Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

overcoat rather than a blanket, Nicholas I spoke haltingly with a rasp to his heir, Grand Duke Alexander: “I hand over command, unfortunately not in the good order I would have liked, leaving you many worries and concerns.”

Those bitter words concerned the military and diplomatic situation, the only one that worried Nicholas. The failure in the war in the Crimea revealed the great vulnerability of his empire.

Nicholas had no idea that he was leaving yet another legacy to his son—a group of young men, his subjects, who would constitute the glory and pride of nineteenth-century Russian culture. They were Ivan Turgenev, thirty- six, Afanasy Fet, thirty-four, Fedor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Nekrasov, both thirty-three, Alexander Ostrovsky, thirty- one, and Leo Tolstoy, twenty-six.

All these young lions formed in Nicholas’s reign, when, according to yet another great contemporary of Nicholas I, the dissident Alexander Herzen, “educated Russia, with a ball and chain, eked out a pathetic existence in profound, humiliating, insulting silence.”

This polemical evaluation of cultural life under Nicholas as an intellectual desert was taken up by Soviet propaganda and survived for three-quarters of a century, turning into dogma. The real situation was not quite so black-and-white.

Let us recall such cultural titans as Pushkin, Gogol, and the composer Glinka, who all interacted with Nicholas. It is true that Catherine II was in close contact with the poet Derzhavin, and Alexander I with Karamzin and Zhukovsky. But in those days the Russian cultural elite was a compact group and its members naturally were part of the court circle as well.

The situation under Nicholas I was different: Glinka and Gogol had no entree into royal circles. Their promonarchist views were not the result of special status in the court, but rather were formed at least in part thanks to the emperor’s skillful attitude and personal attention.

It should be no surprise that his contemporaries often had diametrically opposed views of Nicholas, influenced by their political convictions. In the opinion of conservative writer and critic Konstantin Leontiev, Nicholas I was the “ideal autocrat the likes of which history has not produced in a long time.”¹⁷

The radical liberal Herzen, on the contrary, saw in Nicholas misfortune for Russia and considered him one of the “military leaders who have lost everything civilian, everything human, and have only one passion left—to rule; narrow mind, no heart at all.”

Nicholas I’s historical standing was hopelessly damaged by the humiliating failure in the Crimean War. Even the monarchist and nationalist Tyutchev was disillusioned in his former idol.

Since Nicholas’s own main criterion for a nation’s grandeur was its military might, the severity of this judgment was warranted. The army created by Nicholas, his beloved child, did not stand the test. However, the ideological triad “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality,” developed under his aegis, proved to be much stronger. While sometimes vanishing from the cultural horizon, it has survived in its basic form to this day. It was used, with modifications to suit changing political realities, under Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II, and later even by Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, and Vladimir Putin. For the Soviet leaders, orthodoxy was the Communist ideology, autocracy—the rule of the Party—and nationality remained. Under Putin, the triad morphed again: Russian Orthodoxy was returned, autocracy became paternalistic rule, and nationality persisted as nationalism.

PART IV

CHAPTER 9

Alexander II, Tolstoy,

Turgenev, and Dostoevsky

Alexander II, the son of Nicholas I, who took the throne on February 19, 1855, had been prepared for the role of monarch—thanks to the poet Zhukovsky—as none of his predecessors or descendants were or would be.

Zhukovsky oversaw the heir’s education for twelve years, from 1826 until 1838. All the classes throughout the period were guided by his detailed plan, approved by Nicholas. Zhukovsky concentrated on Russian literature and Russian history, and other experienced instructors taught the many other subjects.

Zhukovsky, with the tsar’s support, declared an active, energetic monarch the goal of his training, and developed a rather tight schedule for Alexander: reveille at six a.m., lights out at ten p.m. After prayers and breakfast, there were five hours of classes (with an hour break), two hours for lunch (with a walk and rest before and after), more classes from five to seven, then gymnastics and dinner. Before bed, there was time for reflection and diary writing, which Zhukovsky considered mandatory.

Nicholas believed that as a Romanov, the heir “must be military to the bone, otherwise he will be lost in our age.”¹ Zhukovsky disagreed: “The passion for military craft will cramp his soul: he will become accustomed to see the people as his regiment and his Homeland as a barracks.”²

Following Zhukovsky’s curriculum, Alexander read The Iliad, Don Quixote, and Gulliver’s Travels and, in Russian literature, works by Karamzin and Pushkin; once, Pushkin read aloud his ultrapatriotic poem “To the Slanderers of Russia” in the heir’s presence. Zhukovsky and the fabulist Krylov read and explained their own writings to him.

The young heir learned to shoot and fence, and he rode well and danced gracefully. Like his father, he liked to draw (especially sketches of new military uniforms) and loved opera (especially Rossini and Glinka, for his A Life for the Tsar). Alexander and his two classmates published a children’s magazine called “The Ant Hill,” which was supervised by Nicholas I personally.

Alexander was brought up to be rather broad-minded with a European worldview (he knew English, French, German, and Polish), and he grew up to be much milder and more compassionate than his severe father. Zhukovsky enjoyed a good cry (a tribute to Romantic ideals) and taught his pupil not to be ashamed of tears. The poet wanted to form a clement sovereign. Zhukovsky had released his serfs, a rare gesture that even Pushkin had not attempted. He taught Alexander that serfdom was evil.

Tellingly, Nicholas did not oppose this. He had long contemplated emancipation of the serfs but never took the step: he was afraid it would shatter the empire. Nicholas refused to pardon the Decembrists he had exiled to Siberia, despite the requests from Zhukovsky and others. But he listened to his son. When Alexander and Zhukovsky and their retinue traveled through Russia in 1837 (part of the heir’s education), Alexander met the Decembrists in distant Siberia and was horrified by their ordeal. He asked his father to at least ameliorate their living conditions, which was done. (Later, when he became tsar, his first act was to pardon the Decembrists.)

Zhukovsky considered bringing up Alexander to the Russian throne as the most important work of his life—his best poem. In 1841 he retired from his post as tutor and moved to Germany, having married a Romantic maiden almost a third his age. After bearing two children, his wife fell into a deep depression (it was hereditary), spending weeks at a time in bed. Zhukovsky lived in despair: “My poor wife is like a skeleton, and I can’t alleviate her suffering: there is nothing to relieve her of her black thoughts!”