Meanwhile, far away from both capitals, in Iaroslav there was formed, almost of itself without any commands or even any encouragement being given, a Russian dramatic company which is indissolubly bound up with the name of Volkov. Theodore Volkov was the son of a merchant and had been educated in the Iaroslav seminary, where, following the example of the Academy of Kiev, and others, representations of a spiritual or religious character were given. They produced a great impression upon the young merchant; when later on he managed to get to St. Petersburg and saw on the stage of the corps des Cadets a dramatic representation given with scenery, lighting, and mechanical contrivances, Volkov was stupefied with rapture and astonishment. Being to the highest degree sensitive to every artistic impression, being a painter, a musician, and a sculptor—all self-taught—Volkov was also endued with that constancy and patience without which even gifted natures do not attain to any results. Volkov studied the material side of scenic art to the smallest details—that is, the arrangement of the machinery, of the scenes, etc.; when he returned to Iaroslav he asked his parents, with whom he lived, to let him have an empty tanner’s shed; there he arranged a pit and a stage, and making up a company of young merchants like himself, sons of citizens and clerks, gave representations which aroused the enthusiasm of all the spectators. The intelligent and practical Volkov, seeing how the population of Iaroslav flocked to his representations, named a price for them—a five kopeck piece for the first rows—and thus little by little he amassed a sum with which in 1752 he was able to build a general public theatre with room for one thousand spectators.
The taste for the stage had meanwhile greatly spread in St. Petersburg; in various private houses dramatic representations were given at evening parties; it was therefore not surprising that the Iaroslav theatre soon began to be talked of. The empress invited Volkov to come to St. Petersburg with his company, as she wished to see his representations given on the stage of the court theatre. She was remarkably pleased with them, and four years later issued an ukase for the establishment of a public theatre. The first director of this theatre and almost the only dramatic writer was Sumarokov; according to the testimony of contemporaries Volkov was one of its most talented actors and his friend and fellow worker Dmitrievski a great artist.
We must here speak of another still more remarkable Russian native genius—Lomonosov. It is well known how, when he was a youth of sixteen, devoured by a thirst for knowledge, he secretly left the paternal roof and made his way on foot from Kholmogori to Moscow. How unattractive must life and learning have appeared to him in those early days! “Having only one altyn (a three-kopeck piece) a day for salary, it was impossible for him to spend more on food than a halfpenny a day for bread and a halfpenny worth of kvass (a kind of beer or mead); the rest had to go for paper, books, and other necessities.” Thus he described his life in the Zaikonospaskvi Ecclesiastical Academy to Ivan Shuvalov and concluded with the following words: “I lived thus for five years and did not abandon science!” Theodore Prokopovitch, when he was already an old man, visited the Moscow academy a few years before his death; he noticed Lomonosov there and praised him for his laboriousness and learning. In 1737 Lomonosov was sent abroad to perfect himself and placed himself under the surveillance of the then famous scholar, Wolff, who, while despising him for his disorderly life, spoke with respect of his capacities and success in study. Lomonosov followed the lectures of the German professors and amused himself with the German students. The news of Minikh’s great victories and the taking of Khotin reached him; his patriotic feelings were aroused, and he wrote an ode. When the verses were received in St. Petersburg everyone was struck with their harmony; and when Lomonosov returned from Germany in the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign his reputation as a poet had already preceded him—the more he wrote the greater his fame became. Poetry, however, was not Lomonosov’s strongest point, and verses do not occupy a quarter of his entire works. His mind worked even more than his imagination, and his scholarly writings are striking in their variety. He composed a grammar of the Russian language from which several generations have learned; he laid down rules of versification, the foundation of which are even now recognised by everyone; he wrote on chemistry, physics, astronomy, metallurgy, geology; he composed a Russian history, wrote a hypothesis concerning the great learned expeditions and memoranda bearing on questions of the state (as for instance measures for increasing and maintaining the population in Russia): in fact, Lomonosov’s extraordinary intellect seemed to touch upon every branch of mental activity. He was made a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, but there the German element reigned supreme and Lomonosov was one of those who, while venerating the work of Peter the Great and the European learning introduced by him, yet was oppressed by foreign tutorage and took offence when the Germans put forward their own countrymen to the detriment of meritorious Russians. Continual disputes and quarrels arose between Lomonosov and his fellow members; nor, being of a very impetuous and obstinate nature, was Lomonosov always in the right. His rough and sharp measures frequently led him into quarrels even outside the academy, for instance with his literary brethren, Frediakovski and Sumarokov. All this might greatly have injured Lomonosov, but fortunately for him he possessed powerful protectors in the persons of Count Worontzov and Count Razumovski, who liked to show favour to the first Russian scholar and poet.
But the strongest, truest, and most constant of his protectors was Ivan Shuvalov. Shuvalov had many defects—his character was weak, lazy, and careless; but he nevertheless represented one of the most consolatory types of his epoch: strong, energetic types were not uncommon in the first half of the eighteenth century, but gentle, benevolent, indulgent natures were rarely to be met with. Shuvalov was not captivated by clamorous deeds, like the men of Peter’s time, but by the peaceful progress of science and art. Therefore if the weakness of his character made him an instrument for the ambitious designs of his cousin, his heartfelt sympathies drew him towards Lomonosov, of whom he naturally learned much and—what is of more importance—with whom he devised means for the spread of education in Russia. The result of these deliberations was a vast plan for the establishment of schools throughout the governments, and finally of a university in Moscow. The establishment of a university seemed of the first necessity, as it was to furnish Russia with teachers; this had been Peter’s intention with regard to the academy: but it had not been fulfilled. In his report to the senate upon this subject, Shuvalov wrote that it would be desirable to appoint a “sufficient number of worthy men of the Russian nationality, acquainted with the sciences, to spread education in distant parts among the common people, so that thus superstition, dissent, and other like heresies proceeding from ignorance might be destroyed.” The senate approved Shuvalov’s proposition and in 1755 the University of Moscow was founded.
