Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  Again out of a concern to foster the free circulation of goods and merchandise and to stimulate commerce, Alexander emphasized progress in internal navigation. In the wake of Peter the Great, who had dreamed of uniting by means of canals the Baltic Sea, the White Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea, Alexander launched major public works. Started back in 1711, the construction of the Vyshniy-Volochok Canal to link the Volga and the Neva rivers and the Caspian and the Baltic seas was pursued throughout his reign and was finished in 1818. Envisaged by Peter I, the Tikhvin Canal, dug during Alexander’s reign, allowed the linking of Tikhvina, a tributary of the Ladoga, with the Volga. The Maria Canal, whose construction started in 1799 and ended in 1808, united the two navigable rivers in the upper part of their courses: the Kovja, a tributary of the White Lake and the Vytegra, a tributary of Lake Onega. Finally the North Canal, begun under Catherine II’s reign, was finished in 1820, forming a junction between the White Sea and the Caspian Sea. The monarch also favored mercantile trade by decreeing all Black Sea ports free of customs duties. Finally, in 1805, he ordered the construction of a canal within the walls of St. Petersburg. Finished in 1822, it circumscribed the city to the south and allowed merchant ships of various sizes to load and unload merchandise more easily. Thus, like Peter the Great and Catherine II, Emperor Alexander was concerned to develop transport and communication infrastructure, aware of the crucial role they played in development. However, at the start of his reign, it was to education that the emulator of Laharpe gave priority.

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  As a disciple of the Enlightenment and of Laharpe, Alexander gave major importance to education as the means for individual improvement and eventually for collective progress. When it had become better educated, open-, and critical-minded, Russian society would be better prepared to understand and to defend the idea of reform incarnated by the sovereign. For Alexander as for Laharpe, public education therefore represented a crucial investment for the future of the country, all the more so since the emperor was very critical of the system in force when he ascended the throne. In January 1802 he sent Laharpe a report once presented to Paul I by the Imperial Commission of Schools, with a devastating note:

  My dear, I attach the unsatisfactory memorandum38 I told you about. I doubt that you can get much out of it, but at least it will give you an idea of the current uselessness of an institution that is so important for the nation.39

  With this radical realization, he began as soon as he was in power to make major changes.

  The reform of September 1802 led to the founding of a Ministry of Public Education initially entrusted to Count Zavadovski, an aged and inactive veteran who had led the school commission under Catherine II. As of January 1803 the ministry included a “General Office of Schools” that became the actual decision-making body. Directed by Basil Karazin (1773–1842) and including some close friends of the emperor like Czartoryski, it came in fact to direct the ministry, as Alexander admitted explicitly to Laharpe in a letter of July 1803:

  Your regrets about the nomination of Zavadowsky as minister of public education would dissipate if you knew about the organization of his ministry. He is nobody. A council composed of Muravyov, Klinger, Czartoryski, Novossitzoff, etc. governs everything. Every paper is worked on by them. The frequency of my relations with the latter two prevents the minister from posing the least obstacle to the good we are trying to do. We have made him as easy-going as possible, a real sheep; he is nobody and has only been put in the ministry so he cannot cry that he was excluded from it.40

  Accordingly, in November 1804 the General Office published a “Status of Schools” that was inspired by both Czartoryski’s thinking in his memo of 1802 on school matters (in turn taken from the teaching model developed by Condorcet in France in 1792)41 and by a memorandum written by Laharpe in March 1802.42

