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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
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Current mood:  pensive
Category: Writing and Poetry
Yet not all that was ossified and fossilised triumphed in the reign of Alexander; that relic of another age, Nesselrode, who had enjoyed the company and counsel of Talleyrand was at last dismissed from the foreign ministry, and the capable Gorchakov, who had earlier represented the interests of Petersburg in the great courts of the West and was most familiar with the rapid evolutions of their customs that had not yet appeared upon the remote Neva, was elevated as his successor. Gorchakov viewed through a prism un-fogged by the ancient principles that had been fixed after the fall of the Corsican, and his fresh vigours persuaded Alexander to fill the ministry with figures that espoused the novelty of his views. These were expressed in attempt to compensate for the westerly stopper that the Treaty of Paris had fixed upon the Russian ambitions in that direction by an expansion towards the east and which might offer but little resistance. The trail of the explorations of the Cossack towards an easterly horizon had once been most rapid when the fall of the Tatar khanates and the capture of that frosty northern citadel of Kazan, the polar extremity of the domains that saluted and adored the revelation of the Prophet had been accomplished. These hardy fighters and riders that must have excited the admiration of Genghis Khan smiled and sang deep in the wilderness, ignorant of fears, and descended the Urals into the vast reaches of the unknown, speedily cleaving the gushing flows of the great rivers of Asia, of the Lena and the Yenisei and the Ob and pressed yet further, pursuing the rosy dawn and introducing the Russian upon the flow of the Amur upon the confines of the domains of the Chinese mandarins and only still the relentless gallop of their steeds until their hooves were washed in the waters of the Pacific early in the reign of the Romanovs. In 1689, the Russian retired from that distant domain through a treaty with the Emperor of the Manchu that still enjoyed the health and youth of their rule; only now near some two centuries later, did the Russian venture to return to the Amur, encouraged by the decline of the Manchu and the sclerotic Empire of China. The Count Muravyev, with ease and facility and the aid of a treaty that reversed the earlier Russian retirement, sliced away the northern reaches of China, and attained the port of Vladivostok upon the Sea of Japan, firmly enlisting the Empire amongst the powers of the Pacific.
These diplomatic feats in the reign of Alexander were matched by the enterprise of the general who intruded into the sandy wastes of Central Asia that had once generated the irruption of the fury and the armies of Timur and had also incubated the infancy of the Turk and the Hun and shed its domestic tumults over the greater stretches of the world. The Rivers Oxus and Jaxartes, below the boundaries of the Siberian possessions of Petersburg, still foaming long after the visits of Alexander and the generals of the Caliph were approached by the Russians in 1863 who established a series of forts upon their banks and penetrated to the River Ili where the General Cherniayev was confronted by the final and fitful raids of a surviving pastoral barbarism. The martial reply of Cherniayev captured the town of Alma Ata, or Almaty is it is known to contemporary maps that include the confines of the modern Kazakhstan and its capital. The reaches of Turkestan, already engaged in a transformation into a province of the Empire were attained, the burning dunes bounded over in an enthusiasm and Cherniayev refused to be stilled in his motions by conquest by a missive from Petersburg that he was informed commanded a halt in his military operations. He excused himself from abiding from its obligation until the city of Tashkent had fallen to his arms and thence he might at last fix eyes upon the mute document·
In the deepest reaches of Central Asia, upon the rocky slopes of the lofty spire of mount that set on the confines of British India, only the Khanates of Khiva and Bukhara persisted in an independence. Bukhara offered the Russian a resistance and defiance of its aims, although it might wield but a selection of the antiquated implements of a medieval war against the arms of Russia, that though retrograde in the eye of the western European, functioned as utterly modern in the bloodied and savaged face of the Oriental who must soon yield up the independence of their realm. Several routs brought the Russian before the tomb of Timur in Samarkand, that ancient city of incident and history. The denizens of Samarkand regarded their city as sacred and resented with clamours and violence the insult of the Russian infidel that now sat as master over their city. The natives rose up in the motions of rebellion, the fighters of the Tsar were claimed in siege in their fortress, but the General Kaufmann marched rapidly over the dunes to the relief of his countrymen, and having plunged the blade into the beating heart of the rebellion, compensated the labours of his soldiers with the plunder of Samarkand, accomplished over four days of unfettered pillage. The Khanate of Khiva rapidly yielded after its capital attired in the same name was claimed in the swarm of fighters bearing the eagle of the Romanov and the moment of a civil conflict in the mountainous realm of Kokand upon the confines of Tibet encouraged the intervention of the Russian who fixed the title of vassal upon it as Khiva and even Bukhara had already embraced the attire of the Russian yoke...
