Декабристи
Like the Decembrists, who had been profoundly shocked when they returned home after observing
Western liberty in action when they occupied Paris at the end of the war with Napoleon, Chaadaev had
come to the conclusion that the source of Russia’s ‘unhealthy atmosphere and paralysis’ was the
iniquitous institution of serfdom.5 This challenged the nationalist feelings inspired by 1812. But
modernisation was out of the question under a tsar terrified of further rebellion, and in 1833 his
minister of education, Sergei Uvarov, formulated an official state ideology based on ‘Orthodoxy,
autocracy and nationality’ which was to set the course for cultural policy throughout Nicholas’s reign.
Дух времена (култура и политичка/филозофска мисао, конзервативизам + цензура)
In music, there simply was no institution yet for the professional training of native composers and
performers, and the already low prestige of Russian music was soon to be further undermined when an
Italian opera company was installed in St Petersburg’s main opera house. in 1843. 7 The Russian literary
canon, meanwhile, was still so small that in Pushkin’s story The Queen of Spades (Pikovaia dama), set in
1833, the old countess could express surprise that there are any novels written in Russian.8 But it was in
the 1820s and 1830s that Peter the Great’s secularising reforms began to bring forth fruit in terms of
native works of art of outstanding originality. Pushkin published the first great Russian novel (in verse),
Eugene Onegin, in 1823–31. The following year Russia’s first professional critic, Vissarion Belinsky, made
his debut with an article which the literary historian D. S. Mirsky memorably called the ‘manifesto of a
new era in the history of Russian civilization’.9 In 1833too Karl Briullov completed his mammoth canvas
The Last Day of Pompeii, described by Gogol as a ‘complete universal creation’ and celebrated by Sir
Walter Scott, Bulwer Lytton and countless Italian academicians.10 Two other cultural landmarks were to
follow in 1836, the year in which Chaadaev’s ‘First Philosophical Letter’ was published: Gogol’s play The
Government Inspector (Revizor) and Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar. This was also the year in which
Pushkin launched The Contemporary (Sovremennik), which was destined to become Russia’s most
famous literary journal in the nineteenth century and in which Orest Kiprensky, one of Russia’s finest
Romantic painters, died. Other important artists of the first half of the nineteenth century who were not
products of the Imperial Academy, and who treated Russian themes, include Aleksei Venetsianov, who
received no formal training, and Vasili Tropinin, a gifted serf given his freedom only at the age of forty-
seven. Both excelled in depicting scenes from daily life. The central figure of what is now referred to as
the ‘Golden Age’ of Russian poetry was Pushkin of whose work David Bethea has written: ‘It engages
prominent foreign and domestic precursors (Derzhavin, Karamzin, Byron, Shakespeare, Scott) as
confident equal, defines issues of history and national destiny (Time of Troubles, legacy of Peter,
Pugachev Rebellion) without taking sides, provides a gallery of character types for later writers . . . and
expands the boundaries of genre . . . in an intoxicating variety that earned him the name of Proteus.’11
Pushkin’s work alone undermines Chaadaev’s theory of Russian cultural stagnation. Pushkin was one of
the first Russian writers to earn his living through his literary works, and the last to have to suffer the
dubious privilege of having them personally scrutinised by the tsar, who appointed himself as the poet’s
personal censor when graciously allowing his subject to return from exile in the south. Pushkin’s career
exemplifies the growing rift that was opening up between artists and the state in Russia, as the nascent
intelligentsia increasingly came to define itself by its opposition to the Government. The fate of
Chaadaev’s ‘Philosophical Letter’, meanwhile, exemplifies the cultural atmosphere under Nicholas I as a
whole: its author was pronounced insane and placed under house arrest, the man who failed to censor
the article was sacked, the journal in which it was published was shut down, and its editor exiled. It is
not surprising, under these circumstances, that culture, and in particular literature, became so politically
charged during the reign of Nicholas I. The headstrong young poet and hussar Mikhail Lermontov was
courtmartialled for writing an outspoken poem condemning the society which allowed a genius like
Pushkin to be killed in a duel.12 Lermontov’s career was also cut short: he died in a duel in the Caucasus
in 1841 at the age of twenty-seven, leaving behind a corpus of remarkable lyrical poetry (representing
the apex of Russian literary Romanticism) and a justly celebrated novel, A Hero of our Time (Geroi
nashego vremeni), whose ‘superfluous’ hero is clearly the successor to Pushkin’s Onegin. Not all Russian
artists wished to antagonise the regime in the 1830s and 1840s. Glinka’s patriotic opera A Life for the
Tsar, the first full-length Russian opera, is also a celebration of the official ideology of nationality
propagated by Sergei Uvarov. For that reason it was enthusiastically endorsed by Nicholas I, but then
became a problematic work for the nationalist composers who came to prominence in the 1870s.
