Conservative attacks on Stolypin and increased fragmentation within the party forced Stolypin to turn increasingly to the right, thereby placing his relationship with the Octobrists and their unity under additional strain. In 1911 the conservatives in the State Council, with the help of Nicholas II, rejected the Western Zemstvo Bill already passed by the Duma. Stolypin, infuriated by constant conservative attempts to block his policies, forced Nicholas II to disband the parliament provisionally, as allowed by Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws, and make the bill law by decree. The Octobrists, although they had supported this bill, considered Stolypin’s step to be a betrayal and undermining of the constitutional system. They went into opposition.
In elections to the Fourth Duma (1912), the Oc-tobrists, while remaining the largest party, saw their share of the vote collapse to ninety-five. Morale in the party was at an all-time low, reflecting the overall disappointment with the gradual but successful emasculation of the constitutional system by conservatives and Nicholas II.
Octobrist unity cracked in 1913 when Guchkov, admitting that attempts to cooperate with the government to achieve needed reform had failed, urged adoption of a more aggressive stance toward the government, which since the assassination of Stolypin in 1911 had showed few signs of continuing reform. While the Central Committee supported this step, the larger body of deputies split on this issue. Disappointed with lack of party backing for such a move, some twenty-two deputies formed the Left Octobrists. The majority formed the Zemtsvo Octobrists under the leadership of M.V. Rodzyanko, the party’s leader. Some ten to fifteen remained uncommitted to either side. The party ceased to have any real power.
The weakening and fragmentation of the Oc-tobrist Party mirrored the collapse of Russia’s experiment with constitutional monarchy. See also: CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY; NICHOLAS II; OCTOBER MANIFESTO; STOLYPIN, PETER ARKADIEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hosking, Geoffrey. (1973). The Russian Constitutional Experiment: Government and Duma, 1907-1914. London: Cambridge University Press. Seton-Watson, Hugh. (1991). The Russian Empire, 1801-1917. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Waldron, Peter. (1998). Between Two Revolutions: Stolypin and the Politics of Renewal in Russia. London: UCL Press.
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(1804-1869), romantic and gothic fiction writer, pedagogue, musicologist, amateur scientist, and public servant.
A Russian thinker with encyclopedic knowledge whom contemporaries dubbed “the Russian Faust” (a character in one of his novels), Vladimir Odoyevsky was mentioned in his day in the same breath as Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol. He is perhaps best known for the philosophical fantasy Russian Nights (Russkie nochi), published in 1844. In 1824-1825 he edited, with Wilhelm K?chelbecker, four issues of the influential periodical Mnemosyne. Its purpose was to champion Russian literature and German philosophy at a time when everyone else seemed fascinated with French ideas. Odoyevsky contributed works such as “The City Without a Name” (1839) to Nekrasov’s influential magazine Sovremennik (Contemporary). In 1823 he founded a group called “Lovers of Wisdom” (Lyubomudry, a literal translation of the Greek word “philosophy”). Propounding ideas of philosophic realism, the group was dissolved soon after the Decembrist uprising in 1825, even though the group’s pursuits truly were only philosophical, not political. The failed rebellion deeply affected Odoyevsky, because-like the poet Pushkin-he had many friends among the Decembrists, including his cousin, the poet and guards’ officer, Alexander Odoyevsky (1802-1839), and the writer Wilhelm K?chelbecker (1797-1846), both of whom were imprisoned and exiled after the uprising.
A Slavophile of sorts, Odoyevsky believed in the decline of the West and the future greatness of Russia. He met regularly with other Slavophile thinkers, such as Ivan Kireyevsky, Alexander Koshelev, Mel-gunov, Stepan Shevyrev, Mikhail Pogodin (the last two were professors at Moscow State University), and the young poet Dmitry Venevitinov.
In the 1830s Odoyevsky was preoccupied with political questions, antislavery, anti-Americanism, Russian messianism, the innate superiority of Russia over the West, and criticisms of Malthus, Bentham, and the Utilitarians. The novel Russian Nights contains a mixture of these ideas. Odoyevsky proposed a revealing subtitle, which his editor later rejected: “Russian Nights, or the Indis-pensability of a New Science and a New Art.” Throughout the novel the main characters grapple with topics such as the meaning of science and art, logic, the sense of human existence, atheism and belief, education, government rule, the function of individual sciences, madness and sanity, poetic creation, Slavophilism, Europe and Russia, and mercantilism.
Odoyevsky also cherished music and musicians, composing chamber music as early as his teens and writing critical appraisals of composers such as Mikhail Glinka. He was devoted to the history and structure of church singing and collected notational manuscripts to preserve them for future generations. As he wrote in one of his letters: “I discovered the definite theory of our melodies and harmony, which is similar to the theory of medieval Western tunes, but has its own peculiarities.”
Odoyevsky excelled the most in the genre of the short story, particularly ones geared toward children. Two stories rank among the best in children’s fare: “Johnny Frost” and “The Town in a Snuff Box.” Generally, Odoyevsky’s fiction reflects two main tendencies. First, he expresses his philosophical convictions imaginatively and often fantastically. His stories typically move from a recognizable setting to a mystical realm. Secondly, he injects commentary on the shortcomings of social life in Russia, usually in a satiric mode. See also: GOLDEN AGE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE; LOVERS OF WISDOM, THE; SLAVOPHILES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cornwell, Neil. (1998). Vladimir Odoevsky and Romantic Poetics: Collected Essays. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books. Minto, Marilyn. (1994). Russian Tales of the Fantastic. London: Bristol Classical Press. Rydel, Christine. (1999). Russian Literature in the Age of Pushkin and Gogol. Detroit: Gale Group. Smith, Andrew. (2003). Empire and the Gothic: the Politics of Genre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
In 1833, Sergei Uvarov, in his first published circular as the new minister of education, coined the tripartite formula “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” as the motto for the development of the Russian Empire. The three terms also became the main ingredients of the doctrine that dominated the era
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of Emperor Nicholas I, who reigned from 1825 to 1855, and that came to be called “official nationality.” About two dozen periodicals, scores of books, and the entire school system propagated the ideas and made them the foundation for guiding Russia to modernity without succumbing to materialism, revolutionary movements, and blind imitation of foreign concepts.
The meaning of Orthodoxy and autocracy were clear. The Orthodox faith had formed the foundation of Russian spiritual, ethical, and cultural life since the tenth century, and had always acted as a unifying factor in the nation. It also proved useful in preaching obedience to authority. Autocracy, or absolute monarchy, involved the conviction that Russia would avoid revolution through the enlightened leadership of a tsar, who would provide political stability but put forth timely and enlightened reforms so that Russia could make constant progress in all spheres of national life. Political theory had long argued, and Russia’s historical lessons seemed to demonstrate, that a single ruler was needed to maintain unity in a vast territory with varied populations.
The third term in the tripartite formula was the most original and the most mysterious. The broad idea of nationality (narodnost) had just become fashionable among the educated public, but there was no set definition for the concept. In 1834, Peter Plet-nev, a literary critic and professor of Russian literature at St. Petersburg University, noted: “The idea of nationality is the major characteristic that contemporaries demand from literary works . . . ,” but, he went on, “one does not know exactly what it means.” A variety of schools of thought on the subject arose in the 1830s and 1840s.
