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Empire by Consent: Strakhov, Dostoevskii, and the Polish Uprising of 1863

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Edyta M. Bojanowska
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Abstract

In this article Edyta Bojanowska explores the circumstances surrounding the publication, in 1863 in the Dostoevskii brothers' journal Vremia, of a pro-Polish article by Nikolai Strakhov that led to the journal's closing. Bojanowska argues against accepting Strakhov's and Fedor Dostoevskii's retroactive explanations that the article was misunderstood. She analyzes Strakhov's article and the entire issue of Vremia in which it appeared and finds a consistent message in both: that Russia should withdraw from Poland, where imperial success would be either unlikely or too costly, shift its attention from imperial expansion to a domestic agenda, and restructure the empire into one based on the constituent populations' consent. Given Dostoevskii's endorsement of Strakhov's article and his hands-on editorial work on Vremia, this affair suggests a tolerant and pragmatic phase in Dostoevskii's imperial ideology that contrasts with the militant imperialistic punditry of his later period.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , Spring 2012 , pp. 1 - 24
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2012

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References

My warmest thanks to colleagues who generously offered their criticisms and advice about the various drafts of mis article: Jeffrey Brooks, Ellen Chances, Giorgio DiMauro, Michael Gordin, Susan McReynolds, Deborah Martinsen, and Mark D. Steinberg. I am deeply grateful for the rigorous evaluations and helpful suggestions for revision offered by my anonymous reviewers. Early on, a fruitful discussion wim Donna Orwin about Strakhov's article stimulated my further interest in uiis topic. I benefited from consultations about specific questions with Mikhail Dolbilov, Ekaterina Pravilova, and William Mills Todd III. I am also grateful to the Princeton Russian and Eurasian Studies Kruzhok for the opportunity to workshop an early version of this research, especially to my discussant Mayhill Fowler.

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5. During Nicholas I's reign, Faddei Bulgarin and Nikolai Grech were briefly imprisoned for their newspaper's review of Mikhail Zagoskin's Iurii Miloslavskii (1829); Moskovskii telegrafvias closed down and Nikolai Polevoi banned from practicing journalism after he unfavorably reviewed Nestor Kukol'nik's Ruka Vsevyshnego Otechestvo spasla (1834); after Chaadaev's infamous “Philosophical Letter” appeared in print, die censor was relieved of his duties, die journal closed down, its editor exiled to Siberia, and die audior officially pronounced insane.

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10. Katkov, M. N., “Pol'skii vopros,” Russkii vestnik 1 [24 February] (1863)Google Scholar, see commentary to Dostoevskii, “Otvet redaktsii ‘Vremeni’ na napadeniie ‘Moskovskikh vedomostei,'” PSS, 20:317. The very volume diat printed Strakhov's article contained other polemics with Katkov and with Den'. See Vremia, no. 4 (1863): 54-65, 103-20. Political differences aside, Katkov's decision to denounce Vremia likely involved a wish to eliminate a rival journal.

11. The Revue article appeared on 1 August 1863 (commentary to Dostoevskii, “Otvet redaktsii,” PSS, 20:318). On Revue's mistaken attribution of die article to Dostoevskii, see Dolinin, A. S., “Dostoevskii i Strakhov,” in Piksanov, N. K., ed., Shestidesiatye gody (Moscow, 1940), 256.Google Scholar

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13. This irony was not lost on Dostoevskii when he drafted his reply to Moskovskie vedomosti, see Dostoevskii, , “Otvet redaktsii,” PSS, 20:101.Google Scholar

14. Renner, Andreas, “Defining a Russian Nation: Mikhail Katkov and the ‘Invention’ of National Politics,” Slavonic and East European Review 81, no. 4 (2003): 674.Google Scholar Emphasis added. For Herzen's remark, and his regret about the closing of Vremia, which dared say “a few humane words on the subject of Poland,” see Nechaeva, V. S., Zhurnal M. M. iF. M. Dostoevskikh “Vremia,” 1861-63 (Moscow, 1972), 308 Google Scholar (hereafter Zhurnal “Vremia“).