Between 1789 and the early 1830s a distinctively Russian variant of conservatism began to emerge. A
pivotal figure in its formation was the belletrist and historian Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766–
1826), a man called not only Russia’s first conservative but its first political scientist as well. His most
important political tract was Zapiska o drevnei i novoi Rossii (Memorandum on Ancient and Modern
Russia,1811), a document intended to dissuade Alexander I from instituting a Russian version of the
Code de Napoleon ´ and from abolishing serfdom. In current circumstances, Karamzin advised Alexander
to reject foreign-inspired reforms, particularly any division of sovereign authority between the tsar and
State Council. He rejected serf emancipation on the ground that ‘it is safer to enslave men than to give
them freedom prematurely’.
Shishkov’s Razsuzhdenie o starom i novom sloge rossiiskago iazyka (Comments on the Ancient and
Modern Style of the Russian Language, 1803) contended that Russian peasant dialects were rooted in
ancient Church Slavonic and that the proximity to the old liturgical language tended to preserve among
the common people Orthodox customs. He decried the modern Russian language spoken by the nobility,
for it had been corrupted by foreign, irreligious influences that fostered vice among the social elites.
His Zerkalo novago Parizha (Mirror of Modern Paris, 1809) attributed the French Revolution to declining
morals in the French court and among the provincial noblesse. It ascribed French decadence to an
absence of Christian self-discipline and to a consequent fatal indulgence in worldly passions. By
reminding educated Russians of Russia’s glorious past and of the dangers of irreligion, Glinka
encouraged them to abandon foreign vices for Orthodox virtues.
Декабристичке идеје
In 1809, Mikhail Mikhailovich Speranskii (1772–1839) prepared a series of memoranda on political
reform, the most important of which was a draft introduction to a projected Russian law code. Although
he carefully avoided describing the draft introduction as a constitution, that was its unmistakable
purpose. In it Speranskii argued for a division of government into three branches: executive, judicial and
legislative. He called for a multi-level, elective system of representation in which volosts, districts,
provinces and the empire as a whole would select delegates to exercise oversight over the
administrators of their respective jurisdictions. At the imperial level a State Duma (elected assembly)
would be empowered to discuss laws proposed by the State Council. In discussing the prerogatives of
citizens, Speranskii limited political rights to property owners, but made civil rights common to all
Russian subjects. He called serfdom a violation of human nature and asked for its gradual abolition. In
1818 Alexander ordered Nikolai Nikolaevich Novosil’tsev (1761–1836) to prepare a constitutional
charter for Russia to be based partly on the Polish experience. Novosil’tsev’s proposal, which underwent
three redactions by the tsar, was entitled ‘La Charte constitutionelle de l’Empire russe’ (1820). Like
Speranskii’s plan, it divided the functions of government among three branches, and it also projected a
legislature incorporating elected delegates from the various regions of Russia. Novosil’tsev proclaimed
that all citizens would receive equal protection under the law, and his plan forbade arbitrary arrests and
administrative punishments. His plan neither extended civil rights to the peasantry nor raised the
prospect of abolishing serfdom. Novosil’tsev’s plan differed from Speranskii’s in two other respects.
