Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History

The Formation of the Russian National Identity: The Role of Status Insecurity and
Ressentiment
Author(s): Liah Greenfeld
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Jul., 1990), pp. 549-591
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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The Formationof the Russian
National Identity:The Role of Status
Insecurity and Ressentiment
LIAH GREENFELD
Harvard University

This paperis a partof a much largerstudy in comparativehistoricalsociology

addressingthe questionof the emergenceandinitialdevelopmentof the related
phenomena that may be subsumed under the umbrellaterm "nationalism":
national identity, nationalconsciousness, and political collectivities based on
such an identityandconsciousness-nations. This largerprojectfocuses on the
five societies thatwere among the very first to define themselves as nations-
England, the United States of America, France, Germany,and Russia-and
examines the social bases of nationalidentity,its embodimentin and perpetua-
tion throughinstitutionalarrangementsandpatternsof culture,and its transfor-
mation in the process of diffusion from one cultureto another.
I define nationality and national identity as essentially a style of thought
(borrowingMannheim'sconcept) anduse the word "nationalism,"by analogy
to "Impressionism," as a name of the style, not to be confused with the
politically activist, xenophobic variety of nationalpatriotismwhich the word
frequently designates. The specificity of this style of thought lies in the
following. Nationalism locates the source of individual identity within a
"people," which is seen as the central object of loyalty and the basis of
collective solidarity.The "people" is the mass of a populationwhose bound-
aries and natureare defined in variousways, but which is usually perceivedas
larger than any concrete community and always as fundamentallyhomoge-
neous, and only superficiallydivided by the lines of status, class, or locality.
The words "people" and "nation" came into their moder use simul-
taneously, as synonyms. The meaningof the word "nation"at the time (early
sixteenth century) was that of an "elite of representatives,"' and in this
meaning it was applied, in England, to the population of the country. The
equationof the two concepts symbolicallyelevatedthe populaceto the position
of an elite. The word "people" acquiredits lofty moder connotation(of the
supremeobject of loyalty, the bearerof sovereignty,and the basis of political
solidarity)and lost the meaningof "rabble"thatit invariablyhad before. This
1 G. Zernatto, "Nation:The History of a Word", Review of Politics, no. 6 (1944), 351-66.

0010-4175/90/3577-9362 $5.00 ? 1990 Society for ComparativeStudy of Society and History

549
550 LIAH GREENFELD

reflected a tremendouschange of attitude, for with it many membersof the

society willingly identifiedwith a groupfromwhichpreviouslythey could only
wish to dissociate themselves.
"Nationalism,"broadly defined, is this new, fundamentallylevelling, de-
motic attitudewhich views membershipin a boundedundifferentiatedcollec-
tivity as the individual'sidentityand as the basis of social andpolitical loyalty
and solidarity.This principle is at the basis of what today is the individual's
centralidentityand which defines the individual'svery essence more thanany
other factor. It justifies viewing differentnationalismsas expressions of the
same phenomenon, and at the same time distinguishesnationalityfrom other
identities. National identity, for example, differs from the religious identity
derivedfromthe transcendentalbeliefs of the individual,of which membership
in a religious communityis, basically,a result. The conceptof a "people"cuts
across the divisions of class and locality, and is, however stratifiedin fact,
perceived as fundamentallyhomogeneous, while such divisions have only
secondaryimportance.Thus, nationalidentity also differs from class, estate,
and local identities which emphasizethese divisions as essential.
The principle emerged in sixteenth-centuryEngland, which was the first
nation in the world (and the only one to remainso, with the possible exception
of Holland)for about200 years. Due to the dominanceof England,andthenthe
Westas a whole, nationalitysoon becamethe canon. As the sphereof influence
of the core Westernsocieties (which defined themselvesas nations)expanded,
societies belonging or seeking entryto the supra-societalsystem of which the
West was the center had in fact no choice but to become nations. When
nationalism started to spread in the eighteenth century, the emergence of
nationalidentitiesin othercountrieswas no longera resultof originalcreation,
but ratherof the importationof an alreadyexisting idea. The developmentof
nationalidentitiesthus was essentially an internationalprocess, whose sources
in every case but the first lay outside of the evolving nation.
At the same time, every specific nationalismwas an indigenous develop-
ment for two reasons. First, the availabilityof the concept alone could not
have motivatedanyone to adopta foreign model, however successful, and be
the reason for a change of identity and the transformationwhich such funda-
mental change implied. For such a transformationto occur, influentialactors
must have been willing, or forced to, undergo it. The adoption of national
identity must have been, in one way or another,in the interestof the groups
which importedit, influentialgroupswhich would laterbe able to promulgate
the new identity within the rest of the society. In other words, the reason for
the receptivityto the availableidea of the nation, and for its active adoption,
along with the answer to the question as to why influentialgroups opted for
changing their identity-and thus the definitionof their society-and adopt-
ing the democratizingidea of the nation, lies withinthe structuralsituationsof
these groups-their social position and its structuralconstraints,and the as-
pirations, frustrations,and intereststo which these constraintsgive rise. On
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 551

the most general level, the structuralconditionwhich seems to obtainin every

case of the adoptionof nationalidentity is "anomie":the lack of correspon-
dence between the traditionaldefinition of the social order and the involved
agents' place in it, on the one hand, and the changing reality, on the other.
Since the agents are differentin differentcases, the anomie is expressed and
experienceddifferently.Often, though, it takes the form of statusinconsisten-
cy and insecurity.2
Second, every specific nationalismhas been essentiallyan indigenousdevel-
opment because every countryimportingthe foreign idea of the nationneces-
sarily focused on the sourceof importationwhich was the object of imitation,
and reacted to it. Because the model was more often than not superiorto the
imitator (in the latter's own perception), and the contact itself served to
emphasizethe latter'sinferiority,the reactionmoreoften thannot assumedthe
formof "ressentiment."3The exact natureof the reaction,whetheror not it was

2 In the four
Europeancases I study, that elite sector actively involved in the promulgationof
the national identity and consciousness, on the verge of the turn to nationality,found itself in
crisis, usually caused by an acute discomfortof statusinconsistency:The realityof theirstatusdid
not correspondto its traditionaldefinition, and thus they were renderedmarginal-were of it in a
way yet in a way were not. The groupsthemselves differed, however:In England,these were the
new-Henrician-aristocracy, the gentry, and the increasingly literate urban population; in
Franceand Russia, the nobility played the centralrole; in Germany,the creatorsand propagators
of the nationalconsciousness came from among the middle-class intellectuals, the Bildungsbur-
ger. In the Americancase, the "anomie" was due to the discrepancybetween the English values
and their implementationin relations with the colonies ratherthan to the position of one or
anothergroup in the colonies vis-a-vis other groups.
3 Ressentiment,a term coined by Nietzche (1887; rpt. "Genealogyof Morals," in The Philos-
ophy of Nietzsche [New York:The Modem Library1927]), and later defined and developed by
Max Scheler (1912, rpt. Ressentiment[Glencoe, Ill.: The FreePress, 1961]), refersto a psycho-
logical state resulting from suppressed feelings of envy and hatred (existential envy) and the
impossibility to satisfy these feelings (to get revenge or act them out). The sociological basis for
ressentiment-or structuralconditionsthat are necessaryfor the developmentof this psychologi-
cal state-is, first, the fundamentalcomparabilitybetween the subjectand the object of envy, or
ratherthe belief on the partof the subjectin the fundamentalequalitybetween them, which makes
them in principle interchangeable.(This in fact is the structuralbasis of envy itself.) The second
condition is the actual inequality(perceived as not fundamental)of such dimensionsthat it rules
the practicalachievementof theoreticallyexisting equality out. (Scheler refers to the realization
of such factual inequality,or inferiority,on the partof the subject, as the feeling of impotence.)
The presence of these conditions renders a situation ressentiment-prone,irrespectivelyof the
temperamentsand psychological inclinationsof the individualswho compose the relevantpopula-
tion. The situation is analogous to suicidogenic situationsdescribedby Durkheim.
The sociological importanceof ressentiment-or its creative power-consists in that it may
eventuallylead to the "transvaluationof values," that is to the transformationof a value scale in a
way which denigratesthe supremevalues in the original scale while elevating to the position of
supreme values notions that are unimportant,totally nonexistant,or indeed bear in the original
scale the negative sign. The effect producedby ressentimentis similar to what Furetcalls "the
Tocqueville effect," based on Tocqueville's argument regarding the emphasis on equality in
prerevolutionaryFrancein The Old Regime and the French Revolution.In both cases the creative
impulse comes from the unbearableinconsistencybetween expectationsbredby certainchanging
aspects of reality and those aspects of reality which remainunchanging.In this respect ressenti-
ment is also structurallysimilarto "anomie." See my applicationof the concept in the analysis of
nationalidentity in Francein "The Emergenceof Nationalismin Englandand France:A Study in
the Sociology of National Identity,"Research in Political Sociology, forthcoming.
552 LIAH GREENFELD

"ressentiment,"depended,however,on the specific social andpoliticalcondi-

tions within the country as well as the level and characteristicstrengthsand
weaknesses of its culture. "Ressentiment"eventuallyresulted in the "trans-
valuation of values" of the model of imitation: The imported ideas were
reinterpretedand adjustedto the internalreality of the country.The matrixof
the national identity and consciousness in such cases evolved out of this
transvaluationof values, whose results, togetherwith the modificationsof the
importedideas reflecting the characterand situationsfaced by the importing
groups, are responsible for the unique, distinct characterof every specific
nationalism.The purposeof this paperis to examinethe role of statusinsecurity
and ressentimentin the formation of national identity and consciousness in
Russia. The choice of this case is justified by the fact that, in comparisonto
othercases, in it the phases in which the two sets of constraintswere influential
can be clearly distinguished, and the effects of each factor can be studied in
relative isolation from those of the other.

THE ROLE OF STATUS INSECURITY

The first Russian nationalistscame from the service nobility in the capitals-
the noble elite-and the turn to national identity was precipitatedby a pro-
tractedsituationof status inconsistencyand insecurityamong the aristocracy,
the increasingpsychological untenabilityand disintegrationof its identity as
an estate. The Russian nobility differed substantiallyfrom parallel stratain
otherEuropeansocieties. Unlike these latter,it was not in its essence a landed
elite, and for this reason its status was much less determinedby lineage.4 In
distinction to nobilities of other countries, the Russian nobility did not de-
scend from a feudal elite. In fact, Russia scarcely experiencedfeudalism at
all; among the Europeansocieties, it was a site of a remarkablyprecocious
absolutism. The Russian nobility was a service estate. One sector in it (the
"dvoriane"proper)originatedas such; another(the "boyare," the appanage
princes) was graduallybroughtunderthe controlof the centralpower.5By the
latterpartof the sixteenthcentury,everyone was obliged to serve and distinc-
tions between the "dvoryane"and otherservitorsgraduallywere obliterated.6
At the end of the seventeenthcentury,when PeterI acceded to the throne, the
privileged service estate bore the revealingname of "servingmen by right of
inheritance" (sluzhilye liudi po otechestvu),7 lending support to the sardonic

4 J. Blum, "Russia," in EuropeanNobility in the 19th Century, D. Spring, ed. (Baltimore:

John Hopkins University Press, 1977), 68-97.
5 M. Beloff, "Russia," in The European Nobility in the 18th Century, A. Goodwin, ed.
(London: A. and Ch. Black, 1953), 172-181. B. Meehan-Waters,Autocracy and Aristocracy
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1982).
6 "Dvorianstvo,"EnziclopedicheskiySlovar' (St. Petersburg:Brokhausand Evfron),X, 203-
18.
7 Meehan-Waters,Autocracy and Aristocracy, 138.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 553

phrase of S. N. Eisenstadt, who called the Russian aristocracy "domesti-

cated."8 Both the status and material well-being of a nobleman (especially
one nearerto the Court)entirely dependedon the extent to which the sover-
eign was satisfied with his service. Such dependencemade the position of a
noblemanhighly unpredictableand resultedin the permanentsense of insecu-
rity and anxiety among the nobility.
During the course of the seventeenth century, the territoryof Muscovy
increasedthreefold. The growing need in service nobility inevitablyled to the
blurring of status boundaries. The nobility expanded. The aristocracyfelt
threatenedby the advanceof the newcomersand fought it. Simultaneously,an
alternativehierarchyof militaryand civil service emerged. New militaryfor-
mations, organizedunderforeigncommandaccordingto the WesternEuropean
models, by the late 1670s outgrew the traditionalmilitary organization in
numbers and far surpassedit in importance. The waning of the power and
influence, however little of it therewas (andbecausetherewas so little of it, it
seemed so preciousand the slightest diminutionin it was painfullyfelt), was a
cause of considerabledistress to the aristocracywho regardedthe traditional
militaryorganizationas its preserve;and it retaliatedby denying social accep-
tance to the new formations.The civil service also grewrapidly.These changes
resultedin a measureof integrationof the numerouslower ranksof the nobility
with the exclusive higher ranks. This integrationwas furtherpromotedby the
legal enserfment of the peasant population in 1649, uniting the upper and
middle echelons of the nobility, which had the rightto use serf labor, and the
gradual obliteration of distinctions between hereditaryand service estates
which made it possible to redefinethe nobilityas the land-owningstratum.The
swelling of ranksand simultaneousshifts in the bases of identitycould not fail
to add to the sense of precariousnessand insecuritywhich was the more or less
permanentlot of the Russian nobility. Thus, when Peter I came to power, he
found his aristocracyin a state of crisis that was growing increasinglyacute.
Though the psychological tribulationsof his fellow humanbeings could not
have concernedthis remarkableautocratless, the effects of his actions were to
both temporarilyattenuate,or rathermove these tribulationsto the background,
andat the same time aggravatethe crisis andintensifythis sense of insecurity.In
addition, however, in the borrowed language of patriotism, he unwittingly
offeredhis sufferingsubjectsthe means which was eventuallyto lead them out
of their predicament.
The valuable study of Brenda Meehan-Watersshowed that little had
changed with the opening of the new era in Russian history, as far as the
predominanceof the aristocracyis concerned. Though the titles of boyarin
and "Moskovskii dvoryanin"might have become obsolete, the top positions

