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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
“Speransky chez lui is very kind. I spoke to him about the fine beginning of Alexander's reign.”—
A. S. Pushkin“Sire, vos années sont comptées, vous n'avez plus rien à remettre, et vous avez encore tant de choses à faire pour que la fin de votre règne soit digne de son beau commencement.”—
M. N. KaramzinIn the nearly one hundred days between the murder of Alexander Pavlovich's father, Paul I, on the night of March 11-12, 1801, and the fall of Count Peter von der Pahlen, the leader of the conspiracy, on June 17, Alexander recovered from his initial demoralization and formed the paternalist political conceptions that would guide the next twenty-five years of his reign.
This paper was read in a slightly different form at the University of Aberdeen in June 1967. I would like to thank the American Philosophical Society for aid in support of research.
1. Dnevnik A. S. Pushkina, Apr. 2, 1834. Karamzin to Alexander I in conversation, Aug. 28, 1825, in Neizdannye sochineniia i perepiska Nikolaia Mikhailovicha Karamsina (St. Petersburg, 1862). Throughout this article I have used the Julian calendar, which was in effect in Russia until 1918. Dates are eleven days behind the Gregorian calendar in the eighteenth century and twelve days behind in the nineteenth.
2. Predtechensky, A. V., Ocherk obshchestvenno-politicheskoi istorii Rossii v pervoi chetverti XIX veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1957), pp. 6–7, 143.Google Scholar Despite this touching fidelity to a class interpretation of history, worthy of a Marxist Tertullian, this book is an important monograph on internal policy under Alexander I, with extensive citations from archives not easily accessible to Western schools and with careful analysis of many government plans that bore no results—and that one might have expected would be relegated to the “dustbin of history.”
3. “Alexander did not abandon his liberal inclinations and busied himself with constitutional projects until his death (1825).” George, Vernadsky, “Reform Under Czar Alexander I: French and American Influences,” Review of Politics, 9 (January 1947): 49–50.Google Scholar Alexander's permanent concern for constitutional government abroad and as a matter of conviction is amply demonstrated in Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, “Diplomatic Spokesmen and the Tsar Diplomat: The Russian Foreign Ministers During the Reign of Alexander I” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1964), especially chapter 2, a brilliant analysis. A revised version will be published by the University of California Press. For the constitutional plans of Speransky, see Marc, Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772-1839 (The Hague, 1957).Google Scholar
4. “ … I ultimately complied to quiet him. My draft set forth the evils of the regime … and the benefits of the one which Alexander proposed to introduce; the blessings of liberty and justice … and his resolution to abdicate after having accomplished this task, in order that some one more worthy than himself to be in power should be called upon to consolidate and perfect the great work which he had inaugurated.” Memoirs of Prince Adam Czartoryski and His Correspondence with Alexander I, ed. Adam Gielgud, 2 vols. (London, 1888), 1: 161-62.
5. See especially the letter of Sept. 27, 1797, cited in Le Gouvemeur d'un prince: D'apres les manuscrits inédits de F. C. de La Harpe (Lausanne, 1902), p. 331
6. Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 223-55 gives an account of the conspiracy's gestation and the murder based on what he was later told by Alexander, General Bennigsen, and Count Valerian Zubov shortly after his return in June 1801. Bennigsen and Zubov, along with Pahlen, were leaders of the conspirators. Accounts by conspirators, including Bennigsen's, and by contemporaries were published in Tsareubiistvo 11 marta 1801 goda: Zapiski uchastnikov i sovremennikov, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg, 1908).
