Life Under the Tsars

[Tsarfan]

I have been reading Elaine Feinstein's recent biography of Pushkin which, though not the weightiest work on Russia's pre-eminent literary genius, takes account of some of the newest evidence to emerge on his life and loves.  Having also recently read The Glitter and the Gold,  Cornelia Vanderbilt Balsan's autobiography which includes a recounting of her visit to the Russia at the start of the twentieth century, I could not help but draw some comparisons and begin musing about how life under the tsars really  looked to those who experienced it.

In the 1820's Pushkin found himself exiled for six years to various parts of southern Russia by Tsar Alexander I, whom Pushkin had offended with a poem alluding obliquely to the circumstances of Tsar Paul's death and with a private letter -- which wound up in the hands of the secret police -- in which Pushkin reported favorably on an English writer who was examining atheism.  While exiled to his family estate at Mikhalovskoe, Pushkin was visited by his close friend Ivan Puschin who brought along a new work on the subject of wit by an author Pushkin admired.  In the midst of reading from the new work, a local monk who was doubling as an agent of the secret police dropped in unannounced, whereupon Pushkin immediately feigned to be reading a religious tract.

The notion that Pushkin, a member of a noble (though impoverished) family older than the Romanovs, sitting at home on a remote estate pleasantly reading an innocuous work with a close friend in private, could be intruded upon by a tsarist agent and feel constrained to pretend to be doing something else sent something of a chill up my spine.  And it triggered the recollection of a report on a dinner at the Winter Palace almost eighty years later.  Cornelia Vanderbilt, then the Duchess of Malborough and a lady-in-waiting to Queen Alexandra, found herself seated next to Nicholas II.  Nicholas asked her why her friend and travelling companion, the  Duchess of Sunderland, had been seen in in the company of Maxim Gorky during their visit.  Vanderbilt was taken aback by the question, whereupon Nicholas explained that his secret police dogged the footsteps of all foreign visitors to Russia and reported their activities to him personally.  It had apparently not occurred to her that two English Duchesses, along with the Duke of Malborough -- all intimates of the British royal family and unreproachably monarchist in their viewpoints -- would be objects of police surveillance while in Russia.

We too often forget that behind all the mesmerizing pomp of Imperial Russia and all the charming pictures of pretty little princes and princesses there lurked a police state.  It might not have been as efficient or as brutal as that which succeeded it, but it was equally bent on forcing the views and the will of one individual -- the tsar -- on the actions and even the thoughts of all who lived and moved within Russia's borders.

[LisaDavidson]

The Vanderbilt in question was Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan. She was forced by her mother to marry the Duke of Marlborough.

A police state certainly existed in Imperial Russia - the Ohkrana was well known both before and after the Revolution.

[Tsarfan]

The Vanderbilt in question was Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan.

Sometimes I am simply appalled at the stupid mistakes I can make.  (I must have had Cornelius Vanderbilt -- the founder of the family's fortune -- on the brain.)

Thanks for the catch, Lisa.

[lexi4]

Good post Tsarfan. There was no personal freedom in Russia under the Tsars. But it didn't get any better after the fall of the monarchy. It seems much of Russia's history is about one ruler, whether called a Tsar or not, is about bending the will of the people to the will and the beliefs of the ruler. The effects of this on those who lived in the more populated areas is obvious. I wonder how it affected the farmer/peasant for whom survival was a daily struggle.
How much different were Lenin and Nicholas or his father? They all slaughtered their own people and tried to bend their will.
At the end of the cold war my ex-husband, who is a physicists, was part of a U.S. program to work with Russian physicists. The job involved travel to Russia. Even then, he was warned to be careful even in the hotel rooms because no one knew for sure whether or not "bugs" had been removed. I can't even imagine living that way. Yet in Russia is seems to have been sop.
Lexi

[Tsarfan]

There is a fascinating excerpt at http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=25&pid=511081&agid=2 from the book Kremlin Rising:  Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution,  by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.  These are two Washington Post  journalists who spent almost four years in Russia from the outset of Putin's first term and who wrote a fascinating account of how Putin came from the dark recesses of the old Soviet state police bureaucracy to fashion a virtual takeover of Russia.