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
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Current mood:  amused
Category: Writing and Poetry
In January of 1863, the aggrieved Pole, organised into a plenty of secret societies, replied to a measure of the Viceroy seeking to conscript the youth of Warsaw into the army of the Tsar with an attack upon several upon several Russian detachments; yet the masses of the Polish nation, the peasant and the labourer in the city did not swarm to the standards of rebellion and continued to dwell in an indifference to the fortunes of the patriots regarded as dangerous radicals. Disappointed in their expectations, the apostles of rebellion vanished into the forests and engaged in the tactics of the guerrilla and their hopes might be momentarily raised by the return of the some former names of revolution to Poland. The brandished Russian sword toppled their fancies of the restoration of the realm of Poland and after a few more reverses offered by the arms of the Tsar, they retired across the frontier. The voices of London and Paris and Vienna united in a call for moderation and restraint after the tidings of the vengeance of Petersburg were made known; hundreds of Poles were hung in the presence of several generals, and one General Muravyov, renowned over his pitiless ferocity and known to History as the Hangman, personally tied the noose above the necks of above one hundred captives. The more adjacent voice of Berlin spoken by Von Bismarck, assured Petersburg of the support of Prussia which united with Petersburg in a military convention and the Empire was relieved of the fears of a new Western intervention. The fury of the Empire, permitted to be fully expressed, was still not yet appeased and some nine thousand Poles were torn from their homes and hearths and all familiar to them and were hurled in a motion of deportation into the wilderness of Siberia. Entire towns were delivered to the flames and those spared the brand of the Russian were exposed to the most exorbitant taxation.
In a final bid to maintain the spirit of the rebellion, the harried Dictator of the revolt, one Traugutt, moved to gain the support of the peasants through a promise that the land upon which they toiled and from which issued the rich fruits that were delivered to the tables of others was to given to them. The policy of Traugutt was tardy and ineffective; the government of Alexander had already awarded the peasant with generous tracts of field and they rolled up their ears against the redundant proclamation of the Dictator. The remnants of the rebellion retired into the Citadel of Warsaw, pursued by their Russian masters, and having torn down the ramparts of the fortress, Traugutt and his staff were apprehended and swiftly brought to the scaffold. Alexander persisted in the spirit of reformation and preferred to avoid the inevitable repression that must follow an act of a national insurrection, and again the liberal qualities of Miliutin were sought to address the issues of the troublesome realm. The capable minister, after a study of the Polish issue recommended that a vast an radical emancipation and great program of reform be launched in order that the gambols of the Polish sprit might at last be arrested. Alexander might have blanched, but the sudden and disabling apoplexy of Miliutin rendered these possible policies stillborn. The certain and fixed habits of revenge were easily and quickly revived after the retirement of their chiefest adversary; the Pole was further to deprived of his name and nature, the language of the instruction of their youth was to be exclusively in Russian and the idiom was to be used in every operation of the administration of Poland. The former autonomy of the nation was terminated, the old Constitution and its protections derived of the generosity of Alexander I was dissolved by Alexander II. The old nation was fractured in several provinces that were subject to a stern military administration and t was to be presumed by the authority of Petersburg that the impulse to rebellion in even such a tumultuous people as the Poles was forever extinguished; yet it would rise forth again in full vigour yet again thereafter, the Poles were not quieted in the hatred of their Imperial master but nourished its fiery impulse in the bosoms of the noble and the peasant and grew ever more violent set upon the name of Russia all that was odious and hateful and detestable. It must be seen as inevitable that later, the death of the Third Rome was the occasion of the rebirth of Poland...
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Monday, July 06, 2009
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Current mood:  voluminous
Category: Writing and Poetry
The further actions of reform at last threw open the doors of the universities to the masses and admitted them to the precincts of learning and education, and the ability to write one’s name was a moment of the most signal achievement. They were immediately exposed to the species of the intelligentsia that was bred in the speech of the lecture by the professor who had imbibed the various isms of the West and transmitted them to his fellow Russians, and of the study of a new political theory that was utterly divorced in its secular from the old traditions of obedience and devotion to the sacred Empire. The ruin of the Autocracy was a settled destination to them and only the speed of its destruction was the subject of debate, whether the Romanov Eagle was to be transfixed in its flight by a sudden arrow or a lengthy preparation of the projectile that might at length inspire the further reformation of the Empire. Yet the passions and the animating fire of the radical, whose intensity ever manufactures beguiling and perhaps even cogent words that the cautious and measured speech of their adversaries, weighted in consequences that might draw shade upon the glow of the Dawn and that the flight of Hope could not carry, also directed their energies into the expanse of remote morass and forest far from Petersburg and Moscow in order to carry the tidings of their revolutionary call, and disparage the benefits of the Emancipation. The cried out to those still new in their manumission whether they were truly given land, whether their odious taxation was but a new style of oppression. The leaders of the radicals glowed in the health of youth and were but faintly opposed by the ministers of state, long exhausted and burdened in uncertainty; one Dobrolyubov, a literary critic but twenty years of age, seethed in impatience and sought the instant overthrow of the autocracy, and in his examinations of literary product and the tales of rural outrage, derided the measures of the state revealed as sham and hoax and bellowed out from font that issued smoke that a radical spirit must possess the nation. Even the igneous Herzen who had celebrated the demise of Nicholas I was still enlisted in the service of the cause of the circumspect and the elder Liberal and condemned the impetuous young radical who swarmed to London to hear the voice of the presumed oracle of revolution and were delivered to dismay over his caution and later would rail against his arrogance and smugness that they discerned was the nature of the Liberal.
It was inevitable the Liberal and the Radical should now part in their courses; the nihilist character of the prescient Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons was realised in a new race of young figures in Petersburg and Moscow who viewed ANY restraint as an intolerable yoke upon the vigours of freedom, exalted Science as the true salvation of the masses and published a series of inflammatory tale, a mirror through which the masses of the Empire might at last recognise themselves and their lamentable condition. But the impulse of the revolutionary might not even await these too tardy developments and soon committed to paper and to a thousand walls open encouragement to strike terrorist blows against the government of the Tsar, and even the assassination of the sovereign himself might at last be advocated. Fire was soon reflected upon the flow of the Neva as the inspired engaged in an inflammable mischief upon the streets of Petersburg that attracted the inevitable vengeance of the state; the young radical editor and agitator were fitted in chains and cast into the depths of Siberia, their presses subdued in their motions and destroyed and the publications that advocated a violent overthrow suppressed.
But the spirit and the enthusiasms that the radicals had roused were no longer to be extinguished and the work of the undiscovered radical might continue unimpeded and indeed emboldened by these momentary reverses. The undimmed zeal of the patriots of Poland derived nourishment from the speech of the radical and revived the intention to recover the liberty of their country. The folly of Alexander II had hoped to erase these impulses by the attainment of the happiness of the Poles through the extinction of their name and their utter absorption into the Empire, although the means by which he sought their contentment were salutary; a gentle Viceroy, the Prince Gorchakov, was appointed and he loosened the weight of the chain upon the Poles and laboured to improve the lot of the peasant with an agricultural innovation. But the memories of the Pole still recalled the previous outrage of the Russian and marked the anniversary of these events; in February, 1861, a commemoration in Warsaw was intruded upon the violence of the Cossack. Gorchakov replied with regret and invited the prominent amongst the Poles to explore yet further reforms. These solutions did not appease the growing expectations of the Polish who resumed demonstrations and Gorchakov was induced to coat his newest response in the iron of bullets. In May of 1861, the Prince expired and a series of Viceroys followed, varied in their polices save a stern colour attached to them and the demonstrations of the Poles grew yet more violent, and the figment of the assailed Russian authority in Warsaw, one Luders, imposed a martial law. Alexander regarded the gathering upheavals in Poland with teeming concerns and dispatched his brother Constantine, attired in the title of Viceroy to the rebellious province. The tempers of the Poles had only increased and the salutations offered Constantine when he arrived in Warsaw was spoken from the barrels of a gun, and a new uprising must be considered as inevitable...
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Sunday, July 05, 2009
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Current mood:  distractable
Category: Writing and Poetry
The cheers of the peasantry and the serfs over the Emancipation must have been muted; though the document decreed the serf was to be given land, the title to the field was in the collective possession of the mir and he still drew plow upon ground that yet belonged to others and his use of a plot was subject to an external approval in a manner that had been the lot of the lowly above a thousand years. The desire for a property theirs exclusively, subject to the considerations of no other than their own was an expectation dashed and these violated hopes festered in resent and informed the eruptions of mass discontent that filled the last years of the Third Rome and challenged the authority and tempted the vengeance of its Soviet successor. The tempers of the peasant were stoked as the realisation of the limitations and terms of the Emancipation circulated throughout the Empire and the arms and soldiers of the state were induced to punish the complaints of their countrymen. Opportunism followed the tidings of disappointment; in the remote hamlet of Bezhna in the region of the Urals, one bold villager by the name of Petrov announced he was the Tsar, aided by the credulity and hunger of the simple peasants and the ragged standard of rebellion was raised and the grim inevitability of the revenge of the state was visited upon the presumption of Petrov in fire and blood. However, despite the defects of the Emancipation and its tardy and tenuous steps, the greater portion of serf and the peasant celebrated his liberation in an humble gratitude, and a friend of Miliutin, one Samarin, wrote him in glowing terms that, “These labours of the Statute are set not upon sand, but the deepest rock…the people are transformed, their appearance, their speech, all is utterly changed…this is irreversible, it has been won and can never be reversed.” Indeed the historian must agree with this assertion of Samarin, for a signal and central point of the story of the Third Rome had been attained. A public thought and opinion was formed at this moment, separate from the beliefs of court and courtier was another consequence of the Emancipation as the masses of the nation had departed the status of chattel and had become citizens. The evolutions of the beliefs of the citizen would nourish the development of the intelligentsia and the new phenomenon of the middle-class intellectual who had appeared fitfully in this long tale before as fantastic creatures whose race a primitive age could not long sustain; yet know they appear as certain fixtures of the realm, growing in numbers and gathering in a society and Empire that ever had new expectations and their disappointment and dismay must from this point onward must disorder and submit to trembles the foundations of the Empire.
And yet the vitality and the powers of the realm at such a moment that demanded a most animated display, were falling into decay and exhaustion. The Emancipation had struck a fatal blow against the fundament of the authority of the state founded upon the labouring and servile serf and that vast duty of manufacturing a new ground of rule was utterly beyond the ministers of state who were reduced to a bewildered silence over the strange transformation of the Empire and even the agility and capacity of such figures as Miliutin, exhausted by the strenuous and devouring labours of creating the Emancipation and were removed from the political scene by the calamity of a stroke that bent the thought and limbs or of Rostovtsev who was felled by the sickle of the Reaper even before the completion of the Statute. Alexander who had commanded the Emancipation had largely expended the waters of his liberal and reforming reservoir and the later years of his reign might be regarded by the nation and the Historian cursory in his research, as a dusty waste, replete in figments and mirages mistaken by the masses, at last submitted to education and possessed of opinion, for further efforts of betterment and when they were disabused of these notions, the fervour of the people was roused and the revolutionary, refreshed in the waters of the Marxist fount, was excited in his hopes and encouraged in his attempts at terror.