7. Kazimierz Waliszewski contends that Alexander knew that the murder was inevitable and his ambition was such that he accepted this price for power. Waliszewski offers no evidence for either the knowledge or the ambition. Waliszewski, , Le Regne d'Alexandre Ier: La Bastille russe et la revolution en marche (1801-1812) (Paris, 1923), p. 23.Google Scholar
8. Kornilov, A. A., Modern Russian History from the Age of Catherine the Great to the End of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Kaun, Alexander S. (New York, 1943), p. 74.Google Scholar
9. Pahlen told the miserable new autocrat: “C'est assez faire l'enfant; allez régner. Venez vous montrer aux gardes.” Comte Langeron, “Mémoire sur la mort de Paul I, ” cited in Shilder, N. K. (Schilder), Imperator Aleksandr Pervyi, ego zhisn’ i tsarstvovanie 2nd ed., 4 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1904-5), 2: 5.Google Scholar See also “Zapiski Iakova Ivanovicha de- Sanglena, ” Russkaia starina, 37 (1883): 4; Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 231-32; the accounts of Alexander's wife, Dr. Rogerson (a Scottish court physician), and Countess Golovine in Almedingen, E. M., The Emperor Alexander I (London, 1964), p. 60–61.Google Scholar
10. Only two senators were made privy to the plot (besides the prominent conspirators, Nikolai and Count Valerian Zubov)—Count Peter Tolstoy and Troshchinsky. See V. I. Semevsky, “Liberal'nye plany v pravitel'stvennykh sferakh v pervoi poloviny tsarstvovaniia imp. Aleksandra I, ” in Dzhivelegov, A. K., Melgunov, S. P., and Picheta, V. I., eds., Otechestvennaia voina i russkoe obshchestvo, 7 vols. (Moscow, 1911-12), 2: 155–56.Google Scholar
11. “Alexandre mérite vraiment d'être adoré, comme il est, par ces qualités sublimes et caractéristiques; il sera aimé, vénéré et admire du monde entier.” Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna (hereafter cited as HHSA), Russland II, Berichte, Viazzoli report from Riga, Mar. 17/29, 1801, apostille no. 8.
12. Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 247.
13. Cited in S., Melgunov, Dela i liudi aleksandrovskogo vremeni (Berlin, 1923), p. 55.Google Scholar
14. Czartoryski, Memoirs, p. 248. Langeron, an émigré general in the Russian service, wrote of Pahlen, “il continua trop longtem á traitter son souverain comme un enfant. … Pahlen s'en fit craindre …” (Langeron's spelling). Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangerès, Paris, Mémoires et Documents, vol. 21, fol. 170.
15. Kochubei to S. Vorontsov, Apr. 9/21, 1801, in Bartenev, P. I., ed., Arkhiv Kniacia Vorontsova, 40 vols. (Moscow, 1870-95), 14: 149.Google Scholar Kochubei wrote more favorably of Pahlen a month later: “II a une tête bien ouverte et une activité qui, réunie á l'opinion publique, qui est pour lui, le rndent, selon moi, bien utile dans cette lutte des passions et après un rèegne de fer.” Kochubei to Vorontsov, May 12/24, 1801, ibid., 18: 241.
16. Duroc to Bonaparte, May 14/26, 1801, in Sbornik Imperatorskago russkago istoricheskago obshchestva, 70 (St. Petersburg, 1890): 155 (hereafter cited as SIRIO).
17. Ibid., p. 162.
18. Kochubei to S. Vorontsov, May 12/24, 1801, in Bartenev, ed., Arkhiv Kniasia Vorontsova, 18: 239.
19. S. Vorontsov to Novosiltsev, May 6/18, 1801, ibid., 11: 391-93.
20. Kochubei to S. Vorontsov, May 12/24, 1801, ibid., 18: 240.
21. Tsareubiistvo 11 marta 1801, p. 397. Kotzebue heard this from General Uvarov and Prince P. M. Volkonsky, intimates of Alexander from his youth and men of conservative views.
22. “Iz donesenii bavarskago poverennago v delakh 01’ ri … , ” Istoricheskii vestnik, 147 (January 1917): 115.
23. This account was given by M. A. Fonvizin, who entered service in the guards in 1803 and heard it from Peter Tolstoy. Fonvizin, , “Obozrenie proiavlenii politicheskoi zhizni v Rossii,” in Semevsky, V. I., Bogucharsky, V., and Shchegolev, P. E., Obshchestvennyia dvisheniia v Rossii v pervuiu polovinu XIX v., 1 (St. Petersburg, 1905): 142–43.Google Scholar M. A. Fonvizin, nephew of the dramatist, later became a Decembrist plotter against Alexander I.
For another affirmation of attempts by Pahlen and Panin to impose a constitution on Alexander, see the testimony in 1826 of Nikita Muraviev, another Decembrist, in Pypin, A. N., Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii pri Aleksandre I, 5th ed. (Petrograd, 1918), p. 61 Google Scholar, n. 2. For a third Decembrist's similar view, given in Lunin's testimony before Nicholas I's investigating committee in 1826, see Tainoe obshchestvo i 14 dekabria 1825 v Rossii (Leipzig, 1875), p. 229.
