Douglas Smith

I am not prepared to be a Czar. I never wanted to become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling.” The grand duke, and history, would confirm the truth of Nicholas’s words.

When confronted with difficult problems, Nicholas was apt to go pale, light a cigarette, and fall silent.

Society wits quipped that “Russia did not need a constitution to limit the monarchy since she already had a limited monarch.

Nonetheless, there was one aspect of Russian political culture that survived the reign of Alexander III. The Russians call it proizvól,

nontitled boyar families

hard was life in the countryside that more than three-quarters of peasant army recruits called up in 1891 were declared unfit for service because of poor health.

Nobles and peasants were divided not just by an economic barrier but by an even more important cultural barrier. The nobles, by and large, were Europeanized; they were children of the reforms of Peter the Great. The peasants were not; they lived in a different cultural and psychological world of tradition, habit, and religion that had changed little since the days of early Muscovy and one in which the nobles were viewed wearily as fallen Christians and, at times, forces of evil.

State service was obligatory for Russian noblemen until 1762. By then the ethos of service had become deeply ingrained in the nobleman’s self-identity, so much so that even after the emancipation from state service, most noblemen continued to serve. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the nobleman’s understanding of service had begun to change, and increasingly the object of service shifted from that of the state to the Russian people or nation.

Pavel was a complicated man, full of contradictions and with a character given to anguishing over Russia’s so-called cursed questions: What has happened? Who is to blame? What is to be done?

By showing contempt for society, the government is teaching society how to disdain political authority.