Yet some reform did continue, as long as Miliutin drew able breath; that devoted minister already observed the growth of the radical and revolutionary and resolved that their thunders must be stolen away by the involvement of the liberal-minded and the progressive into the institutions of government set in the rural domains of the Empire. “Such an involvement of the people of the countryside truly serves the interest of the state and even the safety of the sovereign,” Miliutin asserted, “and it is urgently to be demanded.” On January of 1864, the sweat and toil of Miliutin and his associates rendered the Zemstvo Statute; this established a system of autonomous governments in the rural reaches of the Empire that would oversee the local concerns of education and of the public health in addition to pursuing the stimulation of trade and industry aided by the visitations of the urban doctor and teacher and scientist into these stretches of forests dark in poverty and ignorance illumined at last and in the glow of learning the peasant might further understand his new possession of title of citizen...
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Saturday, July 04, 2009
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Current mood:  curious
Category: Writing and Poetry
Nikolai Miliutin was derived of lowly stock and only the evolutions of state policy and the opening of its purse that might further extend the frontiers of the province of education provided Miliutin with its benefits at the University of Moscow the skills of statecraft and his brother with the qualities of a journalist. Thereafter entering into the service of the State, Miliutin was a member of a new race of minister who were not of a noble pedigree, and did not view the world through their opulent lens. They derived neither wealth nor ease from the labours of the serf and did not tremble nor express a single scruple over the abolition of serfdom in order to advance the health of the state. Miliutin had employed his craft and talents to reform the administration of Petersburg and Moscow, animated by the hope of a great and liberal reform of the Empire and its ossified institutions and he was joined by compatriots that also dwelt in the expectations of the alteration of the course of Russia. One Alexei Strolman, an author and historian of some repute who had achieved a further renown in regards to his exploration of geological topics, was admitted to the committee in addition to one Yakov Rostovtsev, derived of a lengthy duration in the military barracks and recommended to Nicholas I as a figure of fidelity who had scorned involvement in the Decembrist Revolt and reported its seditious danger to the Imperial ear. His further military services to Tsar and Empire had procured him the position of General and admitted him to the committee that would expose the institution of serfdom to a critical examination. These men regarded the true state of the economic and social condition of the realm without a blush or evade the unflattering answers that must follow their studies and indict the nation. They understood the onerous conclusions returned them and at last a minister of state ventured to give an honest appraisal of the domestic condition, and the intelligence of Miliutin was soon to be beheld as a most coveted commodity.
The observations and reports of Miliutin and Strolman and Rostovtsev, conceived in a veracity, were devoured by a plenty of ensuing committees, and yet despite the efforts and toils of Miliutin, he was largely excluded from their deliberations until in 1859, when the circumspect motions of Alexander had discerned that a sufficient amount of time had passed and the moment when an official emancipation at last might be drafted. Miliutin and his capacity were again summoned to the chambers of the committee, united again with Rostovtsev in order to compose the fateful document, aided by the participation of several noble figures who were celebrated over the depth of their knowledge of serfdom. In the midst of such an abundance of capacity, the committee commenced its work that was ever impeded by moments of acrimony and the most vehement debate, largely offered by the Minister of Justice, one Count Panin, who as a member of the society of landowners had long derived benefit from serfdom and in moments igneous speech voiced his opposition to the discontinuation of the imperilled institution. Panin spoke the discomfit of the nobles who clearly wished to be informed of the status of the serf after his ties had been split by the decree of the State. They offered, guided by their interest that the serf should indeed be freed, but he should attain no land in his liberation; the misgivings of Miliutin retorted that danger must attend this doubtful course and loose instability upon the Empire although he possessed the ability to recognise that the landowner must abandon his estates and the realm forgo the produce and wealth that they generated unless he continue to maintain a large number of labourers upon the fields. The fervour of Panin to resist the emancipation was at length muted and guided by the command of his sovereign that was ever superior to his own convictions. “My assertions and beliefs,” he once remarked, “are onerous things if they run counter to the will of His Majesty.”
The tardy compliance of Panin at last permitted the committee to conclude its assignment, and on the 19th of February, 1861, the Emancipation was formally issued, a document of startling complexity, numbering nearly four hundred pages. It decreed that the serf was to be gradually released from the ties of his bondage only over a period of two years and he would receive land from his former master, the affected noble compensated with a the grant of many tracts of Imperial domains, of radiating roads and trails and the gushing flow of rivers that might only be opened to the freed bond through the offered monies of a toll; the aristocrat’s burdens were also to be relieved by a monetary compensation from the government. The denuded coffers of the state were to be refilled by the slender purse of the liberated serf who would be subject to the duties of a redemption tax above the next fifty years. But the landowner and noble was yet relieved of some of his privileges; the promulgation of the Statute struck the lash from a noble hand and drove the master from an impromptu judgment seat where he had long visited punishment and violations upon his chattel at will over crimes and infractions that either event or his own fancy had manufactured. His justice was replaced by a new race of jurist and court, and the novelty of a trial by jury that introduced the regular motions of Law in an Empire where it had hitherto been little more than exhibition of caprice, and of judges whose rulings were subject to an Imperial review. A new species of independent jurist were established, and the absolute authority of the Romanov over their Empire now perished, and in the final years of the Third Rome the sceptre slowly fell from their hands...
