War And Peace

‘Well, why are you crying? I’m so pleased for you,’ said Princess Marya, so moved by her tears that she completely forgave Natasha’s happiness.

‘It won’t happen straightaway . . . One day soon. But think how happy we’ll be when I’m his wife and you get married to Nikolay!’

‘Natasha, I asked you not to talk about that. Let’s talk about you.’ Neither of them said anything.

‘Oh, but why does he have to go to Petersburg?’ cried Natasha suddenly, only to come back with a ready answer. ‘No, no, he has to go . . . Doesn’t he, Marie? He does have to go . . .’

EPILOGUE

PART I

CHAPTER 1

Seven years had passed¹ since the events of 1812. The turbulent sea of European history had settled within its shores. It seemed to have calmed down, but the mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws that determine their activity are unknown to us) were still at work.

Although the surface of the ocean of history seemed to be without a ripple, the movement of humanity went on as smoothly as the flow of time. Men kept coming together in various groups and splitting up again, and causes were gradually building up that would determine the formation and dissolution of empires and the displacement of peoples.

The ocean of history was no longer sent surging from one shore to another; it seethed in its depths. Historical figures were no longer borne by the waves from one shore to the other; now they stayed in one place and seemed to be going round in little eddies. The historical figures that had led armies and reflected the movement of the masses by waging war, marching men about and going into battle now reflected that same seething movement in political and diplomatic stratagems, statutes and treaties.

This kind of activity on the part of historical figures is called ‘reactive’ by historians.

In describing such activity the historians censure the historical figures most severely, accusing them of bringing about what they call ‘reaction’. They sit in judgement on all the famous people of the age, from Alexander and Napoleon to Madame de Staël, Photius, Schelling, Fichte, Chateaubriand² and the rest, and find them innocent or guilty of promoting ‘progress’ or ‘reaction’.

By their account Russia was a centre of reaction at that time, and Alexander I bears most of the blame for this – the same Alexander who, by their account too, had been mainly responsible for liberal initiatives taken early in his reign, and for the saving of Russia.

In modern Russian letters there is no one, from schoolboy to learned historian, who is not ready to throw his little stone at Alexander for the bad things he did during the latter period of his reign.

‘He should have done this or that. On this occasion he did well; on that occasion he did badly. He behaved splendidly at the beginning of his reign and throughout 1812, but he performed badly when he gave Poland a constitution,³ set up the Holy Alliance,⁴ gave authority to Arakcheyev, encouraged first Golitsyn⁵ with all his mysticism, and then Shishkov⁶ and Photius. He was wrong to go out to the front during the war, wrong to disband the Semyonovsky regiment,⁷ and so on.’

It would take a dozen pages or more to list all the charges levelled against him by the historians, all of them working on the safe assumption that they have a unique knowledge of what is good for humanity.

What do these charges amount to?

Is it not true that the actions of Alexander I that are applauded by historians, the liberal initiatives taken early in his reign, his struggle against Napoleon, his intransigence in 1812, and the campaign of 1813, flow from the same sources – the blood-line, upbringing and life experience that made Alexander’s personality what it was – that produced the actions for which he is censured by historians, such as the Holy Alliance, the restoration of Poland, the reaction that set in during the 1820s?

What is the essence of these charges?

Alexander I is charged as follows: he, a figure of history standing on the highest pinnacle of human power, with all the blinding light of history focused upon him, a man who was prey to the strongest blandishments of intrigue, trickery, flattery and self-delusion inextricably linked with power, someone who at all stages of his life felt a sense of personal responsibility for everything that was going on all over Europe, a living personality as opposed to a creature of fiction, subject like everybody else to his own practices, passions and impulses towards goodness, beauty and truth – this man is charged not with lacking virtue fifty years ago (the historians have no complaints on this score), but with a failure to share the same views concerning the good of humanity as those held today by some professor who has spent all his adult life studying, i.e. reading books, listening to lectures and scribbling notes from these books and lectures in a note-book.