First, it contemplated a federal arrangement dividing the empire into vice regencies (namestnichestva)
doxy the ‘dominant faith of the empire’ but promised not to oppress members of other creeds except
for the Jews. The federalist element, nod toward religious toleration and the Jewish exclusion clause
were part of Novosil’tsev’s effort to contend with the empire’s diversity. Between Napoleon’s defeat
and Nicholas I’s accession to the throne in December 1825 there developed a movement among
patriotic army officers and nobles seeking to create in Russia a new active citizenry and a representative
political order. In its first stages the movement focused on the inculcation of civic virtue through
education and philanthropy; in its later stages it concentrated on political revolution. In the so-called
Northern Society the most interesting thinker was Nikita Mikhailovich Murav’ev (1796–1843), the
author of a Proekt konstitutsii (Draft Constitution, 1821–22) envisaging Russia as a federal republic.
Murav’ev claimed that ‘autocratic government is ruinous’, and that ‘it is incompatible with our holy
religion’s commandments and with common sense’.13 He called for a division of Russia into thirteen
states (derzhavy), each of which would elect state governments by ballot of property holders. At the
national level there would be three branches of government, including a bicameral assembly with the
right to pass laws over the emperor’s veto. Murav’ev’s constitution was influenced by the American
constitution but also by his admiration for the Old Russian veche(popular assembly). In a short essay he
handed to Karamzin himself, Murav’ev accused the conservative historian of preaching political quietism
in the face of political evil. Murav’ev’s answer to autocracy’s imperfections was ‘eternal struggle’ against
errors and vice. In the Southern Society the dominant figure was Colonel Pavel Ivanovich Pestel’ (1793–
1826), whose constitutional plan Russkaia Pravda (Russian Law, 1824) was the most radical platform to
appear in Russia before 1861. A fervent republican and great admirer of the French Jacobins, Pestel’ was
also an exclusivist Christian who treated the New Testament as the natural law foundation of a just
society. In Russian Law, he proposed the elimination of social privileges based on property, abolition of
serfdom, destruction of the monarchy, and institution of a ‘provisional’ dictatorship that would prepare
the country for a republic. He also demanded the prohibition of any acts by non-Christian faiths
‘contrary to the spirit of Christian law’. Although he declared himself willing to tolerate Islam and
Judaism under certain conditions, he exhorted the revolutionary regime to proselytise Muslims to
convert to Christianity He also warned Jews that, if they did not surrender their ‘privileged’ status, the
government would ‘assist’ them to establish their own state ‘somewhere in Asia Minor’.14 Pestel’ has
often been called a forerunner of later-day egalitarian republicans, but it could be said with equal justice
that he anticipated twentieth-century ethnic cleansers
Елите
Throughout the imperial period Russia’s political and social elites were drawn overwhelmingly from
members of the hereditary noble estate (soslovie).1 Even in 1914 the core of the social elite were
members of great aristocratic landowning families.2 This group overlapped to a still considerable but
ever decreasing degree with the political elite, whose core were senior civilian and military officials. The
aristocrats were all from hereditary noble families, these families usually being both old and titled, as
well as rich. Most of the military and bureaucratic elite were also by birth from the hereditary nobility,
the majority still coming from well-established though not usually rich land-owning families of the
provincial gentry, or sometimes from well-entrenched service noble ‘dynasties’. The still relatively small
minority of senior generals and bureaucrats who were not noble by birth had acquired this status
automatically by reaching senior ranks in the civil and military service.3 There were really only two
relatively minor exceptions to the rule that the imperial elite was made up of hereditary noblemen.
Током читавог царског периода руска политичка и друштвена елита била је у великој већини
извучена из припадника наследног племићког сталежа (сословие). Чак и 1914. језгро друштвене
елите чинили су чланови великих аристократских земљопоседничких породица. Ова група се
преклапала са још увек значајном, али све мањи степен код политичке елите, чије су језгро чинили
високи цивилни и војни званичници. Сви аристократи су били из наследних племићких породица,
а ове породице су обично биле и старе и титуле, али и богате. Већина војне и бирократске елите
такође је била рођена из наследног племства, а већина је и даље долазила из добро
успостављених, али обично не богатих земљопоседничких породица провинцијског племства, или
понекад из добро укорењених племићких „династија“. Још увек релативно мала мањина виших
генерала и бирократа који по рођењу нису били племенити стекла је овај статус аутоматски
достизањем виших чинова у цивилној и војној служби.
