An Enlightened path towards conservatism: critical junctures and changing elite perceptions in early nineteenth-century Russia

Abstract

This article explores the historical roots of Russian conservatism by analyzing the evolution of Russia’s Westernized, Enlightenment-minded nobility to a conservative segment of Russian society in the early nineteenth century. The events of 1789 and 1812 were critical junctures that made the Russian nobility painfully aware of their own deep level of Westernization. The article first describes the reverberations of the French Revolution among the Russian elite. It also discusses the internal and external scrutiny of Russia’s relations with France under Napoleon, which made Russian conservatism a contingency. It then describes the evolution between 1789 and 1812 of a corpus of conservative ideas ranging from traditionalism to ardent patriotism and xenophobia. Napoleon’s 1812 campaign against Russia overshadowed the generational gap and diverging political and literary preferences among the elite. The reaction to it illustrates the intrinsic duality of the Russian elite: culturally Westernized, yet politically conservative. Yet the influence of several Western defenders of the ancien régime on Russia’s conservatives shows that the essentially conservative Russian identity as propagated by Putin these days originally might have been more pan-European than purely Russian.

Keywords:

• Russia
• conservatism
• autocracy
• East–West relations

Notes

1. V.V. Putin, “Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu” (Address of the President to the Federal Assembly) http://kremlin.ru/news/19825 (Accessed 13 October 2015).

2. V.V. Putin, “Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu” (Address of the President to the Federal Assembly) http://kremlin.ru/news/19825 (Accessed 13 October 2015).

3. Cannady and Kubicek, “Nationalism and Legitimation for Authoritarianism,” 8.

4. Blank, “Putin’s ‘Glorified Version of Official Nationality’,” The Moscow Times, 28 April 2014, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/putins-glorified-version-of-russian-nationality/499107.html (Accessed 17 November 2015).

5. Mannheim, “Das Konservative Denken,” 68–142.

6. Loader, The Intellectual Development of Karl Mannheim, 79.

7. Minakov, Russkii Konservatizm v Pervoi Chetverti XIX veka, 7.

8. Minakov asserts that the emergence of Russian conservatism coincides with the reign of Alexander I, Khristoforov situates the first Russian conservatives between the late eighteenth century and 1825. In Minakov, Russkii Konservatizm v Pervoi Chetverti XIX veka, 4–5 and Khristoforov, “Nineteenth-Century Russian Conservatism,” 58–9.

9. Minakov, Russkii Konservatizm v Pervoi Chetverti XIX veka, 8.

10. Collier and Collier assert that “the concept of a critical juncture contains three components: the claim that a significant change occurred within each case, the claim that this change took place in distinct ways in different cases, and the explanatory hypothesis about its consequences” – see Collier and Collier, “Critical Junctures and Historical Legacies,” 30. Other authors who contributed to the literature about critical junctures are Paul Pierson (2000), Kathleen Thelen (1999), Theda Skocpol (2002) and James Mahoney (2000).

11. Collier and Collier, “Critical Junctures and Historical Legacies,” 39.

12. Comparing the legacy to the antecedent system, and making a distinction between constant and historical causes, leads to an assessment of the impact of critical junctures in the context of comparative-historical analysis: Collier and Collier, “Critical Junctures and Historical Legacies,” 39.

13. Kiselev and Mironenko, “Russia’s Bureaucratic Elite,” 151.

14. Offord, Ryazanova and Rjéoutski, French and Russian in Imperial Russia, and Ewington, A Voltaire for Russia, 54–5.

15. Argent, Offord and Rjéoutski, “French Language Acquisition in Imperial Russia,” 1.

16. Like the correspondence of Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Shcherbatov, see RGADA, f. 1289, op. 1, d. 517, fols 12-13; 33-34; 174-74 v. and https://frinru.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/content/second-manscript (Accessed 28 April 2016).