8 S. N. Eisenstadt, The Political Systemsof Empires (London:Free Press of Glencoe, 1963),

182.
554 LIAH GREENFELD

in the military and civil service, and the privileges which went with them,
remained the preserve of their descendents. Peter "was more interested in
retrainingthan in replacingthe aristocracy."At the same time, the complaint
of Kniaz' Kurakin, that "princely names were mortally despised and de-
stroyed,"9 against which Meehan-Watersargues, and which helped to origi-
nate the view that Petrine elite was created by the tsar from "novi homini"
and eclipsed the traditionalaristocracy,may have had more truthto it than
Meehan-Watersis willing to grant. Whatever the objective evidence, for
example, of the composition of the Generalitet10in 1730, a significant per-
centage of which descended from the ancient families, to those who lived
throughthe experience of Petrinereforms, the situationmost certainlylooked
as it had to Kurakin.There is no doubtthatthe wild-temperedand determinate
monarch degraded and terrorized his nobles to an unprecedenteddegree,
although, and indeed because, he chose them as the chief means to carryout
his plans. Not satisfied with theirbeing "domesticated,"Peterset out to civi-
lize them, and in his determinationknew no pity. He had no regardfor their
values and habits or for what they held dear and appropriate.He shaved their
beards, groomed with care and worn with dignity, and under the threat of
"cruel punishment"orderedthem to give up their resplendentkaftansfor the
funny, outlandishclothes, which made them feel naked and broughttears of
shame to their eyes. He made them leave theirdirty,cozy, and familiarhomes
in Moscow and move into the unhealthy climate of his new city, where,
horrified of displeasing their Sovereign Lord, they built houses with walls
"quite out of perpendicular,and ready to fall"' and wasted their wealth on
necessities which would have cost them close to nothing in Moscow. He
decreed thatthey should entertainand pay visits in a civilized manner(the tsar
and his head of police personally drew up the lists of guests and picked the
hosts), talk, and dance, and play cards, denying them even the liberty to pick
their noses, and ready to teach them mannersin no uncertainterms.12 He sent
them abroadto study and forbadethem to marrybefore they had satisfied his
requirements.If they half-heartedlyclung to their chosen lives, in meek de-
fiance of his commands, his wrath knew no limits and he reduced them to
nothing. He claimed the bodies and souls of their children, and early taught
them the advantagesof keeping a watchful eye over their neighbors, so that
even in their homes and very beds they had no peace and kept shakingin fear.
There was no end to humiliationPeter's most privileged stratumexperienced
under the tsar whom it was moved to call "the Great," and the "domesticat-

9 Meehan-Waters,Autocracy and Aristocracy, 2. Quoted in ibid., 36.

10 List of the incumbentsof the four top ranks in service hierarchy-the object of Meehan-
Waters' analysis.
11 Algarotti;quoted in Beloff, "Russia," 177.
12 Meehan-Waters,Autocracy and Aristocracy, 102-4.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 555

ing" efforts of Ivan the Terrible,which won that other tsar his eloquent title,
appearedlenient in comparisonto the civilizing undertakingsof his descen-
dant.
Peter's policies aggravatedthe effect producedby his tactics: They carried
the dependenceof nobility on the royal power to the previouslyundreamedof
degrees. This was achieved with the help of several successfully enforced
pathbreakingdecrees. The 1714 Decree on Single Inheritanceintroducedthe
entail system into Russia, in a strokedeprivingyoungersons of landedincome
and any means either to procurea living or to attainappropriatestatusoutside
the state service. At the same time anotheredict explicitly forbadethe purchase
of estates to those who had not served, making it possible for others to do so
only on conditionof having served for a lengthyperiod.13 As scions of ancient
families (who, in the case of titled families, inheritedthe titles of theirfathers)
were thus cut off from the land and made entirely dependenton service, the
decree on single inheritancetended to sever the links to the land and again
redefine the nobility as a whole, underminingits identityonce more. Forthese
(among other)reasons, the entail decree was opposed with unusualdetermina-
tion and eventually rescindedby Anne in 1731.
Of far greater importance was the fateful ukaze #3890'4 of 1722, The
Table of Ranks, which was never to be rescinded and the implications of
which were not to be easily obliterated.The Table of Ranksreinforcedearlier
laws of obligatoryuniversaland permanentservice and establishedtwo points
of crucial consequence for the natureof the nobility and the existential situa-
tion it was to face after its appearance.First, with the exception of princes of
royal blood, the social statusof everyone was to be definedby and inseparably
linked to one's rank in the service hierarchy,which was assigned by achieve-
ment and not by birth. The second point institutionalizedennoblement,auto-
matically opening the doors and privileges of the nobility to people of low
birth and foreigners, if they rose above a certainrank. In militaryservice all
rankscarriednobility, and in civil and Courtservice the eight upperranks(out
of fourteen) did so. Noble status acquired by a father in the ranks which
carried hereditary nobility was passed down to the children. Ancient no-
bility-that is descent from noble families of pre-Petrineperiod-was also
respected, but everyone had to begin service at the bottom of the ladder and
advance accordingto achievement,not birth. People claiming precedenceand
deportmentnot in accordance with their service rank were to be fined, and
although the nobles of the old stock enjoyed the cumulative advantage of
betterpreparationfor service and all-importantcontacts(the fact that a father,

13 Ibid., 18.
14 Polnoye Sobranie Zakonov or PSZ, 1722
(Complete Set of the Laws of the Russian Em-
pire). Hereaftercited as PSZ.
556 LIAH GREENFELD

uncle, or brotherwas personallyacquaintedwith the Emperorhelped), anyone

achieving certainrankwas to be treatedas "equalto the best ancientnobility
in all dignities and advantages, even being of a low birth."15
The connection of status to rank separatedit from and underminedthe
importanceof lineage, which was thus strippedfrom all its worthas a basis of
stabilityin the life of the nobles. The automaticennoblementled to the further
swelling in the ranks of the nobility and cut deeper into its insecure identity,
destroyingthe boundariesbetweenit andthe outerworld. Both effects servedto
aggravatethe sense of insecurityamong the nobles, highlightthe instabilityof
theiridentity,andsecuretheirunescapabledependenceon the central,personal
power of the ruler.This was not only a predicamentof the old nobility;for the
momenta lowbornpersonbecameennobled,he andhis childrenfaced the same
vagueness of (new) identity,and the insecurityof the superior-and therefore
most precious-status earnedby hardlabors. Of course, such a new nobleman
could not have resentedthe Table of Ranks as did the old nobility,and had no
ancestralhonorto cling to and feel robbedof; there indeed was a conspicuous
differencein the way the two sectorsof nobilityreactedto theirpredicament.In
general, the anxietiesof a new nobleman,however,were similarto those of the
class he joined as a whole: The moment that one's identitywas transformed,
one lived in a crisis of identity.
The personality of the frightful and wonderful sovereign, the immediate
dangersto life and possessions in which his closest collaboratorsand servants
stood, and the very amount of the tasks which they had to accomplish de-
prived these nobles of the luxury to wallow in the pain of and ruminateover
this experience of status insecurity,alleviated its acuteness, and delayed the
necessity of resolving the crisis. The reigns of Peter's feeble successors, on
the other hand, made the crisis itself less urgent. The tsars and tsaritzas
seemed to graduallybut consistently give in to the clamourof their nobility
and attendto its psychological needs. The period was called one "of gradual
emancipationof the gentry"and culminatedin the Manifestoon Noble Liber-
ty16 issued by Peter III. The participationof the nobility in the crises of
succession which became a permanentfeatureof the Russianpolitical life (its
only feature, one might add) in the four decades between the death of Peter
and the accession of Catherinethe Great, when nobles seemed to hold the
destinies of autocratsof All Russias in their own hands, might have also
contributedto a false sense of stability among this permanentlyharriedstra-
tum.17
While the objective components of the situationdid not change and even

15 PSZ, #3890, pt. 11.

16 PSZ, 11, 444.
17 This is dubious, however. There is no sign of relief in the evidence we have: literatureand
occasional diaries (for example, Dolgorukaia).It is probable,though, that duringthese decades,
the experience of the instability itself stabilized on a certain level and was not aggravated.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 557

somewhat improved, there were significant changes in the subjective percep-

tion of it. In the sixty years which elapsed between the first reference to the
"general good" in a Petrine ukaze in 1702 and the accession of the Empress
for whom the discourse of 1'Encyclopedie was a natural language, the con-
sciousness of the Russian elite underwent an important transformation that
paralleled the developments in its nature and position. The alien concepts
which Peter the Great imported from the West, along with technical knowl-
edge, examples of military organization, and salted herring, were slowly but
surely finding their way into the curves of the noble brains, where they
gradually built up, transforming the way in which the members of the elite
related to themselves. The great tsar insisted that they were serving not only
him personally, but something beyond him: the State, or Fatherland; he de-
manded that they do this of their free will and commanded them to have such
free will-all this was inconsistent with the sense of being somebody's (even
the Great Lord's) slaves. There was something elevating in the sense of
belonging to a State which one served of one's free will. There was also
something elevating in the consciousness of belonging to a mighty, colossal
power into which Peter had transformed Russia. Many members of his elite
travelled abroad. Some were sent to European courts with diplomatic mis-
sions. They observed the respect with which the nobility was treated there and
the dignity with which it carried itself; they had to carry themselves with
similar dignity. Peter's rhetoric was retained and developed by each of his
successors. In the reign of Elizabeth Russia participated in the Seven Years
War. One historian said that this was
possibly the most importantaspect of her reign, even from the point of view of the
country's interior development .... Not for the last time in Russian history, the
officers of her victorious armiesreturnedto Russia afterexperiencingat first hand the
attractionsof countries on a much higher material and cultural level. Since these
officers were nobles, this episode meant in fact the introductioninto the only educated
class in society of new, not to say revolutionaryideas.18
One may dispute that "from this date there begins the history of Russian
intelligentsia," but, doubtless, such firsthand experience by a mass of no-
blemen of eighteenth-century Europe must have had a shuddering impact on
their notions of social relations in general, and the nature and rights of their
own order in particular. The permission of free travel abroad, contributed to
the body of Russian law by Peter III, diminished the possibility that they
would quickly forget the lesson. Finally, although it is an exaggeration to call
the Russian nobility of the Elizabethan reign "an educated class" because the
knowledge noblemen were required and could acquire in the existing condi-
tions was almost exclusively technical, many of them in the second half of the
eighteenth century being still illiterate, even simple exercises of mental fac-

18 Max Beloff, "Russia," 181.

558 LIAH GREENFELD

ulties made necessary by the requirementsof service, and the exposureto the
very minimumof Westernmores and ideas in the preparationfor it, had their
importance.A literateperson able to dance a minuet, mastersome Frenchor
German on occasion, or talk about the "general good" or "duty to the Fa-
therland" was likely to find the possibility of being subjected to corporal
punishmentmore revolting than his beardedancestorwho did not know any
better. This development of the mind and the self-respect accompanyingit,
the growing ability and the acquisition of the language in which to concep-
tualize this self-respect, and a new frame of referencetended to intensify the
sense of discomfort in spite of the improvementin the objective situation.
Corporalpunishmentwas a real threatat the time of Catherine'saccession.
The Russian nobility was not exempt. In 1730, we are told, there was some
talk of treating nobility with more respect; and in 1750 Count Shuvalov
contemplatedthe inclusion of an exemption in the Russian law.19In general,
legal boundariesbetween the nobility and other stratawere vague at the very
best. If not bolstered by merit and individual achievement, nobility in fact
meantexceedingly little and, while raisingthe expectationsof those who were
born into it, as such offered nothing to satisfy them. Nobility derived its
definition from the characterof its service obligations, which were greatly
elaboratedin the Petrineedicts. The noble privileges, in distinction, received
little attentionin them. As a result, the only thing that distinguishednobility
as an orderfrom the rest of the Russianpeople was "the natureof its burdens
and bonds."20
Catherinetook the plight of the nobility to heart. "I confess," she wrote,
"thatalthoughI am free of prejudiceand of a naturallyphilosophicalframeof
mind, I sense in myself a great tendency to respect ancient families; I suffer
seeing that many of them are reducedto poverty;I would enjoy raising them
up again. .. ."21 Many of Catherine'spolicies testify to the sincerity of her
concern for the nobility (as well as to the exacerbationof the sense of crisis
within the latter). Her period saw, in a sense, a "feudal reaction" (however
inapplicable the word itself is to the Russian conditions) parallel to that in
eighteenth-centuryFrance. Several of the already traditionalavenues of en-
noblement were curbedby decree. A 1765 edict regardingthe recruitmentof
young noblemen into civil service ordered to "do them, according to their
dignity [merit]preferenceover those who do not come from the nobility". An
ukaze in 1766 forbade accepting soldiers' sons to positions of chancellery
clerks; anotheredict in 1769 similarlylimited the opportunitiesof childrenof
clergymen.22

19 P. Dukes, Catherinethe Great and the RussianNobility (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity

Press, 1967). 6.
20 A. V. Romanovich-Slovatinski,Dvorianstvo v Rossii ot nachala XVIII veka do otmeny
krepostnogoprava (St. Petersburg:Ministry of InternalAffairs, 1870), 212.
21 CatherineII, Zapiski ImperatritsyEkaterinyVtoroy(St. Petersburg, 1907), 626.
22 M. M. Shtrange, DemokraticheskaiaIntelligentsia Rossii XVIII veka (Moscow: Nauka,
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 559

The noble estate was finally and conspicuouslyset apartfrom the rest of the
populationand became distinguishedby characteristicsother than the way it
was expected to serve. The Charterof Nobility of 21 April 1785 grantedthe
ordersignificantpersonal, economic and statusprivileges. In accordancewith
the Manifesto on Noble Libertyof 1762, the freedomof noblemento serve or
not to serve was confirmed, as was the right to enter the service of friendly
Europeanstates and travelabroadfor study.Also confirmedwas the exemption
of nobility from personaltaxation, which was introducedby PeterI, who thus
sharplyseparatedbetween taxableandnontaxableclasses. The service nobility
was exempt from taxation;those nobles who were not able to serve, however,
were not. Catherinemade the exemptionfromtaxationcontingenton the noble
status itself. The nobles were declaredexempt from corporalpunishmentand
guaranteedinviolabilityof noble dignity:Nobility could be lost only as a result
of crimes "contraryto the foundationsof the noble status,"and thatonly after
the conviction by peers was confirmedby the sovereign. Nobility was granted
the right of possession of estates. This, again, was previously contingenton
service, but now became the unconditionalprivilege of the order. Moreover,
only hereditarynobles could own populatedestates, thatis, hadthe rightto own
serfs. Henceforth, the nobility was protectedfrom the confiscation of estates
and guaranteedsecurity of property-the estate remainedin the family even
upon the conviction of a nobleman in case of a grave crime. In addition, the
Charterlegally recognized the corporaterightsof the nobility and encouraged
its self-government.23
The definition of nobility in the Charterretainedthe emphasison meritand
service. Nobility, it declared, was "the result of the quality and virtue of the
men in positions of leadershipin the past, who distinguishedthemselves by
service and, turningthe service itself into dignity, gained the title of nobility
for their posterity." The Charter also did not limit access to the nobility
throughthe ranks (althoughas we saw, the access to the ennoblingrankswas
limited), and it added new awarenessof ennoblement,such as certaindecora-
tions for merit, to the previously existing ones-service and creationby the
sovereign. Thus the Charterdid not guaranteethe exclusivity for which the
nobility was clamoring.
In addition, not all the policies of the Empressfavoredthe ordershe wished
to elevate and set apart. She rejected Panin's idea of a permanentcouncil of
nobles and strove to reduce the powers of the Senate, which were rathermea-
ger to begin with. In 1763 she called a commission to revise the Manifesto on
Noble Liberty of Peter III on the grounds that it tended "to constrain the
libertyof the nobility in a greatermeasurethanmay be requiredby the interest

