Russia under the Old regime

CHAPTER 10

The title of poet and writer has long since eclipsed the tinsel of epaulettes and gaudy uniforms. Vissarion Belinskii, 'Letter to Gogol' (1847) A great writer is, so to speak, a second government of his country. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, First Circle {1955-64) The sum total of the preceding analysis of relations between state and society in pre-1900 Russia is that none of the economic or social groups of the old regime was either able or willing to stand up to the crown and challenge its monopoly of political power. They were not able to do so because, by enforcing the patrimonial principle, i.e. by effectively asserting its claim to all the territory of the realm as property and all its inhabitants as servants, the crown prevented the formation of pockets of independent wealth or power. And they were not willing because, in so far as under this system the crown was the ultimate source of all material benefits, each group was strongly inclined to fawn on it. Dvoriane looked to the autocracy to keep their serfs in place, to conquer new lands for distribution to them as pomestia, and to preserve their various exclusive rights; the merchants depended on the crown to grant them licences and monopolies, and through high tariffs to protect their inefficient industries; the clergy had only the crown to safeguard their landed properties and, after these were gone, to pay them subsidies and keep their flock from defecting. Under the adverse economic conditions prevailing in Russia, groups aspiring to rise above the subsistence level had but one option open to them, and that was to collaborate with the state - in other words, to give up political ambition. Throughout Russian history, private wealth came into being and was viewed as the consequence of government favour, as government reward for good political behaviour. It was by exercising humility not by struggling that dvoriane and merchants amassed