Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia

Collected Essays by Isabel de Madariaga

Isabel De Madariaga

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138160897
• eBook ISBN: 9781317881896
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This is a collection of thirteen major essays on eighteenth-century Russia by one of the most distinguished Western historians. They illustrate and explore three major themes: the development of the Russian state and Russian society, in the years when Russia was changing from a minor power on the European periphery to a major actor on the continental stage; the influence of western ideas and western thought on Russian politics and culture; and the impact of the Enlightenment on Russia. This is a substantial contribution not just to the history of Russia, but to early modern Europe generally.

PART ONE

Russian Government and Society

CHAPTER ONE

Tsar into emperor: the title of Peter the Great

I

C’est par ces riens d’étiquette que se marque la considération d’un pays, que s’affirme sa puissance, que s’établit sa grandeur …

Jean Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Torcy*

On 30 August 1721, the long Great Northern War came to an end and peace was signed between Russia and Sweden at Nystadt. The peace consolidated the gains made by Russia, notably the acquisition of the Baltic provinces of Livonia and Estonia, part of Finland and the estuary of the Neva on which St Petersburg had been founded in 1703. Russia had now replaced Sweden as the principal naval power in the Baltic Sea.

A thanksgiving service was to take place in the new capital on 22 October 1721, and two days before, on the 20th, the Senate and the Synod, in joint session, decided to beg the tsar, in the name of the whole Russian people, to accept the titles of Father of the Fatherland (otets otechestva), All Russian Emperor (imperator vserossiyskiy) and Peter the Great, in gratitude for the graces and great services he had rendered to his country in both peace and war. In fulfilment of this decision, Prince A.D. Menshikov, the most corrupt and well loved of Peter’s ‘fledglings’, was charged by the Senate to submit to Peter a written request, ‘in the name of all the orders in the All-Russian state’ (vserossiyskogo gosudarstva chinov), that he should condescend to accept this title, and allow the Senate to submit the proposal to him in the course of a solemn church ceremony. Peter, in reply to Menshikov’s proposal, said that he would first like to consult with a few members of the Senate. Whereupon a number of senators, and the archbishops of Pskov and Novgorod, who were the vice-presidents of the Synod, waited upon Peter and humbly presented their petition again. ‘With his usual praiseworthy modesty and moderation’ Peter at first refused to agree, giving many substantial reasons. But he finally gave way and, as we know, on 22 October 1721, at the solemn service of thanksgiving for the peace with Sweden, in the Holy Trinity Church in St Petersburg, the archbishop of Pskov, Feofan Prokopovich, proclaimed in his sermon the services to his people which entitled Peter to be called by these new titles. After the sermon, all the senators approached Peter, and the chancellor, Count Golovkin, made a fulsome speech praising Peter for having ‘brought his faithful subjects from the darkness of ignorance to the theatre of glory of the whole world, from not-being to being’, and for ‘introducing them into the society of political peoples’.¹

The difficulties experienced by Peter I in obtaining recognition of his new title by the other European powers have been quite extensively studied. But the change from the traditional Slavonic title of ‘tsar’ to the Latin title of ‘imperator’ raises a number of interesting questions which do not seem to have attracted so much scholarly attention in English. First of all, what did the titles ‘tsar’ and ‘emperor’ mean in traditional Russian usage? Secondly, what grounds, if any, did Peter have for wishing to change from the traditional Russian title of tsar to that of emperor? What kind of emperor was he thinking of, and what consequences would the change have for the status of Russia in international relations?²

In considering the meaning of titles, one must bear in mind that before the late seventeenth century there was a certain lack of precision about their use among European powers. The supremacy traditionally granted to the Holy Roman Emperor was being undermined already in the sixteenth century by the concept of ‘Rex imperator in regno suo’ which had a respectable medieval ancestry. The growing discrepancy between the actual power of the emperor and his claims to supremacy, blatantly revealed by the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, further weakened the imperial position. Europe, moreover, since the discoveries, was no longer a ‘Christian Commonwealth’, and the peace settlements of 1648 opened the way to a restructuring of international relations on the basis of the equality of sovereign states.³ Russia had now to insert herself at her proper rank into this new network of states.

The title ‘imperator’ goes back to republican Rome, where it meant only a military commander, and was a title of honour bestowed on victorious generals by the acclamation of their soldiers, and subsequently endorsed by the Senate.⁴ After the reign of Augustus, the imperator united military, administrative, and judicial power, and religious power as Supreme Pontiff. Under Diocletian he was surrounded with the trappings of a god: petitioners had to prostrate themselves before an emperor withdrawn in his apartments, wearing rich robes and a crown. Though he was in all respects a king, even an oriental king, the sole source of power and enjoying sole power, yet he did not use the name ‘king’ in Rome because of the historical Roman aversion to kings as dangerous to liberty.⁵ With the transfer of the capital to Byzantium and Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, the role of the emperor, as head of the church and ruler by divine right, was greatly enhanced. The emperor continued to be ‘elected’ (or appointed by a reigning emperor) and ‘acclaimed’ but became also the manifestation of a power created by God. The wreath was replaced by the diadem.

At the beginning, Byzantine titles in Greek were faithful translations of the original Latin. Thus ‘imperator’ was translated ‘autokrator’. Little by little Latin was edged out and replaced by Greek, and Greek writers often used ‘basileus’, which was the common title for the ruler of the eastern dependencies of the Byzantine Empire, as for instance Egypt, though the usage took some time to penetrate the chanceries. ‘Basileus’ was originally the Greek for the Latin ‘rex’, but as it came to be applied to the emperor, so it ceased to be applied to the emperor’s vassals.⁶ In the seventh century for the first time the title basileus was used alone as the formal title of the imperator, swallowing up autokrator, Caesar, and Augustus, ‘So that at length the name of emperor and king grew to be as one although the Romans … so much at first distinguished them’.⁷ As Bréhier puts it, ‘oriental usage was stronger than Roman constitutionalism’. Later ‘autokrator’ revived but was applied only to the senior emperor, to the basileus who actually ruled when there was more than one, in order to reinforce his authority. Never did the Byzantines, as lords of the world, use ‘basileus’ to translate the Latin ‘rex’, and they refused to allow the title of basileus to the Carolingian and German emperors, except only to Charlemagne.⁸ The Byzantine view was not accepted everywhere in the barbarian West, however: when Basil the Macedonian reproached the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig II with presuming to use the title ‘basileus’, the latter replied that he was as good an emperor as Basil, and that anyhow basileus was only the Greek for rex, and need not mean emperor at all.⁹ Indeed, in its time basileus was the favourite title used by the Saxon kings of England.¹⁰

It was this ‘basileus autokrator’ who presided over the conversion of Kievan Russia to Christianity, and who became known in early Slavonic chronicles as tsar, with his capital at Tsargrad. The word ‘tsar’ derives philologically from ‘caesar’, a derivation which was often lost sight of in the centuries to come. The title of tsar was not confined in Old Church Slavonic to the ruler of the empire in Constantinople; it was also used of kings, for instance the kings of the Old Testament, like David, or of the New Testament, like Herod, king of Judea, and indeed the kingdom of heaven was the ‘tsarstvo bozhie’. After the Mongol conquest it was also used of the rulers of the Golden Horde, and in general seems to have been used indiscriminately of Orthodox or eastern pagan or Muslim rulers, but not of the Catholic western emperors. In medieval Russian documents, the title ‘kesar’ was applied exclusively to the pagan Roman emperors. The alternative, ‘tsesar’, was used of the Christian Holy Roman emperors.¹¹ Thus in the early middle ages ‘tsar’ was used in Church Slavonic both of the emperor in Byzantium and of kings in the Bible,¹² just as ‘basileus’ was used by emperors in Constantinople and by kings in England.