Prince Peter Dolgorukov heard that Alexander actually promised the plot leaders a constitution before the coup of March 11. “Grand Duke Alexander … had agreed that they should demand abdication from his father and he had promised, but verbally, to grant a constitution. Hardly had Paul been killed when Pahlen and the three Zubov brothers went to Alexander, informed him of his accession to the throne and reminded him of his promise; but then three of the conspirators—Lieutenant General Uvarov … , Major General Talyzin, commander of the Preobrazhensky regiment of the guards, and Colonel Prince Peter Volkonsky, adjutant and favorite of Alexander—objected to this and, threatening to bring in the Preobrazhensky regiment immediately, they demanded and obtained the acclamation of Alexander as autocratic sovereign” (Dolgorukov's italics). Dolgoroukow, Prince Pierre, La Verite” sur la Russie (Paris, 1860), p. 214–15.Google Scholar
24. “II y a des cabales, des dissensions, parmi les Chefs dominans et, á moins qu'on réussisse á les anéantir d'une manière ou d'autre, il parait que le but principal des intrigans est celui de profiter de la faiblesse de l'Empereur pour opérer un Changement dans la constitution de la Russie, de la forme du Gouvernement, etc.” HHSA, Viazzoli, May 31/June 12, 1801.
25. Kniaz, Velikii, Mikhailovich, Nikolai, Graf Pavel Aleksandrovich Stroganov (1774-1817), 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1903), no. 108 (May 9, 1801), 2: 31; no. 109 (May 9, 1801), 2: 34.Google Scholar
26. Pypin, Obshchestvennoe dvishenie, p. 97; Predtechensky, Ocherk, pp. 120-23.
27. Shilder, Imperator Aleksandr Pervyi, 2: 6.
28. Polnoe sobranie sakonov rossiiskoi imperii, first series, 46 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1830-39), 26: 583-84, no. 19, 779 (hereafter cited as PSZ).
29. Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 125; Shilder, Imperator Aleksandr Pervyi, 14: 100
30. PSZ, 26: 601-2, no. 19, 810.
31. Kashin, N. P., “Novyi Spišok biografii A. N. Radishcheva,” in Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete, vol. 241 (Moscow, 1912), bk. 2, pt. 3, p. 22.Google Scholar
32. Intimate Committee meeting of July 15/27, 1801, in Mikhailovich, Stroganov, 2: 73.
33. For details of his service and proposals, see D. M. Lang, “Radishchev and the Legislative Commission of Alexander I, ” American Slavic and East European Review, 6, no. 18-19 (May 1947): 11-24.
34. The most recent and best treatment of this hopeful but brief episode, which shows the depth of noble resistance to enlightened measures, is given in Paul, Dukes, Catherine the Great and the Russian Nobility: A Study Based on the Materials of the Legislative Commission of 1767 (Cambridge, Eng., 1967).Google Scholar
35. PSZ, 26: 692-93, no. 19.908.
36. For a summary of the Senate's history since its founding under Peter, see Istoriia Pravitel'stvuiushchogo Senata za dvesti let, 1711-1911 gg., 5 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1911).
37. Duroc to Bonaparte, May 17/29, 1801, in SIRIO, 70: 163. Locatelli, speculating on Pahlen's hostility to the Zubovs, wrote that the rumor, which set off the uproar in the guards, was used to discredit the Zubovs. HHSA, Locatelli, June 2/14, 1801, apostille no. 1.
38. Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 250.
39. HHSA, Schwarzenberg, no. 1, June 19/July 1, 1801.
40. “Mr. Cte. de Pahlen est maintenant le Personnage le plus puissant dans cet Empire, et le plus influent dans toutes les affaires du dedans et du dehors.” HHSA, Locatelli, June 19/July 1, 1801, apostille no. 2.
41. Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 251.