  The empire would be divided into six huge education districts that would each eventually have a university. The head of each district, the trustee of the university, would exercise authority and supervise all the gymnasia (secondary schools) of the provinces situated in the district. At the provincial level the director of the gymnasium had the task of supervising all the schools in the local districts. At the level of each local district, a supervisor was charged with taking care of parish schools. In the Baltic provinces teaching would be in German, while in Russian-speaking regions it would be in Russian. Parish schools would deliver one year’s instruction; and district schools two years’ instruction; and provincial schools four years. In parish schools priority would be given to reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, and morality, as well as to notions of hygiene and agriculture. District schools would stress religion, law, the Russian language, history, geography, mathematics, physics, the natural sciences, technology, and drawing. Children destined for provincial schools would also receive the rudiments of Latin and German. Finally, provincial schools would teach mathematics, physics, technology, the natural sciences, ethics, law, political economy, history, geography, Latin, German, French, and drawing. (Note the important place given to teaching religion in parish and district schools and its absence from the secondary curriculum: for members of the General Office influenced by German idealism, the teaching of religion in the lower grades would give children solid moral guidelines.43) As in Condorcet’s plan, teaching would be open to girls as well as boys and would be free of charge, with books freely supplied to poor children. But in reality education under Alexander’s reign would remain the privilege of boys. Moreover, for lack of finance, of competent teachers, and of Russian textbooks, many schools planned for the countryside never saw the light of day.

  University education was also reformed. Moscow University had been founded in 1755, and it was simply reorganized and provided with new regulations in November 1804. Four faculties were created: political and moral sciences, mathematics and physics, medicine, and letters. While university organization remained traditional—based on the medieval model—it aspired to train not only competent civil servants but also the engineers and specialists that the country still lacked. Under the authority of the university, several libraries, scholarships for poor students, a classical lycée, and a pedagogic institute were created. Moreover, now endowed with a printing press, Moscow University was also able to publish ambitious scientific works. In parallel, new universities were opened in Vilnius44 and in Tartu in 1803, where the courses were given respectively in Polish and in German. A year later, in 1804, the universities of Kharkov and Kazan were opened. Finally, the pedagogic institute in St. Petersburg, shut in 1801, was reopened and formed the nucleus of the university that was officially created in 1819.

  In these various universities that educated a few hundred students at a time, the teaching body was composed of Russian and foreign professors giving a variety of courses. (In 1804 Moscow University had eleven professors from Germany.) While giving an important place to traditional subjects—theology, scripture, Russian civil and criminal law—university education gave a good share to the exact sciences and to disciplines from western Europe: Roman law, diplomacy, and even political economy.

  Both illustrious names and Alexander’s friends figured among the first trustees of the universities: Muravyov, the vice-minister and a former tutor to the emperor, was the first trustee of Moscow University; Novosiltsev was trustee of St. Petersburg University from 1804 to 1810, and Prince Czartoryski trustee of Vilnius University from 1804 to 1824. This demonstrates the interest the tsar took in the universities. But the creation of these institutions often required the overcoming of difficulties, as illustrated by Kharkov. Alexander approved the project as personally presented by Karazin in 1801, but the university did not see the light of day until January 1805, due to financial and administrative vagaries. However, Alexander’s investment in university development was irrefutable: each year the state gave the universities a budget higher than the whole budget that Catherine II had devoted to education.

  Under Alexander’s reign stude
nts remained few in number, but by their friendship and social networks—they often formed clubs—as well as by the journals and newspapers they published, they contributed to forming the dynamic embryo of an enlightened society.

  In parallel to the establishment of a denser grid of public schools, the monarch encouraged the foundation of “modern lycées,” meaning colleges at an intermediate level between gymnasia and universities, often privately financed, usually offering scientific and technical education. The first was created in Yaroslav; financed by Demidov, a rich entrepreneur from Ural, it was approved by Alexander in January 1805 and opened its doors under the name of the Demidov School of Law. The same year an institute of history and philology was founded in Nezhin (Ukraine), thanks to the financial support of Prince Bezborodko. And in 1811 a third lycée—the most famous one—opened in Tsarskoye Selo, welcoming children from the regime’s aristocratic elite; it included Pushkin among its first students.

  Overall, there was real educational development under Alexander’s reign: in 1801, on the eve of reform, there were only 334 schools in the Russian Empire, including 241 primary schools and 93 secondary schools serving 21,533 pupils in all, from a population of 34 million, or a schooling rate of 0.06 percent. By 1825 the number of primary schools had risen to 370, and there were 600 secondary schools and lycées, representing a total of 69,629 pupils,45 for a population now estimated at 53 million, or a rate of 0.13 percent. The breeding ground for young people trained in these higher and secondary establishments would play a key role during Alexander’s reign, not only on the economic and social levels, as they went on to become the civil servants and specialists the country needed; on a cultural level, the lycées would educate the great names of art and literature during the reign, as well as supply the audience for those artists and writers.

