Russian Revolution(s) from Peter to Putin (HIST 316 Spr 17 Sec 2)

During the reign of Nicholas I and the unrest following the Decembrist Revolt, many educated people came together to discuss how to best move forward as a nation. For many, this required first identifying what it truly meant to be “Russian.” Slavophiles looked to their history and their pre-Petrine past in order to develop an inherently Russian identity. In the preface to “On the Nature of European Culture and Its Relation to the Culture of Russia,” Marc Raeff highlights the Slavophiles’ belief that “a people or a culture develops organically, manifesting distinctive spiritual traits in all major aspects of its social and national life.” (Raeff, 174) While Russia took massive strides in education, technology, arts, and medicine during Peter’s Cultural Revolution, this development was not organic, but was implanted suddenly and dramatically during Peter’s reign, and instilled a great cultural divide between the nobility and the lower classes. On a deeper level, it created a dichotomy in Russian identity: while aspects of Muscovite culture were still very much present in the poorer classes, people were expected to see their cultural roots as “backwards” and only embrace what was wholly “European.”

In “On the Nature of European Culture and Its Relation to the Culture of Russia,” Kireevski upholds the Russian Orthodox Church as a unifying element of Russian culture when he writes: “the vast land of Russia, even when it was divided into petty principalities, thought of itself as a single living organism, held together not so much by a common language as by the unity of convictions which resulted from a common faith in the dicta of the Church.” He says the Church fostered “an overwhelming reaching out for wholeness of being, both external and internal.” (Kireevski, 194-205) In contrast, European philosophy and culture are described as creating a “dichotomy of the sum total and of all separate aspects of human life, both social and individual.” (Kireevski, 205) For Kireevski, Europeanization created a deep schism in Russia between the rich and the poor, educated and non-educated, and traditional Russian versus modern Russian culture.

Some may argue that without Peter’s Cultural Revolution, Russia never would have developed into the modern industrial nation that it is today, but Slavophiles would seem to argue otherwise. Following the Slavophiles’ belief that a culture must develop organically in order to flourish culturally, my question is: was Peter’s Westernization, and by extension Europe’s influence, necessary for Russia to turn into a modern and developed nation, or could Russia have developed in its own uniquely Russian, but equally modern way?

As we have previously read, Catherine II initially saw herself as the “enlightened despot” and harbinger of Russia’s westernization before doubling back on herself in light of events in France. The Captain’s Daughter, set during Catherine’s reign, describes the experiences of Pyotr (the son of landowners) in the period before, during and immediately after the Pugachev rebellion. At various points, the narrative suggests the presence of emergent ‘Western’ ideas or ideals – unsurprisingly in the context of Pyotr, our noble protagonist. Yet, in each case, these ideas and ideals are limited or qualified.

At the beginning of the book, Pushkin describes the unsuccessful attempt by Pyotr’s parents to give him a European education, courtesy of a Frenchman, Monsieur Beaupre: “although he was supposed by the agreement to teach me ‘French, German and all subjects,’ he preferred to pick up some Russian from me and, after that, we each followed our own pursuits.” (3) Beaupre was later found blind drunk and relieved from his duties, bringing Pyotr’s education to an end. The book’s primary European presence, as well as Pyotr’s European education, die an early, symbolic death.

Pyotr does later appear to acknowledge the limitations of Russia’s ‘westernization’. On torture, he says: “when I recall that this happened in my lifetime and that now I have lived to see the gentle reign of the Emperor Alexander, I cannot but marvel at the rapid progress of enlightenment and the diffusion of humane principles.” (84) He is apparently conscious of Catherine’s limitations and recoils at the horrors of torture; positioning torture as contradictory to enlightenment (and thus European?) ideals. Although Catherine opposes (to some extent) torture, the antiheroic Pugachev is, as we know, eventually drawn and quartered. Importantly, Pyotr equates “enlightenment” with “progress” and suggests that although it was present under Catherine, these ideals were limited and only accelerated under Alexander.

(Page numbers taken from 1928 Viking Press edition)

I felt that evident in “The Captain’s Daughter” was a criticism of the alienation of social groups under Catherine, particularly ethnic groups. Pushkin frames his novel with multiple moments of extreme violence – first with the violent beating of the Bakshir, who was in the possession of “inflammatory leaflets,” by Ivan Kuzmich. The Bakshir is criticized for not having a “lick of Russian” and for wearing a “stupid stripy robe” (Pushkin 291). As Ivan beats the man, Pushkin describes him in a completely dehumanizing way, likening him to an animal. This gruesome depiction highlights the feeling of disdain that higher classes of Russian society had towards ethnic minorities, and the lack of cross-cultural understanding between them.