15. For studies of Katkov's journalism during the Polish Uprising, his nationalist philosophy, and his relationship with the government, see Maiorova, Olga, From the Shadow of Empire: Defining the Russian Nation through Cultural Mythology, 1855-1870 (Madison, 2010), 94-127 Google Scholar; Kantor, Vladimir, Sankt-Peterburg: Rossiiskaia imperiia protiv rossiiskogo khaosa (Moscow, 2008), 320-39Google Scholar; Glębocki, Henryk, Fatalna sprawa: Kwestia polska w rosyjskiej myśli politycznej (1856-1866) (Kraków, 2000), 301-34Google Scholar; Renner, Andreas, Russischer Nationalismus und Öffentlichkeit im Zarenreich 1855-1875 (Cologne, 2000), 210-26Google Scholar; Renner, , “Defining a Russian Nation“; Tvardovskaia, V A., Ideologiia poreformennogo samoderzhaviia (M. N. Katkov i ego izdaniia) (Moscow, 1978)Google Scholar; and Martin Katz, , Mikhail N. Katkov: A Political Biography, 1818-1887 (The Hague, 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Renner, , “Defining a Russian Nation,” 661 Google Scholar; and Maiorova, , From the Shadow of Empire, 94-127.Google Scholar

17. Katkov's activism at the time of the Polish Uprising added impetus to his increasing influence and gave him access to the highest echelons of power. He regularly exchanged information with the minister of the interior, Valuev, and the minister of foreign affairs, Aleksandr Gorchakov, flooding diem with policy memoranda. In the late 1860s, Valuev, fed up with Katkov's unofficial ministering, tried to exclude him from the editorial board of Moskovskie vedomosti, only to have his decision reversed by Tsar Alexander II himself. See Sleznev, F. and Smolin, M., “Velikii strazh imperii,” in Katkov, M. N., Imperskoe slovo (Moscow, 2002), 19-25 Google Scholar, and Dnevnik P. A. Valueva, ministra vnutrennikh del (Moscow, 1961), 1:251. According to K. P. Pobedonostsev, there were ministries in Russia, “where nothing important was undertaken without consultation with Katkov.” Tvardovskaia, Ideologiia poreformennogo samoderzhaviia, 3.

18. Ellen Chances illuminates this philosophy in her work on Dostoevskii and his 1860s journals: Chances, “Pochvennichestvo“ Chances, “Literary Criticism and the Ideology of Pochvennichestvo in Dostoevsky's Thick Journals Vremia and Epokha,” Russian Review 34, no. 2 (April 1975): 151-64; Chances, , “Počhvenničhestvo—Evolution of an Ideology,” Modern Fiction Studies 20, no. 4 (Winter 1974-75): 543-51Google Scholar; see also her dissertation “The Ideology of ‘Pocvennicestvo’ in Dostoevskij's Journals Vremja and Epoxa” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1972). For Dostoevskii's elaboration of pochvennichestvo and for his Vremia mission statement, see “Riad stat'ei o russkoi literature,” PSS, 18:41-103 and 19:5-66.

19. Dolinin, , “Dostoevskii i Strakhov,” 238-40.Google Scholar

20. Strakhov, N. N., Materiialy k biografii Dostoevskogo (1883), 238 Google Scholar, quoted in Dolinin, ibid., 242.

21. Dolinin, , “Dostoevskii i Strakhov,” 243 Google Scholar; Dostoevskii's phrase was “obshchaia i otvlechennaia formula.“