42. Letter from Alexander I to his sister Catherine, Sept. 18, 1812, in Kniaz, Velikii, Mikhailovich, Nikolai, Perepiska Imperatora Aleksandra I s sestroi Velikoi Kniaginei Ekaterinoi Pavlovnoi (St. Petersburg, 1910), p. 87.Google Scholar Noting that the two capitals also wished Pahlen, Alexander condemned his perfidy, immorality, and crimes. Writing again five days later, he told his sister that he had heard Pahlen's nomination “avec terreur, car quelle foi peut-on avoir en un traitre?” Ibid., p. 94.
43. Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 252.
44. Panin's menace was not neglected. Alexander kept him surrounded with spies so long as he remained in St. Petersburg and was “extremely anxious … always suspecting Panin of new plots. He had no peace until Panin left St. Petersburg, only to receive an order that he never show himself in any town in which the emperor was staying.” Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 268. The brazenness of the surveillance over Counts Valerian Zubov and Panin—of which both complained—was discussed in the Intimate Committee meeting of Jan. 27/Feb. 8, 1802, in Mikhailovich, Stroganov, 2: 172. Alexander's anxieties concerning Panin were still evident in 1819 when he decided against direct elections of deputies to the lieutenancies proposed in Novosiltsev's draft constitution. Alexander thought they might elect the wrong people, “Panin, for example.” N., Turgenev, La Russie et les Russes, 3 vols. (Paris, 1847), 1: 73.Google Scholar
45. HHSA, Locatelli to Cobenzl, Mar. 15/27, 1801, apostille no. 1.
46. Along with their threats they added a self-pitying argument that they had promised Catherine to recognize only Alexander as legitimate sovereign and now what was their reward? Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 252. Their plea ignored Alexander's contempt for Catherine.
47. S. Vorontsov to A. Vorontsov, June 14/26, 1801, in Bartenev, ed., Arkhiv Kniazia Vorontsova, 10: 100. Count Alexander's view is taken from Count Simon's reply (Count Alexander's letters to his brother after 1798 have not yet been published).
48. Of this committee only Stroganov was in St. Petersburg at the time of the assassination. Kochubei arrived at the beginning of April, Novosiltsev about May 20 or 21, and Czartoryski about June 15.
49. Intimate Committee meeting of June 24/July 6, 1801, in Mikhailovich, Stroganov, 2: 61. See also Raeff, Speransky, chap. 2, “The ‘Constitutionalism’ of Emperor Alexander I, ” pp. 29-48. Raeff was the first to suggest that Alexander meant by constitution something quite different from what one normally means in the West, but implies that this purely administrative goal was always Alexander's view. I suggest that before 1801, as often after 1803, Alexander meant limitations of a political character.
50. Mikhailovich, Stroganov, 2: 8 and 28.
51. When asked how he knew the French constitution so well, Alexander replied that his grandmother had read it all to him and told him to learn it by heart, but not to tell anyone. V. I. Semevsky, “Vopros o preobrazovanii gosudarstvennago stroia Rossii v XVIII i pervoi chetverti XIX veka, ” Byloe, 1906, no. 2, pp. 24-26.
52. For a discussion of the four extant copies, their variant titles and texts and the commentaries on them, see Predtechensky, Ocherk, pp. 190-99. Radishchev's participation in the work is still debated.
53. Mikhailovich, Stroganov, 2: 73, 77.
54. Ibid., 2: 63.
55. For the timid politics of the Senate in this period, see G. G. Telberg, “Senat i 'právo predstavleniia na vysochaishie ukazy, '” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnago prosveshcheniia, 25 (January 1910): 1-56; Istoriia Pravitel'stvuiushchago Senate, 3: 55 ff.
56. Arkhiv gosudarstvennago soveta, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1878), pt. 1, col. 15.
57. That the Senate report made such a claim is denied in Istoriia Pravitel'stvuiushchago Senata, 3: 34-37, and Predtechensky, Ocherk, p. 114. Telberg found that the claim to make petitions involved legislative competence. Telberg, “Senat, ” p. 16. A middle view sees the right of petition as “pointing toward the claim of legislative power for the Senate.” Dovnar-Zapolsky, M. V., “Zarozhdenie ministerstv v Rossii i ukaz o pravakh Senata 8 IX. 1802 g.,” Is istorii obshchestvennykh techenii v Rossii (Kiev, 1905), pp. 72–73.Google Scholar
58. For the text of Zavadovsky's project, see “Mnenie o pravakh i preimushchestvakh Senata grafa Petra Vasil'evicha Zavadovskago, ” Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete, vol. 48 (1864), pt. 1, pp. 100-107.
