In a curious document he entitled Ma Confession, Tsar Nicholas spelled out his views on the situation created by the revolutions of 1830. Russia was, according to him, in the happy position of being unaffected by their spirit, and had held to the moral high ground. Prussia and Austria had turned away from it over the past decade, and this had weakened them. They had caved in one after the other and recognised the ‘illegitimate’ monarchy of Louis-Philippe. He, Nicholas, had fulfilled what he saw as his duty by standing up for the principle of legitimacy. Their recognition of Louis-Philippe had been a ‘fatal’ error, as it meant the acceptance of the principle of revolution and therefore of the sovereignty of the people, and had led to a string of disastrous consequences elsewhere in Europe.
While he was eventually persuaded by Metternich to recognise the King of the French, Nicholas would never use the received address of ‘Monsieur mon frère’ in correspondence, only that of ‘Sire’. When Marshal Mortier arrived in St Petersburg (a questionable choice for an ambassador to Russia, since it was he who had blown up the Kremlin in 1812), Nicholas conversed at length with him about Napoleon, but refused to mention Louis-Philippe. Three years later, when Marshal Marmont met Nicholas at Töplitz, the tsar could still not bring himself to pronounce his name. When he visited London in 1844 he dreaded the possibility of running into the King of the French, who had also been invited by Queen Victoria. Similarly, he had recognised the independence of Belgium, but only because the King of Holland had done so, and he would not acknowledge Leopold as king. (It did not help that in creating an army for his new kingdom, Leopold had taken advantage of the large pool of Polish émigrés who had borne arms against Russia to fill its most senior ranks.)1
Unlike Austria and Prussia, Russia would remain true to itself and its duty. ‘Let us conserve, I say, the sacred fire for the solemn moment, which no human power can avoid or delay, the moment when the contest between justice and the infernal principle must break out,’ Nicholas wrote. ‘That moment is near, and let us in preparation for it be the standard around which, of necessity and for their own salvation, those who tremble now will rally for a second time … at the moment of danger we will be seen to be always ready to fly to the aid of those of our allies who will return to their old principles … That is my confession, it is solemn and decisive; it places us in a new, isolated, but I dare to say honourable position, and one worthy of ourselves.’2
A crucial element in the tsar’s strategy was to isolate his people from pernicious outside influence, particularly that of France. For decades the cultivated aristocracy had been entirely French in culture and outlook, which contrasted with the more German influences in the imperial family and much of the court, made up as it was in large part of German Baltic nobles. Nicholas was suspicious of all things French, particularly after the July revolution of 1830, and regarded Paris as a sink of moral as well as political depravity. His immediate reaction to the July Days had been to recall all Russians from France. Princess Lieven, by then estranged from her husband and enjoying a remarkable position in English and French society, failed to comply, as a result of which she was cast adrift by Nicholas, and her brother Benckendorff had to sever relations with her. Admiral Chichagov, a venerable commander with a distinguished war record (which had ended somewhat ingloriously when he failed to prevent Napoleon crossing the Berezina in 1812) had married a Surrey vicar’s daughter, and spent his time between their home in Brighton and Paris, where he had many friends. He wrote to Nicholas pleading to be exempted from the new ruling; in response he was stripped of his estates in Russia, his honours, his rank and even his nationality.3
An ukaz of 1831 decreed that all Russian youths between the ages of ten and eighteen must be educated in Russia. After that they could study abroad, but only after passing a strict vetting process, and they might not go to France. As a result, Russian students who had traditionally attended French universities were now encouraged to study at German universities – with the unintended consequence that French influences were superseded by those of Hegel and Marx, which would in the long run prove far more dangerous for the Russian monarchy. At the same time, Russians in Germany had no trouble in acquiring French books and periodicals, which they would then either smuggle back or read and relate to their friends on their return home.4
In 1834 restrictions were introduced limiting the time Russian subjects could spend abroad to five years for nobles and three for all others. Non-observance or settling in other countries caused repercussions such as confiscation of property and possible repression of family members. In 1840 a tax was levied on passports to travel abroad, and a special committee which included the chancellor Nesselrode, Benckendorff and the interior minister Perovsky reviewed every application. Further impediments and restrictions followed. ‘A couple of weeks ago a new decree was published against travel,’ Countess Nesselrode wrote to her son in April 1844. ‘It would be difficult to convey to you how it has enraged public opinion … It inspires the most violent utterances from the most passive who see in it a new attack on the nobility.’ The decree in question forbade foreign travel to anyone under the age of twenty-five, and the process of applying for a passport was complicated further, requiring a visit in person to offices in St Petersburg, and lengthened inordinately.5