22. Dostoevskii's relations with Strakhov began to deteriorate after Epokha closed down due to low subscriptions. Scholars disagree about the degree and duration of the two men's affinity. In A. S. Dolinin's view, their differences were personal rather than ideological. Ibid., 253. For a view of Dostoevskii and Strakhov's relationship that stresses their differences, see Rozenblium, L. M., “Tvorcheskie dnevniki Dostoevskogo,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 83 (Moscow, 1971), 16-23.Google Scholar Rozenblium does not, however, disprove the close personal and intellectual ties that indubitably existed between them in the 1860s. Though their relations began to cool in the late 1860s, Strakhov was the best man at Dostoevskii's 1867 wedding to his second wife, Anna Grigorievna, who later asked Strakhov to edit Dostoevskii's posthumous collected works. Gerstein, , Nikolai Strakhov, 69 Google Scholar; Rozenblium, , “Tvorcheskie dnevniki Dostoevskogo,” 23.Google Scholar

23. On Dostoevskii approving the article for publication, see Frank, Joseph, Dosloevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865 (Princeton, 1986), 212.Google Scholar

24. Dostoevskii, letter to I. S. Turgenev of 17 June 1863, PSS, 28.2:34. Dostoevskii corresponded with Turgenev about Turgenev's contribution to Vremia.

25. Quoted in a commentary to Dostoevskii, letter to Turgenev, PSS, 28.2:381 n6.

26. Since Dostoevski's manuscript is not extant, the authenticity of this letter rests entirely on Strakhov's testimony. He published the reply only two years after the writer's death, in his Materiialy k biografti Dostoevskogo (1883); see a reprint in Dostoevskii, “Otvet redaktsii,” PSS, 20:97-101.

27. Strakhov, N. N., Bor'ba s zapadom v nashei literature (Kiev, 1897), 2:91-120.Google Scholar

28. See commentary to PSS, 20:252-55; Grossman, Leonid, Dostoevsky: A Biography (Russian original, 1962; London, 1975), 272-75Google Scholar; Hingley, Ronald, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (London, 1978), 99 Google Scholar; Kjetsaa, Geir, Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writer's Life (1985; New York, 1987), 147-48Google Scholar, Nechaeva, , Zhurnal “Vremia,“ 305-13Google Scholar; Tvardovskaia, V. A., Dostoevskii v obshchestvennoi zhizni Rossii (Moscow, 1990), 30.Google Scholar

29. Frank, , Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 211-12Google Scholar; see also Dolinin, , “K tsenzurnoi,” 2:561.Google Scholar

30. Gerstein, , Nikolai Strakhov, 106 Google Scholar; Walicki, , “Slavophile Thinkers,” 91, 90 Google Scholar; Maiorova, , From the Shadow of Empire, 100.Google Scholar

31. Walicki claims that Strakhov “provided strong arguments against the optimistic belief in the possibility of solving the Polish question through the mild treatment of the Poles and through offering diem material concessions.” Walicki, “Slavophile Thinkers,” 91. This seems to suggest that Strakhov advocates treating die Poles harshly and offering them no concessions. I do not find such arguments in Strakhov's article or any encouragement of such positions.

32. Walicki, , “Slavophile Thinkers,” 91 Google Scholar; Maiorova, , From the Shadow of Empire, 100, 218n28.Google Scholar

33. Kantor, Sankt-Peterburg, 347nl.

34. Strakhov told Nikitenko that he had wanted “to convince the Poles not to take pride in ‘their superiority, in their civilization that has overtaken ours’ and so on, but he did not fully express this idea [ne vpolne frazil elu mysl', ne doskazal ee],” see Nikitenko, Dnevnik, 2:340. Emphasis in the original.

35. Strakhov, N. N., “Rokovoi vopros,” Vremia, no. 4 (1863): 153, 155, 154.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., 153-54. Strakhov quotes from I. V. Kireevskii, “Obzor sovremennogo sostoianiia literatury,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii Ivana Vasil'evicha Kireevskogp (Moscow, 1861), 2:30.