1965), 262-3. The specific citations for the three edicts are 1765 (#12,465), 1766 (#12,723),
and 1769 (#13,306).
23 Charter Nobility, PSZ, #16.187, 1785; M. Diakov,
of "Dvoryanstvo,"Enzyclopedicheskii
Slovar', X, 206-8.
560 LIAH GREENFELD

of the Fatherland"24and encouragedvoluntaryservice. Her Legislative Com-

mission of 1767-68 included 160 noble deputies, but 207 representativesof
other groups-possibly a reflection of Catherine'sdesire to build up a Euro-
pean middle class.25 The early versions of the Instruction,we are told, "can
be used to show that Catherinemodified the views of her admitted model
Montesquieu, precisely on the point of the position of the nobility."26If one
adds to this the crisis in the noble fortunes, which, whetheror not connected
to her policies, characterizedCatherine'sreign,27 the period may appearas
"the golden age" of this unfortunateorderonly if comparedto otherperiods
in its history.Regrettably,as so often happens,it was not such otherperiodsto
which Catheriniannobles cared to compare their situation.
By far the most pregnanttransformationbroughtabout by Catherinebe-
longed to the sphere of consciousness. She acceleratedthe revolutionin the
subjective perceptionby the nobility of its situationand quickenedthe devel-
opment of the sense of pride and dignity which made the vestiges of the hu-
miliatingpracticesand social arrangements(howeverlittle remainedof them)
and the continuingstate of dependenceon the royal power most oppressive.
This was the "Tocquevilleeffect": the maddeningitch of inconsistency,of the
discrepancybetween the possible and the existent, the frustratingapprehen-
sion of unfulfilled opportunity.
"Peter gave Russians bodies," wrote a gentleman-poetKheraskov, "and
Catherine-souls," and the age of learningdawnedon Russia.28Neither the
benefactress nor the beneficiaries realized how dangerous the gift was.
Catherine'sefforts to provide Russia "with the most advancedlaws, the best
schools, and the most enlightenedgovernment,"29althoughnot crownedwith
absolute success, given the conditionof Russianculturebefore them, resulted
in relative improvementof a vast magnitude.The numberof educationalinsti-
tutions increasedsignificantly.The nobility grew more responsiveto the need
to be educated, and with the active supportof the Empress,set out to conquer
the existing institutions of higher learning. By the end of the 1770s, the
children of the nobility dominated the student population of the Moscow
University, which, given that this was at the time the only universityin Rus-
sia, amounted to the "ennoblement" or "aristocratization"of the higher
educationas such. In 1765 Catherinepersonallyassumedthe leadershipof the
St. PetersburgCorps of Cadets, an exclusive school preparingyoung noble-
men for military service; and she decreed that the school should expand its
24 PSZ #11,751 PSZ ("O Rasmotreniiakta . . ").
25 Dukes, Catherine, 55, 61-2.
26 Beloff, "Russia," 187.
27 P. G. Liubomirov, "Kniaz' Shcherbatov i ego sochinenia," in M. M. Shcherbatov,
NeizdannyeSochinenia, P. G. Liubomirov,ed. (Moscow: Worksof the State HistoricalMuseum,
1935), vi-xi.
28 Dukes, Catherine, 189-217.
29 N. Riazanovsky,A Parting of Ways (Oxford:The ClarendonPress, 1976), 14.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 561

curriculumand henceforthinclude in it civic and generaleducation, so that it

would serve "no longer as only a militaryschool, but also as a political and
civic school." The circle of noblemen willing to acquireand encouragetheir
children to acquire education widened. More and more of the middle and
lower provincial gentry were filling the ranks of aspiring intellectuals. The
statusof learningand intellectualactivities increasedtremendously.An article
in Evenings, a new periodical, showed that an apology was still considered
appropriatein 1772 and claimed that those who think "thatit is dishonorable
for nobility to assume the name of a writer" are mistaken.30But obligatory
service was a matter of the past, and members of the nobility were in-
creasingly inclined to regard education as a possible basis of its privileges.
The Legislative Commission focused on mattersof concernto the nobility,
although it was a minority among the deputies. Around 13 percent of the
nobles who signed the instructionsto the Committeewere illiterate;the degree
of literacy of others left much to be desired;31and the more fortunatefor-
eigners regardedthe whole affair as a bad joke. Yet, participationin it re-
quired nobles to think, discuss, have an opinion, and advise the sovereign
regardingissues of nationalimportance.This uniqueexperiencecould not fail
to bolster the budding self-respectof the order,while such exceptionalexam-
ples as Novikov,32testify what an inspirationserving on the Committeecould
be for the more acute.
The incipient and immediately flourishing periodical press, also more or
less a creation of the indefatigableEmpress,33who fostered it with maternal
care, augmentedthe effects of these educationalmeasures and experiences.
This developmentof the spirit was aided by the rousing language of dignity
that Catherineused, and her insistentallusions to the honourand virtueof the
nobility in the service of the fatherland,the very belonging to which was
elevating and ennobling. And this time the republicanrhetoricof the autocrat
of All Russias, who (before Radishchev)said: "freedom-you [are] the soul
of all,"34was not wasted on her subjects:They were becoming culturallyalert
and acquired feelings and general sensibility which were unable to torture
them in the past days of their innocence, for, of course, this forced "civiliza-
tion" could not fail to awakenthose who were indeed civilized to the degrad-

30 Shtrange, DemokraticheskaiaIntelligentsia, 254, 267. Ibid., 255. Quoted in ibid., 272.

31 Dukes, Catherine, 196.
32 Novikov served on the Committeeas a secretary,afterwhich, in 1769 at the age of
twenty-
four, he founded his first periodical, "The Bumble Bee."
33 The first Russian newspaperappearedin 1703 and was published by Peter. Several peri-
odicals of the Academy of Sciences, Moscow University, and Cadet Corps followed, Sumaro-
kov's "Busy Bee" was the firstjournalpublishedby a privateperson, and it lasted only one year
(1759). The coming of age of the periodical press did not occur until Catherine.Already in the
first half of her reign, twenty different journals circulated, and the number grew steadily.
Catherineherself was an active contributorand sponsoredseveral publications.
34 CatherineII, Zapiski, 627.
562 LIAH GREENFELD

ing inconsistencyof theiractualposition with the principlesof the noble status

and their practicalimplementationin the cases of their counterpartsin other
Europeansocieties. The policies of Catherinewere themselves inconsistent;
they could not be consistent. On the one hand, she sincerely wished the
bettermentof the nobility: She wanted to believe and prove to others that
Russia was a Europeanstate and, therefore, needed it to have a respectable
Europeannobility. She was, or at least caredto pose as, a disciple of Voltaire,
to whose views she exposed her loyal subjects, not quite awake of their
primevalslumber.She sponsoredthe translationof l'Encyclopedie,bannedin
France,and cultivatedcivic spirit. On the otherhand, she believed thatRussia
could not do without autocracyand was jealous of the nobles' timid efforts to
interfere in her government; ultimately, she was not ready and could not
deliver what she had systematically taught the nobility to expect. Even the
well-intended Charter of Nobility, which finally established this order as a
privileged estate, given its timing, contributedto the intensificationof the
sense of anxiety within the nobility, instead of soothing it. The privileges of
the nobility were confirmedexactly when it had lost the very basis for them-
obligatory service-for which they were a just reward. True, education of-
fered an alternativebasis; but, unlike the service, culturewas not self-legit-
imating. The Russian doryanstvo under Catherinefound itself in a situation
analogous to that of the Frenchnoblesse in the early eighteenthcentury;and,
like the Frenchnoblesse, it was turninginto a culturalelite. As in France,not
this would deliver it from its predicament.To escape it, the Russian nobility
had to abandonits tormentingestate identity and turn to nationality.

Preoccupation with the Crisis of the Nobility and the Turn

to the National Identity
The plight of the nobility was, undoubtedly,the first existential question to
seriously preoccupy the inchoate Russian intellect. The sense of crisis was
pervasive and manifesteditself in many ways. The nobilitycould not make up
its mind about the service. On the one hand, it consideredthe freedom not to
serve as its greatest privilege; on the other hand, it (or, to be precise, that
sector of it which did not opt for nonexistenceand thereforewas affected by
the crisis) never used this freedom. Service, or ratherthe rank earned in it,
remainedthe main road to status until the end of the Tsaristregime and was
the only such road at least until 1820s. In 1786, a dramatistfrom the nobility,
Kniazhnin, wrote: "People have all gone wild about ranks . . . he who passes
his dark life without rank does not seem to us a man at all."35 Ratherthan
escape service altogether,nobility on the whole was preoccupiedwith secur-
ing that it became more exclusively its prerogative.Thus, some even called

35 Ya. B. Kniazhnin, "The Boaster,"IzbrannyeProizvedenia (Leningrad:Sovetskii Pisatel',

1961), 318.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 563

for a return to obligatory service for the nobility. The representativesof

Kashin nobility instructed the Legislative Commission: "Every dvoryanin
should serve his fatherlandten years without respite, at the end of which he
should be dischargedif he wants to serve no more, because the first duty of
the dvoryanin is to demonstrate his merits to his fatherlandfor all those
advantages with which he is endowed by the sovereign." Alternately,they
expressed the wish for a preferentialtreatmentof the nobility when it came to
promotions. The majority, as is clear from the materialsof the Legislative
Commission, were concerned less with the necessity to serve as such, than
with the lack of guaranteesfor the distinctiveness of the nobility in service
which institutionalizedits penetrabilityfrom below. While they were willing
to serve, they were reluctantto share the privileges of service with others. A
majoritywas opposed to the Table of Ranks and thoughtthat service should
not automaticallyennoble. "As in all Europeanstates," wrote representatives
of Pustorzhevanobility, "non-noblesreachingthe top rankscannot without a
grantof a diploma of nobility ascribeto themselves Von, De, Don and similar
nobility; in the like mannerwe also most humbly ask that the ancient dvori-
anstvo . . . be distinguished . . . from non-dvoryane." One way or the other,
service remainedessential for the definition of nobility.
Service for the nobility in general was acquiring the connotation it had
within classical patriotism. The rhetoricof the tsars had caught. The docu-
ments of the Legislative Commission are full of references to the "beloved
fatherland;"however, this is still little but rhetoric:The "fatherland"is inces-
santly remindedthat it owes everythingit is to the "blood and wounds"of its
nobility, and the interestsof the two are believed to be identical. The patriotic
rhetoric, though, allowed the nobility to express its desperate craving for
independencefrom the autocratand at least to pose as an indispensablemain
element of the body politic. It gave them the possibility to express unthinka-
ble, wishful thoughts in which some later observerssaw a move towardsthe
idea of Rechtstaat. Whetherthis is what it was is debatable.At the Legislative
Commission the mass of the nobility appearedto have but one concern: to
distinguish itself as persuasively as possible from the lower strataand keep it
that way.36 This exclusive preoccupationwith the particularisticconcerns of
the order, from our perspective (because of the human interest in and the
prominence the issue had in later Russian thought), is most remarkablein
regardto the question of serfdom. There was no question in the minds of the
decisive majority of noble delegates and those who delegated them, that
serfdom was a legitimate, useful institution. This opinion, apparently,was
shared by everyone else present, irrespectiveof social position, with a pos-

36 All the quotationsfrom and referencesto the materialsrelatedto the Legislative Commis-
sion rely on Paul Dukes' excellent study of the noble opinion in it; Catherine, 158; 147; 178-80;
129, 142, 174.
564 LIAH GREENFELD

sible exception of Catherineand, for the same reason, a few otherindividuals

who, like the Empress, were unusually sensitive to the influence of foreign
ideas.
The position of the nobility as a whole was understandablyconservative:
The majority,which was essentially inactive, forsakingits own aspirationsof
high achievement, wanted to preserve its present status by preventing its
devaluationwhich would follow with the ascendancyof their inferiors. But,
apartfrom the instructionsto the Legislative Commission, the majoritywas
not vocal. The opinion leaders who would soon fashion the ways that Russia
thoughtcame from elsewhere. The vocal segmentof the nobility-that is, the
first Russian intellectuals-subscribed to two positions regardingthe matter
of the natureof nobility and, in particular,service. The first position was that
of the ancient nobility; the other representedthe views of "Peter's men"-
those who owed their elevated status to the Table of Ranks and the spirit of
reform. Intellectuals,even when they sprungfrom the ancientnobility,repre-
sented a novel type of personalityin Russia:They were distinguishednot only
by theirbirth;they also valued the distinctionswhich reflectedtheirtalentand
education. Most of the intellectuals,however, came from the new or marginal
nobility (such as that of foreign stock); for, not having the honor of the
indigenous ancient lineage to rely upon, they were more motivatedto excel
through their own efforts. Not unexpectedly, therefore, the position of the
ancient nobility, which sharedthe fundamentalconservatismof the majority,
was a minorityposition in the case of the opinion leaders and less systemat-
ically argued.37
Often the hesitantdefendersof the old restrictedthemselves to generalized
expressions of elitism and conservatism, fuminatingagainst upstartsand ad-
vising everyone to keep to one's place. Such were, for example, the views of
the famous Sumarokov, one of the first Russian poets, "the father of the
Russian theatre,"and a prominentdefenderof the interestsof the nobility. A
noblemanof an old family, whose ancestorsserved underTsarAlexis, Suma-
rokov scorned and feared "novi homini," and left a few biting verses as an
evidence of such attitude.38For him, the old nobility of birthwas the natural
elite of the nation; and he found it absurd and unnaturalthat it could be
challenged by people from below. In the preface to his play Dmitrii the Pre-
tender, he wrote: "A lowly clerk (pod'yachii) became the judge of the Par-
nassus and the arbiter of taste of the Moscow public! . . . Certainly the end of
the world is coming."39 But nobility derived its superiority from its pa-

37 Its most consistent representative was Kniaz' M. M. Shcherbatov. See Shcherbatov,

"Zamechaniena bol'shoi Nakaz Ekateriny," 16-64 in Liubomirov,Kniaz' Shcherbatov, 16;
Shcherbatov,O povrezhdenii nravov v Rossii (St. Petersburg:V. Vrublenskii, 1906), 16, 47;
Liubomirov,Kniaz' Shcherbatov, xxviii.
38 For example, "Basnia o docheriachpod'yachich."
39 A. P. Sumarokov,Polnoe Sobranie Vseh Sochinenii (Moscow: Novikov, 1781), IV, 62.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 565

triotism, and this-not birth as such-justified Sumarokov's conservatism.