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Friday, July 03, 2009
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Current mood:  productive
Category: Writing and Poetry
The defeat of the Empire was the clear repudiation of the policy of Nicholas and imperilled Russia’s continuing possession of the title great power that was utterly founded and purchased only upon the blood of the warrior and the thunder of arms on a far field of victorious battle that a military might expended. Now the vaunted and even feared Russian sword was blunted in the tumults of more recent battle and was vanquished. It was to be expected, and with a deep satisfaction by many of the princes of the West that Russia, whose position was founded upon the triumphant speech of cannons must now desist from casting a menacing shadow upon Europe and recede into the deserts of Asia. The lofty and the great in Petersburg agreed with this assessment of the fortunes of the Empire and this soon informed Alexander that the most important accomplishments of his reign would be in the realm of reforms. The Emperor lavished attention upon their urgent counsel, yet he was not yet the Tsar-Liberator. His initial motions of reform were halting and timid and perhaps a committee to examine the anatomy of the Crimean defeat was summoned, and the Imperial contentment might have been attained, but the irresistible force of event impelled the hand and the deeds of Alexander II, and a great alteration of his ancient heritage must commence.
Amongst the earliest verdicts derived of the study of this Imperial committee was that the institution of serfdom retarded the advance of progress and rendered the Empire as a backward and medieval realm, as chained as the machines that laboured as a teeming and animal mass upon the fields of the Empire. Only the dashing motions of a reformation might break these fetters and ties and maintain the glory that Peter the Great and Catherine and Alexander I had achieved for the Empire. It was certain the sphere of domestic policy would generate the blows of reform, and the dawn of such a realisation informed an early speech of Alexander in March of 1856 to an assembly of noble and notable, soon after the Russian signature was affixed to a hateful treaty in Paris. “The present policy of serfdom cannot be continued,” he informed his exalted audience before broaching the odious possibility of revolution. “The hand of the state above must freely pursue the abolition of serfdom in preference to its being forced by those below.” The faces of the assembled great blanched and murmured in quiet disdain over a such a public declaration that the extinction of a cherished institution was to be achieved and they momentarily expected a proclamation that must instantly abolish it. But the steps of Alexander were not in the keeping of rapidity and only slowly approached such a weighty decision; the slow and measured acts of succeeding committees were assembled to pursue further discussions, and Efficiency was utterly excluded from their discussions, yet by 1857, a certain progress might be measured, as the main focus of the study of the complexity of serfdom was entrusted to one Nikolai Miliutin and his attending circle of reformers who were animated by a zeal and a devotion to the service of the Empire, and through their labours, the official Emancipation of the serf was at last attained.
The domain of Russia that was addressed was a nation of peasants that comprised above eighty percent of the denizens of the Empire; the greater portion of these lowly figures were owned by the state, the remainder were the private possessions of the great landlords of the realm, enduring the sudden a cruel motions of his power and his fancy, and it is these labouring machines that are properly attired in the name of serfs. These rural denizens of the Empire dwelt in rural villages that were administered by the operations of a mir, or commune as it was known in the idiom of Russia. Hidden in the depths of the woods, excluded from the tide of modernity whose even weakest currents did not intrude upon these societies, dwelling in a certain credulity and fear over the workings of the phenomena of the weather that was esteemed as the inevitable pique and the affront of the Divine, so little changed above a thousand years. These mir were bastions of an insular independence and were ignorant of the concept of a private property, a concept that must be incomprehensible to them. The lands allotted to the lowliest of the Empire to till as his plot of subsistence was distributed in an egalitarian equality by the mir despite the reality that ALL the land was the personal property of the great landowner who held his chattel by a chain of short links, forbade to quit the place of his birth and stern and regular in his right to command a steady payment of the fruits of their labours. The retarding and retrograde consequences of serfdom were long known to be deleterious to the Empire yet the interest and the opposition of the nobles strangled these earlier intentions of liberation in the cradle and the weight of the yoke remained set upon the serf. The humiliation and the shame that followed in the aftermath of the Crimean War at last might mute the certain opposition of the noble and of the landowner, and Miliutin at last could wield a fateful impact upon the face of the Empire...
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Thursday, July 02, 2009
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Current mood:  breezy
Category: Writing and Poetry
The accession of Alexander II was dressed not only in acclamations and the ritual gems and furs that had long comprised a Russian coronation, but also in the onerous obligations of the Crimean War that continued in scenes of defeat and calamity. The Russian fighter, though burdened in retrograde supply and equipment and policy still contended with some success against the invader who had introduced his boot and numbers upon both the shores of the Crimea and of the distant Kamchatka, had convinced the British to desist from a direct assault upon Petersburg and plunged a sabre into the breasts of the Turk that had forayed into the northerly reaches of the Caucuses. The more recent months brought to naught these acts of valour and confounded the easy Russian assertions of invincibility. The fortress of Sevastopol still yet defied the efforts of the British and the French to reduce it and overcome their assaults with fiery reproaches fired from its ramparts, but the decay of the Empire could not long be delayed in its display. The Russian lines, afflicted with privation and hunger and arms devoid of shot at length waved and faltered before an adversary that boasted the refinements of the craft of war and its capacity to administer easy death and devastations. In the summer of 1855, the Prince General Gorchakov sighed in a deep understanding of the parlous Russian situation; in August of 1855 the zeal and the affront of the British and the French that had been left bereft of an easy expectation of victory now massed their plenty of cannons and poured out their greatest fire yet upon the walls of Sebastopol. A sally of the French undermined the continuing Russian possession of the fortress, despite the ferocious reply of the defenders who bravely unsheathed their swords and plunged into the advancing face of the western allies.
