On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825

The Self-Invention of the Russian Elite

Andreas Schönle, Andrei Zorin

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781609092412
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la Russie

Throughout the eighteenth century, the Russian elite assimilated the ideas, emotions, and practices of the aristocracy in Western countries to various degrees, while retaining a strong sense of their distinctive identity. In On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825, Andreas Schönle and Andrei Zorin examine the principal manifestations of Europeanization for Russian elites in their daily lives, through the import of material culture, the adoption of certain social practices, travel, reading patterns, and artistic consumption. The authors consider five major sites of Europeanization: court culture, religion, education, literature, and provincial life. The Europeanization of the Russian elite paradoxically strengthened its pride in its Russianness, precisely because it participated in networks of interaction and exchange with European elites and shared in their linguistic and cultural capital. In this way, Europeanization generated forms of sociability that helped the elite consolidate its corporate identity as distinct from court society and also from the people. The Europeanization of Russia was uniquely intense, complex, and pervasive, as it aimed not only to emulate forms of behavior, but to forge an elite that was intrinsically European, while remaining Russian. The second of a two-volume project (the first is a multi-authored collection of case studies), this insightful study will appeal to scholars and students of Russian and East European history and culture, as well as those interested in transnational processes.

1

HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF RUSSIA’S EUROPEANIZATION TO 1825

The standard narrative of Russia’s Europeanization is fairly straightforward. Peter the Great had traveled on his “Grand Embassy” to Holland and England, where he studied not only shipbuilding technologies and other crafts, but also matters of political philosophy and, with Gilbert Burnet, of theology. In addition to its diplomatic aims, the journey also offered the opportunity to learn new technologies and to recruit craftsmen and other specialists into the Russian service. Even though his primary aims were military and economic, upon his return to Russia, Peter ushered in a series of cultural and symbolic reforms, which signaled his intention to secularize cultural practices in Russia and eventually to transform its polity. Military, administrative, institutional, political, and religious reforms ensued, and even though the task of transforming Russian society was left unfinished at Peter’s death in 1725, these changes profoundly affected Russian society throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. More than anything else, in matters as varied as behavioral and sartorial norms, print culture, architecture, landscape design, and scientific practice, it is a cultural revolution that Peter had launched (Cracraft 2003). In all these domains, the reforms were profoundly inspired by western models, as is vividly and impressively illustrated by the creation of St Petersburg, the geographically and stylistically westernmost city in Russia. Political, administrative, military and religious reforms were more incremental, although often likewise inspired by western ideas.

So is the standard narrative about the Petrine reforms. No doubt influenced by the towering figure of Peter the Great and the mythologies it inspired, scholarship of eighteenth-century Russia has generally posited that the imitation of Europe provides one of the macrohistorical keys to unlock and explain Russia’s historical development in this period. Yet matters became more complex when it came to determining what exactly Russian rulers were imitating. In a famous, if controversial article, Mark Raeff began to question the customary argument. The Russian eighteenth century is a “heuristically convenient” historical period, but precisely because it is defined by “the conscious efforts to imitate the principal features of another polity,” it is crucial to acknowledge that Russia was in fact emulating features from different centuries. For example, the political culture that most strongly influenced Peter was cameralism, a set of ideas developed in German lands in the seventeenth century, “the baroque and classical century” (Raeff 1982, 612–3). Likewise, the craftsmen Peter recruited were not at the cutting edge of science and technology, but introduced mid-seventeenth-century techniques, and even the scholars drafted to establish the Academy of Sciences espoused views that were fast becoming obsolete. Furthermore, due to weaknesses of the state, the implantation of a new political culture only reached the upper levels of the elite, while traditional culture endured on lower rungs of society and in the provinces. The age of Peter the Great thus turned into a confrontation between two “seventeenth centuries,” that of “European political culture” and that of the “traditional Muscovite order” (Raeff 1982, 615). There is considerable simplification in this neat picture, not the least because on the one hand the traditional Muscovite order, under Kievian influence, had already undergone considerable changes in the second half of the seventeenth century and, on the other, there was no such thing as a unified European political culture at the time, only a set of substantially different political practices even among so called absolutist regimes.