"To slaves belongs slavish obedience," he wrote, "to sons of the fatherland
[nobility]-care of the state; to the monarch-power, to verity-establish-
ment of laws. Such are the foundations of the common well-being of the
Russian nation."40 Significantly, Sumarokov's conservatism was not at all
consistent. In the same preface to Dmitri the Pretender, he defined the con-
cepts of "public" and "plebs" in a manner closely reminiscent of La Bruyere,
thus:
The word Public, as Mr. Voltairealso agrees, does not denote a whole society, but only
a small part of it, namely people who are knowledgeable and have taste. . . . The
word Plebs refers to the low people, not the word Mean people; for mean people are
convicts and othercontemptiblescum, and not artisansand agriculturists.We here give
this name to everyone who is not noble. Nobility! Big deal! A knowledgeablepriest
and preacher of the Supreme Majesty, or shortly, a Theologian, a Naturalist, an
Astronomer,a Rhetorician,a Painter,a Sculptor,and Architect,etc. are accordingto
this stupid definition, members of the Plebs. Oh, unbearablenoble pride, worthy of
contemptand lashing! The real Plebs are ignorants,even when they have a greatrank,
the wealth of Cresus and count among their ancestors Zeus and Juno, who never
existed, the son of Philip, the victor, or rather,ruinerof the universe, or JuliusCeasar
who strengthenedthe glory of Rome, or ratherdestroyed it41
He thus opposed nobility as such to the "public" and defined the true nobility
by culture and intellectual excellence.
In a Satire on Nobility, he presented nobility as a reflection of service to the
nation, although apparently he still considered people of noble stock to be the
pool out of which such true noblemen were to be recruited:
I bring this satire to you, dvoryane!
I write this for the first members of the fatherland ....

.. I should be honoured, if I earned respect myself:

And if I have no aptitudefor office,
My ancestor is noble, but I'm not.42

The position of the vocal majority-represented by noble intellectuals who

owed their position in society to Peter's reforms-was that of unqualified
support for the Table of Ranks. In it virtue, nobility of spirit and behavior, and
especially service to the nation, were regarded as the basis of the noble status,
thus giving an unmistakable tint of modem nationalism to this view.43 The

40 G. P. Makogonenko,ed., PoetyXVIIIveka (Leningrad:Sovetsky Pisatel', 1958), I, 38. It is

significantthat Sumarokovidentifiedpatriotswith noblemen;his definitionof the nationwas very
similar to that of Montesquieu;nation was, for him, the elite of the country,not the countryas a
whole; his was fundamentallyan estate patriotism.
41
"Preface," Dmitri The Pretender.
42 Sumarokov,Polnoe Sobranie, VII, 356-8 (author'stranslation).
43 One finds this view already in the first Russian manual of mannersaddressedto young
noblemen, The Honest Mirror of Youth (Younnostichestnoe zertasalo). Among the different
useful instructions, such as "don't glut like a pig and don't blow. . . to spattereverywhere"or
"don't clean your teeth with a knife", were included the following assertions: "Not a famous
566 LIAH GREENFELD

nature of nobility forms the focus of some of the earliest works of modem
Russian literature. Prince Antiokh Kantemir, called "the first Russian to busy
himself seriously with belles-letters,"44 was a son of a Moldavian (or Wal-
lachian) hospodar' who moved to Russia and became a Russian subject under
Peter. The educated, intelligent young Antiokh was a protege of the great tsar
and could expect a bright future, but the tsar died when the youth was only
seventeen. Kantemir, though of-an ancient family, was left with no connec-
tions among the Russian nobility and was deprived of his inheritance due to
circumstances in which he could see the hand of some Russian grandees. He
wrote his first satires on the conditions of the temporary ascendancy of the
ancient nobility and their assault against the "low-born" new nobility which
included newly ennobled natives and foreigners now recognized as Russian
nobles. His second satire (1730) was entitled On the Envy and Pride of the Ill-
natured Nobles. Kantemir wrote in the preface:
I do not intend to disparage nobility, but to oppose the pride and envy of ill-natured
nobles, by which means I defend nobility as such. In this satireI say thatthe advantage
of nobility is honest, and useful, and glorious, if the noblemanhas to his name honest
deeds and is adornedby virtuousbehavior,that the darknessof ill-natureeclipses the
brilliance of nobility and that not the one whose name can be found in ancient scrolls
deserves greatest distinctions, but the one whose good name is commended today;
afterthatI show thatpride is inappropriateto nobilityand thatit is base for a nobleman
to envy the wellbeing of those of meaner birth, if they achieved honor and glory
throughtheir good deeds, and had to spend their time not in games and self-pamper-
ing, but in earning their glory with sweat and corns for the good of the Father-
land.. . 45

The subject continues to be a major preoccupation in the already significant

literary production of Catherine's reign.
The famous writer of fables, I. A. Krylov, a son of an army officer en-
nobled by service, was the author of the following "Laudatory Speech in the
Memory of My Grandfather," which he published in his satirical journal
Spectator (1792). The speech is both a mockery of the definition of nobility
by birth and a sign of a new attitude towards the common people.
However much philosophersare ravingthat, accordingto the family tree of the whole
world, we all are brothers,and however much they insist on our common derivation
from Adam, a noble person should be ashamed of such philosophy, and if it is
absolutely necessary [to concede] that our servantsdescend from Adam, it is betterfor
us to admit a donkey as our ancestor,thanbe of the same lineage as they are. Nothing

family and high birth make a nobleman, but noble and commendabledeeds" and "a peasant
would be more respectedthan a noblemanwho does not keep his noble word and promise:that's
why it happens even today, that some ratherbelieve a peasant than a nobleman." See "Iunosti
chestnoe zertsalo," in Alferov and Gruzinsky,Russkaia LiteraturaXVIII veka (Hrestomatia)
(Moscow: Shkola, 1915).
44 Clarence A. Manning, ed., Anthology of Eighteenth-CenturyRussian Literature (New
York:Kings' Crown Press, 1951), I, 35.
45 Alferov and Guzinsky, Russkaia Literatura, 81-82.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 567

elevates a man as much as a noble birth: this is one's greatest merit. ... To have an
ancestor who was intelligent, virtuous and did service to the fatherland-this is what
makes a nobleman, what distinguishes him from plebs and common people, whose
ancestors were neither intelligent, not virtuous, and did not do service to the fa-
therland. The more ancient and remote from us this ancestor is, the more brilliant is
our nobility, and such exactly was the distinction of our hero, to whom I dare to weave
these worthy laudations, that 300 years had passed since an intelligent and virtuous
person appeared in his family and did so many excellent deeds, that so far as his
descendants were concerned there was no longer any need in such phenomena, and, to
this day, the family existed without intelligent and virtuous people, in no degree losing
its dignity.46

Gavrila Derzhavin, "the first significant lyrical talent in the Russian liter-
ature of the eighteenth century,"47 "the singer of Catherine," and also a scion of
a modest noble family who owed his position to his own efforts, devoted to the
subject a poem, The Grandee. He wrote thus:
.. I wish to glorify the homor
Which by themselves they would achieve
As a rewardfor worthy deeds;
Those who were not adornedfrom birth
By famous names, luck, or position,
But valiantly earned respect
From their fellow-citizens.
What is nobility and rank
But excellencies of our spirit?
I am a prince-if spirit in me shines.
A master-if I can control my passions;
Boyarin48-if I am a friend to tsars,
The law, and Church, concerned
About good and welfare of all.
Grandee should be the one who has
A healthy reason and enlightened spirit,
The one who is a living proof
Of that his rank is truly noble,
That he is but a tool of power,
The fundamentof royal building,
His every thought, his words, his deeds
Are these-good, dignity, and glory.

Whatever the position taken, the obsessive preoccupation with the definition
of nobility was a sign of the status anxiety and insecurity that plagued its
members. It continued to plague them until the annihilation of the order in the
final debacle of the 1917. The majority persisted in demanding curbs to the
access to ennoblement, and their demands met with moderate success in the

46 Ibid., 324-50.
47 Alferov and Gruzinsky,Russkaia Literatura, 410.
48 Actually, bolyarin. Sochinenia Derzhavina (St. Petersburg:A. Smirdin, 1851), I, 198-203
(author's translation).
568 LIAH GREENFELD

nineteenthcentury:The laws of 1845 and 1856 raised the level of ranks and
decorationswhich carriednobility,49and a "numerusclausus"for the nobility
was introducedin the universities,thus ensuringtheirpredominancein higher
education. These alleviatingmeasureswere offset by the emancipationof the
serfs, which signified the beginning of the speedy destructionof the noble
privileges, leaving the nobility a privileged orderonly in name and thereby
causing a suddenexacerbationof its chronicmalaise. The implicationsof this
fateful development, and their role in bringingabout the Revolution, are not
fully realized, but they form a subject for anotherdiscussion.
As far as the subject of this paper is concerned, the protractedcrisis of
identity within the nobility, similar to the developments in other countries,
renderedthis elite stratumsympatheticto the nationalistideas made available
and forcefully promoted by Russia's energetic despots, Peter and Catherine
the Great. For the great majority of the nobility, even by the time of the
Legislative Commission, the nationalist ideas were nothing but rhetoric,
which they used, as they would magical incantations,to appeasetheirgodlike
rulers. However, these ideas offereda most potentremedyfor the maladywith
which the nobility was afflicted. Nationalityelevated every member of the
nation and offered an absolute guaranteefrom the loss of status beyond a
certain-rather high-level. One could be strippedof nobility, but (unless
one rejected it of one's free will, which possibility was not to be relevantfor
Russians) not of nationality. There was in nationalism an ensurance of a
modicum of an unassailabledignity that was one's to keep. And so, Russian
aristocratswere graduallyturninginto nationalists:They were beginning to
experience the therapeutic effects of national pride, and their identity as
noblemen was giving way to the national identity of Russians.
It was exactly that sector of the nobility which felt its crisis most acutely-
thatis, the service nobility in the capitals, the elite, the aristocracy,which saw
no solution besides total withdrawaland did not wish to withdraw-that was
turningto nationalism. Among this elite, rare was a man who, like Kniaz'
Shcherbatov,did not escape into the soothing embraceof the new identitybut
persisted in the desperate, hopeless efforts to salvage the old. There were
some timid nationalists, descendants of the ancient families, who had too
much to give up with their identity as nobles. They were quite satisfied with
the idiom and limits of classical patriotism, in which the definition of the
"nation"was narrowand in fact includedonly the existing elite-the nobility.
This accounts for Sumarokov'suse of the term "sons of the fatherland"as a
synonym of the "dvoryane,"but this notion could not aspire to longevity in
Russia:The nobility there simply was not a "nation"in the sense given to the
concept by Montesquieu,and such wishful thinkingflew in the face of reality.

49 EnzyclopedicheskiiSlovar', X, 207.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 569

For the nobility of service, however, classical patriotism was too tight; and
they converted to the new, moder faith with abandon.
For at least half a century the new identity did not entirely eclipse the old
but existed side by side with it. How closely the two issues-the crisis of
identity within the nobility and its nationalism-were connected is evident in
most of the contemporary sources, but nowhere is this connection and the
psychological entanglement of the noble nationalists expressed with greater
poignancy than in the famous Questions by Denis Fonvisin answered by
Catherine. Fonvisin belonged to a Lifland knightly family, but his ancestors,
first captives of Ivan IV, settled in Moscow. The original faith of his family
was Protestant; his name was spelled "fon-Visin"; and thus, though in some
way he could be considered of an old noble family, his ancient nobility was of
a peculiar kind.50 Like many other noblemen of foreign stock, this descendant
of Baltic Lutherans early became a Russian nationalist and greatly contributed
to the development of Russian national consciousness.
Fonvisin defines nobility in The Minor through a protagonist, Starodum
(Old Thinker), a man of Peter's time, who measures everything by the honest
measure of those good old days. According to Starodum, nobility is earned in
service of the fatherland and cannot be acquired simply by birth. He dis-
tinguishes between the true and formal nobility and says: "Honor! Only one
sort of honor should be flattering-the spiritual one; and only that one de-
serves a spiritual honor who bought his rank not with money, and whose
nobility is not just in the rank." "I reckon the degree of nobility according to
the amount of services the grandee rendered the fatherland, and not according
to the amount of affairs he grabbed because of his haughtiness ..." Star-
odum is distressed by the lamentable situation of Fonvisin's own time, when
real nobility is undervalued and nobles only in name rule the day.
Office! Oh, my friend, how this word is on everyone's lips, and how little it is
understood! . . . If people understoodits importance,nobody would utterit withouta
sense of inner(spiritual)respect. Think, what is office? It is the sacredcommitmentby
which we are obliged to all those among whom we live and upon whom depend. If
everyone were as diligent in office as they are in talking about it, every condition of
people would keep to its place and would be absolutely happy. A nobleman, for
example, would consider the greatest disgrace not to do anything, when there is so
much to do: there are people who can be helped; there is fatherlandwhich should be
served. Then there would be no such noblemen, whose nobility,one may say, is buried
with their ancestors. A noblemanunworthyto be a nobleman-I know nothing baser
than that on earth.51
50 The orthographyof fon-Visin's name was changed into "Fonvisin"in the mid-nineteenth
centuryby ProfessorTihonravov,but Pushkinthoughtthe change advisablemuch earlier, for, in
his opinion, it would make the name more "Russian"and thus emphasize the nationalcharacter
of the writer he considered "a Russian of arch-Russians"(iz pererusskichrusskiy).
51 "The Minor," Act 4, scene 2, 138-9, Pervoe Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii Fonvinsina
(Moscow: Shamov, 1888).
570 LIAH GREENFELD

But, alas, those considered noblemen do not behave like ones; and thus
nobility is neglected. The focus of the Questions52is the vagueness and
resulting insecurity of noble status.
In the form of open-endedquestionsFonvisin, in fact, underscoresthe chief
symptoms of evil and, by implication, points to the conditions that should
prevail instead. Question 4 is: "If nobility is the rewardfor service (merit),
and service (merit) is open to every citizen, why then merchantsare never
ennobled, but only fabricantsand monopolists?"The meaning is: If nobility
were indeed a reward for service, merchantswould be ennobled too; since
they are not ennobled, nobility at present is not a rewardfor service, but is
something corrupt. Another question (9) is: "Why notorious and evident
idlers are everywhere received with the same respect as are honest people
[people are, of course, nobility]?" The meaning is: Unworthy people are
rewarded;we, the worthy ones, not they, should be preferred.Anotherques-
tion (13): "How can we raise the decaying spiritof the nobility?How can we
ban from heartsthe insensitivitytowardsthe dignity of the noble status?How
can we make the honorable rank of the nobleman a doubtless proof of the
spiritual nobility?" The meaning is: The spirit of nobility is in decay; the
noble status has lost its dignity; the honorable rank of a nobleman (formal
nobility) is not a reflection of spiritual(true) nobility. But what is this formal
nobility, and who are these idlers who ban the sensitivity towardsthe dignity
of the noble status (thus threateningit) from the heartsof the citizens? These
are, of course, the representativesof the ancient families. While some could
not think calmly about the Table of Ranks that ennobled merit and thus
assailed the exclusivity of the ancient nobility and underminedit, the new
nobility found it impossible to reconcile itself to the respect still paid to the
ancient nobility, for it could never hope to become equal to the latterin birth
and antiquity;and so long as those were legitimatebases of the noble status,
its own identity was insecure.
However viewed, the situation was unsatisfactory.Fonvisin clearly ex-
presses this dissatisfactionand is unwilling to accept the situationas it is. He
even rationalizesan escape from it: Nobility, defined as it is, is corrupt,which
is a good reason for an honest, spirituallynoble personnot to belong to it. But
to escape where? The two last questions (20 and 21), on the face of it uncon-
nected to the points raised earlier,pose the alternative:nationality.And ques-
tion 21 patheticallyasks: "Whatdoes our nationalcharacterconsist of?" It is
a most significant, urgent question. Here, Fonvisin is preparedto trade his
identity as a nobleman for that of a Russian, but what is it? This new entity,
Russian nationality,does not as yet exist.

