Karamzin justified Catherine’s wars as necessary for Russia’s security, attacked
“impudent and malicious Poland”[95], and when praising Catherine’s wise choice
of military leaders carefully omitted to mention Potyomkin – possibly a survival
of the old masonic antipathy toward him[96]. The third section, where Karamzin
extolled such institutions as the Academy of Arts, the National Schools, the
Orphans’ Home and even the wise censorship[97], was the Russian response to the
social institutions which Karamzin considered to be one of England’s glories[98].
It is, however, the discussion of Catherine the lawgiver that is the most revealing
source of Karamzin’s views on systems of government and the relationship of the
individual and the state. Karamzin portrayed Catherine as favouring comprehen-
sive laws and opposed to all arbitrary power:
“Since She knew that personal security is the first blessing of a man and that with-
out it our life is an eternal torturing worry amidst all the other forms of happiness
and enjoyment. This mild spirit in government, proof of Her love and respect for
mankind, was to be the main characteristic of Her decrees”[99].
Karamzin dwelt at length on Catherine’s arguments in favour of autocracy con-
tained in her Nakaz and attempted to illustrate their justice by examples: he point-
ed to the sorry failure of contemporary France to rule itself and its need of a
“Corsican soldier” to save itself from utter collapse[100]. Simultaneously with his
support for autocracy Karamzin reaffirmed his love of the great Republicans of
history. Although he had himself rejected the possibility of realizing the ideal
republic in the modern world[101], he admired the republican virtues.
Nevertheless, the demands on the individual in a republic were too high; and loss
of civic virtue brought the downfall of a republic:
“Either people have to be angels or every complex form of government based on
the action of different wills becomes eternal dissension and the people become the
unhappy instrument of a few ambitious men, who sacrifice their country for their
own personal benefit”[102].
The idea of autocracy as the time-hallowed and only fitting form of government
for Russia was propounded by Karamzin throughout the Messenger. Whenever
possible, Karamzin praised Alexander as the wise autocrat and connected Russia’s
imminent glory with his personal rule and example[103]. He was particularly anx-
ious that false courtiers or advisers should not blind Alexander to his true obliga-
tions to his country or attempt to impinge upon his power. In his first ode
Karamzin spoke of these “sly flatterers”[104]; in his essay on the Moscow revolt of
1648 he painted the picture of a good tsar, a ‘little father’ to his people but prevent-
ed from helping them by the machinations of his favourites[105]. As distinct from
their position, Karamzin’s was that of a loyal well-intentioned patriot, one of the
“unhypocritical friends of good / Able to speak the truth”[106]. The picture
emerges of a Russia ruled by a wise autocrat, beneath whom the gentry, the ever-
increasing bourgeoisie and the peasantry performed their duties loyally and virtu-
ously, respecting the contribution of every member of society to the general pros-
perity and content with their position: for the rejected western models of republics
and constitutional monarchies Karamzin substituted his own autocratic Arcadia.
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VI.
Behind Karamzin’s persuasive and insistent arguments in favour of what Pushkin
was to call the “necessity of autocracy / And the charms of the knout”[107] stood
a fear of upheaval, of tyranny by one man or many, or more specifically, the spec-
tre of the French Revolution which had haunted and influenced his thought for
more than a decade:
“The Revolution has elucidated ideas: we have seen that the civil order is holy even
in its most local or chance defects, that authority is not tyranny for nations but
protection from tyranny, that when it shatters the beneficent aegis, people become
the victim of terrible disasters which are incomparably more evil than all the usual
abuses of authority, that even Turkish rule is better than anarchy, which is always
the consequence of state conflict, that all the bold theories of the mind, which
from the study wishes to prescribe new laws for the moral and political world,
must remain in books, together with other more or less curious products of wit,
that the institutions of antiquity have a magical force, which cannot be replaced by
any force of intellect, that only time and the good will of a legal government
should correct the imperfections in civil societies, and that with this trust in the
action of time and the wisdom of the authorities, we private citizens must live
peacefully, obey willingly and perform all possible good around us”[108].
He admitted that all the outstanding minds of the day had desired «great changes
and novelties in the constitution of societies», but they had learnt that «revolution
was the abuse of freedom”[109]. To provide an example of a great European mind,
seduced by the French Revolution and eventually rejecting it, Karamzin chose to
translate an article on Klopstock by Archenholz. Not only is the central passage an
apology for Karamzin’s own attitude to the Revolution, but the article as a whole
echoes many of Karamzin’s ideas on both patriotism and literary works:
Klopstock, like all true philanthropists and all people of unusual intelligence, who
are not egoists but friends of the general good, was a friend of the French
Revolution, when it seemed a beneficial change in human destiny in France.
Together with others he hoped that a strong and enlightened nation could be its
own wise lawgiver: at that time much appeared captivating, especially from afar.
Above all, his humane heart was enraptured by the famous decree of the National
Assembly that France would forever reject wars of aggression – a decree made in
the dawn of this great event but soon mocked and forgotten by the new rulers of
France. But this passionate love for the new freedom of the French gradually died
as a result of subsequent events and finally disappeared completely during the ter-
rors of the Convention[110].
Karamzin’s desire to exorcise the French influence is apparent from the very first
number of the Messenger. In addition to a translation entitled A History of the
French Revolution, Selected from Latin Authors (Istoriya frantsuzskoy revolyutsii,
izbrannaya iz latinskikh pisateley), in which the horrors and excesses of each stage
of the Revolution were illustrated by quotations from Tacitus, Sallust and oth-
ers[111], the piece Alcibiades to Pericles (Al’tsibiad k Periklu) was full of obvious
allusions to the pseudo-wisdom of the revolutionary leaders[112]. A third article
Ladies’ Wigs (Zhenskiye pariki) linked the fashion for wigs with the “unfortunate
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