While the book relates much of what is going on in Russia to communist-era antecedents, I was struck by the much earlier antecedents -- the reigns of Ivan IV, Peter the Great, Nicholas I.

In interviewing two young people who voted for Putin, the authors asked them why they were not bothered by his KGB background.  They answered that they voted for him precisely because  of his background:  " 'Absolutely it prepared him to be president,' Sergei said before patiently explaining to us why Russians would be proud of Putin's past.  'They like it.  They see [the KGB] as strong.  They see it as severe, harsh.' "

In one interview and conversation after another, the authors found that "old habits of subservience to the authorities, never unlearned, guided political responses to the reempowered president."  (Remember that this is a president under whom 21 journalists have been assassinated so far, under whom all three national news networks have been put back under state control, and under whom regional gubernatorial elections have been suspended.)

One of the more telling interviews was with Aleksandr Oslon, Putin's chief pollster.  In talking about Putin's appeal, Oslon explained, in the reporters' words, "Yeltsin and his young band of reformers, the new team in the Kremlin believed, had embraced a course of democratic and economic transformation that Russians never really wanted.  But Putin came to office determined not to force-feed democracy to Russia; he would, in the metaphor Oslon used with us, simply let the river revert to its authoritarian course and ride along with it."

Then came Putin's "pomp-filled second-term inauguration at the Kremlin, when, standing underneath the golden tsarist sunburst of St. Andrew's Hall, Putin began his new four years in office with a speech that no longer even mentioned the word democracy."

But for me, having just read a new Pushkin biography, this was the most chilling passage.  The authors were visiting a rural village in the company of a Moscow acquaintance named Tatyana whose family still lived in the village.  "Another man, asked to describe his life [in the village] . . . replied immediately that he could not answer.  'The FSB [state police] wouldn't like that,' he explained."  It immediately pulled me back into an anecdote regarding one of Pushkin's many scrapes with the tsarist authorities.  He had finally been allowed to return to St. Petersburg from exile, subject to the tsar's personal censorship of all his published writings.  Pushkin was invited to read from an unpublished manuscript at an intimate gathering in a friend's home.  Within two days, he received a summons from the tsar's head of police, Count Benckendorff, to whose attention the manuscript had been brought.  Now Pushking understood.  The secret police were to be a constant in his life.  Every word he uttered, whether in private or in company, had the potential of coming to the ears of the authorities.

How very, very little has changed in Russia.  And how very, very much they still seem to crave the yoke of the tsars.

[mr_harrison75]

I agree...

Except, through all the history of Russia, they had (or needed) a strong ruler to keep the country united. Russia is a hodge-podge of different races, peoples, cultures and religions. To keep the country a viable entity, they had to rule it with an iron fist...sadly, we saw what happened the last time they had a weak ruler (notwithstanding his personal qualities, and lovable family)...Russia collapsed and they had a 3 years-long Civil War. It's obvious Russia don't want it to happen again.

I'm not saying that it is the right way to do things, just that they always did it that way. The problem is that the country is too big to be ruled democratically; if it would become a real democracy (like us Westerners have), the country would simply collapse into many little countries, with enormous instability, it would become a new Balkans. We saw it happening once, at a smaller scale, when USSR collapsed.

We sometimes wonder if Russians would reestablish the Romanov as tsars; but they don't have to, they have Putin as tsar in all but name...

[ChristineM]

While today's Russian little 'princes' and 'princesses' can be found scattered around Europe buying up historic houses and estates, dining in the most opulent hotels and restaurants, driving Rolls Royces and dressed from top to toe in designer 'chic'.

You're right Tsarfan, not a lot has changed.

tsaria

[Tsarfan]

Except, through all the history of Russia, they had (or needed) a strong ruler to keep the country united. Russia is a hodge-podge of different races, peoples, cultures and religions. To keep the country a viable entity, they had to rule it with an iron fist...