  Meanwhile, the emperor wanted to open Russia up to Europe, to integrate it into the intellectual and cultural exchanges of the era. This is why he adopted in 1804 an extremely liberal censorship code, the most liberal one of the nineteenth century, and encouraged Russian students to spend time abroad, particularly in Germany. Each year, two students from each of the universities on imperial territory could pursue their studies in western Europe at the state’s expense. The tsar also commissioned the translation into Russian of certain literary, philosophical, and political works that seemed to him likely to foster this openness: Adam Smith’s On the Wealth of Nations was published in Russian in 1804. However, this receptiveness to European culture was not to be to the detriment of the Russian patrimony. In 1814 the Imperial Public Library opened in the center of St. Petersburg at the corner of the Nevsky Prospect. By 1838 it had almost 42,700 volumes and more than 17,000 manuscripts.46

  The consequences of this intellectual and cultural openness were not long in coming: between 1801 and 1825 there was an explosion in the number of publishing houses (55 were created in 1813) and periodicals: reviews, almanacs, newspapers multiplied in just a few years. The lifespan of these publications was sometimes brief, but they still managed to stimulate, in away unprecedented in Russia, the circulation of ideas, values, and tastes. In a few years, under the influence of the Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Sciences and Arts, several magazines in various formats came out: in 1804 the Northern Messenger and in 1805 Russian Belles-Lettres. Individual initiatives were behind other new magazines: the Messenger of Europe was founded in 1802 by Nikolay Karamzin and the Russian Messenger by Sergey Glinka in 1808.

  Concerned to open up to Europe while fostering the development of a certain kind of Russianness, the tsar also had an urge to renovate and embellish St. Petersburg, to make it one of the most beautiful capitals in Europe. From the start he distanced himself from the baroque, if not rococo, style that had been in fashion under Catherine. Steeped in Greek and Latin references thanks to Laharpe, he asserted a marked taste for neoclassicism. So it was in this direction that the architects of his day, mostly Russians and no longer western Europeans, would work, inventing a “Russian Empire” style of Palladian inspiration that was frequently considered to be a “Romantic classicism.”47 In the course of the years 1801 to 1825, forms were purified, and geometry and symmetry were rediscovered;48 the majestic and monumental constructions also featured political symbols.

  During the first years of his reign, Alexander launched major rebuilding at the Admiralty. Symbol of St. Petersburg’s strategic and military role, it was renovated starting in 1805, under the direction of Andrey Zakharov, then professor of architecture at the Imperial Academy of Beaux-Arts. But the architect died in 1811, and it was Andrey Voronikhin, a talented architect and a serf freed by Count Alexander Stroganov,49 who took charge of the construction. When the work was completed in 1823, the result lived up to imperial aspirations: the facade of the main building of the Admiralty was 415 meters long, decorated with sumptuous bas-reliefs, the central tower bore 28 statues and four monumental sculptures that represented Pyrrhus, Achilles, Ajax, and Alexander the Great, proclaiming a symbolic continuity between ancient Greece and the Russian empire. Finally, on the summit of the building stood the admiralty arrow, 72 meters high, which became an essential landmark on the Petersburg horizon. But Alexander (like his father before him) was not content with erecting only secular buildings: in 1801 on Paul I’s initiative, construction of the Kazan Cathedral had been undertaken by Andrey Voronikhin, and Alexander pursued the work until it was finished ten years later. Inspired by the basilicas of St. Peter and Sta. Maria Maggiore in Rome, the cathedral opened in an elegant semi-circle onto the famous Nevsky Prospect. From the first years of its consecration, it became the pantheon of the saints and heroes of the Russian nation.