Others have further refined the imitation paradigm. Several scholars have pointed out that theological and political debates during Peter’s time were strongly inflected by catholic and protestant theologians and political philosophers. Indeed, Maria Pliukhanova has demonstrated that the so-called Old Muscovite opposition to Petrine modernization was mostly driven by people fascinated not so much by national tradition as by contemporary Polish baroque culture. Moreover, ever since Slavophile thinker Iurii Samarin defended his Masters dissertation in 1844, it has been known that the main confrontation of the period unfolded between the protestant-leaning Feofan Prokopovich, Peter’s main “ideologue” and spokesman, and the catholic-educated Stefan Iavorsky, who gradually evolved from being one of the main ideologues of Petrine reforms to active resistance to them. Likewise, Kirill Rogov has demonstrated that Peter himself was not immune to the traditions of baroque symbolism (Pliukhanova 2004, Rogov 2006, Samarin 1880).

Recently, Paul Bushkovitch has argued that Prokopovich was less interested in promoting western absolutist theory, which, according to him, did not exist anyway, than in legitimating the transfer of specific legal and administrative practices (Bushkovitch 2012). In short, the point is that the more granular our understanding of “Western influence,” the more contested, multivalent and diffuse it becomes, and the more it seems that opponents in the project of cultural and political reform were equally under the sway of Western influences, only different ones. Consequently, as the sources of influence multiply and become more widespread, the explanatory value of the imitation paradigm begins to disintegrate, since it can no longer account for the overall development of Russia in the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, all scholars agree that the period of Peter the Great marked Russia’s dramatic opening towards Western values, ideas, norms, and practices, only that this transfer was considerably more chaotic than had been presumed heretofore.

Let us look more closely at the parameters of Russia’s Europeanization. Western influence upon Russia, of course, goes back a long way. It is architects from Italy who were invited to build the Moscow Kremlin in the fifteenth century, and contacts with Europe intensified in the seventeenth century, notably under the rule of Aleksei Mikhailovich, the father of Peter the Great. Yet it is under Peter, who ruled independently between 1694 and his unexpected death in 1725, that Russia embarked on a sustained and explicit program of Europeanization, which brought about a profound cultural transformation, often in defiance of the church. The long-standing historiographic polemic whether Peter ushered in a revolution or only extended what his father and his elder brother had initiated need not preoccupy us too much here. What matters to us is the perception of Peter’s reforms by contemporaries and subsequent generations, and it is obvious that Peter’s reforms had radically transformed their lives. Peter’s status as the creator of the new Russia, for better or worse, remained unquestioned until well into the nineteenth century.

In his reforms, Peter pursued first and foremost practical aims. The initial military defeats he sustained in Azov in 1695 and Narva in 1700 drove home the pressing need to raise a modern regular army and find sustainable ways of supplying it. At the same time, his first steps towards Europeanization predate the stinging defeat at Narva and also grow out of domestic considerations, in particular Peter’s distaste for the traditional ways associated with the Miloslavsky party against which he had had to assert his own power (Anisimov 1995, 135).

Europeanization started with attempts to educate the elite and change their way of life. In November 1696, Peter issued an edict in which he peremptorily dispatched a few dozen scions of the elite abroad to study. He promptly followed suit himself, announcing the so-called “Grand Embassy” on December 6, 1696. This diplomatic mission, consisting of about 250 people, set out to Holland and England during 1697–98, with Peter traveling incognito among the dignitaries, the first time a Russian tsar had ventured beyond his dominion. While its diplomatic aims were only partially successful, the embassy allowed Peter to observe Western practices, learn about new technologies, notably in ship-building, and discuss politics and theology with high-placed figures, for example Gilbert Burnett. The journey to Europe threw into relief the developmental contrast between Russia and Europe’s industrializing countries and afforded access to novel intellectual developments, notably the optimistic melioristic philosophy of the early Enlightenment (Anisimov 1993, 24–26).