Since the Church was firmly subordinated to the secular ruling elite and enjoyed limited status in
aristocratic society, perhaps the senior clergy is best defined as a sub-elite. The other non-noble sub-
elite worth mentioning is the new Russian business class which had emerged since the middle of the
nineteenth century and whose national centre was Moscow. Whereas before the 1850s most great
business fortunes either were founded by the nobility or were absorbed into it by marriage or
ennoblement,5 this became much less true in the last three generations of Imperial Russia, when a
distinctive Moscow business elite and subculture emerged and came to dominate Muscovite society.
Пошто је Црква била чврсто подређена секуларној владајућој елити и уживала ограничен статус у
аристократском друштву, можда се више свештенство најбоље дефинише као поделита. Друга
неплемићка поделита коју вреди поменути је нова руска пословна класа која се појавила од
средине деветнаестог века и чији је национални центар била Москва. Док је пре 1850-их већину
великог пословног богатства или оснивало племство или га је апсорбовало браком или
оплемењивањем,5 ово је постало много мање тачно у последње три генерације царске Русије,
када су се појавила и дошла препознатљива московска пословна елита и субкултура. да доминира
московским друштвом.
Although members of the imperial social and political elite were almost all hereditary nobles, the
hereditary nobility as a group was not a class, let alone a ruling class. It was not a class above all because
of its enormous heterogeneity in terms of wealth, culture, lifestyles, economic interests, ethno-national
allegiances and careers. Even its aristocratic core was not a true ruling elite because it lacked the
political institutions which would have allowed it to define and defend coherent policies and interests,
choose its own leaders and control the government machine.6 One way to illustrate these points is by
reference to England, whose aristocracy and gentry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a
ruling class in the full sense of the word.
The hereditary nobility was not a class nor a political elite but rather a group (estate/soslovie) defined by
law whose members shared certain privileges and institutions. These were largely set out in legislation
enacted under Peter I and Catherine II.8 This legislation established who was or was not a noble, how
one acquired nobility, what rights and obligations noble status entailed, and what common institutions
united the nobility. The most famous piece of Petrine legislation was the 1722 Table of Ranks which
stressed the link between service to the crown and noble privilege, and created the rule that officers
and civil servants acquired noble status automatically upon reaching defined ranks.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century even wealthy young nobles usually served some years in the
army (or more rarely the bureaucracy) before retiring into a private life of marriage and estate-
management. The eighteenth-century legislation also confirmed the nobility as a property-owning class,
with absolute possession of their estates and the subsoil, and exclusive rights to ownership of serfs.
One fundamental point about the hereditary nobility was that it was a relatively small group when one
considers the governing, modernising and civilising role which the state expected it to play in Russian
government and society. Over the next two centuries the hereditary nobility grew enormously in size, by
1897 numbering 1.2 million people, or roughly 1 per cent of the total population.11 Though this sounds
formidable, one has to remember that until well into the second half of the nineteenth century most of
the professional class was in state service and thereby ennobled, as were almost all the leading
businessmen.
. Even most officers in Russian infantry regiments of the line in 1812 were not much more than literate,
whereas even the French royal army of the 1770s already required literacy of senior non-commissioned
officers.12 This helps to explain the warm welcome that the tsarist regime gave to foreigners willing to
enter Russian service Whatever their ultimate ethnic origin, all these families were ethnic Russians by
the eighteenth century though the cosmopolitan and frequently Frenchspeaking world of Petersburg
high society was often seen as alien, even disloyal, by nineteenth-century Russian nationalists.
By the last quarter of the eighteenth century the Petersburg and Moscow intellectual elite, inevitably
drawn overwhelmingly from the wealthier nobility, was developing its own variation on the theme of
modern European literary culture.22 In the nineteenth century it was to produce some of Europe’s
greatest musicians, poets and novelists. In general, education had high prestige among the
nineteenthcentury Russian elites, including among their wives and daughters. Given the extent to which
the Russian elites drew on European models for everything from literary culture to fashionable dress
and administrative modernisation, it was inevitable that they would attach a very high value to
European languages. In certain respects educated Russian elites in the nineteenth century were indeed
more ‘European’ than many of their peers in western and central Europe in that they were better
equipped to look at European culture in total and without some of the national blinkers of the French,
English or Germans.
