun to appear in all of the provinces specified in the statute of 1837. In November 1838 Bludov could declare: ‘With particular satisfaction, I see that these gazettes are generally being published in a satisfactory manner and in accordance with the goals of their establishment’.22 Indeed, virtually overnight, as 1838 commenced, the number of newspapers in Russia increased by a factor of nearly three, making this moment a genuine watershed in the country’s history (Table 5.1). As one local historian of the gazettes wrote 50 years later, the decree of 1837, ‘which laid the foundation for the existence and development of a provincial press here [in Russia], had enormous historical significance for the development of the printed word in Russia generally’.23

The Practical, the Praiseworthy, the Fantastical So what did the provincial newspapers look like as they began publication? What kinds of materials did they contain? The newspapers were in some measure constrained by the programme that the government had identified for them. But those parameters were actually quite broad, leaving considerable room for individual editors and local authors to impress a distinct character on the papers, as a basic description of their content reveals. The official section of the gazettes carried information most directly relevant to local administration, including many lists: lists of vagrants and runaway serfs, lists of people arriving to and departing from the provincial capital, lists of abandoned children, and so on. Specific matters of governance and justice were also addressed. Could family members join religious dissidents (skoptsy) who had been exiled across the Caucasus? The Voronezh paper explained that wives might,

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90 1837 but children could not. Based on Austrian requests, the interior ministry used the gazettes to call on all Italian soldiers remaining in Russia from the war of 1812 to ‘declare themselves to the Austrian Embassy in St. Petersburg’. The Vitebsk gazette informed its readers of labor protections applying to serfs sent by their landlords for contract work in Prussian port cities such as Danzig and Königsberg. When local authorities were found to be misapplying a new police statute of 1837 by producing directives that were ‘onerous for residents and inconsistent with the government’s intentions’, the interior ministry used the gazettes to provide clarifications. The papers also helped Petersburg to combat sartorial chaos in government offices: reports revealed that ‘some officials permit themselves to wear, together with their uniform coattails, service caps, coloured vests’, and other such elements, ‘to the patent disfigurement of their uniforms’.24 Thanks in part to the gazettes, these outrageous transgressions might now be contained. Such, in very broad strokes, was the official section. The newspapers also offered mountains of practical advice on matters such as reducing dental pain, combating rats, digging wells, protecting fruit trees from frost, growing beets, increasing the bee population, producing earthen bricks, enhancing the quality of wine, and treating people struck by lightning. At least two newspapers propagandized an Index to St. Petersburg, a guidebook for those planning to visit the capital. In its first and only supplement of 1838, Mogilev’s paper offered its readers a table ‘by which one may quickly know: in what period of time money with a given interest rate doubles and triples, and by how much it increases in one year, two, and so on’. For its part the Penza paper reported that in treating many diseases ‘electricity has advantages over other medicines’, adding wisely that such a deployment ‘demands much attention, knowledge of the properties of electric matter, and patience’. Presumably referring to such materials, a chronicler in Voronezh called the newspaper ‘extremely useful for the local population’.25 Considering finance minister Cancrin’s original preoccupations, we should not be surprised to find that economic matters occupied a prominent place in the gazettes. They frequently contained prices of various goods (grain, ‘Bessarabian state salt’, etc.) and agricultural instruments, as well as announcements of upcoming auctions. The Nizhnii Novgorod paper reported in 1838 that fewer ‘Asian goods’ (especially Bukharan cotton textile) had appeared at the city’s famous trade fair, because less had been purchased for the Chinese market. Other articles sought to stimulate provincial residents to economic innovation. An article of the Free Economic Society in Mogilev’s gazette proposed that if local landlords were to create a few ‘model farms’ and deploy the findings of ‘expert economists’ from England (‘or at least from Germany’) then ‘the success of the novel agricultural economy would encourage everyone to imitation’. With such advice in mind, Saratov’s paper declared joyfully, ‘How many advantages a newspaper provides to all classes!’26

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Provinces Animated  91 Some articles provided vivid accounts of extraordinary events and phenomena. In February of 1838, one paper reported, a rabid wolf entered the city of Mogilev, attacked several citizens, and killed a dog before being driven away and then exterminated the next day. In the same month the Voronezh gazette carried the story of an unfortunate peasant woman who gave stillbirth to a freakish infant with ‘a round mouth underneath his chin; [whose] ears, separated by a narrow partition, are located on the front part of the neck; [and whose] nose has only one nostril’. Nizhnii Novgorod’s gazette reported on how a fire broke out in a village in 1837: as a woman tried to light her stove, embers landed unnoticed on her headscarf; when she went out into the yard, a gust of wind caused the smoldering scarf to burst into flame, which ignited the straw roof of her dwelling and caused calamitous destruction to the village.27 Consider also the remarkable story about a blind young woman, Domna Onisimova, in Riazan province, who exhibited ‘an uncommon memory and gift for composing verse on various topics and occasions’. Deprived of eyesight at the age of 5, she developed ‘a particular inclination to listen to reading’, and after a new village priest exposed her to a wider range of texts, Onisimova began to produce her own works, dictating them to her brother. ‘Now the maiden composes verses herself with astounding liberty and ease’, the gazette reported. Informed of this remarkable poet, interior minister Bludov sent her verses to the Russian Academy, which resolved to give the girl 100 rubles and a stack of books, while also printing several hundred copies of her work with the endorsement of the minister and the academy.28 If there were any lessons in these accounts, they were implicit. For the most part they simply offered human interest that generated horror, sympathy, or amazement. But always curiosity. A special category of remarkable occurrences were the laudable feats by which local folk saved others from death. A 14-year-old lad in Smolensk province won reward from the tsar for saving a little girl from a burning house, while a peasant man received similar recognition for rescuing a boy from a well. In Tambov province one resident and his two sons received 50 rubles each from the interior ministry for saving two people drowning in an overflowing river. Perhaps the most remarkable such case was the resourceful boy of 6 years, who in destitution after the disappearance of his parents fed his infant sister by placing her among a bitch’s puppies so that she could drink its milk and keep warm—‘and with this saved the child’s life’. The interior ministry petitioned the emperor to reward the boy, ‘who, despite his utter orphanhood and helpless condition, saved his sister’s life in such an unusual fashion’. The emperor admitted the boy to a military school and designated a 400-ruble annual allowance for his sister until marriage.29 These remarkable and selfless feats could, thanks to the gazettes, now be broadcast to a wide circle of people, and their publicity and reward could stimulate others while also affirming the state’s solicitude. Indeed, the newspapers provided the possibility to offer praise—and also censure—to local officials and residents, for the edification of all. Thus Mogilev’s

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92 1837 gazette recounted the exceptional work of a local police chief, who by his resourceful actions had identified the murderers of a peasant from Kaluga province and brought them to justice, ‘for which reason [an account] of the laudable actions of Police Chief Berlinskii is published here’. In an article entitled ‘An Act of Charity’, the Tambov paper recounted how townspeople in Temnikov paid the taxes and arrears of ten impoverished comrades and received an expression of thanks from the interior minister. In contrast, the members of a rural court in Mogilev province were publicly issued ‘a stern reprimand’ in the gazette for failing to provide requested information on a case. Nizhnii Novgorod’s paper commented on the drowning death of a young peasant woman, proposing that if her would-be saviours had deployed ‘measures prescribed by experienced doctors and the law itself ’ instead of pumping her body across a barrel (an ‘extremely harmful’ and prohibited method of resuscitation), the poor woman might still be alive.30 If the foregoing description characterizes the newspapers in the aggregate, it is essential also to acknowledge their diversity. At one end were those papers that struggled to produce anything beyond basic decrees, lists of prices, descriptions of runaway serfs, and similar material that stood at the core of the official section. In Mogilev province the unofficial part began to appear regularly only around 1849.31 At the other end were those gazettes whose editors immediately recognized the opportunities that the government’s directives offered for studying their provinces and for enhancing the intellectual life of their inhabitants. So excited were the editors of Vologda’s new gazette that they began its very first issue—the official section, no less—with a poem, which ended thus: Onward now to useful things; And then our motto for each case— ‘Glory, honour, use’—thus brings Successes that we might embrace.32

Even the same paper could vary substantially from week to week. The papers’ periodicity exhibited great variety as well. Most started out on a weekly basis, but others eventually adopted a more frequent schedule. Leading the pack was Kharkov’s paper, which by the 1880s was appearing on a daily basis. Close behind, Penza’s paper came out every day except Mondays and days after holidays. A few others (Kazan, Tambov, Kiev, Tauride, and Livland) came out three times a week, with the rest still appearing once or twice. The papers’ revenues tracked the frequency of their appearance, though they depended also on the size of the province and especially its reading public.33 For all the papers’ variety, it is clear that editors, presumably in search of ‘curious’ materials to fill their pages, used articles that had originally appeared in other provinces. In the first year or so, for example, Voronezh’s gazette depended

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Provinces Animated  93

Figure 5.1.  Title page for Vologda Provincial Gazette, 1 January 1838.

heavily on articles from neighbouring Kharkov’s paper, though it borrowed from ­others as well. The story above about the boy who saved his infant sister ori­gin­ated in Volhynia, but was carried by Kiev, Voronezh, Mogilev, and Nizhnii Novgorod gazettes (and perhaps others). This kind of exchange should not surprise us, since the 1837 stature required each provincial directorate to send the official section of its gazette to all other provinces—even those that did not yet have such papers.34

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94 1837 Several provinces advocated the exchange of the unofficial section as well. The directorate in Tauride province complained that its habit of sending the unofficial portion of its paper to other provinces was not always reciprocated.35 Presumably referring to the unofficial section, other provinces wrote to their counterparts asking ‘whether anyone wishes to receive [our] provincial gazette’.36 Appealing more directly to Petersburg, Olonetsk province highlighted ‘the benefit that may accrue from the dissemination of statistical information in our Fatherland’ and its own practice of sharing the unofficial section with all others. But while the governor asked the interior minister to require such an exchange, Bludov demurred: the statute required exchange only of the official section, so the requested reciprocity ‘depends directly on mutual agreement of provincial authorities’.37 Although it remains unclear precisely how much voluntary exchange there was, it seems safe to propose that the gazettes fostered new horizontal connections among provinces, and that tsarist rulers were less apprehensive about such ties than were, for example, their Ottoman counterparts.38 Many of those looking back on the early gazettes later were not impressed by what they saw. Their appearance alone left much to be desired. Later observers commented on the rough grey paper, with slipshod printing using letters of different shapes and sizes. With dismay, one editor looking back found it remarkable that the appearance of Penza’s newspaper ‘even became worse’ in 1851 compared to earlier years.39 Nor did the contents win much praise from subsequent ob­ser­vers. The articles in the unofficial part of the Voronezh gazette, wrote one chron­ic­ler, had ‘nothing interesting in terms of their content’, adding that the first year’s supplements ‘were extremely meagre’. Generalizing excessively, in 1862 that paper’s own editor described as an ‘axiom’ that all provincial papers had previously been ‘just awful’.40 Reviewing the previous contents of Penza’s news­paper in 1865, its editor harshly declared that over the course of its early decades, there did not appear a single item that was either useful ‘or in any way even simply interesting in terms of its content’. He contemptuously dismissed an 1849 art­icle entitled ‘Curious Events with a Goose’ by remarking: ‘We don’t see anything curious in this article and don’t understand why it appeared in the provincial gazette; it is entirely ridiculous and noteworthy only for that reason’.41 Yet not all early issues were as bad as those assessments would have it, and even within the first decade or so some editors sought actively to improve their papers. In 1841 the editor of Mogilev’s newspaper explicitly made the paper’s aesthetics a priority, signaling his intent to replace old and worn-out letters with ‘new, clear, and attractive ones’, and the paper currently in use with stock of ‘a new and higher quality’. These efforts extended to content as well. Still in its first year, Saratov’s provincial directorate expressed certainty that, ‘with the active exertions of the editorial staff, it can soon make this gazette entertaining not only for the residents of Saratov province, but for others as well’. Admitting that the gazettes were ‘still far from what they could be’, the editor of Vladimir’s paper proposed in 1839 that

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Provinces Animated  95 there were grounds for supposing that ‘with each year Vladimir’s newspaper will improve’. Two years later the editorial staff in Voronezh declared that it would make ‘every possible effort to make this gazette as pleasing as possible’, and hoped that the public would express its gratitude by subscribing, ‘especially landlords, for whom we are placing very useful and curious articles on agricultural science, medicine, and economy’.42 These calls only sometimes enriched the paper’s offerings, just as promises to improve the papers did not always have an immediate effect.43 As the century progressed, the number of gazettes increased. Newly created provinces—such as Kovno in 1843 and Samara in 1851—began publishing papers almost immediately. And most provinces not regulated by the original statute of 1837 received their own newspapers over the next three decades, and more distant regions by the 1890s. Having received at least the official portion of other provinces’ gazettes (and in some cases supplements), these newer publications had ready models to follow and set about quickly emulating them. From the very start in 1850, Stavropol’s paper was appealing to the public for articles to enhance the paper and publishing significant ethnographic material, for example a sketch of local Turkmens.44 Seven years later Irkutsk initiated its gazette by articulating an impressive sense of mission and producing an unofficial section of over ten pages in each issue. Such, then, were the basic characteristics of the provincial newspapers in their early stages. Exhibiting a degree of diversity, the gazettes nonetheless broadly revealed an aspiration to solve administrative problems, to promote economic activity, and to present readers with the practical, the praiseworthy, and the fantastical, both in their own provinces and elsewhere. Of particular note is also the newspapers’ sense of provincial mission.

A Provincial Mission Much of the material in the gazettes no doubt had a random, serendipitous character, and some editors lacked either the will or the possibility of doing more than the minimum. But others exuded a hearty sense of mission from the very beginning, seeing the 1837 statute as a remarkable opportunity to cultivate knowledge, civic engagement, and affection for the local. Thus the editorial staff of Vladimir’s paper proposed in its very first issue that if faraway places could generate curiosity, then so too should ‘that which is close by, the homeland’. Similar commitments were evident from the start in Viatka, where editors immediately declared that the troika of statistical committees, exhibitions, and gazettes, ‘going by different routes toward the same goal, reveal all the foundations for the activity and life of the region’. Fully embracing the government’s ‘beneficial concern’ in founding the newspapers, the editor pledged his efforts to invest the paper ‘with all the

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96 1837 entertainment value and utility that one may expect from them’. By April of 1838 the editor in Saratov had likewise identified a clear programme for the paper: ‘to acquaint our readers with various historical facts about our province worthy of curiosity, with the antiquities located there, with the most remarkable phe­nom­enon in the kingdom of nature, and in particular with the condition of handicrafts, trade, and methods for their improvement’.45 Although it could be difficult at times to acquire the necessary materials—editors could do only so much themselves—some gazettes managed to deliver on these promises rapidly. Alexander Herzen’s presence in Viatka helped that province’s gazette to burst out of the gate with numerous articles on various aspects of the province’s life: its Russian peasants, its Finnic peoples, industry in the district town of Nolinsk, various icons and churches, burial mounds and ancient monuments, and much more—all this in just the first year. In October of its first year, Tambov’s paper published an extensive description of the province, from which we learn that it had 28 doctors and two veterinarians; that it lacked ‘native inhabitants’ (even Mordvins and Tatars had migrated from other provinces); that its major forests had been felled and its meadows ploughed; and—though it may seem incredible—that over a 12-year period the province’s capital had witnessed 36 rainbows. The presence of a university in Kharkov presumably helped that province’s gazette provide abundant material from the very start, for example on local history, the mineral waters at Slaviansk, and earthquakes—including one in Kharkov itself in January of 1838. Based on a massive survey of the province’s capital and district towns, the paper concluded that this relatively young region ‘has nearly superseded some provinces that were created much earlier’. Taking stock of the paper’s first year at the end of 1838, the editorial staff of Vladimir’s gazette reported with satisfaction that it, too, had provided descriptions of all of the province’s towns. One of its readers confirmed in 1850 that ‘for the thirteenth year and with constant enthusiasm [the paper] tells us about every district—all that is curious and entertaining from the past, present, and near future’.46 The province was now familiar in a way that it could not have been before. Even those looking back with a critical eye decades later often discerned a larger trajectory of positive development. As one wrote of the Tambov gazette, ‘The whole past experienced by the population of our region over those fifty years [1838-88] were registered to a greater or lesser degree on the pages of our printed organ’.47 Noting that the newspaper occasionally featured ‘remarkable articles’ on local phrases and proverbs, another added that the inclination to study one’s own life and past with such affection and respect revealed ‘that the need for selfconsciousness and a direct view on life becomes everywhere more perceptible from day to day’.48 In 1899 the chronicler of Mogilev’s paper remarked that in its 60 years the gazette ‘has provided a fine service to the study of Mogilev province’, and that its editors had earned the gratitude of all those concerned with the province’s fate. Just an assembly of the articles in Penza gazette, wrote its compiler, ‘in

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Provinces Animated  97 some measure constitutes a very interesting chronicle of Penza province’. Even if the paper’s articles on local life were not especially rich, ‘they are the only reliable source from which one may acquire materials for study of the homeland, which, we are convinced, will in the near future occupy its appropriate place in the education of our youth’.49 In some instances this enhanced consciousness found expression not only in love for one’s particular province but also in broader claims about the value of provincial life. Anne Lounsbery has shown that in the 1830s Russian prose ­writers were busily portraying the provinces as unbearably trivial, immutably backward and stagnant, utterly homogeneous, hopelessly inept at emulating high (European) culture—in short, as empty, meaningless spaces.50 The gazettes allowed provincials to push back. In 1862 the editor of the Voronezh gazette declared that at one time everyone looked contemptuously at the provinces, the ‘backwoods’, places like Saratov and Voronezh, wondering how anyone could possibly live there without dying of boredom. But, he asserted, the view of the provinces had changed fundamentally, and the possibility of its ‘conscious life’ had appeared: In recent times, when we took a more serious look at ourselves, when we understood all the banality of our ballroom view on life, when we saw the necessity to take up our own affairs, the province suddenly matured before our eyes; we began to understand that our dear Russia was not locked up behind the walls of Moscow and Petersburg, but rather freely and widely spread out into those remote Saratovs and Voronezhes and tens of thousands of villages unknown to geography.51

If not exclusively, then, Russia was to be found in its provinces, which were themselves diverse and distinct, while also united by the fact that they were neither Moscow nor Petersburg. The inclination to take a ‘serious look at ourselves’ was a product precisely of the gazettes. Indeed, the newspapers represented a response to this call ‘to take up our own affairs’. The aspiration to promote such activism—and also merely to acquire enough material to fill the papers’ pages—induced editors to appeal directly to the reading public. Announcing the appearance of the gazette in Tver province in 1839, its editors promised to publish ‘everything that each private person, either for his own needs or for the general good, would like to make known’. Their counterparts in Vologda ‘call on every member of all estates to aid our labours’ by providing articles on appropriate topics. Vladimir’s paper likewise requested ‘lovers of antiquity to send in their local discoveries, treasures that inalienably belong not to any one person, but to the History of our Good Fatherland’. The paper sought such ‘worthy’ collaborators ‘because on this foundation rests the hope that each and all may live in common sympathy, something demonstrably lacking up until now and that is demanded by our present state of education’. Saratov’s editor

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98 1837 issued a similar call, noting that articles would be received ‘with gratitude [and] without any cost for their publication’. Some years later, in 1847, the editor in Voronezh appealed to the public, ‘without reference to rank or class’, to provide materials—manuscripts, coins, oral legends, deeds, fairy tales, songs, etc.—‘and in general all that has any relation to the life of old in Voronezh province’.52 Even if such calls did not always meet with an enthusiastic response, the papers nonetheless created the possibility for the mobilization of the provincial public in the service of local knowledge and collective enlightenment. All of this, then, points to the main significance of the gazettes: they fostered both provincial identity and a civil society on the local level. Neither of these appeared immediately, of course, and the newspapers were not the only factor encouraging them. Statistical committees, provincial libraries, local museums, and other such institutions played critical roles as well.53 But it is hard to imagine that provincial consciousness could have reached the level that it did without the gazettes. Catherine Evtuhov has accordingly remarked that the newspapers ‘were to become the point of departure for an independent provincial cultural consciousness’. Developing that assertion further, Susan Smith-Peter describes how in the 1830s the province went from being ‘primarily an archaic administrative term’ to ‘an expression of a sense of identity’, based in part on new institutions, including the gazettes, created by the government better to inform the center about its own resources.54 The task of promoting economic development and improving administrative efficiency thus had the unintended effect of creating provincial affinities. Though the term did not yet exist, this process played a key role in the emergence of kraevedenie, a peculiarly Russian form of regional studies evident today in libraries, museums, and mentalities.55 The civil society that emerged as part of this process featured, not a clear distinction between state and society (which is often implied by the term today), but rather collaboration or at least coexistence of the two. Indeed, as Smith-Peter recounts, the state itself was central in bringing this civil society into being. Inspired by the thought of Adam Smith (see also Chapter  9), the government encouraged individuals to provide it with local knowledge in the hopes that this would stimulate economic growth. Enlightened provincial bureaucrats became crucial actors in this project as well. Non-nobles, especially, now acquired a voice and an audience for the first time, while the study of the local ‘became a key means to mobilize members of society to public action and to articulate a vision of provincial identity’. Part of this process entailed the consolidation of a selfconscious provincial intelligentsia—once again of largely non-noble origin—with goals and interests distinct from those of the intelligentsia in the capitals.56 The provincial gazettes both reflected and helped to produce this new civil society and intelligentsia at the provincial level. These developments proved critical to paving the way for an ideology of reform on matters of decentralization and self-government in the 1850s–1860s. Indeed,

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Provinces Animated  99 the question of the regions’ relationship to the centre became a major one at the time. Whereas some proposed that only the state could guide the destiny of a modern nation, others discerned in such guidance a bureaucracy that constituted an evil to be cured by turning administrative functions over to elected representatives of local society. A critical issue in the debate was the degree to which Russia’s own past authorized decentralization—i.e. whether the provinces and their institutions were autonomous societal forces or the creation of central government. The result was a search for a provincialist past, an orientation that for a few years represented a dominant attitude toward the nation’s history. These discussions at times flirted with federalism, and provided an important source for the creation of the bodies of local self-government known as zemstvos, which would inhabit Russian history (and literature) until 1917.57 Finally, we may posit that the gazettes reflected and embodied an emerging Russian nation within the empire. We have seen that narodnost was a major preoccupation for both the regime and many thinking Russians, and the gazettes provided material to fill that idea with content. It was also at about this time, as Leonid Gorizontov contends, that the task of identifying an ‘interior Russia’—the places and spaces that constituted Russia’s core—became another priority for the Russian public.58 Though contemporaries could define that core variously, the 42 provinces called to produce provincial gazettes—the predominantly Orthodox East Slavic territories that were perceived to share much by way of culture and institutions— represent a definition as reasonable as any other. Finally, as Benedict Anderson has remarked, the technology of print played a critical role in generating national consciousness. Newspapers produced a sense of simultaneity and could thus naturally create ‘an imagined community among a specific assemblage of fellow readers’.59 From this perspective, Russia’s provincial gazettes, along with other common reading matter, helped to bring a Russian nation more fully into being. We should certainly not exaggerate. In the 1840s some papers had only a dozen or fewer private subscribers, and one Soviet historian, probably setting an unrealistic standard, concludes that they ‘did not enjoy particular popularity with readers’.60 But some papers show larger numbers of subscribers. Smith-Peter found 238 subscribers of various classes to the unofficial section of Vladimir’s paper already in 1838, and 639 for Kaluga’s in 1857, concluding that the papers ‘reached a wide audience that was made up of groups other than the noble estate’. Evtuhov also emphasizes that the papers would have ‘fallen flat’ without some degree of active participation of provincial residents.61 It seems safe to conclude that even if readership remained comparatively small in relation to overall population, the gazettes nonetheless reached a segment of Russia’s literate population in the provinces. They also helped to inform the capitals and people in other locales about the country as a whole. Thus the Petersburg newspaper Northern Bee, which openly aspired to provide information about Russia in its entirety, made ample use of materials from the gazettes as part of that project. Praising the gazettes’ inclusion

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100 1837 of ‘highly important and curious news for each Russian’, the Northern Bee’s editor, Faddei Bulgarin, declared in 1839, ‘Of the many truly useful and national establishments, the provincial gazettes [rank] among the top’.62

Conclusion Enthusiasts for the gazettes gave credit where it was due: it was the autocracy that had created these local organs of the press. Vladimir’s editors called the papers ‘an ark by which the government invites us to common intellectual collaboration’. And a historian of the gazette in Tambov province declared on their fiftieth anniversary, ‘As in all other undertakings, such as the propagation of book publishing in provincial capitals and the establishment of provincial organs of the press, our government went ahead of society and aroused in it the wants and aspirations of an enlightened European’.63 In short, just as the autocracy created Russia’s provinces in 1775, so too, six decades later, did it create conditions for investing those provinces with content and identity. But provincial residents also deserve credit for meeting the challenge and shaping the new gazettes. Herzen, having seen the process unfold, recounted that provincial directorates initially ‘tore their hair out’ trying to get the unofficial segment in train. ‘All those suspected of even a bit of education and the ability to spell properly were requisitioned’. Yet they managed. After thinking a bit, consulting journals like Library for Reading, and fretting some, ‘they took a stab and, finally, started writing little articles’.64 And they made the gazettes their own. This was one of those cases, Evtuhov remarks, when government legislation produced local interpretations that exceeded the centre’s original intentions. Smith-Peter likewise highlights ‘the unexpected side effect of encouraging the development of subnational identities at various levels’.65 Provincial actors thus appropriated the papers and elaborated novel allegiances and forms of civic engagement at the provincial and local level. Provinces now occupied a place in hearts and minds that they previously had not. Even today, anyone who ventures beyond Russia’s two capitals encounters a mentality that would probably not exist without the country’s provincial newspapers. For all of their focus on the local and the provincial, the gazettes also performed an integrative function. They helped to create stronger links between provinces and capitals, and represented one factor by which the provinces ‘were on a slow but continuous trek toward cultural integration with the rest of the country’.66 To be sure, they encouraged residents to explore and articulate what was locally distinct, which thereby promoted a sense of particularity. But the task of initiating and publishing newspapers imposed on provinces a shared intellectual experience, while the papers’ administrative functions necessitated horizontal exchange. Moreover, the very sense of distinctiveness fostered by the project

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Provinces Animated  101 could itself serve as a source of unity, linking all the ‘Saratovs and Voronezhes’ in their common provinciality. Thus even as each province was particular, it was made so conceptually through a similar set of practices, reinforced by a shared juxtaposition to the capitals. To adopt a phrase from a different context, the gazettes produced ‘a common denominator of variousness’ that allowed the fact of diversity to bind provinces together.67 Binding them further was a new and dynamic ministry for peasant affairs, yet another product of the remarkable year 1837.

Notes 1. Cited in N. A. Ozerov, Mogilevskie gubernskie vedomosti za 1838–1844 gg. (Mogilev, 1905), 4. 2. Anne Lounsbery, Life Is Elsewhere: Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces, 1800–1917 (Ithaca, NY, 2019). 3. A. G. Rashin, Naselenie Rossii za 100 let, 1811–1913 gg. (Moscow, 1956), 90–91. 4. Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven, CT, 1981), 277–91. 5. S.  Frederick Starr, Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 1830–1870 (Princeton, NJ, 1972), 6–7. 6. Alexander Martin, Enlightened Metropolis: Constructing Imperial Moscow, 1762–1855 (Oxford, 2013). 7. A. G. Rashin, ‘Gramotnost’ i narodnoe obrazovanie v Rossii v XIX i nachale XX v’, Istoricheskie zapiski 37 (1951): 32, 52; B. N. Mironov, Sotsial’naia istoriia Rossii perioda Imperii, vol. 1 (SPb, 1999), 104, 109; Abram Reitblat, Kak Pushkin vyshel v genii: Istoriko-sotsiologicheskie ocherki o knizhnoi kul’ture Pushkinskoi epokhi (Moscow, 2001), 14–29; Katherine Pickering Antonova, An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia (Oxford, 2013), 22, 35, 105–18. 8. Nikolai Nadezhdin, ‘Evropeizm i narodnost’, v otnoshenii k russkoi slovesnosti’, in Iu. Manna (ed.), N.  I.  Nadezhdin: Literaturnaia kritika, estetika (Moscow, 1972), 400; Yelizaveta Raykhlina, ‘Russian Literary Marketplace: Periodicals, Social Identity, and Publishing for the Middle Stratum in Imperial Russia, 1825–1865’ (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 2018). 9. Reitblat, Kak Pushkin vyshel, 29; citation in Lounsbery, Life Is Elsewhere, 113. 10. Susan Smith-Peter, ‘The Russian Provincial Newspaper and its Public, 1788–1864’, Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies no. 1908 (Pittsburgh, PA, 2008), 6–7. 11. These were Kazanskie izvestiia (1811–1820), Khar’kovskii ezhenedel’nik (1812), Khar’kovskie izvestiia (1817–23), and Vostochnye izvestiia (Astrakhan, 1813–16). 12. A. I. Stan’ko, Russkie gazety pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Rostov, 1969), 17–21. 13. Odesskii vestnik (1828–94) and Litovskii vestnik (1834–1915), renamed Vilenskii vestnik in 1840. 14. PSZ 4036 (27 Oct. 1830): 212–19, citation at 212.

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102 1837 15. Stan’ko, Russkie gazety, 25; Susan Smith-Peter, Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Leiden, 2018), 98–103; V. V. Demet’eva, ‘Iz istorii voznikonoveniia “Iaroslavskikh gubernskikh vedomostei” ’, Sovetskie arkhivy 6 (1981): 43–5; Alison Smith, ‘Information and Efficiency: Russian Newspapers, ca. 1700–1850’, in Simon Franklin and Katherine Bowers (eds), Information and Empire: Methods of Communication in Russia, 1600–1850 (Cambridge, 2017), 201–4. 16. N. Varadinov, Istoriia Ministerstva vnutrennikh del, pt 3, bk 1 (SPb, 1862), 363; bk 2 (SPb, 1862), 275–87. 17. More negative appraisals: Starr, Decentralization, 26–37 (esp. 33–4); O. V. Moriakova, Sistema mestnogo upravleniia Rossii pri Nikolae I (Moscow, 1998), 38–68 (esp. 28, 39, 57–8). More positive ones: Smith-Peter, Imagining, 27 and 41; Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in NineteenthCentury Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh, PA, 2011), 134–7, 273–4. 18. PSZ 10304 (03 June 1837): 459–62; Smith, ‘Information and Efficiency’, 204–6; SmithPeter, Imagining, 103–4. 19. RGIA, f. 1284, op. 22, otdel 1, stol 1, d. 112 [henceforward ‘RGIA-vedomosti’], ll. 167–67ob. 20. RGIA-vedomosti, ll. 11, 50–4ob. (citation at 53ob.); ‘Ob izdanii gubernskikh vedomostei’, Mogilevskie GV 1 (2 July 1838). 21. RGIA-vedomosti ll. 11ob., 124, 167–8. 22. Ibid. l. 148 (circular of 27 Nov. 1838). 23. V. V. Solovskii, Pamiatnaia knizhka redaktsii neofitsial’noi chasti ‘Tambovskikh gubernskikh vedomostei’ po povodu ikh piatidesiatiletiia (Tambov, 1888), 21. 24. ‘O semeistvakh skoptsev, ssylaemykh v Zakavkazskie provintsii’, Voronezhskie GV, official, 45 (12 Nov. 1838): 327; Vitebskie GV 49 (9 Dec. 1838): 1–5. Viatskie GV 17 (23 Apr. 1838): 129–35; ibid. 27 (2 July 1838): 242–3; ibid. 28 (9 July 1838): 254–5; Belostokskie oblastnye vedomosti 9 (5 Mar. 1838): 2. 25. Viatskie GV 27 (2 July 1838): 245–51; ‘Raschet protsentov’, Mogilevskie GV 11 (10 Sept. 1838), no pagination. Penzenskie GV 33 (19 Aug. 1838). N.  V.  Voskresenskii, Piatidesiatiletie Voronezhskikh gubernskikh vedomostei: Istoricheskii ocherk s biografiei redaktorov i sotrudnikov, vol. 1 (Voronezh, 1888), 3. 26. Nizhegorodskie GV 37 (14 Sept. 1838): 126–30; Ozerov, Mogilevskie, 9; Saratovskie GV 13 (16 Apr. 1838). 27. Ozerov, Mogilevskie, 3; ‘Ob urodlivom detiati muzhskogo pola’, Voronezhskie GV 6 (5 Feb. 1838): 21; ‘O proisshestvii’, Nizhegorodskie GV (5 Jan. 1838): 1. 28. Nizhegorodskie GV 14 (6 Apr. 1838): 56–8. 29. Recounted in Ozerov, Mogilevskie, 2; Viatskie GV, official, 3 (15 Jan. 1838): 24; Tambovskie GV 36 (22 Oct. 1838): 595–6; Kievskie GV 38 (23 Sept. 1838): 1376. 30. Mogilevskie GV 6 (6 Aug. 1838): 31; ibid. 9 (27 Aug. 1838): 44; Tambovskie GV 8 (26 Feb. 1838); Nizhegorodskie GV 48 (30 Nov. 1838): 384–5. 31. E. R. Romanov, Ukazatel’ k neofistial’noi chasti ‘Mogilevskikh Gubernskikh Vedomostei s 1839 po 1898 god (Mogilev, 1899), 3. 32. ‘Na Novyi god’, Vologodskie GV 1 (01 Jan. 1838): 1. 33. Voskresenskii, Piatidesiatiletie, 10 and 13.

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Provinces Animated  103 34. As readers were reminded in Tambovskie GV 40 (19 Nov. 1838): 805–7. 35. Tavricheskie GV 24 (17 June 1838): 4. 36. Provinces of Saratov, Olonetsk, and Petersburg made such an inquiry in Penzenskie GV 9 (4 Mar. 1838). 37. RGIA-vedomosti (Olonetsk governor to Bludov, 24 Dec. 1838; and the latter’s response, 21 Jan. 1839), ll. 173–9ob. (citations at ll. 174ob., 179ob.). 38. Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2008). 39. Solovskii, Pamiatnaia knizhka, 24; Prozin in I. I. Vasil’ev, Penzenskie gubernskie vedomosti: Pervoe piatidesiatiletie, 1838–1887 g. (Penza, 1889), ix–x. 40. Cited in Voskresenskii, Piatidesiatiletie, 56, 58, 161. 41. Vasil’ev, Penzenskie, viii, x. 42. Ozerov, Mogilevskie, 11; Saratovskie GV 26 (16 July 1838); Vladimirskie GV 1 (7 Jan. 1839): 1; Voskresenskii, Piatidesiatiletie, 61. 43. For a negative case: Vasil’ev, Penzenskie. 44. Stavropol’skie GV 2 (7 Jan. 1850): 18–23. 45. Vladimirskie GV 1 (8 Jan. 1838): 6; Viatskie GV 1 (1 Jan. 1838). Saratovskie GV 13 (16 Apr. 1838). 46. Tambovskie GV, Pribavleniia 13 (22 Oct. 1838): 43–8; ‘O Khar’kove, i uezdnykh gorodakh Khar’kovskoi gubernii’, Khar’kovskie GV 3 (15 Jan. 1838), pribavleniia, 29; Vladimirskie GV 50 (17 Dec. 1838): 219–20; A. Chikhachev, ‘Mysli sel’skogo zhitelia o gubernskoi gazete’, Vladimirskie GV 45 (11 Nov. 1850): 249. 47. Solovskii, Pamiatnaia knizhka, 43. 48. As cited in P.  A.  Islaev, Ukazatel’ k neofitsial’noi chasti Voronezhskikh gubernskikh vedomostei, s 1833 po 1865 g. (Voronezh, 1869), 1–11. 49. Romanov, Ukazatel’, 3; Vasil’ev, Penzenskie, i, xxviii. 50. Lounsbery, Life Is Elsewhere, esp. 1–118. 51. Cited in Voskresenskii, Piatidesiatiletie, 156–7. 52. Tverskie GV 1 (7 Jan. 1839): 6; Vologodskie GV 1 (1 Jan. 1838): 1–2; Vladimirskie GV 1 (8 Jan. 1838): 6–7; Saratovskie GV 13 (16 Apr. 1838); ibid. 26 (16 July 1838); Voskresenskii, Piatidesiatiletie, 65–6. 53. Smith-Peter, Imagining, 60–134; Starr, Decentralization, 97–9; W.  Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825–1861 (DeKalb, IL, 1982), 109–25; Viktor Berdinskikh, Uezdnye istoriki: Russkaia provintsial’naia istoriografiia (Moscow, 2003), esp. 44–63. 54. Evtuhov, Portrait, 137; Smith-Peter, Imagining, citations at 12. 55. For a brief history, see Susan Smith-Peter, ‘How to Write a Region: Local and Regional Historiography’, Kritika 5(3) (2004): 527–42. 56. Smith-Peter, Imagining, 126; Berdinskikh, Uezdnye istoriki, esp. 38, 48–53. 57. Starr, Decentralization, 90–109. 58. Leonid Gorizontov, ‘The “Great Circle” of Interior Russia: Representations of the Imperial Center in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, in Jane Burbank et al. (eds), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930 (Bloomington, IN, 2007), 67–93. 59. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 2006), citation at 62.

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104 1837 60. Moriakova (Sistema mestnogo upravleniia, 183) cites source indicating no subscribers for Orenburg’s and only 12 for Tambov’s (both in 1842); and only 6 for Tver’s in 1849. Stan’ko, Russkie gazety, 108–12, citation at 108. 61. Smith-Peter, Imagining, 116–17; Evtuhov, Portrait, 138. 62. Raykhlina, ‘Russian Literary Marketplace’, 135–60, citation (slightly modified) at 159. 63. Cited in Chikhachev, ‘Mysli’, 249; Solovskii, Pamiatnaia knizhka, iii. 64. Aleksandr Gertsen, Byloe i dumy, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1969), 261. 65. Smith-Peter, Imagining, 6; Evtuhov, Portrait, 134. 66. Richard Stites, Serfdom, Society, and the Arts in Imperial Russia: The Pleasure and the Power (New Haven, CT, 2005), 49. 67. Alon Confino, ‘The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Heimat, National Memory and the German Empire’, History and Memory 5 (1993): 42–86, citations at 54 and 62.

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6

Guardians of the Benighted It may be a reckless assertion, but few people seem to be authentically hostile towards potatoes—especially given how much else in the world merits indignation. In the early 1840s, however, potatoes generated such profound objection among some peasants in Russia that there was a raft of ‘potato riots’ featuring vocal protest and substantial violence. Their origins take us back to 1837, when Russia’s government established a new agency with jurisdiction over almost half the country’s peasant population. Created by decree in December 1837, the Ministry of State Properties played a crucial role in agrarian reform and peasant affairs for decades thereafter. Armed with a reformist ethos and headed for its first two decades by the ‘enlightened bureaucrat’ Pavel Dmitrievich Kiselev, the ministry set out to reorder and improve the lives of state peasants—Russia’s principal non-serf population—by promoting new crops, establishing communal tillage and grain reserves, building schools, and advancing plans for the ‘proper’ construction of villages and homes. These and other initiatives signalled a new degree of state intervention into the lives of Russia’s rural population, and defined many key parameters of Russia’s subsequent efforts to solve its ‘peasant question’. The ministry essentially initiated a process leading to serf emancipation in 1861, and in the early twentieth century it was reorganized to oversee large-scale migration of Slavic peasants to Asia, a major development of the last tsarist decades. It also concerned itself with potatoes. The agrarian history of Russia in the nineteenth century is inconceivable without the Ministry of State Properties, and its appearance in 1837 compels us to address it here.