‘The Emperor’s rage against Paris is stronger than ever, and I, who inhabit that evil city, am regarded as a rebel, and will probably be taken for a spy before long,’ Princess Lieven wrote to her friend Lady Cowper (the future Lady Palmerston) in October 1838. Two years later she reported that Paris was ‘full of Russian ladies, all very distinguished’, and two years after that she commented that ‘this forbidden spot’ had become ‘a place of pilgrimage, though not a very holy one’ for Russians; ‘the whole of St Petersburg’ had turned up there, and Paris was ‘swarming with Russians’. This anomaly is explained by the fact that Russia’s secret police organ, the Third Section, felt a pressing need to know what the Polish émigrés gathered in Paris were doing and thinking. It therefore began sending out spies in the shape of apparently innocent pleasure-seeking Russian aristocrats. Since these were not to be trusted themselves, and must therefore be watched, others were recruited to keep an eye on them. The system was extended to other countries where Russians might be travelling or Poles congregating. ‘With its army of amphibian agents, political amazons, with their clever masculine minds and their feminine language, full of shrewdness, the Russian court gathers news, receives reports,’ in the words of the marquis de Custine. The ladies were not, however, allowed to attend the court of the ‘illegitimate’ Louis-Philippe.6
Both Alexander and Nicholas had always shown a tendency not so much to control the society they ruled over through repression, as to mould it morally to the desired form. The fusion in 1817 of the ministries of education and religious affairs had initiated a process of aligning the educational system with the appropriate world view. This had not achieved the desired result, and reports reaching Nicholas bristled with complaints that schools and universities were ‘gangrened’ with immorality and incorrect political attitudes. Something more comprehensive was called for, and Nicholas turned to Sergei Semionovich Uvarov to come up with an educational programme that would, if not cure Russian society, at least ensure that future generations were bien-pensant.
Born in 1786 into a family of well-connected gentry, Uvarov started out as a young man of literary tastes and liberal views, writing lyrical poetry in French and German. He met and corresponded with such literary luminaries as Goethe and Madame de Staël, and played a lively part in the rich literary life of St Petersburg; he was one of the founders in 1815 of the literary society Arzamas. His career included a posting at the Russian embassy in Vienna in 1806, and in 1810, at the age of twenty-four, he had been appointed superintendent of the St Petersburg educational district. He was instrumental in the founding of the city’s university, but was forced to resign in 1821 under pressure from Galitzine and Magnitsky. In 1826 Nicholas brought him back into education. In 1832 he was appointed deputy minister of education, and the following year minister, a post he was to hold until 1849.
Nicholas wished to see the educational system reformed in such a way that it would deliver solid citizens and servants of the state. Uvarov later confessed that he almost gave way to despair when confronted with this task, but understood that it was crucial to ‘the very fate of the fatherland’ in view of ‘the social storm raging across Europe’. He saw his task as being ‘to rebuild our fatherland on firm foundations, on which to establish the prosperity, strength and life of the nation’, to identify the essential ‘distinctive character of Russia’, and ‘to gather together into a single complete celebration the remains of her nationality in which to anchor our salvation’.7
Russian society had, he believed, fallen behind others in the human progression towards what he called ‘maturity’, and could not be left to itself but had to be ‘brought up’ as might a child. In establishing the principles on which that upbringing was to be based, his point of departure was the Orthodox faith, which was common to the overwhelming majority of the nation. The second defining element in Russia was, in his view, the supreme and boundless authority of the tsar. ‘Autocracy constitutes the very condition for the political existence of Russia,’ he argued. ‘The Russian colossus rests on it as on the cornerstone of its greatness.’ For a people at the stage of maturity of the Russians, the fatherly authority and protection of the tsar were the best guides towards a virtuous life. The third element he called ‘narodnost’, meaning something like faith in the value of the distinctly national character.8
This trinity of Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality was proclaimed in 1833 as the basis for not just the educational system but the whole social and cultural environment. It was supposed to create a new identity which would define both state and nation, and set Russia apart distinctively from other nations – and make it immune to the ‘gangrene’ devouring them. Elements of it, particularly the idea of the essential genius and virtues of Russianness, appealed to the Russian Romantics and inspired some interesting thought and literature, including works by Pushkin and particularly Tiutchev. Gogol lent his support with an astonishing justification of serfdom as being based on the will of God. But it quickly turned into a siege mentality resistant to ‘dangerous’ and ‘destructive’ influences flowing from the west, and indeed to any new development in these decades of discovery and invention.9
In both academic works and popular literature, Russian history was written in such a way as to present a process which derived from the particular genius of the Slavs and their unique communal patterns, and should not be viewed or judged by the same criteria as the histories of other nations. Ironically, this Romantic particularism owed a great deal to German thought.
