A Short History of Russia

by Mary Platt Parmele

CHAPTER XXI

RUSSIA ORIENTALIZED—EASTERN QUESTION

As Alexander left no sons, by the law of primogeniture his brother Constantine, the next oldest in the family of Paul I., should have been his successor. But Constantine had already privately renounced the throne in favor of his brother Nicholas. The actual reason for this renunciation was the Grand Duke's deep attachment to a Polish lady for whom he was willing even to relinquish a crown. The letter announcing his intention contained these words: "Being conscious that I have neither genius, talents, nor energy necessary for my elevation, I beg your Imperial Majesty to transfer this right to my brother Nicholas, the next in succession." The document accepting the renunciation and acknowledging Nicholas as his successor was safely deposited by Alexander, its existence remaining a profound secret even to Nicholas himself.

At the time of the Emperor's death Constantine, who was Viceroy of Poland, was residing at Cracow. Nicholas, unaware of the circumstances, immediately took the oath of allegiance to his brother and also administered it to the troops at St. Petersburg. It required some time for Constantine's letter to arrive, stating his immovable determination to abide by the decision which would be found in his letter to the late Emperor. There followed a contest of generosity—Nicholas urging and protesting, and his brother refusing the elevation. Three weeks passed—weeks of disastrous uncertainty—with no acknowledged head to the Empire.

Such an opportunity was not to be neglected by the revolutionists in the South nor their co-workers in the North. Pestel, the leader, had long been organizing his recruits, and St. Petersburg and Moscow were the centers of secret political societies. The time for action had unexpectedly come. There must be a swift overturning: the entire imperial family must be destroyed, and the Senate and Holy Synod must be compelled to adopt the Constitution which had been prepared.

The hour appointed for the beginning of this direful programme was the day when the senators and the troops should assemble to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas. The soldiers, who knew nothing of the plot, were incited to refuse to take the oath on the ground that Constantine's resignation was false, and that he was a prisoner and in chains. Constantine was their friend and going to increase their pay. One Moscow regiment openly shouted: "Long life to Constantine!" and when a few conspirators cried "Long live the Constitution!" the soldiers asked if that was Constantine's wife. So the ostensible cause of the revolt, which soon became general, was a fidelity to their rightful Emperor, who was being illegally deposed. Under this mask worked Pestel and his co-conspirators, composed in large measure of men of high intelligence and standing, including even government officials and members of the aristocracy.

A few days were sufficient to overcome this abortive attempt at revolution in Russia. Pestel, when he heard his death sentence, said, "My greatest error is that I tried to gather the harvest before sowing the seed"; and Ruileef, "I knew this enterprise would be my destruction—but could no longer endure the sight of my country's anguish under despotism." When we think of the magnitude of the offense, the monstrous crime which was contemplated; and when we remember that Nicholas was by nature the very incarnation of unrestrained authority, the punishment seems comparatively light. There was no vindictiveness, no wholesale slaughter. Five leaders were deliberately and ignominiously hanged, and hundreds of their misguided followers and sympathizers went into perpetual exile in Siberia—there to expiate the folly of supposing that a handful of inexperienced enthusiasts and doctrinaires could in their studies create new and ideal conditions, and build up with one hand while they were recklessly destroying with the other. Their aims were the abolition of serfdom, the destruction of all existing institutions, and a perfect equality under a constitutional government. They were definite and sweeping—and so were the means for accomplishing them. Their benign government was going to rest upon crime and violence. We should call these men Nihilists now. There were among them writers and thinkers, noble souls which, under the stress of oppression and sympathy, had gone astray. They had failed, but they had proved that there were men in Russia capable of dying for an ideal. When the cause had its martyrs it had become sacred—and though it might sleep, it would not die.

The man sitting upon the throne of Russia now was not torn by conflicts between his ideals and inexorable circumstance. His natural instincts and the conditions of his empire both pointed to the same simple course—an unmitigated autocracy—an absolute rule supported by military power. Instead of opening wider the doors leading into Europe, he intended to close them, and if necessary even to lock them. Instead of encouraging his people to be more European, he was going to be the champion of a new Pan-Slavism and to strive to intensify the Russian national traits. The time had come for this great empire to turn its face away from the West and toward the East, where its true interests were. Such a plan may not have been formulated by Nicholas, but such were the policies instinctively pursued from the beginning of his reign to its close.

Such an attitude naturally brought him at once into conflict with Turkey, with which country he was almost immediately at war. Of course no one suspected him of sentimental sympathy when he espoused the cause of Greece in the picturesque struggle with the Turks which brought Western Europe at last to her rescue. It was only a part of a much larger plan, and when Nicholas had proclaimed himself the Protector of the Orthodox Christians in the East, he had placed himself in a relation to the Eastern Question which could be held by no other sovereign in Europe; for persecuted Christians in the East were not Catholic but Orthodox; and was not he the head of the Orthodox Church? It was to secure this first move in the game of diplomacy that Russia joined England and France, and placed the struggling little state of Greece upon its feet in 1832.

But the conditions in Western Europe were unfavorable to the tranquil pursuit of autocratic ends. Charles X. had presumed too far upon the patient submission of the French people. In 1830 Paris was in a state of insurrection; Charles, the last of the Bourbons, had abdicated; and Louis Philippe, under a new liberal Constitution approved by the people, was King of the French. The indignation of Nicholas at this overturning was still greater when the epidemic of revolt spread to Belgium and to Italy, and then leaped, as such epidemics will, across the intervening space to Russian Poland. The surface calm in that unhappy state ruled by the Grand Duke Constantine swiftly vanished and revealed an entire people waiting for the day when, at any cost, they might make one more stand for freedom. The plan was a desperate one. It was to assassinate Constantine, who had relinquished a throne rather than leave them; to induce Lithuania, their old ally, to join them; and to create an independent Polish state which would bar the Russians from entering Europe.