17. Offord and Rjéoutski, “Family Correspondence in the Russian Nobility,” 1.

18. Joseph de Maistre, Lettre au Roi Victor-Emmanuel, SPB 1811 in De Maistre, Oeuvres Complètes tôme 12, 30–1.

19. Those in the West who dared doubt Russia’s level of Westernization received a spirited retort, even early on in her tenure, e.g. “Antidote, ou Examen du mauvais livre superbement imprimé intitulé Voyage en Sibérie” (1770, in response to the by-then deceased Chappe d’Auteroche’s criticism in his 1768 Voyage en Sibérie). See also Levitt, “An Antidote to Nervous Juice,” 49–63.

20. Dickinson, “Russia’s ‘First Orient’: Characterizing the Crimea in 1787,” 6.

21. Apart from the famous letters of Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne to Mme de Coigny, this trip also gained international renown through the letters and memoirs of Comte de Ségur and Prince von Nassau-Siegen.

22. Dickinson, “Russia’s ‘First Orient’: Characterizing the Crimea in 1787”, 8.

23. According to Stroev (2013), Catherine saw Ligne as a worthy epistolary successor to Voltaire, who had died two years before Ligne and the Empress took up their “correspondance moins tudesque qui présenterait des projects politiques hardis sous forme de badinage littéraire” see de Ligne, Correspondances Russes, 30.

24. de Ligne, Correspondances russes, 42.

25. Bisschoff, “Madame Vigee Lebrun at the Court of Catherine the Great,” 33.

26. de Ligne, Correspondances russes, 239–40.

27. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, 22.

28. Karamzin, Pis’ma russkogo puteshestvennika, SPB: 1791–1792.

29. From 1809 onwards, Von Gentz became a close confidant of Clemens von Metternich and secretary of several diplomatic conferences, among which was the 1815 Congress of Vienna.

30. Stroganov, a childhood friend of Catherine’s grandson Alexander, would later resurface in Russian politics as a member of Alexander’s Privy Committee, Minister of Interior and senator. See Rjéoutski and Chudinov, “Russkie Uchastniki Frantsuzskoi Revoliutsii,” 23.

31. Letter from P.A. Stroganov and Gilbert Romme to A.S. Stroganov, 14 January 1790 (translated from Russian by the author) from the collected correspondence in Chudinov, “Pis’ma P.A. Stroganova I Zh. Romma iz Frantsii 1788–1790,” 79.

32. Letter from P.A. Stroganov and Gilbert Romme to A.S. Stroganov, 12 March 1790 (translated from Russian by the author) in Rjéoutski and Chudinov, Russkie Uchastniki Frantsuzskoi Revoliutsii, 84.

33. Michailovich, Ukaz. Soch. T.1, 302 and Chudinov, “Pis’ma P.A. Stroganova I Zh. Romma iz Frantsii 1788–1790,” 23, 46–98.

34. Golitsyn, De l’Esprit des Economistes, 1–2.

35. Golitsyn, De l’Esprit des Economistes, 2–4.

36. Kennedy, “Lord Withworth and the Conspiracy against Tsar Paul I,” 211.

37. He “boldly blamed the Tsar for the fiasco of Russian participation in the Second Coalition”, and consequently proposed a partition project in which “Bulgaria, Rumania and Moldova were designated for Russia” Interestingly, his plan was “quite consonant with the more famous ‘Greek project’ of Catherine the Great” in Ragsdale, “The Origins of Bonaparte’s Russian Policy,” 88–9.

38. McGrew, “A Note on Some European Foreign Office Archives and Russian Domestic History,” 533. Despite Rostopchin’s swift ascent (from General-Maior in 1796 to General–Leitenant in 1798 and from Tainyi Sovetnik in 1798 to “Pervoprisutstvuiushchii” of the College of Foreign Affairs in 1799), he also eventually fell out of favour. On 20 February 1801, only a week before the tsar was murdered, Rostopchin was relieved of his duties, and sent off with the title of “deistvitel’nii tainyi sovetnik” as a parting gift.

