Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

Even the intellectual elite (a stratum traditionally given to skepticism) felt that an event of extraordinary significance had occurred. Alexander Nikitenko, a professor at St. Petersburg University, read that “precious” manifesto aloud to his wife and children in his study beneath a portrait of Alexander II, “which we regarded with profound reverence and gratitude”³ (as he recorded in his diary).

The great poet and editor of the leftist journal Contemporary Nikolai Nekrasov, in his poem “Freedom,” addressed an imagined peasant infant, “God is merciful! You will not know tears!” He called upon his fellow writers, “O Muse! Greet freedom with hope!” Even the implacable opponent of autocracy, the revolutionary émigré Herzen, doffed his metaphorical cap to Alexander II: “You have won, Galilean.”

But the honeymoon soon ended for the Tsar Liberator. It seemed that this reform and the important ones that followed (administrative, judicial, military) ultimately satisfied no one. The nobles worried about the erosion of their position as the leading political class. The peasants were unhappy with the small land allotments for which they had to pay high prices. The intelligentsia demanded a European-style constitution. The radicals among students, the so-called nihilists, dreamed of overthrowing autocracy altogether and establishing a “peasant” socialism in Russia.

Nikitenko wrote in horror in his diary, “To speak badly of the government and accuse it of all wrongdoing has become the fashion … Will the government have the strength to restrain this disorderly movement that threatens Russia with innumerable catastrophes? The main thing is a lack of national, patriotic feeling. Society is handicapped by the absence of lofty beliefs.”⁴

Karakozov’s attempt on Alexander II’s life was used by the authorities as an opportunity to instill “lofty beliefs” from above. As usual in such cases, cultural figures were quickly brought into play. Poetry in honor of the “savior of the emperor” Komissarov-Kostromskoy was hastily written by Prince Petr Vyazemsky, seventy-four, once Pushkin’s liberal friend and now a major official, and by Apollon Maikov, who had previously praised Nicholas I in his verse.

They were major poets, but not trendsetters. The ultrademocratic Nekrasov was one, and the authorities forced him—on pain of banning his progressive journal, Contemporary—to write an ode in honor of the “new Susanin.”

Son of the People! I sing of thee!

You will be glorified a lot!

You are great—like the weapon of God

Who directed your hand!

All three odes—by Vyazemsky, Maikov, and Nekrasov—were included in a deluxe presentation book, Osip Komissarov-Kostromskoy, Savior of the Emperor, published in Moscow and ornamented by a portrait of Komissarov and his wife. Some think that bad verse looks better on good paper, but it didn’t help here: even Nekrasov’s work looked pitiful.

Was that all the government could squeeze out of Russian culture for its large-scale propaganda campaign? (Further poetry dedicated to Komissarov, and there was a lot of it, was even worse.) They did not manage to create a “new Susanin.” That required authentic and not simulated “lofty beliefs” (both from the government and the cultural leaders), the absence of which was bemoaned by Professor Nikitenko. Glinka and Nicholas I had them: that is why their “cultural contract” brought about the great opera A Life for the Tsar, which still elicits “national, patriotic feeling” (as Nikitenko termed it). In Alexander II’s Russia, there was an apparent shortage of “lofty beliefs” and “patriotic feelings.”

The failure of this ambitious promonarchist cultural action in 1866 was symbolic of the ever-increasing alienation between the Romanovs and educated society. Autocracy was losing—slowly but inexorably—its former authority and its power over culture. The fear of the tsar’s wrath was gradually replaced with the fear of losing one’s audience. This was a historic transitional period.

The last great Russian monarchist writer was Fedor Dostoevsky. His road to apologist of the Romanovs was complicated and even dramatic. In 1847 the young Dostoevsky, already a famous writer, joined a socialist circle in St. Petersburg headed by Mikhail Petrashevsky. The police learned of the circle, and its members were arrested in 1849 on orders from Nicholas I. After an intensive investigation, supervised by Nicholas himself, the authorities sentenced twenty-one members of the Petrashevsky circle to hanging, including Dostoevsky.