Upon his return to Moscow, Peter promptly convened his boyars and cut their cherished beards, a way for him to stamp his authority and mark the beginning of new times (the Russian church had risen in defense of the beard). In 1699, Peter wielded his scissors again to cut the traditional Russian dress of his courtiers, while an edict mandating the German dress for all noblemen was issued a year later. It was clear from their inception that his reforms would have a coercive dimension. The attention to sartorial norms reflected cameralist theory, namely the notion that only a comprehensively organized social system was capable of functioning properly, so that in a well-ordered society even details of external deportment were subject to regulation (Raeff 1984, 24–31; Kamenskii 2001, 99–101).

Creating a secular culture was one of Peter’s ambitions, and it extended to various spheres of life. Calendar reform, introduced by edict on 19 December 1699, mandated the count of years from the birth of Christ, rather than the notional creation of the world, and the New Year on 1 January, rather than 1 September. The edict also carefully defined spheres of life to which it applied, prominently leaving the church off the hook, and thereby beginning the work of creating a secular culture distinct from religious traditions (PSZ 1830, vol. 3, no 1735, p. 680). Henceforth Russia would follow two different calendars at once, a civil and a religious one. British teachers were invited to Moscow to teach mathematics and engineering, and a school was established for this purpose in 1700. In the same year, a typography was created in Amsterdam to print secular books translated into Russian for shipment to Russia. This was the first step of a process to create a secular literary culture, which we describe in our chapter on literature. A “Manifesto on the Import of Foreigners to Russia” promulgated in 1702 laid out an ambitious aim of social betterment and economic development and offered foreigners willing to work in Russia several guarantees, notably confessional freedom. The church was placed under greater control. As we explain in greater detail in our chapter on religion, Peter refused to appoint a new patriarch upon the death of Adrian in 1700 and introduced measures to diminish the role of monasteries, in particular as centers of learning. The first newspaper was launched in 1702 and a comedy theatre was erected on Red Square, a site traditionally perceived as sacred. Peter also promoted attitudes such as intellectual curiosity and scientific experimentation even when there was no immediate utilitarian benefit in sight (Iosad 2016). And he ordered elite women to be released from seclusion in their chambers and to participate in the emergent society. All these initiatives contributed to compartmentalizing the church and hence diminishing its sway over the everyday life and mindset of the elite.

One of Peter’s most visible and consequential decisions was the foundation in 1703 of a new capital, St. Petersburg, situated amidst marshlands, in the most inhospitable of terrains and exposed to regular flooding. By shifting the capital to newly conquered land on the empire’s periphery, Peter gave a spectacular example of creation ex nihilo. In a manifestation of his melioristic ambitions, Peter called it his “paradise.” The cost of creating this realized utopia, in terms of human life and material resources, was forbidding, yet Peter didn’t recoil from any sacrifice. His motivations were several. Demoting Moscow as the center of traditional culture was one of them, though the first government bodies moved to St. Petersburg only in 1712. Commercial and strategic considerations about reorienting Russian foreign policy and commercial interests in a North-Western direction, in particular achieving military control over the Baltic sea and thereby facilitating trade with northern Europe, were key. And designing from scratch a city embodying Peter’s vision of the state, both administratively and aesthetically, was likewise important to him. The new city, built mostly by European architects in a Western architectural idiom and with a regular layout of streets, was meant to become a showcase of the new rational well-ordered Russia. It emerged by force of edicts mandating everything from the design of facades and the use of building materials to the dress of its inhabitants. It was to become the site of a brilliant court, but also of a bureaucracy, staffed mostly by nobles, which attempted vainly to gain control over the vast expanses of the Russian empire.