The partiality of the bloody gods of war had at last departed the Russians; the French perhaps yielded up seventeen hundred of their warriors in contrast to the Empire that was despoiled of above eight thousand fighters. The Russian determined in a hateful council that the further defence of the fortress of Sevastopol was a vain and useless proposition; when the French amassed their arms and fury in order to hurl a final attack that must at last render Sevastopol their possession, Gorchakov parted from his hopes and commanded the abandonment of the coveted citadel that was left to the western allies as a smoking and useless hulk of a position. The violated and offended pride of the British and the French was not yet concluded in their punishment of the Russian audacity and the remaining huts by the shores of the Crimea that persisted in a martial abstinence were confronted by the latest evolutions of armed conflict, and the ironclad, the wooden vessel dressed in a sheath of steel directed its fire upon the Russians who despaired of inflicting any damage upon their adversary that absorbed the blows of shell without a blemish. Their performance excited the imagination of the navies of the world who regarded that the age of wood must soon yield to that of iron and the propulsion of engines and the feed of coal and it was the demonstration during the contest of the American states in their Civil War less than a decade later, beheld upon the waters of Virginia that banished forever from the waves the wood and sail that stretched backwards to the primordial mists.
Alexander was yet minded, despite the fall of Sebastopol, to continue in a pose of combat against the British and the French, but at last the intervention of the young Austrian Emperor, Franz Josef, induced the Russian to enter into a negotiation of peace after Franz had drawn out the sabre and promised its use against Russia. Alexander blanched over the prospect that a new front of hostility might be offered to the Empire and at last admitted that the Empire must accept the finality of defeat. In December of 1855, the Emperor signalled his intention to a discussion that would at length render peace and a conference in Paris to attain that coveted goal was soon arranged in February of 1856 when the victors, Britain and France and those who at last swarmed to their policy, that now realm of Sardinia, dispatched a gathering of Italian fighter to the Crimea and thence elevated to a great status by the charity of Napoleon III that might have been more swayed in his generosity by the overwhelming charms and beauty of the Countess of Castiglione whose bosoms might at length ordain the fortunes and the freedoms of the Italian peninsula. The expected participation of Austria and Prussia sent their ministers to Paris to sit in judgment over the conduct of Russia and to determine its consequences. The motions of this latest Congress of Paris was determined to defend and prop upwards the empire and the independence of the Sultan; the neck of Petersburg was burdened in the weight of the Allies to bow before the restoration of the authority of the Sultan and assent with discomfited motions to abandon the Orthodox Christians to the administration of the Sultan and surrender its expectations of their defence. The border between Russia and Turkey was fixed upon the pre-war frontiers, Russia retired from the banks of the Danube and the Black Sea was rendered inaccessible to warships, although the commercial vessels of ALL nations were now permitted to foray upon its waves without hindrance, and the Empire, accepting with distaste and disdain the sentence of the victors of the war must review the causes of its defeat and at last focus a tardy attention upon the issue of the serfs...
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
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Current mood: selective
Category: Writing and Poetry
The character of Alexander was fully revealed when he announced his love for the minor German princess; it had long been known to his suffering and despairing tutor that Alexander was a vessel filled replete with obstinacy and unswayable resolution and these qualities were hurled before his Imperial parents, Nicholas and Alexandra, exposed to the brawny and stubborn sinews of their son, who once his fancy had been fixed upon a notion was unyielding and immobile. Alexander scorned the tears of Alexandra who shed streams of sorrow over the unseemly background of the Princess Marie, derived of a liaison and an indiscretion of the night and the seed of a lowly lover. He answered his weeping mother and the fearsome glower of his father with a declaration, announced in tones that must indicate he spoke no trifle, that if he was denied Marie, that woman who was derived of a dream, he would refuse the throne and depart the Empire. Nicholas suddenly blanched that his careful efforts to prepare Alexander for rule would be brought to naught and frustrated in their hopes and expectations, and after inducing the acceptance of Alexandra who wiped away the gleam upon her Imperial cheek, bowed before the triumphant ardour of the Grand Duke. In 1840, assured of the parental assent, Alexander, travelling a merry path comprised of joys and happiness returned to Darmstadt in order to declared his love and propose marriage to the Princess Marie, who swept by the immensity and the honour of her elevation to the status of a Grand Duchess of Russia assented in the most easy of manners. With rapid facility in accord to the regulations of Petersburg where she shortly arrived, Marie departed from the Lutheran revelation in order to adore the truth and sanctity of its Orthodox counterpart. Under the song of priests in the air scented in rich aromatics, she dropt the name of Marie and was installed in that of Maria Alexandronva and beneath the further spreading sweet vapours and the penetrating stare of the venerated icons in the confines of the cathedral, on the 16th of April, 1841, she was united in matrimony with Alexander.