39. Pavel Stroganov and Nikolai Novosil’tsev were distant cousins and longtime friends: it was Novosol’tsev who travelled to Paris in 1790 to pick up his uncle Stroganov senior’s son and take him back to Russia. Viktor Kochubei also spent time abroad: from 1788 until 1792 he lived in England, France and Switzerland. See Roach, “The Origins of Alexander I’s Unofficial Committee,” 321.

40. Nikolai Novosil’tsev, “proposed dividing the labor in three stages: a review of the present situation; the reform of specific departments; and the preparation of a constitution to crown the transformed governmental edifice” in Saunders, Russia in the Age of Reaction and Reform, 19 and de Grunwald, Alexandre Ier, 63.

41. Decree of Free Cultivators of 1803, and Decree allowing merchants and artisans to buy land (1801).

42. They intended to create gymnasia and universities and divide the Russian Empire into six educational districts: Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Vilnius, Dorpat, Khar’kov and Kazan’ (Statute of Schools) in Chapman, Imperial Russia 1801–1905, 17.

43. Manifesto “On the Creation of Ministries” (“Ob Uchrezhdenii Ministerstv”), 8 September 1802.

44. However, “the first time the senators invoked this right, Alexander berated them for their effrontery and abruptly withdrew it” in Freeze, Russia: A History, 71.

45. Rostopchin had many enemies in Russia’s state circles. Upon ascending the throne, Alexander immediately appointed one of them, the Anglophile Count Panin, as Head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Rostopchin withdrew from state service and retired to his Voronovo country estate, spending the winters in Moscow; see Ragsdale, “The Origins of Bonaparte’s Russian Policy,” 89.

46. Martin, “Fedor Vasil’evich Rostopchin – geroi 1812 goda ili predshestvennik chernykh soten?,” 70–1.

47. Rostopchin struck a chord among the wider public. In 1807, the year of the Russian defeat in Friedland and the subsequent Treaty of Tilsit, he wrote the pamphlet Mysli vslukh na krasnom kryltse (“Thoughts Aloud on the Staircase of Honor”), written in the simple, colloquial Russian of its protagonist, a good Orthodox Russian who lamented the fact that the great Russian empire was being threatened by the revolutionary ideas of the detestable French merchants and tutors who had permeated Russian society. See Rostopchin, Mysli vslukh na krasnom kryltse, 171–2.

48. De La Fuye, Rostopchine: Européen ou Slave?, 344–5. Eventually, Rostopchin managed to re-establish himself at the Imperial court, aided by Princess Dashkova and Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna, Tsar Alexander’s younger sister. He received the court function of Chief Chamberlain, (Ober-Kamerger) in 1810 but was told by the tsar not to put in too many appearances. See Lieven, Russia against Napoleon, 87.

49. Dumont-Wilden, “Compte-rendu critique sur Louis Wittmer’s Ligne, Muller et Gentz en Autriche,” 583.

50. Von Gentz, “The Diaries of Frederic von Gentz,” 43–4.

51. Michaud, Bibliographie Universelle Ancienne et Moderne, tome 65 (Paris: 1838), 241.

52. Letter by Friedrich Von Gentz to Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Dresden, 22 June 1806. National Museum, Krakau. Czartoryski-Library, Manuscript Department, 5534 III, Bl. 5-19 1806.

53. Quarg, “Zar Alexander als erhoffter ‘Retter’ Europas, Memorandum von Friedrich Gentz, 19 November 1805,” 92–102.

54. Letter by Friedrich Von Gentz to Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Dresden, 22 June 1806. National Museum, Krakau. Czartoryski-Library, Manuscript Department, 5534 III, Bl. 5-19 1806.

55. Letter by Friedrich Von Gentz to Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Teplitz, 4 June 1807. National Museum, Krakow. Czartoryski-Library, Manuscript Department, 5534 III, Bl. 85-107 1807.

56. Letter by Friedrich Von Gentz to Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, Gentz; Czartoryski, Teplitz, 27–30 October 1806. National Museum, Krakow. Czartoryski-Library, Manuscript Department, 5534 III, Bl. 25-61 1806.