It was not Uvarov’s intention to repress. He wanted to encourage young men to study, but only what he felt would be good for them: the sum of human knowledge could not be safely passed on to them whole. He took pride in the fact that the number of titles published in Russian rose from seven hundred a year to nine hundred over the decade and a half of his ministry. He was, however, against the printing of cheap books, on the grounds that they might ‘set the lower classes in motion’.10
The universities flourished under Uvarov; he reduced the social impediments to admission, and exercised minimal control. The young Aleksandr Herzen remembers his fellow students saying ‘anything that came into their heads’ without fear of being reported, prohibited poems circulating in manuscript and even officially banned books being readily available. After the University of Vilna was closed down as a consequence of the role it had played in fostering Polish patriotism, the new University of St Vladimir was intended to bring Poles, Belorussians, Lithuanians and Russians (Ukrainians did not officially exist) together in a spirit of Slavic brotherhood. While Kiev had been chosen because it was supposedly the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy and statehood, Benckendorff pointed out to Nicholas that it also happened to be the headquarters of the First Army, which could guarantee order.11
Things did not work out as Uvarov had hoped. Inspectors were introduced into the universities to keep an eye on what teachers and students were doing and an ear open to what they were saying. Schools too were watched for any departure from conformity. Nicholas himself would make surprise visits, looking for signs of subversion and even seeing it in the physiognomy of certain students, making disapproving comments on their looks. In 1834 inspectors were briefed to monitor the behaviour of students outside the classroom.
Private tutors were not exempt. They had to take exams and observe the same rules of behaviour and the same standards as civil servants. Even those employed by the most aristocratic households were subject to invigilation and assessment. They had to have certificates which to all intents and purposes reduced them to the status of state officials.12
By the mid-1840s Uvarov had grown disillusioned, and whatever enthusiasm his vision had inspired had evaporated, leaving only an increasingly soulless system grinding on under its own momentum. When a group of Ukrainian students founded the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius (who had introduced Christianity to Russia), they were severely punished for what the head of the Third Section described as this act of ‘delirium’. In 1838 four students of the new university were tried by a military court and sentenced to garrison duty at Orenburg, principally for the possession of banned books by the Polish poet Mickiewicz.
