Conservatives against Uvarov’s triad

Long before Durnovo, in the early 1860s, M. V. Yuzefovich reflected on the same topic: “And our enemies could not have devised a better means to support the Western influence on the minds -- restraining the Russian speech within the limits of some official formalism deprived the most well-intentioned minds not only of developing useful ideas freely, but even of being able to reasonably oppose the most dangerous misconceptions that developed under the influence of Western theories. Censorship, restraining the speech, not only failed to restrict the spread of harmful thoughts but helped it” Iuzefovich M. V. O znachenii lichnosti u nas i na Zapade. St. Petersburg, 1906. P. 9..

After the closure of the Moscow Slavic Charitable Society in 1878, Yuzefovich wrote to I. S. Aksakov: “...There is a double game here fully exposing the total incapability of our protectionist authorities to cope with the tasks of modern life. <...> Nobody would be louder than I am in demanding a strong, legitimate protectionist authorities, nobody would be more convinced than I am that without it freedom turns into the ugliest of moral human ugliness. I even do not mind dictatorship, if under certain circumstances the normal law is insufficient. But how to reconcile with the protectionist authorities, which not only allows the outrage of freedom but supplements it, where possible, with their own arbitrariness? Which <...> disperse the society that served the cause pointed to by the Tsar himself, and, at the same time, leave the outrage, with which the present time has marked, unpunished: in courts, where the murderers are acquitted; in the temples of God, where scoundrels serve requiems with cigars in their teeth, in the streets, where robberies are committed in broad daylight and where soldiers are wounded or killed while they are forbidden to use weapons” Rukopisnyi otdel Instituta russkoi literatury (RO IRLI). F. 3. Op. 4. Ed. 719. L. 34-34ob..

A. A. Kireev, also repeatedly indignant about censorship, explained that the authorities “are trying to find their own servants, but dress them in livery, and decent people do not accept livery. Prohibiting from talking those who are not lackeys, who want to support Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality <.> they clamp their mouths” Nauchno-issledovatelskii otdel rukopisei Rossiiskoi Gosudarstvennoi Biblioteki (NIOR RGB). F. 126. K. 9. L. 111..

The consequences of such a policy were described in a letter to Kireev by another representative of the right wing of Slavophilism, P. A. Kulakovsky: “I completely agree with those who think that the restraint was needed, that it was necessary to put a bridle on many things that were unbridled, but in times like this it is not always possible to keep within bounds, because pulling the bridle, you can do it too hard, cause pain <...> Now, even the Citizen is considered a prophet! It is necessary to fight not only with the unprincipled, broken "liberalism", but also with those who are not reasonably conservative, it is the duty of the honest free journalism that serves the Sovereign and Fatherland” RO IRLI. F. 572. Ed. 50. L. 2..

But even a decade later, L. A. Tikhomirov, who shared these feelings, wrote: “The bureaucracy puts all the life of the nation in the monotonous obligatory forms, destroying, as far as the state's power allows, the entire free life of the nation, abolishes all social centers of life, and, therefore, undermines the moral and social authorities. Thus, it demoralizes the nation and brings a total lifelessness” Repnikov A. V., Milevskii O. A. Dve zhizni Lva Tikhomirova. Moscow, 2011. P. 366.. Paradoxically, Tolstoyism turns out to be akin to the deadly bureaucracy: “For the social world, it is much more terrible than the dynamite anarchism, for it brings into society neither acute crises nor the reviving struggle, but the hopeless dead rotting. It permeates the society with the bacilli of lifelessness, it erodes it in all veins and nerves” Ibid. P. 266.. The thought of the “Tolstoy-like” character of the Russian bureaucracy at the turn of 20^th century was expressed by the student of K. N. Leontiev, Yu. S. Kartsov: “The theory of Count Leo Tolstoy about non-resistance to evil penetrated the consciousness of St. Petersburg statesmen and discouraged them from thinking and acting” Kartsov Iu. S. Sem let na Blizhnem Vostoke (1879-1886). Vospominaniia politicheskie i lichnye. St. Petersburg, 1906. P. 390..

The dissatisfaction of the conservatives with the consequences of the “conservative turn” was largely due to the specific character of Russian statehood: the government of the huge country could never afford to be restricted by any sort of masterminds -- either conservative or liberal. Any theory was perceived by the authorities in the best case instrumentally, and any adherent of a theory sooner or later could find himself on the verge of disgrace: not only I. S. Aksakov or N. N. Durnovo, but also M. N. Katkov and E. V. Bogdanovich. On the other hand, post-reform conservatism was in fact broader than Uvarov's triad -- both because of its heterogeneity and because of its belonging to an era that was far from conservative. All this ultimately led the followers of post-reform Russian conservatives -- V. M. Purishkevich, V. V. Shulgin, and others -- to support the Progressive bloc.

conservatism uvarov triad

References

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