Further violence continues later on, this time against members of the privileged class. Significantly, it is the very Bakshir who was earlier beaten that hangs Ivan Kuzmich and Ivan Ignatyich. This violent reversal in power emphasizes the extreme social disharmony that exists in Russian society. Although Catherine sought theoretically to end serfdom and to create more social cohesion, it is clear that her ideals never played out – and in fact, social classes in Russia were more antagonized than ever. This makes evident why Pugachev was able to mobilize so many Cossaks – they were used to being mistreated by the elite classes and stigmatized within society. Pugachev harnessed their built up rage, and was able, for a time, to flip the power dynamic that existed between classes. Pushkin utilized the Pugachev rebellion as a narrative by which to make evident that under Catherine, social tensions were at their highest, contrary to her professed goals.

I was interested in the justification for torture that Pyotr/Pushkin describes and the argument he uses against it: “In the old days torture was so ingrained in legal procedure that the beneficial decree that abolished it long remained without any effect. The thinking was that a criminal’s own confession was necessary for his full conviction – an idea not only without foundation, but totally con­trary to juridical common sense: for if a criminal’s denial is not accepted as proof of his innocence, still less should his confession be proof of his guilt… But in our day nobody doubted the necessity of torture, neither the judges, nor the accused.” (Pushkin, 291) This intrigued me because in the Nakaz, Catherine explains why a confession is not proof of guilt: “The Party accused on the Rack, whilst in the Agonies of Torture, is not Master enough of himself to be able to declare the Truth… In such an Extremity, even an innocent Person will roar out that he is guilty, only to gain some Respite from his Tortures.” (Nakaz, 85) It got me thinking about the way Catherine is portrayed in contrast to Pugachev. Catherine was ahead of her time when it came to torture, yet she executed Pugachev in quite a horrific way; however, this would not be considered torture by her definition because it was not for the purpose of extracting a confession, but rather as punishment for a crime of which he had already been convicted. She also disguises herself as a commoner and listens to Marya’s case, and decides to show her mercy once her true identity is revealed. Pugachev, on the other hand, has no qualms with public hangings and is generally depicted as cruel; however, he does show mercy to Pyotr due to the kindness Pyotr showed him when he (Pugachev) was in disguise.

I was also intrigued by the way serfdom is portrayed in the relationship between Pyotr and  Savelyich. Despite Pyotr’s rather brusque treatment of him, Savelyich shows undying loyalty to Pyotr and his father. I was wondering if this was a positive portrayal of serfdom as an institution, demonstrating that serfs do in fact care for their masters, or if it was a positive portrayal of a serf who gives far more than he gets and therefore an argument against serfdom (or at least for better treatment of serfs).

In Peter the Great’s eulogy, he was praised for having “transformed the existing architecture, [which was] coarse and deformed in the utmost degree; or rather, he caused architecture to be born in this country” (Cracraft, 78). Cracraft goes on to explain that this condemnation of Muscovite building practices, considered backwards and medieval in comparison to the Western European standards of beauty at the time, was “self-evident” not only to european visitors, but also to the Russian elite that had travelled extensively and seen the grand capitals of other nations.
Throughout this course and especially in sections related to Petrine revolutions, we’ve seen this combination of declaring traditional Russian ways backwards or outdated and striving for a Western European standard of progress and cultural power. How does the architecture of St. Petersburg, especially compared to Moscow, speak to this recurring power dynamic? How do features of architectural and civil engineering in Peter’s great city reveal the cultural and societal ideals he was trying to instill in Russia?

It seems that, through many of Peter’s revolutionary exploits, there was often an existing, Russian precedent for the changes that Peter was making. For instance, when looking at the introduction of modern European motifs in architecture, Cracraft states, “Certain minor precedents for the civil architecture of St. Petersburg could be found in Russia, to be sure, notably the churches and mansions built in and around Moscow in Peter’s early years, or even before his time, in a hybrid ‘Moscow Baroque’ style.” (Cracraft, pg. 82). Although these structure in the “Moscow Baroque” were baroque only in the sense of some ornamentation, they go to show that the world Peter grew up in wasn’t completely opposed towards European ideas.