  Thus, in the course of the years from 1801 to 1825, change was in the air and the reforming intentions of the sovereign were to be seen in many domains. However, the concrete decisions were modest if not disappointing, not up to the height of initial hopes, for Alexander’s constitutionalist and reformist dream quickly ran up against a harsh reality: the absence of any relays and support within Russian society. So, from 1802–1803 onward, the sovereign was pushed to opt for caution and very gradual reform.

  A Young Emperor Searching for Himself

  Paul I had banned Freemasonry everywhere, but in 1802 the new emperor authorized it once more. This benevolence was partly based on tolerance, comparable to what he observed among various religious sensibilities. But this tolerance mutated into positive attraction. We lack the sources to be precise about Alexander’s feelings about Freemasonry, but we do know that many of his close friends (all those in the inner circle), ministers, and advisers were Freemasons and that he himself was undoubtedly initiated in 1803–1804 by Rodion Koshelev. Significantly older than the tsar (he was then 55), a great connoisseur of German mystic philosophy and of Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Koshelev occupied the post of chamberlain at the imperial court, which meant he was in charge of the general security of the emperor, the court, and the palace, which enabled him to reside at the Winter Palace and to share a number of philosophical and spiritual discussions with Alexander, entering gradually into “intimacy with the tsar.”50 Introduced by Koshelev to a Russian Freemasonry of liberal and deist inspiration (distinct from the western European variety that was usually atheistic and republican), Alexander took his place within the lodge of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. Later on, the emperor himself founded a Masonic lodge with Koshelev and Alexander Golitsyn, nicknamed “Three in One,” where the ideal of Masonic fraternity would try to cohabit with his own messianic spirituality—a subject to which we will return.

  Simple and open in his relations with others, Alexander (like his grandmother) appreciated salon wit and conversations where he could shine, particularly among women, whom he seduced as much with his culture as with his sense of presence. In her memoirs Countess Edling insists on the emperor’s taste for the company of the finer sex, whom he regarded with “an interest and chivalric respect full of grace and goodness.”51 Amiable and gallant, Alexander desp
ite his partial deafness and the slight myopia that obliged him to use a lorgnette (that he often lost), pleased many people. In April 1801 General Duroc, the aide-de-camp of Bonaparte who was sent to the court of St. Petersburg, attested to Alexander’s seductiveness to his entourage and the court: “The emperor combined a handsome and agreeable physique with gentleness and honesty; he appeared to have good principles and education; he had a taste for the military.”52

  A seducer, Alexander had many affairs. But although some liaisons lasted, most of these were passing fancies and often platonic, based on sophisticated banter in the style of Marivaux inherited from eighteenth-century France, and they had little consequence—at least until the second half of 1803, when Maria Naryshkina, whom he had loved unrequitedly since 1801, became his mistress. Then began a liaison that would last more than ten years.

  Gallant toward all women, his heart loved only one of them, and he loved her with constancy until the time when she herself broke a link that she could never appreciate. Madame Naryshkina, whose ideal beauty was found only in the pictures of Raphael, had captivated the emperor.53

  This pretty testimony from Countess Edling, a lady of honor to the empress and hence not likely to be indulgent toward Elizabeth’s rival, is precious for the historian. Archive sources fail to take account of Alexander’s passionate love affair; at most we find a few documents dealing with the children of the beautiful Polish woman: daily reports from James Wylie in April 1824 on the illness of the young Sophie Naryshkina54 and some awkward notes55 written by her children. The emperor was always very discrete, even proper, toward the woman who was his sole passion. He never mentioned her in his letters to his mother, Maria Feodorovna; this silence, surprising when one knows the intimacy between mother and son, is perhaps suspicious. (In fact, we know that Nicholas I would destroy many letters exchanged between his brother and his mother.) On the other hand, Maria Naryshkina and her children were more present in the frequent letters Alexander sent to his sister Catherine. They are mentioned in an evasive way but always with tenderness and propriety; thus the monarch gives news about their health, although he never speaks about his wife Elizabeth. A single reminiscence from Alexander allows us to glimpse the durable passion that united him to Maria Naryshkina, his lack of any guilt toward Elizabeth, and his indifference to her feelings. Many years after the rupture with his mistress, he let escape in a confidence to Countess Edling: