By Fables Alone

Literature and State Ideology in Late-Eighteenth – Early-Nineteenth-Century Russia

Andrei Zorin, Marcus C. Levitt

• Éditeur: Academic Studies Press
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781618119094
• Sujet: Literature
• Sous-sujet: Russian Literary Criticism

Academic Studies Press is proud to present this translation of Professor Andrei Zorin's seminal Kormya Dvuglavogo Orla. This collection of essays includes several that have never before appeared in English, including "The People's War: The Time of Troubles in Russian Literature, 1806-1807" and "Holy Alliances: V. A. Zhukovskii's Epistle 'To Emperor Alexander' and Christian Universalism."

CHAPTER 1

Russians as Greeks:

Catherine II’s “Greek Project” and the Russian Ode of the 1760s–70s

1

Catherine II’s well-known “Greek Project” is undoubtedly one of the largest, most comprehensive and ambitious foreign policy ideas that Russia’s rulers have ever put forward. Like Catherine’s colleagues and opponents both in Russia and abroad, modern historians tend to see it as just another of Potemkin’s fantasies which the usually sober-minded empress allowed herself to be caught up in; as a manifestation of traditional imperial expansionism; as a smoke screen to hide less far-reaching but more practical intentions; or as a clear and well thought-out plan of action (see, for example, Markova 1959; Hösch 1964; Raeff 1972, Ragsdale 1988, Smilianskaia 1995, Leshchilovskaia 1998, Vinogradov 2000, and others; for the most thorough survey to date and a survey of the sources, see Hösch 1964). Authors who write about this usually limit themselves to the sphere of diplomacy and court politics, and completely ignore the symbolic dimension of the project (see Hösch 1964, 201–202). Yet for an evaluation of the project’s sources as well as the historical significance of the empress’s plan, this dimension may turn out to be most crucial.

Catherine laid out the “Greek Project” in comprehensive form in her letter to Emperor Joseph II of Sept. 10/21, 1782 (Arnet 1869, 143–147). Somewhat earlier, approximately in 1780, it was noted in a memorandum by A. A. Bezborodko, possibly intended for a meeting of the two emperors in Mogilev (SbRIO XXVI, 384–385). At the same time it is obvious that by Grand Prince Konstantin Pavlovich’s birth in 1779 that a sufficiently well-developed outline already existed. The choice of name for the newborn and the memorial medal with classical figures and Church of St. Sophia that was minted to mark his birth testify to the empress’s intentions with regard to her grandson rather clearly. As English ambassador James Harris stated, “Prince Potemkin … is continually occupied with the idea of raising an Empire in the East; he has so far infected the empress with these sentiments, that she has been chimerical enough to christen the newborn Grand Duke, Constantine; to give him a Greek nurse, whose name was Helen; and to talk in her private society, of placing him on the throne of the Eastern Empire. In the meanwhile, she is building a town at Czarsco-Zelo, to be called Constant-ingorod” (Harris I, 97–98). The numerous odes on the birth of the grand prince demonstrate that, despite the secrecy that surrounded the diplomatic correspondence, the Russian public was perfectly well informed of these intentions (Ragsdale 1988, 97–98). In particular, Petrov wrote:

Figure 1 Medal commemorating the birth of Grand Prince Konstantin Pavlovich (1779).

… Мавксентий коим побежден,

Защитник веры, слава Россов,

Гроза и ужас чалмоносцев,

Великий Константин рожден …

… град, кой греками утрачен,

От гнусна плена свободить, -

(Petrov I, 164).

(The one who conquered Maxentius, / Defender of the faith, the glory of Russians, / Threat and horror of the turban-wearers, / Great Constantine is born… / …To liberate the city from odious captivity / That was lost by the Greeks)

Apparently, the idea of the “Greek Project” originated in the mid-1770s when, after the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, G. A. Potemkin gave Catherine his plan of the “Eastern System” (on which see Samoilov 1867, 1011–1016),¹ which was to replace N. I. Panin’s “Northern System” in Russia’s foreign policy (see Griffiths 1970). Potemkin’s swift rise to power, beginning in 1774, was not only due to personal reasons but also because the ideas he put forward were in line with Catherine’s strategic plans that had been worked out during the course of the Russian-Turkish War of 1768–1774.

Both contemporaries and later commentators on the “Greek Project” paid special attention to its central element, which was also the most critical and difficult to achieve: the conquest of Constantinople. However, this very idea of Catherine’s and Potemkin’s was not in itself new. Plans for conquering the former capital of the Eastern Roman Empire had stirred Russian tsars as early as the seventeenth century (see Kapterev 1885; Zhigarev I-II, and others). They had circulated during Peter I’s Azov and Pruth campaigns and arose again under Anna Ioannovna during the Turkish campaign of 1736–1739 (see Kochubinskii 1899). In 1762 the hero of that campaign, B. K. Minikh, presented Catherine with a letter in which he called on her to fulfill Peter’s will and to take Constantinople (see Hösch 1964, 181). The theme of Constantinople reverberated in Russian journalism and social thought even later, right up to 1917, when the idea of placing a cross above St. Sophia and taking control of the straits outlived the Russian monarchy and became one of the reasons for the failure of the Provisional Government.