Who Were the State Peasants? Historians rightly identify serfdom as a major institution structuring Russia’s social and economic life in the two or three centuries before its elimination in 1861. In the 1830s roughly eleven and a half million adult male souls (this is what the tax censuses known as ‘revisions’ counted) found themselves in this condition of servile dependence. The material well-being of Russia’s noble elite (including many of the protagonists in this book) depended on their exploitation, which helps to explain why abolition proved so difficult. Less well known is the fact that by the 1830s, serfs constituted only just over half (53 per cent) of Russia’s peasant 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0007

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106 1837 population. Comparable in number (over nine million male souls) was a group known as state peasants, who had no landlords but instead occupied state lands with oversight provided by local officialdom. These peasants had the legal status of ‘free rural inhabitants’, which meant that they enjoyed personal freedom, elem­ents of self-government, and the right to acquire property in land, to change their place of residence, and to become townspeople.1 They were of diverse origin, first appearing around the start of the seventeenth century as ‘black-ploughing’ peasants (‘black’ lands were those belonging to the state). Settlers in Siberia and non-Russian peoples of the Volga region (Tatars, Chuvash, and others) became state peasants in the early eighteenth century, and another large addition to their ranks followed the state’s secularization of Orthodox ecclesiastical lands in 1764. Over time still other groups entered this general receptacle for free rural inhabitants. Even in 1837, as the new ministry was appearing, Russia retained an astonishing range of only marginally trans­lat­ able social categories that counted as state peasants in a broad sense, including 1,238,214 ‘single homesteaders’; 553,691 Ukrainian Cossacks; 206,856 native Siberians (‘tribute-payers, nomads, and wanderers in the northern and Siberian provinces’); 124,590 ‘Mohammedan settlers in Tauride province’; 40,131 coachmen; 3,637 ‘Jewish agriculturalists’; 2,723 ‘sharecroppers in Vologda province’; 410 settlers on Kamchatka; and 215 grave-diggers.2 Even this partial list reflects a bizarre and adorably pre-modern assortment of people defined by a combination of ethnic origin, geographical location, and occupation.3 The distribution of state peasants across the empire was uneven. In parts of the country (mostly the centre and west), serfdom predominated and state peasants were few. Estland province had just 2,143 such souls. Elsewhere, state peasants predominated: in Viatka province they constituted almost 83 per cent of the popu­ la­tion, and in Siberia they were close to 100 per cent of all peasants. In no region of European Russia and Siberia did state peasants constitute less than 15 per cent of the population, and in many—the North, the Volga region, and even Left-Bank Ukraine—they represented 40 per cent or substantially more.4 Before the ministry’s creation, state peasants were under the jurisdiction of the finance ministry, although it was the rural police that executed policy (such as it was) on the sub-provincial level. That ministry took little interest in administering the peasants in its charge, let alone ameliorating their condition, instead regarding them primarily as a source of revenue through taxation. Taxes themselves bore no relationship to income and instead had an arbitrary character. Local police chiefs, often recruited from among impoverished local gentry, abused and exploited peasants, effectively becoming temporary landlords over these otherwise free peasants. Sources ascribe a chaotic and unregulated character to state-peasant administration before 1837: state peasants were resettling without proper authorization, state-owned forests were suffering rapid and illegal depletion, and peasant gatherings (the main mechanism of peasant self-government)

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Guardians of the Benighted  107 amounted to unrestrained anarchy, often lubricated by buckets of booze. There were virtually no schools for state peasants, and local scribes, among the few literate people locally, had tremendous liberty to exploit and manipulate the rest. Many state peasants, it was alleged, lacked even a basic understanding of the Orthodox religion, which rendered them susceptible to religious dissent. Resettlement to Russia’s south had left peasants there profoundly short of parishes and churches, while drink represented a serious problem throughout state-peasant settlements, especially in the western provinces. The picture sketched out here is almost surely too grim, but to reformers at the time the issue was clear: state peasants were benighted and needed guardians. The stage was thus set for the new ministry’s creation.5

Unfurling the Banner of Guardianship The central figure in the reform was Pavel Kiselev. Born in 1788 into a Muscovite noble family, Kiselev grew up in a household frequented by leading intellectuals of the day, including Peter Viazemskii and Alexander Turgenev. Having seen his first military action in 1807, he participated in the famous battle of Borodino in 1812 and was among the Russians who entered Paris in 1814. For a decade beginning in 1819, he was chief of general staff for the Second Army in Tulchin (present-day Ukraine), a senior position in the Russian army. Kiselev was in close contact with some of the leading Decembrists, not least the radical Pavel Pestel, though the precise nature of these contacts remains unclear, and Kiselev in any event managed to occupy a place in the good graces of the new emperor Nicholas. Entrusted with senior office in a war with the Ottomans in 1828–9, Kiselev served for five years thereafter as supreme commander of the Russian occupation in Moldavia and Wallachia (present-day Romania), where his tasks included regulating relations between lords and peasants. In 1835 he returned to Petersburg, where his involvement in Russia’s own peasant affairs began. Pushkin characterized Kiselev as ‘the most remarkable of all our state officials’, and a subordinate in the ministry recounted, ‘His appearance was magnificent, his manners and motions were graceful, his voice soft, his address to others gentle and completely simple, but at the same time in him, in everything, a grandee was clearly visible.’6 Efforts to improve the plight of state peasants were by no means new in 1837. Catherine II’s government had drafted a charter for this group—akin to those produced for the nobility and the towns in 1785—that would have more clearly defined state-peasant status and rights. It was not promulgated, however, prob­ ably because of its potential to raise the expectations of serfs. Emperor Paul’s cre­ ation of cantons—administrative units below provinces and districts—in 1797 also proved an important reform, by giving new canton chiefs and scribes significant power over peasant life. The creation within the finance ministry of a

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108 1837 ‘Department of State Properties’ in 1810 indicated aspirations beyond the mere collection of taxes, though this entity remained almost entirely dependent on the local officials of other governmental bodies. Finance minister Dmitrii Guriev drew up another charter for state peasants in 1824, which would have defined and even expanded state-peasant rights, but in this case, too, nothing came of the matter, in part because of Alexander I’s death in 1825 and partly because Guriev’s successor, Georg Ludwig Cancrin, focused on the fiscal interests of the state to the exclusion of state-peasant improvement. It fell to a series of committees convened by Nicholas I over the first decade of his reign to address the peasant question more substantively.7 The government began to take important steps of reform in the 1820s in relation to a group similar to, yet also distinct from, state peasants. These were socalled ‘crown peasants’, the nearly one million male souls belonging to the imperial family itself (Russia’s largest landowner). Although formally enserfed, they occupied an intermediate status between ordinary serfs and state peasants. Already in 1827 the Crown Department’s director, Lev Perovskii, introduced communal tillage, whereby a certain portion of the land in crown-peasant settle­ ments was separated from ordinary peasant allotments, with its produce entering the department’s grain stores. The capital thereby generated was earmarked for programmes to improve peasant agriculture. In 1829 Perovskii shifted the department’s basis of taxation from a levy on each male peasant to a system of rent dues based on the quality of the land they tilled, thereby doubling the income of crown lands by 1845.8 Thus as Kiselev contemplated reform for the large mass of state peasants, he had a model close at hand. Further impetus for reform came from a drought and harvest failure in 1833, which proved especially severe in the steppe regions of the Russian south. That disaster, wrote one official in the ministry subsequently, ‘first impressed upon the government the need for serious thought not only about temporary measures to eliminate problems in feeding the population, but also about durable and per­ man­ent measures to increase productivity of the Russian land’.9 One of the Crown Department’s key reforms (also a model for Kiselev’s ministry) came in response to this crisis: That agency became more aggressive in promoting the hardy potato, seeing in it one of the best ways to prevent peasant dependence on government aid from state grain reserves. Meanwhile, tsarist bureaucrats engaged in a broader quest to identify the most (cost-)effective way to promote ‘the perfection of agriculture’. Notably, even western Europe offered few models for emulation, as only in the 1840s did governments there initiate significant intervention in agricultural affairs. The US Department of Agriculture was established only in 1862.10 Keeping his proverbial cards close to his chest, Nicholas created a ‘secret committee’ in 1835 to contemplate the condition of various sorts of peasants in Russia. Frustrated by Cancrin’s inability or unwillingness to address the state-peasant issue, he turned to Kiselev in 1836, soon creating a special division of His Own

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Guardians of the Benighted  109 Chancellery for Kiselev and designating him ‘My chief of staff for peasant affairs’.11 All state lands and peasants were assigned to this so-called Fifth Section in February 1837, which was separated completely from the finance ministry in September. Furnished with this autonomy and the emperor’s support, Kiselev laid the foundations for the future ministry. Over 18 months in 1836 and 1837, he visited four provinces to observe the situation on the ground in state-peasant settle­ments, dispatched subordinates to perform the same task in other locales (at times ‘to the most god-forsaken places almost untouched by civilization’, as one reported), instigated a review of relevant government files, and drew up plans for the new ministry.12 Those were reviewed in the larger ‘secret committee’ and other relevant instances, and on 26 December 1837 (as the Winter Palace lay smouldering—see Chapter 10) the emperor approved the creation of the Ministry of State Properties. Opening for business on 1 January 1838, the ministry had jurisdiction over more than nine million male souls, as well as 950,000 km2 of land and 1,300,000 km2 of forest in European Russia alone.13 Essential to the project was an entirely new bureaucracy at all levels. Establishment of the ministry itself in the capital was thus accompanied by the creation in each province of a new Chamber of State Properties, with a director and a staff consisting of advisers on agriculture and forests, as well as clerks, assessors, land surveyors, civil engineers, scribes, secretaries, and accountants. Each district received a ‘district captain’ supported by assistants on matters of agriculture and forestry. Duties of all these offices were defined in exceptional detail so that officials could know what to do in each and every instance. Peasants themselves, meanwhile, were to select local residents to serve as officials at the canton and village levels.14 Representing a substantial increase in local administration, the ministry was part of the provincial reform of 1837 that produced the provincial gazettes (see Chapter 5). That reform in general revealed an aspiration for greater order and uniformity, and the ministry’s local bodies fitted within this larger system: the chamber’s director was subordinate to the governor, and the jurisdiction of the ministry’s district captains was carefully distinguished from that of the local police.15 The key concept for the new ministry’s activity was ‘guardianship’. Kiselev’s basic supposition was that two main problems—ignorance and abuse—stood at the foundation of peasants’ benighted condition. Lacking agricultural knowledge and good morality, state peasants had no possibility of improving their situation. And their abuse by local officials, scribes, and bigwigs magnified their unfortunate fate. As Kiselev declared in May 1837, the absence of ‘management’ represented ‘one of the most important causes forestalling the welfare of state peasants and the good organization of state properties’. Central to peasants’ improvement, then, was the active and energetic intervention of enlightened officialdom, which would ‘lead them to welfare by way of intimate and direct guard­ian­ship’. The values of humaneness, justice, and respect for law underpinned this larger vision.16

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110 1837 Such commitments to an almost painfully paternalistic ‘guardianship’ gave the ministry’s remarkable staff a distinct ethos and esprit de corps. As one historian remarks, these men ‘felt themselves to be representatives of a kind of “state within a state”, an elite club, a laboratory of reformist thought’. Elements of technocracy were prominent as well: many had become experts in particular fields and were thus strong proponents of applying concrete empirical knowledge to the problems they faced. Many embraced statistics, then emerging as the premier social science. They viewed things like cadastres not only as tools that could solve specific problems such as establishing a clearer connection between land and tax­ation, but also as a lever by which to budge the otherwise immovable ‘peasant question’ and to assert greater bureaucratic control through claims to scientific and veri­fi­ able knowledge. Alien to Slavophile conceptions endowing peasants with his­tor­ic­al significance and national essence, the ministry’s staff instead viewed their charges as objects of tutelage and peasant traditions as symptoms of stagnation and ­ignorance rather than accumulated wisdom. If, despite his initial inclinations, Kiselev recognized the need to maintain the peasant commune (the existing form of peasant self-management), this was for pragmatic reasons and not because of some misty romanticism about its historical and social mission. While such ‘enlightened bureaucrats’ could be found not only on Kiselev’s team, his ministry was unique because it was brand new (other ministries were several decades old), and he could recruit an entirely fresh crew of people sharing his sensibilities (higher salaries were one of his priorities). Energetic and ambitious young men—such as Andrei Zablotskii, who became chief of the ministry’s statistical section and later Kiselev’s biographer—saw in the ministry both prospects for rapid career advancement and the opportunity to do meaningful work (as opposed to the vapid paper-pushing that characterized other branches of the imperial bureaucracy). Its exceptional talent and ethos made the Ministry of State Properties ‘one of the most unusual bureaucratic staffs in Russia’.17 The ideology of guardianship quickly made its way down to the new ministry’s local instances. At the ceremonial opening of the chamber in Voronezh province on New Year’s Day 1839, the governor hailed the emperor’s new ministry and its ‘enlightened Founder’, Kiselev. Turning to the ministry’s staff, he declared, ‘To you is given the honorable privilege of protecting the rights of the country’s most numerous estate; to you are entrusted its morality, its prosperity, its upbringing; it is you who are obligated to guard its property, establish justice, and direct its diligence and industriousness, but without the least coercion in any of this.’ The activities of the ministry’s local agents were to be guided ‘by conscience, prudence, love for humanity and gentle condescension for the limited knowledge that characterizes our fellow countrymen of the lowest estate, our brothers by Slavic blood’.18 A speech at the corresponding opening in Kiev province a year later went even further in casting the new chamber’s exalted duties as a function of the morally and intellectually compromised character of the state peasantry.

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Guardians of the Benighted  111 The villager, the speech’s author averred, lacks ‘the ability to prudently direct his own activity, to deploy and multiply the advantages of his condition’. If the peasant was ‘robust in strength and rich in patience’, then he remained ‘short of ideas, poor in wit’. And he was morally deficient, too: ‘By his very lack of education, [he] is easily inclined to crude pleasures and is prepared to plunge into them to the point of forgetting not only his own advantage but also human dignity.’ Fortunately, the ministry had now appeared ‘to arouse the villager’s slumbering activity and direct it towards the true goal’. Who, the speech asked rhetorically, ‘has not wished for an enlightened, firm, and conscientious tutelage with the requis­ite authority to come rapidly to the aid of this infancy and incapacity, to take into its hands the uneducated children of nature, to open their eyes and reveal to them the secret to their own prosperity?’ Who indeed? If anything, these local declarations went even further than Kiselev himself in asserting the state peasantry’s intellectual infancy and thus the scope of the task before the new ministry. And give these boosters credit for their motivational enthusiasm as well: ‘Let each and everyone be shown that the state peasant economy is not just a sonorous name, but a great affair!’19 One need only add: ‘Hear, hear!’ With the benighted character of the state peasantry ascertained and the new ministry established, let us observe what happened next.

The Ministry in Action The reform promised a major intrusion into the lives of state peasants, as the imperial government now became involved in the agricultural process to an unprecedented degree. Indeed, the speech at the Kiev chamber intoned that as a result of the new ministry, ‘the villager’s entire way of life must submit to salutary alteration’.20 One historian remarks, ‘Kiselev’s program represented the first largescale plan for the central authority to operate more directly and on a much lower level.’ More negatively, another scholar discerns in the ministry’s project ‘an almost maniacal desire to prescribe everything in detail, to regulate everything, to foresee everything’. In a similar key a pre-revolutionary historian commented with irony (and metaphor), ‘Through conduits branching out in all directions, the tutelary energy generated by the central power station in Petersburg flowed out across all of Russia’, in such a way that the ministry’s guardianship ‘envelopes the peasant’s entire life, penetrates into its most intimate corners’.21 Kiselev had some sense of the size of the task before him and the obstacles he was likely to face. In a letter to the emperor he predicted that peasants’ first impression of the reform was bound to be ‘unfavourable’. Because they were ‘accustomed to unbridled freedom’ and prone to favor ‘their vices and immorality’ over prosperity, ‘those people will regard any action of a guardian power as inhibiting’. There were also many entrenched interests—people profiting from the

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112 1837 current disorder of state-peasant villages—who would instinctively oppose the new regime. Implicated in the new ministry’s project, wrote Kiselev, ‘are so many diverse and complex interests that the hostility is likely to be almost universal’. Even nearby landowners would become agitated, for the state’s failure to protect its own lands and forests had invited their incursions, and the exploitation of state peasants had made the serf order appear better than it should have. In this light Kiselev proposed introducing the new regime gradually, opening just five provincial chambers in 1838, ten in 1839, and the rest only in 1840. He also suggested offering tangible and immediate benefits to peasants—for example, cancelling arrears and leaving in place those folk who had resettled without authorization— and infringing as little as possible on core customs of the people. Critical in all of this was the emperor’s full support. As Kiselev wrote to the sovereign, ‘Offended pride or shaken personal interests will by all kinds of sinuous routes aspire to reach you. However indifferent I am to such efforts, I nonetheless cannot think without shuddering that their goal will be to shake or disparage the trust in me of Your Imperial Majesty.’ (The emperor assured Kiselev that nothing would come between them.) Despite the reform’s prospective scope, then, it would be hard to accuse Kiselev of recklessness. Still, it was probably disingenuous of him to claim that ‘alteration to the peasant way of life is not being proposed’.22 The ministry’s activities addressed a wide range of issues. Central to its mission were efforts to improve agriculture. Having inherited oversight of Forest Journal and Agricultural Newspaper upon its creation, in 1841 the ministry began also to publish its own Journal of the Ministry of State Properties, which contained numerous materials on the subject. Surveying just the journal’s first year, we find articles on the geographical distribution of grapes and winemaking, on the use of peat rather than firewood as fuel, on improving tobacco production in Ukraine, on the relative merits of agriculture in the German states of Holstein and Mecklenburg, on the Belgian method of processing linen, on the irrigation of fields and meadows, on improvements in cattle-breeding, and much more besides. More than this, the ministry established a series of experimental and educational farms, which tried out different crop varieties, field-rotation systems, ploughing techniques, and fertilizers, thereby accumulating significant new knowledge that it shared with its readers and peasant pupils. Agricultural ex­hib­ itions also helped to spread the word.23 Among other things, the ministry promoted potatoes, noting in its journal that ‘without doubt’ this esculent ‘is one of the most valuable gifts that we owe to the discovery of America’, since with proper cultivation it could provide ‘an immense harvest, far exceeding the harvest of all other plants known at this point’. Similarly designed to secure a consistent food supply for the country’s population was the ministry’s promotion of grain reserves and storage facilities, which had more than quadrupled by 1853.24 Land was central to the ministry’s programme as well. The ministry took concrete steps in converting the basis of taxation from people to land and extending

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Guardians of the Benighted  113 taxation to industrial pursuits (since far from all state peasants were engaged only or even primarily in agriculture). In some cases this meant that the tax burden increased, but at the same time the new system minimized opportunities for local officialdom to extort from peasants, with the result that the overall burden was likely lower. Related to this was the goal of providing peasants with allotments whose produce would be sufficient to maintain their families and meet their tax obligations. With the ministry’s creation Kiselev increased the number of land surveyors in state service from a mere 80 to over 1,400, and by the end of his tenure in 1856 they had measured three-quarters of state land in European Russia, excluding forests. Also by that time, more than 32,000 km2 had been granted to state peasants with insufficient or no land. The larger significance of these efforts (and the bequest that they conferred on future agrarian reformers) was the proposition that ‘land hunger’ represented an objective problem demanding state action for its resolution: the state had a moral obligation to provide peasants with a ‘sufficient’ or ‘normal’ allotment. Representing the predominance of sufficiency over efficiency in tsarist thinking, this principle would impose real limits on agrarian change in the future and would likewise shape both the emancipation of 1861 and the revolutions of the early twentieth century.25 The ministry furthermore became the principal manager of Russia’s forests. The 1830s saw major developments in Russian forestry, with the first meeting of the Russian Forestry Society in 1833 and the initiation of its periodical Forest Journal that same year. Under the ministry’s oversight from 1838, the journal continued publishing articles on forest science and related issues both in Russia and abroad (for example, ‘On the Uncommon Multitude of Bears in Tver Province’).26 The ministry itself meanwhile started to establish forest plantations in the steppe region and to encourage tree planting to improve the climate there.27 Also critical was the surveying of existing forests, about which the ministry had painfully little knowledge when it opened. In just one province (Tambov) some 436 km2 of state forest that surveys had previously identified turned out in 1837 simply not to exist (it had presumably been felled by locals).28 Kiselev created a forester corps to protect that state property, and in the 1840s graduates of Russia’s Land Survey School began to make more serious progress on mapping. Though it was only a start and the task was massive—mapping of Siberian forests would not begin until the twentieth century—the country’s forest management undoubtedly took a big step forward with the ministry’s creation.29 The ministry likewise gave new structure and impetus to resettlement. Given the persistence of serfdom and the reluctance of many landlords to transfer their peasants to new locations, state peasants represented logical candidates for re­settle­ment to new and comparatively open lands in New Russia, the North Caucasus, the Lower Volga, and the Orenburg region. Resettlement was not a core factor in the creation of the new ministry, but as Willard Sunderland comments, ‘it quickly developed into an important ministerial concern’, and the new

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114 1837 agency thus became ‘the closest equivalent yet to a Russian ministry of colonization’. The ministry produced new regulations on resettlement in 1843, which served to unify provisions regulating peasant movement. The chambers, for their part, became managers on the ground, called upon to provide escort teams and precise land allotments at the destination. The ministry as a whole invested in building roads and granaries, digging wells, planting forests, and encouraging experimentation. By 1850 it could claim to have effectuated the resettlement of over 130,000 souls, thus laying the foundations for a much larger wave of re­settle­ment later in the century.30 The ministry’s preoccupation with morality made religion a priority as well, especially in the western provinces, where Orthodoxy faced a formidable Catholic rival. It thus allotted funds for the construction of Orthodox churches, provided material support for clergy, and instructed its local subordinates to ensure peasants’ respect for clerics and attendance at church. The ministry aided religious authorities with combating sectarianism among state peasants and made special efforts to entrench Orthodoxy in formerly Greek Catholic parishes that had been converted en masse in 1839 (see Chapter 8). Kiselev could claim in 1850 that his ministry had aided in the construction of 1,264 churches and in the conversion to Orthodoxy of 23,607 sectarians.31 Conversions of non-Christians occurred under the ministry as well, though sometimes through coercion. True, the ministry’s concern for ‘legality and humaneness’ led it to emphasize gradual and ‘judicious’ methods of Christianization over ‘oppression’ and ‘forceful measures’.32 But especially for less discerning officials of the ministry embedded in provinces where Orthodoxy remained a minority religion—for example Orenburg province, with large Muslim and pagan populations—the moral component of the reformist agenda created incentives to instigate religious change. As one ministry official explained in justifying the conversion of over 800 Cheremis pagans (many of whom later complained that their baptisms had been coerced), the people in question had a ‘dark and limited life’, and lacked even ‘the tiniest understanding of trade, industry, and other conditions for civil life’. Their faith was the culprit: ‘Such an ignorant way of life is unquestionably the consequence of their crude and paltry religion.’33 In short, the ministry both instigated religious change and sought to reinforce Orthodoxy where it seemed besieged. The ministry’s formation also provided the impulse and occasion to secularize Calvinist, Catholic, and Orthodox ecclesiastical properties in the western provinces, thus adding over 100,000 new male souls to the ranks of the state peasantry.34 The promotion of education occupied a place in the ministry’s programme as well. Starting out with just twelve schools, the ministry could claim by 1845 to have over 1,600 with almost 50,000 students; by 1866 it listed nearly 8,000 schools with some 280,000 pupils.35 Undoubtedly, the three-year course of instruction was rudimentary and, consistent with Kiselev’s views about moral improvement, focused as much or more on religion and morality as it did on reading and

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Guardians of the Benighted  115 arithmetic. The numbers of schools and pupils may well have been exaggerated, as investigations sometimes revealed.36 But at the same time, it is hard to deny that the ministry’s actions were helping to change the scope and character of education in Russia: If previously state schooling had been primarily an urban phenomenon or was geared only towards preparing people for state service, with the ministry’s efforts it became a rural phenomenon as well. As Ben Eklof concludes, of the schools in existence before the Great Reforms, the ministry’s ‘were unquestionably the most widespread and best organized and made the most lasting impact in the villages’.37 Yet for all of these accomplishments, implementation of the reform also revealed critical deficits in Russia. Aside from being in constant need of competent personnel to execute complex reform projects, the government also found itself deficient in the necessary elements of infrastructure. It simply lacked the financial and intellectual resources, for example, to produce clear and accurate cadastres for the lands inhabited by state peasants. It was partly for this reason that Kiselev concluded that the government could not really afford to dispense with the peasant commune, since its retention would obviate the need for more detailed technocratic knowledge at the level of the individual household. The ministry’s efforts to produce cadastres thus achieved only limited results: it neither linked up with larger surveying practices in the country as a whole nor managed significantly to rationalize tax apportionment. Statistics in Russia also left much to be desired. Many statistical works on agriculture tended still to be descriptive, lacked a clear formulation of research questions, and were based on faulty data (which was sometimes made up out of whole cloth). A leading Russian statistician (and an employee of the ministry) concluded in 1846 that given the existing methods of collection, statistics on land and agriculture were meaningless.38 The recollections of a young official within the ministry provide a curious window onto some of these deficits. Entering the ministry as a 19-year-old almost from its very inception, K. S. Veselovskii joined its ‘scholarly committee’, whose members, he averred, ‘could in no way have been called scholars’. The committee itself, he reported, often became a dumping ground for matters on which others in the ministry sought to evade making a decision. His ‘lively and amiable’ boss in the library to which he was assigned turned out to be ‘a passionate billiards-player but a bad librarian’. Nikolai Turgenev, brother of the writer Ivan, also worked in the ministry but was poorly prepared for civil service ‘and thus was a lousy ­official’, for which he compensated by telling amusing stories (‘he had an inexhaustible supply’). The ministry’s Third Department—charged with general development of agriculture, land-surveying, and the gathering of statistics— suffered from the bureaucratic formalism of other Petersburg ministries: many there ‘excelled only in the fruitless art of unconscious prolixity’ or introduced principles ‘hastily deducted from books poorly understood’. Key elements pertaining to agricultural policy—roads and canals, tariffs and customs, factories

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116 1837 and industry, banking and credit—lay beyond the ministry’s purview, and thus its efforts ‘could scarcely bring any significant benefit’. Made head of the statistical division in 1846, Veselovskii contended that the five people there could not possibly fulfil their massive charge. Raw data were housed in a different department of the ministry, which proved reluctant to share, and the division was prohibited from appealing directly to provincial chambers, already overloaded with work. This made it impossible to produce ‘statistical information in the scientific sense of the term’. The data included in ministerial reports were often massaged to fit a preconceived narrative. Even Kiselev himself did not escape Veselovski’s criticism: The minister, he wrote, ‘obviously had no idea what a cadastre was and the enormous financial and technical means necessary for its introduction’.39 Perhaps this account is overly negative, and presumably much of it reflects the growing pains of a new ministry. But it suggests that we must take accounts of the ministry’s successes with a large grain of salt. And salt brings us back to potatoes.

Would You Like Potatoes with That Reform? Among the ministry’s more interesting interventions in state-peasant life was its promotion of the potato. The goal, as for the Crown Department earlier, was to make peasants less dependent in times of crop failure on the state’s own reserves, and to minimize wild price fluctuations on grain. Potatoes could provide an alternative food source when the grain harvest failed, and it had the added advantage of yielding more calories per unit of land. Peasants in Russia were by no means entirely unfamiliar with potatoes, but it was clear that they still needed encouragement. ‘Good Ukrainians!’ urged Kharkov Provincial Gazette in 1838, ‘Try planting at least one row of potatoes in your grain fields. You will see how useful it is!’40 Bad harvests in 1839 and 1840 produced greater incentives for the state to use compulsion, and thus in 1840 the emperor ordered state peasants to cultivate potatoes on collective fields (not just in gardens).41 Yet despite both potatoes’ intrinsic advantages and the gold and silver medals on offer to those registering exceptional potato accomplishments, in places the ministry’s campaign encountered serious resistance—in fact, more than any other of its initiatives. Understanding this opposition requires that we return momentarily to the Crown Department. Аs part of its own reform starting in the late 1820s, it began to concentrate its holdings, scattered across 36 separate provinces, through exchanges with the state treasury. It says something about the conditional character of state peasants’ free status that some 300,000 of them could thereby become crown peasants—factually serfs. The largest single transfer was the ‘Simbirsk exchange’ of 1835–6, whereby the department completely relinquished its properties and peasants in 18 provinces with compensation in Simbirsk province, which now became the nucleus of its holdings.42 It is true that crown peasants differed

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Guardians of the Benighted  117 from ordinary serfs and in some ways were closer to state peasants. But by the department’s own characterization in 1826, its charges stood ‘in the same relationship to the imperial family as do seigniorial peasants to their lords’.43 Apparently sharing this view, some of those peasants slated for transfer to the crown resisted the exchange, above all in Simbirsk province itself, but also in the Ural region, where rumours about an impending exchange of a similar nature had gained traction.44 As these peasants saw it—and in this they were quite correct— their status as free rural inhabitants was at stake. Given that the Crown Department had already been promoting the potato and that it also converted over a quarter-million state peasants into serfs, one can well imagine the reaction when the Ministry of State Properties also began championing potatoes. To be sure, the opposition was far from universal, and in some places it derived from the potato’s unfamiliarity or from peasants’ objections to planting it in place of familiar cereals, thus upsetting established routines. Potatoes also demanded more work than growing grain, with even the ministry’s journal acknowledging that their success required ‘meticulous cultivation of the land and appropriate fertilizer’. Some religious dissidents meanwhile regarded the potato as the ‘devil’s apple’ and a sign of the coming antichrist, thus adding a spiritual dimension to the skepticism.45 Here it bears emphasizing that potatoes had encountered resistance elsewhere in Europe—they were thought to cause leprosy, they were not mentioned in the Bible, and many felt they could not possibly replace grain—so it was really only when destructive warfare in the eighteenth century compelled villagers to embrace the potato that it became a staple food.46 But the evidence also shows that for many state peasants the fear of transfer to the Crown Department—and thus to serfdom—provided a major reason for opposition. It is true that Kiselev had ended all such exchanges in November of 1838, but peasants on the ground were not aware of that decision.47 Such peasants regarded the ministry’s promotion of potatoes—to quote one report from Saratov province in 1841—‘as the first step in their conversion to the status of crown peasants or to corvée [i.e., serf labor]’. In Kazan province, too, ministry officials reported that initial efforts to promote potatoes had met little opposition, but that then non-Russian Chuvash and Cheremis peasants had begun to complain, ‘expressing fear of being transferred to the Crown Department’. A dispatch from Perm province likewise reported peasants declaring their preference for death over sowing potatoes, based on the conviction ‘that the authorities have sold the peasants to the Crown Department and also to some lord, and that he who sows potatoes expresses his agreement to his own sale’ (‘You can exile us to Siberia,’ these peasants added, ‘but we won’t plant potatoes’).48 Behind such rumors Kiselev saw the instigation of precisely the kinds of locally influential figures whose resistance to the new order he had foreseen (i.e. those ‘who had based all of their sources of enrichment on the peasants’ defenceless condition’). There were indeed such people, as investigations revealed. Yet the core problem was the link

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118 1837 in peasants’ mind between potatoes and servitude, and Kiselev himself was ­compelled to admit, ‘All those ridiculous rumors have had all the more effect in that they were spread among precisely those cantons where a registry of peasants for exchange with the Crown Department was conducted in 1835.’49 Nota bene: Precisely those cantons. Maybe the rumours were not actually ‘ridiculous’, then? Potatoes had become a symbol of servility. As the unrest unfolded, some officials paid terribly for their association with potatoes. Peasants were determined to get their hands on documents that they believed registered their transfer to the crown or their sale to a private landlord— presumably so as to destroy them—or that confirmed their free status as state peasants. Most frequently targeted were scribes, especially those employed by local canton boards. Unable either to produce the documentation sought by enraged peasants or to convince them that it did not exist, these scribes and sometimes the rural clergy were subjected to merciless torture and retribution. Most were severely beaten, and some were submerged in near-freezing water until they lost consciousness. As peasants inflicted this punishment, their accusations posited a direct link between potatoes and ‘a deed on our sale’. In a segment of Kazan province confrontations were sufficiently violent for them to have gone down in popular memory as the ‘Akramovo war’, named after the canton center where the worst showdown took place.50 Pacification was also brutal, especially in Perm province. After subduing one village there, a local commander ordered Cossacks to strip off skin and flesh of insurgent peasants from head to toe with their whips. The commander personally beat a certain sergeant, who had strengthened the peasants’ resolve just when it appeared that they might submit to admonition. He tied the sergeant to a pole, removed the latter’s medals and beat him with them ‘until the face of the unfortunate one had been reduced to a bloody patch’. Yet authorities also recognized that they could not deal so harshly with the larger mass of peasants. The governor of Kazan greatly lightened the verdicts delivered by courts martial, emphasizing the ‘simplicity, gullibility, and half-savage condition’ of Cheremis and Chuvash and the fact that some crimes had not been proven irrefutably. In Perm province the emperor likewise lightened the verdicts of courts martial, in light of peasant ‘ignorance’.51 Whether or not peasants were really so gullible and ignorant, such dispensation provided an off-ramp out of the crisis. We should by no means make too much of these potato riots. They were far from universal, and seem to have been most dramatic in the general region where exchanges of peasants between crown and state had occurred. These were also often areas with many non-Russians, where linguistic and cultural barriers complicated communication. Less objectionable to peasants than potatoes themselves was what they symbolized, as well as the communal tillage—which smelled of serfdom—by which they were to be grown. Having resorted to compulsion rather than encouragement, the ministry became less insistent thereafter, and by all

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Guardians of the Benighted  119 indications, the situation stabilized by the mid-1840s and was tranquil after that. The cultivation of potatoes expanded significantly: to take one province (Vladimir) as an example, by 1852 over ten times as many potatoes were being planted and harvested compared to twelve years earlier. The esculent became an indispensible element of the Russian diet, helping to feed the country’s demographic growth and thus to secure its great-power status as the century progressed.52 How, then, are we to assess the results of the ministry’s efforts as a whole? Kiselev’s subordinate and biographer Zablotskii painted a positive picture of the ministry’s achievements (in which he himself was implicated) and the central values that guided his hero’s labours. Kiselev established a clear system of administration that tackled the complicated task of state-peasant reform with a firm commitment to benevolence and respect for law.53 Subsequent assessments have been more mixed. The ministry’s principal Soviet historian was ideologically compelled to condemn its failure, yet even he acknowledged some ‘progressive’ elements and some modest achievements (he perhaps admired Kiselev more than he was at liberty to say).54 A Western account concludes that numerous obstacles, above all a lack of qualified personnel and funds, inhibited the reform’s success, yet it proposes that the difficulties were at least partly a reflection of the scale of the problem that the ministry confronted.55 It indeed seems likely that the lack of administrative capacity represents a key explanation for why the reform, at least in a direct sense, enjoyed only limited success. But by providing forward-looking personnel at both the central and provincial level with valuable experience in addressing concrete problems, the ministry allowed for ‘the formation of a new generation of officials, in whose hands the elaboration and realization the Great Reforms would later wind up’.56 The ministry’s importance looks greater, then, when we take the longer view.

Conclusion In 1827 the prominent statesman Mikhail Speranskii proposed that the trans­ form­ation of serfdom in Russia would have to begin with the organization of state-peasant life.57 This is essentially what happened. The emancipation of 1861 needs to be understood as a process rather than an act, and the period leading up to the emancipation statute itself—beginning with ‘the government’s first largescale attack on solving the peasant question in the 1830s’—turned out to be of major consequence. It was in the 1830s and 1840s that consideration of the peasant problem first raised those questions that would shape discussions for decades thereafter.58 One of the biggest pertaining to emancipation concerned the void that would appear when landlords were relieved of the administrative functions that they had performed, for good and for ill, over more than two centuries. If the government could provide efficient administration and deliver real prosperity for

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120 1837 some 20 million state peasants, then it could look forward with greater confidence to the day when serf owners would no longer be agents of the state for the rest of the peasantry.59 In short, while the reform impacted principally the ministry’s own state-peasant bailiwick, it also had major implications for the peasant question as a whole. The peasant reform under Kiselev also had consequences for the further unification and integration of the country. As one scholar writes, a major goal of the reform was ‘to unify the economic and legal position of state-peasant villages’ and ‘to eliminate obsolete medieval partitions dividing state peasants into diverse, often small strata with distinct rights and obligations’.60 The reform thus did a great deal to create a consolidated estate of ‘state peasants’ out of the plethora of particularistic groups that had existed until then, and thus represents a key step in the formation of a single peasantry in Russia. On the matter of land, the goal became uniformity through equalization of allotments, and their attempted ‘universalization’ in the emancipation of 1861 (whose terms extended to crown and state peasants over the next five years) ‘made it more possible to conceptualize the peasantry as a coherent whole’.61 No doubt, some peculiarities among those diverse categories persisted, just as socioeconomic stratification among rural inhabitants also made for diverse peasant experience. But to a much greater extent Russia now had a single mass of peasants. The ministry played a key role in this process, just as another crucial aspect of its work was its attempted ‘unification of reality’—standardization, rationalization, and control through practices like surveying and cadastres.62 The results perhaps fell short of what Kiselev had envisioned at the outset, but critical steps had now been taken in creating a single peasantry and unified intellectual mechanisms for analyzing its existence. As state peasants left the ministry’s charge and merged with other peasants in 1866, the ministry concentrated more on other aspects of its mission. On the one hand—and especially after the 1890s—it became even more concerned with promoting agriculture through new experimental institutions and the coordination of existing initiatives.63 On the other, the ministry eventually focused more of its attention on resettlement, which by the 1880s was becoming a major national priority. As southern lands filled up with settlers, the ministry turned its gaze eastward towards Siberia, the Kazakh steppe, and the Far East—for reasons both geopolitical and economic. Their mobility aided by the Trans-Siberian railway, approximately five million peasants crossed the Urals into Asia over the last three decades of the empire’s existence, producing one the largest migrations in human history. The ministry’s name changed (twice) to reflect its shifting priorities, and its director earned the moniker ‘the minister of Asiatic Russia’. But while its mission had evolved and it became ‘a prominent and lavishly funded agency’,64 neither its concern for peasant movement nor its strongly technocratic ethos was entirely new. Both had their origins in Kiselev’s Ministry of State Properties, founded in 1837.

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Guardians of the Benighted  121

Notes 1. Olga Crisp, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914 (London, 1976), 76–7. 2. Istoricheskoe obozrenie 50-letnei deiatel’nosti Ministerstva gosudarstvennykh imushchestv, vol. 2, otdel 1 (SPb, 1888), 10–39 (citations at 10). All numbers refer to male souls included in the revision. 3. Crisp, Studies, 73–6; David Moon, The Russian Peasantry, 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made (Harlow, 1999), 103–6; George Bolotenko, ‘Administration of the State Peasants in Russia Before the Reforms of 1838’ (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1979), 65–75. The foundational work is V.  I.  Semevskii’s colossal Krest’iane v tsarstvovanie Ekateriny II, vol. 2 (SPb, 1901). 4. N. M. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye krest’iane i reforma P. D, Kiseleva, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1946), 311–13; V.  M.  Kabuzan, Izmeneniia v razmeshchenii naseleniia Rossii v XVIII–pervoi polovine XIX v. (Moscow, 1971), 143–54. 5. The account here is based on Bolotenko, ‘Administration’, 331–96, 478–500; ‘Obozrenie upravleniia gosudarstvennykh imushchestv za poslednie 25 let (1825–1850)’, in Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva 98 (1896): 468–98; Obzor deiatel’nosti Ministerstva Gosudarstvennykh Imushchestv (SPb, 1867), 11–16; A. P. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Graf P. D. Kiselev i ego vremia, vol. 2 (SPb, 1882), 41–52; Istoricheskoe obozrenie piatidesiatiletnei deiatel’nosti Ministerstva Gosudarstvennykh Imushchestv, 1837–1887, vol. 2, otdel 1 (SPb, 1888), 40–77; Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye vol. 1, 346–78; Boris N. Mironov, ‘Local Government in Russia in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: Provincial Government and Estate Self-Government’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 42(4) (1994), 177–88. 6. Patrick O’Meara, ‘General  P.  D.  Kiselev and the Second Army HQ at Tul’chin, 1819–29’, in Simon Dixon (ed.), Personality and Place in Russian Culture (London, 2010), 261–90 (citation of Pushkin at 276); A. A. Malyshev, ‘Iz vospominanii o proshlom (1830–36 gg.)’, Istoricheskii vestnik 20 (1885), 654–5; and W.  Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825–1861 (DeKalb, IL, 1982), 30–4. 7. Bolotenko, ‘Administration’, 122–239; Istoricheskoe obozrenie, vol. 1, 11–25; R. P. Bartlett, ‘Catherine II’s Draft Charter to the State Peasantry’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies 23 (1989): 36–57; Tat’iana Andreeva, ‘Na puti k reforme: Vopros o kazennykh krest’ianakh v sekretnykh komitetakh nikolaevskogo tsarstvovaniia’, Quaestio Rossica 7(1) (2019): 39–54. 8. Lincoln, In the Vanguard, 34–5. 9. V. Veshniakov, ‘Komitet 1833 goda ob usovershenstvovanii zemledliia v Rossii’, Russkii vestnik 82 (July 1869): 286–320 (citation at 286). For more on the drought, see Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 1, 198–9; David Moon, The Plough that Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700–1914 (Oxford, 2013), 66, 169, 243; S. A. Kozlov, Agrarnye traditsii i novatsii v doreformennoi Rossii (Moscow, 2002), 361–2. 10. Istoriia Udelov za stoletie ikh sushchestvovaniia, 1797–1897, vol. 1 (SPb, 1902), 93; vol. 2 (1901), 246–8. 11. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Kiselev, vol. 2, 13; Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 1, 28–98.