52 Fonvisin, Pervoe Polnoe . .. 812-4.

 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 571

THE WEST, RESSENTIMENT, AND THE FORMATION OF THE

RUSSIAN NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Fonvisin's other question (20) reflected the instantly torturouscharacterof

Russian nationalism and its frustrating,ambivalent, and ineluctable depen-
dence on the West. The first Russian nationalistsfound themselves between
the hammer and the anvil. In a desperate bid to escape the psychological
discomfort of the insecure and vague estate identity, they threw themselves
into the armsof ressentiment.Its poisonous vaporswould crippleand mutilate
their souls, and work wonders;they would create a fertile soil, a hothouse for
the growth of nationalconsciousness, and melting old frustrationsand aspira-
tions, for long decades, incessantly, indefatigably fuel, nourish, and shape
new passions. And so the Russian nation would be born. Fonvisin asked:
"How can we remedy the two contradictoryand most harmfulprejudices:the
first, that everything with us is awful, while in foreign lands everything is
good; the second, that in foreign lands everything is awful, and with us
everything is good?" This was the dilemma on which the constructionof the
Russian national consciousness was predicated.

The West as the Model

The awarenessof the Westwas forcedon Russiaby Peterthe Great,who, as in
everythinghe did, allowed no time for getting preparedfor the encounter:The
confrontationwas suddenand shocking, and evidently signified the beginning
of a new era. On the whole, the firstreactionto this otherworldseems to be that
of an undilutedadmiration.The reminiscences of the first Russian travellers
sent to the West by Peter convey a sense of wonder, of meeting something
good-out of this world. Twentyyears later,one could still find expressionsof
unmarredadmirationin the writingsof most educatedRussians, andone of the
very first verses in moder Russian were devoted (by V. K. Trediakovskii)to
"the beautiful place, the dear banks of Seine."53
At this early stage, the West was eagerly accepted as an absolute and
incontestable model, the only possible standardof behavior. A manual for
nobility, The Honest Mirror of Youth,contains some evidence of this attitude,
uninhibitedand unselfconscious. For example, it instructsits young readers
regardingthe appropriatemannerof addressingone's parents.One shouldtalk
to one's parents, it advises, respectfully, "as if one happens to talk to some
importantforeign person."54Much later, Sumarokov,in the already quoted
preface to Dmitri the Pretender, in an attemptto teach his audience respect
towardsRussiantheater,dramaticallyasks: "You, travellers,who visited Paris

53 Alferov and Guzinsky, Russkaia Literatura, 89.

54 Alferov and Gruzinsky,Russkaia Literatura, 4.
572 LIAH GREENFELD

and London, tell me! do people therecrunchnuts while watchingDrama;and

when the performanceis on the stage, do they whip drunkenand quarreling
coachmen, causing alarmto the floor, balconies andthe whole theater?"55(Of
course, nothingof the sorthappensin the civilized world.) Morerevealingthan
such explicit references, however, is the widespreadunreflectiveimitationof
Westernways in the everydaylife of Moscow and St. Petersburgnobility, the
extent of which can be gauged from the matter-of-factdescriptionsof this life
(Bolotov, Shcherbatov)andeven moreso fromthe amountof criticismof which
this behaviorbecame the focus.56 The excitement in Russia with everything
Westernis reminiscentof the mass Anglophiliain Franceduringthe firsthalf of
the eighteenthcentury,and, if anything, is more enthusiastic.
The nationalidea itself is also, in some way at least, a sign of recognitionof
the West as a model, and the earliest expressions of Russian nationalism(in
the sense of national patriotism and consciousness) have to do with com-
parisons of Russia to the West. Such comparisonsremain an importantele-
ment of the nationallore, but later lose their originallyunproblematic,confi-
dent character.The early representativesof Russian nationalismdid not view
the West as threatening.The achievementsof Peter the Great, the change in
the internationalposition, and in many ways the internalimage of Russia,
were so tremendousas to borderon fantastic,which greatlycontributedto the
sense of confidence and pride of the first nationalists, all of whom were
"Peter's men." The Russia of their time was indeed a wonder in the eyes of
the world, and they werejustifiablyproudof belongingto it. They were proud
of Russia's greatness, but they defined it by its similarityto Europe. Their
confidence was the confidence thatRussia was a Europeanstate, and this was
the chief foundationof theirnationalprideat this early stage:They were proud
to be up to the standard.A telling example of this view is the popularTale of
the Russian Sailor Vasilii Koriotskiand the BeautifulPrincess Iraklia of the
Land of Florence.57 The tale dates to the early eighteenthcenturyand belongs
to the genre representing "the favorite reading of the average 18th century
reader."58Its audienceis the literateRussianpublic-noblemen and burghers
who, literally, can read. The tale is based on an earliertranslatedstory Of a
Spanish Nobleman Doltorne and the Spanish Princess Eleonore, but is in
significant ways a reflection of the Russian reality of the time. The sailor
Vasilii is a poor noblemanwho goes to St. Petersburgand becomes a sailor to
earn a living and glory for himself. FromPetersburghe sails to Holland and
Florence, is sent to study abroad,and eventually,afterdistinguishinghimself
in every possible way, becomes the king of the "land of Florence." While

55 Sumarokov,Polnoe Sobranie, VI, 60-64.

56 See discussion of this criticism in Hans Rogger, National Consciousness in 18th Century
Russia (Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1960).
57 Alferov and Guzinsky,Russkaia Literatura, 41-56.
58 Ibid., 39.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 573

foreignerscannot find words to praise the remarkable"Russiansailor," Rus-

sia throughoutthe tale is called "Russian Europe" (RossiyskayaEvropia).
The term has a peculiar sound and is never repeated in the later Russian
literature,but whether it means the Russian part of Europe, or the European
land of Russia, it clearly representsRussia as essentially a Europeanstate.
The moment the West was recognized as a model-and this happened
simultaneouslywith the first, tentative flirtationwith national identity-the
degreeto which this identitywas to be psychologicallygratifyinghingedon the
outcome of the competition with the West. All of the eighteenth-century
Russianliteratureas well as life (which is true, thoughin a less simple way, for
the subsequentcenturies as well) attests that competitionwith the West was
indeed the motive force behind the early achievementsof the Russian culture
and the formation of the national consciousness. In the latter part of that
century, Nikolai Karamzin, while still in the optimistic phase of his na-
tionalism, explicitly pointedto the competitionwith the West-and a victoryin
it-as the main goal of the Petrinereformsandthe naturalnationalmotivation.
When Peter initiated his reforms, it was as if he had said to the Russians:
"Look:become equal to them, and then, if you can, surpassthem!"59Like the
reforms, contemporaryattitudeswere justified to the extent they promotedthe
possibility of winning in the competition. At this stage, Karamzinfavored
unabashedimitationof the West;for, he thought, "Shouldn'tone first become
equal in orderto surpass?"This attitudewhich, as we see, persisteduntil the
end of the eighteenthcentury,very soon createda problem, and in the time of
Karamzin, who several years later abandonedit himself, was rarely encoun-
tered, at least in the literature,in such an uninhibited,untroubledform. After
the death of the great tsar, whose unique personalityand truly extraordinary
achievement encouraged unbounded optimism, it became quite clear that
Russiawas not on a parwith any of the Europeanstateswith which it hadboldly
and cheerfully bid to compareitself, that it was not at all up to the standardit
had appropriated,andthatit was, in fact, clearly,painfully,hopelessly inferior.

The Stages of Reaction Formation

Acknowledgement of Inferiority. The realization of the discrepancy be-
tween the Russian reality and its chosen ideal did not come as a shock: It
developed gradually,togetherwith the nationalconsciousness itself. In fact, it
was an integralpartof the nationalconsciousness. But it came early. Already
in Pososhkov one finds a recognitionof the superiorityof the foreignersand a
certain suspicion as to the effects of admiringthem.60The recognitionof the
superiorityof the West gave rise to increasinglycomplicatedattitudeswhich
59 Karamazin,Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii (St. Petersburg:S. Selivanovsky, 1803), IV, 280.
60 See L. V. Krestova, "Otrazhenieformirovaniarusskoi natsii v russkoi literaturei
publit-
sistike pervoi poloviny XVIII veka," in Voprosy Formirovania Russkoi Narodnosti i Natsii
(Moscow: Academy of Sciences, 1958), 253-96, especially 259.
574 LIAH GREENFELD

eventually,towards the close of the eighteenthcentury,built up into ressenti-

ment. The simplest reaction was the acknowledgementof the fact that com-
parisonwith the West in general is unflatteringto Russia. It does not question
the view of the Westas a legitimatemodel or ideal. One finds examplesof this
attitudethroughoutthe eighteenthcentury.It is very well expressedin a 1763
poem by Sumarokov, "A Choir to the Upside-down World,"which depicts
reality "overseas". "Overseas"is an Utopia, as is the generalized "West";it
is an ideal, a standard.The sad thing is that Russia falls so conspicuously
short of this ideal: In fact, it is an ideal turnedupside down. Some of the
themes in Sumarokov'spoem were focal points in the growing nationalistic
literature:One finds here the dissatisfactionwith the haughtinessof the gran-
dees and honoringnobility without merit, the attitudeto learningand the state
of letters, the native language and self-image, and-unexpectedly, for
Sumarokov was a defender of serfdom-a condemnation of the habit of
selling people. Yet, the recognition of the disparitybetween Russia and the
West in this case is diffuse: It does not focus on an area in which the discrep-
ancy is most pronouncedor postulate an organizingprinciple for it. Several
importantauthors of the eighteenth century, more sensitive to the original
meaning of the idea of the nation, regardthe social and political conditions in
the country (especially serfdom and the situation of the peasantry) as the
essence of the difference between Russia and its ideal.
There are two reactionsto the recognitionof sociopoliticalreality in Russia
as the core problem:shame and denial. Shame is a rarereaction. Given how
singularly unpleasantthis feeling is, it must be difficult to sustain it over a
period of time of any length. As a result, this reactionis characteristiconly of
one importantwriter: Radishchev. Radishchev's genuine abhorrenceof the
barbarismof serfdom, his concernfor the peasantry,andhis understandingand
passion for libertyas a rightof humansas such, madehim an exceptionamong
the creators of the Russian culture. Radishchev is also unusual, though not
unique, in that his Westernmodel was not Europe but the United States of
America;6l yet, it is significant that even his abhorrenceand shame of this
peculiar Russian reality is expressed and felt as an embarrassmentin the
presenceof the West:It is a shamethatRussiafalls shortof its Westernideal, as
if the reasonfor it would disappearif Russiawere the only countryin the world.
Even with Radishchev,this is a matterof the relativeposition of Russia vis-a-
vis the West. This pervasive "relativity"is at its most poignant in a passage
from the chapter "Mednoe" in The Voyage from Petersburg to Moscow.62 In
this passage Radishchev tells about a harrowingexperience of watching a
family of serfs being auctionedto separatebuyers, which, after a while, he is

61 See his lines on Washingtonin "Vol'nost'."

62 "Mednoe," Puteschestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu (Moscow: Gosizdat Khudozhestvennoi
Literatury),159-61.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 575

unable to watch any longer and leaves the terrible scene in a flight. He
continues:
On the staircaseI met one foreigner,my friend."Whathappened? Youarecrying!"
"Return," saidI to him;"donotbe a witnessof a horribledisgrace.Youwhocursed
oncea barbariccustomof sellingblackslavesin remotesettlements
of yourfatherland.
Return,"I repeated,"donotbe a witnessof ourderangement, anddo nottell thestory
of ourshameto yourcompatriots whentalkingto themof ourcustoms."63
The usual reaction, however, was denial. In its early and simple forms, it was
very close to a conscious lie. A remarkableand almost unbelievableexample
of denial because of its naivety and transparencyis Catherine'sdefense of
Russia in a letterto Voltaire,in which she wrote thatin Russiapeasantslive so
well that there is not a peasantfamily without a chicken for dinnerand some
are so fed up with chickens, that they now eat turkeysinstead.64
More interesting, because of its precocity among other things, is Antioch
Kantemir'srefutationof Locatelli's LettresMoscovites. Kantemirwas an am-
bassadorin England when Locatelli's book appearedin Paris in 1735. It had
two editions in France, and then was translatedinto English and publishedin
London. According to Kantemir,its contents were outrightslander,so he set
out to write a refutation, and notified of his intention Baron Osterman(an-
other Russian patriot) in St. Petersburg.In his letter to Ostermanof 1736,
Kantemirwrote that he "never wanted to write more than on this occasion,
having to defend the fatherland."He also mentionedhis intentionto write a
refutationin an official dispatch, addingthathe conceived of it as "a descrip-
tion, both geographicaland political, of the Russian empire, similarto those
which exist in all famous states underthe title 'etat present'." The refutation
was intended exclusively for the foreign audience and published in German,
being ostensibly written "von einem Teutschen."65In the treatise Kantemir
stressed the huge territoryof Russia, its enormousnaturalresources, and its
momentousrise to prestige underPeter. He commendedits economy, saying,
for instance, that textiles manufacturedin Ekateringofare so excellent that
they are "almost as good as the Dutch." He drew attentionto the national,
namely unique, characterof the Russian people (this is indeed one of the
earliest attemptsto define it) and stressed the unendingpatience of the peas-
ants and their loyalty to the master. He also emphasizedthe thirstfor knowl-
edge characteristicof Russians and their extraordinaryability to learn, both
demonstratedby their success in imitating the West during the period of
Petrine reforms. Of particularinterest in the refutationof LettresMoscovites
is Kantemir'sdepiction of the political values and civic conditions in Russia.

