The Icon and the Axe

Rarely have the vague hopes of so many different groups converged so clearly on one man as on the handsome young prince who became tsar in 1801. Alexander's loosely worded promises of reform at his „coronation

encouraged the_hopes of_ everyone. The peasant hailed him as "blessed Alexander" after the harsh reigns of Catherine and Paul. Dissenting religious groups were heartened by his promises of tolerance. The venerable historian, Professor Schlozer, who had spent many years in Russia and attracted many Russian students to Gottingen, hailed the nineteenth century as "the Alexandrian century."122 Optimism was everywhere as Russia prepared to send its first round-the-world naval expedition under a flagship appropriately named Hope.

Hope ran perhaps highest of all among the liberal reformers. Radish-chev hailed Aleiancterji^"guardian angel";123 and reformers were encouraged by his long association with LaJHarpe, his .repeal of the ban on secret societies, and his decision to charter four new universities. Liberated from the harsh reign of Paul and exhilarated by Russia's growing importance in Europe, they were anxious to aid Alexander in his professed intention to modernize the political system of Russia. As he introduced modern ministries and gathered about himself a liberal-minded entourage of advisers known by the French revolutionary designation "Committee of Public Safety," Alexander placed political reform_squarely on the agenda.

In response, the aristocracy produced a bewildering array of political ideas during Alexander's reign. Three major currents of thought predominated: c^^titutional monarchism, autocratic conservatism, and federal republicanism. The first current dominated the first or "liberal" period of Alexander's reign; the second predominated in the second half; and the third was an undercurrent which came to the surface only briefly after his death. Each of these three positions was defended in the measured manner of the Enlightenment as the best rational alternative for Russia. Each of the positions was drawn up without much consideration of economic and social problems; each was deeply aristocratic Trfits assumption that only a •few were qualified either to discuss or to implement political change.

Constitutional monarchy was the predominant ideal for the first decade of Alexander's reign, the dominant figure of which was Michael Speransky. Like most other leading thinkers of the Alexandrian age, Speransky divided his time between political theories and religious concerns. He began his career as a student and teacher at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and ended it as a mystical student of the occult. His most lasting accomplishment lay in law and administration: as a reforming governor-general of Siberia in the 1820's and the principal editor of the new law code of 1833.124 But in the first decade of Alexander's rule he advanced more sweeping programs for transforming Russia into a constitutional monarchy of a Western type. As the son of a priest and a relative outsider to the higher levels of Russian society, Speransky was far more interested in

plate x

PLATE IX

The Evolution of Old Russian Architecture

PLATES IX-X

The late-twelfth-century Cathedral of St. Dmitry in Vladimir (Plate IX) illustrates the creative development of Byzantine architecture which began in the Kievan period and which was particularly characteristic in this wooded heartland of Great Russia. The storied "white stone" (limestone and mortar) here replaced the Byzantine brick and cement still in use in both Kiev and Novgorod-encouraging massive and simple structural forms while providing surfaces suitable for sculptured relief of a kind previously confined to impermanent wooden surfaces. Traces of Armenian and Romanesque influences in the structural forms and a profusion of unfamiliar flora and fauna in the lavish reliefs, all reveal the relative cosmopolitanism of pre-Mongol Russo-Byzantine culture. Later architecture in the same region reflected the growing Muscovite intolerance not only of secular subject matter in sacred art, but of sculptured forms as such. New traditions of inventiveness in church construction nevertheless accompanied the great growth of monasticism. The early-sixteenth-century Church of the Annunciation over the entrance to the women's monastery of the Protection of the Virgin in Suzdal (Plate X) illustrates one of the many places in which churches were built and special services held in this increasingly ritualized and intensely ecclesiastical society. The cult of the Virgin was particularly intense in the Russian North (where indeed the feast of the Protection of the Virgin was introduced); and the three asymmetric cupolas-a special feature of Suzdalian architecture-illustrate the transposition into stone of the decorative, onion-shaped gables previously used in wooden architecture.