Nicholas might have relented in one aspect of the life of Alexander; yet he remained utterly determined that his son continue in the requisite preparations of his future rule. A series of appointments added Alexander to the ranks of the great Councils of the Empire, of the Ministers and of the State that offered him a participation in the affairs of rule but denied him a role in decisions and voice that might gift a yea or nay upon their policies. Yet the offices continued to be bestowed upon Alexander, and their attending authority were at last his to possess by 1842, when he functioned as the high minister of the Emperor. This lofty post offered Alexander with a plenty of weighty issues, and in the midst of the discussions and debate that attended such an office even the most dire and thorny issue of serfdom must be discussed during the course of his councils. And the tumults offered by the times at last introduced the Empire to the calamity of the Crimean War and Alexander was promoted to the vice-sergeant of the Emperor, to be attired in the braid of a general and truly conduct the martial matters of the Empire, in order to defend his throne and realm and to ultimately deserve them both by a worthy conduct. In early 1855, upon the death of Nicholas I, Alexander ascended to the throne of All the Russias with ease and facility, the vast burdens of rule and the strange complexion of authority not inexplicable to the practiced craft of the new Emperor. The enthronement of Alexander offered him an opportunity to cite the great figures of the Russian past, of Peter the Great, of Catherine and Alexander I and to enlist himself in their society that must culminate in the name of his blessed father. The reign of Nicholas I was determined to be the example and the pattern that would be emulated by his son, although its severity might be lessened. The ministers of Nicholas I were maintained in their offices, and the abiding reverence of the Autocracy and the devotion to the fortunes of the Empire was celebrated as the greatest duties of the sovereign that fixed his personal fortune to the realm and his very molecules became indistinct from the fabric of the Empire. A fatalism was the greatest inheritance of Alexander who esteemed that his service to Russia and the operations of his authority were but an acceptance of the majesty and the power of the Orthodox God that had bestowed an eternal service upon the Tsar that even death could not dissolve and the duties of the Autocrat of all the Russias must be viewed as an act of worship and an humble attachment to the stern divinity of the desert that had extended the compass of his rule even as far as the rude and remote forests of the Third Rome.
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
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Current mood:  accomplished
Category: Writing and Poetry
The Emperor Nicholas regarded the misgivings and the complaint of the tutors of his son; he further refined the education of the young Alexander and added further topics of study in a manner to jolt and to excite the interest of his languid and dreamy son who might barely suppress a yawn when confronted with the topics of ballistics and military strategy and Alexander II might at last attain the title of Emperor but never would wear the name of soldier. In 1837, the Grand Duke concluded his course of instruction, exposed to a level of learning that had never before sought to elevate a Romanov to such a level of intellective capacity. Alexander was possessed of a fluent French and English and German in addition to his native Russian, and Nicholas, beaming in some satisfaction over the achievements of his son, refused any notions that Alexander might now retire into the shade and quietly await in a ceremonial ease the moment of his accession. The Emperor determined that Alexander must be properly prepared to administer the vast realm of Russia and resolved that he be presented with a practical experience. An excursion throughout the Empire was arranged for Alexander in the spring of 1837; the course of the Grand Duke, covered in celebration and enduring protocol that was not dispensed with even in the wilderness of Tomsk, was directed to the furthest ends of the Empire. The polished boots of Alexander cracked the frosts of Siberia after they had traversed the squares of ancient Novgorod and Tver, the Grand Duke viewing the cathedrals and lofty belfries with awe and admiration. The route of Alexander passed an interminable day through the grain-clad fields of the Ukraine that stretched forth above a dozen horizons and thence was set upon the waters of the Volga before descending upon the shores of the Black Sea and the balmy Crimea laden in fruits and heady wine. It was apparent to the young Alexander that the Empire that he would one day rule over was utterly vast, that the greater portion of the races and religions and cultures of the world were contained within its boundaries, the Cossack upon the steppe, boisterous and bursting in song, the swarthy Tatar to the south tending the vine and bowing towards Mecca, the bookish and industrious German upon the Baltic issuing the nature of the West onto Russia, all saluting the authority of Petersburg. Alexander swelled in pride over this unequalled inheritance that no other Empire might remotely approach and though he recognised the immense issues that attended such a domain, he did not blush over nor rush to deny the sceptre that must one day be his.
In 1838, Alexander returned to Petersburg, a figure transformed by his direct encounter with the nature of his Empire, a compelling report not returned to him through the papers of ministers but by the observations of his own eyes. He was momentarily permitted to rest near the Neva before it was determined that the Grand Duke must next travel to the West, and perhaps this itinerary was founded upon a desire that the health of Alexander, suddenly beset by fevers and coughs contracted during his Siberian foray might be remedied and fully restored by a visitation to the spa at Ems where he might take its storied though fetid and sulphurous waters. A new great excursion was commenced that delivered Alexander to every great capital of Europe save Paris where reigned the despised Citizen King or those of the Iberian domains of Spain and Portugal which to the estimation of the greater portion of Europeans were little more than a northern intrusion of Africa. Alexander thence endured the foul waters of the spa, examined with interest the ruins of antiquity and the triumphs of its reprise of the Renaissance in Italy, breathed the salutary airs of the Alps and entered into the merry and even ribald society of the young and still quite undomesticated Queen Victoria, yet unexposed to the restraining and VICTORIAN influence of Albert, in Windsor Castle.