I see your point.  But what I find unique about Russia is that all  segments of the country -- including the ethnically and religiously dominant ones -- were subjugated to an authoritarian yoke.  For much of its history, the U.S. was a combination of a democracy and a tyranny.  At first, only people of white European stock (and only males, at that) were granted full civil rights and liberties, while blacks were held in slavery and Indians were rounded up onto reservations or annihilated.  And, using different groups as examples, the same could be said for the evolution of full English democracy from an initially narrow base.  But from that small kernel of rights extended only to the core, we slowly learned to bring others into the tent without destroying the body politic.  The conquest of a landmass that contains an array of diverse populations does not necessarily entail an autocracy to the extent and for the length of time that Russia imposed one.

In the eighteenth century, Catherine II was writing Voltaire of her dreams to grant Russians more freedom, if only they were ready for it.  Alexander I commissioned a constitutional study to give form to his desire to grant Russians more freedom, if only there were ready for it.  Nicholas I, in a famous interview with Pushkin, expressed his sincere desire to grant Russians more freedom, if only they were ready for it.  Alexander II was toying with the notion of a constitution to grant Russians more freedom, once they were ready for it.  At the open of the twentieth century, Nicholas II sat next to the Duchess of Marlborough at a dinner and assured her he would love to grant Russians more freedom, if only they were ready for it.  Awash for centures in all their myriad desires, the only ones the tsars ever really worked consistently to fulfill were the desires for more territory and more dynastic wealth.

As the aftermath of the Decembrist revolt made clear, not even the noble ranks of White Russians -- a group uniformly supportive of assembling a multi-ethnic empire -- were to be allowed the least hope of evolution toward a governmental system that conferred a political voice at least on them.

[mr_harrison75]

I understand what you mean.

But I don't think US and UK are a perfect example though, because the contexts were not the same. In England, they already had the Magna Carta (1215) and a bit later, the Parliament, to protect the nobles and bourgeoisie (first of all) from the King's exactions (God knows that King John Lackland was famous for that!), and many years later, the Habeas Corpus. They became more liberal, but it took hundreds of years for them to do so!

The US inherited this from the time they were an English colony. They managed to integrate their minorities just fine, but it took them some time, and they already had a democratic ideal and experience in mind!

But Russia is not exactly the same! Russia was still living in Medieval times until Peter the Great (who tried to yank them out of the past, and only partially managed to do so), and always in a state of war or unrest for most of their history. They freed themselves from the Tatars's yoke in the 1550's only! And even during Alexander II's reign, the serfs were not sure that they wanted to be freed, because it was changing all they had known for generations! Of course, it was the right thing to do, but still...they probably didn't know what to do with their freedom, and most stayed were they were, continuing life as it was.

Even during Nicholas II's reign, it still caused problems! Even as late as the end of the 19th century, most of the Russian population still lived in Middle-Age, and couldn't care less about Constitution, and the right to vote! All they wanted was food, prosperity, and having good lives.

Where people wanted some changes was in the cities, and we could even say in St-Petersburg! Because they were generally more educated people (at least, an elite of citizens). It's not for nothing that the conservatives called the terrorists "students", because they came from the Universities, and liberal professions, etc.

Now, I'm not saying that democracy cannot work in Russia, but it would demand an inmmense change in the manner the Russians are thinking, and doing, about matters of governing their country. I think that perhaps it was too early to give them that latitude of freedom. But neither the last Tsars than the people understood that at the time...

See what happened in 1917; they had their Constitution, they had vote, a full-fledge Duma, etc...but what happened? They quickly fell under another autocratic system, one even more hard and repressive than tsarism; communism. If they would've been all ready, they would've fought for Kerensky and the Assemblée Constituante, to keep their democracy!

It's exactly what happened with the French Revolution! Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, but it went down in a spiral of horrors, to finally falling into the hands of Napoléon, who profited from it to establish his personal regime, just like Lenin did, and after him Stalin, and another, and another, and another...

Russia was always late in its development, compared to the other European powers, and had to modernize at its rythm, not the one the other nations or some elite in Russia thought they should! It would have become a democracy eventually, but at its own pacing, a bit like England, I think...

And just another thought; what if that's what a majority of Russians want? What if they don't want to be a full-fledged democracy (Their real democratic regimes didn't do very well for Russia; think of Kerensky's and Yeltsin's)? Now, don't get me wrong, we have some great advantages with democracy, but is that really better, or as the French say le salut de l'homme moderne?