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122 1837 12. ‘Vospominaniia K. S. Veselovskogo’, Russkaia starina 116 (1903): 21. 13. Istoricheskoe obozrenie, vol. 1, 25–35; Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Kiselev, vol. 2, 7–39; Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 1, 299–310. 14. Istoricheskoe obozrenie, vol. 1, 40–45; Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 1, 521–7. K. I. Zaitsev, Ocherki istorii samoupravleniia gosudarstvennykh krest’ian (SPb, 1912); Henry Hirschbiel, ‘The District Captains of the Ministry of State Properties in the Reign of Nicholas I: A Case Study of Russian Officialdom, 1838­–1856’ (PhD diss., New York University, 1978), 37–76. 15. Catherine Evtuhov rightly notes these connections in Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburgh, 2011), 135–7. 16. Cited in Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Kiselev, vol. 2, 52–3, 189–90. 17. I. A. Khristoforov, Sud’ba reformy: Russkoe krest’ianstvo v pravitel’stvennoi politike do i posle otmeny krepostnogo prava, 1830–1890-e gg. (Moscow, 2011), 58–100 (citation at 77); Lincoln, In the Vanguard, 32–4, 41–51, 67–76, 109–25 (citation at 45). 18. Voronezh GV 1 (7 Jan. 1839): 4. 19. Rech’ pri otkrytii kievskoi palaty gosudarstvennykh imushchestv, proiznesennaia 8 marta 1840 g. (Kiev, 1840), citations at 2–4 and 7. The author of the speech was presumably the governor or the chamber’s director. 20. Rech’ pri otkrytii, 5. 21. Walter McKenzie Pintner, Russian Economic Policy under Nicholas I (Ithaca, NY, 1967), 161; Mironov, ‘Local Government’, 184; Zaitsev, Ocherki istorii, 99. 22. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Kiselev, vol. 2, 63, 60–65 (citations at 62 and 64). 23. Moon, Plough that Broke, 252–63; Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye krest’ian i reforma P. D. Kiseleva, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1958), 51–3, 242–5. 24. ‘Otchet o raznykh khoziaistvennykh opytakh i nabliudeniiakh na Luganskoi ferme za 1840 g.’, Zhurnal Ministerstva gosudarstvennykh imushchestv, ch. 3 (1841), 351; Istoricheskoe obozrenie, vol. 2, otdel 1, 86–9; Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 2, 242–6. 25. Crisp, Studies, 84–91; Ekaterina Pravilova, A Public Empire: Property and the Quest for the Common Good in Imperial Russia (Princeton, NJ, 2014), 52–3; David W. Darrow, Tsardom of Sufficiency, Empire of Norms: Statistics, Land Allotments and Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1700–1921 (Montreal, 2018), 3–12, 42–7. 26. ‘O neobyknovennom mnozhestve medvedei v Tverskoi gubernii’, Lesnoi zhurnal 11 (1838): 237–49. 27. On these matters, see Moon, Plough that Broke, 109, 119–21, 174–5, 185–7. 28. Istoricheskoe obozrenie, vol. 1, 19. 29. Pravilova, A Public Empire, 47–54. 30. Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, NY, 2004), 137–44 (citations at 138); Obozrenie upravleniia, 487; Istoricheskoe obozrenie, vol. 2, otdel 2, 21–35. 31. ‘Obozrenie upravlenie za 25 let’, 479, 481; Istoricheskoe obozrenie, vol. 2, otdel 1, 40–48; Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confesssional Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1905 (Ithaca, NY, 2002), 87–8. 32. Paul W. Werth, ‘Subjects for Empire: Orthodox Mission and Imperial Governance in the Volga–Kama Region, 1825–1881’ (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1996), 115–17.

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Guardians of the Benighted  123 33. I recount this case at length in ‘Baptism, Authority, and the Problem of Zakonnost’: The Induction of over 800 “Pagans” into the Christian Faith’, Slavic Review 56(3) (1997): 456–80 (citation at 473). 34. A.  L.  Zinchenko, ‘Reforma gosudarstvennoi derevni i sekuliarizatsii tserkovnogo zemlevladeniia v zapadnykh guberniiakh Rossiiskoi Imperii’, Istoricheskie zapiski 112 (1985): 98–125. 35. Istoricheskoe obozrenie, vol. 2, otdel 1, 50–66; Obozrenie deiatel’nosti, 123. 36. Ben Eklof gives somewhat lower figures for ministry schools and also notes that many schools shown on paper existed only there. See his Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861–1914 (Berkeley, CA, 1986), 32–4. 37. Ibid. 32. 38. This infrastructural deficit is key for Khristoforov, Sud’ba reformy, 58–81; see also Pintner, Russian Economic Policy, 163–6. For largely nega­tive assessments, see also Kozlov, Agrarnye traditsii, 361–71, 382–3; and Ol’ga Elina, Ot tsarskikh sadov do sovetskikh polei: Istoriia sel’sko-khoziaistvennykh opytnykh uchrezhdenii XVIII-20-e gody XX v., vol. 1 (Moscow, 2008), 31. 39. ‘Vospominaniia Veselovskogo’, 16–37 (citations at 17, 20, 22, 25, and 35). A broad catalogue of the ministry’s failures is in Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 2. 40. ‘O posadke kartofelia v poliakh’, Khar’kovskie GV, pribavleniia, 9 (26 Feb. 1838), 81. 41. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 2, 53–4, 235–6. 42. On the exchange, see Istoriia Udelov, 81–6, 216–23; Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 1, 204–6. Over a third of all crown peasants (36%) were now located in Simbirsk province. 43. Cited in V. A. Bogoliubov, ‘Udel’nye krest’iane’, Velikaia reforma, vol. 2 (SPb, 1911), 249; V.  Miagotin, ‘Iz istorii krest’ianstva v pervoi polovine XIX stoletiia’, Russkoe bogatstvo 7 (1903): 41–78. 44. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 1, 221–40; P.  G.  Grigor’ev, ‘Volnenie udel’nykh krest’ian chuvash i tatar vo vtoroi chetverti XIX veka v Simbirskoi gubernii’, Zapiski Nauchno-issledovatel’skogo instituta iazyka, literatury, istorii pri Sovete Ministrov Chuvashskoi ASSR, vyp. 4 (Cheboksary, 1950), 82–130. 45. ‘Otchet o raznykh’, 351. See also Moon, Russian Peasantry, 142–3; Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 2, 471. 46. John Reader, Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent (New Haven, CT, 2009), esp. 111–22. 47. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 2, 175–6. 48. RGIA, f. 383, op. 5, d. 4208, l. 3ob.; N. M. Druzhinin (ed.), Krest’ianskoe dvizhenie v 1826–1849 gg.: Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 1961), 409, 415; Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 2, 460–80, 521–2. 49. Kiselev’s report of 25 May 1843 to the emperor, in Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Kiselev, vol. 4 (SPb, 1882), 161. 50. V. Kokosov, ‘Kartofel’nyi bunt’, Istoricheskii vestnik (May 1913): 604–5; RGIA, f. 383, op. 5, d. 4208, l. 97ob. 51. N.  Sereda, ‘Pozdneishie volneniia v Orenburgskom krae’, Vestnik Evropy 4 (1868), 591–2, 613, 615–16; RGIA, f. 383, op. 5, d. 4208, ll. 125ob., 232; M.  S.  Valevskii, ‘Volneniia krest’ian v Zaural’skoi chasti Permskogo kraia v 1842–1843 gg.’, Russkaia starina 26 (1879), 630.

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124 1837 52. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 2, 37–28, 351; William H. McNeill, ‘How the Potato Changed the World’s History’, Social Research 66(1) (1999): 67–83. 53. Zablotskii, Kiselev, vol. 2, esp. 185–90. 54. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 2. See also the thoughtful consideration of this work: Bruce F. Adams, ‘The Reforms of P. D. Kiselev and the History of N. M. Druzhinin’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies 19(1) (1985): 28–43. 55. Pintner, Russian Economic Policy, 153–83. 56. Khristoforov, Sud’ba reformy, 70–71; also Lincoln, Vanguard, and Crisp, Studies, 91. 57. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Kiselev, vol. 2, 10. On the background, see Andreeva, ‘Na puti k reforme’, 43–4. 58. Khristoforov, Sud’ba reformy, citations at 9 and 10. 59. Crisp, Studies, 85. 60. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye, vol. 1, 502. See also 628–9, and vol. 2, 63–74. 61. Darrow, Tsardom of Sufficiency, 45, 54; N.  A.  Ivanova and V.  P.  Zheltova, Soslovnoe obshchestvo Rossiiskoi Imperii, XVIII– nachalo XIX veka (Moscow, 2009), 547–70; Boris Mironov, Sostial’naia istoriia Rossii perioda Imperii, vol. 1 (SPb, 1999), 122–3. 62. Khristoforov, Sud’ba reformy, 49–50. 63. Elina, Ot tsarskikh sadov, 32. 64. Peter Holquist, ‘ “In Accord with State Interests and the People’s Wishes”: The Technocratic Ideology in Imperial Russia’s Resettlement Administration’, Slavic Review 69(1) (2010), 152; Donald W. Treadgold, Great Siberian Migration: Government and Peasant in Resettlement from Emancipation to the First World War (Princeton, NJ, 1957).

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7

Think More About Camels It is a truth rarely acknowledged that most people don’t think a lot about camels. Perhaps this is reasonable, as few have much contact with them. But camels warrant greater heed where and when they represent a critical mode of transport. Kazakhs thought about them a lot. And when Orenburg governor-general Vasilii Perovskii prepared to launch a military campaign against the khanate of Khiva, camels were at the forefront of his mind: he needed 12,000 of them. Russia’s campaign against Khiva in 1839–40 is noteworthy principally for its disastrous outcome. Planned for the winter months in order to obviate the absence of water in the arid steppe through reliance on snow, the campaign encountered an uncommonly severe winter, which imposed exceptional hardships. Less than halfway to Khiva, Perovskii abandoned the campaign. With difficulty the columns returned to Orenburg, by which time 90 per cent of the camels, over 1,000 soldiers, and an unknown number of Kazakh camel drivers had perished.1 The Khiva campaign offers drama and pathos at its best. But it is also enmeshed in a larger set of changes unfolding in Russia’s relationship to Kazakhs, Central Asia, and the wider world. The proposition of this chapter is that the 1830s represent a critical point of inflection in that process. By the century’s third decade, the patterns and priorities that had guided Russia’s relations with the steppe for several centuries were shifting in favour of a more aggressive stance. A growing Russian attitude of European superiority and preoccupations with great-power status after the defeat of Napoleon equipped tsarist elites with an enhanced sense of entitlement, while the purported offences of Khiva, seen to be abetting nomadic raids on Russian subjects and holding them as captives, merited punishment in Russian eyes. The year 1837 proved critical for translating these sentiments into attempted conquest. Meanwhile Great Britain, observing Russian activity in ­theatres from the Baltic Sea to Central Asia, contemplated St Petersburg with growing apprehension. Indeed, 1837 brought a high point to a novel feature of international politics: British Russophobia.

Russia, Steppe, and Beyond In significant ways, the history of Russia is the history of its relationship with the steppe. That relationship stands at the centre of Russia’s first chronicle, the Tale of By-Gone Years, and it conditioned many institutions and practices that Muscovy 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0008

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Think More About Camels  127 developed over the centuries of its rise as it engaged with the Golden Horde and its successors. Though Russia gradually joined a European system of states and thus looked westward on key issues of diplomacy and strategy, the country also remained a central player in Eurasian politics. For several centuries Muscovy and then the Russian empire advanced gradually into the steppe, building defensive lines, and providing protection for peasants who had run too far ahead.2 The steppe remained a Russian preoccupation for so long in part because it was so large—with a few breaks, it extended from Hungary to Manchuria. The result was that even comparatively effective command over one part of the steppe did little to secure control over the next, even as the mobility of nomadic populations seemed to require precisely that. A critical part of Russia’s strategy, then, was to work with nomads as allies, joining with some groups against others and seeking to identify convergences of interest wherever it could. Nomads, for their part, aligned with Russia or other sedentary states, playing them off against one another for their own advantage. Such a situation characterized the relations between Russia and Kazakhs for the early modern period and well into the nineteenth century. At the same time, the movement of large continental empires into the steppe represented a historical turning point, with grand implications for world history. Borders began to appear between Russia and the Ottoman empire in the late seven­teenth century, which impinged on nomadic groups in between. In 1735 Russia created a frontier post called Orenburg at the northwestern edge of the steppe and secured (what it regarded as) oaths of loyalty from some Kazakhs, the principal nomadic group inhabiting the steppe to the southeast of that new outpost. Political fragmentation in Central Asia from the eighteenth century facilitated the advance of established sedentary states. China’s westward movement—including its dramatic defeat of the last major Eurasian nomadic state, the Jungars, in 1757—contributed to the steppe’s closure.3 Still, even in the 1830s this process remained far from complete, and native inhabitants of the steppe and the urban oases beyond continued to be critical players in the unfolding drama. Kazakhs occupied a territory extending from the steppes to the north of the Caspian Sea in the west to the Tian Shan mountains along the Chinese frontier in the east. Divisions among them conditioned their dealings with one another and with others beyond. At the highest level we can point to three major subdivisions, labelled ‘hordes’ (Kazakh: zhüz) moving from west to east: the Junior Horde administered from Orenburg; the Middle Horde administered from Omsk; and the Senior Horde, still well beyond Petersburg’s remit. Divisions at lower levels make it difficult to generalize about the situation even within a single horde. Kazakh subjects of the tsar were expected to assist Russia’s recovery of criminals, to allow passage of trade caravans, and to refrain from both raiding other Russian subjects and transferring allegiance to another ruler. They were also supposed to provide intelligence, among other things in order to secure the release of Russian captives. Yet whatever Russians thought of

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128 1837 the matter, most Kazakhs were still at least semi-independent—Russian power could be projected only partially and unevenly into the steppe—and Kazakh raids on Russian and Cossack settlements remained a standard feature of life. As a mobile population, Kazakhs could flee from the territory of a stronger state to one that was weaker or more conciliatory. They had potential allies and patrons in China’s Qing dynasty and sedentary oasis polities of Central Asia—Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand. There were thus various groups of Kazakhs, some in alliance with Russia and others hostile. This meant that Kazakhs themselves were important historical agents and participants—along with Russia itself—in the conquest of the steppe. It also meant that some Kazakhs were hostile to others.4 The principal rival for Kazakh allegiances in the time and space that concern us was Khiva, a khanate to the east of the Caspian Sea originally established in the early sixteenth century. An urban oasis in the midst of harsh desert, Khiva could claim authority over Kazakhs to the north and over nomadic Turkmens to the south. Aside from this contest over Kazakhs’ fealty, Khiva was significant to Russia for two principal reasons. First, the khanate had long been a trading partner for Russia, with its merchant caravans visiting towns like Astrakhan and Orenburg, and the caravans of Russian subjects travelling south across the steppe. And second, Russia contended that Khiva was inciting its nomads—of particular concern in the 1830s were Turkmens and Kazakhs of the Adai tribe—against tsar­ist subjects, and thus represented a major source of the steppe’s destabilization. Some of those subjects were taken captive and became slaves in Khiva, though Persians from the southwest represented a much larger source of slaves.5 Historians disagree about whether Central Asian khanates in the era were regionally isolated or integrated into global processes by overland connections.6 Without hoping to resolve that debate, we may assert, first, that ecological conditions isolated Khiva more than other parts of Central Asia; and, second, that Russian knowledge about the khanate and even the steppe itself remained limited.7 For Russia, in short, the khanate remained distant and unfamiliar.

Towards Confrontation The 1820s–30s proved to be a time of crucial change in the steppe and in Russia’s relation to it. The later eighteenth century had seen the erosion of the power of Kazakh khans and the concomitant fracturing of existing hordes into small clusters governed by sultans and warriors. Intuitively understanding the symbiotic relationship between cities and nomadic life, would-be Kazakh rulers had made determined but largely unsuccessful efforts in the eighteenth century to gain control over towns on the Syr-Darya River, above all as a way of taxing sedentary populations and itinerant traders. Deprived of revenue and thus power, khans’ control over hordes dissipated, and Kazakhs accordingly focused less on controlling cities

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Think More About Camels  129 than on accessing the pasturelands around them. The Junior Horde, in western Kazakhstan, had by the 1820s–30s divided into three sections, each ruled by a separate sultan. The fates of the Middle and Senior Hordes were largely variations on this theme of disintegration. One effect of this conflict and disorder was to draw Russia deeper into the steppe in order to protect both trade routes with Asia and its own subjects—including Kazakh ones—from raids and other forms of depredation. Beyond this, plentiful rainfall in decades around the turn of the century was followed by decreased precipitation in the 1820s, stoking competition for pasturelands as well as increased poverty and unrest among Kazakhs. In ­desperation, some Kazakh parents even sold their children in the markets of southwestern Siberia. Raids on Russian settlements and Caspian fishermen also increased. Indications are that the turmoil was increasing over the course of the 1830s, with caravan raids growing in number and trade with Khiva ceasing almost entirely given the security risks.8 But probably greater than any objective changes in the steppe itself were shifts in the mentality of Russian ruling elites. Petersburg’s relationship to the steppe had altered gradually over the eighteenth century as the country embraced a European identity. Peter the Great and his successors began to situate Russia within a European family of states, to the point that in 1767 Catherine II declared Russia explicitly to be a European country. Now counting themselves among the ‘civilized peoples’, Russians labelled peoples outside this inner circle as ‘wild’ and ‘unbridled’.9 Such claims made it harder for Petersburg to treat Asian peoples as equals. Added to this was a more powerful sense of great-power status after victory over Napoleon, which reinforced the proposition that Russia was engaged in a global contest with other imperial powers and furthermore made its ruling elites less tolerant of what it regarded as the insolence of steppe nomads and the khanates beyond.10 The emerging expectation, then, was that Kazakhs would develop under the tutelage of the Russian state. In new statutes of 1822 (for the Middle Horde) and 1824 (for the Junior one), Petersburg decided no longer to recognize any Kazakh leader as khan, and set about creating new institutions of governance for the steppe. Thus an administrative layer of ‘ruling sultans’—paid officials with formal authority over different segments of the Junior Horde—appeared as part of this reform, and in 1837 Russia began to collect a tax directly from Kazakhs for their right to winter encampment along the defensive line.11 So great was the growth of Russian involvement in Kazakh affairs that in 1838 the Orenburg Frontier Commission, the agency overseeing the steppe, complained that these various projects were overwhelming the staff it had to discharge them.12 To be sure, longstanding nomadic norms and practices—trade relationships, religious ideas, familial and tribal politics, etc.—continued to guide Kazakh behaviour within the framework created by these tsarist efforts to establish ‘organization and order’ in the steppe.13 But that the relationship between Russia and Kazakhs was changing

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130 1837 cannot be in doubt, and by one account it was at this moment—the 1830s—that the steppe’s relation to Russia became one of a colony to its metropole.14 The mid- to late-1830s brought a culmination in the steppe’s destabilization. On the one hand, there were insurrections in two different quadrants of the steppe, both beginning around 1837. At the far western end, in the so-called Inner (or Bukeev) Horde, Kazakhs revolted under Isatai Taimanov against new forms of taxation, inadequate pasture, and tsarist prohibitions on traversing the Ural River. Though the revolt was suppressed, Taimanov himself supposedly found refuge in Khiva. Further east, in the Middle Horde, a larger uprising under Kenisary Kasymov unsettled the steppe still further. Beginning as a dispute between sultans descended from two rival khans, the rebellion took a bewildering course and ended only a decade later, in 1847, when Kasymov was killed by Kyrgyz allied with Russia. The revolt’s precise character and motives have received diverse interpretations, which cannot be sorted out here.15 It is perhaps enough to remark that these rebellions reflected disruption in the steppe and created stronger incentives in Russia to do something substantive in response. On the other hand, raids on settlements and especially Caspian fisheries increased—or at least Russian elites became less tolerant of them. The accounts of those captured and then released give us a sense of their experience. In a petition to the military governor in Astrakhan, the state peasant Alexander Kerchintsev recounted in late 1836 how he had taken two peasants and his stepson out to the northeastern Caspian Sea to catch sturgeon. While returning home with a successful catch, ‘plunderers’ attacked their boat and took the crew captive. They found themselves distributed to different encampments, with one of the hired hands eventually dispatched to Khiva. Having learned of his capture, Kerchintsev’s wife gathered 700 roubles in Astrakhan for his ransom, putting his house up as collateral. He was thus able to return home after four months in captivity, while authorities in Orenburg purchased the freedom of the second hired hand. Kerchintsev was however unable to raise the 1,000 roubles his captors demanded for his stepson: he owed money for his own ransom, his left arm had been per­man­ent­ly disabled during capture, and his boat was gone now as well. Evaluating his losses at 3,800 roubles, plus the 700 for his ransom, Kerchintsev made a heartfelt request of the military governor to aid him in returning his stepson and for providing ‘compensation to me for the losses I have suffered from ruin at the hands of Plunderers’. By all indications, he received no recompense for his devastating loss, nor was his stepson located.16 Women were captured as well, as two accounts recorded in October of 1840 show. The Cossack woman Marfa Yasyreva told how she was taken with her husband and daughter in 1836 by Turkmen while returning from Astrakhan to Guriev on a boat transporting flour. The bandits traded the flour for livestock and travelled with the captives for a week by camel, at which point her husband perished in an unsuccessful attempt to murder their guard. She and her daughter were eventually brought to Khiva, where they served the khan’s brothers. ‘I did

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Think More About Camels  131 various kinds of work,’ Yasyreva recounted, adding, ‘They did not offend or abuse me.’ Her daughter, given as a gift to the khan by a Kazakh and still only 5 years old at her capture, apparently remained in Khiva.17 The Cossack wife Natalia Zamianushnova provided a similar story. Now aged 50, she had been captured by four Kazakhs some 18 years earlier together with her sister. After ten days of travel beyond the Ural River, they were traded for 200 sheep and brought to Khiva, where they served two successive khans. Her sister died in 1831, leaving behind a son fathered by another Russian captive. The khan released Zamianushnova in 1840, but refused to relinquish the boy, contending that he was the khanate’s possession. She herself had married another Russian captive and had lived with him for a decade or so, but he too remained behind in Khiva. Like Kerchintsev, she requested aid, as she had lost 100 roubles during her capture; now in Russia, ‘I have no home and no property whatsoever.’ Not only Russians but others, too, such as Tatars and Kalmyks, were taken into captivity.18 Russia had few ways to prevent these raids. The open sea and the lengthy frontier offered extensive opportunity for ‘plunderers’ to prey on fishermen and Cossacks. To a degree, Russian authorities resigned themselves to the raids, and the statute of the Orenburg Frontier Commission even included a 3,000-rouble line in its annual budget ‘for the redemption of Russian captives from Asian regions’.19 But the khan prohibited the redemption of captives in Khiva, and efforts to have Bukharan traders purchase the captives as slaves and return them to Russia also proved unsuccessful.20 Orenburg grew increasingly frustrated with the state of affairs. Letters from captives in Khiva requesting religious items such as crosses and books, transported at risk by Bukharan merchants, merely increased the sense of their misfortune.21 Seeing the government’s legitimacy at stake, the commission’s head, G. F. Gens, noted in 1831, ‘The orphaned families of the captives grumble at the Frontier Commission and possibly at the higher authorities, believing that they choose not to seek the unfortunates’ liberation.’22 But what could be done? The erection in 1835 of a new fort at NovoAleksandrovsk, on the eastern coast of the Caspian, appears not to have made a demonstrable impact.23 A campaign in 1836–7 against Adai Kazakhs and Turkmens, labelled ‘a brilliant success’ by the emperor, likewise failed to deliver resolution (most ‘plunderers’ manage to evade it).24 To the extent that tsarist authorities saw Khiva behind the raiders’ activities, and to the extent that their great-power preoccupations had altered their attitudes towards Asians more generally, the solution became clear: Russia needed to discipline the khanate.

How to Discipline an Unruly Khanate? Serious discussion of the matter appeared already in the early 1830s, and some of the measures just noted came as a result. Tsarist authorities identified two other

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132 1837 metaphorical arrows in their quiver. The first was to detain Khivan traders on Russian territory and hold them hostage until the khanate relented. The Frontier Commission proposed this idea as early as 1831, adding that if the plan proved unsuccessful, then at least the confiscated goods could compensate captives’ fam­ilies.25 The scheme was not implemented immediately, but in August of 1836 it went forward: authorities detained all Khivan traders, together with their caravans, along the Orenburg and Siberian lines and in Astrakhan, ‘in order by this measure to compel that Khan of Khiva to alter his mode of action with regard to Russia and to rescue at least a portion of the Russian subjects languishing in harsh bondage under the Khivans’.26 In Orenburg alone some 327 traders were apprehended in a raid on the city’s main marketplace and transferred to a nearby artillery camp for detainment. Their animals were likewise taken into custody, as was their coin after conversion from diverse currencies into Russian assignats. Subsequent efforts revealed even more goods—in one case 255 camels’ worth— that traders tried unsuccessfully to claim as Bukharan rather than Khivan.27 The detainment produced several problems. One was that tsarist officials could not get Khivan merchants, confused by the whole affair, to acknowledge formally the reasons for their arrest. Willing to do whatever else was asked of them, these self-described ‘simple Khivan people’ drew the line at signing documents that tsarist officials placed before them: ‘We are poor people, we are afraid to sign and do not wish to sign, because we don’t know anything, except that we are not guilty.’ Another problem was that some of the Khivans turned out in fact not to be Khivans—or at least claimed not to be. Consider, for example, the poor Persian fellow who had been captured by Turkmens and brought to Khiva as a slave some 30 years earlier but was finally able to purchase his liberty, only to be detained as part of the Khivan caravan in Russia. His principal aspiration was just to go home, ‘and that I am Persian I prove by having not yet forgotten my language’. Others claimed to be Afghans, Bukharans, or Kazakhs, none of whom could be held responsible for the actions of the Khivan Khan. Officials remained sceptical, but in this multi-ethnic world it was hard to tell—and to prove—who was who. The detainment furthermore threatened to agitate others in the region. Foreign minister Karl Nesselrode wrote to the interior minister that local subordinates should make ‘clear’ and ‘doubtless’ to ‘all other Asians’ that the detainment ‘is undertaken exclusively in relation to Khivans, as a consequence of the hostile actions of their Khan, so that other Asians will accordingly remain calm and not at all become agitated’. Even so, growing Bukharan anxiety compelled Perovskii to assure their emir explicitly that Khivans alone were the object of Russia’s wrath. Having listed all of Khiva’s transgressions, he presumed that the Bukharans would agree ‘that the Khivans’ deeds and actions are worthy of punishment’.28 Whether the Bukharans were assuaged by such declarations remains unclear. Nor was the detainment effective. Probably instigated by tsarist authorities, some detained Khivans in Astrakhan appealed to clergy and grandees back in

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Think More About Camels  133 Khiva to do something on their behalf: ‘It’s now three years since our trade has come completely to a stop. We resemble birds deprived of nests, and blood rather than tears flow from our eyes. . . . Try to help us unfortunate ones. Farewell.’29 But nothing changed. The raiding continued, and Russian estimates suggested between 1,000 and 2,000 Russian captives were still ‘languishing’ in Khiva. It is true that the khan returned 105 captives over two years (1836–8),30 but this was too little, too late: by 1837, Russia had decided to undertake a military campaign. This idea had been raised in the early 1830s, but statesmen realized that such an enterprise would be complicated and costly, and partly for this reason they had hesitated. Military action, Gens had written in 1831, ‘demands careful con­sid­er­ ation, lengthy preparations, [and] is accompanied by loss of money and people’. Nor was it clear that it would achieve the goal. Two years later Nesselrode echoed these concerns, prophesying the loss of ‘thousands of soldiers, useful to the State, who would perish in the steppe not at the hand of the enemy, but from the climate and shortages of all kinds’. He also raised the frightful spectre of the Khivans simply killing all the captives as Russian forces approached the city.31 There was some hesitation, then, and the enterprise would probably not have been undertaken were it not for the young Perovskii, who became governor-general in Orenburg in 1833. Only 39 years old as he took the post, Perovskii had fought at Borodino against Napoleon and also been seriously wounded in war with the Ottoman empire in 1828. Here was a man ready for any challenge, even one as daunting as moving a large force across more than 1,500 km of arid steppe and then engaging in combat.32 In 1837, preparations for the assault began.

A Wider Lens So far our story has remained in Orenburg and the steppe, but there is a wider context that warrants heed. For the 1830s featured an escalation of hostility between Russia and the other principal power of the day, Great Britain. Indeed, there was little that Russia could do in Asia at this time without raising British hackles, and our account must therefore widen its lens and take stock of broader international politics. The historian Alexander Morrison has warned against reducing developments in Central Asia to ‘an incidental outcome of AngloRussian rivalry’, as an older literature on the ‘Great Game’ typically did.33 Undoubtedly, there is that danger and we should avoid it. But it is nonetheless impossible to deny that this broader context is a part of the story, and examining it allows us also to recognize the appearance of British Russophobia as another major feature of the 1830s. Russian activity in two other Asian theatres was already disturbing London. One was the Ottoman empire, which Russia had defeated in the war of 1828–9, thereby acquiring the entire eastern coast of the Black Sea and enhanced

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134 1837 instruments for pressuring Constantinople. Faced with an insurrection emanating from Egypt in the early 1830s, the Ottoman sultan ceded even more in order to secure Russian assistance. In the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (1833), the Ottomans agreed to close the Dardanelles to foreign warships on Russian request even as Petersburg retained the right of passage through the Bosporus, thus giving Russia a substantial advantage over its rivals in the region.34 The other theatre was Persia. In two wars (1804–13 and 1826–8), Russia had wrested much from its southern neighbour, including a permanent envoy there, a large indemnity, and extraterritorial rights for Russian subjects. With the Treaty of Turkmenchai (1828), tsarist power radiated from a hub of consulates (though local networks and practices on the ground made Russia’s advantage greater on paper than it was in fact).35 Partly on the basis of these accomplishments, Nicholas could remark in 1830 that Russia’s geographical position was ‘happy’ enough that ‘her frontiers are sufficient for her’.36 But London was not convinced. Great Britain had emerged, along with Russia, as one of two truly global p ­ owers in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat. In the decades leading to the Crimean War, a contest between these two hegemons played itself out across a grand canvas extending from Scandinavia to East Asia, but nowhere was the competition more intense in the 1830s than in southwestern Asia. At the forefront of things was a British apprehension over the security of India—a set of fears that at times took the form of irrational obsession. There are no indications that Russia actually had ambitions there,37 something that Petersburg took pains to communicate. Indulging the British for a moment, however, we might make two points. One is that London construed Afghanistan, Persia, and Central Asia as a single complex of parts requiring an indivisible policy of containment. That the British mission in Tehran was directed from Calcutta beginning in 1824 reflects this thinking. The second is that, more than an actual invasion of India, the fear in Calcutta was of ‘the moral effect produced among our subjects in India by the continued apprehension of that event’. In other words, British anxiety centred on symbolic dimensions of India’s defence sooner than on strictly material ones.38 British interests in fact aligned with Russia’s to a significant degree—the two shared, for instance, the goal of Ottoman preservation—and British policy in these years was arguably more provocative than Russia’s. Yet the British dis­ covered ample reason to fear and censure Russia, especially in the 1830s. Having already construed Russia in the late eighteenth century as a complete despotism inhabited by brutal and drunken savages, the British gradually perceived a threat to India as a more concrete cause for concern. More generally, they increasingly viewed Russia as having an irrepressible tendency towards territorial aggrandizement, with each Russian advance adding new grist to the mill. Unkiar Skelessi offered proof of Russia’s intention to claim the Ottomans’ European lands, and as the Times of London commented in 1829, ‘There is no sane mind in Europe that can look with satisfaction at the immense and rapid overgrowth of Russian power.’

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Think More About Camels  135 In 1837–8, new fears about the size and growth of Russia’s Baltic fleet led some to propose that Russia was preparing to coerce if not invade Britain itself. By this view, India was merely the feint, with the British navy serving as Russia’s true object. Russia’s denials of ambitious purpose were useless. By the mid-1830s, writes one historian, the danger of war with Britain ‘became one of Russia’s major preoccupations’.39 To be sure, there were voices of caution concerning Russia’s power and intentions, but Russophobes like the Scot David Urquhart had the upper hand by the mid-1830s. Urquhart’s England, France, Russia, and Turkey (1834) asserted, without evidence, that Russia’s major purpose was the acquisition of Constantinople and the Straits, and that this conquest would involve ‘the instantaneous transmission of the power and capabilities of Persia into the hands of Russia’, thus negating an otherwise neutral space that separated the tsar’s empire from India. Others jumped on board, too. An alarmist pamphlet of 1836 by the surgeon to the British mission in Tehran, John McNeill, proposed that Russia’s ‘whole history, and the posture in which she now actually stands, contradict any professions of indifference to conquest and aggrandisement that she may venture to put forth’.40 By the end of 1837, Russophobia had become a major element in English opinion; by 1840 such suspicion, to quote one scholar, ‘had become a real hatred’.41 So deep was the ‘eternal hostility’ between ‘the highest freedom of man’ (Britain) and ‘his lowest debasement’ (Russia), wrote the Times, that ‘that the ephemeral expedients of our statesmen to ward off the collision are attended with the most absurd and transient results’. For his part, Russia’s ambassador to London, Pozzo di Borgo, confirmed that ‘the prejudices of that country [Britain] against Russia are almost universal’.42 Developments in 1837 brought the countries close to war. In that year the Persian shah launched a campaign against Herat in western Afghanistan, which the British assumed the Russians had instigated, using Persia as a tool to threaten India, and as a way to bypass the great distance otherwise separating the two empires in Asia. This perceived threat constituted a key foundation for Britain to embark on a disastrous military adventure in Afghanistan in 1839.43 Also in 1837, British Russophobes devised a provocation on the Black Sea that challenged Russia’s blockade of the eastern coast of the Black Sea (part of its campaign to subjugate the North Caucasus), in the apparently sincere belief that they had the government’s tacit approval. Urquhart & co. dispatched a schooner, the Vixen, with salt—a prohibited commodity—to the shore on the premise that the blockade was unlawful. When Russia detained the Vixen, London journals loudly denounced Petersburg. To their credit, the British and Russian governments worked to defuse the crisis, but this in turn produced incredible claims that foreign minister Palmerston—only slightly less Russophobic than the likes of Urquhart—was in Petersburg’s pay.44 Russian activity in Central Asia appeared in England through this same prism. As McNeill contended in 1836, Russian success in Persia ‘would suffice for the

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136 1837 final subjugation of Central Asia, from the Caspian to the Oxus and the Indus’. Based on false reports that Russia had routed the khan’s forces, an editorial in the Times of July 1840 concluded that ‘the Russians have well nigh mastered the whole of the northern kingdoms of central Asia’. Two months later—well after the Russian campaign’s failure—the Times still insisted on Petersburg’s intention ‘to invade Khiva, to take possession of the country’, adding that the contest was ‘in reality between Russia and England’.45 An intriguing story in its own right, this cold war matters to us here primarily because it conditioned Russia’s actions with regard to Khiva. Perovskii had been pushing for an assault almost from the moment of his arrival in Orenburg, and he even refused to receive two Khivan envoys who arrived with five freed Russian prisoners in August 1838, having them instead detained with the merchants. But Nesselrode, eager to avert gratuitous conflict with Britain, consistently applied the brakes (the two men purportedly came to despise one another). When Perovskii finally convinced the tsar to authorize his plan, Nesselrode managed at least to impose conditions on the exercise: that Perovskii keep the preparations secret so that the foreign minister could prepare the British; that the timing be designed to minimize London’s anxiety; and that, rather than planting the Russian flag in

Figure 7.2.  A Kazakh leading camels during Perovskii’s winter expedition. From M. I. Ivanin’s Opisanie zimnego pokhoda v Khivu v 1839–40g (St Petersburg: Obshchestvennaia pol’za, 1874).

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Think More About Camels  137 Khiva, the campaign merely release the captives and install a Kazakh ruler there. Nicholas meanwhile assured the British ambassador that Russian aims had no implications for either India or Afghanistan but were instead designed merely to secure ‘tranquility for the future’.46 To be sure, the British remained sceptical, but the campaign might have looked different if Russia had felt truly uninhibited.

The Winter Campaign Concrete preparations for the campaign began in 1837. Assembling clothing proved especially important, as layers upon layers were to be worn. Boots were so broad as to allow a thick felt layer within them. The result would not have fared well on a runway in Milan: ‘Dressed in this uniform the soldiers were absurdly fat and clumsy,’ wrote one participant in the campaign, ‘and in his mask and with a gun in his left hand the soldier lost entirely the appearance of a human.’ Other efforts focused on food: a multitude of ovens baked bread that was then dried into rusk; beets, potatoes, and carrots were dried as well. Soldiers meanwhile studied the science of assembling and packing nomadic tents onto camels.47 By 1838, military authorities were gathering camels from the steppe, ostensibly for a ‘scholarly expedition’ (the cover designed to distract the British). The task was not simple. The late onset of spring and limited precipitation in 1839 had hurt flocks, giving Kazakhs other things to worry about. Nor was the compensation offered for camels adequate. Kazakhs closer to Khiva feared reprisals for aiding the Russians. Some clans moved deeper into the steppe to resist the call for camels, while others provided such lousy animals that commanders returned them as defective. The head of the Frontier Commission entered the steppe to cajole Kazakh leaders and provide plenty of gifts to secure their compliance, and even then Perovskii mustered only 10,400 camels rather than the 12,000 he had sought. Advance detachments were sent into the steppe to dig wells, which agitated Kazakhs further. With the steppe not yet fully understanding the purpose of these activities, one Kazakh official wrote to the Frontier Commission, ‘Our people are afraid of the detachment of yours that has departed.’48 As the campaign set out in November 1839, military authorities provided more clarification. On the one hand, they instructed Kazakh leaders to maintain peace and order among their subordinates and to inform them of ‘the importance of this directive and of the baneful consequences for them if they are inattentive to these warnings from the authorities’. Any interference in the detachment’s progress or disobedience of directives ‘will be considered state treason, which will be forgiven in no instance’. On the other hand, Perovskii published a bellicose ‘Declaration’ identifying Khiva’s ‘hostile disposition’ and ‘manifest disrespect’ for Russia and the need to settle scores with the khanate. Russian captives, disrupted trade, and ‘treachery’—these were the Khivan responses to Russia’s goodwill.