But though Alexander might reflect with pleasure upon these memories, they were but items of little moment as compared to the results of a fateful visit to a minute and petty domain of the Germanies, one Hesse-Darmstadt. The dull and stern formality for which the German prince was renowned throughout the Europe of the age and which produced the scruples of Albert must recommend that the course of Alexander avoid the onerous duty of a courtesy call upon such a member of a tiresome society, and it was only with the greatest of difficulty that he was prevailed upon to pay a visitation to Prince Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt. The glower set deeply upon the face of Alexander was lifted in an instant whence he cast glance upon the admittedly graceless and austere daughter of Ludwig, one Princess Marie, and the liberty of his heart was yielded up to the young princess of Hesse-Darmstadt that through the motions of the passion of Alexander would one day wear the title of Empress of all the Russias...
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Monday, June 29, 2009
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Current mood: distractable
Category: Writing and Poetry
The elevation of his father Nicholas to the throne, also promoted Alexander to a lofty status, to that of Heir, and Merder blushed to continue in the education of such an exalted pupil that must command the tutelage of a superior figure. The Emperor was convinced and swayed by the misgivings of the military tutor and in 1827, released Merder from his obligations; the post of teacher and instructor to the young Alexander was thence transferred to one Zhukovsky, a celebrated poet and translator who had earlier rendered into the Russian idiom various songs derived of Britain and the Germanies including the immortal lyrics of Schiller. His pen had also generated the original verse compositions of Ludmila and Svetlana, that ensued after the translation of the foreign models and acclaim, if not greatness might attach to these poems. The struggle against the Corsican invader provided Zhukovsky with the opportunity to compose the lyrics for the Imperial anthem, God Save the Tsar and after the Victory requited the travails of Russia, he established a literary circle in Petersburg which included the young and ascending Pushkin who rose forth upon the foundations constructed by Zhukovsky and at length, abetted by his signal contributions to the literary arts, he attained the friendship of the Imperial family.
Zhukovsky accepted the prestigious assignment with elan and excitement; he prepared a great programme of instruction for his Imperial pupil and decreed that the final responsibility fell exclusively within his own province in which would be created the virtue and character of a future sovereign. “The residents of the spirit of men, glory, duty or patriotism no longer interest me,” grandly declared Zhukovsky, “save that they be pursued and advanced for him whose exalted future station might translate these qualities into clear and visible benefits for his subjects.” He dwelt in grandiose expectations that his teaching would create and mould the conduct of a prince that might rule as a second Marcus Aurelius, that might astound the world with the brilliance of his enlightenment; yet he shared in the disappointment that followed the hopes of his predecessors that sought a similar destination for the ancestors of Alexander as the thin shoots of a liberal education that peeked above the harsh ground of the Empire were at last submitted to the trod of the military boot that the Empire had long adopted and fired the excitements of even the young Alexander and largely comprised the nature of the realm. Zhukovsky was still determined to avert the natural course of a young prince of Russia and bewailed the future fortunes of the Empire if justice was not united with valour under the Imperial tunic. The tutor of Alexander hurled a series of epistles upon the Empress Alexandra warning of the damage and the perils that must attend a violation of his still malleable spirit. “Do think,” he asked of the Empress, “what might come of events of he looks upon his people as nothing but a company of troops and his Empire as naught but a military barracks.”
The discernment of Zhukovsky easily understood the ramifications of the great evolutions of Europe, of the strange new routes that History would now trod, leading forth from the furnaces and engines of the Industrial Revolution and the chambers of dispute and the motions of the guillotine of the French Revolution. The advance of technology and the frontiers of enfranchisement that fitted the merest in the title of citizen must induce the sovereigns that would now ascend the Throne of all the Russias to attend to complex matters of social and economic policy that far transcended the capacity that the primitive education derived of the Age of Elizabeth and Catherine might grant a Tsar confronted with issues utterly unimagined in the gaudy baroque Empire of Russia. Nicholas answered the tutor of his son and heir that the classic military spirit and the stern demeanour of a soldier was ever more required in this new age if an Emperor was not to be devoured by events; however the Emperor was swayed by the unimpeded passion of Zhukovsky and at length regarded it as prudent that the young Alexander be at least introduced to these new matters of policy that might enhance the quality of his reign. Zhukovsky was soon aided by the instruction of the great Speransky who taught the necessary fetters of Law upon even an autocratic power, Brunnov, the ambassador to Britain who lectured upon the state of foreign policy and of Arsenev who explored the topics of economy. Yet these abstruse and complicated subjects were largely beyond the capacity of the young Alexander to absorb and it was inevitable that he rapidly displayed the clear signs of an inattention that must be viewed as boredom. Zhukovsky regarded the heaviness of the eyelids of Alexander that frequently concealed the whites from the view of his tutors. “He is susceptible to the merest of difficulty,” Zhukovsky lamented, “and he is revealed as weak, lacking the strength to admit even a single idea into his head over the course of an hour…it is certain that he would prefer to be upon the parade ground and whatever attention he possesses is spent upon the details of a military review.”...
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