Russia under the Old regime

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seigneurs need not be feared. What remains then, and where are the elements of dangerous discontent?... What was not done in the previous reign [of Paul i] against justice, against the rights of these people, against their personal security? If ever there was a time to fear anything it was then. But did they ever breathe a word? Quite the contrary - all the repressive measures were carried out with amazing scrupulousness, and it was precisely the gentleman [gentilhomnu] who executed the measures designed against his fellow noble, measures which happen to have run against the interests and honour of this estate. And one wants that a body totally devoid of public spirit do things which call for esprit de corps, clever and a little persistent conduct, and courage!M Twenty-four years after these scornful remarks had been uttered came the Decembrist uprising, in which spirit and courage certainly were not lacking. But nevertheless, Stroganov's opinion is correct as pertains to the dvorianstvo as a whole. For the remainder of the Imperial regime it never again gave it much trouble.* In dealing with the politics of a class as diversified as the Russian dvorianstvo, it is necessary to draw a distinction between its three constituent elements, the rich, the middling and the poor.

The poor can be ignored for this purpose. For although they constituted more than nine-tenths of all the dvoriane, they had no evident political aspirations. Their concerns were of an immediate material nature. Like the peasants, whose way of life many of them shared, they looked to the crown for help and reacted to any effort to liberalize the system of government as a move undertaken in the interest of the magnates. As Stroganov aptly put it, this type, especially when ennobled by way of service, was concerned only to 'see nothing superior to die Emperor's power'. These people, so brilliantly depicted in the novels of Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin, made for a profoundly conservative force.

The very rich - members of some one thousand families with a thousand or more souls each (they owned, on the average, four thousand adult serfs of both sexes) - presented a different picture. They tended to live in oriental splendour, surrounded by hordes of friends, retainers and domestics. Very few of them had any clear idea of their incomes and expenditures. They usually squandered all the rents, and got into debt which their heirs had to sort out the best they could. At a pinch, they

* It is, of course, true that the bulk of the opposition to the imperial regime in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries came from people born dvoriane. But the liberals and radical dissenters were struggling not for the interests of their class, which is what concerns us here. They were struggling for national and social ideals of society as a whole - a struggle which sometimes compelled them to move against the interests of their own class. Surely, Bakunin, Herzen, Kropotkin, Lenin, Struve, Shipov, though of dvoriane background, cannot be said to have been in any sense exponents of dvorianstvo causes. could always sell one of the many scattered properties of which such great fortunes were normally composed, and go on living in their accustomed style. The Rostovs of War and Peace give a faithful portrait of such a family.

It was customary for Russian grandees to keep an open house to which even the slightest acquaintances were freely admitted to share in lavish offerings of food and drink - the surplus from estates for which there was no worth-while market. Much money was spent on foreign luxuries, such as tropical fruits and wines; it was said that imperial Russia consumed each year more champagne than was produced in all the vineyards of France. The hospitality of the great Russian houses could probably not be duplicated anywhere else in Europe. It was possible only where no one kept a close watch on the account books.

An essential feature of life of the very rich were hordes of domestics who catered to their every whim. One general had 800 servants, 12 of whom were assigned exclusively to care for his illegitimate children. A profligate count employed 400 domestics, including 17 lackeys, each of whom had assigned a single duty; one to bring his master water, another to light his pipe, and so on. Another seigneur boasted a special hunting orchestra of serfs, each of whom produced only one sound. Rich households had also their contingents of clowns, 'Arabs' (Negroes), 'Holy People', story-tellers of all sorts, to help while away long winter evenings. Most of the domestics did little work, but prestige required one to have as many of them as possible. Even the poorer dvoriane liked to have a couple of servants in attendance.

A household of this kind, when it ventured on a trip, resembled a tribal migration. In 1830 Pushkin met the son of a grand seigneur who described to him how his father used to travel in the reign of Catherine the Great. This is what Pushkin wrote down:

When my father was about to undertake a journey somewhere, he moved with his entire household. In front, on a tall Spanish horse, rode the Pole Kulikovskii... It was his function in the house to ride out on market days on a camel and show the peasants the lanterne magique. On the road he gave the signal to stop and go. Behind him followed my father's gig, and behind it, a carriage for use in case of rain; under the seat was the place of my father's favourite clown, Ivan Stepanich. These were followed by carriages loaded with us children, our governesses, teachers, nursemaids, and so on. Then came a grated cart with the fools, Negroes, dwarfs - in all, thirteen persons. Then again an identical cart with the sick borzois. Next came a gigantic box with horn instruments, a buffet carried by sixteen horses, and finally wagons with Kalmyk tents, and all sorts of furniture, because my father always stopped overnight under the open sky. You can judge yourself how many people were involved, musicians, cooks, dog-watchers, and other helpers.21