The emphasis on education and manners continued unabated. By a decree of 1714 nobles who had not completed their primary education were forbidden to marry, a measure that had no chance of being implemented, but showed the priorities of the ruler. And those without education could not receive promotion in the army or civil service. It is estimated that about 1000 young men were sent abroad to study during Peter’s reign (Kamenskii 2001, 124). In the late 1710s, following a trip to France, Peter issued a decree on assemblies, which mandated holding public gatherings in the houses of his grandees, open to all well-dressed individuals without distinctions of rank, where men and women could interact freely, creating the semblance of an open public sphere. An etiquette book composed of various foreign sources, the Honorable Mirror of Youth, was first published in 1717 and saw several subsequent publications. It contained both moral admonition and advice on etiquette, including for young ladies, and urged young nobles to converse among themselves in foreign languages, both for practice and to avoid eavesdropping by servants (Wortman 1995, 54; Hughes 1998, 288–90).

Peter’s reforms had profound social consequences. While the ideological underpinnings of Peter’s reforms had European origins, their scope was beyond anything the rulers he aspired to imitate could possibly imagine. A number of early modern European monarchs enjoyed “absolute” power, yet they were nevertheless constrained by traditional customs, legal norms, the established practices of everyday life, and, not least of all, the moral authority of the church. Peter implanted his reforms as if he was personally responsible for everything from the external appearance of his subjects, to their mindset, family life, daily routine, and religious beliefs. As a result, he introduced a social divide between the Europeanized nobility and the rest of the population, a divide which would grow only wider over the course of the eighteenth century and whose consequences are still felt in Russia today.

Peter tightened the nobility’s obligation to serve and lengthened the duration of service, making it continuous and lifelong. He changed the economic basis of the nobility: remuneration for service replaced grants of estates, which made nobles more dependent on the bureaucracy and ultimately the ruler’s good will. The decree on single inheritance (1714) was in part meant to force those deprived of an inheritance to enlist in state service. Many nobles stopped residing on their family lands. The meritocratic principles at the heart of Peter’s educational policies were eventually formalized in the Table of Rank (1722). The Table developed a nomenclature of titles modeled on Western examples (Ageeva 2006, 69–71), but instead of distinction by birth, it instituted the principles of length of service and merit as the basis for promotion. The Table made education a requirement and granted noble title to commoners reaching a certain rank, thus recasting the nobility as an open class. Nobles started service in the lowers ranks, alongside commoners, though they generally benefitted from speedier advancement. These reforms profoundly redefined what it meant to be a noble in Russia, placing much greater emphasis on service to the state than in other European countries. Nevertheless, historians generally agree that Peter’s attempts to instill a commitment to state service did more to foster corruption than to instill a work ethic (Kamenskii 2001, 120–122; Hughes 1998, 290–91).

Peter’s administrative and political reforms also took their inspiration from Western models. The introduction in 1717 of Colleges (that is specialized organs of government) and of the so called “General Regulation” (1720)—a massive administrative code—was patterned after Swedish equivalents and aimed to formalize the work of a caste of expert civil servants organized and rewarded according to a uniform administrative order. In 1721, to crown the transformation of his position as absolute monarch, Peter assumed the title of emperor. In referring rhetorically to the trappings of imperial Rome, for example by awarding himself the title of Father of the Fatherland, Peter also conjured up legitimating analogies with Roman antiquity. The contradiction between the machinery of an administrative apparatus and the tsar’s reliance on personal charisma, combined with his frequent readiness to sidestep administrative procedure, endured throughout the eighteenth century and culminated in Catherine the Great’s notorious favoritism (Wirtschafter 2008, 57–58).