Examples of similar precedents are the Foreigner’s Quarter in Moscow or the Dutch ships that Peter’s Father, Tsar Aleksei, had obtained. Another good example is the direction that icon painting was taking prior to Peter’s reign. Elements of portraiture that originated in Europe were begin to show within the confines of the rules of icon painting. All of these may be attributed to what Hughes calls “a belated Russian Renaissance.” (Hughes, pg. 51). My question is: To what extent can Peter be considered a revolutionary? Was the genesis of his ideas revolutionary in relation to prior cultural changes? Was Peter the right man in the right time and place?

Russia acquired its storied tradition of icon painting from the Byzantine Empire, with the introduction of Christianity into Russia centuries before Peter’s reign. The practice served as Russia’s primary form of artistic output until, as a result of Western influence, the visual arts began to secularize and expand. The absence of official portraiture of Tsar Mikhail, Aleksei’s father, at the same time as depictions of Western leaders abounded across Europe, speaks to the automatized relationship between tsar and public. The problem of access, too, posed a problem, as the Russian people, before the introduction of the printing press, would have had few means to encounter portraiture should it exist, and little incentive to seek out anything beyond religious imagery. Furthermore, the icon represented not merely an image executed by a painter, but a medium through which the beholder could approach the holy scene itself. The icon transcends its pigment and two-dimensionality to impart in the viewer its divine message and engage him in an act of worship.

Alexei’s portrait signaled an evolving Muscovite culture in the late Seventeenth Century, termed by Hughes a “belated Russian ‘Renaissance’” (Hughes, 51). This evolution, catalyzed by “war, trade, and diplomacy,” exemplified by Russia’s conflict with Poland-Lithuania in the mid-Seventeenth Century, with its attendant land acquisition, allowed European influence to arrive through the Western borders. Yet, by the 1670’s, writes Hughes, secular portraiture was still fairly inextricable from religious iconography. Artists remained “within the confines of Orthodox sensibilities and Muscovite aesthetic conventions” (Hughes, 53), conforming to the iconographic project and style.

The shift, however, from solely iconographic work to the inclusion of secular portraiture presents a gradual and seemingly logical step in the timeline of Russian painting. The “Muscovite ‘monarchical myth’” finds its origins in the concept of divinely granted exclusive power. The portrait works to maximize its subject’s Orthodoxy and piety in order to bolster his claims to power, as the “portraits give embodiment to the idealized ruler” (Hughes, 54). Aleksei’s portrait insists on history and tradition, and shares more with Russia’s icon painting in its flatness and religiously symbolic details, while Peter’s, with their depth and attempts at higher verisimilitude to life, motion towards freer exchange with the West. Hughes asserts that Peter’s portraits came to present him as a figure of evolution, in constant contact and conversation with the present; whereas, Alexei’s provides a static image of religious transcendence and lack of dialogue, as a symbolic figurehead of Orthodox anachronism.

At the same time, the military trappings of Peter’s portraiture convey his power just as Aleksei’s religious devices did; both possess their own strict orders and implications. Even by the 20^th Century, imagery such as these remained a means of the authorities to impel a reverence for “orthodoxy and autocracy” (Hughes, 55). As Cracraft writes in his chapter on “Cultural Revolution,” Peter’s institutional upheavals brought with them cultural changes that required the development of new vocabularies in order to accommodate new activity. This evolution is reduced and made visual in the progression from icon to portrait, and from portrait to portrait as style fluctuates according to time and ruler. Still each portrait retains a primary motive in the exaltation of the infallible supremacy of the Russian leader. Peter’s travels throughout Europe coincided with the late Baroque phase of Western art. The Baroque’s emphasis on “dynasty, church, and aristocracy” coincided with a distinctly Russian ethos, while its status as “arts of power designed to glorify society’s rulers and to magnify their claims” (Cracraft, 89) left an indelible mark on Peter in an appeal to both a Russian autocratic and European sensibility.

How did Russia’s tradition of icon painting poise the nation for its rapid rate of artistic expansion both under and following Peter’s reign? The image underwent a revolution alongside Peter’s religious, military, and bureaucratic reforms. Iconographic insistence upon divine power paved the way for the proceeding renditions of Russia’s ruling class, as they underwent shifting grammars of symbology (Aleksei’s Muscovite attire and religious detail to Peter’s militaristic trappings) and conceptions of realism. Still, the image remained motivated by a certain propagandistic impulse, “for the purpose of enhancing [Peter and his successors’] prestige in Europe and reinforcing their rule at home” (Cracraft, 94).