The title used by the rulers of the Kievan principalities was knyaz’, which could be both a general designation of all members of a ruling clan and could also refer specifically to one knyaz’, who was the senior ruler in that clan at the time in a given city, and who later came to be known as ‘velikii knyaz’’. The title knyaz’ has usually been translated as prince, while ‘velikii knyaz’’ appears as grand duke or grand prince. Neither prince nor duke is really strictly correct, since knyaz’ derives from the Germanic *Kuningaz which later developed into König, king.¹³

The whole question of the titles used by and to the rulers of the principalities of Kievan Russia is extremely complex, and there is no room, nor am I competent, to enter upon it here in any detail. It appears that in the pre-Mongol period they were addressed by Byzantine officials as αρχοντ∊ς Pωσɩας. Later, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they were addressed as ρ∊ξ or μ∊γας ρ∊ξ, as in μ∊γας ρ∊ξ τον Tɩφ∊ρον (king or grand king of Tver’). It is possible that the Byzantine chancellery simply accepted the titles the Russian rulers gave themselves, adopting the Latin version. P∊ξ was in common use in Constantinople for the kings of France, Italy, Germany, etc., though it should be borne in mind that Greek writers had early learnt to use ‘rex’ for barbarian kings such as Odoacer.¹⁴ Yet Michael of Tver’, after receiving the yarlyk (edict) of the Mongol Khan in 1304 as grand prince of Vladimir and Moscow, sent an embassy to the Emperor Andronicos II in which he described himself as ‘βασɩλ∊νς των Pως’. The Byzantine patriarchs also called the Russian princes ‘ρ∊γ∊ς’. The title of tsar appears very rarely in medieval Russia, but the use of ‘kaiser’, in German, in Russian relations with the Catholic Livonian Order appears as early as 1417.¹⁵ Thus the distinction between basileus and rex, while very clear to the Byzantine chanceries, was not necessarily so clear to kings and princes elsewhere.

Similarly, in the Latin West, the Russian princes were usually addressed as ‘rex’ in early medieval times. Yaroslav the Wise was often called ‘rex’ in foreign chronicles. The right to make kings was one of the prerogatives of the Holy Roman Emperor, and also at times of the popes.¹⁶ When Izyaslav was expelled from the throne of Kiev in 1073, he was granted the title of king by the Emperor Henry IV. When he received no help from the emperor he turned to the pope, Gregory VII, offering to place Russia under the Holy See if the pope helped him to recover his throne. Pope Gregory VII used the titles rex and regina to Prince Izyaslav and his wife. In the thirteenth century Honorius III addressed a missive to ‘universis regibus Russiae’, that is to say to all the princes of Russia. Later when the princes of Galicia sought in the West for help against the Tartar invasions of the early thirteenth century, the papacy offered Danilo the title of king. In 1253 he received the regalia and was crowned, but he proved unable to impose union with Rome on his subjects. However, he was known as ‘rex Russiae’, and even sometimes by the title ‘korol’’ (<Karl, i.e. Carolus Magnus), the Russian for ‘king’.¹⁷

It seems that before the Mongol conquest – when Russia played an active part in the diplomacy of eastern Europe, and Russian princesses married into a number of royal houses, including those of the Empire – and particularly before the schism of 1054, the title of ‘rex’ was normally used in the Latin West not only for the senior ruler but for many of the minor rulers in Russia. But the usage gradually died out once the Russian principalities were overrun and became vassals of the Mongol khans.¹⁸

First the schism of 1054 and then the Mongol conquest set up barriers between East and West which lasted almost until the end of the fifteenth century. But several circumstances came together then to link Russia more closely with the West. It is difficult for the historian today to grasp quite how world-shattering was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Christian community, coming on top of the final breach between the eastern and the western churches after the Council of Florence of 1439. In the West the Church survived but in the East there now remained only one independent Orthodox realm, as the Turks advanced throughout southern Europe. In Russia the disaster had a very special impact. In the first place Russian relations with the West had become...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART ONE: Russian Government and Society
• PART TWO: Social and Administrative Problems
• PART THREE: Catherine II, Russian Society, and the World of Ideas
• Index