I find the situation in Russia difficult, they are struggling to have a better life, and I just hope that it will get better for them in the near future...regardless of the form of government they have...

Whew! Now I'm done! 

[Tsarfan]

I agree that 1917 can stand for the proposition that Russia was not ready for democracy.  However, one must remember that at that point they were trying to create a democracy in the middle of a war crisis, transport breakdown, and urban famine that paralyzed the tsarist regime before the first gun was raised in revolt.  I think the more telling experience was in 1905/06 when Russians demanded a more moderate experiment with constitutional monarchy.  Instead of embracing the experiment in good faith, Nicholas began a series of maneuvers to recover his full autocratic power . . . something at which he was largely successful by around 1911/12.  Yet it was in this time period that Nicholas had two of his ablest ministers available to assist with keeping the experiment with liberalization within bounds.  But he dumped Witte, and Stolypin was already on the ropes with Nicholas (or rather Alexandra) by the time he was shot.  In fact, neither Nicholas nor Alexandra even bothered to call on him in the few days between the shooting and his death.  (Stolypin's widow refused to receive the tsar's condolences upon his death, having been rightly incensed by that profound slight.)  And Alexandra floored Stolypin's successor with her callous remark that Stolypin -- who, staunch monarchist that he was, had recognized the need and the possibility of seeking a workable accord with reformist forces -- had died by the hand of God.

Russian history was not devoid of some of the chances other nations had to begin the evolution toward more inclusive government, and Russians had not failed to make attempts to force broader distribution of authority.  The boyars tried under Ivan IV.  Michael Romanov was elected in 1613 with an eye toward putting in a weak tsar who would give the boyars more influence in government.  Nicholas I confronted a rebellion by the social elite who wanted a more western-leaning model of government.  There was widespread clamoring for wider representation in 1905.  What was different about Russian history was not the lack of attempts, but the brutality with which the tsars resisted any incursions into their authority.  From Ivan IV's random executions of his nobility, to Peter the Great's total subordination of the Church to tsarist authority, to Nicholas I's establishment of the 19th century's premiere police state, to Nicholas II's unrelenting maneuvering to destroy the experiment his people forced on him in 1905/06, tsarism went farther than any other western government prior to the totalitarian states of the 20th century to maintain unbridled control over every single element of Russian society and every single aspect of Russian life.

And, after centuries of this, Russians in the 21st century can admire a man, not in spite of his having been a KGB agent in a brutal system, but because  of it.

[mr_harrison75]

I thank you for the kindness of your answer. 

I haven't thought of 1905, but it illustrates probably as well how Russia was not ready for this experiment yet. What I find ironic, is that even if he tried to regain complete control over the country, Nicholas II could never become again the autocrat he was before. Even against his will, he had to work with an elected Duma. It's too bad that Stolypin was killed; the country was well on it's way to be modernized...even the Communists despaired to seize power at the time...

As for the willingness of the Russians to accept strong leaders, etc. , I've found something interesting on RIA Novosti today. Here's an excerpt (that I translated from French), written by Lev Goudkov, director of the Levada Centre for the Study of Public Opinion (based in Russia):

People are tolerating the changes, they adapted and got used to arbitrary power, they have learn not to keep any illusions on their government. This gives you an idea of the political and social situation...

Their future is unknown, because people cannot really organize their lives by themselves. So, as in the past, they put their hope in the government, who will be, according to them, a little bit more moderate, who will plunder and lie to them less, and who will be more predictable. Because of that, they feel more calm and steady.

The entire (Russian) society got used to a repressive form of government, who exploited the people. They have learn to dodge it, to deceive it, to adapt to it. They do not trust it, but give it their consent and loyalty.

Old habits are tough to change!

[Tsarfan]

I think the passage you translated is very telling, especially the observations that "people cannot really organize their lives by themselves" and that "they put their hope in the government".  That, combined with the fatalism that so marks Russian literature and the Russian character, seems to be at the core why Russians seemed doomed to wander from one autocratic system into another.

What bothers me is that too many modern observers trace the origins of this mindset no further back than the soviet era.  In my view, it has its origins in tsarism.