Ironically, foreign books were relatively easy to get hold of. The number imported rose from around 200,000 in 1832 to almost a million in 1847, and only 150 titles were actually banned. When, however, a group of Moscow booksellers requested a list of the banned books they were told this was impossible, as it ‘might serve to direct special attention to the forbidden books’. This kind of reasoning did not serve the authorities well: the search of one St Petersburg bookshop turned up 2,581 forbidden books.13
It was not only foreign books that needed to be controlled: the Third Section applied strict censorship to all Russian publications. What made the censor’s job difficult was that it was a censorship of spirit and tone as much as one of substance. He might pass an article as being harmless, only for it to provoke violent reaction from a dignitary or official who had read something quite different into it. Those who missed an implication that was later picked up by a senior official or the tsar himself were regularly sent to spend a few days or weeks in the guardhouse, along with the offending authors and editors. This was not a sentence, and did not qualify as incarceration; it was a paternal smack across the wrist and an encouragement to try harder. Although Benckendorff was never sent to the guardhouse, he too was occasionally reprimanded, as happened when he missed the political subtext of Lermontov’s poem ‘Death of the Poet’, which represented Pushkin’s death in a duel as murder. Others called the attention of the tsar to it, branding it ‘a call to revolution’, and Benckendorff had a great deal of explaining to do.14
Pushkin had always proved a headache to Benckendorff, who was obliged to read everything he wrote, hold lengthy talks with him and carry on an arcane correspondence which sometimes revolved around the possible meanings of a single word. There had therefore been considerable relief at the Third Section when Nicholas decided to personally take over the role of Pushkin’s censor. To begin with, Pushkin welcomed the tsar’s interest. His mood changed when Nicholas, having read the manuscript of his play Boris Godunov, addressed him as a great author might a fledgling, suggesting he rewrite it as a novel in the style of Walter Scott. It soon emerged that Nicholas was interested not only in Pushkin’s work, but also in his attitude, as expressed in his behaviour and even his clothes. He was admonished regularly on the most personal matters, including the state of his marriage, was supposed to report regularly everything he did, and was generally treated as a perverse child.15
By the mid-1840s there were, according to one writer, more censors in Russia than books being printed. Another described the apparatus of censorship aimed at the press as ‘a cannon aimed at a flea’. There was something in this: in 1840 the most popular periodical had a circulation of no more than 3,000, while the readership of the entire periodical press did not exceed 20,000. Yet editors were repeatedly reprimanded or sent to the guardhouse, often on pretexts which were recondite, to put it mildly.16
Faddei Venediktovich Bulgarin, co-founder and editor of the Northern Bee, himself a regular informer for the Third Section, was arrested for printing a poem entitled ‘The Forced Marriage’, about a loveless union in which the adulterous wife justifies herself by the fact of having been forced into it, in which Nicholas saw a reference to the relationship between Russia and Poland. The publication of Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842) encountered the objection that the soul is immortal, and the title therefore constituted blasphemy. In one poem the censor crossed out a passage about a Roman emperor being killed, as the very notion was subversive. A love poem was returned with a litany of objections, beginning with the fact that a woman could not be described as divine, since only God was; that her looks could not be heavenly, because only that which emanates from God is; that ‘one tender look’ could not be ‘worth more than the attention of the entire universe’, because the universe contained the tsar and other ‘lawful authorities’ which would be insulted by the notion; and that the desire to retire from the world to be alone with the undivine lady suggested a wish to shirk duty to the state.17
In 1836, Piotr Yakovlevich Chaadayev published a piece in the form of a letter, which constituted a comprehensive attack on everything the Russian state stood for. He maintained that Russia had contributed nothing to civilisation except autocracy and serfdom, and chastised what he called ‘the imbecilic contemplation of [Russia’s] imaginary perfections’. Since there was no conceivable way to treat this matter in a rational way without opening to discussion the matters he raised, he was branded a lunatic, the censor who let the piece through was dismissed, the periodical in which it was published was closed down, and its editor was sent to Siberia.18
Censorship was by no means restricted to the printed, or even the written, word; it also encompassed attitude, and therefore behaviour. Nicholas banned smoking in the streets of St Petersburg, out of a conviction that it disrupted order. He also forbade the wearing of grey hats, which, for reasons unknown, reminded him of Jews, whom he loathed and suspected of being a subversive force. White hats were also outlawed, as he associated them with Poles. He had an almost pathological dislike and fear of the Poles, whom he described as ‘a species of animal between man and beast’. He lived in fear of being assassinated by one, and whenever he travelled he took extreme precautions. In his Polish provinces, false itineraries were posted in order to confuse would-be assassins. Outside Russia he would travel incognito, and sometimes in disguise: when he went to London in 1844 his itinerary was such a closely guarded secret that the Russian ambassador there had no idea when he was coming, where he would cross the Channel and what route he would take.19
In 1834 Herzen, then a student at Moscow University, was arrested for attending a party at which, according to an informer, a scurrilous song was sung. He was able to prove that not only had he not attended the gathering, he had not even been invited. He was nevertheless subjected to a sermon by an avuncular general of gendarmes by the name of Lesovsky. ‘Lesovsky, himself a Pole, was not a bad man, and was no fool: having wasted his property over cards and a French actress, he philosophically preferred the place of general of gendarmes in Moscow to a place in the debtors’ prison of the same city,’ Herzen wrote. Lesovsky counselled him to lie low and keep his mouth shut for a few months. The contrarian youth did not take his advice: he and his fellow students went about ostentatiously wearing berets à la Karl Sand, and once more fell foul of the Third Section.
