The Romance of the Romanoffs

by Joseph McCabe

It seems to have been the laughter of Europe which roused the Tsar from the half-hysterical condition into which he fell, and it may be said that from that time forward he became a more vigorous and skilful, and generally courageous, commander. That he ever became a great soldier is emphatically denied by many competent authorities. But he had, we saw, two qualities of value: a colossal nervous energy, and a great promptness to seek teachers in the more advanced west. He entered upon terrific preparations for a more promising campaign. Brushing aside the clergy, he melted down their bells to make cannon, and he, swinging from place to place with giant strides, spurred his subjects to throw all their energy into the task. That he had a clear and statesmanlike idea of opening “a window upon Europe” may very well be questioned. It is more in accord with his psychology to suppose that his mind did not go much beyond a fierce resolve to beat Sweden. But out of his very need to create an army for this purpose he began to develop his Empire. He needed money, and his merchants must earn more money. He needed metal, and it must be found. He was stung by the opinion of the world that Russia was still barbaric, and he struck fiercely at cherished old traditions. He saw the Church, especially on its monastic side, as a great fat pale fungus sucking the national sap, and he attacked it.

Many of his internal reforms belong to this period. In 1698, we saw, he had fallen, scissors in hand, upon the Russian beard, and desecrated it. A ukase ordered all Russians to shave the chin, and even this change cost a mighty struggle. Ancient texts of Scripture plainly sanctioned the beard: sacred ikons showed that the saints, and even Christ, had always worn beards: and, in fine, it was not comfortable to have to face the piercing Russian winds in the winter with a clean-shaven face. Peter fought for years against this symbol of the power of antiquity. Soldiers were put at the doors of churches and instructed to pull out the beards of rebels. Heavy fines were imposed.

With this went a reform of the clothing. Long, skirted coats were traditional, and had become sacred; and they were considered warmer in a Russian winter. Peter ordered shorter and more workman-like coats, and patterns were exhibited in the streets to the outraged people. The nobles were, as a rule, not unwilling to dress in western fashion. The poor were allowed a few years in which to wear out their long coats. But it was a long and futile struggle, as pictures of Russian peasants show to-day. Even women were ordered to trail less cloth and, to the boisterous amusement of the crowd, the skirts of the recalcitrant were lifted up in the street by officials and torn or sheared.

The position of woman was a more direct religious concern. The customs which made the Russian woman, especially of the middle and better class, a slave of her menfolk and easy victim of the clergy, had been elaborated and codified by the clergy themselves, though in substance the zealous enclosure of women was, we saw, borrowed alike from Tatars and Greeks. A girl lived in terror behind locked doors, growing fat for the marriage-mart. The way out from her quarters was through the father’s room, and, whenever she was suffered to go out, she was heavily veiled. Marriages were arranged by deputies. Even during the ceremony bride and bridegroom were separated by a curtain. The bride went to bed while her new husband was thoroughly intoxicated below—the worse the bargain his relatives had made for him the more carefully he was stupefied with drink—and when he at length reeled into the room, she showed her face for the first time. Usually he did not examine her face closely. If he were sober enough to find that he had a pock-marked, cross-eyed, lean and skinny spouse, he might there and then bully her into a promise to enter a nunnery and leave him free. The marriage was generally consummated before he came to dislike her, but the resource was still open to a resourceful man. The stick was a powerful instrument of persuasion, and it was used generally and brutally. Women drank heavily in their miserable quarters, and remained in the last degree of ignorance and superstition.

Peter’s mother, and the example of Sophia, had already raised some defiance of this tradition. Peter himself loathed it and violently assailed it: partly because it was one of the antique practices which made Russia ridiculous and kept it unprogressive, partly because he genuinely wanted the women, morals or no morals, to enjoy life as his gay women-friends of the foreign quarter, and later of his court, did. He kicked over the barriers and encouraged women to come out. He ordered a six weeks’ interval between betrothal and marriage, and wanted girls to see men before they married them. He gave his daughters a French governess, and urged his nobles to do the same, or send their daughters abroad to be educated. In 1704 he startled and outraged Moscow by having a procession of young ladies on the street, scattering flowers and showing their fresh faces to the world.

Toward the close of his reign (in 1718) he desperately ordered his people to hold periodical receptions, or “drawing-room” entertainments, in their houses from four in the afternoon until ten. It is understood that his recent visit to Paris gave him the idea. Chess and smoking and dancing and drinking—but no cards or dice—were to be provided, and men and women were to mix socially. But social intercourse enforced by the knout is not apt to be genial. They were, as far as the law was obeyed, melancholy entertainments.

To all these reforms the clergy and monks were opposed, and he quickly attacked their power and wealth. In the December of 1699 he flouted the Church-calendar and decreed that henceforward, as in the rest of the civilised world, the year would begin on the First of January. An entire reform of the calendar was beyond even his audacity, and Russia still lingered behind the world. In 1700 he ordered the opening of apothecaries’ shops in Moscow, and, although the bulk of the messes sold in such places at the time were not much more efficacious than charms or the prayers of the monks, it was a healthy assault on tradition and the trade of the priests. In the same year he began his direct assault upon the ecclesiastical authorities.

The Patriarch of Moscow died in October, and Peter boldly refused to appoint a successor. It could not be pretended that such an institution was an essential part of the Russian tradition, as the patriarchate of Moscow had been founded only by Boris Godunoff, but the murmurs of the clergy may be imagined. Peter appointed instead a “Superintendent of the Patriarchal Throne,” and through this man he got control of the wealth and affairs of the Church. A separate department took control of the monasteries, and the Tsar made a bold attack upon this economic evil. Monasteries and convents were full of men and women who were religious only in name and dress. Frequently they took no vows, and their sole intention was to enjoy the immunities, the well-fed idleness, and the frequent dissoluteness of the religious institutions. As in other lands, centuries of ignorant piety had showered wealth upon an institution which at first had won sympathy by its austerity and now retained it by hypocrisy. Such a condition, when Peter sought for war-purposes every rouble he could get, stirred his wrath, and he had little piety to restrain him. He “regulated” the incomes of the monasteries and convents in such fashion that they became less attractive to economic parasites and sensual hypocrites. As time went on he increased the restrictions of monastic life, and tried to compel the monks to teach or work.

To the dissenters he was, naturally, more lenient than his predecessors, though he took advantage of their nonconformity to secure heavy fines for his treasury; and to foreign heretics he gave complete liberty. Clergy, monks, and dissenters roared their discontent, openly calling him “Antichrist,” but Peter was content with an occasional execution or application of the knout to some monk’s broad shoulders. In 1721 he at length conceived a plan of Church-government, and created the “Ecclesiastical College,” as the supreme clerical authority, which became in time the Holy Synod. His futile efforts to educate Russia out of its morass of superstition and conservatism will be noticed later. For the moment I would recall only how the mighty problems raised by the appalling condition of the country forced themselves upon him in the course of his one clearly conceived design: the destruction of the Swede. When he thus saw an abuse he smote it, angrily and unscientifically. He had not the mood or mind to sit down to the elaboration of a constructive programme. He probably devoted more time, and more cheerfully, to creating the rules and orgies of his “Mad Ones” than to the conception of a system of education.