We certainly agree that 1917 was no time for Russia to launch an experiment with full-blown democracy.  But we probably disagree on 1905.  I think that, had Nicholas attempted in good faith to work more constructively with a constitutional sharing of authority, Russia might have taken its first halting steps off the path that has herded them as sheep into the 21st century.

Most tsars since the late eighteenth century claimed to rue Russia's lack of readiness for more freedom.  The question is that, as autocrats who claimed sole right to make Russia's choices, what did any of them do to start the actual process of preparing Russians for more freedom?  That answer, in a word, is NOTHING.

Catherine II expanded serfdom and established the Pale of Settlement.  Alexander I, trying to palliate his guilt at his father's assassination with a reactionary mysticism, abandoned his early goals of liberalizing Russia and became the man who sent Pushkin into exile.  Nicholas I, fearing the exposure of Russia's elite to liberal western thinking, curtailed study abroad and set the contemporary standard for a police state.  Alexander II dithered about promulgating a constitution until it was too late, fearing not the lack of Russian preparedness for freedom, but the nobility's resistance to land reforms.  Alexander III passed the May Laws and implemented a Russification program intended to curtail Russia's growing affinity to non-Russian (i. e., liberal) attitudes.  Nicholas II reversed the one moderately liberal course his father set -- with labor laws -- and tightened the noose in which Russian capitalists held their workforces.  The self-improvement societies that the Church and social reform groups set up in urban centers around the turn of the 20th century were promptly infiltrated by the secret police.

No, perhaps Russians were not ready for freedom.  Because the tsars did everything in their power to make sure they were not.

[Silja]

Now, I'm not saying that democracy cannot work in Russia, but it would demand an inmmense change in the manner the Russians are thinking, and doing, about matters of governing their country. I think that perhaps it was too early to give them that latitude of freedom. But neither the last Tsars than the people understood that at the time...


And just another thought; what if that's what a majority of Russians want? What if they don't want to be a full-fledged democracy

Yes, indeed. Most Russians simply don't care about participation and a democratic control of their Government. They want a strong and powerful state with a strong and powerful leader.

To work a democracy needs democrats, and Russia has simply always been lacking in that department. Some time ago I heard of a Russian poll which revealed that only about 5% of the population wanted to elect their head of state.

[Tsarfan]

They want a strong and powerful state with a strong and powerful leader.

So do most Americans.  But somehow Russians have come to believe that they cannot have this without an autocratic form of government and a forgoing of personal liberties.

I am not disagreeing with either you or Mr. Harrison on this point.  Clearly most Russians seem indifferent to the murder of journalists, the collapse of a free press, the suspension of regional elections, and the rise of yet another autocrat.  And, in that sense, it really doesn't matter if they are denied freedoms they don't want, anyway.  The question is why  are they so indifferent to such an outcome.  Why  do they think that everything good or bad that befalls them is a function not of their own endeavors or choices but of which dicatator seizes power?

Putin's recent laying claim to the North Pole is a fascinating insight to his understanding of Russia's predicament of being a one-product economy -- oil.  Faced with a populace that expects him to fix everything for them, he is resorting to the only expedients available to see him through such a task:  rely on easy oil revenues to the exclusion of fixing the fundamental crises in the economy; tell Russians that a sacrifice of political freedom is the price for national resurgence; create boogeymen of the U.S. and other western powers to blame for the mess; try to identify personally with Russia's storied imperial past; and silence or kill any journalists and political opponents who point out the implications of these stratagems.

I think it's time to quit feeling sorry for the Russians who lived as serfs, who had their artistic outpourings dogged by tsarist and soviet censors, who died in gulags, and who are trapped in the decaying secret cities of Stalin's Russia.  Given the risk of reliving these experiences or of finally taking responsibility for their own fates, they clearly prefer the former.  So be it.

[mr_harrison75]

That's why I'm sad for the Russians, it's almost as if they do not realize what's happening to their country...or don't care.

Perhaps they think that everytime they tried to take their future into their hands, it failed miserably, so why trying again?

A bit like the Romans, in fact; as long as they had panem et circenses, who cares what the Emperor was doing? On the other side, they are so busy to earn a living that they do not have time to think about politics, freedom, changes, reforms, etc.