63 Ibid.
64 See 3-14 July, 1769, p. 30 in Reddaway, ed., Documents of Catherine the Great. ..
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1931).
65 This discussion relies on Krestova, "Ostrazhenieformirovania."
576 LIAH GREENFELD

He wrote: "Peterthe Great and the gloriously reigning EmpressAnne made

tremendousreformsin Russia. [Now] urbanartisansand the peasantrysuffer
no oppression from the supremepower." Kantemirbroughteloquent exam-
ples to supporthis characterization.Indicativeof the prevailingappreciation
of liberty was a Petrineedict forbiddingto fall on one's knees before the tsar,
whom Kantemirquoted as saying, in the best traditionof Europeanhuman-
ism: "I could never think without abhorrence,how much enslaved rational
creaturesmust long, trembleand groan for freedom, if even creatureswithout
reason, as is said in the Scriptures,when under subordination,passionately
strive to be freed from it." The sourceof the quotationhad neverbeen located,
but if Peterindeed held such enlightenedviews, this certainlywould earnhim
the respect of those Westernerswho were makingsuch a fuss over freedomin
the eighteenth century.Kantemirblamed whateverinsignificantrelics of op-
pression which remained, as one could expect, on the ill-natured, un-
enlightened nobility, therebykilling two birds with one stone.66
Presentation of Equality as Undesirable. In all these innocent lies-and
one is temptedto sympathizewith them for they were made in self-defense-
the assumption that the West was the model remained unchallenged. The
problem with lies, however, is that the liar knows that they are untrue;and
thus, while they could, perhaps,convince some gullible foreigners,they were
powerless to make the Russian patriots who circulated them believe that
Russia was indeed equal, essentially similar to Europe. The next step in the
developmentof the Russian nationalconsciousness, therefore,was to present
similarity as undesirable and the West as, for one reason or another, an
unsuitablemodel for Russia. This attitudewas clearly articulatedtowardsthe
end of the eighteenth century,although some vague expressions of it can be
found much earlier. The exact natureof the reactiondependedon the acute-
ness of the sense of discrepancybetween Russia and the West, and the degree
to which it was experienced as painful and reflecting Russia's immanent
inferiority.In those instances in which self-dissatisfactionwas not acute, the
assessment of the West as an inappropriatemodel for Russia went hand in
hand with the admirationof the West as such and produceda vague form of
culturalrelativism. This was a transientand thereforenot a thoroughlyargued
position. In Russia it had no consistentrepresentatives,and not even inconsis-
tent ones similar to Herder in Germany. One finds expressions of cultural
relativism interspersedwith rudimentsof other, contradictory,positions in
numerouswritings of the formativeperiod of Russian nationalismin the end
of the eighteenthcentury.Karamzin'sinfluentialLettersof the Russian Trav-
eller (1791-92) are characteristic.67The epigraphof the 1797 edition offers a
66 Krestova, "Ostrazhenieformirovania."
67 The Letters were first publishedin his Moscow Journal, the most popularperiodicalof the
time, which had 300 subscribers-an extraordinarynumberby the standardsof the time. The
Letters appearedagain in 1797. "Their numerousreadersbecame inconspicuouslyeducated in
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 577

psychological insight so accurate that it is difficult to believe it was chosen

unselfconsciously. It reads: "Who with one's self can live in love and quiet,/
Will love and gladness find in countries all."
Karamzin's cultural relativism is evident in his reaction to the Russian
history by Levesque. Referring to it in a letter, he urges the creation of
Russian history by a Russian which would emphasize the uniqueness of
Russia and show its equality to Europe not because it is like it, but because
there is a distinctively Russian parallel to everything European of note:
What is not importantwe should cut down, as Hume did in his English history;but all
the features which evince the uniqueness of the Russian people, the characterof our
ancient Heroes and famous people . . . describe vividly, strikingly.We had our own
Charlemagne:Vladimir-our own Louis XI: Tsar Ioann-our own Cromwell: God-
unov-and in addition such a Ruler, whose like is nowhere to be found: Peter the
Great.68

Karamzin's position in this letter (if what we find in it may be regarded as a

coherent position) is complex. In accordance with the spirit of cultural rela-
tivism, he emphasizes the distinctiveness of Russia and subscribes to the
Romantic-avant le nom-notion of the supremacy of inner understanding:
Only a Russian can truly understand Russia. At the same time, he believes
that all nations follow the same path, that the West happens to be the leader,
and that Russia, therefore, should imitate the West. The firm confidence that
it can do so and is very successful in doing so, allows Karamzin-without the
anguish of self-contempt-to denounce characteristically Russian traditions
which are inconsistent with or even irrelevant to the universal progress: He
has not as yet reached the point where what is peculiarly Russian becomes the
synonym for moral good. This confidence in the ability of Russia to speedily
catch up with the West also finds its expression in the admiration for the
initiator of the process of catching up, Peter the Great. In direct continuation
of the quotation above, Karamzin writes:
Levesque, as a writernot without talent, not withoutmerit, thinks ratherclearly, tells
the story ratherfluently, judges ratherreasonably;but his brush is weak, colours are
not vivid. ... In addition, Russia is not a motherto him; not our blood flows in his
veins: how could he speak of Russianswith the same feeling as a Russian?But most of
all, I do not like him for his depreciationof Peter the Great (if a mediocre French
Writercan depreciateour glorious Monarch)in saying: on lui a peut-etre refuse avec
raison le titre d'homme de Genie, puisque en voulantformer sa nation, il n'a su
qu'imiter les autrespeuples. I heardthis opinion even from Russians, and never could
hear it without vexation. The path of education or enlightenmentis the same for all
nations; all of them traverseit one after another.Foreignerswere cleverer than Rus-
sians: and so one had to borrow,lear from them, use their experience. Is there any

the traditionsof the Europeancivilization, as if they maturedwith the maturingof the young
Russian traveller,learning to feel with his noble feelings, to dream with his beautiful dreams"
(Buslayev in Alferov and Gruzinsky,Russkaia Literatura, 450).
68 N. Karamzin,Polnoe SobranieSochinenii (St.
Petersburg:S. Selivanovsky, 1803), IV, 280.
578 LIAH GREENFELD

sense in tryingto find what is alreadyfound?Wouldit be betterfor the Russiansnot to

build ships, not to form regular army, not to establish Academies, factories, for the
reason that all these were not inventedby Russians? . . . Is it not necessaryto become
equal in order to surpass? . . . A beard belongs to the condition of a primitive man
[dikogo cheloveka]; not to cut it is the same as not to cut one's nails. . . . WerePeter
born a sovereign of some island, remote from communicationswith other states, he
would find the source of useful inventions for the good of his subjects in his great
naturalintelligence; but born in Europe . . . he had only to cut throughthe veil which
concealed from you the achievementof the humanreason, and tell us: "look, become
equal to them, and after that, if you can, surpass them!" Germans, Frenchmen,
Englishmen, were in front of the Russians by at least six centuries:Peter moved us
with his mighty hand, and we in several years almost caught up with them. All the
pitiful Jeremiadesabout the alterationof the Russian character,about the loss of the
Russian moral physiognomy, are either nothing but a joke, or derive from the inade-
quacy of the well-foundedthinking. . . . Everythingnationalis nothingin comparison
with the human.The main thing is to be humans, not Slavs. Whatis good for humans,
cannot be bad for the Russians, and what Englishmen or Germans invented for the
good and benefit of man is mine, for I am human!There is anotherstrangeopinion. II
est probable, says Levesque, que si Pierre n'avait pas regne, les Russes seraient
aujourd'huice qu'ils sont, namely: even if Peter the Greatdidn't teach us, we would
learn! By which means? By ourselves? . . . Russians were not predisposed, were not
ready to become enlightened. . . . Only the zealous, active will and unlimitedpower
of the Russian Tsar could affect such a sudden, quick alteration. .... As Sparta
without Lycurgus, so Russia without Peter, would not be able to become famous.69
It is clear from this passage that in this last decade of the eighteenth century,
the belief in the salubrity of Peter's reforms, and the superiority of the West,
was already far from universal. Many educated Russians were no longer "in
love and quiet" with themselves; they were deeply troubled by the discrep-
ancy between Russia and its model. When they resorted to cultural relativism,
it was usually in a less cheerful manner than Karamzin: Rather than believing
that equal merit is to be found behind different appearances, they found solace
in thinking that different customs conceal an equally grim reality behind them.
Fonvisin, for example, summarized his impressions of foreign travel in the
following manner: "I saw that in all countries there is more bad than good,
that men are men everywhere; that intelligent people are everywhere rare, that
there are everywhere plenty of fools, and, in one word, that our nation is no
worse than any. . . .70 While Karamzin, in his eagerness to see Russia like
the West, confident that it could easily become like it, thought Russian
customs disposable and not worth keeping, many of his more pessimistic
compatriots thought that these customs might as well be kept, for they pre-
ferred to see the West as not worth imitating. Karamzin himself, in the
Memoir of Ancient and Modern Russia (1810), advised a more discriminating
attitude: "Two states could be on the same stage of civic enlightenment and

69 Ibid.
70 D. Fonvisin, Pervoe Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii D. I. Fon-Visina, 1761-1792 (Moscow:
K. Shipov, 1888).
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 579

have different mores. A state may borrow from anotheruseful information,

without imitating the other's customs".
Rejection of the West. The inclinationto seek solace in equality(whetherof
meritor misery) in differencewas not sustained,for therewas no equality,and
so it gave way to ressentiment,the rejectionof the Westbased on envy and the
realizationof the all too evident, and thereforeunbearable,inferiority.

RESSENTIMENT: THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF THE MATRIX

OF RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

The matrix of the Russian national consciousness finally crystallized in the

last thirdof the eighteenthcentury,when the abolitionof compulsoryservice
left noble identityhanging in the air-unjustified, undefined,even more inse-
cure than it had been always-and when the noble elite had turnedto learning
and nationalidentity.Ressentiment,existentialenvy of the West, was the most
importantfactorin this crystallization,andthe values which were to constitute
the Russiannationalconsciousness and laterembodiedin the Russiannational
characterwere a result of the transvaluationborn out of this ressentiment.
Intriguingly,ressentiment initially took the form of hostility towards those
numerousRussians who were not as yet affected by it and persisted in their
unashamedadmirationof the West. The recognitionof Russia's inferiorityled
the sensitive Russians among the educated elite (and those were the people
who both experiencedthe crisis of the noble identitymost painfully and were
the first to turnto nationalidentity)to the realizationthathavingthe West as a
model must inevitably result in self-contempt. Karamzin,endowed with an
unusual talent for lucid expression of what others perceived but dimly, after
entirely reversinghis opinion in regardto the role of Peterthe Great, wrote in
the Memoirof Ancientand ModernRussia (1810): "Whileeradicatingancient
customs, presentingthem as ridiculous, stupid, and introducingforeign ones,
the tsar humiliatedRussians in their own heart. Can self-contemptpredispose
a person and a citizen to great deeds?"71The Russians who naively admired
the West were (or at least seemed to be) walking examples of such self-
contemptand underminedthe yet uncertainnationalpridewhich, as a compo-
nent of identity, was to substitutefor the shatteredindividualself-esteem of
the more thin-skinnedmembersof the elite. "RussianFrenchmen,"the "pe-
timetry,"72became the chief objects of satirein which they were deridedwith
varying degrees of cruelty, moral fervor and wit. In satirical plays, poems,

71 N. Karamzin, Zapiska o Drevney i Novoy Rossii, Richard Pipes, ed. (Cambridge,MA:

HarvardUniversity Press, 1959), 22. See analysis of Karamzin'sideas and their backgroundin
Richard Pipes, Karamzin's Memoir of Ancient and Modern Russia (Cambridge,MA: Harvard
University Press, 1959).
72 From the French "petit maitre";see excellent discussion in Rogger, National Conscious-
ness, 48 et passim.
580 LIAH GREENFELD

and sketches, the imitation (and even admiration) of the West were repre-
sented as imbedded in such qualities of character as to make anyone inclined
to such imitation ashamed of oneself and willing to nip it in the bud. The
eighteenth-century Russian intellectuals taught themselves the social psychol-
ogy of marketing and successfully marketed the rejection of the West.
The behavior of the complacent majority who actually enjoyed the prox-
imity of the West, instead of being tortured by it, must have been a powerful
irritant, for it provided constant inspiration for the best talents and served the
focus of some of the most entertaining works of the time. The hilarious Mis-
fortune from the Carriage73 by Kniazhnin teaches its lesson in a good-natured
but no uncertain way. It depicts the Francophile gentry husband and wife as
complete idiots, who carry empty headedness to the level of high art; yet, their
idiocy, which is fortunately monitored by the fool of their small court, is
shown to have potentially disastrous effects. In a scene from the second Act,
the two, Firiulin and Firiulina, exchange impressions from their native coun-
try, to which they just returned from a sojourn abroad.
Firiulin: "Barbaricpeople! Wild country!What ignorance!What vulgarnames! How
they insult the delicacy of my ears!"
Firiulina: "I am amazed, my soul! Our village is so close to the capital, and nobody
here talks French;and in Franceeven a hundredmiles from the capitaleveryone does."
[The fool sarcasticallycongratulatesthem on being so differentfromtheirown people]
Firiulin [responds]:"Ah, even we, we, ah! are nothingin comparisonto the French."
The fool: "You should have indeed traveledabroadto bring back only contempt, not
solely towards your countrymen,but even towards your own selves."
While lashing out against their unconscientious compatriots, the committed
nationalists also launched an attack on the foreigners themselves, especially
foreigners in Russia. Lists of protagonists in satirical plays usually included a
German or a French tutor, stupid and puffed up, with an appropriate name
such as Vral'man.74 In satirical journals this other object of derision provided
endless employment for the best writers of the time. Young Novikov placed
the following "communication" in Truten' (The Bumble-Bee).75
FromKronstadt:These days several ships from Bordeauxarrivedin this harbor:on the
board, besides most fashionablecommodities, are 24 Frenchmenreportingthat all of
them are Barons, Chevaliers,Marquises,and Counts, and that, being unhappyin their
fatherland,for all sorts of reasons touching upon their honor, they were reduced to
such extremitythat, seeking gold, insteadof America, were forced to come to Russia.
In all these stories they lied very little: for, accordingto reliable information,they are
all naturalFrenchmen,skilled in all kinds of crafts and professions of the third sort.