We have given as just and complete a picture of the period of the empress Elizabeth as is possible in view of the scarcity of information obtainable concerning many circumstances of that time. Elizabeth left behind her if not a great memory yet, broadly speaking, a good one. Her administration may be reproached with much: in its foreign policy it was not sufficiently independent; it was not sufficiently watchful in interior affairs, where oversights occasioned special evils; moreover examples of unlawful enrichment attained huge dimensions. But her reign may be said to have led Russia out of bondage to the Germans, while the level of education was not in the smallest degree lowered, but on the contrary considerably raised. Much that brought forth such brilliant fruits under Catherine II was sown under Elizabeth.[d]
Bain’s Estimate of Elizabeth
It is the peculiar glory of Elizabeth Petrovna that she consulted once for all the life work of her illustrious father. During the first fifteen years after the death of the great political regenerator, his stupendous creation, Russia, (before him we only hear of Muscovy,) was frequently in danger. The reactionary boyars who misruled the infant empire under Peter II would have sacrificed both the new capital and the new fleet, the twin pivots upon which the glory and the prosperity of the new state may be said to have turned; the German domination under the empress Anna, directly contrary as it was to the golden rule of Peter, “Russia for the Russians,” threatened the nation with a western yoke far more galling than the eastern or Tatar yoke of ruder times. From this reaction, from this yoke the daughter of Peter the Great set the nation free, and beneath her beneficent sceptre Russia may be said to have possessed itself again. All the highest offices of state were once more entrusted to natives and to natives only, and whenever a foreigner was proposed for the next highest, Elizabeth, before confirming the appointment, invariably inquired: “Is there then no capable Russian who would do as well?” Moreover she inherited from her father the sovereign gift of choosing and using able councillors, and not only did she summon to power a new generation of native statesmen and administrators, but she constrained them to work harmoniously together despite their mutual jealousies and conflicting ambitions. She herself had advantageously passed through the bitter but salutary school of adversity. With all manner of dangers haunting her path from her youth upwards, she had learnt the necessity of circumspection, deliberation, self-control; she had acquired the precious faculty of living in the midst of people intent on jostling each other, without in any way jostling them; and these great qualities she brought with her to the throne without losing anything of that infinite good-nature, that radiant affability, that patriarchal simplicity which so endeared her to her subjects and made her, deservedly, the most popular of all the Russian monarchs. As regards her foreign policy, it may be safely affirmed she laid down the deep and durable foundations upon which Catherine II was to build magnificently indeed, but too often, alas! so flimsily. The diplomacy of Elizabeth, on the whole, was not so confident or so daring as the diplomacy of her brilliant successor; but, on the other hand, it was more correct, equally dignified and left far less to chance. It must also be borne in mind that the energy and firmness of Elizabeth considerably facilitated the task of Catherine by rendering Prussia, Russia’s most dangerous neighbour, practically harmless to her for the remainder of the century. This of itself was a political legacy of inestimable value, and it was not the only one. All the great captains, all the great diplomatists of the “ever victorious Catherine,” men like Rumiantsev, Suvarov, Riepnin, Besborodko, the Panins and the Galitzins, were brought up in the school of Elizabeth. Excellent was the use which the adroit and audacious Catherine made of these instruments of government, these pioneers of empire, but it should never be forgotten that she received them all from the hands of the daughter of Peter the Great.[g]
PETER III (1762 A.D.)
As Elizabeth, on her death-bed, had confirmed the rights of Peter III; and as the conspirators, deprived of Bestuzhev their guide, were unable to act with energy, the new emperor encountered no opposition. On the contrary, he was immediately recognised by the military; and the archbishop of Novgorod, in the sermon preached on the occasion, thanked heaven that a prince so likely to imitate his illustrious grandfather was vouchsafed to Russia. Catherine was present. She wore a peculiar dress to conceal her pregnancy, and her countenance exhibited some indication of the anxious feeling which she was obliged to repress. Compelled to defer the execution of her ambitious purposes, and uncertain what vengeance the czar might exert for her numerous infidelities, she might well be apprehensive.
But she had no real foundation for the fear. Of all the sovereigns of that or any age, Peter was among the most clement. Whether he thought that clemency might bind to his interests one whose talents he had learned to respect, or that her adherents were too numerous and powerful to allow of her being punished—whether, in short, he had some return of affection for her, or his own conscience told him that she had nearly as much to forgive as he could have, we will not decide. One thing only is certain—that, in about three months after his accession, he invested her with the domains held by the late empress. Certainly his was a mind incapable of long continued resentment. His heart was better than his head. Resolved to signalise his elevation by making others happy, he recalled all whom his predecessor had exiled, except Bestuzhev. Many he restored to their former honours and possessions. Thus the aged Munich was made governor-general of Siberia, restored to his military command; while Biron, who certainly deserved no favour, was reinvested with the duchy of Courland. He did more: he restored the prisoners made by the generals of Elizabeth, and gave them money to defray their passage home. And, as Frederick had always been the object of his idolatry, the world expected the armistice which he published, and which was preparatory to a peace between the two countries.