the European courts and allowed the future tsar to discover European political models and ways of life.
After returning to Russia, still deprived of their older sons and of any power, Paul and Maria Fiodor1148
PAUL I
ovna lived at Gatchina, a large estate given to them by Catherine. At Gatchina, the tsarevitch had his own court and a personal small army, composed of 2,400 soldiers and 140 officers. Isolated, fascinated by the Prussian model, Paul began to show an abnormal obsession for military parades and processions and started to tyrannize his soldiers. But at the same time, he established a hospital where peasants could receive free medical care, founded a school for the children of his serfs, and was tolerant of the Lutheran faith of his Finnish serfs.
On November 5, 1796, the death of Catherine made him tsar at the age of forty-two. He made many decisions-more than two thousand ukases in five years-that revealed the rejection of his mother’s heritage, but they were not always consistent. In domestic policy, he first issued on April 1797 a decree establishing the principle of male primogeniture for succession to the throne, so as to eliminate any political turmoil. He proclaimed a general amnesty, freed all of Catherine’s political prisoners, including the thinker Nikolai Novikov, and liberated the twelve thousand Poles kept in Russian jails since the last Polish war of independence led by Tadeusz Kociuszko. His hate for Catherine’s immoral behavior and way of governing brought him to exile his mother’s lovers and to cut down court expenses. His piety led him to forbid landowners from forcing serfs to work on Sundays and on religious feasts, while his mistrust of the nobility led him to impose a new tax on nobles’ estates. All these measures, as well as the reorganization of the Russian military service according to the Prussian model and the reintroduc-tion of corporal punishment for nobles, made him very unpopular quickly among the aristocracy.
At the same time, deeply hostile to the French Revolution and anxious about its potential impact on the Russian Empire, he heavily censored intellectual and political productions, rejecting the symbols of a French liberal influence in all spheres, even in the more superficial ones such as fashion. Relying on a growing bureaucracy, he reinforced the autocratic regime, condemning random innocents to Siberia or jail to show his unlimited power. He also systematically repressed peasant riots and extended serfdom to the Southern colonies. His domestic policy was therefore a mixture of generous and tyrannical measures.
In foreign policy, his choices were much more consistent. He pursued his mother’s policy of ex Emperor Paul I by Vladimir Lukic Borovikovsky. © THE STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM/CORBIS pansionism in the Far East and Caucasus: in 1799, he chartered a Russian-American Company to favor Russian economic and commercial expansion in the North Pacific; and in December 1800 he annexed the kingdom of Georgia. As to war in Europe, he first chose to abstain but finally decided in 1798-1799 to join the Second Coalition against Napoleon I, together with Great Britain, Naples, Portugal, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire. Russian troops obtained brilliant successes: in winter 1798-1799, Admiral Fyodor Ushakov took the Ionian Islands from the French armies and established a republic occupied by the Russians. Meanwhile, General Alexander Suvarov won impressive battles in Italy (Cassano and Novi) and Switzerland in 1798-1800. And in November 1798, opposing Napoleon’s claim to the Island of Malta, Paul agreed to become the protector and Great-Master of the Order of Malta. But in 1800, irritated by the suspicious behavior of his Austrian and British allies and convinced that an alliance with Napoleon could favor the Russian national interests, Paul abruptly
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changed his mind. He led Russia into a rapprochement with France and a war against Britain; to this end, in January 1801 he launched a military expedition toward India. These last decisions were perceived as dangerous and even foolish by a faction of the court. Encouraged by Charles Whit-worth, the British ambassador in St. Petersburg, and with the passive complicity of Tsarevitch Alexander, several figures close to the tsar, such as Nikita Panin the young, Count Peter von Pahlen, general governor of St. Petersburg, and Leontii Ben-nigsen, led a conspiracy that culminated with Paul’s brutal assassination in March 1801. See also: CATHERINE II; NOVIKOV, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH Pavliuchenko volunteered for military service during the summer of 1941 and became an expert sniper for the Independent Maritime Army in Odessa and Sevastopol. Invited by Eleanor Roosevelt, she toured North America in August 1942 and was presented with a Winchester rifle in Toronto. In 1943 she completed the Vystrel Courses for Officers. On graduating from Kiev University in 1945, she became a military historian and journalist. Affected with a concussion and wounded four times, Pavliuchenko died prematurely and was buried at the prestigious Novode-vichye Cemetery in Moscow. See also: AVIATION; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McGrew, Roderick Erle. (1992). Paul I of Russia, 1754-1801. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. Ragsdale, Hugh. (1998). Tsar Paul and the Question of Madness: An Essay in History and Psychology. New York: Greenwood Press.
Cottam, Kazimiera J. (1998). Women in War and Resistance: Selected Biographies. Nepean, Canada: New Military Publishing. Pavlichenko, Liudmila Mikhailovna. (1977). “I was a sniper.” In The Road of Battle and Glory, ed. I.M. Dan-ishevsky, tr. David Skvirsky. Moscow: Politizdat.
(1916-1974), soldier, historian, and journalist.
A World War II heroine who a became champion sniper with 309 kills to her credit, including thirty-six enemy snipers, Pavlyuchenko was the first Soviet citizen received at the White House. She retired at the rank of major after serving in the No. 2 Company, Second Battalion, 54th Razin Regiment, 25th “V.I. Chapayev” Division of the Independent Maritime Army, and was awarded the status of Hero of the Soviet Union on 25 October 1943.
Born in Belaya Tserkov, Pavliuchenko completed high school while working in the Arsenal factory in Kiev, where she mastered small arms in a military club. She also trained as a sniper at the paramilitary Osoaviakhim (loosely translated as “Society for the Promotion of Aviation and Chemical Defense”) and took up hang-gliding and parachuting. After enrolling at the State University of Kiev, she successfully defended her master’s thesis on Bohdan Khmelnitsky.
PAVLOVA, ANNA MATVEYEVNA
(1881-1931), the most famous of Russian ballerinas.
Anna Matveyevna Pavlova (patronymic later changed to Pavlovna) began her career in the St. Petersburg Imperial Theaters in 1898, which ended amidst her usual flurry of performing in 1930, only weeks before her death. Pavlova’s rise to the rank of ballerina in the Imperial Theaters (by 1906) was rapid, though her artistic breakthrough came the following year, when she appeared in several short works choreographed by Michel Fokine. Two of these works (Les Sylphides and Le Pavillon d’Armide) would join the roster of Serge Diagilev’s Ballets Russes (as would their star performers, Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky). Both the ballets and dancers achieved unprecedented fame in that company’s Paris season of 1909. Pavlova debuted another Fokine composition in St. Petersburg in 1908, a solo that would become her signature work and that remains strongly identified with her: The Swan, to music of Camille Saint-Sa?ns. Popularly known as the dying swan, this evanescent figure suited Pavlova’s physical type and stage temperament. Pavlova excelled in ethereal, romantic roles such as
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Prima ballerina Anna Pavlova is considered one of the premier dancers of the twentieth century. © CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. “Giselle,” and would later create for herself a multitude of roles in which she portrayed butterflies, roses, snowflakes, dragonflies, poppies, leaves, and various other delicate creatures. After achieving international stardom with Diagilev’s Ballets Russes, Pavlova struck out on her own, first negotiating an enviable contract with the Imperial Theaters, and subsequently abandoning the Russian stage to settle in London. In twenty years of touring the globe, Pavlova came to personify the peripatetic Russian ballerina, the touring star whose only home was the stage. See also: BALLET; NIJINKSY, VASLAV FOMICH