37. Strakhov, , “Rokovoi vopros,” 155 Google Scholar; Walicki, , “Slavophile Thinkers,” 90.Google Scholar

38. Strakhov, , “Rokovoi vopros,” 155, 157.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., 158.

40. Dostoevskii, letter to Turgenev, PSS, 28.2:34. Emphasis in the original.

41. Strakhov, , “Rokovoi vopros,” 159, 160.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., 160.

43. Historical research corroborates the immense importance of the so-called Polish Question. Even without a Polish uprising on his hands, Alexander III devoted 30 percent of all his decisions to the management of Poland. See A. Miller and M. Dolbilov, eds., Zapadnye okrainy Rossiiskoi imperii (Moscow, 2006), 436.

44. Strakhov, , “Rokovoi vopros,” 161.Google Scholar

45. Bojanowska, Edyta M., Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), 197-210, 236-53.Google Scholar

46. Strakhov, , “Rokovoi vopros,” 162.Google Scholar

47. Ibid.

48. As early as 1861, a censorship circular forbade any hints of Polish autonomy, let alone independence. Renner, “Defining a Russian Nation,” 672n52.

49. Vremia, no. 1 (1863): 64.

50. See the 1863 report of the Third Section, quoted in VS. Nechaeva, Zhurnal M. M. i F. M. Dostoevskikh “Epokha,” 1864-1865 (Moscow, 1975), 6 (hereafter Zhurnal “Epokha“).

51. Vremia, no. 2 (1863): 183-94 and no. 3 (1863): 128-32.

52. Vremia, no. 3 (1863): 139-40.

53. See Hosking, Geoffrey, Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917 (Cambridge, Mass., 1997)Google Scholar; and Maiorova, From the Shadow of Empire.

54. Nechaeva, , Zhurnal “Epokha,” 74.Google Scholar

55. For the segment devoted to the Polish affairs, see Vremia, no. 4 (1863): 190-97.

56. Dostoevskii later propounds the same scenario for all Slavs; see Dostoevsky, F. M., A Writer's Diary, ed. and trans. Lantz, Kenneth, vol. v, 1873-1876 and vol. 2, 1877-1881 (Evanston, 1993-94), l:522-31and 2:1099-1205, 1206-12.Google Scholar

57. Vremia, no. 4(1863): 197.

58. Miller, and Dolbilov, , eds., Zapadnye okrainy, 182.Google Scholar See Kautov's leading article in Moskovskie vedomosti 228 (1863). In the next issue, Katkov clarifies diat retreating from Poland would be a terrible mistake; see Sobranieperedovykh statei “Moskovskikh vedomostei” (Moscow, 1863-1887), 623-26. In private letters to Alexander II and Alexander III, however, Katkov apparently favored giving Poland independence “within its edinographic boundaries“; see Alexei Miller, The Romanov Empire and Nationalism (Budapest, 2008), 170.

59. Vremia, no. 4 (1863): 220.

60. Pravilova, Ekaterina, Finansy imperii: Den'gi i vlast’ v politike Rossii na natsional'nykh okrainakh, 1801-1917 (Moscow, 2006), 137-51, 165-99.Google Scholar

61. Strakhov, , “Rokovoi vopros,” 155, and Razin's mention of “broshennye miliony” in Vremia, no. 4(1863): 195.Google Scholar

62. Sokal'skii, P. P., “Nashi glavnnye spornye punkty,” Vremia, no. 4 (1863): 257.Google Scholar

63. Brower, Daniel, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London, 2003), 66, 19.Google Scholar See also Miller, , Romanov Empire, 49-52.Google Scholar On institutional Russification in Poland, see Weeks, Theodore, Nation and State in Late Imperial Russia: Nationalism and Russification on the Western Frontier, 1863-1914 (DeKalb, 1996).Google Scholar

64. According to Dov Yaroshevski, grazhdanstvennost’ became prominent in Russian political culture between 1857 and 1867; see Yaroshevski, , “Empire and Citizenship,” in Brower, Daniel and Lazzarini, Edward, eds., Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917 (Bloomington, 1997), 65.Google Scholar

65. For example, Sokal'skii harangues against the persecution of the Ukrainian language—a policy that conservative papers supported (e.g., Den’ or Biblioteka dlia chteniia). He claims that the Russians are hypocritical in defending the national rights of the Czechs, the Serbs, or the Slovaks, that is, Slavs who happen to reside in other empires, while restricting these same rights at home; see Sokal'skii, “Nashi,” 254.