59. Intimate Committee meeting of Aug. 5/17, 1801, in Mikhailovich, Stroganov, 2: 85. See also pp. 96, 100, 127, 137, 167.
60. Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 291, 294.
61. Conversation reported by Lauriston, the French ambassador, June 13, 1811, in Mikhailovitch, Grand Duke Nikolai, Les Relations diplomatiques entre la France et la Russie avant l'année 1812, 6 vols. (Paris and St. Petersburg, 1905-8), 6: 37.Google Scholar
62. SIRIO, 90 (1894): 14.
63. Intimate Committee meeting of Nov. 18/30, 1801, in Mikhailovich, Stroganov, .2: 111-12.
64. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov, tetrad’ no. 13, fol. 355, cited in Russian in Predtechensky, Ocherk, pp. 101-2.
65. Intimate Committee meeting of Sept. 11/23, 1801, in Mikhailovich, Stroganov, 2: 100. Though a chair was kept for La Harpe, he declined invitations to join the Intimate Committee. The once simply dressed tutor, who had meanwhile been a Frenchsupported chief executive in the Helvetian Republic, now wore military uniform and a heavy sword, and took Prussia as a laudable model of absolutism combined with legality. See Sukhomlinov, M. I., Issledovaniia i stafi po russkoi literature i prosveshcheniiu, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1889), 2: 72.Google Scholar
66. Troshchinsky believed Catherine II's autocracy “much more bearable for the people than all the constitutional charters of the new legislation.” A. Fateev, “Politicheskie napravleniia pervogo desiatiletiia XIX veka v bor'be za Senat, ” Sbornik russkogo instituta v Prage, 1 (1929): 208.
67. See Czartoryski's report in the Feb. 10, 1802, session; Stroganov, Mar. 16, 1802; Kochubei, Mar. 24, 1802; and Novosiltsev, Apr. 11, 1802. Mikhailovich, Stroganov, 2: 178, 185-86, 198, 215-16.
68. Intimate Committee meeting of Mar. 16/28, 1802, ibid., 2: 185. A recently published scholarly article, which treats fully the various Senate projects and the Intimate Committee's deliberations, and which came into my hands too late for analysis with the care it deserves, maintains that Novosiltsev was the dominant force in the battle between the generations for control of the vacillating young sovereign's domestic policy. Novosiltsev managed to defeat the senatorial party—the Vorontsovs, Stroganov's father, Count Alexander, Count Zavadovsky, and Count Potocki. Alexander is portrayed as weak and a sincere liberal who did not know how to use his autocratic powers. See Narkiewicz, Olga A., “Alexander I and the Senate Reform,” Slavonic and East European Review, 47, no. 108 (January 1969): 115–36.Google Scholar
69. Czartoryski, Memoirs, 1: 322-24; Predtechensky, Ocherk, pp. 132-34.
70. P. Maikov, “Baron G. A. Rozenkampf, ” Russkaia starina, 120 (1904): 373.
71. For the constitution's provisions, see Emmanuel, Rodocanachi, Bonaparte et les iles ioniennes: Un épisode des conquêtes de la République et du premier Empire, 1797-1816 (Paris, 1899), p. 186–88.Google Scholar For a recent commentary, see A. M. Stanislavskaia, “Rossiia i Gretsiia v kontse XVIII-nachale XIX v.: Iz istorii politiki Rossii na Ionicheskikh ostrovakh (1798-1807), ” Istoriia SSSR, 1960, no. 1, pp. 159-76.
72. Rescript of Alexander I to Mocenigo, Aug. 17/29, 1803, Arkhiv Vneshnei Politiki Rossii Kantseliariia 1803, d. 4999, 11. 10 ob.-ll, cited in Stanislavskaia, “Rossiia i Gretsiia, ” pp. 72-73.
73. Maikov, “Rozenkampf, ” pp. 169-70, 373.
74. La Ferronays to Pasquier, no. 28 Confidentielle, Mar. 30/Apr. 10, 1820, SIRIO, 127 (1908): 362.