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138 1837 Recounting the unsuccessful detainment of Khivan merchants, the Declaration concluded, ‘All methods of persuasion have finally been exhausted. The preservation of Russia’s advantages, the security of her trade, that tranquility of her subjects— all of this now requires measures more decisive and efficacious; the very dignity of the EMPIRE demands it.’49 Kazakhs had expressed scepticism about undertaking a winter campaign, and it did not take long for their doubts to be justified. Already in November the steppe proved exceedingly cold, with temperatures consistently below –25° and sometimes –37.5° C (the average over three months would be –24° C). Initially the clothing and preparations served the soldiers well, but as the deeper snows hindered movement, the winds increased, and fuel began to run short, a state of ‘complete despondency’ set in.50 Conditions took a heavy toll on camels as well. Mostly kept in southern parts of the steppe during the winter, camels had great difficulty handling the cold and snow in the north. It proved impossible at times to locate forage for them under deep snow, and they accordingly went without feed for long stretches. Before long many were sick and unfit—they weakened ‘not by the day, but by the hour’, wrote Perovskii at one point51—and soon they were dying at a catastrophic rate. A month-long stop on the Emba River (perhaps one-third of the way to Khiva) to regroup and await better weather brought no relief. Khivan bands harassed the advancing column, driving off camels and in one instance lassoing a Russian out into the steppe where he was skinned alive, his ‘frantic screams’ echoing across the wastes. A critical moment came in January 1840, when a mutiny arose: more than 300 camel drivers refused to go further, arguing that caravans never travelled in such conditions and that their camels would simply not make it. Perovskii would have none of it: as a prisoner in 1812, he had made his way with the retreating French army all the way from Russia to Paris—in winter and on foot. After exhorting unsuccessfully, he selected two of the ringleaders and had them shot, thus compelling the others to continue the trek (‘A pity,’ acknowledged the emperor, ‘but nothing else could be done in such a case’).52 But the mutinous drivers had understood what Perovskii did not: the game was up. The famous polymath Vladimir Dahl, who accompanied the campaign as Perovskii’s secretary (and had been present at Pushkin’s deathbed), admitted that the camels had become so tired, and progress so slow, that the campaign might never reach its object. That realization dawned fully on Perovskii himself, who finally called for a retreat on 1 February 1840. Over five months later, in July, the expedition crawled back into Orenburg, where even many of the survivors died in hospital from the effects of frostbite and scurvy. Thus ended the glorious campaign of 1839–40.53 Incredibly, Perovskii almost immediately announced that there would be a second attempt. On his behalf the Frontier Commission broadcast into the steppe that while ‘the harshness of an unusually cold winter’ had forced a retreat, ‘the villains

Think More About Camels  139 cannot remain without punishment’, and ‘the forces of His Imperial Majesty will be in Khiva’. Proclaiming that directives for a second campaign had already been issued, the commission explained to all Kazakhs in its jurisdiction ‘that Russia’s state of war with Khiva has not ceased’, and that Kazakh subjects ‘not only have the right, but also the obligation to inflict on the Khivans and all those loyal to them as much harm as possible’. Any possessions that Kazakhs seized from Khivans and their allies would be considered ‘legal spoils and the un­alien­able property of whoever managed to take it’. The capture and murder of Khivans ‘will be regarded as a merit and splendidly rewarded’.54 It is hard to know what sort of turmoil this instigation might have unleashed in the steppe, but the course changed dramatically a short time later—for two apparent reasons. First, Nesselrode, strongly favouring rapprochement with Britain, was apparently determined to deny Perovskii a second try. The Russian campaign had agitated the British, with Palmerston supposing that Russia sought merely a different road to India. A second campaign would undermine this attempted rapprochement, and Nicholas was apparently inclined to agree.55 Second, when a large number of Russian captives were released from Khiva in 1840, the ostensible reason for military action disappeared. How did this occur? Russian accounts propose that the campaign, though unsuccessful in reaching Khiva, had nonetheless frightened the khan into meeting Russian demands.56 There is probably some truth in this—Khiva could not ignore a power as substantial as Russia— but another factor was the intervention of the Englishman Sir Richmond Shakespear, who appeared in Khiva as a mediator between Russia and the khanate, and by negotiation secured the captives’ release in the summer of 1840 (in what may justly be called a ‘Shakespearean drama’). The NovoAlexandrovsk fortress reported in August 1840 that 416 captives (two of them seized in 1784!) had arrived, along with Shakespear and an envoy of the khan.57 Kazakhs in the steppe accordingly received a new missive from Orenburg shortly thereafter. The khan’s fulfilment of one of Russia’s main demands ‘eliminates the need to renew the military expedition against Khiva now’. The emperor, the commission explained, had accepted the khan’s act ‘as a sign of genuine repentance and sincere desire to terminate hostile actions’. Noting that Russia would now liberate all of the detained merchants, the commission instructed Kazakhs ‘to treat Khivans as peaceful neighbours and not as enemies of the EMPIRE’.58 The two countries had soon exchanged missions, and by the end of 1842 they had concluded a new agreement, by which the khan vowed to secure free movement of Russian trade caravans and to prohibit attacks by its nomads on Caspian fishermen.59 Russia would not undertake a similar ­military campaign until 1853, when it captured the Kokand outpost of Aq Masjid and renamed it ‘Fort Perovsk’ for its conqueror, redeemed now by this successful assault.60

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140 1837

Conclusion In the early 1840s Russia and Britain entered a period of rapprochement. In the Straits Convention of 1841, Russia offered a significant revision of Unkiar Skelessi that placed the straits under international control; British policy itself saw a major reorientation, from ‘a state of quasi-war in central Asia’ to an entente. But if the period after 1841 brought a marked decline in anti-Russian propaganda, Russophobia did not disappear—it was too firmly established now simply to dissipate. Over the longer term, Russophobia of the 1830s was important because it could be reactivated on demand. As John Gleason writes of the run-up to the Crimean War, a hostile stereotype of Russia solidified as quickly as it did in 1853 ‘only because its mold had been well-fashioned two decades before’. Nor was the stereotype relevant only to the era of Crimea. The Russophobia of the later Cold War (1947–89) was also ‘partly shaped by nineteenth-century attitudes’.61 Khiva had evaded subjugation, and would fall to Russia only in 1873. But the campaign of 1839–40 effectively initiated the tsarist conquest of Central Asia. True, that process was a gradual one that in some sense had begun in the eighteenth century or earlier, when Russia started its advance into the steppe. Peter the Great had in fact dispatched the first Russian attempt to conquer Khiva back in 1716–17.62 But the campaign of 1839–40 was the first Russian effort in the nineteenth century to settle scores with a sovereign Central Asian state, and it signalled also Russia’s full participation in the European imperialism that left such a deep imprint on the nineteenth-century world. With the weather serving as the main culprit, Perovskii could claim that Russian forces had not been defeated. And indeed, subsequent developments would reveal the campaign to have been more of a speed bump—if a substantial one—than an insurmountable obstacle in Russia’s path. In the meantime, Russia changed its tactics, foregoing direct assaults on Central Asian towns and strongholds (for the moment) and focusing instead on the construction of fortresses within the steppe itself. The capture of Aq Masjid set the conquest more fully in train.63 The winter of 1839–40 was uncommonly severe, but the expedition’s true Achilles’ heel turned out to be the camels. As Perovskii wrote from the steppe, thawing the ink in his pen on a candle after every two or three words, ‘Our camels are not endowed with the moral strength that sustains us to the extreme limits of possibility.’ Perovskii’s formal command to retreat made the point as well: the troops remained cheerful (he claimed), the horses satisfied, the reserves plentiful; ‘only one thing has betrayed us: a significant part of our camels have perished, the rest are enfeebled, and we thus are deprived of all ways of carrying the provisions needed for the rest of the trip.’64 Dahl also recognized the camels’ importance, but his account was more sympathetic to the animals themselves. He described how they struggled on uneven terrain; how they could not use their soft feet to forage

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Think More About Camels  141 under the snow (as horses could with their hooves); how they were strangled by badly packed loads; and how the poor animals groaned under that weight. The result was a camel holocaust: ‘The entire path is littered with animals from the two preceding columns, felled by their loads.’ But in Dahl’s view these losses were not inevitable, and he pointed to merchant caravans to explain why: ‘In a caravan each owner accompanies his own camels, cares for them, walks ahead and shovels the snow from their path, lays felt rugs under them.’ In contrast, ‘our soldier says: “to hell with the camel, so long as I survive!” ’ Dahl thus identified as ‘a most important rule’ ‘to remember day and night that a camel is not a wooden filly, impervious to wear and tear, but also a living being, if only a beast’.65 In short: think more about camels.

Notes 1. Alexander Morrison, ‘Camels and Colonial Armies: The Logistics of Warfare in Central Asia in the Early 19th Century’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 57 (2014): 443–85; also recounted in idem, The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion (Cambridge, Eng., 2021), ch. 2. 2. Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (Bloomington, IN, 2002), Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, NY, 2004). 3. Nancy Kollmann, The Russian Empire (Oxford, 2017); Brian Boeck, Imperial Boundaries: Cossack Communities and Empire-Building in the Age of Peter the Great (Cambridge, 2009); Peter Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, 2005). 4. Yuri Bregel, ‘Central Asia in the 12th–13th/18th–19th Centuries’, in E. Yarshater (ed.), Encyclopedia Iranica, vol. 5 (Costa Meza, 1992), 193–205; Janet Marie Kilian, ‘Allies and Adversaries: The Russian Conquest of the Kazakh Steppe’ (PhD diss., George Washington University, 2013); Scott C. Levi, The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 1709–1876: Central Asia in the Global Age (Pittsburgh, PA, 2017), 168–81; and Jeff Eden, Slavery and Empire in Central Asia (Cambridge, 2018), 163–74; Gregory Afinogenov, ‘Languages of Hegemony on the Eighteenth-Century Kazakh Steppe’, International History Review 41(5) (2019): 1020–38. 5. Bregel, ‘Central Asia’; ‘Svedeniia o Khivinskom Khanstve’, Zhurnal manufaktur i torgovli 4 (1843): 77–162, esp. 160–62; Jeff Eden ‘Beyond the Bazaar: Geographies of the Slave Trade in Central Asia’, Modern Asian Studies 51(4) (July 2017): 919–55. For more on the background and experience of slavery in the region (including Russia’s own involvement in captive-taking), see Eden, Slavery, esp. 13–33, 115–43. 6. For two views on the matter, see Levi, Rise and Fall; Paolo Sartori, ‘Introduction: On Khvārazmian Connectivity: Two or Three Things That I Know About It’, Journal of Persianate Studies 9 (2016): 133–57. 7. Ibid. 141, 150–51; Ian  W.  Campbell, Knowledge and the Ends of Empire: Kazak Intermediaries and Russian Rule on the Steppe (Ithaca, NY, 2017), 13–30.

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142 1837 8. Kilian provides a good overview in ‘Allies and Adversaries’, 158–66. See also G. B. Izbasarova, Kazakhskaia step’ Orenburgskogo vedomstva v imperskikh proektakh i praktikakh pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Moscow, 2018). 9. Ricarda Vulpius, ‘The Russian Empire’s Civilizing Mission in the Eighteenth Century’, in Tomohiko Uyama (ed.), Asiatic Russia: Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts (London, 2012), 13–31. 10. Morrison, Russian Conquest, 24–6. 11. Izbasarova, Kazakhskaia step’; Gul’mira Sultangalieva, ‘Kazakhskoe chinovnichestvo Orenburgskogo vedomstva: Formirovanie i napravlenie deiatel’nosti’, Acta Slavica Iaponica 27 (2009): 77–101; TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 2156, l. 88ob.; L. Meier, Materialy dlia geografii i statistiki Rossii, sobrannye ofitserami General’nogo shtaba: Kirgizskaia step’ Orenburgskogo vedomstva (SPb, 1865), 53. On differences between the regimes for Kazakhs constructed in Orenburg and Omsk, see A. I. Bykov, Istoki modernizatsii Kazakhstana: Problema sedentarizatsii v rossiiskoi politike (Barnaul, 2003), 103–28. 12. TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 2156 (Frontier Commission to governor-general, 13 Apr. 1838), ll. 22–6ob. 13. Such at least was true in the Middle Horde. See Virginia Martin, ‘Engagement with Empire as Norm and Practice in Kazakh Nomadic Political Culture (1820s-1830s)’, Central Asian Survey 36(2) (2017): 175–94. 14. Meier, Materialy, 46–7; Morrison, Russian Conquest, 66–7. 15. Kilian, ‘Allies and Adversaries’, 202–10; N.  A.  Sereda, ‘Bunt Kirgizskago sultana Kenesary Kasymova’, Vestnik Evropy 4 (1870): 541–73; 5 (1870): 60–86; 4 (1871): 655–90; Yuri Malikov, ‘The Kenesary Kasimov Rebellion (1837–1847): A NationalLiberation Movement or a “Protest of Restoration”?’ Nationalities Papers 33(4) (2005): 569–97; Steven Sobol, ‘Kazakh Resistance, to Russian Colonization: Interpreting the Kenesary Kasymov Revolt, 1837–1847’, Central Asian Survey 22(2–3) (2003): 231–51. 16. TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 4871, ll. 2–7ob., 28–28ob. (citation at 3–3ob.). 17. Ibid. f. 4, op. 1, d. 1637, 463–4 (citation at 463ob.). 18. Ibid. f. 4, op. 1, d. 1637, ll. 462–462ob. Numerous other accounts are in f. 4, op. 1, d. 4296; and some (mostly from later decades) are analysed in Eden, ‘Beyond the Bazaar’. 19. TsGARK f. 4, op. 1, d. 2156, l. 32ob. 20. M.  Galkin, ‘K istorii sovobozhdeniia russkikh plennykh iz Khivy’, Russkii arkhiv 3 (1914): 9, 100, 106, 108–9. 21. TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 1520; Galkin, ‘K istorii’, 104–5. 22. G. F. Gens, ibid. 101 (26 Nov. 1831). 23. On the fort’s creation: ibid. 102; Kilian, ‘Allies and Adversaries’, 192–5; and Alexander Morrison, ‘Twin Imperial Disasters: The Invasions of Khiva and Afghanistan in the Russian and British Imperial Minds, 1839-1842,’ Modern Asian Studies, 48.1 (2014), 291. 24. Odesskii vestnik 24 (24 Mar. 1837), 280; Meier, Materialy, 52–3; Sereda, ‘Bunt’, 545. For more on the history of Russian efforts to safeguard and liberate its subjects from slavery in Central Asia, see Eden, Slavery, 47–50. 25. Gens in Galkin, ‘K istorii’, 101–2. 26. TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 322, l. 2ob. (Journal of Orenburg Frontier Commission, 21 Aug. 1836). 27. Ibid. f. 4, op. 1, d. 322, ll. 3–4ob., 119–119ob.

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Think More About Camels  143 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Ibid. f. 4, op. 1, d. 322, ll. 36, 110, 780ob.–781, 884–5, 1341–2. Ibid. f. 4, op. 1, d. 322, ll. 337–337ob. Meier, Materialy, 54. Galkin, ‘K istorii’, 101, 106. Morrison calls him ‘the central figure in Russian policy towards Central Asia in the first half of the nineteenth century’. See ‘Twin Imperial Disasters’, 272. 33. Alexander Morrison, ‘Introduction: Killing the Cotton Canard and Getting Rid of the Great Game: Rewriting the Russian Conquest of Central Asia, 1814–1895’, Central Asian Survey 33(2) (2014): 131–42 (citation at 133). See also the introduction to Morrison, Russian Conquest. 34. John  P.  LeDonne, The Russian Empire and the World, 1700–1917 (Oxford, 1997), 122–4 (citation at 122). 35. Ibid. 118; Robert D. Crews, ‘Muslim Networks, Imperial Power, and the Local Politics of Qajar Iran’, in Uyama, Asiatic Russia, 174–88. 36. Cited in William  C.  Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600–1914 (New York, 1992), 221. 37. In 1801 Russia had initiated an ill-fated expedition to conquer British India, but the plan was abandoned less than a month before it began. See David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, ‘Paul’s Great Game: Russia’s Plan to Invade British India’, Central Asian Survey 33(2) (2014): 143–52. 38. LeDonne, Russian Empire, 308–14 (citation at 314); Morrison, ‘Twin Imperial Disasters’, 268, 270. 39. The Times (16 Oct. 1829), 2; Harold N. Ingle, Nesselrode and the Russian Rapprochement with Britain, 1836–1844 (Berkeley, CA, 1976), 57. 40. Cited in John Howes Gleason, The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain: A Study of the Interaction of Policy and Opinion (Cambridge, MA, 1950), 174–5; Anonymous [John McNeill], Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East (London, 1836), 121. 41. Gleason, Genesis, 277. 42. The Times (6 July 1840), 12; F. F. Martens, ‘Rossiia i Angliia v tsarstvovanie Imperatora Nikolaia I’, Vestnik Evropy (Feb. 1898): 465–502 (cit­ation at 488); F.  F.  Martens, ‘Imperator Nikolai i Koroleva Viktoriia’, Vestnik Evropy (Dec. 1896), 108–9, 104. 43. McNeill, Progress, 125; Morrison, ‘Twin Imperial Disasters’, 261–82; Martens, ‘Imperator Nikolai’, 108–9. 44. Ibid. 111–12; Gleason, Genesis, 191–9; Ingle, Nesselrode, 63–72. 45. McNeill, Progress, 140; The Times (6 July 1840; 9 Sept. 1840, 4). On British reactions to the Khiva campaign, see also Martens, ‘Imperator Nikolai’, 128. 46. Morrison, ‘Twin Imperial Disasters’, 284–5, 291; Ivan Zakhar’in, Graf V. A. Perovskii i ego zimnii pokhod v Khivu, pt. 1 (SPb, 1901), 15–16; Ingle, Nesselrode, 89–92 (citation at 92). 47. Egor Kosyrev, ‘Pokhod v Khivu v 1839 godu (iz zapisok uchastnika)’, Istoricheskii vestnik 58 (1898): 538–45 (citation at 539). 48. TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 2167, 1, 34–5, 82–5ob., 248–248ob. (citation at 34ob.); Meier, Materialy, 54–5; Morrison, ‘Camels’, 451–3, 460. 49. TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 2167, ll. 171–2, 206–7ob. 50. Kosyrev, ‘Pokhod v Khivu’, 541.

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144 1837 51. I. D. Garan’kin (ed.), Orenburgskii gubernator, Vasilii Alekseevich Perovskii: Dokumenty, pis’ma, vospominaniia (Orenburg, 1999), 201. 52. A. G. Serebrennikov (ed.), Sbornik materialov dlia istorii zavoevaniia Turkestanskogo kraia, vol. 2 (Tashkent, 1912), 3. 53. Morrison, ‘Camels’, 450–62; Kosyrev, ‘Pokhod v Khivu’ (cit­ation at 452); Garan’kin, Orenburgskii gubernator, 191–216; Serebrennikov, Sbornik materialov; Vladimir Dal’, ‘Pis’ma k druzi’am iz pokhoda v Khivu’, Russkii arkhiv 3 (1867): 402–31; 4 (1867): 606–39. 54. TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 2182 (citations at 10–11ob.). On Perovskii’s idea of a second campaign, see his letters in Garan’kin, Orenburgskii gubernator, 204, 213. 55. Broadly on the rapprochement, see Ingle, Nesselrode, 120–71. 56. For example, Meier, Materialy, 56 and Sereda, ‘Bunt’, 543. 57. TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 1637, ll. 6–6ob.; Ingle, Nesselrode, 154; Morrison, ‘Twin Imperial Disasters’, 298. 58. TsGARK, f. 4, op. 1, d. 1637, ll. 274–5ob. 59. Eden, Slavery, 51–2; I.  N.  Zakhar’in, ‘Posol’stvo v Khivu v 1842 godu’, Istoricheskii vestnik 58 (1894): 427–47; Ingle, Nesselrode, 154–6. Zakhar’in claims that Khiva was already violating the agreement a short time later. 60. Levi, Rise and Fall, 169–72. 61. Gleason, Genesis, citations at 239 and 276. Also Ingle, Nesselrode; Orlando Figes, The Crimean War (New York, 2010), 70. 62. Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven, CT, 1998), 57–9. 63. On the conquest’s course, see Morrison, The Russian Conquest. 64. Perovskii’s letters from Jan. and Feb. 1840 in Garan’kin, Orenburgskii gubernator, 197, 200. 65. Dal’, ‘Pis’ma’, no. 3, 411, 424; no. 4, 609, 616–17, 621, 631.

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8

Orthodoxy Marches West Unable to contain their curiosity, people often ask: What was Russia’s very first legislative act in 1837?* And it typically astonishes them to learn that the first such law, issued on New Year’s Day, transferred the administration of Greek Catholic religious affairs from the interior ministry to the chief procurator of the Orthodox Holy Synod.11 On one level, this transfer was utterly and boringly bureaucratic. If before 1  January the interior ministry pushed around copious paper concerning this Eastern branch of the Catholic Church, then after that date the procurator’s office got to do so. But in fact something momentous had just occurred, even if its import would become fully apparent only two years later. For in ordering this transfer, the tsarist regime had just taken a major step in effecting one of history’s most striking examples of confessional engineering and in terminating the existence of an entire church within the Russian Empire. Formally proclaimed in 1839, the union of the Greek Catholic Church with Orthodoxy pushed the boundary between Western and Eastern Christianity substantially westward, and played a key role both in consolidating a single Orthodox Russian nation and in binding territories acquired from Poland in the previous century to Russia’s central provinces. The audacious project had begun a decade or so before 1837, as my humble narrative will reveal. But 1837 represented a decisive moment in this process— more important, arguably, even than the formal union itself. If the campaign against Khiva in the east proved a dismal failure, the ‘reunion’ represented a major success—though one not without its own complications.

Russia’s Uniate Inheritance Typically construed as a matter exclusive to Western Christendom, the Reformation had significant implications in the East as well. For in response to the Protestant challenge the Catholic Church embarked on its own trans­form­ation, and in seeking to reclaim those lost to its new rival this reformed church also found opportunities for expanding eastward at the expense of an older one— Orthodoxy. For their own part, Orthodox hierarchs in Poland-Lithuania began to *  Admittedly, only one person—Daniel Werth—has posed this question explicitly (and he was instructed to do so), but many others surely would if they had the opportunity. 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0009

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146 1837 fear that their church and flock were falling behind more dynamic Catholic and Protestant counterparts. A sense of crisis, as well as unwelcome intrusions from Constantinople in the late 1580s, drove those hierarchs to explore the prospect of compromise with Rome. The result in 1596 was the Union of Brest, an ec­cle­si­as­tic­al union whereby Eastern communities retained core elements of their religious life—most notably the Byzantine liturgy and married clergy—in exchange for acceptance of Western doctrine, above all papal primacy and the Filioque (a provision of the Nicene Creed asserting that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father). The union created a new confession, known as Greek Catholicism or the Uniate Church.2 In the longer term, the union’s fate depended on broader political fortunes in the region. The destruction of Poland-Lithuania in the partitions of 1772–95 brought a significant portion of its territory under Russian rule. Together with numerous Roman Catholics and Jews, St Petersburg thus inherited many Greek Catholic communities as well—roughly three million souls. As the later stages of partitions unfolded, and as revolution deepened in France, tsarist elites expressed growing anxiety about alignments of religious affiliation and political loyalty, which drove them to suspect their new Uniate subjects of harbouring sympathies for Poland, especially after insurrection erupted there in 1794. The result was a coordinated campaign under Catherine II to eradicate the Uniate faith. Orthodox clergymen, joined by secular officials and police forces, fanned out into Uniate settlements, encouraging the embrace of Orthodoxy. Military force also played a role. The result was the formal transfer to Orthodoxy of some 1.6 million people, or roughly half the Uniates acquired in the partitions.3 Even before Catherine’s death in 1796, however, the process of reunion stalled. Proceeding more smoothly in the southern lands of the partition, where his­tor­ic­al attachments to Orthodoxy were stronger, the campaign encountered greater impediments in the north, especially Belarus. Here, the Uniate Church had struck deeper roots, and in any event the campaign had hardly begun in that region when the empress flinched. The resistance of the local elite—Roman Catholic Poles represented much of the landlord class and officialdom in the region—also played a role, as did fear that further promotion of conversion might complicate the partition rather than bringing it to a successful conclusion. Arguably, then, the conversions of the 1790s picked off the low-hanging fruit, leaving the Uniate Church largely intact in Belarus and Volhynia, as well as in the territories of the third partition, which became Russian only subsequently. Catherine’s immediate successors had other priorities, and the Uniate Church in Russia thus entered the nineteenth century in comparative tranquillity.4 The simplest thing would have been to maintain that peace. Although Orthodoxy was the country’s ‘ruling and predominant faith’, the Russian empire was home to many adherents of other religions, from Lutheranism and Catholicism in the west to Islam and Buddhism in the east. From this standpoint, Uniates represented

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Orthodoxy Marches West  147 Table 8.1.  Numbers of Uniate parishioners, churches, and monasteries in 1827 a) Diocese

(b) Parishioners

(c) Churches

(d) Monasteries

Vilna Brest Polotsk Lutsk Total

270,407 617,221 514,354 119,330 1,521,312

301 540 436 189 1,466

10 27 13 26 76

Source: P. O. Bobrovskii, Russkaia greko-uniatskaia tserkov’ v tsarstvovanie Aleksandra I: Istoricheskoe issledovanie po arkhivnym dokumentam (St. Petersburg, 1890), 125. That was included in the document “Captions and Credits” that I submitted originally.

nothing exceptional. For several decades after the 1790s the church’s existence raised few hackles, and in fact even prospered. As the data in Table 8.1 reveal, in 1827 Uniates remained a significant religious group, with 1.5 million adherents, nearly 1,500 parishes, and over 75 monasteries (of the Basilian order).5

Origins and Instigators Yet even before Nicholas assumed the throne in 1825 circumstances were beginning to undermine the Uniate Church’s long-term prospects in Russia. Already in Catherine’s time, the autocracy had begun to elaborate a conception that justified Russia’s westward expansion as a matter of reuniting the lands of the medieval polity known as Kievan Rus, the source of both Russia’s name and its Orthodox Christianity. The lands acquired in the partitions were thus sometimes called ‘the provinces returned from Poland’, and Catherine II justified the conversion campaign in 1794–5 by contending not that Uniates were converting to a new religion—or even ‘converting’ at all—but rather that they were ‘returning’ to the faith of their ancestors (never mind two centuries of Catholicism).6 Her line of thinking received further elaboration in the 1820s and 1830s. New trends in historical scholarship placed the principle of nationality—and the proposition that Ukrainians, Belarusians, and (Great) Russians were all one people—at the foundation of new narratives. Minister of education Sergei Uvarov’s triad of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and narodnost (see Chapter  2), strengthened the link between religion and nationality, and thus had distinct implications for Uniates: as they were increasingly viewed as members of the Russian nation, it seemed only natural that they should confess the Russian (i.e. Orthodox) faith as well. As the autocracy moved in the 1820s–1830s to create stronger institutional and legal frameworks for the country’s ‘foreign confessions’ (the non-Orthodox faiths whose adherents constituted over a quarter of the empire’s population), the incentives to foment union increased, for the alternative was to accept the permanent entrenchment the Uniate Church in the empire’s confessional order.7

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148 1837 Of greater immediate consequence were developments within the Uniate Church itself. Most notable were efforts of the Uniate parish clergy to restore Byzantine elements of religious practice that had been abandoned over the course of the eighteenth century. Within Poland, and especially after the Council of Zamość in 1720, the Uniate confession had experienced substantial Latinization, which brought it closer to Roman Catholic norms and farther from Orthodoxy.8 To take just one example—a matter to which we shall return—over time most Uniate clerics had ditched their beards in favour of shaving. As the nineteenth century began, however, members of the Uniate parish clergy began to question this Latinization and to agitate for the resurrection of the confession’s Eastern elem­ ents. Thus there appeared a struggle between a ‘Latin’ orientation, designed to keep the church closer to its Roman counterpart, and an Eastern one, directed towards the revival of its Byzantine character. The ‘orientalist’ party gradually made its way into key positions in the Uniate hierarchy, and if for most of Alexander’s reign its adherents encountered primarily the government’s indifference, then as the emperor turned conservative in his last years, more sympathetic tsarist officials emerged to support the ‘orientalist’ cause. Over some five years (1822–7) a fundamental shift occurred, whereby the autocracy embraced the orien­tal­iz­ing reforms. The culmination was a decree of October 1827 that blocked Roman Catholics’ entry into the Uniate Basilian monastic order and took other steps to prevent departures ‘from the rules of the Greco-Uniate Church and to affirm its ancient liturgical rite’.9 There is little evidence that the ‘orientalists’ wanted their church to merge with Orthodoxy; they instead sought the re-Byzantization of a confession that had gone far in a Latin direction.10 But their activity created the foundations for a much larger transformation. Three individuals proved central for converting this ecclesiastical reform into a confessional union. The first was Uniate prelate Joseph Semashko, initially a figure in the Roman Catholic Spiritual College, which administered religious affairs for Catholics of both rites. The son of an impoverished Uniate priest in Kiev province, Semashko was troubled by the dominance of Roman Catholicism over Greek and by the Latinization of his confession. Stimulated by the decree of October 1827 and encouraged by the head of the empire’s Directorate of Foreign Confessions, in November Semashko composed a memorandum advocating further efforts to strengthen Uniates in relation to Roman Catholicism. This memo is often regarded as the start of the reunion. By his own account, Semashko there­ after worked tirelessly in different capacities to promote the cause. In the late 1820s he had to educate key officials in Petersburg about the situation among Uniates (most of them knew little) and to develop central institutions for the church’s administration, separate from Roman Catholic ones. At numerous points when the project was flagging, Semashko inserted himself to maintain momentum, and on at least two occasions he threatened to convert to Orthodoxy himself, which would have deprived the project of its leading force within the

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Orthodoxy Marches West  149 Uniate confession. In 1833 Semashko became bishop of one of the two Uniate dioceses (the Lithuanian), from which position he made strenuous efforts to prepare the parish clergy for reunion, meeting with hundreds of them individually and plumbing the disposition of each. Semashko did not deny himself credit: while he portrayed others as resistant, hesitant, or inert, he declared of himself, ‘The Lord, having chosen his instrument for the completion of this noble deed, animated him with insuperable fervour and gave him powers to overcome all obstacles.’ Think what one will of Semashko’s immodesty, but it is hard to imagine that the reunion could have occurred—and certainly not in the way that it did— without him.11 Also important was the statesman Dmitrii Bludov. Serving as minister for foreign confessions (1828–32) and after that as interior minister (1832–9), under whom the affairs of the foreign confessions became a department in 1832, Bludov was the central figure in the management of Russia’s non-Orthodox religious affairs from 1828 to 1839. Having received Semashko’s memo from the emperor, he quickly saw in the prelate ‘a person who by his abilities, feelings, and very title may be used by the government with great utility for a great and holy deed’.12 Naturally more cautious than the bold Semashko (and responsible for much more), Bludov made a good yin to the prelate’s yang. In his recollections Semashko accused Bludov of lacking enthusiasm for the Uniate project, being excessively sensitive to European opinion, and in general exhibiting ‘a kind of coldness’, attributable to ‘my insistence’ (which Semashko admitted was ‘sometimes unceremonious’).13 But Bludov’s involvement was more consequential than Semashko suggests, and he was almost surely more committed to the project than the prelate allows.14 If nothing else, as head of the Interior Ministry Bludov had to ensure that the Uniate project unfolded in a manner consistent with general policy on Russia’s non-Orthodox faiths. Bludov of course did many things over the course of that long decade (1828–39), but his involvement in religious affairs coincides almost exactly with the evolution of the Uniate question. In 1841, moreover, he received a gold medal from the emperor for his work on the ‘reunion’.15 Finally, there was the emperor himself. Nicholas’s brother and predecessor, Alexander I, had put his stake on an ecumenism that posited a single Christian church of which different denominations were merely specific manifestations. He accordingly opposed religious polemics and conversion among the Christian confessions, as privileging external distinctions over internal unity. For most of his reign little was done on the Uniate question.16 Nicholas rejected this approach and instead emphasized Orthodoxy, which was itself defined increasingly in national terms. Projects of ‘reunion’—religious unification through transfer of communities to the empire’s ‘ruling and predominant faith’—represented precisely the kind of unity that he endorsed. Filipp Vigel, who headed the Department of Foreign Confessions over the course of the 1830s, suggests that it was actually the emperor himself who had raised the issue of union, albeit ‘in passing’. ‘How

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150 1837 can we unite them with us?’ he supposedly asked Bludov in 1827.17 If Semashko and Bludov constituted the strange duo orchestrating the reunion, they did so with the emperor’s solid backing. To summarize, then, a set of factors made the quest for ‘reunion’ both desirable and seemingly achievable. Some impetus emanated from within the Uniate Church, while other factors concerned the broader political and ideological atmosphere in Russia at the time. Capable and committed people appeared to set the project in train. Now it was only a matter of execution. But here a question arises: just how exactly does one transfer the confessional allegiance of 1.5 million people?

The Process Begins Semashko’s memorandum of 1827 represented the main catalyst converting reform into reunion. The memo provided a stark, ‘orientalist’ picture of a confession that had been converted by its Latinist leadership into a mere imitation of its Roman counterpart, albeit with less prestige. ‘Its only remaining distinguishing feature is the Slavic language used in its liturgy,’ Semashko wrote, but even this was ‘corrupted daily and deployed reluctantly’. Semashko in effect portrayed a religious community on a precipice, tottering on the edge of disappearance into Latin ranks. But with investments in the Uniate clergy and a few other measures, Semashko declared, the government could turn the tide. Schools for the Uniate clergy, the elimination of ‘excess’ Basilian monasteries, the reorganization of the church’s administration, and other forms of symbolic and material attention could secure ‘the protection of the integrity of the Greco-Uniate confession and the preservation if its peculiar liturgical rite’. In the memo, Semashko did not actually call for Greek Catholics’ ‘reunion’ with Orthodoxy, but he coyly gestured in that direction by touting his desire ‘to see one-and-a-half million truly Russian folk, if not united, then at least drawn closer; if not entirely friendly, then at least not hostile to their elder brothers’.18 Once the emperor had embraced Semashko’s call, three core principles guided the process. The first was to focus efforts on the Uniate clergy, with the ex­pect­ation that parishioners, more or less like sheep, would follow their lead. When Nicholas originally raised the issue with Bludov, the latter had remarked, ‘If one could identify among their clergy people willing to promote our goals, then one could expect success.’ The appearance of Semashko and his memo just a few months later fulfilled that scenario perfectly.19 True, not all Uniate clerics were on board. At one point Semashko himself complained about insufficient numbers of people among the Uniate clergy ‘who can combine the necessary zeal with excellent abilities and activity’. But ultimately he and others were able to identify col­lab­or­ators. As the project unfolded, more attention was directed to enlisting the parish clergy, who were on the frontlines in securing the acquiescence of the Uniate masses. Semashko

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Orthodoxy Marches West  151 had remarked in his original memo that the parish clergy were key, and that if one could ‘give appropriate direction to the minds of the clergy’ in the 1500 Uniate parishes, ‘then the people will easily take the path indicated by their pastors’.20 The second principle was to keep the autocracy’s ultimate goal secret. From the very start Semashko himself had emphasized the need for circumspection, remarking, ‘Prudence itself demands caution in relation to opinions whose premature revelation may have consequences more harmful than useful.’21 Recognizing that the country had certain commitments to the principle of religious toleration, Bludov likewise sensed the need for restraint: ‘It’s a tricky matter,’ he supposedly said. ‘One must act carefully with everything that touches on conscience and faith in light of our general religious toleration’.22 The reunionists accordingly sought to engineer a process that would look and feel organic. In 1832 Bludov remarked that given the complicated situation in the western provinces, and ‘in light of the complexity and delicate character of all matters pertaining to freedom of conscience’, it was essential ‘that the intention to convert the Uniates inhabiting those provinces to Orthodoxy should remain as little evident as possible’.23 Probably nothing reveals the concern for secrecy more than the fact that the government created not only a ‘secret committee’ to oversee the process, but also a hyper-secret subgroup of four senior officials and churchmen that operated unbeknownst to the rest. One pre-revolutionary historian wryly noted that this represented an ‘interesting and unique institution of its kind: a Secret Committee that the government decided not to trust on the very matter for which it had been created’.24 A third principle was that the process should unfold gradually. Bludov’s initial response to Semashko’s memo of 1827 was to assert the need for more information and deliberation.25 In 1834 he also insisted on the need for the government to bide its time, to make use of opportunities as they arose, and to avoid opening itself to censure. ‘Up to this point,’ he wrote to the Orthodox chief procurator Stepan Nechaev in 1834, ‘the government has not revealed its desire to convert Uniates; it has moved towards this goal in an indirect fashion.’ He counselled, ‘We must ensure that the government is not compromised.’ When Nechaev petitioned the emperor to transfer Uniate affairs from the Department of Foreign Confessions to his own dominion, Bludov resisted, claiming that the step was premature. Other factors also applied the brake: the Orthodox Holy Synod exhibited reluctance to enter association with the Uniates for fear of giving dissident Old Believers grounds to criticize the official church for rapprochement with Catholics.26 On numerous occasions Semashko complained about the slow pace of things, yet in most cases incrementalism won out. Indeed, his frustrations reveal just how gradual the process actually was. The imperial historian Mikhail Koialovich proposes that Semashko was a greater proponent of gradualism than even he himself recognized in his memoirs, and that precisely this attribute ‘likely constitutes the most outstanding aspect of his personal achievement’.27

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152 1837 The first concrete step after Semashko’s memorandum was to separate the two Catholic confessions—Greek and Roman—more thoroughly from one another. In April of 1828, an imperial decree did two things on this score. On the one hand, it replaced the four existing Uniate dioceses by two: the Lithuanian diocese, with its seat at Zhirovitsy (later Vilna), and the Belorussian, based at Polotsk. This change allowed authorities to use the small number of truly reliable Uniate hierarchs to greater effect. On the other hand, the decree removed Uniate religious affairs from the Roman Catholic Spiritual College and placed them in a new Greco-Uniate Spiritual College, which would isolate the Uniate hierarchy more thoroughly from Roman Catholic influence. Semashko considered the decree ‘the complete breaking of the old building and erection of a new one’.28 Rather than regarding Roman and Greek Catholicism as one confession with two distinct rites, the autocracy now treated them as two separate confessions, united only— and only for the time being—by their allegiance to Rome. An advantage of this approach was that the papacy itself had acknowledged the distinctiveness of the two versions of Catholicism, so that Petersburg could rely on papal edicts in deepening the separation, claiming—cynically, but not without foundation—that it was merely executing Rome’s own directives. In November of 1830 a major insurrection against Russian rule broke out in the historically Polish lands, requiring outright warfare for its suppression. While some accounts identify this rebellion as the main impetus for the reunion, the foregoing reveals that the process was in fact well in train by then. The insurrection primarily reinforced the regime’s determination to go forward with the plan, while also investing it with greater urgency. In addition, it politicized the idea of reunion to a greater degree: the project became more deeply embedded in larger government plans of reducing the influence of Catholics and Poles in the western provinces. In the shorter term, at least according to Semashko, the insurrection actually halted further progress for some three years by creating other priorities related to its suppression. But negative consequences of the uprising for Uniate and Roman Catholic monasteries and schools appeared comparatively quickly, and this undoubtedly promoted the reunionist cause.29 As the insurrection receded, two methods of effectuating ‘reunion’ emerged. One may be associated with Archbishop Smaragd, who took command of a new Orthodox diocese having the same boundaries as the Uniate Belorussian one (yet another step in the project’s execution). Eager to grow his own flock at the expense of Uniates, Smaragd contended that liturgical differences between the two confessions actually helped to create in the minds of ‘simple folk’ the necessity of formal transfer to Orthodoxy. His fear was that as Uniate peculiarities gradually disappeared, the only thing distinguishing it from Orthodoxy would be dogmatic issues, which would be much harder to explain to parishioners. So for him the process of Uniate ritual reform promoted by ‘orientalists’ within the Uniate Church represented a propitious moment for promoting conversion as

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Orthodoxy Marches West  153 well. Smaragd’s efforts produced a significant number of conversions over the course of the 1830s, perhaps as many as 50,000 by 1835, mostly among state peasants and serfs with Orthodox landlords.30 If Smaragd focused on individual conversions, banking on their cumulative effect, then other reunionists envisioned a process whereby all Uniates would embrace Orthodoxy at a single go. In this view, the two churches would remain separate for the time being, while Uniates experienced revival and incremental convergence with Orthodoxy. The supposition here was that an effective, gradual rapprochement would bring the Uniate rank-and-file so close to Orthodoxy that the final union could occur almost imperceptibly. Individual conversions à la Smaragd threatened to reveal the government’s intentions, to incite the resistance of the region’s Polish elite, and to establish antagonistic relations between Orthodox and Uniate clergies. Smaragd’s method was furthermore likely to stall as soon as it encountered estates with Roman Catholic landlords, who pre­dom­in­ ated in the region and were unlikely to acquiesce in the conversion of their serfs to an alien confession.31 The problem, of course, was that the need for secrecy made it impossible for senior officials to let on about what they were doing. Indeed, Smaragd and those who aided him were probably not fully aware of the autocracy’s project, which explains their enthusiasm for the first route (Semashko even complained about ‘the fanatical actions of the Orthodox clergy’ that were complicating his efforts).32 By 1835 Bludov endeavoured to impose greater unity on the process by issuing an instruction to governors-general and Orthodox ­bishops in the region, and the new ‘secret committee’ was also designed to integrate approaches (though of course the real secrets were contained deeper in the autocracy’s bowels).33 Semashko, meanwhile, worked to change the situation on the ground. Though he remained resident in Petersburg as a member of the new Uniate College, he made a series of trips to Uniate dioceses in order to bring parishes closer to Orthodoxy in all possible respects. Starting with visits to both dioceses in 1830, he had encountered ‘the unfeigned gratitude of the parish clergy that had been called to a new life’. New schools opened for Uniate clerics. Semashko removed organs and other musical instruments from churches and replaced them with Eastern-style singing. Iconostases, long absent in Uniate churches, now re­appeared, as did utensils and vestments in their Eastern form. Most significantly, in a crit­ ic­al step that some Uniate priests regarded as effectively representing transfer to Orthodoxy, Uniates received a new service book published in Moscow, which addressed issues of dogma as well as ritual. Semashko studied his diocese (which covered five provinces) and made intense efforts to know in­tim­ate­ly his sub­or­din­ ate clergy, producing a notebook with details about each and every of his 1,200 parish priests and 300 monastics. In a feat that would impress any modern dean or provost, he met personally with over 800 priests over two months in 1834. Fortunately, God had endowed Semashko with ‘particular perspicacity and

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154 1837 acumen’ (‘Often with one look I could divine a person’s character and disposition,’ the hierarch remarked of himself), and on that basis he marginalized less reliable clergy by closing their parishes and ascribing believers to neighbouring ones. He ensured that clergy were properly instructed in the arts of correct Eastern liturgy, edifying one by one those about whom he had doubts. It was colossal work, Semashko recounted, but after six years ‘the clergy and flock of the Lithuanian diocese were ready for reunion with the Orthodox Church’. To be sure, there was opposition, especially to the Muscovite service books, which excluded both the Filioque and commemoration of the pope and remained difficult to apply in the many churches that still lacked iconostases (which themselves took time and resources to erect). The books’ introduction factually took several years. But Semashko and his team continued to push, gradually wearing down the resistance, while the installation of iconostases picked up in 1837. Semashko’s account of his activities was undoubtedly self-congratulatory (and his col­lab­or­ ators did a great deal as well), but on some level his accomplishment was genuinely extraordinary.34

