1 849, Russian armies, commanded by Paskevich, crushed the revolution in Hungary; Russian influence played a major part in the suppression of the revolution in the other provinces of the Austrian Empire and in Prussia; the power of Russia in Europe, and the terror
and hatred which it inspired in the breast of every liberal and constitutionalist beyond its borders, reached their zenith. Russia was to the democrats of this period very much what the fascist powers were
in our own time: the arch-enemy of freedom and enlightenment, the
reservoir of darkness, cruelty and oppression, the land most frequently,
most violently denounced by its own exiled sons, the sinister power,
served by innumerable spies and informers, whose hidden hand was
discovered in every political development unfavourable to the growth
of national or individual liberty in Europe. This wave of liberal
indignation confirmed Nicholas in his conviction that, by his example,
no less than by his exertions, he had saved Europe from moral and
political ruin: his duty had at all times been plain to him; he carried
it out methodically and ruthlessly, unmoved by either flattery or
abuse.
The effect of the revolution on internal affairs in Russia was
immediate and powerful. All plans for agrarian reform, and in particular all proposals for the alleviation of the condition of the serfs, both private and state-owned, not to speak of plans for their liberation
to which the Emperor had at one time given much sympathetic
consideration, were abruptly dropped. For many years it had been a
commonplace, and not in liberal circles alone, that agricultural slavery
was an economic as well as a social evil. Count Kiselev, whom
Nicholas trusted and had invited to be his 'Agrarian Chief of Staff',
held this view strongly, and even the landowners and the reactionary
bureaucrats who did their best to put difficulties in the pa.th of positive
reform had not, for some years, thought it profitable to question the
evil of the system itself. Now, however, the lead given by Gogo! in his
unfortunate Selected Extracts from a Correspondence with Friends was
followed in one or two government-approved school textbooks which
went further than the most extreme Slavophils, and began to represent
serfdom as divinely sanctioned, and resting on the same unshkeable
foundation as other patriarchal Russian institutions-as sacred in its
own way as the divine right of the Tsar himself. Projected reforms of
local government were likewise discontinued. The 'hydra of revolution' was threatening the Empire, and internal enemies, as so often I I
R U SS IAN T H I N K E R S
in the history of Russia, were therefore to be handled with exemplary
severity. The first step taken was connected with censorship.
The steady stream of secret denunciation which issued from
Bulgarin and Grech at last had its effect. Baron Korf and Prince
Menshikov almost simultaneously, it appears, compiled memoranda
giving instances of the laxity of the censorship and the dangerous
liberal tone to be found in the periodical press. The Emperor declared
himself shocked and indignant that this had not been detected earlier.
A committee under Menshikov was immediately set up with instructions to look into the activities of the censors and tighten up existing regulations. This committee summoned the editors of SfJ'IJT"tmmnik
and of Otechesroennye zapisn and reproved them strongly for 'general
unsoundness'. The latter changed its tone, and its editor-publisher
Kraevsky produced in 1 849 a him pmstmt article denouncing western
Europe and all its works, and offering the government a degree of
sycophantic adulation at that time unknown even in Russia, and
scarcely to be found in Bulgarin's subservient St'Utrnaya pchela (Tht
Northern Btt). As for SD'UT"tmmnilt, its most effective contributor
Belinsky, whom nothing could corrupt or silence, had died early in
1 848.1 Henen and Bakunin were in Paris, Granovsky was too mild
and too unhappy to protest. Of major literary figures in Russia
Nekrasov was left almost alone to continue the fight; by displaying
his extraordinary agility and skill in dealing with officials, and by
lying low for a good many months, he managed to survive and even
publish, and so formed the living link between the proscribed radicals
of the 405 and the new and more fanatical generation, tried and
hardened by persecution, which carried on the struggle in the sos and
6os. The Menshikov Committee was duly superseded by a secret
committee (the Emperor was in the habit of submitting critical issues
to secret committees, which often worked at cross-purposes in ignor-
1 There is a story still to be found in the latest Soviet lives of the great
critic that at the time of his death a warrant had gone out for his arrest, and
it is true that Du belt later said that he regretted his death, as otherwise 'we
would have rotted him in a fortress' (M. K. Lemke, NiltolllffJsltit zho11tiormy
i liltroturo s826-s855 gotiw, 2nd ed. [St Petersburg, 1909], p. 190). But
Lemke has conclusively shown that no such warrant had ever been signed and
that the invitation to Belinsky to visit Dubelt, which had largely inspired the
story, was due mainly to a desire of the Third Department to get a specimen
of his handwriting in order to compare it with <hat of a subversive anonymous
letter circulating at the time (ibid., pp. 1 87-90).
1 2.
R U S S I A AND 1 84 8
ance of each other's existence) headed by Buturlin, and later by
Annenkov-commonly known as the 'Second of April Committee'.
Its duty was not that of pre-<:ensorship (which continued to be performed by censors under the direction of the Ministry of Education) but of scrutinising matter already published, with instructions to report
any trace of'unsoundness' to the Emperor himself, who undertook to
execute the necessary punitive measures. This committee was linked
with the political police through the ubiquitous Dubelt. It worked
with blind and relentless zeal, ignoring all other departn:ents and
institutions, and at one point, in an excess of enthusiasm, actually
denounced a satirical poem approved by the Tsar himself.1 By going
with a fine comb through every word published in the none too
numerous periodical press, it succeeded in virtually stiBing all forms of
political and social criticism- indeed everything but the conventional
expressions of unlimited loyalty to the autocracy and the Orthodox
Church. This proved too much even for Uvarov, and, on the plea of
ill-health, he resigned from the Ministry of Education. His successor
was an obscure nobleman- Prince Shirinsky-Shikhmatov,8 who had
submitted a memorandum to the Tsar, pointing out that one of the
mainsprings of disaffection was undoubtedly the freedom of philosophical speculation permitted in the Russian universities. The Emperor accepted this thesis and appointed him to his post with
express instructions to reform university teaching by introducing
stricter observance of the precepts of the Orthodox faith, and in
particular by the elimination of philosophical or other dangerous
leanings. This medieval mandate was carried out in the spirit and