66. Sokal'skii, “Nashi,” 232-33.

67. Bibikov, N., “Terriorial'naia voennaia sistema,” Vremia, no. 3 (1863): 1-16 and no. 4 (1893): 46-62.Google Scholar Apart from the burden of hosting and supplying an enormous Russian army stationed in Poland (many times that of the British military presence in Ireland), die draft was a permanent source of Polish discontent. According to recent Polish research, of the 200,000 Poles drafted in 1831-1873, 150,000 died while in service. See Miller and Dolbilov, eds., Zapadnye okrainy, 442.

68. Tkachev, P., “Nashi budushchie prisiazhnye,” Vremia, no. 4 (1863): 103-20.Google Scholar

69. Rodevich, M., “Nekotorye cherty iz istorii poslepetrovskogo vremeni,” Vremia, no. 4 (1863): 65, 68-69.Google Scholar Rodevich was Vremia's permanent collaborator.

70. Popov, V. P., “Prestuplenia i nakazania,” Vremia, no. 4 (1863): 149.Google Scholar The article subsequently played a role in the genesis of Dostoevskii's Crime and Punishment. Chances notes Vremia's use of Aesopian language in her “Pochvennichestvo,” 79.

71. Given Vremia's popular serialization of Dostoevskii's House of the Dead, which the public knew was based on the author's personal experience of exile, diis issue would certainly have been seen to enjoy the writer's personal endorsement.

72. On Kostomarov's federalism, see Miller, Alexei, “Ukrainskii vopros” v politike vlastei i russkom obshchestvennonm mnenii (vtoraia polovina 19veka) (St. Petersburg, 2000), 76-115 Google Scholar, and Maiorova, , From the Shadow of Empire, 75-81.Google Scholar Katkov vehemently opposed Kostomarov's federalism, so this review may have helped in getting Vremia's April issue on his bad side (on Katkov and Ukraine, see Katz, Mikhail N. Katkov, 131-33).

73. [P. V. Znamenskii] (signed M. N.), “Eshche stat'ia o novoi knige,” Vremia, no. 4 (1863): 4, 27-28. On Znamenskii's authorship, see Nechaeva, Zhurnal “Vremia, “200-201.

74. The ideas of both federalism and empire by consent were confidentially debated in high government circles. Minister of the Interior Valuev reportedly weighed federalism's viability for Russia. Katkov insinuated this when he inveighed in Moskovskie vedomosti against high-placed government officials who wanted to transform Russia into a confederation; see Sleznev and Smolin, “Velikii strazh imperii,” 24.

75. See, e.g., Frank, Joseph, The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859 (Princeton, 1983), 87-88.Google Scholar

76. Chances, , “Pochvennichestvo,” 73.Google Scholar

77. See, for example, the editors’ footnote to [A. A. Grigor'ev], “O postepennom, no bystrom i povsemestnom rasprostranenii nevezhestva i bezgramotnosti v rossiiskoi slovesnosti,” Vremia, no. 3 (1861): 39; on Grigor'ev's likely authorship, see Nechaeva, Zhurnal “Epokha, “236, 262nl9.

78. Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 83 (Moscow, 1971), 176, 186. Emphasis in the original. Entry 1 from between 16 April and die end of June 1864; entries 2 to 4 from August 1864.