57. Princess Ekaterina Feodorovna Dolgorukaia, née Bariatinskaia (1769–1849), married to Prince Vasilii Dolgorukii, General in the Russian Imperial Army (+1812), lived in Vienna in 1806–7. Prince de Ligne was one of her close friends (and lover), at the time, as well as Von Gentz. Dolgorukaia bequeathed her letters of Prince de Ligne to Sergei Uvarov.

58. Letter by Friedrich Von Gentz to Princess Ekaterina Feodorovna Dolgorukova, Prague, 20 May 1807. Russian National Library, St Petersburg. Manuscript Department, F. 608 (Pomjalowski, J.W.) Invl. 1, N 5581, Bl. 13-16v 1807.

59. Letter by Friedrich Von Gentz to Heinrich Friedrich Karl Freiherr vom und zum Stein, Breslau 28 December 1805 National Museum, Krakow. Czartoryski-Library, Manuscript Department, 5534 III 1805.

60. Von Gentz, “The Diaries of Frederic von Gentz,” 45.

61. Von Gentz even met de Maistre for the first and only time in 1803, when he dined in Vienna with the ambassador while he was on his way from Turin to Saint Petersburg. He noted in his diary about this meeting that he dined at Paget’s (the British ambassador to Vienna) with the famous Count Maistre, although 20 years later, when re-writing his diary he added that he did not remember this meeting. Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 12:2, 373 . For more on Gentz, de Maistre and de Bonald, see Cahen, “The Correspondence of Frederick Von Gentz,” 208.

62. Rostopchin himself however remained Orthodox, which he considered to be an essential component of his Russian patriotism. Schlafly and Dragon, “De Joseph de Maistre à la ‘Bibliothèque Rose’: le Catholicisme chez les Rostopchin,” 94.

63. de Maistre, “Lettre à M.A. Vicomte de Bonald,” 124–25.

64. He only mentions once the 1799 Italian campaign of Russia’s “Generalissimo” Suvorov, which he wrongly spells “Souwarof” in De Maistre, “Mémoire à consulter sur l’état present de l’Europe,” 139.

65. Lettre à M. Chevalier de Rossi, St Petersbourg 28 Mai 1806, in de Maistre, Oeuvres Complètes tôme dix, 121–2.

66. Mémoire 21 Décembre 1805, in De Maistre, Oeuvres Complètes tôme dix, 1.

67. Mémoire 12 Octobre 1806, in De Maistre, Oeuvres Complètes tôme dix, 219–22.

68. Stepanov, “Zhozef de Mestr v Rossii,” 577–726.

69. De Ligne et Uvarov, “Correspondances russes,” 561–2.

70. Uvarov, “Le Prince de Ligne. Souvenirs. 1842,” 355–72.

71. Durylin, “Gospozha de Stael i ee russkie otnosheniia,” 238.

72. Stroev and Vercruysse, Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne, Correspondances russes, 53.

73. Cannady and Kubicek, “Nationalism and Legitimation for Authoritarianism: A Comparison of Nicholas I and Putin,” 3. See also Zorin, Kormia dvukhglavnogo orla. Khristoforov ironically remarks that most of Uvarov’s notes about the doctrine of official nationalism are in French, and were only subsequently translated in Russian. In Khristoforov, “Nineteenth-Century Russian Conservatism,” 60.

74. Sergei Uvarov, Tablettes d’un Voyageur russe, 1807–1809, dans Sergueï Ouvarov, Mélanges sur Vienne, GIM, OPI, F. 17 (Ouvarov), op. 1, n° 6, ff. 13r°-91v°. in Correspondances russes, 577–9.

75. Uvarov, Madame de Stael.

76. Uvarov, “Le Prince de Ligne. Souvenirs. 1842,” 355–72.

77. Sergei Uvarov, Tablettes d’un Voyageur russe, 1807–1809, dans Sergueï Ouvarov, Mélanges sur Vienne, GIM, OPI, F. 17 (Ouvarov), op. 1, n° 6, ff. 13r°-91v°. in Correspondances russes, 577–9 and Durylin, “Gospozha de Stael i ee russkie otnosheniia,” 226.