The special historical nature of Catherine’s “Greek Project,” at least if we judge by the letter to Joseph II and by public perception of the time, lies on a different plane. The empress did not at all plan to unite Constantinople with the Russian Empire, or to move its capital there. According to her project, the Second Rome was to become the center of a new Greek empire whose throne would go to Constantine only under the strict condition that he himself and his heirs would forever and in all circumstances repudiate any pretensions to the Russian crown. In this way, two neighboring powers under the scepters of the “star of the North” and the “star of the East,” Alexander and Constantine, would be united (using deeply anachronistic but precisely accurate terminology) by the bonds of fraternal friendship, so to speak, while Russia would play the role (again resorting to anachronism) of elder brother.

However, more profound historical factors would have had to support the dynastic union guaranteeing this brotherhood, which in turn would have propelled a member of the Russian imperial family to the throne of the new Greek empire, thus raising the whole project above the level of just another opportunistic diplomatic game. Such a factor was the Russian Empire’s religious heritage in relation to that of Constantinople. Russia had received its faith from Greek hands as a result of the marriage between a Kievan prince and the Byzantine emperor’s daughter, and therefore could now act as the natural savior of the Greeks from the yoke of the infidels. This gave a new twist to the newly developing relations between Russians and Greeks, as Russia not only appeared as the savior of Greece but also as its heir, or—to continue the familial metaphor—as a daughter who was obliged to return a long-time debt to her elder and at the same time younger sibling.

Here we approach what is arguably the core of this entire ideological construction. In the “Greek Project’s” system of coordinates, religious succession was equated with the cultural, as if by default. Hence Constantinople and Athens were marked as equivalent and by definition Russia’s role as the single heir to the Byzantine church also made her the only indisputably legitimate heir to classical Greek culture.² In all aspects of the project we consistently see the mixing of Byzantine and classical motifs, including in the aforementioned celebrations on the birth of Constantine and in the program for his education.

This logical tour de force fundamentally changed the thinking about Russia’s historical role and destiny. If it had been traditionally thought that the torch of enlightenment had gone from Greece to Rome, then taken up by Western Europe, and from there passed on to Russia, now Russia was seen to have had a direct line to Greece and therefore, had no need for intermediaries.

“The present reigning idea (and it carries away all others) is the establishing of a new Empire in the East, at Athens or Constantinople. The empress discoursed a long while with me the other day on the ancient Greeks; of their alacrity and the superiority of their genius, and the same character being still extant in the modern ones; and of the possibility of their again becoming the first people, if properly assisted and seconded,” the English ambassador Harris wrote home soon after Constantine’s birth (Harris I, 204). Catherine’s speech reveals a highly characteristic mode of thinking. Russia was called to restore their true nature to the Greeks, to lead them back to their own origins. She may also be seen as obliged to do this, insofar as she was the legitimate heir to classical Greece by way of Byzantium, and in some sense its modern embodiment. At least in Harris’s perception, Athens and Constantinople enjoy equal rights to serve as the capital of the future empire.

In an obvious way, this position led to the idea of Russia’s cultural potency in Europe and to a reconsideration of her political priorities. In the early 1780s, after Catherine’s meeting with Joseph II in Mogilev, negotiations began concerning an alliance between Russia and Austria. This alliance was very necessary for Catherine given her new political orientation, but at the decisive moment of signing the treaty it was almost rescinded because the Russian side raised the question of a so-called “alternative.”

According to the diplomatic etiquette of the time, it was standard practice that two copies of the treaty would be signed simultaneously, and then the two sides would swap places and sign again. However, this practice did not apply to the Holy Roman Emperor, who claimed the immutable right to sign first. Given Russia’s new orientation, this did not suit Catherine in the least. As strongly as she was interested in an alliance with Austria, she could not accept its diplomatic primacy. Russia, as legitimate heir to the Eastern Roman Empire, demanded equality with the Western (see Madariaga 1959/1960).³ A compromise that was on the whole advantageous to Catherine was finally found, but the very emergence of this conflict eloquently testifies to the enormous growth of Russian state consciousness that was unquestionably tied to the “Greek Project.” According to Joseph II, during the Mogilev meeting, every time that he began to speak of Greece and Constantinople, the empress made mention of Italy and Rome (Arned III, 250). Catherine’s idea was that Europe’s political leadership should consist of two empires: the Viennese, heir to Rome, and that of Petersburg, heir to Constantinople.

Not even the most sophisticated imagination could fashion a figure more suited to conceive and carry out all of these hyperbolic plans than G. A. Potemkin. The English Ambassador Harris reported in his dispatches that Potemkin was little interested in Western politics but that he paid great attention to Eastern matters. Later, when the question of transferring rule of the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean to Britain was under discussion, Potemkin quickly expressed an intention to settle Greeks there (see Harri...