Final Phase: 1837–39 As 1837 approached, then, it was possible to test the waters with a more significant step: the transfer of jurisdiction described at the start of this chapter. Semashko had proposed this as early as 1832 (and then a year later and once again the year after that), and Orthodox chief procurator Nechaev, too, raised it in 1835. Only in late 1836, however, did Bludov and the emperor agree that it was time for what the former called ‘not the final, but the decisive’ measure. For Bludov, writing to the sovereign in late 1836, it was critical to transfer Uniate affairs not to the Orthodox Synod itself but to that body’s chief procurator. The latter, like the in­ter­ior minister, was a secular official rather than a cleric, and thus the transfer ‘will not outwardly represent any change in the administration of the Greco-Uniate Church’. Put another way, this step ‘will combine all the advantages of decisive action with prudent, cautious gradualness’, and the rapprochement and union of the Uniate Church with Orthodoxy ‘will be accomplished imperceptibly, indiscernibly, but in quite good time’.35 For Semashko this was a critical attainment, as now unity of direction could be given to the whole affair: ‘Friendly functioning from the Orthodox and Uniate sides was [now] ensured by a single authority,’ he recounts in his memoirs.36 Indeed, for Semashko’s narrative of the reunion, the transfer in 1837 represented a greater milestone than the re­union itself. For all of Bludov’s suppositions about imperceptible convergence, the autocracy considered it essential to monitor responses to the transfer of jurisdiction among clergies of both Catholic rites, local landlords, and ordinary Uniates. The decree on the transfer was promulgated on 16 January, and later that month

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Orthodoxy Marches West  155 the head of the Third Section, Alexander Benckendorff, instructed subordinate gendarmes to assess local reactions and to admonish everyone through ‘reliable people’ that the decree ‘in its essence makes no change’ to Uniate administration, and that Uniates should regard the measure ‘as nothing other than proof of the particular preference that [the government] renders to them based on their unity of descent, language, and liturgy’ (i.e. with Russian Orthodox folk). Roman Catholics, for their part, were to be told that the decree did not concern them, ‘that toleration with regard to the Greco-Uniate confession is not violated by the decree’, and that the tsarist government ‘patronizes all confessions but in doing so adopts different measures, consonant with the spirit of each’.37 Soon reports began arriving, and revealed two things: first, that the cat was at least partly out of the bag; and second, that there was comparatively little op­pos­ ition to the transfer. The head of gendarmes in the western provinces, Alexander von Drebush, reported that Uniate clergy were receiving the decree ‘submissively’, and that some even supposed that the directive ‘will serve to establish order among the clergy, which up until now has been missing’. Simple folk either knew nothing about the decree or followed the lead of their pastors. Even though some Roman Catholics were (correctly) asserting that the Uniate Church’s end was nigh, ‘this opinion produces no particular effect on Uniates’. Writing later on the basis of even more reports, von Drebush reported that Uniate clergy in many areas indeed saw the decree as a preliminary step to the complete elimination of their church and its union with Orthodoxy. In other cases they were too poor and uneducated to have an opinion, and still more discerned and welcomed the possibility of greater order in Uniate affairs. Von Drebush’s informants did discover a bit more opposition from Roman Catholics: they reportedly regarded the Uniate Church as a barrier between themselves and Orthodoxy—one that was now disappearing, to their consternation. But Roman Catholic landlords, at least in Minsk province, seem to have regarded the loss of Uniates to Orthodoxy already as a fait accompli.38 In short, reactions to the transfer of jurisdiction gave grounds to move forward. The year 1837 accordingly saw further steps. Semashko himself travelled again to both Uniate dioceses and extracted written pledges from mid-level clerics ‘about [their] willingness to join the Orthodox Church’. Though he proved more successful in the Lithuanian diocese than the Belarusian, lining up these key figures in the ecclesiastical hierarchy was essential.39 Many Uniate clerics were now obligated by signature to embrace Orthodoxy when the call came. Semashko also moved to combat the harmful influence of those wives and daughters in Uniate clerical families who remained Roman Catholic: such women gave Latin priests a conduit into Uniate families, and ‘those prejudices spread from mothers at an early age to children of the male sex, future Greco-Uniate priests’. Under Semashko’s direction, the Uniate College proposed that no candidate for Uniate priesthood be ordained if his wife were Roman Catholic, and that wives and daughters of

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156 1837 those already ordained be permitted—and, implicitly, encouraged—to convert. At least some such women did become Uniate.40 In 1838 two more occurrences pushed the reunion process toward denouement. On the one hand, two Uniate clerics opposed to the project—vicar bishop Josaphat Zharskii and the formal head of the Uniate Church, Metropolitan Josaphat Bulgak—died of natural causes, leaving the church’s upper hierarchy entirely in the hands of Semashko and his adepts, most notably bishops Antonii Zubko and Vasilii Luzhinskii. On the other hand, an emerging protest by a segment of the Uniate parish clergy provided new incentives for the reunionists to move forward decisively. In the summer of 1838, the Orthodox chief procurator dispatched a subordinate, Valerii Skripitsyn, into Uniate lands to assess the situ­ ation. Skripitsyn concluded that the population was ready for reunion, but his loose tongue also revealed too much about the government’s plans. As a result, Semashko remarked, ‘the direction of the Uniate affairs, previously still doubtful to many, now became clear to everyone and threatened catastrophe’.41 Semashko probably exaggerated the consequences of Skripitsyn’s talk: most Uniates seem already to have known which way the wind was blowing, and Skripitsyn’s trip may have served the important function of convincing them that reunionists on the local level actually had Petersburg’s backing. In any event, a group of 111 Uniate priests mobilized to appeal directly to the tsar, asking that they be freed from the existing Uniate leadership (Semashko and his allies), be permitted to publish and use their own non-Muscovite service books, and, barring all else, be allowed to accept Roman Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy. The reunionists would have none of it, however, and it now seemed clear that further delay would likely invite more protest. Semashko had already submitted a memorandum on 1 December 1838 arguing for starting the reunion, and Orthodox metropolitans in Moscow and Kiev quickly agreed. The protest rendered even more urgent the need to act. Consisting exclusively of secular officials (including Pavel Kiselev, the guardian of state peasants who features in Chapter 6), the hyper-secret committee met twice in late December to approve the project of reunion, and the emperor signed off on the 28th. It remained now only to finish the job.42 As 1839 dawned, the region’s two governors-general were given extraordinary powers to neutralize obstacles—resistant Uniate clergy, local landowners, and Catholic officials—while Skripitsyn departed for the western provinces to help prepare the ground for reunion, in part by interrogating and admonishing the protesting Uniate priests. He concluded that most had been drawn into the matter ‘without full contemplation’, and that in order to break the defiance it was ne­ces­sary only to show that reunion truly represented the will of the tsarist government. This Skripitsyn managed to communicate (to local landowners as well as clergy), along with the message that resistance would be punished. For his part, Semashko also arrived in the region from Petersburg and soon concluded that ‘a much larger impression’ was needed in order to break the resistance to reunion.

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Orthodoxy Marches West  157 He accordingly oversaw the transfer of 15 recalcitrant priests to internal Russian provinces (where most subsequently came around to his view of things), and through a combination of threats and persuasion managed to whittle down the ranks of other resisters (‘The work was exhausting,’ he acknowledged). A number of priests who refused to convert but did not impede the reunion were allowed to live out their days in peace.43 The arrival of Cossacks, the ongoing prosecution of remaining resisters, and decisive declarations by the governor-general ensured that a gathering of Uniate clergy in Polotsk on 12 February could formally adopt the request for reunion that Semashko had already composed. Having been sep­ar­ated from the Orthodox Church and the Russian people by historical circumstances, the Act of Reunion declared, Uniates had experienced the ‘cunning policy of the former Polish Republic’ that aimed to erase ‘even the traces of the primordial origins of our people and our Church’. Yet the Almighty had deigned to return their lands to the Russian sceptre, thus making it possible for them now to seek ‘the complete restoration of their previous unity with the Russian Church’ and ‘to acquire in the bosom of their mother the tranquillity and spiritual flourishing of which they were deprived during their alienation from her’. In a separate petition, the clergy asked the emperor to permit their union with Orthodoxy.44 Nicholas formally approved the request on 25 March (a day that also figures prominently in Chapter 10), and celebration of the reunion in different locales followed over the next few months. The Uniate Church in Russia was gone.

Aftermaths The reunion was not unconditional. Uniate clergy posited the need to retain certain specificities of local religious practice as essential to making the reunion palatable to parishioners. Thus even as they requested permission to convert, they called also for ‘condescension’: certain distinct forms of attire, foods used during fasts, methods of prayer, and the shaving of beards—in short, various Uniate particularities not at odds with Orthodox dogma—should be tolerated for the time being, since these things remained crucial to clerical authority and ‘cannot be altered rapidly without significant inconvenience’.45 The police in the region backed these claims. Writing on the mood in 1837, von Drebush recommended that the clergy’s external appearance should be left as it was. The Uniate clergy was open to accepting Orthodoxy, he proposed, but the prospect of beards and new dress ‘frightens them to the point that many will even offer resistance; for, in their opinion, change of dress and growing of beards in the manner of the Orthodox clergy will have an extreme effect on the common folk, who will see in such change that their clergy has been compelled to accept an alien custom and that their religion is completely corrupted.’46 The result of these concessions,

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158 1837 writes one historian, was ‘a rather specific kind of Orthodoxy that sharply differed from the Orthodoxy of the central provinces of the Russian Empire’.47 Before long, though, Semashko began reversing those concessions. Managing beards proved a particular challenge. Von Drebush had commented that beards were alien to the local culture and even represented ‘an emblem of contempt’.48 Semashko concurred that it ‘was not so easy’ to cultivate a taste for beards. Refraining himself from growing facial hair (‘since otherwise everyone would take fright’), he had induced his vicar, Anthony Zubko, to do so ‘as an experiment’ before the reunion. Only in 1842 did Semashko himself make the switch, thus investing beard and cassock with prestige—‘all the more,’ he remarked, applying reverse psychology, ‘in that I prohibited the growing of beards and the donning of cassocks without my permission’—and vowed to grant that privilege ‘only to priests of merit and good behaviour’. Semashko claims that he did not push too hard (‘to show local Latins that our Orthodoxy does not consist merely of beard and cassock’),49 but it is clear that pressure built on these new Orthodox clerics to look the part. By the mid-1840s Orthodox superintendents could report that local clergy were growing beards and donning cassocks, with a few still lacking facial hair ‘because of their youth’. Yet there were also holdouts. For example, it was reported that a certain Andrei Shimanskii ‘has not begun to grow a beard because his wife doesn’t like it’. Shimanskii himself confirmed: his wife ‘nowise agrees to live with me when I grow a beard’. Faced with a terrible dilemma—’grow a beard or part with my wife’—Shimanskii declared, ‘I would rather part with life on this earth than with my wife.’ Even so, the poor man eventually caved in (or so it seemed) and promised to add more hair to all parts of his head. Choosing not to make too much of his insubordination (and perhaps recognizing where power truly lay), the local consistory subjected Shimanskii merely to a reprimand for his resistance. Still, his wife won this confrontation with his bosses: Shimanskii was later discovered to be shaving again, and he proved deaf to admonitions to cease.50 This case notwithstanding, a transformation did occur, if we can believe Semashko: ‘In a few years the reunited clergy became visibly Orthodox.’51 For Rome and Catholics generally, the reunion of 1839 was a disaster. While the tsarist government endeavoured to place articles in the European press promoting its view of things,52 Catholic Europe reacted with horror. At the time preparing to depart from Petersburg, the French traveller the Marquis de Custine reported that ‘several persons were secretly deploring the abolition of the Uniates, and were recounting the arbitrary measures that, with much time and effort, had brought this irreligious act as a triumph of the Russian Church’. The Orthodox, he con­ tinued, ‘are busy making martyrs. What has become of the toleration of which they boast before those who know nothing of East?’53 The papacy did what it could to counter and protest the union. In December 1838, the young heir, now touring Europe, found himself in Rome for a month, just as Petersburg was making the final decision to proceed with the reunion. Sensing the impending catastrophe,

Orthodoxy Marches West  159 Gregory XVI appealed to the young Alexander to raise the Catholic cause with his father, but Nicholas made clear that in his eyes the only Catholics in Russia now were Roman ones. In these matters, the secrecy of the reunion process paid dividends: Rome had few undeniable facts that it could reference in its protests, and it was mindful that vigorous objection might place Russia’s millions of Roman Catholics in danger as well. Only in November 1839, therefore, did the pope issue an allocution, castigating Uniate clerics for breaking with Rome and expressing anxiety for those in Russia still steadfast in upholding Catholic communion.54

Conclusion In 1834 the emperor had purportedly remarked that the Uniates’ return should be executed ‘without the slightest shock and abrupt measures, but instead calmly, peacefully, and most importantly, by conviction’.55 While some Uniate clerics proved sceptical or resistant, it appears that in their bulk they were prepared to go along. Greek Catholicism was the lesser of the two rites and arguably something of a stepchild to Rome. Though it entailed antagonizing the local Roman Catholic elite, reunion offered alliance with the empire’s ‘ruling and predominant faith’ and, for those beginning to think in national terms, an opportunity to (re)claim Eastern, Russian roots. Semashko’s forceful personality also played a role. Much harder to gauge are the sentiments of parishioners, though if we may believe Skripitsyn they didn’t really matter: ‘Uniates’, he wrote in 1838, ‘are serfs and have neither their own will nor their own way of thinking and live their lives entirely mechanically, based on external admonitions.’ By holding landlords personally responsible for their serfs’ reactions to its directives, Skripitsyn contended, the government could initiate general reunion.56 In a memo to Bludov composed after 1855, the historian Mikhail Koialovich likewise proposed that despite its noble beginnings, the reunion ‘soon transformed into a political and religious struggle between the Russian government and Polish Latinists in western Russia’, which in turn enhanced the attraction of using ‘force’. The reunion accordingly gave little opportunity for Uniates to develop their own Orthodox convictions. ‘This stamp of apathy and indecisiveness remains on them to this very day,’ he lamented. From the moment that Uniate affairs came to the Orthodox procurator in 1837, Koialovich concluded grimly, ‘the Uniate affair had to be conducted in a purely administrative fashion, forgetting about Uniates’ moral re-education’.57 Whatever the precise method, a significant act of integration had occurred. Leaving aside the regional peculiarities of Orthodoxy in the reunited parishes, the complete liquidation of the Uniate Church in the empire had simplified Russia’s confessional landscape. The boundary between Catholicism—now only in its Latin form—and Orthodoxy became sharper. Former Uniates were now subject

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160 1837 to the same bishops and consistories as their long-term Orthodox compatriots. Russia’s Orthodox community was now larger by a million-and-a-half. Despite Koialovich’s worries about the lost opportunity for former Uniates to develop more conscious attachments to Orthodoxy, there are few indications that they aspired to abandon their new faith, even when they—or their descendants—were given the opportunity to do so in 1905. Whether these communities came to regard themselves as Russian in the tsarist era is harder to say. But any such result is at least partly attributable to the reunion. Still, just as the process of ‘reunion’ began before Nicholas’s reign, it was not fully complete even in 1839. The Greek Catholic Church had ceased to exist within the empire proper, but a quarter-million Uniates remained in the Kingdom of Poland, an entity distinct from the rest of the empire. In a process much more contentious and coercive, those Greek Catholics became formally Orthodox in 1875, at which point Uniate communities existed only beyond Russia’s borders: in Austrian Galicia, Hungarian Transylvania, and among immigrants in North America. When Russian forces occupied Galicia in the Autumn of 1914, the process of reunion started again. The culmination of the unionist drive came in 1946, when Stalin’s USSR engineered the self-destruction of the Greek Catholic Church in newly incorporated western Ukraine (formerly Galicia), while nearby satellites—Romania and Czechoslovakia— effectuated ‘reunions’ of their own. Only the collapse of the USSR in 1991 allowed these unions to be partially reversed, though the communities addressed in this chapter have generally retained their Orthodox orientation. Now primarily in Belarus, they are still subject to the Moscow patriarchate, itself the successor of the empire’s Holy Synod, whose chief procurator acquired jurisdiction over their Uniate ancestors in the first legislative act of 1837.

Notes 1. PSZ 9825 (1 Jan. 1837): 1. 2. Borys  A.  Gudziak, Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, MA, 2001). 3. The imperial view: M.  O.  Koialovich, Istoriia vossoedineniia zapadnorusskikh uniatov starykh vremen, do 1800 g. (SPb, 1873), esp. 340–66. More recently: Barbara Skinner, The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in EighteenthCentury Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia (DeKalb, IL, 2009), 196–225. 4. Koialovich, Istoriia vossoedineniia, 358–85; Skinner, Western Front, 219–25; Stefan Runkevich, Istoriia Minskoi Arkhiepiskopii (SPb, 1893), esp. 291–3. 5. The Basilian order had been created for Uniates in 1617. See Gavriil Khrustsevich, Istoriia Zamoiskogo Sobora 1720 g. (Vil’na, 1880), 3. 6. Skinner, Western Front, 201, 231; Serhii Plokhy, Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation (New York, 2017), 63–70. 7. Paul W. Werth, The Tsar’s Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia (Oxford, 2014), 46–73.

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Orthodoxy Marches West  161 8. Skinner, Western Front, 36–41; Khrustsevich, Istoriia. 9. PSZ 1449 (9 Oct. 1827): 877–8. 10. The fundamental work—partisan but thorough—is P. O. Bobrovskii, Russkaia grekouniatskaia tserkov’ v tsarstvovanie Aleksandra I: Istoricheskoe issledovanie po arkhivnym dokumentam (SPb, 1890). A fine summary of the process is in Barbara Skinner, ‘In the Orthodox Fold: Russia’s Religious Conquest of its Western Empire, 1800–1855’ (book MS), ch. 3. 11. Semashko’s own account is in Zapiski Iosifa Mitropolita Litovskogo, izdannye Imperatorskoi Akademiei Nauk po zaveshchaniia avtora, vol. 1 (SPb, 1883), 49–101 (citations at 91 and 73–4). 12. RGADA, f. 1274, op. 1, d. 560 (Bludov to emperor, 21 May 1827), ll. 6–6ob. 13. Semashko, Zapiski Iosifa, vol. 1, 59, 73, 77 (citation at 67). 14. This is also Mikhail Koialovich’s view in his review of Semashko’s memoirs, ‘Kritikia i bibliografiia’, Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia 231 (Jan. 1884): 331–47 (esp. 333 and 345). 15. RGADA, f. 1274, op. 1, d. 69, ll. 1–2ob. 16. Werth, Tsar’s Foreign Faiths, 42–4; Elena  A.  Vishlenkova, Zabotias’ o dushakh ­poddannykh: Religioznaia politika v Rossii v pervoi chetverti XIX veka (Saratov, 2002). 17. F. F. Vigel’, Zapiski, vol. 2 (Moscow, 2003), 1335–6. Vigel’s account is presumably based on what Bludov told him. 18. The memo of 5 Nov. 1827 is published in Semashko, Zapiski Iosifa, vol. 1, 387–98 (citations at 387, 393 and 398). 19. Vigel’, Zapiski, 1335. 20. Semashko’s memo of 5 Nov. 1827 in Zapiski Iosifa, 394 (ellipse in the original). 21. Ibid. 387. 22. As quoted in Vigel’, Zapiski, 1335. 23. RGADA, f. 1274, op. 1, d. 547 (24.01.1832), l. 1ob. 24. Georgii Shavel’skii, Poslednee vossoedinenie s pravoslavnoiu tserkov’iu uniatov Belorusskoi eparkhii (SPb, 1910), 174–5 (citation at 175). The original document on this score— drafted by Semashko and revised by Bludov—is an appendix to Koialovich, ‘Kritika’, 355–8. 25. Bludov, 1827, in Koialovich, ‘Kritika’, 349. 26. Shavel’skii, Poslednee, 168–73 (citation at 16). 27. Koialovich, ‘Kritika’, 338. 28. Zapiski Iosifa, 60. 29. Skinner, ‘In the Orthodox Fold’, ch. 4; Zapiski Iosifa, 70–71. 30. Shavel’skii, Poslednee, 73–6; Bludov, in appendix to Koialovich, ‘Kritika’, 356. 31. Bludov to emperor (25 May 1835), in Koialovich, ‘Kritika’, 356. 32. Zapiski Iosifa, 78. 33. Bludov to emperor (25 May 1835), in Koialovich, ‘Kritika’, 358. 34. Zapiski Iosifa, 49–101 (citations at 68, 85, 88); Shavel’skii, Poslednee, 193–226; and Barbara Skinner, ‘Conversion and Culture in Russia’s Western Borderlands, 1800–1855’, in Yoko Aoshima (ed.), Entangled Interactions between Religions and National Identities in Central and Eastern Europe (Boston, MA, 2020), 29–49. 35. Bludov, cited in Shavel’skii, Poslednee, 232–4. 36. Zapiski Iosifa, 84.

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162 1837 37. PSZ 9825 (1 Jan. 1837): 1; GARF, f. 109 (expedition 1), op. 12 (1837), d. 23 (henceforward ‘GARF-Uniates’), ll. 1–2. 38. Three reports by Drebush in GARF-Uniates, ll. 6–9, 16–24, 25–46ob. (citations at ll. 7–8, 16–18ob.). 39. Zapiski Iosifa, 110. These were generally clerics in mid-level leadership positions. 40. RGIA, f. 797, op. 7, d. 23190 (citations at ll. 1 and 12); also Zapiski Iosifa, 110–11. 41. Zapiski Iosifa, 113, 115–16. 42. Shavel’skii, Poslednee, 274–302. 43. Zapiski Iosifa, 128–30 (citation at 129); Shavel’skii, Poslednee, 305–22 (citations at 308 and 311). 44. Zapiski Iosifa, 119–24. 45. Petition, in ibid. 125. 46. GARF-Uniates, ll. 43–43ob. 47. Elena Filatova, Konfessional’naia politika tsarskogo pravitel’stva v Belarusi, 1772–1860 gg. (Minsk, 2006), esp. 92–8 (citation at 92). See also Skinner, ‘Conversion and Culture’, 49. 48. GARF-Uniates, ll. 44ob. 49. Zapiski Iosifa, 142–3. 50. Liеtuvos Valstybės Istorijos Archyvas (Vilnius, Lithuania), f. 605, op. 2, d. 2302, citations at ll. 13, 14, 15–15ob., and 31 (documents from 1843–44). 51. Zapiski Iosifa, 143. In 1827 Semashko wrote with fondness of his bewhiskered grandfather, also a Uniate priest, adding that ‘his grey beard left a good impression in my memory’ (Zapiski Iosifa, 438). 52. GARF, f. 109 (expedition 1), op. 14, 1839, d. 303. 53. Marquis de Custine, Russie en 1839, vol. 4 (Paris, 1843), 295. 54. Adrien Boudou, Le Saint-Siège et la Russie: Leurs Relations Diplomatiques au XIXe Siècle, vol. 1 (Paris, 1922), 221–6. 55. Lomachevskii, ‘Zapiski zhandarma’, 248. 56. Cited in Shavel’skii, Poslednee, 276–7. 57. Anonymous undated memo (by all indications Koialovich, after 1855) in RGADA, f. 1274, op. 1, d. 569, ll. 45–52 (citations at 49–49ob. and 51).

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9

A Unicorn, Violent but Submissive People are usually surprised when their excellent ideas encounter opposition. Yet sometimes the absence of protest is equally remarkable. Franz Anton von Gerstner, the builder of Russia’s first railroad, certainly thought so. ‘What has still amazed me in Russia’, he wrote in a report on the railroad’s progress in February of 1837, ‘is the weak opposition in the newspapers and journals to railways in general and our enterprise in particular.’1 Along with the steamship, the railroad constituted the principal transport innovation of the nineteenth century. Nothing provided a more vivid and dramatic sign of modernity. Altering conceptions of space and time, creating new forms of subjective experience, and signaling the triumph of mechanical regularity over natural irregularity, railways represented a providential event akin to the invention of gunpowder and printing. As the German poet Heinrich Heine declared, ‘What changes must now occur, in our way of looking at things, in our notions!’2 In Russia, the effect was no less profound. As one booster proclaimed in 1837, ‘For my part I know of nothing that can so powerfully incite the im­agin­ation as the run—one should say flight—across the fields of that mighty machine, which seethes with boiling water, full of red-hot coals; it is a unicorn, violent but submissive, an erupting volcano.’3 Those who experienced the railway’s arrival sensed that they stood at the threshold of a new era. As one Russian engineer predicted in a letter to a friend in 1844, ‘From this point history will now feature two major epochs in the transformation of society: the introduction of Christianity and the introduction of the railway. The Gospel preaches universal brotherhood among people, and the railroad is the material means for attaining this goal.’4 The railroad became a quintessential feature of Russia’s nineteenth century and in a basic sense defines modern Russia. It significantly increased mobility in Russia and contributed fundamentally to the country’s integration, eventually linking distant locations and people in an expanding transport network. It facilitated Slavic settlement of Asia and remains a critical form of transport in Russia to this day. The opening of the first line in 1837 thus represents a moment of birth. There is nothing to be done: we must explore it here.

1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0010

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164 1837

The Decision to Build Nineteenth-century Russia is typically presented as an agrarian country. This is true but also misleading. Various forms of industry, trade, and handicrafts occupied a prominent place for many of the country’s inhabitants. Even serf owners did not all employ their charges in the fields alone, but also in factories and mills. Nor was the government wedded to an ideal of agrarian utopia. Rather, Petersburg sought cautiously to promote industry, trade, and commerce. This preoccupation is evident in the heir’s travels recounted in Chapter 4. At major stops on the itinerary, locals were instructed to organize exhibitions of local manufactures and handicrafts, and the heir himself commented on these matters in letters to his father. Constantine Arseniev’s guidebook for the heir placed such matters at the forefront of its descriptions. Thus the town of Shui, in Vladimir province, was hailed as ‘one of the most important manufacturing cities of the entire Empire’, and in its manufacturing prowess Ivanovo was presented as ‘second only to the capitals’. The dismissal of other cities was likewise closely connected with the absence of manufactures and trade. ‘Up to now,’ the book explained to the heir, ‘Viatka remains an insignificant provincial capital, having neither factories nor mills.’ And a guide for the empress suggested that a similar absence made Nizhnedevitsk ‘the most insignificant of all towns in Voronezh province’.5 Alexander displayed considerable interest in manufactures and transport, making it a point of asking numerous questions at various stops, sometimes even participating in the work. The government’s openness to railways should be seen in this wider context. In its simplest outline, the story goes like this. While Russian entrepreneurs and other mechanics in the Urals and Altai had produced early steam engines and small cast-iron railway lines to serve factories and mines, a fully fledged discussion of railways in Russia began only in the early 1830s. An article by Nikolai Shcheglov in 1830 advocating a horse-drawn system of metal rails is often con­ sidered the first intervention. Not long after, in August 1834, the Austrian subject von Gerstner arrived in Russia to investigate mines and industry. Having previously constructed a railway from Budweis to Linz in Bohemia and sensing an opportunity for enrichment, he quickly became a proponent of railways in Russia. By early January 1835 he had submitted a corresponding memorandum to Emperor Nicholas. Gerstner envisioned a network consisting, in the first instance, of a line between the two capitals, and then extending from Moscow to the Volga at Nizhnii Novgorod and subsequently to Odessa or Taganrog in the south. This proposal set in motion a series of discussions at the highest level, as a result of which Gerstner agreed to undertake construction of a short line designed to demonstrate the viability of railways in Russia: 25 km from the imperial capital to the suburb (and palace complex) at Tsarskoe Selo, and on from there a short distance to Pavlovsk. By March 1836 the government had authorized the creation of

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A Unicorn, Violent but Submissive  165 a stock company for the enterprise, and work on construction of the line began in May 1836. The ceremonial opening came on 30 October 1837.6 Several factors converged in the mid-1830s to provide impetus for the project. For one, Nicholas’s autocracy was eager to stimulate the local economy in ways inspired by Adam Smith. Smith proposed that an agrarian stage of economic development would necessarily give way to a new stage of commercial society, characterized by trade, industry, and a market economy. Though tempered by conservatism and commitments to autocracy, Nicholas embraced this Smithian thinking. Two Russian students had studied with Smith in the 1760s and publicized his ideas in Russia upon their return (Wealth of Nations appeared in Russian in 1802–6). Nicholas’s own visit to Britain in 1816–17 also played a role. Industrializing cities like Manchester and Birmingham were prominent on his itinerary, and for several hours virtually every day he had investigated factories, canals, and railways. By the 1830s tsarist officials were well aware of Smith’s theory and set about establishing institutions—including libraries, statistical committees, and the provincial gazettes described in Chapter  5—in order to encourage development along the lines he prescribed.7 To be sure, not everyone agreed with this project. Enlightened noble landowners, for example, were sooner in favour of developing the agrarian economy than in promoting industrialization. But even these persons were in some measure adherents to Smithian thought and envisioned an innovative Russia. ‘Few were opposed to industrialization per se,’ writes William Blackwell; ‘the dispute was over the methods and pace.’8 Aside perhaps from Nicholas’s gloomy minister of finance Georg Ludwig Cancrin, who was especially sceptical about change, most elites in Russia saw some need for development. Susan Smith-Peter remarks in this context, ‘Russia was among the first countries to realize that it was backward, lagging behind European trends, and it was also one of the first to take steps to encourage the transition to a new, commercial, stage of society.’9 Railways could play a vital role in this development and were also quite consistent with a vision focused primarily on the promotion of Russian agriculture. More directly relevant was that Russia’s communications continued to represent a serious challenge. True, the country’s early modern roads have probably got a bad rap, and actually offered comparatively speedy travel, especially by the 1820s when diligences made their appearance. Carts in summer and sledges in winter could quickly carry goods high in value but low in bulk. Russia’s canal system was extensive, with substantial new portions opened in 1810–11 linking Petersburg to the interior and thus representing a major accomplishment in the task of provisioning the capital. The Lady Londonderry called the highway between the two capitals (completed in 1834) ‘a magnificent work’, indeed ‘by far the finest road I ever saw’. Even the Marquis de Custine, who deplored all of Russia’s roads and lamented their destructive effect on his carriage, allowed that Russia’s system of internal navigation ‘forms one of the wonders of the civilized world’.10 But real inadequacies in Russian communications remained. Both the

166 1837 growth of Petersburg’s population and growing trade in Russian raw materials with foreign countries placed pressure on the canal system. Goods moved slowly (usually not more 10 km a day on the Volga), in large, crude barges (in 1832 the whole country had only 17 steamboats); goods from Astrakhan could take a year or more to reach Petersburg. They moved up-river thanks to boatmen—there were at least 400,000 such toilers on the Volga alone in 1815—who either towed the vessels along a towpath or kedged from on board the vessels themselves. Rivers ran low on water in the dry season, leaving barges stranded; in dry summers the upper Volga was often impassable. Harsh winters rendered water transport inoperable for months—in the north, as many as six or seven of each year. As for roads, during the thaw and the autumn rains many became impassable. They required frequent repairs, as did their numerous bridges. Preparations for the heir’s tour in 1837 (see Chapter 4) had revealed all kinds of limitations—floods that swept away bridges, swollen rivers with currents so rapid as to exclude ferry crossings, deep snow that would impede progress even in May; lengthy stretches through deep forest and bogs with no lodgings, etc.—and his itinerary was altered accordingly.11 Parts of the country had essentially no roads at all and were ac­cess­ ible only by sledge in winter. In short, Russia’s transport system was functional but left much to be desired.12 As the German August von Haxthausen declared after travels in Russia in the 1840s, ‘The greatest requirement of Russia is improved and suitable means of communication’, without which ‘she is a colossal unwieldy giant, whose hands and feet are tied’.13 Developments in other countries also shaped Russian thinking on the railway question. Appearing first in England in the 1820s, railroads had quickly demonstrated their utility and induced other states, after some debate and hesitation, to embark on railway construction. Rapid improvements created further incentive to embrace the new technology.14 Gerstner, who himself had visited England on three occasions in the 1820s to study the newest developments, could claim in early 1836: ‘Over the last ten years no issue of technical Mechanics has so strongly engaged universal attention in enlightened States as has the establishment of railways.’15 By that time France had three rail lines, Austria had the one Gerstner himself had built, and Belgium’s parliament had authorized construction of an entire network for that young country. With 46 completed lines and another 137 in planning, the USA had become ‘in essence the true fatherland of railroads’.16 In contrast to these foreign developments, Russia’s own efforts at rail construction for factories and mines in the Urals and Altai seem not to have shaped discussions substantively. The inventors of those systems had few ties with official Russia, while foreigners like Gerstner had more experience and expertise. For example, during his grand tour of 1837 the heir to the throne, Alexander, recorded little interest in the 3 km rail line at the Demidov factories in Nizhnii Tagil, constructed by the father-and-son team of serf mechanics Yefim and Miron Cherepanov to carry copper ore from mine to factory.17

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A Unicorn, Violent but Submissive  167 In this context, Gerstner appeared at just the right time to propose a railway system for Russia and to undertake the first step in its construction. There were of course engineers in Russia who had already been making the argument on behalf of railways, but Gerstner brought valuable experience, produced the first concrete proposal for an extensive network, and assembled investors and capital to build an experimental line.18 Still, in an autocracy, a project as important as this required the emperor’s assent, especially given that cost overruns were likely to require the state’s intervention (as indeed occurred). Nicholas seems intuitively to have sensed the importance of this new technology—he had training as a military engineer and thus took a natural interest in such matters—even if he remained cautious in promoting its adoption. In one meeting of a committee on the matter in February 1835, the emperor, according to one attendee, ‘depicted in a lively and absorbing speech all the advantages that, in his view, the construction of railroads on a large scale in Russia would bring’.19 Later, when the transport minister argued that enhanced trade in Russia required improvements to navigation above all, Nicholas remarked, ‘I admit that I am more inclined to recognize the railroad as something very useful and likely to significantly facilitate internal trade.’20 It follows that the value of railways was not a foregone conclusion. Despite Gerstner’s remark about merely ‘weak opposition’ in the press, a number of figures, some occupying prominent places in the tsarist bureaucracy, remained sceptical about the benefits of the new technology. There were several reasons for their hesitation. Some continued to hold that existing roads (especially in winter) and canals served the country well and that the best plan was to promote their improvement. Thus a Frenchman in Russian service at the ministry of transport, Moris Destrem, calculated that canals were over three times as efficient for freight transport in Russia and emphasized the expense of constructing embankments and bridges for railways. The ministers of finance and transport, Cancrin and Karl Toll, shared these views, with the former noting the threat that rail presented to both the coach business and to forests, which were likely to be decimated in the absence of coal. Toll contended that proponents of railways placed too much emphasis on speed. ‘The main condition to which our internal trade in agricultural production is subordinated’, he proposed, ‘is not the haste of conveyance, but its low price.’ From this standpoint water transport was ideal. Another concern involved the climate, as some feared that railways would prove ill-suited to Russia’s cold and snow. Destrem, in particular, doubted that rail was compatible with Russia’s severe winters, and envisioned difficulties with clearing snow from the line.21 Financial concerns also proved significant. A line between the two capitals was estimated to cost 120,000,000 roubles, which caused Cancrin to balk: was it really wise to deploy such a sum ‘on a completely risky enterprise’?22 The fear was that even while relying on private investors, the state would ultimately be on the line for overruns and maintenance. There were even trepidations about the democratizing implications of railways—i.e. that railways were likely to promote

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168 1837 the spread of democratic ideas. All of these considerations drove sceptics to conclude that railroads’ benefits were merely relative, not absolute.23 But proponents had their counterarguments. Economic success, many were realizing, depended on investments in infrastructure. Thus, Gerstner proposed, the English and Americans had already recognized the fundamental truth that ‘not only cheap but also rapid communications constitute an unconditional requirement for the prospering of trade’. Among other things, he argued, a line to Tsarskoe Selo would stimulate construction of new dacha settlements along its length.24 Along similar lines, the engineer (and future minister of transport) Pavel Melnikov declared in 1835 that the improvement of internal communications represented ‘the central source of activity in the industry and trade that constitute the distinguishing characteristic of our age’. The Moscow merchant Aggei Abaza, who proposed a Petersburg–Moscow line in 1838, predicted that such a project would ‘open a countless multitude of new sources of wealth and prosperity among all classes’ and bring lower prices for goods in the capital. Emphasizing the importance of Rome’s roads for the power of its empire, Gerstner remarked: ‘the history of all peoples demonstrates that they remained in ignorance and a crude condition as long as the state’s inhabitants, faced with inadequate communications, could not communicate their opinions and experiences to one another and exchange the products of their land and industry.’25 Embedded in such views was a dose of optimistic internationalism. Wrote one anonymous author of railways, ‘How much change they will produce in the mutual relations and intercourse among enlightened peoples!’26 Politically, boosters argued, the railroad could promote the country’s unity. Only railways, contended Gerstner, ‘can form a chain not of iron but of gold, that mutually link all parts of the Empire that is justly called immense’. Discussions reveal a certain painful awareness that Petersburg, in contrast to the country’s historical capital of Moscow, occupied the country’s periphery, and that its closer connection with other parts needed to be deliberately fostered. Abaza contended that steam power could ‘place Petersburg at the centre of the state’, and he also suggested that the railway was a large project that could unite tsar and people in common purpose. A commission in 1841 likewise concluded that without a line to Moscow ‘St Petersburg can only be Russia’s head; when connected to Moscow by rail link, it will be with Russia’s heart.’ There were also military and strategic applications: Gerstner noted that the Manchester–Liverpool line in England had facilitated troop deployments against ‘disorders’ in Ireland. Imagine, he remarked, if Russia had had this advantage during recent wars with Persia and Turkey. And if the country had had lines leading to Grodno or Warsaw in the west, then ‘it would have been possible to subdue the Polish insurgents [of the November Insurrection of 1830] in four weeks’ (as opposed to the extended campaign that was required). The ability to move military forces rapidly appealed very much to Nicholas. A line to the Volga at Nizhnii Novgorod or Kazan could

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A Unicorn, Violent but Submissive  169 enhance connections with the Caspian region, and ‘such rapid, cheap and reliable communication’ would in turn secure ‘Asian trade’ and displace the English rival.27 Some boosters even discerned benefits in the realm of health and recreation. Proposing that fresh air and movement represented medicine in their own right, one enthusiast predicted that doctors would soon be prescribing railway trips as a cure. Extending the point, he proposed that railways were safer than other forms of transport (there were no bolting horses, no drunk or tired drivers, no wooden axles to break), and that brigandage would end (‘What can a band of robbers do against an entire army of travellers, whom the machine whirls along at such speed?’). Concerning the route to Tsarskoe Selo specifically, Gerstner emphasized the unhealthy conditions of urban life in Russia’s capital and asked rhetorically: ‘Is it not fair to assert that there is not one European capital whose residents have such need to spend the summer beyond the city, as in Petersburg?’ He envisioned, indeed, that with the railway many would choose to live outside the city and commute to work there, at least in the summer. And many urban residents, in both summer and winter, would ride the railway either to stroll in the exurban parks or just for the sake of the ride. Thus the rail line represents ‘an enterprise beneficial to the health of the capital’s residents’.28 In short, contemporaries proposed that railways could enhance economic life, military strength, territorial integration, governance, and health. In all of these discussions, though, political considerations seem to have outweighed economic ones for proponents and opponents alike.29 Unable to block the railway, its opponents did compel Gerstner to propose the short line to Tsarskoe Selo as an experiment to demonstrate railways’ viability in Russia. The purpose of the first line, as Gerstner remarked, was to convince ­people ‘by large-scale experiment, whether railways may be introduced in Russia, and with what advantage, despite the climate’.30 Though the project was a comparatively small one, the decision to build had been taken.

