Patrick OMeara - The Russian Nobility in the Age of Alexander I

THE RUSSIAN NOBILITY IN THE AGE OF ALEXANDER I

Patrick OMeara

CONTENTS

Part I
RUSSIAS NOBLE ESTATE ( SOSLOVIE )

Chapter 2
DEFINITIONS OF THE NOBILITYS STANDING

Part II
EDUCATING THE RUSSIAN NOBILITY

Chapter 4
EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATION AND INSTITUTIONAL REALITY

Part III
THE NOBILITY IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION

Chapter 6
THE NOBLE ASSEMBLY IN PROVINCIAL LIFE

Part IV
THE TSAR, THE NOBILITY AND REFORMING RUSSIA

Chapter 8
ALEXANDER I, THE NOBILITY AND CONSTITUTIONALISM

Part V
GOVERNMENT, NOBILITY AND THE PEASANT QUESTION

Chapter 10
APPROACHES TO SERF REFORM FROM BELOW

Part VI
THE RADICAL NOBILITY CHALLENGES AUTOCRACY

The purpose of this book is to offer its readers a densely textured social and political portrait of the Russian nobility ( dvorianstvo ) in the age of Tsar Alexander I, who reigned from 1801 to 1825.

For the Russian Empire this was a twenty-five-year era of rapidly shifting international relations, dominated by the imperial ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte and, indeed, their aftermath. By contrast, domestic polity was remarkably hesitant, reflecting Alexander Is characteristic vacillation in nearly all important matters of state. The nobility (the English rendering of dvorianstvo preferred in this study over gentry or aristocracy) was, second only to the imperial court, the key elite in Russias pre-revolutionary social hierarchy, and it played a vitally important part in the functioning of civil society. Its history, therefore, is central to a fuller understanding of the dynamics of tsarist autocracy.

This project is accordingly based on a wide variety of rarely cited sources, both published and unpublished, including personal collections ( lichnye fondy ), local government papers, memoirs, diaries and correspondence. Taken together, they allow the historian the privilege of a kaleidoscopic view of the Alexandrine nobility, both collectively and individually. Such a wealth of sources would readily facilitate a variety of approaches to a reconstruction and analysis of the historical narrative they illuminate. However, I have elected to focus particularly on the political culture of the nobility in both capitals and in the provinces, in an attempt to produce the first comprehensive work (in English or Russian) to situate Alexander I in this crucially important context: one of my studys main objectives is to shed new light on the character of this famously enigmatic tsar. The accompanying analysis of Alexanders relationship with the Russian nobility serves to plug an important gap in the literature on the political history of Russia in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

On Alexanders accession in March 1801, the Russian nobility looked to their new tsar for a restoration of the 1785 Charters rights and privileges which had been withdrawn from the estate by his authoritarian father, Emperor Paul I, during his wayward and erratic reign. Pauls distrust of the nobility was reflected in what John Gooding has described as a reign of terror unleashed on the estate, which included his 1797 proclamation that serfs should work no more than three days a week for their master and take Sundays off. He also withdrew the nobilitys immunity from corporal punishment, imposed travel and foreign dress restrictions on the estate, even banning the import of luxury goods from Britain to spite the St Petersburg and Moscow nobles, and relied increasingly on the bureaucracy and the army rather than the nobility in both central and local administration. Against this, however, ignoring the provisions of the 1762 emancipation, he The reign of terror was over, and in Alexander Pushkins famous phrase, the beautiful onset of Alexanders days ( Dnei Aleksandrovykh prekrasnogo nachala ) was underway, not least for the nobility.

A crucial feature of the reign of Emperor Alexander I was the political struggle waged around the issue of Russias future: whether or not, in tune with the European Zeitgeist , to embark on a path of fundamental political, economic and social reform. In the Russian context this envisaged primarily serf emancipation and a new constitution. Outside those court circles where such issues were more or less continuously contested, the conflict between conservatives and reformers was played out within the only social class in the empire capable of joining battle: the Russian nobility, which was itself at this time undergoing far-reaching changes.

In particular, there was a growing tension between those sections of the nobility which identified with, or even actively promoted, the Europeanization of Russian politics and culture, and those who sought to preserve the home-grown national status quo. The Western influences which impacted on Russian society, both among the court elite and the nobility as a whole, particularly as a consequence of individual contact with Napoleonic Europe, make it possible to speak of a European generation of the Russian nobility at this time. The increasing currency of the Enlightenment ideals of egalitarian justice and personal liberty, combined with the spread of Romanticism, made a cultural and ideological convergence between Russia and the West seem increasingly ineluctable. Thus, the Decembrist poet and prose writer A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii observed that his was a generation which spoke Russian ( po-russki ) while thinking European ( po-evropeiski ). Such tension would prefigure the Decembrist uprising in St Petersburg at the end of 1825 (in which Bestuzhev played an active part) and, more broadly, the impassioned debate on Russias future pathway waged between the Westernizers and Slavophiles in the decades that followed. It is within these historical and research contexts that my work is set.

The book comprises an exploration of key political, social and cultural themes. It consists of six parts. Parts I and II focus on the sources of the nobilitys privileges and prestige, its legal and social status, questions of wealth and poverty, and its educational pathways. The predominantly Francophone nobilitys foreign language acquisition receives the particular attention this unusual cultural phenomenon merits. Part III is devoted to the nobilitys role in local government and provincial administration, particularly as reflected in the rich provincial archive of Nizhnii Novgorod (since the USSRs collapse once again, along with the city itself, accessible to foreign scholars), through the elective offices of marshal of the nobility, the noble assembly and the district courts.

Alexander Is treatment of the nobility and his relationships with leading members of his government are considered in Part IV, as is the tsars attitude to the question of a constitution for Russia, his constitutional diplomacy in relation to Poland, the nobilitys reaction to it and its significance for Russia. Part V presents a detailed analysis of the tentative approaches to reforming serfdom from above (the tsar and his government) and from below (the landowning nobility). It draws on key projects from both sectors by way of illustrating the variety of responses to the troubling complexity of the peasant question.