In reading about the description of the kompaniya intellegentsii, I was struck by their similarity to the underground cadres and secret societies that made up the Decembrist movement. This similarity was noted even by the kompanii themselves, saying that their “central questions we asked at our gatherings had first been asked by the intellegentsia of old – What is to be Done? was the name of a book by Nikolay Chernyshevsky; Who is to Blame the title of a Herzen novel” (Alexeyeva, 97).  and that “we wanted to…recapture its intellectual and spiritual exaltation.” (Alexeyeva, 97). While these similarities are very close and show the degree to which tsarist intellectual repression mirrored Soviet intellectual repression, their differences reveal a lot about the changed nature of the intellegentsia and its relation to the state.

To begin with, both of them existed right under the nose of the government. However, the kompaniya seemed to be much more widespread, with Alexeyeva describing how she could walk through any communal flat and “open the door of a crowded, smoky room filled with people I knew, people I’d never met, people I must have met but didn’t know by name” (Alexeyeva, 84). While not as elitist as the military-intellectual-foreign-educated groups that comprised the secret societies behind the Decembrist revolt, the members of the kompanii viewed themselves as a distinct and elite class separated from the vydvizhentsy, the ‘technical’ intelligentsia of Stalin (who now, in fact, ran the USSR). Both the Decembrist societies and the kompanii were divided, with Alexeyeva relating anecdotes about passionate arguments between the physicists and the lyricists. However, on the side of the physicists of the kompaniya, the Decembrists were more deeply concerned about effecting positive, tangible change – producing constitutions (detailed enough to reorganize oblasts and gubernii) and organizing troops for actual revolt, while the kompanii were deeply uncomfortable even with the glasnost demonstration mentioned later on. This shows that the nature of intellectual repression had changed to become more all-encompassing, wherein the power of the state had effectively been encoded into a dominant ideology as opposed to the more tolerant tsarist ideology, which was nominally classically Liberal to some degree.

I think the most interesting parallels and differences were with the intelligentsii’s relationship with the West. In tsarist times, as was noted by Alexeyeva, intellectuals persecuted by the tsar published abroad to escape censorship and punishment (“Was it wrong for Herzen to do it [publish abroad] 100 years ago?” (Alexeyeva, 128)). In the Thaw era, the West took on an incredibly heightened importance, through the dissemination of Western works through samizdat and the exportation of Soviet-critical works beyond the Iron Curtain. One of the more significant developments in the book came when the Western press established a relation with the intelligentsia’s press movement. The arrest of Sinyavsky and Daniel became the flash point for international condemnation of Soviet intellectual repression – Alexeyeva recalls writing in code to convey this point to the imprisoned intelligentsii: “Grandmother Lillian Hellman asked me to say hello. Uncle Bert Russell also sends regards. Your nephew, Gunter Grass, talks about you a lot, and so does his younger brother, Norman Mailer” (Alexeyeva, 139). This is a crucial difference between the Decembrists and the intelligentsii – the cause of the intelligentsii was made into a massive, global cause celebre, whereby this small stratum of individuals and kompanii was seen as a tool for dismantling the larger Soviet system of repression. The Decembrists were seen as admirable for their liberal views and democratizing tendencies, but ultimately were a Russia-centric movement.

As I read The Thaw Generation, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the article “Mourners Crushed at Stalin’s Funeral”, where the author tells his mother that he had seen Stalin (despite not literally seeing him) in the environment of chaos and confusion that he left behind. While going to attend a friend’s trial a few years after Stalin’s death and observing the foreign reporters, Alexeyeva notes that “Foreigners were easy to spot on a Moscow street, and not just because they were dressed better than the Russians. The distinction was in the faces. The foreigners’ faces were not marred by fear, concern and suspicion” (130). This difference is especially striking given that one would naturally be afraid when entering a hostile foreign country.

I was also intrigued by the statement “Daniel and Sinyavsky had the honor of being the first writers or poets in the USSR to face criminal charges stemming from the content of their works. Even Stalin had never prosecuted writers for writing” (131). It got me thinking about the description of the intelligentsia on pages 96-7, and the divide between the physicists and the lyricists. Obviously, Stalin valued the physicists more, and created the Vydvizhentsy to be physicists who were completely removed from the lyricist (questioning) side of the intelligentsia. However, if Stalin never prosecuted writers for writing, maybe he didn’t see them as much of a threat. So was it necessary for Stalin to separate these two groups, or do they do that well enough on their own?

Now that you’ve developed substantial expertise on revolutionary change in Russia, you may be interested in assessing your political bona fides. Have fun with this handy quiz form Arzamas Academy!

http://arzamas.academy/materials/1269