Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

In the late 19th century, then, Russia had two parallel and largely unconnected systems of governance. The vacuum which had always existed between state and population became even wider and more dangerous. Civil society became stronger, but so also did the instruments of state repression. In those potentially explosive circumstances, since there was no parliament, the press became especially important.

Russian nationalism

In the press, the relationship between the state and the population was now the subject of relatively open discussion. The fundamental question was ‘What is Russia?’ The successful European countries were nation-states with a high degree of industrial and commercial development. Should Russia emulate them, and, if so, how?

The energetic and enterprising editor of Moskovskie vedomosti, Mikhail Katkov, had one answer. He had been a Westerner, an admirer of the British political system. But the 1863 Polish rising persuaded him that in a multi-ethnic society, a freedom-loving gentry could be a force for sedition. ‘To give up Poland would deprive Russia of its political significance in Europe’, and the Russian people of ‘its world-historical mission’. Katkov’s answer was to convert the Russian Empire into a Russian nation, all of whose peoples, whatever their ethnic identity, would acknowledge the Emperor as their sovereign, as the Welsh, Scots, and Irish did the British monarch. Alternative nation-building projects, like the Poles’, would have to be crushed.

The problem with restricting the rights of non-Russians was that they aroused the resentment of many hitherto loyal non-Russian subjects without increasing Russians’ sense of empowerment. In fact, Russians were beginning to feel that their nation was also being systematically disadvantaged in favour of foreigners – especially, as many of them saw it, Jews. This feeling culminated in 1905 in the formation of the Union of Russian People.

In some ways, Russian nationhood was strongly developed. Most Russians, including the uneducated, had a concept of ‘Russia’, which involved the Tsar, the Orthodox Church, Russian language and literature, and they shared a rich subculture of folklore, music, dances, woodcuts, and other entertainments. They celebrated saints’ days and Russian military victories. But this cultural understanding of Russia had not taken shape in nationwide political institutions.

Russian culture

Russia’s high culture was assuming some of the functions of those missing political institutions. Far-reaching, disruptive change was being introduced, to all appearances from outside, from a Europe to which Russia did not feel it fully belonged. The rule of law, capitalist economics, rationalism, technical progress, and the urban, bourgeois way of life all seemed alien to most non-Westernized Russians, especially to peasants and the church. In this respect, Russia was the first modern nation that reacted against Western-driven modernization to reaffirm the values of inherited communal and religious life.

Faced with these challenges, and with state and church censorship which obstructed open discussion of how to cope with them, prominent writers felt obliged to assume the role of oblique political commentators and even prophets. Nikolai Gogol first made his name in the 1830s with sketches of Ukrainian provincial life and folklore, but to advance his career he decided to move to St Petersburg. There, the frosty formality and pretentious hierarchy of imperial Russia repelled him, and he satirized it in a series of works. In his novel Dead Souls (1842), he manipulates the term ‘soul’, used officially to designate a poll-tax payer, and the administrative fiction that deceased taxpayers were considered alive till the next census. His main character creates fraudulent social status for himself by purchasing such ‘dead souls’ from impoverished landowners.

Dead Souls was intended to be merely the first part of a work in which Gogol would show how Russia could be redeemed by its innate virtues. He found the rest impossible to complete and secretly burnt the manuscript. Instead, he issued a series of epistles preaching repentance and submission to the will of God. His admirers were bitterly disappointed.