“Those loathsome tyrants, comfortingly for the good heart few in number, who
forget that, for a true member of the gentry to be a good master is to be the father
of one’s subjects, could no longer act in darkness”[81].
He expanded this view in what is perhaps the most optimistic and idyllic essay he
wrote for the Messenger – “Pleasing Prospects, Hopes and Desires of the Present
Time” (Priyatnyye vidy, nadezhdy I zhelaniya nyneshego vremeni):
“Enlightenment destroys the abuse of a master’s power, which even according to
our existing laws is not tyrannical and unlimited. A member of the Russian gen-
try gives necessary land to his peasants; he is their protector in civil affairs and
their helper in accidental or natural disasters: these are his duties! For this he
demands from them half the working days in a week: this is his right!”[82]
Given just masters and such an understanding of his position, the peasant was to
be content with his lot and serve his country as his station in life allowed.
Enlightenment, Karamzin argued, allowed the peasant to see the justice of his
position; educated European peasants who “bless their modest lot in civil society,
consider themselves not its victims but beneficiaries like other classes, all of which
must work, if in different ways, for their own and their country’s benefit”[83].
In his defence of the Russian social system Karamzin was consciously reacting
against what he considered were ill-informed attacks and criticism from foreign-
ers[84]; his most open defence of serfdom, “The Letter of a Country Dweller”
(Pis’mo sel’skogo zhitelya) rejects foreign travellers’ explanation of the laziness of
the Russian peasant as a consequence of the evils of slavery. Karamzin saw the serf
as “lazy by nature, habit and ignorance of the advantages of industry”[85]. In addi-
tion, they had an incorrigible weakness for drinking, the bete noire to which
Karamzin pointed in any discussion of emancipation without enlightenment[86].
Karamzin was heavily critical of the study-bound scholar’s pipe-dreams, the sys-
tematic philosopher’s theories, which ignored realities[87]; faithful to his gospel of
the middle way, Karamzin saw change coming gradually, unhurriedly:
“Time moves forward the reason of nations, but quietly and slowly; woe to the
lawgiver who flies ahead! The wise man goes step by step, looking around him.
God sees whether I love mankind and the Russian people; whether I am prjdiced,
whether I worship the loathsome idol of self-interest – but for the true prosperity
of our peasants I wish only that they have good masters and the means to enlight-
enment, which alone will make possible all that is good”[88].
Karamzin was firmly opposed to immediate emancipation. He was unable to
envisage freeing the peasants without land – and this he considered at that time
impracticable; equally he believed that without some degree of education and
awareness of the many problems facing them, the peasants would abuse their lib-
erty with idleness and drink. His caution was apt to be interpreted as reactionary
by a generation of eager young reformers, his defence of serfdom as a preference
for slavery over freedom[89].
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V.
Karamzin’s defence of gentry supremacy and serfdom was one aspect of a compre-
hensive statement on the type of government and society he envisaged for Russia.
It was based on certain beliefs fundamental even to his early writings, but modi-
fied by his experiences, both public and private, during the reigns of Catherine and
Paul. Karamzin’s writings in the first years of Alexander’s reign reveal him to be a
consummate political publicist.
He greeted Alexander’s accession as he had Paul’s – with an ode. Encouraged by
the gift of a signet ring from the Tsar, he wrote a further ode for Alexander’s coro-
nation and by the end of 1801 he had completed for publication his Historical
Panegyric to Catherine II. These three works outline Karamzin’s demands on the
young tsar and anticipate the main arguments of the Messenger of Europe. The
burden of his odes is the need for a code of civil laws that would ensure the free-
dom of the individual and define the responsibilities of the citizen[90]. There is no
suggestion that the law was above the monarch, for he was supreme and answer-
able only to God; nevertheless, fear of history’s judgement was an incentive for a
monarch to be virtuous:
To tyrants my scroll is frightening;
To good monarchs it is kind[91].
Karamzin’s panegyric to Catherine was an attempt to veil his demands on the new
reign under praise for certain aspects of Catherine’s; Karamzin was prompted to
this stratagem by promises contained in Alexander’s first manifesto:
“Accepting the throne, We accept the responsibility of governing the nation
entrusted to Us by God according to the laws and heart of Our most august grand-
mother, the Empress Catherine the Great”[92].
Karamzin’s allegedly historical survey of Catherine’s achievements is a fantasy of
what might have been; he elected to forget the reasons for his limited praise dur-
ing her reign and portray Catherine in an ideal light. She became an indispensa-
ble part of his scheme of Russian development, which linked her name with those
of Peter the Great and Alexander. For his new tasks of civic oratory Karamzin used
all the devices and pathos of his sentimental style, as a contemporary satirist clear-
ly recognized[93].
Following a short introduction, in which he drew attention to the “immortal
pages” of Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois, a work of immense importance for both
Catherine’s and his own political concepts[94], Karamzin reviewed Catherine’s
achievements under the three heads of victories, law-giving and institutions. The
result, however, is essentially an outline of Karamzin’s own political and social
views, to be illustrated not only from the pages of the Messenger but from such
later writings as the Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia (Zapiski o drevney i
novoy Rossii, 1811), the Opinion of a Russian Citizen (Mneniye russkogo grazh-
danina, 1819) and Thoughts on True Freedom (Mysli ob istinnoy svobode, 1826).
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