73 Sobranie Sochinenii YakovaKniazhnina (Moscow: A. Reshetnikov, 1809), III-IV, 134

(Act 2, scene 5).
74 A Liar-the name of the Germantutor in The Minor.
75 Novikov, Truten', (August 11, 1769), p. XVIII in Alferov and Gruzinsky,RusskaiaLiter-
atura, 206-7.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 581

Many of them lived in a great quarrelwith the Paris Police, and for that reason it, out
of hatredtowardsthem, madethem a salutationwhich they did not like. This salutation
consisted in the order to leave Paris immediately,unless they preferredto dine, sup,
and sleep in the Bastille. Although this salutation was very sincere, these French
gentlemen did not like it and for this reason they came hither, and intend to become
tutors and Hoffmeistersto young people of noble birth. Soon they will leave here for
Petersburg.Gentle compatriots, hurryto hire these aliens for the education of your
children!Immediatelyentrustthe futuremainstayof the fatherlandto these vagabonds
and think that you fulfilled your parentalduty having hired as tutors Frenchmen-
without asking of their position or behavior.

Hostility towards the Russian admirers of the West, and Westerners in

Russia, signified the rejection of this ideal geographical entity as a model, but
it was veiled and not entirely consistent. Finally, the veil was dropped; and the
rejection of the West was expressed candidly as the rejection of the West. Still,
there were different levels of complexity. One simple modality of this attitude
was that of undisguised and unreasoning hatred. The reaction was akin to that
of a wounded beast, blinded by pain and moved by nothing but the desire to
hurt back: Nothing was good; everything was bad. Fonvisin's Letters from
Abroad, especially his opinion of France, provide us with an illustration of
what this was like. The mood in which Fonvisin approaches Paris leaves little
doubt as to the nature of impressions he would derive from his visit. "Paris,"
he says upon entering the city, "this alleged center of human knowledge and
taste. I have not yet had the opportunity to find my bearing here; but can
assure your excellency, that I try to spend every hour usefully, noticing all that
can give me the most accurate idea about the national character."76 He makes
an effort to judge with impartiality and notice both good and bad in the object
of his examination. Fortunately, what he sees soon makes it impossible to
follow this good intention. "One has to renounce all common sense and truth,
to say that there is not much of what is very good and deserving of imitation
here. All this, however, does not blind me to the extent that I fail to see as
much, or even more, of absolutely evil and such, from which God save
us. ..." For a moment, his conclusion appears to be cultural relativism:
. . if anyone among my young compatriots,endowed with a good sense, will grow
indignant, seeing abuses and disorderin Russia, and estrangedfrom her in his heart,
there is no better way for his conversion to the proper love of the fatherland,than
quickly send him to France. Here certainlyhe will learn on his own experience very
soon, that all the stories of the local perfection are lies, that people are everywhere
people, that a really intelligentand worthypersonis everywherea rarityandthatin our
fatherland,however bad it can be sometimes, one can be as happyas anywhereelse, if
the conscience is clear and reason rules over imaginationand not imaginationover
reason.
76 Fonvisin, Pervoe Polnoe Sobranie .. , 897. The letters are addressed to Count P. I.
Panin. It is significantthat not having yet found his bearingin Paris, Fonvisinalreadyknows that
Paris is not a real, but only an alleged, center of knowledge and taste.
582 LIAH GREENFELD

This, however, is not enough: France is not as bad as Russia, it is infinitely

worse. Having prepared the ground by proposing a definition of the nation,
which makes his analysis a foregone conclusion, Fonvisin writes:
My stay in this state greatly diminished its value in my opinion .... Good people,
whatevertheirnation, compose between themselvesone nation. Havingexcludedthem
from the French, I observed the qualities [of the latter]in general. ... A Frenchman
does not have any reason and would consider it a misfortune of his life to have
one; . .. a Frenchmanwould never forgive himself if he ever misses an opportunityto
cheat. ... His God is Money.
. . .D'Alemberts, Diderots, in their own way, are as much charlatansas those I
meet every day on the streets; all of them are cheating people for money, and the
differencebetween a charlatanand a philosophe is only such thatthe latterto his greed
adds an unparalleledvanity. . . . Frenchnobility, for the most part, lives in extreme
poverty and its boorishnesshas no parallelsanywhere. . . . With the exception of the
rich and the grandees,every Frenchnoblemanwith all his stupidpride, would consider
it a great happiness to become a tutor to a son of our gentleman. . . . [Impartial
foreigners] say that in their army there is no military spirit. Every soldier philoso-
phizes, therefore, does not obey. ... A cattle-yard in the holdings of our honest
gentry is much cleaner that [streets] in front of the very palaces of the French
kings. ... If I found anything flourishing in France, those are, to be sure, their
factories and manufactories.There is no nation in the world, which would have such
an inventive mind as the French, when it comes to arts and crafts pertaining to
taste. . . . This gift of naturehas tended greatly to the injuryof their mores.77
So much for the poor French. Interestingly, such was Fonvisin's annoyance
with France, on which he focused, that he could even pay a compliment to
England in passing, if this served to underscore the worthlessness of the chief
object of his attention. "Equality", he said, "is a blessing when it, as in
England, is based on the spirit of government; but in France equality is evil,
because it comes from the corruption of mores."78
These passages are an expression of existential envy-pure and simple.
This is ressentiment, to be sure, an unmistakable, typical case of ressenti-
ment, but it is not as yet its creation. There is a certain pleasure in just saying
things such as these aloud, but they can hardly add much comfort to one's
existence. Hatred as such gave vent to the ressentiment of the first Russian
nationalists, but it did not solve their problem. The final stage of this develop-
ment-the construction of an identity with which one could live, the flower of
ressentiment-was not undisguised hatred. It was a transvaluation of Western
values, the creation of a new model, this time imaginary in every sense, and
with it a new hope for Russia, a new image of Russia that was soothing,
comforting, able to serve as a basis for individual self-esteem. And this was
the matrix of the Russian national identity.
At this point it might be helpful to recapitulate the stages in this complex

77 Ibid., 903-9.
78 Incidentally,like many of Fonvisin'sotheraphorisms,this phraseis translatedfrom Duclos.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 583

evolution. The Russian elite was attractedto nationalidentitybecause it could

furnishthe basis for statusand self-esteem the noble identityfailed to provide.
The ability of the nationalidentityto do this dependedon the successful devel-
opment of national pride, but the growth of national price, which initially
built up so quickly due to the triumphant,miraculousrise of Russia to glory in
the beginning of the century,was in later years impairedby the proximity-
the very existence-of the West. Russianscould not separatethemselves from
the West and returnto the times when its existence was a matter of indif-
ference to them. It was the West and the encounterwith the Westthat ushered
Russia into the new era in which it became aware of itself as a nation;it was
Russia's originally successful incorporationin the Westwhich gave its patriots
the first reasons for national pride, and it was in front of the West that they
experienced it. The West was an integral, indelible part of the Russian na-
tional consciousness. There simply would be no sense in being a nationif the
Westdid not exist. Russianslooked at themselves throughglasses fashionedin
the West-they thought through the eyes of the West-and its approbation
was a sine qua non for theirnationalself-esteem. The Westwas superior;they
thought it looked down on them. How could Russiansovercome this obstacle
and build up national pride in spite of the Westernsuperiority?
There were basically three ways to do so. The first was to become like the
West, to imitate it. Its choice was predicated on the optimistic belief that
Russia could do this with relative ease, and most of the eighteenth-century
creators of national consciousness subscribedto this position at one time or
another. Equality proving impossible, it could be seen as unnecessary.The
second response was to define the West as an inappropriatemodel for Russia,
although it had merits of its own, because Russia was incomparableto it,
unique, and went its own way unrelatedto the West. This was culturalrela-
tivism, a transientand inadequateposition, because it defied the purposethat
had called it into being. To admitthatRussia and the Westwere incomparable,
that they were to be judged by differentstandards,amountedto relinquishing
the hope of acquiringvalue in the eyes of the West, and gaining its respect;
and there was no sense in being of value if it was not recognized by the
significant other. In other words, national self-esteem depended on com-
parabilityto the West.
The response that proved most viable was the rejectionof the Westbecause
it was evil, or ressentiment.Like culturalrelativism, ressentimentwas based
on a deeply pessimistic evaluationof Russia, on the recognitionof its absolute
impotence in the competition with the West;but unlike culturalrelativism, it
was a remarkablycreative sentiment, capable of unendingramification,con-
stantly generating and fermenting new sentiments and ideas, a seedbed of
ideologies. Because Russians had few indigenous resourcesto provide them
with building blocks, the rejection of the West as such, pure ressentiment
expressed in hatred,could not furnishthe basis for nationalpride and contrib-
584 LIAH GREENFELD

ute to the constructionof a viable nationalidentity.The Russiansleft theirpre-

Western existence and would not go back to it. When in 1836 Chaadaev
remindedthem of this, his contemporarieswere shockedand he was declared
insane;79yet the creatorsof Russian nationalconsciousness in the eighteenth
century-Novikov, Fonvisin, Karamzin-faced, realized, and agonized over
exactly this issue.80 And thus, unableto tear themselves away from the West,
to eradicate,to efface its image from their consciousness, and having nothing
to oppose to it, they defined the West as the anti-model and built an ideal
image of Russia in direct opposition to it. Russia was still measuredby the
same standardsas the West, for Russia defined Westernvalues as universal,
but, in fact, it was much betterthan the West. Forevery Westernvice, Russia
had a virtue, and for what appearedas a virtuein the West, Russiahad a virtue
in reality;and if it was impossible to see these virtuesin the apparentworld of
political institutions and cultural and economic achievements, this was be-
cause the apparentworld was the world of appearancesand shadows, while
the virtues shined in the world of the really real-the realm of the spirit.
Fromthe days of Kantemir,Russian patriotshad found the political reality
of Russia-the lack of liberty,equality,respect for the individual-to be the
most embarrassing.It was this differencein the fundamentalrelationto Man,
not economic or cultural underachievement,which militated most conspic-
uously against the moral canon of the West, which Russia, eager to be incor-
poratedin this luminaryfamily of nations, nonchalantlyembraced.It was also
political reality which appearedmost immune to change. This was the eigh-
teenth century.The West for Russia was the Franceof the Enlightenment.On
the mental horizon vaguely loomed England, which Franceat this very time
was determinedto emulate and surpass, in the process giving its values the
explicit and articulateexpressionthatthey neverhad in the place of theirbirth.
Other Europeancountries, especially neighboringGermany,were but imper-
fect reflections of France.America, the Landof Liberty,in the consciousness
of eighteenth-centuryRussians, borderedon the imaginary;it was an ideal
constructionratherthan real presence, an embodimentof a principle. But the
principle was the same all along. The thinking individual, the common man
endowed with reason, and thus partakingin the natureof the Deity, was the
measureof moralgood. Historyhad not yet revealedthe failureof Franceand
Germanyto excel in the English values; the Russians could not have known
thatthey were not alone in theirshame. On the face of it, theirrealitydid seem
so much more repulsive. It was rationality,the reason of the thinking indi-
vidual, which necessitatedlibertyand equality.Russiadid not have libertyand
equality; and so it revolted against rationality,rejecting both the thinking

79 Chaadaevwas proclaimedinsane by Nicholas II; his "FirstPhilosophicalLetter,"published

in 1836, was actually written in 1829.
80 Rogger, National Consciousness, ch. 2.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 585

individual and the faculty that defined his nature. Fromthe point of view of
the eighteenth-centuryEuropeanelite, the Russianrealitywas not reasonable,
and the first Russian nationalistsfound reason unpalatable.Reason as a fac-
ulty of the human mind referredto articulation,precision, delimitation, and
reserve. They opposed to it life so full of feeling thatone could choke on it-
the inexpressible, the unlimited, the hyperbolic. Reason had to do with cal-
culation, reflection, predictability;the Russiannationalistsopposedto it spon-
taneity, the unexpectable,the unmeasurable.By their very naturethese quali-
ties were vague, undefined. It was much clearer what they were not, than
what they were. They defied standardsand were perfect ingredientsfor the
enigmatic Slavic soul.
The qualities of the Russian soul were arrivedat throughthe mental exer-
cise of posing antithesesto those Westernvirtuesin which Russia was particu-
larly deficient, and therefore, in the beginning they were as little present in
Russia as anywhereelse. But the possession of such a soul was so sweet, and
its inventorsor discovererswanted so much to believe in it, that this initially
intangibleentity materializedand, embodiedin the nationalcharacter,became
the most formidable and immutable component of the culture emerging
around it. Oh, how much did the enigmatic Slavic soul store within itself!
Nobody could see it; and yet, it was irrefutable.Nobody could deny the Rus-
sian nation a superiority which expressed itself in the world beyond the
apparent.81
The stages of this complex evolution (from the first realizationof Russia's
inferiority-through optimistic acceptanceof the challenge and differentvari-
eties of withdrawalfrom it: culturalrelativismand pureressentiment-to the
transvaluationof values) cannot be clearly separatedand organized chrono-
logically. They coexist and overlap in various ways-and continueto coexist
and overlap beyond the eighteenthcentury,althoughin differentmeasures-
and are frequentlyfound on the same pages as the reflection of the authors'
struggle with the predicamentfaced by the Russian elite. These authors, the
creatorsof the Russian nationalconsciousness, oscillate between the diverse
positions, as if testing the powers of every possible remedy;but they all even-
tually converge on the final stage of the transvaluation,as the only viable
solution to their problem. The rejection of reason runs through all these
searchingwritings, as it does, later, throughassertionsof the Russiannational
character.In the end of the eighteenthcentury,this rejectionis specific. The