Among Herzen’s papers, which were gone through attentively, the gendarmes found a text written by him arguing against constitutional government, and he was asked for an explanation. He replied that the tsar himself was against constitutional government. The interrogating official agreed that this was so, but explained that one could attack constitutional government for the right reasons and the wrong reasons, and he suspected Herzen of the latter. The interview degenerated into an argument about semantics which left both of them exhausted and neither of them any the wiser. The Third Section came to the conclusion that the young man was ‘not dangerous, but could be dangerous’, and he was sentenced to ten months in prison, to be followed by five years’ exile in Siberia. He was pardoned in 1840, but on his return committed the grave fault of not calling on the head of the Third Section to thank him. He was therefore hauled before him, and reprimanded for his lack of manners.20
There was an accepted etiquette. On the one hand, people were usually arrested at night, often in ways calculated to instil fear and to disorient, and might be driven round and round in a windowless black police kibitka, to give them the impression that they were being taken far away from home. On the other, the officials of the Third Section and the gendarmes were impeccably polite – ‘the very flower of courtesy’, according to Herzen; ‘the impersonation of grace and urbanity’, in the words of a French traveller – and made such show of hating what they had to do that it was not unknown for them to shed tears while interrogating someone. Benckendorff himself was, in Pushkin’s words, a kindly man ‘with a good sensitive heart’, and was solicitous even with authors who caused him trouble – he obtained financial assistance for Gogol, and helped to lift the ban on Dead Souls. People arriving in or leaving St Petersburg, even generals off to take up a posting, were expected to pay him a courtesy visit.21
One official who stands out by his urbanity is Leontii Vassilievich Dubelt. Dubelt was an intelligent man with an unusual pedigree. While travelling through Spain in the early 1790s his father Vassily Ivanovich had eloped with a young lady from the princely house of Medina Coeli, whom he married in Italy before bringing her back to Russia. Leontii Vassilievich, born in 1793, was brought up by his cultivated mother, and at the age of fourteen he joined the Pskov infantry regiment as an ensign. He was wounded in the leg at Borodino, but recovered and went on to serve throughout the campaigns of 1813 and 1814. He was then in sympathy with the spirit of the times, and a member of two Masonic lodges. By 1818, when he married, he was colonel of an infantry regiment, and he did not retire from the army until 1829, after a quarrel with his divisional commander. He thereupon decided to become a gendarme, to the dismay of his wife, who, like most of Russian society, regarded the police with the utmost distaste. Dubelt loved his wife and valued her judgement, but defended his decision vigorously. In joining the gendarmes, he argued, he would ‘become the support of the poor, the defender of the unfortunate’, and help ‘obtain justice for the oppressed’. And he warned Benckendorff that he would not carry out orders he considered ignoble.22
He was given a staff post in Tver, but a few days after he left to take up his posting, one of Benckendorff’s staff officers died, and Dubelt was recalled to replace him. Benckendorff was delighted to find a kindred spirit who believed in the mission of the gendarmes, and kept him by his side, promoting him to the rank of general and appointing him chief of staff, effectively commander, of the corps. In 1838 he became Benckendorff’s deputy, and therefore effective head of the Third Section as well as of the gendarmes. With Benckendorff growing increasingly absent-minded (he was known to fumble for a visiting card to remind himself of his own name), it was Dubelt who ran the whole operation. He would carry on after his chief’s death in 1844; Benckendorff’s successor, Count Aleksei Fyodorovich Orlov, was more than happy to delegate all the work to him.23
Dubelt had a talent for appearing less intelligent than he was, and his kindly approach smoothed the path of many an interrogation. It was not uncommon for him to call personally on a man who had just been arrested, check whether he had all the comforts he needed, enquire as to whether he smoked a pipe or cigars, and provide him with his favourite brand. But his features reminded one of his victims of a wolf, and his manner of the ‘cunning of predatory animals’. While he clung to his early ideals for a few years and refused to employ underhand methods, he gradually grew into the role of a circus-master operating a vast network of spies and manipulating the lives of thousands.24
