Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

That was a rather rude send-off. But perhaps Alexander was stung more painfully by his mother (who at forty-one was suddenly a widow) in the morning, who said coldly and scornfully, “I congratulate you, now you are emperor.” Hearing those words, the new monarch, twenty-three, fainted.

Alexander I was tormented by his father’s assassination all his life, and it probably hastened his untimely end. Of course, he had not strangled his father with his own hands, but everyone blamed Alexander for the regicide and patricide (or, at least, so it seemed to him). It’s not clear what was worse: to feel responsible for his father’s death or for the sacrilegious murder of the imperial figure.

In the former, Alexander broke God’s commandment and man’s laws. In the latter, he violated the principle that was the foundation of the state that he would now lead, that of the sacredness of the divine person of the tsar, which was particularly important in Russia, where the sovereign, especially during the early Romanov reign, symbolized the unity and prosperity of the nation.

Alexander, who appeared in public with red-rimmed eyes, could find some comfort, albeit cold, in Karamzin’s description quoted above of the joy of the residents of the capital. This apparent happiness was reinforced also by the stark contrast in physical appearance between the short, hunched, rickety Paul, with a pug nose in the center of his chapped face and always hoarse voice, and his tall, slightly stoop-shouldered, and handsome son, a blue-eyed blonde with polite, gentle manners.

Karamzin published a special edition of his new poem, “To His Imperial Majesty Alexander I, Autocrat of All Russia, on His Accession to the Throne,” in which he expressed the emotions and hopes of Russia’s cultural elite: “It is spring for us, / We are with You!”

Alexander I hastened to justify the hopes, in the first few days of his rule pardoning twelve thousand people arrested by his father, permitting foreign publications into Russia again, and repealing the limitations on travel to and from the country decreed by Paul I.

Calling in some of his young liberal friends, Alexander started to discuss potential radical reforms: limitations on the autocracy, and abolition of serfdom. Even though things never went beyond loquacious debates, the conservatives of the court grew extremely concerned.

They panicked even more when Alexander I, in an obvious attempt to turn vague talk of reform into concrete action, made Mikhail Speransky, an open liberal, his closest administrative councilor and then secretary of state.

These actions came on top of the zigzags in foreign policy that flabbergasted Russian public opinion: first Alexander joined the Austrians against Napoleon, but then, after several military failures, the most famous being the humiliating defeat at Austerlitz, he concluded the Treaty of Tilsit with the French emperor, signed in 1807 in a special ceremonial tent on a barge on the Niemen River.

The alliance with Napoleon did not please the Russian elite. The outrage of the conservative opposition reached the boiling point. Their unofficial leader became Alexander’s favorite sister, the beautiful, educated, and energetic Grand Duchess Ekaterina. She was seen as the patroness of Russian culture; Derzhavin, then sixty-four, dedicated elated odes to her.¹¹

Russian patriots were particularly pleased by her refusal of Napoleon’s hand and demonstrative marriage to Georg Oldenburg, a modest Prussian prince in Russian service. When Prince Oldenburg was made governor of Tver Province, the grand duchess settled in provincial Tver, where her salon became the center of oppositionist intrigues.

Karamzin began visiting, calling her “the demigoddess of Tver.” She saw him as the man best able to formulate a conservative program.

It was at the request of Ekaterina that Karamzin wrote his famous “Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia,” a political manifesto of outstanding literary quality. Through the grand duchess, Karamzin sent the “Memoir” to Alexander in March 1811. It came to be a symbolic moment in the history of Russian culture.

Karamzin’s evolution from author of elegant sentimental novellas to energetic and influential political journalist and, later, to the greatest Russian historian was gradual but steady. Karamzin, like Novikov before him, had the personality of a natural enlightener. (This may have been characteristic of Masons; or perhaps people with these qualities were drawn to Masonry.)

In 1802, Karamzin took charge of Russia’s first political magazine, The Herald of Europe, which quickly grew in popularity: it had twelve hundred subscribers, an impressive number for those days. He was the first Russian editor to draw a salary, a substantial one: 3,000 rubles a year.¹²