81 Hans Rogger in his sensitive description, presentedthe incipient nationalconsciousness in

the eighteenth-centuryRussia as evolving in a series of antitheses, one element in each pair
reflecting an aspect of the Westernsociety and cultureas perceivedby Russians and the other, its
opposite, upheld as a quality of Russian nationalcharacter.These were antithesessuch as mind
and heart, form and substance, age and youth. The list can be continued indefinitely, but the
series are organized around one principle: Every pair is but a variation on the theme of the
rejection of reason.
586 LIAH GREENFELD

value of "reason"is retained,but "reason"is defined either in a Frenchway,

as the true philosophy, or becomes closely akin to the Hegelian Geist, the
Spirit of the Age or the Nation. What is rejectedis the faculty of the human
mind, the ability thatcreates the individual.In the nineteenthcentury,it is the
individualthatbecomes the centralobject of attack,but the eighteenth-century
pioneers concentrateon the perniciousattributeitself and oppose it to the soul
in comparisonwith which it is worthless. Fonvisin, in a detachedbut loving
descriptionof himself, confesses with pride: "Natureendowed me with a keen
intelligence, but did not give me any common sense [zdravogorassudka]"82
"Ah!" exclaims Karamzinwith evident self-complacency, "I sometimes shed
tears, and am not ashamedof them!"83Elsewherehe advises aspiringauthors:
"They say that an Author needs talent and knowledge: acute, perceptive
mind, vivid imaginationetc. [iproch. ]. I grantthis, but this is not enough. He
must have also a kind, tenderheart. . . I am sure that a bad man cannot be a
good Author."84Fonvisin, speaking throughStarodum,articulatesthis posi-
tion in The Minor. "My fatherrepeatedover and over again," he makes the
worthy old man say, "have a heart, have a soul-and you will be a man
always. Everythingelse is governed by fashion: a mind can be in and out of
fashion, knowledge can be in and out of fashion, as much as buckles, but-
tons. . . . Without it [the soul] the most enlightened sage is a pitiful nothing
[zhalkaia tvar']. . . . A simpleton without a soul is a beast." Starodum reiter-
ates the idea in the next Act: "Whatis there to be proudof in having reason,
my friend?Reason, if it is only reason, is a veritabletrifle. We see bad people,
bad fathers, bad citizens endowed with quickest reasons."85
Perhaps,the most articulateearly image of the exuberantRussian soul, and
the most explicitly contemptuous of the dull and cold reason of the West,
belongs to the pen of a minor poet, N. A. L'vov. "The gigantic spirit of our
ancestors," he writes,
appearsin otherlandsto be an unnatural exaggeration. Andhow couldit helpbeing
so?Inforeignlandsall goesaccordingto plan,wordsareweighed,stepsaremeasured.
Thereone sitshouruponhour;thenbeginsto think.Havingthought,onerests.Having
rested,one smokesa pipe.Then,thoughtfully, goesto one'swork.Thereareno songs,
no pranks.Amongus, Orthodox,however,workis like fire underour hands.Our
speechis thunder,so thatthe sparksfly andthe dustrisesin columns.86
The majesticprose of the nineteenth-centurywriterswould makethe language
of their predecessorssound like clumsy babble, but even such giants as Gogol

82 "ChistoserdechnoePriznaniev delach moich i pomyshleniach,"in Pervoe Polnoe Sobra-

nie . . , 856.
83 Karamzin,Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, VII, "O naukah . . .", 77.
84 Ibid., 20, 24.
85 Fonvisin, Pervoe Polnoe Sobranie . . . "The Minor,"Act 3, scene 1; Act 4, scene 1; pp.
121-2, 138.
86 Quoted in Rogger, National Consciousness, 270.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 587

would but embellish L'vov's succinct characterization,adding nothing to the

conception and in fact unable to conceive of the matterin any other way. The
nineteenth-centuryRussians would internalizethe fantasy of the eighteenth-
century inventors.
The rejection of reason implied the reinterpretationof its corollaries in
political culture:liberty and equality. While Russian nationalistsagreed that
the concepts denoted great moral virtues (for these values were so centralto
the canon that their very names acquireda magical character),they refused to
see theirtrueembodimentin Westerninstitutions.Westernlibertyandequality
were not real liberty and equality. These were something else. It was not
entirely clear what they were, but the pivot of the reinterpretationis easily
established. Individual reason was the source of all bondage: It stifled and
constrained the inner forces of spirit; and every expression of this limiting
rationalityin economic or political institutionsonly exacerbatedits deleterious
effects. Real freedomrecededinto the soul andbecame the innerfreedom;and
political equality lost all meaning. Fonvisinwas amongthe first to point to the
crucial difference between the real and the apparent.In his letters to Panin
(1778), he wrote: "Observingthe condition of the Frenchnation, I learnedto
discern liberty by law and real liberty.Ourpeople does not have the first, but
enjoys the latter in many ways. In contrast, the French, having the right of
liberty, live in veritable slavery;"87 but it was Derzhavin who, un-
selfconsciously, gave Russian liberty and equality a concise, but articulate
poetic definition. Blessed is the people, he said in "The Grandee," which,
like the Russian people, sees "happiness-in unity/equality-in equity/and
liberty-in the ability to control one's passions" (V edinodushii-
blazhenstvolVopravosudii-ravenstvolSvobodu-vo uzde strastei!).
One final step had to be takenbefore the transvaluationof the Westerncanon
could crystallize as the Russian nationalconsciousness. The backwardnessof
Russia meant the immaturityand underachievementof its civilization by
Westernstandards.Russianpatriotsconnectedthe abominationof reasonwith
too much civilization-a curse they were spared-and interpretedthe latteras
separationfrom the vital, primevalforces of which they had to spare. (While it
was frequently emphasized during the course of the eighteenth century that
backwardnesswas not necessarily an obstacle on the road to greatness, this
intellectualsalto, making virtue out of necessity, turnedbackwardnessinto a
guarantee of greatness.) At this juncture the Russian nationalist elite dis-
covered, or perhapsinvented, the "people," which determinedthe criteriaof
membershipin the nation and led to its definitionas a racialcollectivity. They
connected the spiritualvirtuesof the Russiansoul, spontaneityand feeling, to
these vital forces, blood and soil. The "people," which the elite eventually
made the central object of collective worship, was a mental construct, a

87 Fonvisin, Pervoe Polnoe Sobranie . .. 907.

588 LIAH GREENFELD

conclusion of a syllogism. The soul-the sign of Russianness-derived from

blood and soil. The people in the sense of plebs, the toilersuncontaminatedby
civilization, had nothing but blood and soil. Thereforetheir soul-their na-
tionality-was the purest. A corollaryof this conclusion was that those who
were not of these blood andsoil, could not possibly havethe Russiansoul-the
visible evidence being consideredinadequate-and thuscould not be Russian.
Ressentiment, not social concerns, fueled Russian nationalconsciousness,
andressentiment,not sympathyfor the peasantry,madethepeasanta symbolof
the Russiannation.The attitudetowardsreal(thatis, existingin the worldof the
apparent)people was hardlysympatheticand for a long time remainedincon-
sistent with this tendency to see the peasantry as the standardbearer of
nationality.Serfdomwas not seen as contradictoryto this idea, andviews which
could be called democraticor egalitarianwith anyjustificationdid not appear
until the nineteenthcentury.The suffering and humiliationof the peasantry
seemed to promote the development of the Slavic soul and soon became
themselves considered its distinctive qualities, taking their place alongside
spontaneityand hypertrophiedfeeling.
The image of the peasantrychanged considerablywith the evolutionof the
nationalconsciousness. In the beginningof the eighteenthcentury,The Hon-
est Mirrorof Youthinstructedits tenderreaders:"The serfs areby theirnature
uncivil, obstinate, shameless, and proud: for this reason they should be re-
strained, subdued, and humiliated." The young gentlemen were advised to
converse among themselves in foreign tongues, to distinguish themselves
from peasants and "other ignorantblockheads," and because peasants were
naturallyuntrustworthy,garrulousand indiscreet, and it was wise to keep
them as little informedregardingthe affairsof their mastersas possible.88 In
the late 1760s Novikov fought this attitude,lashing out againstlandlordswho
treatedtheir serfs inhumanelyand did not respectthem. "Oh, foolhardy!"he
addressed an imaginary culprit. "Did you forget that you were created a
humanbeing, is thatpossible thatyou abhoryourown self in the image of the
peasants, your slaves? Don't you know that between your slaves and human
beings there is more resemblancethan between you and a humanbeing?"89
The humanityof the simple people was glorified in contemporaryplays and
journals. In their simplicity, they were more humanthan their masters, who
either persisted in barbariccruelty and ignorance unredeemedby suffering
(like Prostakovaof The Minor) or aped the cold-heartedevil West (like the
Firiulins of Misfortune from a Carriage); and thus they were more truly
noble-and more Russian than the nobility. They had no manners, they did
not speak French, they were spontaneous and knew no limits in love and
88 "lunosti ChestnoeZerzalo," in Alferov and
Gruzinsky,RusskaiaLiterature,Article 50 and
others, 5-13 et passim.
89 Novikov, Truten', (6 October 1769), p. XXIV in Alferov and
Gruzinsky,RusskaiaLiter-
atura, 207.
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 589

suffering. Truly, when they loved or suffered, "dust was rising in columns."
"Peasant women can love too," wrote Karamzin in Poor Liza, a pivotal work
that announced the age of the Russian novel; but one was made to understand
that only peasant women knew how to love. Interestingly, the image of the
people was most exalted and idealized in the works of writers like Karamzin,
who were noblemen who wrote for the noble elite. A raznochinets Chulkov,
who intended his collection of freely interpreted folk stories for the market of
barely literate merchants with firsthand knowledge of the "people," had a
somewhat different view. "Envy and hatred," he wrote in one of the stories,
"are the same among peasants and city dwellers, but as the peasants are more
sincere than the city folk, these vices are more conspicuous among the for-
mer. .. ."90 Such realism was out of place in the heat of the efforts to create
the basis for the national identity. The "people" was kind, long-suffering,
endlessly patient, pure of heart, never reasoning, and had a huge glorious soul
that put the rest of the world to shame; and it was best to keep it that way.
In the beginning of the nineteenth century, serfdom was already considered
to be intolerable by many, but it is surprising how slowly this sensitivity
developed. In the Memoir of Ancient and Modern Russia, Karamzin, con-
cerned about Alexander's dissatisfaction with serfdom (the young tsar took
after his grandmother), wrote: "In the community of the state the natural right
must give way to the civic right. . . [Freed peasants] will not have the land,
which (indisputably) is the property of the nobility. . . . [The tsar] wants to
make peasants happy with freedom, but what if freedom interferes with the
good of the state? And is it certain that the peasants will be happy, freed of
their landlords, but sacrificed to their own vices, middlemen, and dishonest
judges?"91 For Fonvisin, who also had his share in the celebration of the
"people," equality was simply absurd. He reported from France the following
as a most curious incident:
[The governorof Montpellier,Comte Perigord,]has a box in the theatre.Usually there
is a soldier on guard at its door, to show respect to the person [of the Comte]. Once
when the box was full of the best people in the city, the guard, bored to stand on his
place, left the door, took a chair and, having placed it near the seats of all the noble
persons, sat down to watch the comedy, holding the gun in his hands. A Chevalierof
St. Louis, the major of his regiment, was sitting beside him. I was astonishedat the
impertinenceof the soldier and the silence of his commander,and took the liberty to
inquireof the latter:Why did the soldierjoin him like that?C'est qu'il est curieux de
voir la com6die, answeredhe with such an expressionas if he did not regardthis as in
any measure peculiar.92
For the astonished Fonvisin, this evidently was more than peculiar; and he was
not an exception among his countrymen. In eighteenth-century Russia, the

90 M. D. Chulkov, "A Bitter Dole," from Peresmeshnikor SlavianskieSkazki, in Manning,

Anthology, 110-4, at 111.
91 Zapiska o Drevney, RichardPipes, ed., 72-74 (Russian text).
92 Fonvisin, Pervoe Polnoe Sobranie ..., 908.
590 LIAH GREENFELD

hierarchicalview of society, except for a few dissenterssuch as Catherineor

Radishchev,did not as yet interferewith the view of the "people" as the true
nation.
The period of gestation of the Russian nationalconsciousness ended with
the "discovery of the people." When the eighteenthcenturydrew to a close,
the matrixin which all the futureRussianswould base their identitywas born.
It was a troubledchild, but the agony of birth was over, and the baby could
not be pushed back. For the time to come it would determinethe course of
Russian history. Between roughly 1800 and 1917 the components of this
living, self-proliferatingwhole were in many ways articulated,refined, recon-
ceptualized, and acted out-but never essentially modified. The cognitive
construct born out of the anguish and humiliationof the eighteenth-century
elite became the identity of its nineteenth-centurydescendants. It defined
them. They could no more escape it thanjump out of their skin, and when it
was not reflected in their writings, it was reflected in their lives.
The Russian nationalidea consisted in the following: First, the nation was
defined as a collective individual;second, it was formedby racial, primordial
factors such as blood and soil; and third, it was characterizedby the enigmatic
soul, or spirit. The spirit of the nation resided in the "people" but, rather
paradoxically,was revealedthroughthe mediumof the educatedelite, which,
apparently,had the ability to divine it. The rejectionof the common thinking
individual, which expressed itself in the glorification of its opposite, the
community, also led to the emphasis on special, uncommonindividuals, the
prophetsand divines of the nationalspirit;and as a result the adorationof the
"people" frequentlyfound its counterpartin elitism and the contemptfor the
dumb masses. The special individualswho knew what the "people" wanted
naturallyhad the right to dictate to the masses, who did not know what to do.
Russian nationalismwas racialand collectivistic-authoritarian. Constructedin
this manner,Russiannationalidentityprovidedthe groundfor individualself-
esteem; on the face of it, the comparisonwith the West was moved to a new
plane where Russia, by definition, was in no way inferior.Unfortunately,the
West remained the significant other for Russia and was still an absolutely
necessary condition for the successful formationand sustenanceof national
pride; the paramountmotivation within the frameworkof a national identity
thus defined was still winning its approbation.Again and again, eager to
prove its worth, Russia was forced to confrontthe West on its own ground-
in political culture-only to return,humiliated,to the world of the innerglory
where it licked it wounds and thoughtof revenge. The very same dramawas
constantly reenacted;it is possible that it is being reenactedright now.
The Decembrist uprising of 1825 was the last dramaticand unadulterated
expression of optimism and confidence that Russia could and would catch up
with the West, and this confidence was buriedtogetherwith the Decembrist's
hopes. The principalcontributionof the nineteenthcenturyto the Russianna-
 FORMATION OF THE RUSSIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY 59I

tionalist traditionwas imbeddedin deep pessimism regardingRussia's ability

to emulate and become equal to the West. This contributionwas inherentin
the matrixand representedits ramificationor differentiationinto what ostensi-
bly were two opposing currentsof thought but were actually two sides of
one-Westernism and Slavophilism broadly defined. These were to remain
the chief alternatingapproachesto the confrontationwith the West, or re-
sponses to its persistingsuperiorityuntil our day.93It is debatablewhetherthe
GreatOctoberSocialist Revolutionbroughtthe storyto an end. Currentdevel-
opments in the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic lend supportto the opinion
that the break in continuitythis world-shakingevent ostensibly signified was
not as absolute as some have thought. Nationalismmay be the greatestforce
"liberated"by glasnost, and nationalistsof 1990 explicitly recognize andjoin
hands with their late eighteenth-centurypredecessors.It is certainlyrevealing
that one of the most popularauthorsin today's Russia is Nikolai Karamzin.It
looks as if history is about to provide us with the possibility of assessing the
extent to which social action is influenced by traditionsformed generations
ago. This essay is based on the assumptionthat traditionsowe much to the
circumstancesin which they are born. If they indeed continue to weigh upon
us long since these generative circumstancesare forgotten, we may be well
advised to pay closer attentionto the latter.

93 Limitationsof space do not allow elaborationon this point. The author,however, would be
glad to shareher thoughtson the natureof and affinitiesbetween SlavophilismandWesternism,as
well as evidence on which these thoughts are based, with interestedreaders.