78. Ibid., 234.

79. Although both representatives of the ancien régime in the eyes of Uvarov, they had divergent antecedents and views on the French Revolution. Yet “par un compromise réciproque de fort bon gout, jamais un mot sérieux sur 1789 ne fût échangé entre madame de Staël et le Prince de Ligne: là il y avait incompatibilité complète” in De Ligne et Uvarov, “Correspondances russes,” 564.

80. Gretchanaïa, “Madame de Staël. Lettres inédites a Ferdinand Christin,” 939.

81. Kochubinskii, Nachal’nye gody russkago slavianovedeniia, 3.

82. Shishkov, Zapiski, Mneniia i Perepiska, 81–6, and Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, 24.

83. A disagreement with the Minister of Maritime Affairs Chichagov led to Shishkov temporarily becoming a persona non grata at court. When the conflict was solved in 1805, Shishkov was reinstated as Head of the Educational Department of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and received court invitations again, although the Tsar behaved rather coldly towards him see Minakov, Russkii konservatizm v pervoi chetverti XIX veka, 97.

84. Shishkov, Rassuzhdenie, 1. Many contemporaries read this as a direct jibe aimed at Karamzin and the many enthusiasts for his “novyi slog.”

85. Shishkov, Pribavlenie k sochineniiu, nazyvaemomu Rassuzhdenie o Starom i Novom Sloge Rossiiskogo Iazyka, 5–6.

86. Which was called romantic nationalism by Alexander Martin in his Romantics, Reformers and Reactionaries, 15.

87. Dovnar-Zapol’skii, Obzor Noveishei Russkoi Istorii, 184.

88. Karamzin was however also known as the father of the “new style” of Russian (novyi slog), a more colloquial approach to the Russian language that was not hostile to foreign influences. This is why Khristoforov calls Karamzin’s works “an apologia of autocracy and an empathic innovation in language and literature” in Khristoforov, “Nineteenth-Century Russian Conservatism,” 59.

89. Zavitnevich, Speranskii i Karamzin kak predstaviteli dvukh politicheskich techenii v tsartsve Imperatora Aleksandra Pervago, 11.

90. Speranskii’s 1809 Vvedenie k ulozheniiu gosudarstvennykh zakonov consisted of an ideological part outlining his theoretical views on reforms and a technical part on how to realize this new state system.

91. Torrance, “Some Russian Attitudes to France in the Period of the Napoleonic Wars as Revealed by Russian Memoirs (1807–14),” 291.

92. Raeff, Speransky, 173.

93. See Darcel’s Postface in Miquel, Joseph de Maistre. Un Philosophe à la Cour du Tsar, 248.

94. “la Préface de l’épouvantable livre qu’on nous avait fait lire depuis”, in de Maistre, Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques, 41. The 1809 essay was published by de Bonald in Paris in 1814 without the knowledge of de Maistre at the time. He only found out years later. See Armenteros, The French Idea of History, 232.

95. Christian, “The Political Ideals of Michael Speransky,” 192.

96. Torrance, “Some Russian Attitudes to France,” 292.

97. Lieven, Russia against Napoleon, 87.

98. See the membership lists in Chtenie v Besede Liubitelei Russkago Slova, IX–XII. Beseda’s Board of Trustees existed of four high-ranked statesmen: Count Dmitriev was a Senator and member of the State Council; Count Petr Zavadovskii was Minister of Education between 1802 and 1810; Count Nikolai Mordvinov briefly served as Minister of Navy, and later headed the Economic Committee of the State Council, and Count Aleksei Razumovskii was Minister of Education between 1810 and 1816. Alexander Khvostov and Ivan Zakharov, who chaired different sections (razriady) of the Society were appointed Senator and Privy Councillor (tainyi sovetnik) became advisers to the State Loan bank.