Construction, Trials, and Opening Construction began in March 1836, as soon as the company had been formed. It had 700 stockholders by January, 641 of them residing in Russia (though the 59 foreign investors held close to half of the stock). Gerstner immediately travelled abroad to order equipment: locomotives, rolling stock, and warning devices (organ-like instruments consisting of eleven pipes and a trombone). Gerstner had hoped to acquire rails within Russia, but no company tendered an offer, so he was forced to purchase abroad. Gerstner left Austrian engineers to carry out pre­lim­in­ ary work (Nicholas had admitted all foreigners to the project except Frenchmen). Some 3,000 workers toiled on the line, with contractors hiring some labour locally but also serfs from estates hundreds of kilometres away (who typically arrived on foot). They began draining swamps and building embankments (usually 3 m in

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170 1837 height, but as high as 6 m in places), all designed to make for a straight line. The process revealed the need for 17 more bridges than the original 24 envisioned. The laying of rails, received from England, began in August 1836, and trials over part of the line using horses began the next month. Trials with locomotives could occur after those had arrived in October.31 The trials went well. In Gerstner’s telling, when a test run of 8 km using horses occurred in September 1836, ‘everyone without exception was amazed by the ease with which peasant horses, having previously traversed only ordinary roads, could be used on an iron one as well, and by the weight they could pull’. Northern Bee confirmed this account, calling the motion of 60 people and well over 3,000 kilograms ‘even [and] pleasant’ and remarking of those who had the chance to ride, ‘The pleasure and approval were universal. The rides continued until dusk. There was not the slightest fear, alarm, or danger. Long live Russian railways! Glory to Mr von Gerstner!’ Trials in October drew ‘particular praise’ for the railway crossings: those riding in ordinary carriages ‘will not notice that they have crossed the railway unless the pay particular attention’. More important were three trials in the winter of 1836–7, which showed that the English steam engines could function in –22° C and that even during ‘a frightful snowstorm’ the wind cleared the snow from tracks, leaving the workers mobilized for that task ‘with almost nothing to do’. In late November several thousand spectators came out in ‘foul weather’ to see how the engine would perform in a snowstorm. ‘With extraordinary ease’ the train, over 40 m in length, began moving, ‘to the amazement of the multitudinous public’. In September 1837 the terminal in Petersburg (by Semenovskii Platz at the end of Gorokhovaia Street) was complete, allowing trials from the capital out beyond the city. For five days as the trains went into service, the area around the terminal was ‘covered by a countless multitude of curious people’.32 Indeed, many Russians embraced the railway with enthusiasm. Large crowds (‘a multitudinous, diverse public’, wrote Northern Bee at one point) came out to witness and try out the railway. Gerstner reported that during a trial in January 1837, the public had approached the line and engines with such ‘carelessness’ that it had proved impossible to authorize full speed. Northern Bee confirmed that while keepers insistently asked spectators to stand clear of the line, ‘some people just do not want to obey and even stand between the rails’. In January 1837 more than 1,000 sleds went out from the capital to Tsarskoe Selo and Pavlovsk to try the railway. The aspiring passengers ‘jostled in such large numbers to occupy places [in the train] that 115 people, including ladies, took places in the baggage wagon made for the transport of building lumber. It was not possible to impose order in the crush of that crowd.’ The company even changed the fare structure for tickets in order to handle the throngs aspiring to ride (third- and fourth-class tickets were eliminated to keep away the riff-raff). Steam engines and trains meanwhile appeared on popular prints, calico kerchiefs, and candy boxes. June 1838 already featured a dramatic play by Pavel Fedorov, ‘A Trip to Tsarskoe Selo by Rail’, whose

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A Unicorn, Violent but Submissive  171

Figure 9.1.  Friedrich von Martens, Arrival of the First Train from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo on 30 October 1837. Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo.

action unfolded on a train and gave a central role to the steam engine. The poet N. V. Kukolnik composed verse about the railway after several rides.33 The formal opening of the railway occurred on 30 October 1837. Along the whole line people began congregating from early morning. At around 1.30 p.m., with an engine from the Stephenson factory at its head and Gerstner at the controls, a train set out, frightening spectators with its whistle and compelling dogs to let out bursts of barking. Loud applause and cries of ‘hooray!’ resonated at Tsarskoe Selo as the train pulled in and the riders—’the most resplendent society’ of various social, literary, artistic, and diplomatic elites—received a ‘luxurious Petersburg lunch’.34 For the occasion a medal was struck declaring: ‘Nicholas I, the worthy successor of Peter the Great, introduced railways to Russia.’ Giving due credit to Gerstner (while also playing up his Czech ethnicity), the obverse read: ‘The builder of the first railway was Franz Gerstner, by birth a Czech and fellow Slav to Russians’ (the tsar ordered the medal withdrawn from circulation given its subversive implications for monarchy in Austria).35 During the winter of 1837–8 the line still used steam power intermittently, other­wise relying on horses. From 4 April 1838 steam power was used exclusively, and one historian avers, ‘It is on this date that the full operation of the Tsarskoe Selo Railway may be said to have begun.’ A week later, on 12 April, the emperor rode the railway for the first time ‘and was completely satisfied with both the speed and the comfort and safety of those trips’. He rode the next day with his family, and thereafter this was his principal way of getting to Tsarskoe Selo. By

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172 1837 Table 9.1.  Railway trips and passengers, 1838–41 (a) Year

(b) Overall no. of trips

(c) Total km travelled

(d) Total passengers

1838 1839 1840 1841

3,500 5,091 3,709 3,793

139,000 106,000 107,000 107,000

598,000 726,000 607,000 599,000

Source: V. S. Virginskii, Vozniknovenie zheleznykh dorog v Rossii do nachala 40-kh godov XIX veka (Moscow, 1949), 173

early April 1838 trains were running every day with steam engines, and by the end of the year more than half a million people had ridden. Passengers not only sat in wagons; some rode in their own carriages on platform cars. Dogs and smoking were soon prohibited, and the first train schedule appeared. For the rest of Nicholas’s reign the railway carried between 500,000 and almost 850,000 passengers annually.36 Statistics for the first four years are shown in Table 9.1. The station at Pavlovsk, opened in May 1838, merits special mention. In order to draw more riders, the station offered special attractions: a large hall for dinners, balls, and concerts, as well as 40 guest rooms, a billiards hall, and other amenities. An orchestra played there each day, and on Sundays in September there were fireworks and illuminations at the park. The works of Mikhail Glinka (who set Kukolnik’s verse to music) were among the first to give the musical programme at Pavlovsk a more serious character. Over ensuing years a series of musical celebrities passed through Pavlovsk—including Franz Liszt and Robert and Clara Schumann in the early 1840s—and Johann Strauss the younger eventually made Pavlovsk into a proper concert venue. The Pavlovsk station thus became a beloved meeting place for nearby dacha and villa residents, as well as a centre for Petersburg musical life. The Russian word for ‘train station’ (vokzal) dates to this time and refers precisely to these entertainments: the term, derived from the Vauxhall Gardens near Kennington and a leading entertainment venue for Londoners, originally designated a ‘place of amusement’ in Russian but was then applied to the Pavlovsk station in light of its diversions—or what Gerstner proposed as ‘a new Tivoli, a beautiful Vauxhall’.37 Is it possible to capture the novelty and excitement of the railway in Russia? Northern Bee gives a sense. One gets into the train, the paper described, and you don’t have the time to take a seat before, after the sound of a bell, the long chain of twelve enormous carriages majestically comes into motion. . . . At its first step, a joyful cry escapes from the proud jaws of the powerful animal, but soon it calms itself and [simply] runs. Only with difficulty can you follow the smoke, which flashes before your eyes momentarily. You don’t feel any movement: everything flies along with us: with wings the wind lashes your face and

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A Unicorn, Violent but Submissive  173 refreshes your hot brow; your heart beats more slowly. On the railway you don’t drive, but rather slide, and you arrive, it seems, before you have even left.

Another account praised the unique ‘poetry’ of rail travel: ‘Let whoever wishes dare to speak up after [a ride on the rail] about the pleasures of the highway, about the poetry of diligences; let them dare to compare horses raised in the meadows and fed on hay and straw with my unicorn, which was born in fire and feeds on it as well. Let them praise the art and dexterity of coachmen; for me there is nothing on earth more majestic than the composure of my cyclone!’38 The speed of travel produced a particularly strong impression on many. After a 15-month trip to Europe in 1837 to investigate railways, the engineer Melnikov pointed to ‘the advantage of speed’ as representing the largest factor favouring the new technology, and the committee that finally made the recommendation to embark on the construction of the line to Moscow also declared that speed ‘is regarded now as the first necessity for trade, as it facilitates the cheapening and sale of goods’.39 Steam engines arriving from England could manage 105–20 kmh without friction (i.e. when suspended in air), and in November 1837 Northern Bee hailed the mere 30 minutes or so that it took to reach Tsarskoe Selo and the 27 for the return. Another newspaper reported of the ride at the official opening, ‘60 versts an hour [64 kmh]: it’s frightening to think! And yet you sit peacefully; you don’t notice that speed, which terrifies the imagination; only the wind whistles, only the horse breathes a spume of fire.’ Conceptions of space changed, too. Having arrived at Tsarskoe Selo and then quickly returned to Petersburg, wrote Northern Bee, ‘you simply cannot believe that you traversed more than 40 versts [43 km] without having felt any fatigue, that the panorama of palaces, churches and houses that you saw were really Tsarskoe Selo, that the galleries through which you just strolled are now twenty versts away!’40 There was a sense, then, in which distance had shrunk and space had been mastered.

The Next Step? For some the Tsarskoe Selo line left little doubt about railways’ benefits to Russia. The trials had shown that trains could operate in the worst conditions of Russian winter, and Northern Bee contended already in January 1837: ‘All passengers were convinced of the importance and utility of steam engines and railroads.’ By September, the paper concluded, the case was clinched. Noting the prospects of being able to get to Moscow in 12 hours and Sebastopol in two days, the paper asked rhetorically: ‘Can anyone actually say that railroads in Russia are useless?’ St Petersburg News similarly expressed certainty that the inaugural line was merely the first step in the development of a new form of transport for the country with ‘beneficial consequences that one cannot even completely foresee’. And

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174 1837 an English-language account found the experiences of 1836–7 to reveal that ‘the introduction into Russia, of railways, judiciously constructed, is not attended with such difficulties as appearances would at first have led one to suppose’.41 New proponents of railways appeared. Commandeered to European countries in 1837–8, the engineers Melnikov and S. V. Kerbedz returned to Russia and published a strong endorsement of railways in 1840. Proposing that the steam engine’s invention ‘constitutes one of the most important epochs in the history of peoples’, the two placed a new emphasis on the railway’s speed, which in terms of administration and intercourse rendered a country 16 times smaller. Such advantages were simply too large to ignore, they asserted. The railway in Europe had brought cities much closer together, and ‘that activity of movement is a fruit of growing industry and trade, which in turn is fed by the conveniences of mutual intercourse of people and by the saving of time.’42 Melnikov subsequently visited America in 1839–40 and did even more to promote railways in Russia on that basis. He returned, he recalled later, absolutely convinced ‘of the truth that railroads are essential to Russia, that they were so to speak invented for her’ more than for any European country.43 For all that, the benefits were not so obvious as to dispel hesitation, and in fact the years 1838–9 marked a high point of resistance to further railway construction. The first line had been expensive—chiefly because of Gerstner’s focus on the quality of the work and equipment—and there were accordingly cost overruns. The company was originally authorized to issue as much as 3.5 million roubles in stock, but overruns compelled Gerstner to seek a government loan of another 1.5 million in order to complete the project. Despite Cancrin’s opposition, the loan was granted, probably because the government—and Nicholas in particular—did not wish to shake public confidence in the project. Another 250,000 had to be loaned in 1838, with the final cost of the railway being 5,439,480 roubles.44 In light of the expense that the state was likely to incur in the next stage of railway development, Nicholas proved hesitant and more inclined to listen to the sceptics Toll and Cancrin. Projects after the first line’s opening thus unfolded more slowly and with greater reticence. Still in 1836, Gerstner proposed a line from Moscow to Kolomna, but although he received a green light for an initial survey, he moved to the USA in 1838 and died before being able to return. An 1838 proposal by the merchant Abaza for a line connecting the two capitals encountered extreme caution in the government committee charged with its consideration. There was too much guesswork and too few guarantees that the project could succeed. The railway in Europe and America ‘is still an entirely new affair’, the committee concluded. It remained hard to determine whether the benefits were actually commensurate with the expense, and it was thus ‘better and wiser’ to see what happened next in other countries, building on those innovations to reduce expense. On this basis Abaza’s plan was declined. Other such plans encountered similar hesitation,

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A Unicorn, Violent but Submissive  175 with Russia explicitly seeking to profit from the experiments of others.45 In short: no rush, we can afford to wait—and we’ll be better off if we do. Thus even while the Tsarskoe Selo line had demonstrated viability in key respects, the step from a short line like that to one traversing grander expanses caused the tsarist government to flinch. In the end only two other projects were completed before the Crimean War. On the one hand, in 1839 Russia began construction of a line extending 307 km from Warsaw to the Austrian border, which eventually linked the capital of Russian Poland with Vienna. The project included an unprecedented government guarantee of a 4 per cent yearly dividend to investors. Part of the line opened in 1845, and work was completed in 1848, thus creating Russia’s first international rail connection.46 On the other hand, in early 1842 Nicholas gave the green light for the line connecting the two capitals—at that point it was to be the largest railway in the world—and indicated that the government rather than a private company would construct the line, which opened in 1851 (at which time American railways had not yet reached Chicago). By that time Prussia, France, and Austria had committed to extensive railway construction as a national priority, thus ending the period of experimentation and debate there. Nicholas furthermore con­sidered it essential that the two capitals be connected, the one as the residence of Russia’s rulers and the other as ‘the natural centre of the Empire’.47 No doubt, the Moscow–Petersburg line was a major development, but it is hard to say that railway construction for the two decades after 1837 was extensive. Notably, as the Crimean War began in 1853, there were no lines going south, which placed Russia at a disadvantage against its opponents. At the time Russia had only 1,065 km of railways overall. Strikingly, then, Russia was among railways’ early adopters, yet shortly after embarking pulled back and began to fall behind other European countries.48

Conclusion In 1856, on the eve of a decree that would initiate a major railway expansion in Russia, the Slavophile Alexander Koshelev declared that the benefits of railways in Europe and America ‘have surpassed the boldest calculations and the most impudent expectations of those passionately extolling that great discovery, and incontestably have secured a preponderance of power over all other inventions to this point’.49 The next year, the new emperor, Alexander II (who as heir had headed the committee established in 1842 to initiate construction of the line to Moscow), committed to this matter by noting that railroads had now become an absolute necessity and a national affair. Later tsarist decades saw two major ‘booms’—one in the 1860s and another in the 1890s—responsible for a network by the early twentieth century that was second only to that in the USA. The

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176 1837 railway would moreover convert Petersburg into a major exporter of grain for the first time and would finally create an all-Russian market for cereals.50 Not to be outdone by its tsarist predecessor, the USSR likewise undertook massive railway constructions projects such as the Turksib in the 1930s and the Baikal–Amur line in the 1970s, and could eventually claim a network of close to 150,000 km. People in Russia did not embrace the railway immediately and unconditionally. There were important figures—statesmen and engineers alike—aligned against the idea. The expenses were large, and the benefits far from certain. Some regarded Gerstner as a charlatan. The first experimental line was short, and construction remained limited before 1860. Benjamin Schenk is certainly right to emphasize that early stages of discussion were punctuated with ambivalence concerning the potential social and political consequences of any new transportation technology.51 Caution, in short, was the watchword. At the same time, many in the country were enthusiastic about railways for a host of reasons. Some sensed— rightly, it appears in retrospect—that a new age was dawning. A curious public rode on the Tsarskoe Selo railway with relish. Ambivalence notwithstanding, Russia entered the railway age in 1837. The rest is (railway) history.

Notes 1. F.  A.  von Gerstner, Tretii otchet ob uspekhakh zheleznoi dorogi iz Sanktpeterburga v Tsarskoe Selo i Pavlovsk (Moscow, 1837), 14. 2. Cited in Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley, CA, 1977), 37. See also Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, Russlands Fahrt in die Moderne: Mobilität und sozialer Raum in Eisenbahnzeitalter (Stuttgart, 2014). 3. Anon., ‘Budushchnost’ zheleznykh dorog’, Moskovskii nabliudatel’ 2 (1837): 475. 4. Matvei S. Volkov to A. Baladin (Vienna, 31 Jan. 1844), in Volkov, Otrykvi iz zagranichnykh pisem, 1844–1848 (SPb, 1857), 5–6. 5. Ukazanie primechatel’nostei na puti Ego Imperatorskogo Vysochestva (1837): 30, 31, 38; Ukazanie primechatel’nostei na puti Eia Imperatorskogo Velichestva (1837): 8. 6. Schenk, Russlands Fahrt, 39–50; V.  V.  Salov, ‘Nachalo zheleznodorozhnogo dela, v Rossii, 1836–1855 g.’, Vestnik Evropy 2 (1899): 221–68; Richard Mowbray Haywood, The Beginnings of Railway Development in Russia in the Reign of Nicholas I, 1835–1842 (Durham, NC, 1969). V.  S.  Virginskii, Vozniknovenie zheleznykh dorog v Rossii do nachala 40-kh godov XIX veka (Moscow, 1949) downplays the role of foreigners and Nicholas I in favour of ‘talented Russian engineers’ (10). 7. Susan Smith-Peter, Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Leiden, 2018), 135–53; Natal’ia Potapova, Tribuny syrykh kazematov: Politika i diskursivnye strategii v dele dekabristov (SPb, 2017), 225–8. 8. William L. Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800–1860 (Princeton, NJ, 1968), 126.

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A Unicorn, Violent but Submissive  177 9. Smith-Peter, Imagining, 135–53 (citation at 16); Blackwell, Beginnings, 123–48. 10. W.  Seaman and J.  R.  Sewell (eds), Russian Journal of Lady Londonderry, 1836–7 (London, 1973), 58; Le Marquis de Custine, Russie en 1839, vol. 2 (Paris, 1843), 373. 11. RGIA, f. 1284, op. 22, otdel 1, stol 1, d. 31, ll. 45–6, 121 ob., 154ob., 160–63, 225–6 12. Virginskii, Vozniknovenie, 29–52; Haywood, Beginnings, 3–45; Blackwell, Beginnings, 264–70; Tracy Nichols Busch, ‘Connecting an Empire: Eighteenth-Century Russian Roads, from Peter to Catherine’, Journal of Transport History 29(2) (2008): 240–58; John Randolph, ‘The Singing Coachmen or, the Road and Russia’s Ethnographic Invention in Early Modern Times’, Journal of Early Modern History 11(1–2) (2007): 33–61; Robert E. Jones, Bread Upon the Waters: The St. Petersburg Grain Trade and the Russian Economy, 1703–1811 (Pittsburgh, PA, 2013), esp. 204–19. 13. Cited in Olga Crisp, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914 (London, 1976), 95. 14. Pavel Mel’nikov, O zheleznykh dorogakh (SPb, 1835), 2. 15. F. A. von Gerstner, O vygodakh postroeniia zheleznoi dorogi (SPb, 1836), 1. 16. Ibid. 9–18 (citation, 16). 17. Virginskii, Vozniknovenie, 86–92; Haywood, Beginnings, 46–62. Completed in 1836, this line has a claim to being the first steam railway in Russia. 18. Zheleznaia doroga ot S. Peterburga do Tsarskogo Sela i Pavlovska (SPb, 1837), 19. 19. Modest Korf ’s account in M.  Krutikov (ed.), ‘Pervye zheleznye dorogi v Rossii’, Krasnyi arkhiv 76 (136): 99. 20. Cited in Salov, ‘Nachalo’, 253. On Gerstner and Nicholas, see Haywood, Beginnings, 63–102; Schenk, Russlands Fahrt, esp. 43–4. 21. Toll in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 118; Salov, ‘Nachalo’, 226–9; Schenk, Russlands Fahrt, 41. 22. Cancrin in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 119. 23. Korf in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 100; Salov, ‘Nachalo’, 254; Haywood, Beginnings, 180–81; Schenk, Russlands Fahrt, 43–5; Blackwell, Beginnings, 272–4. 24. Gerstner, O vygodakh, 4, 64. Stephen Lovell indeed identifies the new railway in 1837 as a starting point in a distinct stage of the dacha’s evolution. See Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1720–2000 (Ithaca, NY, 2003), 28. 25. Pavel Mel’nikov, O zheleznykh dorogakh (SPb, 1835), 1; Abaza in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 109; Gerstner, Tretii otchet, 3. 26. Anon., ‘Budushchnost’’, 479. 27. Gerstner, O vygodakh, 65; Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 108, 117 (citation at 108); Commission (15 Sept. 1841) in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 144; Virginskii, Vozniknovenie, 131; Modest Korf in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 99; Gerstner as recounted by Toll (17 Feb. 1835), in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 91. 28. Anon., ‘Budushchnost’’, 479–83 (citation at 483); Gerstner, O vygodakh, 37–9 (cit­ ations, 37 and 39). Increasingly accessible by rail, dachas became associated, among other things, with healthful recreation. See Lovell, Summerfolk, 39. 29. Such is Schenk’s conclusion: Schenk, Russlands Fahrt, 45. For more on these debates, see Haywood, Beginnings, 63–107; Virginskii, Vozniknovenie, 93–161. 30. Gerstner, Tretii otchet, 4. 31. Korf in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 100; Haywood, Beginnings, 120–26; Virginskii, Vozniknovenie, 162–79.

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178 1837 32. Gerstner, Tretii otchet, 11; Severnaia pchela 219 (30 Sept. 1837): 87; 222 (29 Sept. 1836): 885; 229 (07 Oct. 1836): 913; 275 (1 Dec. 1836): 1092; Gerstner, Tretii otchet, 11; Salov, ‘Nachalo’, 240–41; I. A. Bogdanov, Vozkaly Peterburga (SPb, 2004), 23. 33. Haywood, Beginnings, 137; Bogdanov, Vokzaly, 11, 30; N.  F.  Findeizen, Pavlovskii muzykal’nyi vokzal: Istoricheskii ocherk (SPb, 1912), 17. 34. Severnaia pchela 248 (2 Nov. 1837): 991. 35. Bogdanov, Vokzaly, 17; Haywood, Beginnings, 127. 36. Ibid. 128; Severnaia pchela 84 (16 Apr. 1838): 353; Salov, ‘Nachalo’, 241–3; Bogdanov, Vokzaly, 11–75. 37. Bogdanov, Vokzaly, 3, 11, 31 (citation at 14); Lovell, Summerfolk, 45–6; Findeizen, Pavlovskii, 16–19; and Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, ‘Der musikalische Bahnhof: Eine episode aus der Klanggeschichte der technischen Moderne im späten Zarenreich’, in Michael Kunkel et al. (eds), Basels Badischer Bahnhof in Geschichte, Architektur und Musik (Basel, 2012), 13–20. Lucien Tesnière provides a curious history of the term ‘Vauxhall’ and its eventual application to train stations in Russia: ‘Les antécédents du nom russe de la gare’, Revue des études slaves 27 (1951): 255–66. 38. Severnaia pchela 219 (30 Sept. 1837): 875; Anon., ‘Budushchnost’’, 475. 39. Schenk, Russlands Fahrt, 46–7; Commission report (15 Sept. 141) in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 143. 40. Severnaia pchela 229 (7 Oct. 1836): 914; 248 (2 Nov. 1837): 992; 249 (2 Nov. 1837): 991–2; Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, cited in Bogdanov, Vokzaly, 27. 41. Severnaia pchela 5 (8 Jan. 1837): 18; 248 (2 Nov. 1837): 992; Bogdanov, Vokzaly, 27; Christopher Keeft, First Russian Railroad: From St. Petersburg to Zarskoe-Selo and Pawlowsk (London, 1837), 20. 42. Cited in Salov, ‘Nachalo’, 259–60. 43. Cited in Virginskii, Vozniknovenie, 208. See also Blackwell, Beginnings, 280–82; M.  I.  Voronin and P.  P.  Mel’nikov’, Inzhener, uchenyi, gosudarstvennyi deiatel’ (SPb, 2003), 31–3; Haywood, Beginnings, 201–5. 44. Ibid. 124–5, 129–32. 45. Salov, ‘Nachalo’, 246–53 (citations of committee on 248). The committee’s de­lib­er­ ations (Apr. 1838) in Krutikov, ‘Pervye’, 119–22. 46. Salov, ‘Nachalo’, 255–6; Haywood, 193–200 (esp. 195–6). 47. Haywood, Beginnings, 210–37 (Nicholas as quoted by Voronin and Mel’nikov at 231). 48. Haywood, Beginnings, 190; Schenk, Russlands Fahrt, 16–17, 50. On continuing hesitance, also Virginskii, Vozniknovenie, 18–221. 49. A. I. Koshelev, Dve stat’i o zheleznykh dorogakh (Moscow, 1856), 1. 50. Schenk, Russlands Fahrt, 17; Jones, Bread Upon the Waters, 218–19. 51. Schenk, Russlands Fahrt, 46.

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10

Northern Phoenix I don’t know about other people, but if I owned one of the world’s grandest palaces, and if that palace suddenly burned down, and if on top of that I had unlimited power (I realize that this is all rather unlikely), then I would definitely rebuild that palace immediately. And it turns out that I am not alone, for this is exactly what Emperor Nicholas resolved to do after one of Russia’s most spectacular fires, which broke out at the Winter Palace on 17 December 1837 and burned itself out 30 hours later. The conflagration was a stunning spectacle. As an eyewitness recounted, ‘The entire palace, from one end to the other, appeared as a blazing sea of flame, a massive bonfire drawing everything into its gradual incidence.’1 It was also a powerfully public event. It was visible from as far away as 70 km, and as the Northern Bee reported, ‘People from all corners of the city gathered in thick crowds on adjoining areas and on the Neva River and in speechless sorrow beheld the destructive effects of the flames.’2 All that was left standing was the hulking skeleton of what had been among the greatest palaces in the world. An unknown number had perished, many in desperate attempt to save articles from the fire and to prevent its transmission to the adjoining Hermitage. Thus for the imperial family—and for all those in Russia who identified with it in one way or another—the year 1837 ended on a sour note, with the autocracy’s principal symbol in utter ruins. As one of Nicholas’s close servitors, Alexei Orlov, wrote in late December, ‘The expiring year has parted with us in a most grievous fashion.’3 The catastrophe created distinct dangers for the regime. What meanings would people ascribe to the disaster? Yet the fire also provided a remarkable opportunity for Russia to demonstrate to itself and to the world its resilience and unity of purpose. Without concerning himself excessively about the causes of the fire—in part, probably, because his own actions and judgement were implicated— Nicholas set an almost impossible deadline for the palace’s reconsecration: the spring of 1839, a mere 15 months after the building’s destruction. Astonishingly, his autocracy managed to achieve that goal, staging a triumphant rededication on Easter night. There was, then, a deep tension about how exactly to interpret the entire episode. On the one hand, the rapidity of the palace’s renewal offered an occasion to trumpet Russia’s capacity for mobilization and the devotion of its labourers to both tsar and palace. On the other hand, Nicholas clearly saw the fire as an embarrassment and harboured anxieties that the palace’s destruction might undermine his legitimacy. From this standpoint, it was best to erase the very 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0011

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180 1837 memory of the fire, not least of all by ensuring that, outwardly at least, the new palace be identical to the old.

‘The Northern Capital has lost her greatest ornament’4 There had been other winter palaces (or ‘winter houses’) in Petersburg from the time of Peter the Great—as many as six, depending on how one counts—but they were all modest, and none now exists. The Winter Palace with which most are familiar arose in 1754–62 under Empress Elizabeth (r. 1741–61) and the Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli. Elizabeth herself died shortly before con­ struction was complete, and thus Peter III (r. 1761–2) became the first ruler to reside in the palace, which was then yellow and white. Overthrowing him a mere six months later, his wife, Catherine II, occupied the palace for an extended period and added two pavilions, designating them her Hermitage and using them to house her growing collection of art. The palace immediately became the most prominent edifice of the imperial capital and a symbol of the monarchy that ruled the country.5 Neither Petersburg nor Russia was a stranger to fire. Huge conflagrations had decimated the young capital in 1736–7, causing hundreds of deaths and in­cal­cul­ able damage, while also opening up new possibilities for more effective urban planning.6 Among the most dramatic fires in Russia’s history was the con­flag­ra­ tion in Moscow in 1812, a legendary episode in the story of Napoleon’s repulsion. The city of Minsk experienced a devastating fire in 1835, and the next year a makeshift theatre on the Admiralty Square just across from the Winter Palace burned, with the loss of hundreds of lives. Nor was the problem unique to Russia. In 1834 London’s Westminster Palace burned down, as did its stock exchange in early 1838. Just days later flames consumed the Théâtre Italien in Paris.7 For all that, the fire at the Winter Palace remained unique for its destruction of the monarch’s residence, a key symbol of the autocracy and the entire country that he ruled. Indeed, the palace stood at the heart of the Russian capital, with no park or garden separating it from the rest of the city. It was, as Susan McCaffrey has written, a stage for the interactions between ruler and ruled and for the per­ formance of monarchy in Russia. It was here that ‘the monarchy and the public came face-to-face’ in extraordinary events such as Catherine II’s Legislative Commission and in more quotidian form, such as semi-public masquerade balls on New Year’s Day and yearly commemorations for decorated veterans of the war with Napoleon. For no tsar was the palace more central than it was for Nicholas. More than any other Romanov, he loved the Winter Palace and exploited its great stage. He opened the palace church on Easter starting in 1826 and at that first celebration kissed some 700 subjects, including cabbies and doorkeepers.8 The regime’s ideologists proposed that the palace belonged to the nation as well as the

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Northern Phoenix  181 sovereign. As the poet Peter Viazemskii commented after the fire, ‘Russians loved this palace as national patrimony, as the seat of monarchy.’ Education minister Sergei Uvarov called it the country’s ‘main national building’.9 It was to this palace that the imperial family returned on 12 December from their extensive travels (see Chapter 4) just days before it would perish in the flames. How exactly did the conflagration unfold? A smell of smoke had been detectable in and around the Field Marshals’ Hall as early as two days before the fire emerged in full force, but efforts to identify its source had been unsuccessful. By the evening of 17 December the smell of smoke had reappeared and become stronger, and even as no flame was visible it became difficult even to see across the hall. When firemen began to break up the parquet floor around a suspicious stove vent, a false mirror door into the next corridor came crashing down, and bright flame emerged from the opening. The emperor, at the theatre that evening, quickly returned to the palace when informed of the situation. After dispatching his chil­ dren to the Anichkov Palace for safety, Nicholas made an inspection and unwisely ordered the windows of the Field Marshals’ Hall to be broken so as to clear away the smoke. A strong wind entered the room, and tongues of flame jumped forth and quickly reached the ceiling. Around 10 p.m. the windows on the second floor broke with a terrible cracking sound, and flame emerged from the edifice along with clouds of smoke.10 One witness on the square below recounted how up until that point things had been calm and there was no sign of the fire from outside. But then: ‘Suddenly, as if by someone’s command or by an act of sorcery . . . the glass fell out of the palace’s windows, the frames fell burning to the square, the blinds on the windows suddenly dropped, and at that moment snakes of fire began to rise up. And at that same moment the entire palace was illuminated from within.’ That sudden transformation of the palace from darkness into flame caused everyone on the square ‘to gasp in one voice simultaneously’. A ‘frightful mass’ of smoke poured out from within the palace.11 Many factors converged to facilitate the fire’s dramatic spread. Originally completed when the science of fire prevention was still young, the palace con­ tained much that was combustible and little to prevent a fire’s movement. Existing firewalls included apertures, and there were no firewalls at all in the palace’s attics, which thus opened a pathway for the fire to spread easily across the building. Ceiling and roof constructions—densely packed rafters, beams, and footbridges— were all made of wood, representing plentiful food for the fire. The palace’s attics, wrote one commentator who had grown up in the palace, featured ‘forests of immense trees, standing more closely packed than masts of a numberless and compressed fleet at harbor.’ Once the fire arrived here, nothing could extinguish it. Although the palace had its own fire brigade and there were reservoirs of water under the roof, the pumps malfunctioned, and the fire continued its march across ceilings and down walls. The pumps of the city fire department meanwhile proved insufficient to cast streams of water to the upper parts of the building, where the

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182 1837

Figure 10.1.  Pierre Marie Joseph Vernet, Fire at the Winter Palace, 17 December 1837. St Petersburg, 1838. Courtesy of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo by Svetlana Suetova

fire was most intense. To top matters off, the evening featured a piercing wind that fanned the flames energetically.12 By all accounts the fire was stunning in magnitude. George Mifflin Dallas, the US minister to Russia at the time, reported on the evening of the 18th that the palace was still ‘blazing in every direction with almost unabated fury. As a spectacle, it is more grand and imposing than any exhibition I ever beheld.’ The poet Vasilii Zhukovskii confirmed: ‘The spectacle, according to eyewitnesses, was in­des­crib­ able: a volcano had erupted in the centre of Petersburg.’ In such a phenomenon ‘there was something inexpressible: in its very destruction it was as if the palace, with all its windows, columns, and statues, was being engraved as a black mass on a bright, palpitating flame.’13 Another witness, guardsman D.  G.  Kolokoltsov, noted that everyone on the palace square was bathed in the colour of flame, while only the palace’s stone walls provided shade. The palace’s window openings became ‘immense gates through which that thick smoke poured out and was spread into the air by the raging wind’. Appearing out of the smoke above the palace’s roof was ‘a black cloud, indeed a storm cloud, which was illuminated by an immense glow in the sky’. Another witness recounted, ‘The sky changed in appearance by the minute; violet, then black, then scarlet clouds flew out from the furnace . . . The fire lashed out from the windows, flowed along the pillars in cas­ cades, beat like fountains, and ran along the cornices, eagerly seeking out forgot­ ten fuel.’ The composer Mikhail Glinka, giving a night-time singing lesson at the time, recounted that the fire illuminated his apartment enough that he could read by its light.14

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Northern Phoenix  183 Quickly it became clear that the palace itself could not be saved; one could only hope to rescue its most valuable possessions and above all to secure the neigh­ bouring Hermitage, with its extensive art collections. Nicholas instructed soldiers to focus on furniture and similar items, and to leave behind heavier articles, such as statues. ‘Save what you can,’ he said of the empress’s quarters, ‘but I ask that you don’t put yourselves at risk.’ ‘Crowds of soldiers with the full ardour of devoted zeal threw themselves into the burning building and spread out in various direc­ tions.’ Of personal priority to Nicholas were his wife’s letters from before their marriage (‘Let everything else burn up,’ he supposedly said).15 Also of priority were military banners and portraits that decorated the Field Marshals’ Hall and the Gallery of 1812. Soldiers of the Preobrazhenskii Guard, among the first to arrive on the scene, were able to remove all of those quickly on the emperor’s command. At one point, with so many soldiers rushing up the stairways with bricks for impromptu firewalls, it became impossible for others to carry anything down, and some simply started throwing less fragile items out the window. At times anarchy reigned. Kolokoltsov described the situation inside the burning palace as ‘sheer chaos’ and ‘genuine disarray’, in which ‘the soldiers themselves did not know what they were doing’. There was smoke everywhere, nothing was discernible, and few even knew where they were. ‘Once we got into that chaotic oven, we completely lost our heads.’ Objects saved from fire—furniture, dishes, marble statues, porcelain vases, crystal, paintings, clocks, chandeliers, etc.—were deposited on the Palace Square, by the Alexander column, where they mingled weirdly with the less luxurious possessions of servants, chimney sweeps, and waiters. From the collections of the palace’s silver, reportedly not a single one went missing or was even damaged. In January the empress praised the ‘unbeliev­ able solicitude’ underlying efforts to save the palace’s material possessions, ‘even the smallest items’.16 As the fire claimed more of the palace, the task of saving the Hermitage acquired heightened significance. Doors and windows connecting it to the palace were hastily bricked up, and the wooden gallery between them was knocked down, leaving only iron beams between the two structures. Soldiers and fireman sat on the beams and directed water at the palace to prevent the fire’s advance; several were killed when a burst of flame from the palace knocked them to the ground. All of Millionnaia Street (leading northeast from the palace square) was packed with fire teams and their equipment. ‘A large quantity of fire hoses were working non-stop,’ shooting streams of water not only into the palace, but also onto the Hermitage itself. Everyone in the vicinity was soaking wet, including the emperor and Grand Duke Michael, whose efforts were central to the Hermitage’s salvation. Its defence ‘was an extremely dangerous task’ requiring ‘supernatural human strength’. But it was accomplished.17 The role of the emperor in directing efforts to combat the fire became a point of focus for many accounts. L. M. Baranovich, an engineer involved in the palace’s

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184 1837 reconstruction, notes that at one point, ‘despite the obvious danger’, the sovereign went through the Field Marshals’ and Peter the Great Halls ‘with cold-blooded composure’. Another contemporary recounted that on the palace square Nicholas ‘was as calm as if he were issuing orders at manoeuvres’. Orlov confirmed that the sovereign ‘was everywhere’; he ‘appeared first wherever there was any threat of danger and left only when there was no possibility of countering the furious element.’ He was apparently fazed only in the palace church, which housed so many of his treasured memories. Orlov recounted that he had accompanied the emperor on his extensive travels in 1837—on a steamship that barely survived a storm on the Black Sea, to the very ends of the empire along Turkey and Persia—‘but nowhere, I assure you, did Emperor Nicholas appear to me in such grandeur as he did that fateful night, when he had the strength of spirit to say to himself that a human’s power, however immeasurable, cannot win against the almighty power of God.’18 The guardsman Kolokoltsov recounted that there was general confusion on the palace square as the fire appeared in all its force (‘Everyone lost their head,’ he admitted). But then the sovereign appeared ‘in the midst of that rumpus, and in one instant everything fell silent. After an indescribable and all-encompassing uproar, everyone and everything became still, and each remained in a state of high tension in expectation of what the tsar would pronounce.’19 The empress also earned praise, even as her husband sought to shield her from shock. ‘Upon seeing this sad spectacle, [she] exhibited pious fortitude, inspired by Her faith in all-merciful Providence,’ reported Northern Bee. At the same time, she was noted for prioritizing the personal safety of those residing in the palace: ‘She calmed down only when she was certain that all had been saved, and that no one had been forgotten in those massive halls.’ Zhukovskii recounted that once her children had been evacuated and she had attended to a bedridden member of her suite, Alexandra went to her rooms and for a long time observed the fire from her window across an internal courtyard. She remained there until her husband informed her that the fire would arrive shortly. Even then, she did not leave the palace’s vicinity, retiring instead to the foreign ministry across the palace square, from which she could witness the palace’s destruction. In all of this she appeared composed and even thoughtful.20 The young heir, Alexander, likewise distin­ guished himself by attending to a second fire that, by remarkable coincidence, broke out on Vasilievskii Island that same evening. Even though the heir’s car­ riage broke down, he commandeered the first available horse and participated in extinguishing that second fire.21 The emperor’s rank-and-file servitors—the guards and fire brigades, number­ ing as many as 20,000 at one point—earned laud. ‘Of particular significance was the intrepid composure of firemen and soldiers,’ reported Zhukovskii. ‘They in effect went into hand-to-hand combat with the blaze and courageously filled in windows and doors, despite the flames and smoke.’ Baranovich concurred: ‘One

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Northern Phoenix  185 needed sooner to restrain their zeal than to encourage it.’ In the Maria Fedorovna Hall, by one account, Nicholas encountered a large crowd of guardsmen who were trying to remove an enormous mirror as everything blazed around them. Several times the emperor instructed the men to abandon the task and evacuate, but their zeal took the upper hand. Finally, ‘the Sovereign ended the matter by throwing his opera glasses at the mirror, as a result of which it shattered into pieces. “You see, lads,” he said, “that your lives are more important to me than a mirror, and I ask you now to disperse.” ’ Some paid for their zeal with their lives. Kolokolstov recounted how he suddenly heard ‘a thump, a cracking, and the sound of something heavy falling’, which momentarily caused the entire building to shake; it turned out to be the collapse of the ceiling of several adjoining rooms, which interred as many as 30 soldiers in the debris.22 All of these accounts portray city residents as supportive but largely passive. In various ways they exhibited solidarity with the imperial family. Dolly Ficquelmont, the Russian wife of the Austrian ambassador, wrote that the people, ‘for whom the tsarist residence is a sacred object, observed the fire with grief and in deathly silence’. American minister Dallas concurred, observing that the fire ‘has in no manner disturbed the general tranquility of the city’. Zhukovskii confirmed based on several accounts that the people stood ‘as a countless crowd in deathly silence’ behind the military cordon. ‘Seized by a reverent grief, the crowd stood without motion; one could hear only deep gasps, and everyone prayed for the sovereign.’ Alexander Bashutskii claimed that on their faces, as they watched the con­flag­ra­ tion, was none of the idle curiosity typical of the ‘popular masses’ in the face of unusual events, but rather ‘sadness’: ‘their gloomy immobility and reverent silence, interrupted at times by sighs, gave to the spectacle the sense of that sor­ rowful and important moment when a friend parts with a dying friend.’ Orlov recounted that some in the crowd actually wanted to help fight the fire and expressed enthusiasm for the idea of building three such palaces in place of the lost one. ‘There you have our Russia: what a country, what people!’23 Was there myth-making in all of this? Undoubtedly. But what regime would not make good use of a crisis? In the main, the fire had subsided by the morning of the 19th, though by some accounts it continued to smoulder for a week or more. In the end all that was left were the blackened walls of the palace. Zhukovskii provided some sense of the awe created by the resulting picture: Looking at those burned out walls, behind which just a few days ago there was such magnificence and such life, and which are now so empty and gloomy, your soul involuntarily feels reverence: you don’t know whether to marvel at the grandeur of the thing that has been destroyed and yet even in ruins remains so solid; or at the might of the force that could so easily and so quickly annihilate something that seemed so permanent.

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186 1837 In a vivid image, Bashutskii reported that the building’s remnant ‘stood sullenly like a warrior, powerful but covered with wounds and blackened by the smoke of an unprecedented battle, with his helmet in pieces and his armor shattered.’24 Such, then, was the famed Winter Palace on 19 December 1837.