79. The Polish insurgents had been promising die liberation of the serfs from die start. The tsar's edict was widely regarded as a testament to Russia's military challenges: an effort to weaken peasant support for Polish independence.

80. See P. A. Valuev's diary entry for 6 December 1863: “We all seek a moral force on which we can rely, but do not find it. One cannot defeat moral forces with a purely material force. Irrespective of all die foolishness and duplicity of the Poles, the ideas are on dieir side. On ours—not a single one. […] We talk of Russian rule or Orthodoxy. But these ideas are for us, not for the Poles, and we ourselves invoke these words insincerely. Russia itself is not the point here, but the Russian autocrat, the Polish king, and the constitutional Finnish Grand Prince. This is not an idea, but an anomaly. What is needed is an idea diat even a single Pole could accept as his own [usvoit’ sebe].” Dnevnik P. A. Valueva, 1:258-59.

81. Dostoevsky, , A Writer's Diary, 2:1368-78.Google Scholar Dostoevskii may have begun developing this notion as early as 1864, see Nechaeva, , Zhurnal “Epokha, “ 65-67.Google Scholar

82. Dostoevsky, , A Writer's Diary, 2:1368-78, 1:234-40.Google Scholar

83. Ruttenburg, , Dostoevsky's Democracy, 166.Google Scholar

84. Ibid., 25.

85. Nechaeva, , Zhurnal “Epokha,” 214.Google Scholar Nechaeva also notes numerous examples of Epokha endorsing these two journals’ positions. Dolinin may be overstating his case, however, when he sees Epokha as proof that the Dostoevskii brothers joined Katkov's camp. Dolinin, “K tzenzurnoi,” 2:561-62.

86. Bojanowska, Edyta M., “Chekhov's The Duel, or How to Colonize Responsibly,” in Apollonio, Carol and Brintlinger, Angela, eds., Chekhov for the 21st Century (Bloomington, Ind., 2012).Google Scholar

87. Beth Holmgren, “Cataclysm, Nation, Self: An Endoscopy of Polish Lives” (paper, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Boston, November 2009).

88. Dostoevskii, , Zapiski iz Mertvogo doma, PSS, 4:209-10.Google Scholar

89. The Poles whom Dostoevskii met in prison also left their impressions of him. See, for example, Tokarzewski, Szymon, Siedem lat Katorgi (Warsaw, 1907).Google Scholar For an analysis of the Poles’ accounts and for excerpts in English, see Blake, Elizabeth, “Portraits of the Siberian Dostoevsky by Poles in ‘The House of the Dead,'” Dostoevsky Studies, n.s. 10 (2006): 56-71.Google Scholar

90. It appeared in Vremia, no. 12 (1862): 235-49.

91. Maiorova, From the Shadow of Empire. Key historical studies of this topic include Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865 (Cambridge, Eng., 1999), and Bassin, , “Geographies of Imperial Identity,” in Lieven, Dominic, ed., The Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Eng., 2006), 45-63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hosking, Russia; Miller, Romanov Empire, chap. 6; Renner, Russischer Nationalismus; Vera Tolz, Russia: Inventing the Nation (London, 2001). Weeks, Theodore, “Slavdom, Civilization, Russification: Comments on Russia's World-Historical Mission, 1861-1878,” Ab Imperio, no. 2 (2002): 223-48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Weeks, Nation and State.

92. This is consistent with the position of A. F. Gil'ferding, another prominent voice on the Polish Question. For Gil'ferding the real harm of the January Uprising lay in its forcing the Russians to act in violation of their fundamental national values, such as tolerance, generosity, and respect for other cultures. See Weeks, “Slavdom,” 231-32.

93. Mark Beissinger made this argument eloquently in his 2007 Presidential Address to the National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies: “The Persistence of Empire in Eurasia,” News Neft 48, no. 1 (2008): 1-8, also accessible in Ab Imperio, no. 1 (2008): 157-76.