By the time of Peter’s death in 1725, the upper nobility found itself in a contradictory position. On the one hand, it had been firmly tethered to a state project, often by coercive means, which robbed it of its independence despite some privileges such as owning serfs and freedom from the soul tax, a yearly fee levied on all males except nobles, officials and the clergy, which was aimed to finance the military. The nobility was a cog in an administrative machine meant to extend over the vast Russian empire. The obligation to serve indefinitely imposed considerable financial and psychological burdens. Families were often separated, as husbands enlisted in military or civil service were dislocated. On the other hand, the ideas and values imported from Europe began to suggest the dignity and self-worth of the individual, yet nobles did not hold title to their estates and nor could they be assured of the security of their persons in the absence of any form of due process (Raeff 1991, 296). This contradiction opened up a disjunction between the nobility’s social role and its sense of self.

The nobility’s insecurity was compounded by political instability. In his Law on Dynastic Succession of 1722, Peter had empowered the ruler to designate his (her) successor, a way to secure his legacy. Ironically, Peter died in 1725 without nominating anyone. As a result, the law he introduced exposed dynastic succession to a battle between various parties at court, creating considerable instability in the immediate years after his death and fostering several political coups over the eighteenth century until Paul I reestablished succession by primogeniture in 1797. Thus, instead of a well-ordered bureaucratic machine, Russia’s court and government became a battleground between factions, turning patronage and clientelism into the main modus operandi of political life. The notion of charismatic, personalistic power Peter had left behind exacerbated this tendency (Wirtschafter 2008, 118–133).

Deprived of the security of person and property and compelled to serve for an indefinite number of years, the nobility attempted to lobby for improvements, coming together as a political force for the first time. In 1730 it obtained the abrogation of Peter’s single inheritance law and in 1736 the length of service was shortened to 25 years and some dispensations were allowed for one son to remain on the familial estate to manage agricultural work. The standing of the nobility was also enhanced in that years spent in education allowed men to enter service at officer rank or equivalent on the Table of Ranks.

Europeanization continued unabated after Peter’s death. The emphasis on education remained, notably with the founding of the Cadet Corps School and the expansion of the Academy of Sciences. The learning of foreign languages soared, French becoming the language of choice by mid-century. To provide entertainment for her brilliant court, Elizabeth instituted the Russian Imperial Theater (1756), giving pride of place to French theatre in it, and invited numerous French, German and Italian musicians, who turned St. Petersburg into a notable musical center. She was less interested in literature, although she underwrote the publication of various books, including a translation of Fénelon’s Adventures of Telemachus (Marker 1985, 55). In its extravagant balls and masquerades, the Russian court began to outshine its European counterparts. Elizabeth also embarked on ambitious architectural projects, notably the construction by Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli of the Winter Palace (now Hermitage) in St. Petersburg and a summer palace at Tsarskoe Selo. In 1755 she founded Moscow University, which provided an education destined initially more to the lower nobility and commoners than to the elite, as the latter preferred home education by tutors.

The notorious profligacy of Elizabeth’s court—her 15,000 dresses come to mind—raises the question of who bore the cost of Europeanization. Much of Peter’s policies had aimed to strengthen the finances and the manpower of the state at everybody’s expense, but in particular of the serfs. The demands of the regular mass conscription and the introduction of the soul tax led to more stringent enserfment of the peasant population, notably by curtailing its freedom of movement (Kamenskii 2001, 132–36), and also to the constitution of the separate group of so-called state serfs. After Peter’s death, the nobility gained greater control over its serfs, a process that culminated in 1760 with an edict that entitled nobles to banish serfs to Siberia and hold such exiles as credit towards the next draft. Nobles had in effect received sovereign jurisdiction over their serfs.

The elite sought to fund its Europeanization by extracting more rent from its serfs, but was constrained by the ever-present risk of serf flight or sometimes outright rebellion. In 1767, responding to a letter by the poet and playwright Alexander Sumarokov in which he defended the social harmony existing between nobles and peasants, Catherine reminded him that cases of landlords murdered by their serfs were well known (Solov’iev 1895, 27: 310). The latent civil war simmering on noble estates broke out during the rebellion of 1773–1775 led by the Cossack chieftain Emelian Pugachev. When the rebellious Cossacks advanced into Russia’s agricultural regions, the peasants...