The (Immediate) Aftermath There was much to do in the aftermath. In practical terms, among the first tasks was merely cleaning up what was left of the old palace. Its interior, behind the remaining walls, was filled with immense piles of debris. Fireman cooled the roof iron, which was then unriveted and sorted for reuse. Remaining parquet floors were ripped out and dumped onto the place square, as were ash, coals, and pieces of marble. Three hundred carts were hired, and countless loads left the area each day with detritus, which after sifting was brought to Petrovskii Island and Tsaritsyn Square (the Field of Mars). More gruesomely, workers encountered bodies, ‘some of them buried alive, others disfigured and maimed’. A ‘multitude’ of corpses littered the better portion of the palace. The figure of one burned sol­ dier was especially striking: ‘This was genuine, burned up black charcoal; it was absolutely impossible to recognize anything in it aside from its human form.’25 Another task was to reward people for exceptional zeal in fighting the fire. In January 1838 Nicholas awarded 300 roubles each to two men who during the fire, ‘with the obvious danger to their lives, removed an image of the Saviour from the top of the iconostasis of the palace’s church’.26 The kin of those who perished in the flames also required attention. The illiterate Pelageia Stepanova, now wid­ owed, submitted a request for the remaining pay of her deceased husband, a chimney apprentice, as well as an allowance to replace his income. She was appar­ ently not aware that she had already been given a 400-rouble yearly allowance and a one-time payment of 500 rubles. For their part, members of the palace’s fire brigade no. 2 received 6,584 roubles and 36 kopeks from the emperor for lost articles. By one account, Nicholas left no orphan or family of the deceased with­ out generous compensation and income for life.27 Several commissions appeared. One, under chief equerry Prince V. V. Dolgorukov, dealt with sorting out the items saved from the fire. There was irony in the fact that the one item in the palace intended for combustion—the stock of firewood pre­ pared for heating the building throughout the long northern winter—remained entirely intact. Meanwhile, the archive of the palace office perished, as did the store­ room containing livery and related items. Happily, the master of the palace’s wines cellars could report that nothing there had suffered any damage, although a second cellar—the emperor’s personal one—suffered an assault by soldiers during the chaos that led to the loss of 215 bottles (the efforts of Prince Peter Volkonskii, minister of the imperial palace, to identify the guilty parties proved unsuccessful).28

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Northern Phoenix  187 A different commission sought to identify the causes of the fire. The work began already on the 18th, as the fire was still raging, under the head of the Third Section, Alexander Benckendorff. The commission met for seven of the next eight days (taking only Christmas off) and recorded testimony from a wide variety of witnesses and specialists. Yet in its report to the Sovereign on 28 December, it proved reluctant to identify a clear reason for the fire. Part of the problem was that the blueprints for the relevant segments of the palace were incomplete, which left the investigation trying to determine by other means precisely which struc­ tures had existed that fateful evening. The commission did identify certain factors that could have been responsible, but the report’s authors were quick to add that those were ‘in essence only conjectures’. The commission’s efforts ‘remained unsuccessful, and the commission cannot indicate with certainty the decisive ­reasons for the fire’.29 Officially, then, the fire’s causes remained unidentified. As it happened, that commission was not the only entity investigating the fire’s origin. The head of the palace quartermaster’s office, A. A. Shcherbinin, submit­ ted his own report, on the same day as Benckendorff, and was less reticent about proposing the fire’s cause. Specifically, Shcherbinin’s investigation proposed that in the original construction of the Field Marshals’ Hall in 1833–4, a space had been left between a stone wall and a wooden one; the space had been heated by chimneys that passed through the stone wall and a nearby stove with an improp­ erly constructed vent. Exposed to this heat, the wood within had dried and become riddled with cracks. With increased combustion in the palace’s labora­ tory in the basement, and especially on account of some bast that workers there had used to stuff a hatch in the hearth to preserve the room’s heat as they slept, a spark had presumably made its way into the space through an opening in the laboratory’s chimney that had not been properly bricked over. The area had likely been smouldering for some time—thus the smell of smoke that had appeared periodically before the fire broke out fully—but when the false mirror door col­ lapsed the space had been flooded with air.30 By proposing this combination of design flaw, negligence, and poor judgement, Shcherbinin sought to deflect responsibility for the inferno from his office. Neither of the reports named the architect of the Field Marshals’ Hall, Auguste Montferrand, but the Frenchman sensed accusation, remarking in a letter of 1838: ‘I don’t know what I have to do with the fire at the palace.’ Since completing the internal reconstruction five years earlier, he protested, ‘I have not driven a single nail into the Winter Palace.’ He also commented that the schedule for the work then had been extraordinarily tight, and concerns about cost had inclined the commission overseeing the project to favour wood over stone. What in other countries would have taken five years to complete in stone had been done in Russia in five months.31 Ultimately, many of these decisions led back to the emperor, who perpetually involved himself in virtually every detail and construed himself as knowledgeable in all areas. The authors of a Soviet history of the

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188 1837 palace’s reconstruction suggest that the official commission’s refusal to identify a clear cause for the fire was dictated precisely by this circumstance.32 Of no less significance than trying to identify the fire’s cause was the effort to define its meaning. Northern Bee sprang quickly into action on 21 December with an account that set the agenda for subsequent narratives. Acknowledging the tre­ mendous loss, the paper recounted the crowd’s ‘mute grief ’, the ‘fervor, zeal, and selflessness’ of those fighting the blaze, the emperor’s directing of ‘all actions’, and the empress’s ‘pious resoluteness’—in short, the main tropes that we encountered earlier.33 Mindful of the European press, which Nicholas from the very start of his reign regarded as an important political actor in its own right,34 friends of the regime quickly produced material for foreign consumption as well. Within days the poet Peter Viazemskii had composed and sent to Paris a text that was pub­ lished as a brochure, L’Incendie du Palais d’Hiver, in February 1838 and then reprinted, in part or in full, in two royalist newspapers that same month (a ver­ sion in Russian was published in Moscow News in April). Again deploying the same basic tropes and referring also to the annual New Year’s tradition of inviting subjects of all estates to the palace, Viazemskii underscored the familial relations between tsar and subjects, while also identifying the palace as the ultimate source of Russia’s wise reforms and civilizing efforts over the decades. The palace, he asserted, ‘was the Kremlin of our modern history. The chronicle of this palace is the summary of our political existence for nearly a century.’ But even as the destruction was great, there were ample grounds for optimism. As the example of Moscow after 1812 had shown, ‘Russia’s illnesses are in general strong and acute, but her convalescence is rapid and complete, for her resources of vitality are immense.’ Like a phoenix, ‘The palace, as if by magic, will be reborn from its ashes, perhaps even more beautiful than it has ever been.’35 The ‘magic’ of this ‘rebirth’ was itself part of the propaganda effort.

Restoration, or ‘Zeal Overcomes All’ Indeed, by the last days of 1837, Nicholas had established a commission for the palace’s restoration. ‘The larger part of the palace building must be restored exactly as it existed before the fire,’ the decree creating the commission declared, while allowing—somewhat incongruently—for improvements as well. Upon approval of plans and designs, the commission was to set to work ‘without the slightest delay’. Many specialists were to be involved in overseeing the work, but the most important were Peter Kleinmichel (who essentially oversaw the entire project) and the architects Vasilii Stasov (responsible for the building as a whole) and Alexander Briullov (responsible for internal decor).36 The emperor’s aggres­ sive plan called for the palace’s restoration in just over a year so that he might celebrate Easter of 1839 in the restored edifice.37

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Northern Phoenix  189 Even before the commission had been formed and the causes of the fire had (not) been identified, the reconstruction had begun. The emperor ordered the erection of a temporary roof to protect the salvageable walls, and Stasov immedi­ ately oversaw the placement of scaffolds. So hot were the remaining walls that the scaffolds quickly dried out and periodically burst into flame, thus requiring moni­ tors day and night. Workers constructed a tall wall around the entire construction site, while various service buildings—sheds for tools, offices for foremen and architects, kitchens for feeding work crews, ovens for firing alabaster, a field hos­ pital, etc.—appeared within. Baranovich, directly involved in the restoration, reports that there were no fewer than 1,000 people on the site every day, and around 10,000 workmen laboured on the project at one point or another.38 The work was hard and almost continuous. The architects faced exceptional challenges given the strict deadline, and many problems demanded uncommon ingenuity. Consider, for example, that certain phases of the work had to occur at unsuitable times of the year. In order to accelerate the drying of 52 new walls and other structures inside the new palace, crews constructed ten enormous coke fur­ naces and twenty immense fans to blow hot air into the emerging edifice. Window openings were closed over with the goal of attaining a consistent temperature of 45° C, which proved harmful to the workers and caused stoppages. For the most part, though, the work, once in train, did not stop. Even on 1 July, the empress’s name-day (a holiday), Nicholas ordered the work to continue, though he did pro­ vide 7,500 cups of vodka for workmen to celebrate the event (his provision of 1,200 litres of the stuff on an earlier occasion demonstrated that he knew how to motivate his workers).39 The progress was rapid. Already by August 1838 one observer could claim (probably with exaggeration), ‘There is almost no trace of the calamitous fire.’40 By mid-October repairs of the walls and roof were done, and the scaffolding was removed to reveal the renewed edifice to the city’s inhabitants. Because the fire had started in the Field Marshals’ Hall, Nicholas set as a goal to have that room fully restored on the first anniversary of the fire—17 December 1838. On that same day, portions of the palace were illuminated from within, already creating the impres­ sion that the fire had never occurred.41 On 2 February 1839, the palace’s Small Chapel was reconsecrated, and on Easter Night (25/6 March) Nicholas formally dedicated the new palace and began residing there with his family. (That same day—25 March—he formally approved the Uniate bishops’ request for reunion with Orthodoxy, as described in Chapter  8.) He and over 3,000 of his subjects attended Mass at the palace’s church on Easter Sunday. To be sure, some moppingup remained—for example, the Throne Room could not be dedicated until 1841 as it awaited marble from Italy—but in essence the project was complete. The State Hermitage Museum that one visits today is precisely this palace, unveiled in 1839.42 The dedication warranted celebration. Among the first tasks was to reward those involved in the restoration. Six thousand workers—all those who had spent

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190 1837 at least three months on the work site—received silver medals, on which one side featured the inscription ‘I thank you’ and the other (with the façade of the palace): ‘Zeal overcomes all’ and ‘Restoration begun 1838 and completed 1839.’ Those higher up the restoration hierarchy (110 people) received gold medals of the same kind, with three—Kleinmichel, Volkonskii, and Dolgorukov—receiving specially decorated ones. Some received promotions (Baranovich was made major of the palace gates, while Kleinmichel became a hereditary count). As Northern Bee fawned about the beneficence, ‘What sweet hope should animate each of us at the thought that with his gaze the Russian Tsar penetrates all of society’s layers and rewards the contributions and zeal of all orders.’ Nicholas also opened the palace’s ceremonial halls and galleries to the public, and one source reported (implausibly but perhaps not impossibly) that some 200,000 people ‘of various orders’ crammed excitedly into the new edifice. Twice that day the emperor and his family made their way through the crowds with greetings and benediction, thus emphasizing the closeness to his people that informed his scen­ ario. Dessert and drinks were provided to the public as well (massive balustrades near the buffet proved unable to cope with the resulting rush, and collapsed). The visitations continued for some seven hours until 2 a.m., and the crowds brought with them so much damp and stifling air that the walls, columns, sculptures, and parquet floors moistened to the point of spoliation, requiring another 35,000 roubles in restoration costs. But it had been a remarkable holiday. The ‘unprecedented’ restoration, reported Bashutskii, ‘is everywhere the subject of conversation, inter­ pretation, and amazement.’43 Outwardly, almost nothing distinguished the new palace from the old, and many rooms saw almost no change compared to their pre-fire equivalents. The imperial family’s personal chapel was restored as close as humanly possibly to the original, in light of the intense personal experiences that its members had had in that space. Rooms that had been the objects of modification or creation just a few years before—for example, the Field Marshals’ Hall and that of Peter the Great— could more easily be restored, and alterations were mostly subtle. Observers saw primarily similarities. Kolokoltsov referred to the reappearance ‘of the very same Winter Palace,’ as if it had never suffered any misfortune. Likewise, Moscow Metropolitan Filaret, even as he noted modest alterations to the palace church, marvelled at how much the new construction mimicked the old: ‘Like an ap­par­ ition you see exactly the same church that burned.’44 At the same time, the palace was structurally and internally different. In some cases, plans of the original pal­ ace were rudimentary, and architects had to work from a combination of memory and limited drawings. Alterations in one part of the palace had implications for other spaces, so that, for example, the famous 1812 Gallery was now extended by over 6 metres and became a qualitatively different space. Architects also sought now to achieve maximum comfort and functionality, and to better distinguish ceremonial halls from residential spaces. The new interiors drove Bashutskii to

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Northern Phoenix  191 declare, ‘It is impossible to describe Briullov’s work on the Winter Palace’, and Northern Bee proposed that its interiors ‘place the Winter Palace among the fore­ most works of art in the world’. Two mechanical lifts now connected all three floors, many rooms acquired running water, and—perhaps most significantly— the reconstruction introduced central heating, obviating the need for fireplaces and stoves in each room and thus creating greater freedom for interior design.45 Features of fire prevention also improved. Many wooden elements were replaced with iron, stone, or brick. Under the direction of Englishman Matthew Clark, elliptical and parallel-chord metal trusses became core elements of the palace’s structural engineering. For vaults between girders, architects introduced ceramic vessels that could be assembled as arches. Fired for 52 hours in rising tem­per­at­ ures (exceeding those that would be encountered in any fire), these dense, hollow cones offered strength and fire retardation with substantially less weight than brick. Architects ordered five million of them.46 The new palace was, in short, the same only different.

Interpretation as Challenge and Opportunity The Winter Palace’s fate in 1837–9 combined elements of misgiving that under­ mined the regime and triumph that reinforced it. On the one hand, the fire prompted uncomfortable questions: how could this have happened and what did it mean? The Decembrist challenge at the very start of his reign had made Nicholas sensitive to any potential cracks in his legitimacy. Who could know what might start a revolution? On the other, the catastrophe provided an oppor­ tunity to perform bonds of affinity connecting monarchy and people, and to exhibit Russia’s capacity for mobilization. Rapid construction had the potential to erase the tragedy. Nicholas himself exhibited anxiety about the fire’s implications. The empress wrote to her brother that for two weeks after the blaze he feared that the people might regard the fire as an evil omen. He supposedly declared, ‘All this is easy to repair; it will cost only money. But the shame, who can efface it? It will remain.’47 The spectre of fire now haunted the emperor. In mid-January, smoke was detected in the Hermitage. Once again at the theatre that night, the emperor quickly returned, though in this case to a false alarm. All the same, Nicholas, by one account, ‘became frightfully angry’ at the head of palace quartermaster’s office, Shcherbinin, and had him arrested after declaring: ‘You burned down my palace and now you’ll burn down my Hermitage.’ In his diary entry for 15 January, a contemporary remarked, ‘His Majesty is so afraid of fire that, they say, if he notices even the smallest hint of smoke he gets out of bed to determine what is afoot.’ His spirits improved only once the first steps of reconstruction began and expressions of devotion continued to come in. It is from this standpoint that we

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192 1837 can better understand the emperor’s determination both to restore the palace as quickly as possible and to ensure that outwardly it should be indistinguishable from the original. As Richard Haywood comments, the only possible solution was ‘to remove all evidence of the disaster, thereby allowing the world gradually to forget that it had ever happened’.48 Indicative of Nicholas’s trepidations were efforts to limit discussion of the fire. To be sure, as we have seen, Northern Bee and Viazemskii described the catas­ trophe and established interpretations favourable for the monarchy. Likewise, St. Petersburg News carried stories about the fire and reconstruction every week for several months.49 But it is noteworthy that two accounts produced quickly after the fire—one by Zhukovskii in Russian and the other by Uvarov in French— were shelved. Scheduled for publication in the first issue of The Contemporary in 1838, Zhukovskii’s ‘Fire at the Winter Palace’ was prohibited by the emperor with the remark, ‘Enough has already been published about that unfortunate event.’ It appeared in print only half a century later. Uvarov’s text, ‘Letter to a Foreign Journalist’, was not published apparently because Viazemskii’s brochure had already appeared (such at least is the remark on the original manuscript).50 In some sense, these explanations are surely right: the existing accounts—published and unpublished—were similar to the point of being redundant. But they also indicate that calling attention repeatedly to a catastrophe was scarcely in Nicholas’s interest. For similar reasons, perhaps, the precise number of people killed in the fire was never revealed. On 22 December Northern Bee ac­know­ledged thirteen deaths, and I. Korsunskii suggested it was a few more than that. ‘The number of lives lost is differently stated,’ reported Dallas.51 By all indications, the emperor considered it impolitic to broadcast any concrete information about those num­ bers, or indeed even to allude to the fact that there had been fatalities. This, too, can be seen as part of a campaign to erase the event from public consciousness and, as Tatiana Kuzovkina proposes, to limit occasion for discussions of authori­ ties’ impotence.52 Many commented on the seeming impossibility of the palace’s destruction, and expressed foreboding. As Bashutskii remarked, ‘No one wanted to believe in the possibility of such an event; the flame would not dare to touch the walls on which the blessing of one of the greatest peoples had been bestowed.’ The palace was ‘inviolable, as it seemed to us’. The guardsman Kolokoltsov noted that he and his comrades were so astounded by the thought of a fire in Nicholas’s palace that even 45 years later he was ‘seized by a nervous tremor’. Such a building, he continued, ‘such splendour as was the Winter Palace, the residence of the Russian tsar, the focus of all hopes and aspirations, is in one day destroyed and reduced to pile of ash. It thus seemed to me incomprehensible.’ The symbolism was potentially damaging. ‘There is something revolutionary about a fire,’ wrote Herzen (in a slightly different context). Might the rapid destruction of the palace reflect the fragility of the tsarist order itself? Perhaps unconsciously, even supporters of the

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Northern Phoenix  193 regime hinted at this. Zhukovskii remarked, ‘Suddenly this mighty building, with all its magnificence, disappeared in a few hours, like a poor shack.’ Was the autoc­ racy or even Russia itself, perhaps, just a ‘poor shack’, susceptible at any moment to ruin ‘in a few hours’? If the impossible had just occurred, what else might now be possible? Bashutskii recounted that for a long time after the fire, ‘the palace square was filled from morning to evening by crowds, in sorrowful contemplation mutely observing the grand and mournful picture of an immense skeleton’. We have no way of knowing what those crowds were thinking. Presumably many felt solidarity with the imperial family’s loss. But did some of them perhaps detect the regime’s weakness and vulnerability? American minister Dallas and his family had supposed as the fire began ‘that we were in the midst of a revolution’.53 What does it mean when the inviolable is violated? Some offered a religious interpretation for the conflagration. Metropolitan Filaret articulated such a view, privately at least. Perhaps also struck by the remarkable fact that he arrived in Petersburg from Moscow on the evening of the 17th, just in time for the blaze, Filaret connected the Petersburg fire with a series of other recent calamities: an earthquake in Kiev and fires in Paris and London. As he wrote to a fellow cleric, ‘Has our love [for God] not fallen into slumber? And is it not in order to awaken it that God sends us threatening signs? . . . Did you notice that three frightful and highly destructive fires in three countries have destroyed what each of them holds most dear: in Petersburg the palace, in London the exchange, and in France the theatre?’ Filaret couldn’t resist pointing out another coincidence. Petersburg had gone mad, he noted, over the dancer Marie Taglioni, who performed for a part of the 1837–8 season. ‘They say that the fire that destroyed the palace began at the very same time that she, in the theatre, was throwing herself into a fire, from which a shameless pagan idol was supposed to save her.’54 Who could fail to discern something ominous in such a coincidence? Yet religious conceptions could also work in Nicholas’s favour. By specifying that restoration be complete by Easter of 1839, the idea of resurrection could expand from the Saviour to the palace. Indeed, from this perspective perhaps the whole seemingly tragic event could be presented as necessary and preor­ dained. At a minimum, as Bashutskii noted, ‘The very combination of the open­ ing of the palace with the celebration of the Easter holiday contains something inexplicably joyful, full of splendid hopes.’ Perhaps this, in part, induced observers to construe the palace’s reemergence precisely as miraculous. ‘And that genuine and scarcely comprehensible miracle’, wrote Bashutskii, ‘occurred not by sorcery, but by action of a word, uttered by the Sovereign who fully understood his people.’ Looking back, Kolokoltsev marvelled, ‘What wonders indeed were worked in those times.’55 More broadly, the experience offered a remarkable opportunity for the autoc­ racy to demonstrate both its deep bond with the people and its capacity to mo­bil­ ize, and thus to enact what Kuzovkina calls ‘a utopian model of autocratic

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194 1837 power’.56 Bashutskii emphasized the solidarity between tsar and people by noting, ‘In destroying the home of the tsar, did not the senseless flame destroy the home of each of his subjects?’ In an echo of Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar, people and ruler were accordingly united in the challenge of reconstruction. As Zhukovskii declared, ‘Both tsar and Russia reverently accepted the new trial, sent down to them by all-mighty Providence’—a trial that gave the tsar the opportunity ‘to show before the face of the people his submission to God’s power’ and the people the occasion ‘to express their love for the tsar with new force’. Orlov echoed the idea of greatness through trial. ‘In truth it is not in days of happiness or in cele­ brations of any kind, but in moments of trial that one may see how great Russia is.’ Viewing all that was transpiring in the days during and after the fire, he remarked, ‘You come to the conclusion that, as it seems, Russia needs the lessons of misfor­ tune and days of sorrow in order to recognize and appreciate all the energy and internal strength concealed within her.’57 The sense of shared sacrifice was evident in the desire of many subjects to contribute monetarily to the palace’s reconstruc­ tion, thus making the fire, as the emperor recounted in a rescript, ‘an opportunity for new expressions of zeal by our loyal subjects’. In a striking display of such popular generosity, as the emperor was travelling by sleigh through the city not long after the fire, an anonymous man tossed into his lap a packet containing 25,000 roubles for the palace before quickly disappearing again. Though Nicholas refused such gifts, he affirmed that such offers ‘deeply touch our heart’.58 Commenting on the aspiration of nobles, merchants, and ‘even poor people’ to contribute, he wrote in a letter, ‘These feelings are even more precious to me than the Winter Palace.’59 The effect of all this was to assert the shared symbolic and emotional involvement of people and emperor in conceptions of the nation.60 The palace’s restoration also allowed patriotic Russians to poke their finger in the eye of sceptical foreigners. American minister Dallas had dismissed Nicholas’s plans to reoccupy the palace by September as ‘utterly and absolutely impossible!’ Bashutskii, for one, took visible pleasure in asking of such doubt: ‘What will be the response of the experienced builders and the many intelligent people abroad, who thought and wrote that twenty years is scarcely enough to reconstruct the palace as it was before the fire?’61 Not that foreigners were necessarily convinced. The Marquis de Custine had the opportunity to visit the construction site not long before the palace’s rededication and, if prepared to acknowledge the feat of reconstruction, he nonetheless emphasized its cost and the despotism at its base. To complete the work on time, he wrote, ‘unheard-of efforts were necessary’, and of the thousands of workmen employed ‘a considerable number died daily, but the victims were instantly replaced by other champions who filled in only to per­ ish, in their turn, in this inglorious breach. And the sole end of all these sacrifices was to satisfy the caprice of one man!’ Dallas likewise reported, ‘The mortality among the workmen engaged in rebuilding the Winter Palace is represented to be frightful.’ Yet when the American diplomat visited the palace, he was compelled

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Northern Phoenix  195 to admit to being ‘utterly at a loss to comprehend how [the work] could be executed by human means in the course of the brief interval between the con­flag­ ra­tion and the present moment’.62

Conclusion The destruction of the Winter Palace in December was Russia’s second great loss in 1837, the first being the death of Pushkin in January. The later of these two losses made the earlier one all the more palpable. The spectacle of the fire, wrote Viazemskii, was ‘worthy of inspiring a plaintive dirge by the national poet. Who among us has not felt new regrets over Pushkin’s mute lyre? The poet of all our glor­ ies, he had a particular affection for that beautiful edifice and would certainly have shed some poetic tears on those smoking ruins, if the tempest had not recently car­ ried him away and smashed his lyre.’63 The difference of course was that Pushkin was irreplaceable. The palace, by contrast, could reappear, phoenix-like from the ashes, to reoccupy its place at the heart of Petersburg, where it remains to this day. The 1830s in Russia were a time of monumental construction projects, with the decade’s second half being especially noteworthy. Begun in 1818, the construc­ tion of St Isaac’s Cathedral—Petersburg’s largest Orthodox temple—was fully in train, with the core work on the church’s distinctive dome undertaken in 1836–7. Construction of Odessa’s colossal stairway, made famous in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, likewise began in 1837. Initiation of work on Moscow’s mas­ sive Christ the Saviour Cathedral—completed in 1883, destroyed by the Bolsheviks in 1931, and reconstructed in the 1990s—essentially dates to 1837 as well, when the convent occupying its future territory was evicted. In 1838 build­ ers initiated the erection of the New Kremlin Palace (completed in 1849), which was designed to hold immense receptions and processions of the imperial court in Moscow.64 The Winter Palace’s reconstruction represented part of this con­ struction boom, though it was unique in light of both its speed—the Christ the Savior Cathedral took nearly a half-century to complete—and the fact that it was a restoration designed to mask catastrophe. The new Winter Palace would be the site of much subsequent drama as the tsarist decades unfolded. In 1880, a bomb smuggled into the palace by revolution­ ary terrorists destroyed a dining room and killed eleven soldiers in the area of the blast. The next year, Alexander II expired in an office on the second floor after having been fatally wounded by terrorists on a nearby street. In 1906 a reluctant Nicholas II formally convened Russia’s first parliament in the palace’s Throne Room, thus initiating Russia’s first experiment in constitutional government. And the ‘storming of the Winter Palace’—though far less dramatic and consequential than Soviet accounts would have one believe—became a founding myth of the new Bolshevik state. It might seem that the decision to rebuild the Winter Palace

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196 1837 was inevitable, but ultimately it was one that had to be taken deliberately. Both that choice and the catastrophe necessitating it were the products of 1837.

Notes 1. L. M. Baranovich (an engineer involved in the reconstruction) in ‘Rasskazy ochevidtsev o pozhare Zimnego Dvortsa v 1837-m godu’, Russkii arkhiv 1865, izd. 2-oe M 1866, 1193. 2. Severnaia pchela 290 (21 Dec. 1837): 1157. Those same words were carried in Moskovskie vedomosti 103 (25 Dec. 1837), 773. 3. Letter to Russian ambassador in Vienna (24 Dec. 1837) in ‘Rasskazy ochevidtsev o pozhare Zimnego dvortsa v 1837-m godu’, Russkii arkhiv 3 (1865): 1180. 4. Severnaia pchela 290 (21 Dec. 1837), 1157. 5. For more on the original palace and its prehistory, see Aleksandr Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie Zimnego Dvortsa v Sankt Peterburge’, Otechestvennye zapiski 3 (1839): 1–30; Susan  P.  McCaffrey, The Winter Palace and the People: Staging and Consuming Russia’s Monarchy, 1754–1917 (DeKalb, IL, 2018), 17–52. 6. Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 38–42; M.  E.  Pylaev, Staryi Peterburg, 2nd edn (SPb, 1889), 90–3. 7. Dmitrii Chaplin, ‘Vtoroe Fevralia 1836 goda v Peterburge’, Russkii arkhiv 3 (1877): 219–28; Tat’iana Kuzovkina, ‘ “Liudi goreli v udivitel’nom poriadke”: K formirovaniiu ofitsial’nogo iazyka nikolaevskoi epokhi’, Toronto Slavic Quarterly 18 (2002): http:// sites.utoronto.ca/tsq/18/kuzovkina18.shtml; Mariia Maiofis, ‘Chemu sposobstvoval pozhar? “Antikrizisnaia” rossiiskaia publitsistika 1837–1838 godov, kak predmet istorii emotsii’, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 6 (2009): https://magazines.gorky.media/ nlo/2009/6/chemu-sposobstvoval-pozhar.html. 8. McCaffrey, Winter Palace, 69–89, 107–10, 118 (citation at 8). 9. Prince Wiasemski [Petr Viazemskii], L’incendie du Palais d’Hiver à Saint-Petersbourg (Paris, 1838), 5; Sergei Uvarov, ‘Pis’mo k inostrannomu zhurnalistu’, appendix to Maiofis, ‘Chemu sposobstvoval pozhar?’ 10. Good accounts of the fire’s outbreak are in Richard M. Haywood, ‘The Winter Palace in St. Petersburg: Destruction by Fire and Reconstruction’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 27(2) (1979), esp. 163–5; and V. M. Glinka et al. (eds), Ermitazh: Istoriia stroitel’stva i arkhitektury zdanii (Leningrad, 1989), 186–8. 11. D. G. Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar Zimnego Dvortsa 17, 18 i 19 dekabria 1837 g. Iz zapisok starogo l.-g. Preobrazhenskogo polka ofitsera’, Russkaia starina 40 (1883), 335–6. 12. Baranovich, ‘Razskazy ochevidtsev’, 1190; Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 54; Haywood, ‘Winter Palace’, 164–5; Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 333. 13. Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, United States Minister to Russia, 1837–1839 (New York, 1970); Vasilii Zhukovskii, ‘Pozhar Zimnego Dvortsa’, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii V. A. Zhukovskogo v 12-i tomakh, ed. A. S. Arkhangel’skii (SPb, 1902), 70. 14. Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 336; Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 65; Zapiski Mikhaila Ivanovicha Glinki i perepiska ego s rodnymi i druz’iami (SPb, 1887), 130. 15. W.  Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias (DeKalb, IL, 1989), 158.

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Northern Phoenix  197 16. Baranovich, ‘Rasskazy ochevidtsev’, 1192; Zhukovskii, ‘Pozhar’, 69; RGIA, f. 470, op. 1 (82/516), d. 234, l. 50ob.; Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 338–9; Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovelnie’, 56 (citation at 59). 17. Haywood, ‘Winter Palace’, 166; Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 345. 18. Baranovich, ‘Rasskazy ochevidtsev’, 1191; Baranovich and Orlov in ‘Rasskazy ochevi­ dtsev’, 1181–2, 1187; A. I. Lomachevskii, ‘Zapiski zhandarma s 1837 po 1843’, Vestnik Evropy, vol. 2, book 3 (1872), 244. 19. Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 338. On Nicholas’s fortitude, see also Ivan Luzhin, ‘Eshche rasskaz ochevidtsa o Peterburgskom pozhare’, Russkii arkhiv 6 (1868), 847. 20. Severnaia pchela, no. 290 (21 Dec. 1837), 1157; Orlov in ‘Rasskazy ochevidtsev’, 1185; Zhukovskii, ‘Pozhar’, 68–9. See also I.  Korsunskii, ‘Po povodu poluveka so vremeni vozobnovleniia Zimnego Dvortsa’, Russkii arkhiv 27, bk. 3 (1899), 99. 21. Orlov in ‘Rasskazy ochevidtsev’, 1185; Korsunskii, ‘Po povodu poluveka’, 101; Rafael Zotov, Tridtsatiletie Evropy v tsarstvovanie Nikolaia I, pt 1 (SPb, 1857), 258; 22. Zhukovskii, ‘Pozhar’, 69; Baranovich in ‘Rasskazy ochevidtsev’, 1192; Lomachevskii, ‘Zapiski’, 244; Mirbach in ‘Rasskazy ochevidtsev’, 1203–4; Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 343. 23. Dolli Fikel’mon, Dnevnik, 1829–1837: Ves’ Pushkinskii Peterburg, ed. V.  V.  Savitskii (Moscow, 2009), 362; Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, 45; Zhukovskii, ‘Pozhar’, 70; Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 64; ‘Rasskazy ochevidtsev’, 1186. 24. Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 343, 347; Zhukovskii, ‘Pozhar’, 63; Aleksandr Bashutskii, Novosti v Peterburge (SPb, 1838), 6. 25. Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 348–9 (citation at 349); Glinka et al., Ermitazh, 197; L.  M.  Baranovich, ‘Vozobnovlenie Zimnego dvortsa posle pozhara 1837 g.’, Russkii arkhiv 33 (1894), kn. 1, 448–9. 26. RGIA, f. 470 op. 1 (82/516), d. 234, l. 47. 27. Ibid. ll. 16, 42, 46, 58, 68, and 87; Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 349. 28. RGIA, f. 472, op. 2, d. 1125, ll. 34ob.–36. 29. Ibid. d. 1122, ll. 77–80ob. (citations at ll. 79 and 80). A summary is also provided in Glinka et al., Ermitazh, 188–9. 30. RGIA, f. 472, op. 2, d. 1122, ll. 61–5ob. (citation at 64ob.). A key passage of the report is also cited in Glinka et al., Ermitazh, 189. On the construction of that hall, see V. I. Piliavskii and V. F. Levinson-Lessing (eds), Ermitakh: Istoriia i arkhitekury zdanii (Leningrad, 1974), 89–91. 31. Cited in Glinka et al., Ermitazh, 190. 32. Piliavskii and Levinson-Lessing, Ermitazh, 111–17. 33. Severnaia pchela 290 (21 Dec. 37), 1157–8. 34. Natal’ia Potapova, Tribuny syrykh kazematov: Politika i diskursivnye strategii v dele dekabristov (SPb, 2017), 236–7, 253–5. 35. Wiasemskii, L’Incendie, citations at 11, 24, 26. On its publication and interpretations in French royalist circles, see Vera Mil’china, Rossiia i Frantsiia: Diplomaty, literatory, shpiony (SPb, 2006), 364–9. 36. PSZ 10842 (29 Dec. 1837): 1055–9 (citations at 1057 and 1058); Haywood, ‘Winter Palace’, 170. 37. Korsunskii, ‘Po povodu poluveka’, 102; Haywood, ‘Winter Palace’, 169. 38. Baranovich, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 448–50.

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198 1837 39. Ibid. 451–2. Haywood states that the work ceased on 1 July, but Baranovich’s account suggests that it continued, lubricated by vodka. 40. Bashutskii, Novosti, 7. 41. Glinka et al., Ermitazh, 219. 42. Basic timeline from Haywood, ‘Winter Palace’, 173–5; Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovelnie’, 1. 43. Baranovich, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 453–4; Tverskie GV 15 (1839): 90; Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 1–2. On Nicholas’s closeness to the people: Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ, 1995), 299–301. 44. Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 90–95; Glinka et al., Ermitazh, 217. Filaret cited in Korsunskii, ‘Po povodu poluveka’, 110. 45. Glinka et al., Ermitazh, 201–2, 223; Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’ (vol. 4), 3; Severnaia pchela, cited in Tverskie GV 15 (1839); Haywood, ‘Winter Palace’, 173. 46. Glinka et al., Ermitazh, 198–9. Extensive room-by-room descriptions of the new palace are provided by Bashutskii, vol. 3, ‘Vozobnovelnie’, 71–103; vol. 4, 1–34; Glinka et al., Ermitazh, 203–84. See also Piliavskii and Levinson-Lessing (eds), Ermitazh, 119–71; A. Sivkov, V. P. Stasov i ego raboty po vosstanovleniiu Zimnego Dvortsa posle pozhara 1837 g. (Leningrad, 1948); and Sergey G. Federov, ‘Matthew Clark and the Origins of Russian Structural Engineering, 1810–1840s’, Construction History 8 (1992): 69–88 (esp. 77–83). 47. Ficquelmont (ambassador) to Metternich (6[18] Feb. 1838), cited in Haywood, ‘Winter Palace’, 168. 48. Viel’gorskii’s journal (16 Jan. 1838), quoted in E. E. Liamina and N. V. Samover, Bednyi Zhozef: Zhizn’ i smert’ Iosifa Viel’gorskogo (Moscow, 1999), 222; ‘1838 god v Peterburge (po dnevniku P.  G.  Divova)’, Russkaia starina 6 (1902): 633; Haywood, ‘Winter Palace’, 169. 49. McCaffrey, Winter Palace, 137. 50. Kuzovkina, ‘ “Liudi goreli” ’, 11; Maiofis, ‘Chemu sposobstvoval pozhar?’ 51. Korsunskii, ‘Po povodu poluveka’, 101; Severnaia pchela 291 (22 Dec. 37): 1161; Kolokol’tsev, ‘Pozhar’, 101; Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, 50. 52. Kuzovkina, ‘ “Liudi goreli” ’, 5. 53. Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 331, 343; Aleksandr Gertsen, Byloe i dumy, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1969), 156; Zhukovskii, ‘Pozhar’, 68; Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 4–5, 51, 65; Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, 46. 54. Filaret to Antonii (25 Jan. 1838), quoted in Korsunskii, ‘Po povodu poluveka’, 108; Haywood, ‘Winter Palace’, 168. 55. Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 72; Kolokol’tsov, ‘Pozhar’, 349. 56. Kuzovkina, ‘ “Liudi goreli” ’. 57. Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 4; Zhukovskii, ‘Pozhar’, 71; Orlov in ‘Rasskazy ochevidt­ sev’, 1181, 1187. 58. Korsunskii, ‘Po povodu poluveka’, 103; Nicholas, cited in Zotov, Tridtsatiletie, 270. Also in Luzhin, ‘Eshche rasskaz’, 850–51 and Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 69–70. The emperor’s rescript was also carried in the provincial newspapers, e.g. Voronezhskie GV 7 (12 Feb. 1838): 27–8. 59. Cited in McCaffrey, Winter Palace, 137.

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Northern Phoenix  199 60. Maiofis uses the Russian term soprichastnost’ to describe this ideal. See ‘Chemu sposobstvoval pozhar?’ 61. Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, 51; Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie’, 76. 62. Marquis de Custine, Russie en 1839, vol. 1 (Paris, 1843), 236; Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, 182. 63. Wiasemski, L’Incendie, 22. 64. Wortman, Scenarios, 381–7.