99. Joseph de Maistre, Lettre au Roi Victor-Emmanuel, SPB 1811, in De Maistre, Oeuvres Complètes tôme 12, 39.

100. Edwards, “Joseph de Maistre and Russian Educational Policy,” 61.

101. Joseph de Maistre, Lettre au Comte de Front, SPB 5 août 1812, in De Maistre, Oeuvres Complètes tôme 12, 196.

102. De Stael, Dix Années d’Exil, 303.

103. “de Stael left Moscow after a very short stay. Karamzin and his wife dined with her at the Rostopchins.” Letter from P.A. Viazemskii to J.B. Galiffe, as quoted in Galiffe J.B., D’Un Siècle à l’autre, Genève: 1878, 312. See also Durylin, “Gospozha de Stael i ee russkie otnosheniia,” 268.

104. Durylin, “Gospozha de Stael i ee russkie otnosheniia,” 269.

105. Dupré de Saint Maure, L’hermite en Russie, 139.

106. De Stael, Dix Années d’Exil, 303.

107. De Maistre, Du Pâpe, 536–7.

108. De Maistre, Du Pâpe, 536–7.

109. Baron Vom und Zum Stein to Sergej Uvarov, Kalisz, 28 March 1813, Arkhiv S.S. Uvarova, GIM.

110. Letter of Madame de Staël to Sergej Uvarov, Stockholm, 2 May 1813, Arkhiv S.S. Uvarova, GIM.

111. She still wrote him a letter from Coppet in 1815 in which she discussed his political essays and remembered the “pauvre Prince de Ligne” who had passed away the year before during the Congress of Vienna. Letter from Madame de Staël to Sergei Uvarov, Coppet, 10 September 1815. Arkhiv S.S. Uvarova, GIM.

112. Chtenie v Besede Liubitelei Russkago Slova, IX–XII.

113. Vigel’, Zapiski, 339.

114. The original Arzamas circle consisted of a talented young set of writers and poets like Zhukovskii, Viazemski, Pushkin, Vigel’ and Uvarov himself see Vigel’, Zapiski, 342–7.

115. Zhukovskii had just moved from Saint Petersburg to Moscow and had been publicly mocked by Prince Shakhovskoi, one of Beseda’s most notable members.

116. As their Beseda opponent disappeared in 1817 and new young members joined Arzamas, the literary circle increasingly contributed to what Maiofis calls the modernizing project of imperial Russia in her 2008 book Vozzvanie k Evrope: Literaturnoe obshchestvo “Arazamas” I rossiiskii modernizatsionnyi proekt 1815–1818 godov.

117. Often referred to as “strashanaia vojna na Parnase”, or “the terrible war on the Parnassus,” see Orlov, Epigramma i Satira, 17.

118. Ironically, it was Admiral Shishkov who begged the tsar for a more lenient punishment of several Decembrists. See Bulgarin, “Zapiska ob Arzamase,” 26–7.

119. Offord and Rjéoutski, “French in the Nineteenth Century Russian Salon,” 10 and Argent, Offord and Rjéoutski, “The Functions and Value of Foreign Languages in 18th Century Russia,” 15.

120. Similar observations can be found in Vigel, Zapiski, 339, who wrote a nice portrait of Uvarov in his memoirs, and Durylin, Madame de Staël, 226, who also mentions Turgenev’s remarks.

121. Greifer, “Joseph de Maistre and the Reaction against the Eighteenth Century,” 598.

122. De Maistre was nearly 40 years old when the French Revolution began. Garrard, “Joseph de Maistre’s Civilization and its Discontents,” 433.

123. Greifer, “Joseph de Maistre and the Reaction against the Eighteenth Century,” 592–3 and 598.

124. Mostly Corinne, Delphine (that was mentioned in Pushkin’s Evgeny Onegin), De l’Allemagne, and Dix Années en Exil.

125. Christian, “The Senatorial Party and the Theory of Collegial Government, 1801–1803,” 321.

126. Ibidem.

127. Alexander’s friend Count Viktor Kochubei became Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1801–2 and Minister of the Interior until 1812 and again from 1819–25; Adam Czartoryski became Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1804 and 1806.

128. Chamberlain, “Father of Russian Conservatism,” 1.