Russia under the Old regime

THE INTELLIGENTSIA

'Virtue' was that which middle-class ideologists from Alberti to Benjamin Franklin had thought it it to be: industriousness, modesty, truthfulness, compassion, incorruptibility, studiousness. In his satirical publications, Novikov lashed out at life at the court and the estates of the rich in the name of these values. Catherine at first ignored his criticism, but his insistent harping on the dark sides of Russian life began eventually to annoy her, and she engaged him on the pages of her journal in literary polemics. That which Novikov lashed as 'vice' she preferred to treat as human 'weakness'. She called him intolerant and bilious. In one of their exchanges, Catherine charged Novikov with suffering from a 'fever', employing language which foreshadows some of the more bitter anti-intelligentsia polemics of the next century:

An individual begins to experience boredom and sadness, sometimes from idleness, sometimes from reading books. He begins to complain about everything around him, and in the end about the very universe. Having reached this phase, the disease comes to a head and overcomes reason. The afflicted person dreams of building castles in the air [complains] that everyone does everything wrongly, and that the government itself, try hard as it may, gives no satisfaction at all. In their minds, such people feel that they alone possess the ability to give advice and to arrange everything for the best.7 Novikov responded in more cautious language but without yielding an inch. On one occasion he even had the temerity to criticize the Empress's command of the Russian language.

This unprecedented exchange between sovereign and subject, unthinkable even one generation earlier, showed how rapidly the small fissure in the patrimonial structure had widened. In the reign of Elizabeth the emergence of belles lettres as an independent vocation represented a major constitutional change; in that of Catherine, the realm of independent thought came to extend to political controversy. Significantly, Novikov's disagreement with the Empress had for him no untoward consequences. Catherine continued to support him in a variety of ways, including subsidies. In the 1770s and 1780s, assisted by the Empress and wealthy friends, he initiated a programme of educational and philanthropic works of such grand scope that here one can do no more than list its peaks. His book publishing enterprises, designed to place informative rather than merely diverting literature in the hands of noble and burgher families, turned out over nine hundred titles. Through a Translators' Seminary, he made available to Russians many foreign works of a religious and literary nature. Part of the proceeds of his journalism and publishing went to support a school which he founded for orphans and indigent children, and a free hospital. During a famine, he organized relief. These would have been counted as good deeds anywhere in the world; but in Russia they were