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Conclusion The reader of an entire book is entitled to more than an epilogue or something concocted ‘in place of a conclusion’. So here is my humble effort at a brief but proper ending. I start with the Winter Palace, the subject of the sketch just completed. Describing the building’s extraordinary reconstruction, Alexander Bashutskii offered a general comment on his epoch. ‘The time in which we live’, he declared, ‘may justly be called a time of uncommon events and extraordinary phenomena. What has not occurred before our eyes? The unexpected has become almost a necessity, the impossible—possible. . . . Destroying what was created by the efforts of many centuries in the material realm and in thought, the present century bravely replaces the old with the new, with a speed and strength of which humankind previously had no conception.’1 No doubt, there was hyperbole in Bashutskii’s declaration, designed as it was to celebrate the palace’s resurrection. But contained within it is also truth. Indeed, Bashutskii effectively articulated what this book has sought to show: that the 1830s in Russia constituted a striking period of dynamism, innovation, and consequence. To be sure, scholars have previously recognized important changes under Nicholas I that prepared the groundwork for the Great Reforms of the 1860s.2 And recently one historian has identified the 1830s as an era of ‘small reforms’ designed to guide Russia towards a new commercial and civil society.3 Yet my claim is that we may go further and assert a much wider range of beginnings in this decade. Many of the key attributes of modern Russia appeared precisely in the 1830s. In this sense, Russia was scarcely unique. Long ago, Eric Hobsbawm emphasized the significance of the year 1830 as a major break in European history. ‘Whichever aspect of social life we survey,’ he wrote, ‘1830 marks a turning point in it.’ Discernible is the culmination of a broader set of changes in Europe from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth—what some Germans have called a ‘saddle-period’ (Sattelzeit), a transitional period into modernity. In this era, posits Tim Blanning, ‘Europe changed so rapidly and radically that one can reasonably speak of a watershed in world history.’ Pointing to diverse factors, Jürgen Osterhammel indeed extends this idea of a ‘saddle-period’—which he also labels ‘the age of revolution’ (1770–1830)—to the wider globe, offering a truncated ‘Victorianism’ (1830–80) as the century’s core. Paul Johnson meanwhile posits the 15 years of 1815–30 as being those ‘during which the matrix of the modern world was largely formed’. And Holly Case asserts that the 1820s and 1830s gave birth to 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution. Paul W. Werth, Oxford University Press (2021). © Paul W. Werth. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198826354.003.0012

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Conclusion  201 an ‘age of questions’, which featured the widening tendency, originating in the proceedings of representative assemblies like the British Parliament, to frame contemporary political and social issues explicitly as ‘questions’ requiring the arbitration of public opinion and often international diplomacy for their reso­lution.4 Something approximating consensus, then, posits a critical shift around the year 1830, with the next decade or so, by implication, exhibiting attributes of a substantively new era. If the 1830s represent such a distinct threshold, then the year 1837 reveals its significance for Russia with particular clarity. Consider ‘before’ (let us say 1835) and ‘after’ (we may choose 1840). Before, Russia had no railway, whereas after, the binding of the country with this innovation in transportation had begun. Before, Russia had only the tiniest provincial press and thus severely limited opportunities for the expression of regional identity in print; after, 42 provinces possessed just such a possibility, and others would follow. Before, the empire had an eastern variant of Catholicism that reflected historical Polish hegemony in the western provinces; after, that variant was gone in the empire proper, and those provinces had been bound more closely to Russia’s centre institutionally and culturally. Before, Russians sensed that they lacked a distinctly Russian music; after, many were convinced that this had now appeared. Before, Russia had a renowned bard in Alexander Pushkin; after, it was canonizing a national poet, one who would become ‘our everything’. Before, Russians had scarcely considered their history from a philosophical standpoint; after, spurred by their ‘madman’, they were compelled to grapple with the meanings of Russia’s backwardness. Before, few in the country had seen their future ruler; after, countless subjects had beheld him in the flesh and many others had learned through newspapers of his movements and the ‘raptures’ they produced. Before, Russia had neglected its 20 million state peasants; after, a dynamic ministry established ‘guardianship’ for those benighted souls and raised key questions that would shape discussion of the peasant question—including serf emancipation—for decades thereafter. Before, the khanate of Khiva had the temerity, as the tsar’s servitors saw it, to incite ‘its’ Kazakhs against Russia; after, though the khanate remained independent, its ability to infringe on Russian interests had been curtailed, while British Russophobia had blossomed fully. There was greater continuity for the Winter Palace—it existed both before and after—but its reappearance was itself a major event, and the process of reconstruction had helped to reinforce an autocracy otherwise threatened by the catastrophe. In short, a whole series of shifts and transformations had occurred over this short period of time, with 1837 serving frequently as their centre or pivotal point. Sometimes immediately evident, in other cases more discernible only over time, the implications of these changes for Russia were profound. They amount, as I have proposed, to a quiet revolution that unified and integrated the country, while also serving to embody a Russian nation in institutions and practices. This is by no means to say that Russia’s subsequent destiny was now fully determined. In

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202 1837 some cases, the country proved unable or unwilling to build effectively or rapidly on these foundations. For all of the dynamism just catalogued, Russia endured ignominious defeat in the Crimean War two decades after 1837. Nor did any of the drama of 1837 significantly modify the institution of autocracy, which con­ tinued to define Russia’s political order at least until 1905. Even in the twentieth century Russia retained much that was archaic. On balance, though, I submit that the foregoing excursion reveals how many of modern Russia’s most noteworthy features may be traced back to the 1830s, and to 1837 in particular. Pushkin was right to discern ‘something grand’ in Russia’s situation in the mid-1830s, something that has ‘astonished’ at least one historian. Perhaps his readers now share that amazement. * * * The world of course did not end when the clock struck midnight ushering in the year 1838. So what, then, became of the heroes of 1837—those who survived— once that year had passed? The builder of Russia’s first railway, Franz von Gerstner, outlived Pushkin by three years, dying in Philadelphia in 1840. The poet Vasilii Zhukovskii, Pushkin’s friend and Alexander Nikolaevich’s tutor, accompanied the heir on parts of his tour of Europe in 1838 and from the early 1840s spent much of his life in Germany with a new wife (40 years his junior) until his death in Baden in 1852. The emperor Nicholas I died in his beloved (and reconstructed) Winter Palace in 1855 after bringing Russia into the Crimean War. Later that same year, death claimed Sergei Uvarov, Russia’s ideologist of nationality. Pushkin’s friend Peter Chaadaev lived until 1856, unable to publish any other works, which first appeared in print only after his death. Mikhail Glinka composed a second opera, Ruslan and Liudmila (1842) and died in 1857, the same year that claimed Vasilii Perovskii, the architect of Russia’s ill-fated charge across the Kazakh steppe (who nonetheless redeemed himself with imperial exploits in the 1850s). Nicholas’s wife, the empress Alexandra, died at Tsarskoe Selo in 1860, distinct from her husband in that she allowed herself to be photographed. Pushkin’s widow, Natalia, married again in 1844, and in 1856 she petitioned the government for an extension of the family’s property rights over Pushkin’s works (originally 25 years) until the death of his two sons. She died in 1863. Dmitrii Bludov, interior minister during the mass conversion of Uniates, served more than two decades in the empire’s chancery for legal codification and composed the official account of Nicholas’s death, before himself passing in 1864. His collaborator on the Uniate affair, Joseph Semashko, served as bishop, then archbishop and later metropolitan of the Orthodox diocese of Lithuania and Vilna. He died in 1868, just as the next stage of Uniate reunification with Orthodoxy entered its penultimate phase in the Kingdom of Poland. Pavel Kiselev, the first Minister of State Properties, occupied that post for nearly 20 years, serving thereafter as Russia’s ambassador to France. He remained in the City of Light until his

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Conclusion  203 death in 1872. And Alexander Nikolaevich, the young heir to the throne in 1837, became emperor in 1855 and embarked on a series of reforms, among which the emancipation of serfs in 1861 (which drew on Kiselev’s state-peasant reform) was the most important. His legs were blown off by a terrorist’s bomb on the embankment of Petersburg’s Catherine Canal on 1 March 1881. As blood gushed from his wounds, he asked to be returned to die at the Winter Palace that his father had reconstructed after the tragic fire of 1837. And the least of the heroes of 1837, its most humble chronicler? He is still alive as of this writing, and the reader will be relieved to learn that he has no plans to compose a book about 1838.

Notes 1. Aleksandr Bashutskii, ‘Vozobnovlenie Zimnego Dvortsa v Sankt Peterburge,’, Otechestvennye zapiski vol. 3 (1839): 2–3. 2. Perhaps most notably W. Bruce Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825–1861 (DeKalb, IL, 1982); Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias (DeKalb, IL, 1989). 3. Susan Smith-Peter, Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Leiden, 2018), 60–134. 4. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (New York, 1962), 140; Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Patrick Camiller (Princeton, NJ, 2014), 58–63 (citation at 58); Tim Blanning, The Romantic Revolution: A History (New York, 2012), ix; Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815–1830 (New York, 1991), xvii; Holly Case, The Age of Questions: Or, A First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth Century, and Beyond (Princeton, NJ, 2018).

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Index Note: Tables and figures are indicated by an italic “t” and “f ” respectively, following the page number. For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Abaza, Aggei  168–9, 174–5 Adai tribe, see Kazakhs Admiralty Square  180 Afghanistan 134–7 Afghans 132 agriculture  85–6, 90, 105, 108, 111–12, 115–16, 120, 165, 167–8 Agricultral Newspaper 112 Akhundov, Mirza Fatih-Ali (1812­–1878)  22 Aksai 64 Alexander I, Russian Emperor (1777–1825)  5–8, 7f, 59, 148–50 Alexander Nikolaevich, Grand Prince and heir, future Emperor Alexander II (1818–1881) 7f, 35–6, 159, 175–6, 184 and his tour of the empire  1, 3, 5, 59–84, 164, 166 and celebrity  1, 59, 74–9 and charisma  59, 76–7 and emotion  59, 66–7, 77–8, 80 death as Alexander II  195–6, 202–3 Alexandra Fedorovna, Princess Charlotte, Russian Empress (1798–1860)  5, 7, 30, 64, 74, 184, 188, 191–2, 202–3 Altai region  164–6 American Indians  47–8, 70–1 Anapa 64 Anderson, Benedict  99 Anichkov Palace  181 Annenkov, Pavel Vasilevich (1813–1887)  21 D’Anthès, Georges Charles (1812–1895)  11–14, 17, 19 Aq Masjid  139 Apology of a Madman (Peter Chaadaev, 1837)  43, 50–4 Arendt (doctor of Pushkin)  14 Arseniev, Konstantin Ivanovich (1789–1865)  60–2, 69, 164 Armenians 70 Askold’s Grave (Aleksei Verstovskii, 1835)  32–3 Astrakhan (town and province)  86–7, 126f, 128, 130–3, 165–6

Austria  89–90, 160, 164–6, 171, 175 autocracy  2, 36–7, 60, 100 backwardness  1, 43, 55, 165 Bakhchisarai 71 Baer, Karl von (1792–1806)  4 balls 67–8 Baltic Sea  125, 134–5 Baranovich, L. M.  183–5, 189–90 Bashkirs 70–1 Bashutskii, Alexander Pavlovich (1805–1876)  185–6, 189–95, 200 Basilian monastic order, see Uniate Church Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1926) 195 beards, see Uniate Church Belarus 145 Belarusians  3–4, 147 Belev 71–2 Belgium  5–8, 17, 166 Belostok oblast 88 Benckendorff, Alexander Khristoforovich (1782–1844)  17–18, 20–1, 49, 154–5, 187 Berlin  29, 33–4 Birmingham 12–13 Black Sea  133–4 Blackwell, William  174 Blanning, Tim  200–1 Bludov, Dmitrii Nikolaevich (1785–1864)  62–4, 91–4, 202–3 and Uniates  149–51, 153–5 Bohemia, see Austria Boldyrev, Alexei Vasilievich (1784–1842)  45–6 Bolshoi Theater  xviii, 30 Bonald, Louis de (1754–1840)  43–4 Borodino  71–2, 107, 133 Briullov, Alexander Pavlovich (1798–1877)  188, 190–1 Briullov, Karl Pavlovich (1799–1852)  37 Bukhara  30, 90, 126–8, 131–2 Bulgak, Josaphat, Uniate Metropolitan (1758–1838) 156

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206 Index Bulgarin, Faddei (1789–1859)  20–1, 30–3, 37, 99–100 Buren, Martin van, US president, 1837–41 (1782–1862) 5 Byzantium (Byzantine Church)  47–9, 145–6, 148 cadastres  110, 115–16 camels  125, 137–41 canals  73, 165–6 Cancrin, Count Georg Ludwig (1774–1845)  87, 107–9, 165–6, 174 captives, see Khiva caravans  127–8, 139 Case, Holly  200–1 Caspian Sea  126f, 127–30, 135–6, 139, 168–9 Catherine II (the Great), Russian Empress (1729–1796)  59, 71–2, 85–7, 107–8, 129, 146–7, 180–1 Catholicism, Roman  114 and European civilization  44–5, 47, 54 and Uniates  148–50, 152, 156, 159–60 Catholicism, Greek, see Uniate Church Catholics, Roman  146, 154–7, 159 Caucasus  4, 10, 76, 87 North  113–14, 135 South 64 Cavos, Catterino (1777–1840)  32–3 censorship  43, 45–6 Central Asia  1, 3, 125 Chaadaev, Peter Iakovlovich (1794–1856)  1, 3–4, 43–58, 202–3 and insanity  46, 49–50 and errancy and waywardness  43–4, 47–8 see also Philosophical Letters and Apology of a Madman Cheremis (Maris)  114, 117–18 Cherepanov, Yefim and Miron  166 Chernyshev, Alexander Ivanovich (1786–1857) 45 Chief procurator of the Orthodox Holy Synod  145, 151, 154, 160 China  5, 90, 126f, 127–8 Christianity, see Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Uniates Christ the Saviour Cathedral (Moscow)  4, 195 Chuguev 66 Chuvash  106, 117–18 civil society, see provincial newspapers Clark, Matthew  190–1 clothes  62–3, 89–90 conservatism  2, 5–8, 43 Contemporary, The  10, 17, 192 conversion, religious  114 see also Uniate Church

Cossacks  64, 71, 73, 106, 118, 127–8, 130–1, 156–7 Crimea  64, 71, 92, 175 Crimean War  140, 201–2 crown peasants, see peasants Crown Department  108, 116–18 and ‘Simbirsk exchange,’  116–17 Custine, Marquis de, Astolphe-Louis-Léonor (1790–1857)  50, 54–5, 158–9, 165–6, 194–5 Czechoslovakia 160 Dahl, Vladimir (1801–1872)  138, 140–1 Danzas, Konstantin (1801–70)  14–16 Danzig 89–90 Darwin, Charles (1809–1882)  5 Death of a Poet (Mikhail Lermontov, 1837)  22 Decembrist Rebellion  5–8, 10, 60, 191 Decembrists  34–5, 46, 68–9, 111 Dehn, Siegfried Wilhelm (1799–1858)  33–4 Demidov factories  73, 166 Department (Directorate) of Foreign Confessions  45, 148–9 Derzhavin, Gavrila Romanovich (1743–1816)  87 Destrem, Moris (1787–1855)  167–8 Dnieper River  66–7 Dolgorukov, Vasilii Vasilievich (1787–1858)  186, 189–90 Don Cossacks, see Cossacks Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin 72–3 Dostoevsky, Fedor Mikhailovich (1821–1881) 21 Drebush, Alexander von (1783–1855)  155, 157–8 duel  1, 9, 12–14, 22 education, see Ministry of State Properties Eklof, Ben  114–15 Elizabeth, Russian Empress (1709–1762)  180 Elizabeth Alekseevna, Russian Empress, wife of Alexander I (1779–1826)  71–2 emancipation of serfs, see serfdom Emba River  126, 138 emotion, see Alexander Nikolaevich England, see Geat Britain Estland province  106 Europe  60, 158–9, 173–4 and Russia  46–7, 49–50, 52–5, 125–7, 129 Evtuhov, Catherine  98, 100 exile  10, 19, 22, 46 experimental farms  112, 120 factories  66–7, 73, 87–8, 164–6 Far East  120 ferry crossings  64, 76–7, 165–6

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Index  207 Ficquelmont, Dorothea (“Dolly”), Daria Fedorovna (1804–1863)  10–12, 185 Filaret, Moscow Metropolitan (Drozdov, 1783–1867)  64, 79–80, 190–1, 193 Filioque  145–6, 154 Finnic peoples  96 see also Maris, Mordvins, and Votiaks fire  91, 180 see also Winter Palace fisherman  130–1, 139 forests  73, 76, 96, 106–9, 113–14, 165–8 forestry  109, 113 Forest Journal 112–13 France  5–8, 17–18, 46–7, 50–1, 166, 175, 180, 188, 193 Frolova-Walker, Marina  31–4 Galicia, see Austria Gan (Hahn), Elena Andreevna (1814–42)  29 gazettes, see provincial newspapers Gelenzdhik 64 Gens, Grigorii Fedorovich (1787–1845)  131, 133 Germany  19, 89–90, 112, 175 Germans  29, 70, 76 Gerstner, Franz Anton von (1796–1840)  163–71, 174–6, 202–3 Glazov (town)  78–9 Gleason, John  140 Glinka, Mikhail Ivanovich (1804–1857)  1, 3–4, 28–42, 55, 76–7, 172, 182, 202–3 Glinka, Maria Petrovna (wife of Mikhail Ivanovich) 29 Glinka, Sergei Nikolaevich (1775–1847)  34–5 Ginzburg, Lydia (1902–1990)  23 Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich (1809–1852)  31–2, 52, 60 Golden Horde  125–7 Golitsyn, Dmitrii Vladimirovich (1771–1844)  49 Goncharova, Yekaterina Nikolaevna (1809–43)  12 Goncharova, Natalia Nikolaevna, see Pushkina, Natalia Gorizontov, Leonid  99 Great Britain  5, 46–7, 60–2, 125, 133–7, 139 and Russophobia  125, 133–7, 140 and security of India  134–5, 139–41 and railways  165–6, 168–9 Great Patriotic War (War of 1812)  34–5, 64, 71–2, 89–90, 107, 125, 129, 133, 138, 180–1 Great Reforms  119, 200 Greek Catholics, see Uniate Church Gregory XVI, Pope  158–9 Grigoriev, Apollon Aleksandrovich (1822–1864)  21, 23 Grodno (town and province)  168–9

guardianship, see Ministry of State Properties Guriev (town)  126, 130–1 Guriev, Dmitrii Aleksandrovich (1758–1825)  107–8 harvest failure, see Ministry of State Properties Haywood, Richard  191–2 Haxthausen, August von (1792–1866)  165–6 Heeckeren, Baron Jacob Derk Anne van (1792–1884)  11–13, 18–19, 22–3 Hegel, Georg Wiilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831) 50–1 Heine, Heinrich (1797–1856)  163 Herald of Odessa 78 Hermitage, see Winter Palace Herzen, Alexander (1812–1870)  43, 48–9, 96, 100, 192–3 and tour of Alexander Nikolaevich  63, 66–9, 77–9 history  34–5, 43, 49–50, 55, 71–3, 85, 87, 96, 188 Hobsbawm, Eric  200–1 Holy Synod, see chief procurator hordes, see Kazakhs horses  62, 164–5, 170–3 Hungary 160 illuminations  63, 66–7 India, see Great Britain Indians, see American Indians industry  60–2, 66–7, 73, 87, 90, 164–5 Inspector General (Nikolai Gogol, 1836)  52, 60 integration, see unification Interior Ministry  19–20, 87–90, 149 Ipatievskii monastery  71–2 Iran, see Persia Irtysh River  64 Islam 5 see also Muslims Italy  29, 37 Italian opera, see opera Ivan Susanin opera of Catterino Cavos (1815)  32–7 Soviet version of A Life for the Tsar  28–9, 38–9 see also Life for the Tsar Ivanovo 164 Izhevsk 73–4 Jackson, Andrew, US president, 1829–37 (1767–1845) 5 Johnson, Paul  200–1 Journal of the Ministry of State Properties, see Ministry of State Properties Journey from Moscow to St Petersburg (Alexander Radishchev, 1790)  73–4

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208 Index July Revolution in France  5–8, 17–18, 50–1 Jungars 127 Kaliazin 76 Kalmyks 125 Kaluga (town and province)  67–8, 71–2, 99–100 Kama River  75 Kamchatka 106 Kankrin, Yegor Frantsevich, see Cancrin Karamzin, Alexander Nikolaevich (1815–1888) 29–30 Karamzina, Yekaterina Andreevna (1780–1851) 12 Karamzina, Sophia Nikolaevna (1802–1856)  12–13, 31 Kazan  28–9, 67–72, 75, 86–7, 92, 117–18, 168–9 Kasimov  66, 74–5, 78–9 Kasymov, Kenisary, see Kazakhs Kazakhs  3, 67, 70–1, 125–33, 137–9 of Bukeev (Inner) Horde  126f, 130 of Junior Horde  126f, 128–30 of Middle Horde  126f, 128–30 of Senior Horde  126f, 128–9 of Adai tribe  128, 131 and raids  127–8, 130–3, 139 and revolt of Isatai Taimanov  130 and revolt of Kenisary Kasymov  130 and sultans  129–30 Kerch 64 Kerbedz, Stanislav Valerianovich (1810–1899)  173–4 Kharkov (town and province)  67, 69–70, 87, 92–4, 96, 116 Kherson (town and province)  64 Khiva 125–44 and Russian captives  127–8, 132–3, 136–9 detention of its traders  131–3, 137–8 “Winter campaign” against  4–5, 125, 136–41, 145 Khrapovitskii, Alexander Ivanovich (1787–1855) 31 Kiev  86, 92, 110–11 Kiselev, Pavel Dmitrievich (1788–1872)  105, 107–12, 115–20, 156, 202–3 see also Ministry of State Properties Kleespies, Ingrid  47–8 Kleinmichel, Peter Andreevich (1793–1869) 188–90 Koialovich, Mikhail Osipovich (1828–1891)  151, 159 Kokand 126f, 127–8 Kolokoltsev, D. G.  182–5, 190–4 Königsberg 89–90 Korsunskii, I.  192

Koshelev, Alexander Ivanovich (1806–1883)  175–6 Kostroma (town and province)  34–5, 62–4, 66, 71–2, 75–8 Kovno (town and province)  95 kraevedenie 98 Kremenchug 66–7 Kremlin (Moscow)  72–3, 195 Kukolnik, Nestor Vasilievich (1809–1868)  29–30, 170–2 kumys 70 Kungur 68–9 Kurgan 68–9 Kursk (town and province)  19–20 Kuzovkina, Tatiana  192–4 Kyrgyz 130 Laroche, Hermann (1845–1904)  38–9 Last Days of Pompei (Karl Briullov, 1834)  37 Lemke, Mikhail  49 Lermontov, Mikhail Yurievich (1814–1841)  22–3 Levitt, Marcus  19–20 Library for Reading  86–7, 100 Liebermann, August von, Prussian ambassador 18 Life for the Tsar, A (Mikhail Glinka, 1836–37)  1, 3, 28–42, 55, 71–2, 193–4 composition of  29 title of  36–7 libretto for  29 premiere of  29–32 critical assessments of  30–2 “folk” and “national” character of  31–4 Liszt, Franz (1811–1886)  172 literacy 86 Lithuanian Herald 78 Liverpool 168–9 Livland province  92 Londonderry, Lady Frances Anne Vane (1800–1865)  30, 32, 165–6 Lounsbery, Anne  97 Lutherans 79 Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo  10, 21 Maistre, Joseph-Marie de (1753–1821)  43–4 Manchester  165, 168–9 Mandelshtam, Osip (1891–1938)  43 Maria Fedorovna, Russian Empress, wife of Paul I (1759–1828)  7f, 30, 74 Maria Nikolaevna, Grand Princess (1819–1876) 7f, 30, 74 Maris, see Cheremis McCaffrey, Susan  180–1 McNeill, John (1795–1883)  135–6

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Index  209 Melgunov, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1804–1867) 34 Melnikov, Pavel Petrovich (1804–1880)  168, 173–4 Mennonites 71 merchants  66–7, 71, 79, 86–7 Meshcherskaia-Karamzina, Yekaterina Nikolaevna (1806–67)  14–15 Michael Pavlovich, Grand Duke (1798–1849)  7f, 17–19, 183 Michael Romanov, first Romanov tsar (1596–1645)  34–6, 71–2 Mikhailovskoe (Pushkin’s estate)  10, 19 Miliutin, Nikolai Alekseevich (1818–1872)  31 Ministry of Interior, see Interior ministry Ministry of State Properties creation of  108–9 and education  114–15, 120 and forests  113–14 and grain reserves  112 and guardianship  105, 109–11 and harvest failure  108, 116 and Journal of the Ministry of State Properties 112 and land  112–13 and peasant commune  110, 115 and potatoes  105, 108, 112, 116–19 and potato riots  85, 117–19 and religion  114 and resettlement  113–14, 120 and statistics  115–16 and technocracy  110, 120 staff of  110, 115–16, 119 see also Kiselev, Pavel Dmitrievich Minsk (town and province)  155, 180 modernity  1–2, 163, 200–3 Mogilev (town and province)  85, 88, 90–2, 94–7 monasteries, see Ipatievskii, Novospasskii, Sviatagorskii, Trinity-Sergius Lavra, Yuriev, and Uniate Church Montferrand, Auguste de (1786–1858)  187–8 Mordvins 96 Morrison, Alexander  133 Moscow  5, 28, 32–3, 48–9, 86, 89t, 180, 195 and the tour of Alexander Nikolaevich  64, 66 and railways  164–5, 168, 173–5 Moscow News  17, 45–6, 77–8, 188 mufti 71 Muraviev-Apostol, Matvei (1793–1886)  46 Murom 75–7 Muscovy  29, 59, 125–7 music European  33–4, 37 Russian “national”  28–34, 37

Muslims  70–1, 74–6, 114 see also Kazakhs mythologization  28–9, 38–9, 185 see also Pushkin, Alexander, cult of Nadezhdin, Nikolai Ivanovich (1804–1856)  23, 44–6, 48–9, 51–2, 86–7 Napoleon  71–2, 180 Napoleonic Wars, see Great Patriotic War narodnost  23, 32, 34–8, 49–50, 99, 147 see also triad nation (nation-building, nationality, and nationalism)  1, 3–4, 23–4, 28–9, 35, 38, 80, 99, 147, 193–4 see also narodnost Nechaev, Stepan Dmitrievich (1792–1860)  151, 154 Nesselrode, Karl Robert Reichsgraf von (1780–1862)  132–3, 136–9 Nests of the Gentry (Ivan Turgenev, 1859)  21 Neverov, Ianuarii Mikhalovich (1810–1893) 28–32 New Kremlin Palace  195 newspapers 78 see also provincial newspapers Nicene Creed  145–6 Nicholas I, Russian Emperor (1796–1855)  2, 5–8, 7f, 91, 107–9, 111–12, 133–4, 139, 200, 202–3 and Pushkin  10–13, 15–22 and Glinka  28–30 and Chaadaev  46, 50 and tour of Alexander Nikolaevich  59–64, 73, 79–80 and Uniates  149–50, 156–7 and railways  164–5, 167–72, 174 and fire at the Winter Palace  179–81, 183–6, 188–93 Nikitenko, Alexander Vasilievich (1804–1877)  15–16, 20–1, 45, 48–9 Nizhnedevitsk 164 Nizhnii Novgorod (town and province)  10–11, 69, 90–2, 164–5, 168–9 Nizhnii Tagil  73, 166 nobles and nobility  86–7, 105–6, 165 Nogais 70 Nolinsk 96 nomads, see Kazakhs non-nobles  54–5, 98 non-Russians  70–1, 95–6, 117–19 Northern Bee  9, 17, 20–1, 29–30, 78, 86–7, 99–100 and railway  170–4 and fire at the Winter Palace  179, 184, 188–92

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210 Index Novaia Zemlia  4 November Insurrection  5–8, 17–18, 36, 50–1, 68–9, 152, 168–9 Novgorod  21, 76 Novo-Aleksandrovsk (fortress)  126, 131, 139 Novocherkassk  64, 73 Novospasskii monastery  72–3 Nuevo México  5 Odessa  64, 67, 69, 87, 164–5, 195 Odoevskii, Vladimir Fedorovich (1803–1869)  5, 17, 28–9, 31–3, 39 Old Believers, see religious dissent Olonetsk (province)  88, 92–4 Omsk 127–8 opera Russia or ‘national’  28–9, 31–4, 38 Italian and European  32–4, 39 Orenburg (town, province, and region)  62–3, 66–7, 70–1, 86, 113–14, 125, 127–8, 131–2, 136–8 Orenburg Frontier Commission  129–32, 137–9 Orlov (town)  63–4 Orlov, Alexei Fedorovich (1787–1862)  179, 183–5, 193–4 Orthodoxy (Orthodox Christianity)  5, 35–7, 43, 47–9, 54–5, 71, 77–8, 99, 106–7, 114, 145–62 see also Uniate Church Osterhammel, Jürgen  200–1 Ottoman Empire  92–4, 127, 133–5, 168–9 pagans 114 Palmerston, Henry John Temple, Third Viscount (1784–1876)  135, 139 Panova, Yekterina Dmitrievna (1804–1858) 44–5 papacy  152, 158–9 Paul I (1754–1801)  7, 107–8 Pavlovsk palace complex  xviii, 164–5, 170–1 musical train station  172 peasants  86–7, 91–2 serfs  73–4, 164 crown peasants  73–4, 108, 116–20 state peasants  1, 3, 105–24, 130 ‘peasant question’  105, 110, 119–20 Penza (town and province)  59, 62, 67–8, 79, 90, 92, 94, 96–7 Perm (town and province)  64, 66–7, 69, 75–6, 86, 88–9, 118 Perovskii, Lev Alekseevich (1792–1856)  108 Perovskii, Vasilii Alekseevich (1795–1857)  125, 132, 136–41, 202–3 Persia 126f, 133–4, 168–9 Persians  128, 132, 134–5

Pestel, Pavel Ivanovich (1793–1826)  107 Peter I, the Great, Russian Emperor (1672–1725)  5–8, 10, 59, 71–2, 74, 129, 171, 180 and Peter Chaadaev  48–54 Peter III, Russian Emperor (1728–1762)  180 Peterson, Dale  46–7, 53 petitions 68–9 Philosophical Letters (Peter Chaadaev, 1836) 43–5 First Letter 43–50 and Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters 46–7 and publication  44–6, 53–4 content of  47–8 relation to Apology of a Madman 50–4 response of government and society  45–6, 48–50, 52 Pogodin, Mikhail Petrovich (1800–1875)  72–3 Poland  3, 36, 50–1, 145, 152, 156–7, 175 Kingdom of  160 Poland-Lithuania 145–7 see also November Insurrection and western provinces Poles  28, 30–1, 34–6, 68–9, 71–2, 146, 153, 159, 168–9 see also November Insurrection Polotsk (town and Uniate diocese of)  152, 156–7 Poltava (town and province)  62, 70, 76 potatoes, see Ministry of State Properties potato riots, see Ministry of State Properties Pozzo di Borgo, Carlo Andrea (1764–1842)  140 Preobrazhenskii Guard  183 press, see newspapers and provincial newspapers Proctor & Gamble  5 provinces  28, 85 provincial consciousness and identity  85–6, 95–100 provincial intelligentsia  98 see also Alexander Nikolaevich and his tour of the empire provincial newspapers  1, 3–4, 80, 85 creation of  85–9 criticism of  94 content of  87–95 civil society and  85–6, 97–8 diversity of  80, 85–6, 100–1 efforts to improve  94–5 price of  87–9 and editors  88, 94–5, 97–8 and provincial reform of 1837  87 and Russian literature  85–6, 97 and subscribers  87–9, 99–100 Prussia, see Germany Pskov province  10, 15–16, 19

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Index  211 Pushkin, Alexander Sergeevich (1799–1837)  1–3, 5–27, 34, 36, 107, 195, 201–2 duel and death of  11–16, 23–4 cult of  3–4, 20–3 political views of  17–18 and celebrations in 1880 and 1899  21 and celebration in 1937  9 and monuments  21–2 and A Life for the Tsar  30, 34–5, 37–9 and Peter Chaadaev  43–4, 48–51, 55 Pushkina, Natalia Nikolaevna (1812–1863)  9–16, 202–3 ‘quiet’ revolution  2–4, 200–2 railway  1, 3, 73, 120, 163–78 argumenst in favor of  163–9, 172–3 opposition to  167–9, 174–5 constructon and opening of line to Tsarskoe Selo 169–73 after the first line  174–6 and speed  163, 173–4 Rastrelli, Francesco Bartolomeo (1700–1771) 180 reading 86–7 rebellion, see Decembrist rebellion, November insurrection, and Kazakhs reform of state peasants, see Ministry of State Properties of crown peasants, see Crown Department of provinces in 1837  87, 109 see also Great Reforms Reformation 145–6 Reitblat, Abram  86–7 religion  71, 114 see also Catholicism, Islam, Orthodoxy, and Uniate Church religious dissent  71, 89–90, 114, 117, 151 resettlement  105, 113–14, 120, 163 ‘reunion’ of Uniate Church with Orthodoxy 145–62 revolution 200–1 and Nicholas’s fear of  2, 179–80, 192–3 see July Revolution and “quiet” revolution Riazan (town and province)  67, 69–70, 86, 91 roads  62, 66, 165–6 Romania  107, 160 Romanov dynasty  5, 7f, 36–7, 80 see also Michael, Peter I, Elizabeth, Catherine II, Paul I, Alexander I, Nicholas I, and Alexander Nikolaevich Roman Catholicism, see Catholicism Romanticism  23–4, 43–4

Rosen, Georgy (Yegor Fedorovich) (1800–1860)  29, 36–7 Rostopchina, Evdokiia Petrovna (1811–1858)  22 Ruslan and Liudmila (Alexander Pushkin, 1820; Mikhail Glinka, 1842)  37–9 Russian Invalid  17, 20–1, 77–8 Russophobia, see Great Britain Rybinsk 71–2 Ryleev, Kondratii Fedorovich (1795–1826)  34–5 St. Isaac’s Cathedral  15–16, 195 St. Petersburg  xviiif, 5, 64, 86, 89–90, 180 and railways  165–6, 168–9, 175–6 St. Petersburg News  9, 22, 192 Sandler, Stephanie  9, 22, 23–4 Saratov (town and provinces)  86–7, 90, 94–8, 117–18 Semashko, Joseph, Uniate (later Orthodox) prelate (1799–1868)  148–59, 202–3 Semenovskii Platz  xviiif, 170 Shestakova, Liudmila Ivanovna (sister of Mikhail Glinka) 32 Schelling, Friedrich (1775–1854)  43–4, 50–1 Schenk, Frithjof Benjamin  176 Schumann, Clara (1819–1896)  172 Schumann, Robert (1810–1956)  172 Shcheglov, Nikolai  164–5 Shcherbinin, A. A.  187, 191–2 schools, see Ministry of State Properties sectarianism, see dissent serfdom  2, 5, 105–6, 116–19 and emancipation  105, 119–20 serfs, see peasants Shakespear, Richmond  139 Siberia  95, 106, 113, 120, 128–9, 131–2 on the tour of Alexander Nikolaevich  59, 64, 68–70, 74–80 Simbirsk (town and province)  68, 75, 116–17 and ‘Simbirsk exchange,’ see Crown Department skoptsy, see religious dissent Skripitysn, Valerii Valerievich (1799–1874)  156–7, 159 Slaviansk 96 Slavophilism  43, 53–5, 110 Slobodskoi 78–9 Smaragd (Kryzhanovskii), Orthodox Archbishop (1796–1863) 152–3 Smith, Adam (1723–1790)  60–2, 98, 170 Smith-Peter, Susan  98–100, 165 Smolensk (town and province)  29, 32, 62, 71–2, 76–7, 86, 91 Sokhanskaia, Nadezhda Stepanovna (1823–1884) 21

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

212 Index Soviet era, see USSR Spain 5–8 Spasskii (Pushkin’s doctor)  14 Speranskii, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1772–1839) 119–20 Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich (1878–1953)  9, 160 Stasov, Vasilii Petrovich (1769–1848)  188–9 Stasov, Vladimir Vasilievich (1824–1906)  37 state peasants, see peasants Stavropol province  95 steppe  66, 113, 120, 125 Straits Convention of 1841  140 Stroganov, Sergei Grigorievich (1794–1882) 49–52 Sunderland, Willard  113–14 Surat, Irina  23–4 Susanin, Ivan  29–30, 34–7, 71–2 see also Ivan Susanin and A Life for the Tsar Sverbeev, Dmitrii Nikolaevich (1799–1874)  49 Sviatagorskii monastery  15–16 Syr-Darya River  126, 128–9 Taganrog  59, 71–2, 164–5 Taglioni, Marie (1804–1884)  193 Taimanov, Isatai, see Kazakhs Tale of By-Gone Years 125–7 Tambov (town and province)  68–9, 87, 91–2, 96–7, 100, 113 Taruskin, Richard  33–4 Tatars  70–1, 74–5, 96, 106, 130–1 Tatishchev, Dmitrii Pavlovich (1767–1845)  31 Tauride province  92 Telescope  43–4, 46, 50 Temnikov (town)  91–2 Third Section  5–8, 17–18, 20–1, 154–5 Tiflis 87 Time of Troubles  34–5 Times of London  134–6 Tiufiaev, Kirill Iakovlevich (1775–1845?)  63–4 Tiumen  64, 74–6, 78–9 Tobol River  64 Tobolsk  64, 67, 70–1, 74–5, 77–8 Toll, Karl (1777–1842)  167–8, 174 Tomsk trade  90, 95, 98, 164–5 triad (Orthodoxy, autocracy, narodnost) 35, 49–50, 53–4, 147 Trinity-Sergius Lavra  72–3 Tsarskoe Selo  xviiif, 21, 164–5, 169–71, 173 Tsaritsyn Square  186 Tula (town and province)  62–3, 73, 75, 86 Tulchin 107 Tura River  64

Turgenev, Alexander Ivanovich (1784–1845)  14–16, 29–30, 53–4, 107 Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich (1818–1883)  21, 31 Turgenev, Nikolai Sergeevich (1816–1879) 115–16 Turkey, see Ottoman Empire Turkmenchai, treaty of  133–4 Turkmens  95, 128, 131 Tver (town and province)  62–3, 76–9, 88, 97–8 Ukraine  64, 69–70, 106–7, 112 Ukrainians  70, 106, 116, 147 Uniate Church  1, 3, 114, 145 dioceses of  147t, 148–9, 152–3, 155 parish clergy of  150–1, 153–6, 159 parishioners of  150–5 iconostases and organs in transfer of its affairs to chief procurator of Orthodox Holy Synod  145, 154 under Catherine II  146–7 under Alexander I  148–50 ‘orientalist party’ in  148, 150, 152–3 and Basilian monastic order  146–8, 150, 152 and beards  148, 157–8 and Council of Zamość  148 and decree of October 1827  148–9 and decree of April 1828  152 and Moscow service books  153–4 and formal “reunion” with Orthodoxy 156–7 and the Russian nation  3–4, 145, 159 and secrecy in promoting “reunion”  151, 153 and Uniate Spirtual College  152–3, 155–6 and Union of Brest (1596)  145–6 resistance to “reunion”  154, 156, 159 see also Nicholas I, Dmitrii Bludov, and Joseph Semashko unification  3, 80, 100–1, 109, 120, 159–60, 163, 168–9 Union of Brest, see Uniate Church Unkiar-Skelessi, treaty of  133–5, 140 Ural region  59, 64, 68–9, 73, 116–17, 164–5, 171 Ural River  66, 130 Uralsk  66, 71 Urquhart, David (1805–1877)  135 USA  5, 108, 166, 173–6 USSR  9, 28, 38, 160, 175–6 Ustrialov, Nikolai Gerasimovich (1805–1870)  35 Uvarov, Sergei Semenovich (1786–1855)  20–1, 35–7, 147, 180–1, 192, 202–3 and Peter Chaadaev  45–6, 49–50, 53–4 and fire at the Winter Palace  180–1, 188, 192, 195 see also triad

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

Index  213 Verstovskii, Alexei Nikolaevich (1799–1862) 32–4 Vauxhall Gardens  172 Veselovskii, K. S. (1819–1901)  115–16 Viazemskii, Peter Andreevich (1782–1878)  53, 107 and death of Alexander Pushkin  14–15, 17–18, 20–3 Viatka (town and province)  62–4, 66–71, 77–9, 86, 95–6, 106, 164 Victoria, Queen of United Kingdom (1819–1901, r.1870–1901) 5 Vielgorskii, Joseph Mikhailovich (1817–1839) 79–80 Vienna  29, 175 Vigel, Filipp Filippovich (1786–1856)  45–6, 50, 149–50 Vilna (town and province)  86–7, 152 Vitebsk (town and province)  89–90 Vixen (schooner)  135 Vladimir (town and province)  66, 68–9, 77, 86, 88, 94–100, 118–19, 164 Voguls (Mansi)  70–1 Volga region  62, 64, 70–1, 76, 106, 113–14, 164–5 Volga River  59, 75–7, 165–6 Volhynia  92–4, 146 Volkonskii, Prince Peter Mikhailovich (1776–1852)  186, 189–90 Vologda (town and province)  46, 92, 93f, 97–8, 106 Volsk 71 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778) 46–7 Vorobieva, Anna Iakovlevna (1817–1901)  30 Voronezh (town and province)  64, 74, 86, 89–95, 97–8, 110–11, 164 Votiaks (Udmurts)  70–1, 77 Votkinsk  73, 77 Voznesensk  64, 67–8 Vyshnii Volochek  73 Walicki, Andzrej  50–1 War of 1812, see Great Patriotic War Warsaw  168–9, 175 Westernizers  43, 55 Western provinces  114, 145, 147, 152, 159–60 Winter campaign, see Khiva Winter Palace  xviii, 1, 3–4, 179–99, 202–3

significance for St. Petersburg  180–1 causes of fire at  181–2, 187–8 descriptions of fire and aftermath at  179, 181–2, 185–6 reconstruction of  188–91, 193–5, 200 reconsceration of  179–80, 189, 193 rewards after fire at  186, 189–90 its clean-up after fire  186 improvements to after fire  190–1 threats from fire  179–80, 191–3 ideology and  179–80, 188, 193–4 and Hermitage  179–80, 183–4, 191–2 and Providence  193–4 and Palace Square  183 and Field Marshalls’ Hall  181, 183–4, 187–91 and the Gallery of 1812  183, 190–1 and the Peter the Great Hall  183–4, 190–1 and the Maria Fedorovna Hall  184–5 and the Throne Room  189, 195–6 women  75, 77–8, 130–1, 155–6, 158, 186 Wortman, Richard  80 Yaroslavl (town and province)  75–7, 87 Yekaterinburg  69–70, 73 Yekaterinoslav 67 Yuriev monastery  76 Yurievich, Semen Alekseevich (1798–1865)  60–2, 66–71, 75–7 Zablotskii-Desiatovskii, Andrei Parfenovich (1807–1881)  110, 119 Zamość, Council of, see Uniate Church Zavlunov, Daniil  33–4 Zharskii, Josaphat, Uniate hierarch (?–1838)  156 Zhikharev, Mikhail Ivanovich (1820–after 1882) 48–9 Zhukovskii, Vasilii Andreevich (1783–1852)  31–2, 34–5, 202–3 and Pushkin  10, 12, 14–15, 17–18, 22–3 and tour of Grand Prince Alexander Nikolaevich  60–2, 64, 66, 68–9, 74–6, 78–80 and fire at the Winter Palace  182, 184–5, 192–3 Zlatoust 76 Zotov, Rafael Mikhailovich  32–3 Zubko, Anthony, Uniate (later Orthodox) bishop (1797–1884)  156, 158

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 18/11/20, SPi