Essay on "Russia From Peter I To Nicholas"

Essay 7 pages (2306 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Russian Empire from Peter the Great to Nicholas I

The Russian Empire officially began in 1721 and ended in 1917. It was a near two hundred year run toward Russian modernization and absorption of Western European idealism, culminating in the violent Revolution chronicled by Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his many several works. Russian writers (some of the greatest in all the world during this time) in fact chronicled the massive change in Russian society -- the eighteenth century alone saw the works of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky (works that touched upon something so profound at the heart of not just Russian life but also human nature that they have been recognized around the world for their gifts to literature). This paper will take the longue duree viewpoint of Russian history during the Empire's expansion and transformation, showing how Russia and her subjects became a "Great European Power" for better and for worse from the time of Peter the Great to Nicholas I.

Vissario Grigoryevich Belinsky's 1847 letter to Nikolai Gogol expressing his outrage with Gogol's infinitely comic (and subtly tragic) novel Dead Souls reveals much about the frame of mind of "polite society" in Russia midway through its conversion from Tsardom to Communism. Gogol represented the artist who painted Russia, as he saw it, clearly and explicitly and truthfully -- in all its ignorance, insanity, goodness, and nobility. Belinsky represented the critic (which would become so much worse in the following century) of anything that dared give voice to the unseemly corruption lurking under the skin of Russian "greatness." Gogol was a truth-teller, Belinsky an intellectualist reformer -- and Russia was about to tear itself apart as truth and (what is now called) political correctness (often expressed in terms of modern philosophy, itself a striking departure from the theological/philosophical doctrine that underlined Russian orthodoxy) competed for an audience. The struggle would culminate in the works of Dostoevsky -- the last great author to boldly warn his nation of the crisis about to crush them all in masterworks such as Demons and The Idiot. By that time, of course, Gogol and Pushkin were dead, Dostoevsky had already completed a stint in prison and exile (after narrowly escaping execution, a point that had a profound impact on his political and religious beliefs), and modern Western philosophy (as dictated by Romantic/Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau) was bedding down in the Russian youth. Such is seen in The Brothers Karamazov when Alyosha forms a relationship with the leader of the boys who bombards him with questions about Voltaire: the departure of such philosophy from orthodox Christianity (the foundation of Mother Russia), however, is already seen in Gogol's works, such as "The Overcoat," "The Nose" (a hilarious parody of the self-important swagger taking over everyone of "importance" in Russian society), and most comically and tragically in Dead Souls.

Liberal reform, of course, had been part of Peter the Great's policy in the previous century. Peter's young life was as full of horror and heroism as any Russian history could be, and the majesty with which he applied himself to Russian affairs upon coming to rule showed that his concern (as for the military) was no mere shallow or politically correct policy arbitrarily applied. Peter was a Tsar who loved Russia just as much as he loved Europe -- and his love was marked by his magnanimity. However, his policy of modernization was not always marked by the same fervor, love, discipline, and generosity -- as each of his successors, including Catherine the Great (whose correspondence with Voltaire can certainly be seen as pivotal), continued to modernize Russia, Russia began to lose its sense of place and identity.

According to Pyotr Chaadayev, whose "Philosophical Letters" represented the movement from isolationism to liberalism, Russia had a "historic mission." Chaadayev was obviously bound up by the same modern Western philosophy that was dominating intellectual arenas at the time (his letters were written in French, the chosen language of the aristocracy) -- even if he was still attached to the religious rites that had come to define Mother Russia. As he wrote in his first letter: "The best way to keep religious feeling alive is to observe all the practices prescribed by the Church" (33). By Chaadayev's time, religious zeal was being extinguished in the liberal intellectual spheres; however, religion and liberalism were still mingling, as Chaadayev himself shows. By the time Belinsky would write against Gogol in 1847, however, liberalism was well on its way to drowning out religiosity:

Therefore you failed to realize that Russia sees her salvation not in mysticism or asceticism or pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment, and humanity. What she needs is not sermons (she has heard enough of them!) or prayers (she has repeated them too often!), but the awakening in the people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries amid dirt and refuse. (Belinsky 2)

Gogol, of course, knew better. Few understood the problem at the root of the kind of pride that Belinsky was promoting better than Gogol. Attacking that same pride like one would attack a plague was exactly what Gogol undertook in his works. In "The Overcoat" he states: "Nowadays every private individual considers the whole of society insulted in his person" (1), and makes light of a "certain important person" (14). In "The Nose," Gogol takes the expression "a person who cannot see beyond his own nose" to an entirely new level of satire by having collegiate assessor Kovalev's nose disembody itself from his face, parade around town, and act like a snob: "The nose looked at the major and scowled slightly" (5).

The same pride would turn deadly in the tragedies of Dostoevsky, who claimed that if the atheistic revolution underway during his time manifested itself fully and whole-heartedly in Russia one hundred million heads would roll. Solzhenitsyn, looking back nearly a century later (from the perspective of the Stalinist purge of the kulaks and his own stint in the Gulag) would say that the critics had laughed at Dostoevsky's prophecy -- and that they were right to laugh: it wasn't one hundred million; it was one hundred ten million.

How all of this had its root in the liberalization begun by Peter the Great may be an unwarranted assessment: nonetheless, the longue duree viewpoint warrants it. Peter the Great's reforms were significant in that they altered the foundations of society for both better and worse -- depending, of course, upon the perspective. According to Belinsky, modernization, serf emancipation, and the mantra of the French Revolution were points that needed pursuing. According to Gogol, liberality was a curse.

As Haxthausen asserts, "the entire social and even political life of the nomadic or pastoral peoples rests on the patriarchal principle. The family subordinated to its father and the tribe headed by its chief represent a natural hierarchy" (305). That patriarchy was undermined in the liberalism that was introduced into the Empire from Peter to Nicholas. Gogol lamented it by ridiculing the bureaucracy and effeminacy that replaced it.

The Tsarinas that followed the reign of Peter the Great pursued his policy of introducing Western philosophy and "civilized tastes" into Russia (PowerPoint). Catherine the Great certainly had her share of the blame. But Peter III, grandson of the noble patriarch (who had himself refused to participate in public acts of religious worship, essentially setting precedent for Russia's de-conversion), was more a boy than a monarch: Peter III, in fact, despised the mother country that was losing its own identity and longing (at least officially) to be part of the new, modernist tradition of the West. The demands of service that Peter the Great had placed upon the nobility as part of their education and formation were stricken down by his insolent grandson, whose detestation of service was the earmark of the time: liberty was the objective -- and it would lead to the nation's overthrow by the twentieth century.

The emancipation of the nobility was followed in the next century by the emancipation of the serfs -- which was clamored for by the Russian radical intelligentsia. Dostoevsky himself had been part of such intelligentsia, but his conversion to Christianity while exiled to Siberia reshaped his outlook of Russia and its woes: according to him, its woes were not its "social backwardness" nor its isolationism nor its orthodoxy -- its woes were Western liberalism as defined by the Romantic/Enlightenment doctrine. Much in line with his literary predecessor, Dostoevsky believed that religion was what Russia needed: sermons and prayers were what wanting.

Freemasonry, however, was what was spreading -- as it had been all over the world. By the time of Nicholas I, the Freemasons in Russia were seeking "the eradication of religious prejudices, class, racial and national discrimination, and the establishment of international cooperation" (PowerPoint). In fact, the accession of the throne by Nicholas I, led the secret society Union of Salvation (a heterogeneous group of liberals, moderates, and… READ MORE

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