The Third Section had turned into a huge operation. It received at least 10,000 – sometimes up to 15,000 – items every day, including denunciations, petitions to the tsar and appeals against court rulings, for tax exemptions, for scholarships, for advice on legal matters and for a range of other favours. It was also sent plans and projects of a scientific or administrative nature, suggested improvements and new inventions. But the bulk concerned more private matters, and the Third Section’s archive bulged with the most intimate details of people’s lives: accounts of family quarrels, local feuds, marital problems, changes of mistress, and financial difficulties.25
A landowner from the province of Penza, I.V. Selivanov, was surprised to be arrested (in the most courteous manner) by a gendarme and brought to St Petersburg, where he was shown into Dubelt’s office. Lying on the desk was a half-finished letter he had thrown into his waste-paper basket in the country a few months before, describing the poor harvest and remarking that it was the moral responsibility of landowners such as himself to help see their serfs through the hard times. In the margin he could see the word ‘liberalism’ scrawled in Dubelt’s hand. He was asked to respond to a number of questions regarding the institution of serfdom, and whenever he gave an answer that seemed to displease his interrogator, Dubelt would suggest the correct one, which he would duly write down. Having thus shown himself to be fundamentally sound, he was sentenced to only six months’ exile in Siberia.26
Foreign travellers became intensely aware of the blanket of invigilation smothering them from the moment they crossed the frontier. The future president of the United States, James Buchanan, then a diplomatic envoy, was astounded by what he encountered on his arrival in 1833. ‘In Russia the police are long past any feelings of shame,’ he wrote. ‘We are continually surrounded by spies, both of high and low degree in life. You can scarcely hire a servant who is not an agent of the secret police.’ They were so open about intercepting his mail that they hardly bothered to reseal his letters, or did so with a different-coloured wax. ‘A Yankee, arriving on business in 1843, was told by the gendarmes that he had been to Russia once before, in 1820, on a trip of pleasure, and the details of that visit of twenty-three years earlier were recited to the traveller’s great surprise. One felt in Russia as in a glass cage.’27
The various police forces, and particularly the Third Section, employed hordes of spies, many of whom played the tired game of leading conversation towards criticism of the government in order to obtain a response that could become the subject of a report. Barbers, laundresses and purveyors of any kind of service were expected to note anything and everything they considered suspicious. Servants were suborned to provide intelligence on what was going on in a household, and family members encouraged to spy on spouses, parents and children.
‘The secret police of Russia has its ramifications both among the upper and the lower classes of society,’ wrote one contemporary. ‘Nay, many ladies notoriously act as spies, and are yet received in society and have company at home; even men who are stigmatised with the same reputation, are not the worse treated on that account, and bear their disgrace with a kind of haughty dignity. There is not a single regiment of the guard which has not several spies; in the theatres, and especially in the French theatre, there are often a larger number of spies than of mere spectators. In short, there are so many spies that people imagine they see them everywhere, an apprehension which admirably serves the turn of the Government.’28
This was true in one sense: once people were aware that there were eyes and ears everywhere, they assumed the authorities knew more than they did, and were inclined to avoid getting involved in anything questionable. But it also encouraged them to develop secretive habits. These in turn aroused the suspicion of the police and their informants, leading them to pursue futile avenues of investigation. This kind of self-censorship did not serve the police well, as people learned not only not to comment on various things, but to affect not to see them at all, and as a result the relationship between the intelligence received and reality lay in the realms of the surreal.
In this situation there was less and less for the security apparatus to do. As a result, the agents looked closer and closer for anything that might conceivably be worthy of note, and indulged in arcane arguments over what some word or phrase might be construed to mean. The police lurked and snooped, straining eyes and ears for a word, a hint, a laugh, a snort, a look, anything that might betray an incorrect attitude; a hat, a cloak, a necktie, a kerchief, a stick, or any other piece of apparel that could be seen as a manifestation of nonconformity. This turned the relationship between the citizen and the state into a game of cat and mouse which was both self-perpetuating and futile, and, with time, people stopped noticing the absurdities.
After his release, Herzen was given an administrative job in the provinces. He spent most of his time stamping passports, reviewing complaints and passing on the reports of various other officials. In this capacity he found himself countersigning and endorsing the local police report on himself. The prominent Decembrist A.N. Muravev was appointed mayor of Irkutsk after he finished serving his sentence there, but although he was a state official, his mail continued to be opened and scrutinised. When he complained, the head of the postal administration denied the accusation vehemently, but added: ‘The opened seals are replaced so skilfully that it would in any case be impossible for you to prove.’ A Pole exiled to hard labour in Siberia found it easy to avoid the work by doing favours for the guards and serving as tutor to the children of various officials. He progressed to petty trading, and lived quite well. When, after his release in the 1850s, he arrived in Berlin, he compared conditions there unfavourably with his life in Siberia.29
In St Petersburg, Countess Fiquelmont, wife of the Austrian ambassador, had a couple of copies of Silvio Pellico’s violently anti-Austrian and inherently subversive Le mie Prigioni, which she was lending out to members of the Russian court as if it were the latest best-selling romantic novel. The tsar got to hear of it, and asked her to lend him one of them. He read it, and commented that it was well-written. But it does not appear to have made him reflect on the absurdity of the system it describes. The struggle against the many-headed hydra of revolution had become part of the mindset of the tsar, and his underlings.
Colonel Lomachevsky, head of gendarmes in Vilna province, returned to his post after a short absence in 1840 to find a commission nominated by the governor of the province torturing a student. When he pointed out that the evidence they were wringing from him was ridiculous as well as contradictory, they accused him of ‘spoiling’ their work. ‘In order to convince yourself of the existence of a plot,’ the chief interrogator said to him, ‘you have only to observe the activities of Thiers and the Egyptian Pasha, to read through the journal of The Third of May [a Polish émigré periodical] issued in Paris, and the brochure “Young Poland”, and then it will be clear to you that a plot has enmeshed not only Russia, but all Europe as well, and even Egypt …’30
This system may have inspired some remarkable literature, most notably the short stories and plays of Nikolai Gogol, whose masterpiece Dead Souls could never have been written in a saner one, but it did nothing to combat subversion, because there was none, and it did not create useful, loyal citizens. It succeeded only in stupefying people, stultifying society, arresting the development, economic and industrial as well as social and intellectual, of Russia, and inspiring a revolutionary tradition that was to bring it down decades later.
‘As an honest man, if I had to choose under which kind of government to live, I would choose for myself and my family a republic,’ Nicholas confided one day; ‘to my mind this form of government provides the best guarantees of safety. But it does not suit every country; it is acceptable to some and dangerous to others.’ At the beginning of his reign, he had convoked a committee to look through all Alexander’s projects for reform, to identify those that might be implemented. Under the chairmanship of Viktor Kochubey, who had been one of Alexander’s Secret Committee of 1801, they duly set to work, but their meetings grew less and less frequent, and the committee eventually withered as Nicholas’s interest faded. The Third Section also addressed the question of reform, for reasons of its own. In an internal report of 1839 it assessed serfdom as ‘a powder-keg buried under the state’. Another report, on illicit workers’ associations in the province of Perm, noted that the root cause was the appalling standard of living. After looking into working conditions in St Petersburg in 1841, the Third Section had a hospital built for the workers. It later did the same in Moscow, and in 1845 introduced a ban on children working at night. ‘There is no doubt that serfdom, as it exists at present in our land, is an evil, palpable and obvious to all,’ Nicholas told the Council of State in 1842. ‘But to touch it now would be a still more disastrous evil.’ He feared that doing so would precipitate full-scale rebellion, and was afraid of how the landed nobility would react.31
By the mid-1840s Nicholas was going through some kind of midlife crisis, aggravated by health problems. In 1841 he had begun an affair with one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting, which entailed bouts of guilt and self-loathing. He would often lock himself up in his study for hours. ‘There are days when I look up to heaven and ask myself: why am I not there? I am so tired …’ he said to another of the empress’s ladies-in-waiting in March 1845.
But if doubt ever entered his mind as to the way he was ruling his empire, he never showed it. ‘It is with very real fear that one contemplates the future when one sees the Emperor becoming daily more bitter and authoritarian,’ Countess Nesselrode wrote to her son. ‘It is no longer possible for anyone to make him reconsider his views.’ Aleksandr Nikitenko, a professor of literature and himself a censor, delivered probably the most fitting verdict: ‘The main failing of the reign of Nicholas consisted in the fact that it was all a mistake.’32