(^244) Gentlemen to Officers
went to war in 1812 as a humble lieutenant and was greeted cordially on his first
assignment by former associates who were now colonels; touched by their
friendship, he looked back nostalgically to his schooldays, 'when-.each of us
loved to contemplate how we might be useful to the Fatherland'.^74 This was
more than just a loyalist platitude: the term otechestvo was coming to a_cquire
an emotional nuance it had lacked before, and to vie with the established notion
of personal loyalty to the autocrat. The studies which these officers undertook
might not make for intellectual profundity or even impart knowledge of much
immediate professional relevance; but they did lead them to question and
debate contemporary issues, within the limits of propriety, and to develop
a new sense of their own worth as individuals. The schools created nothing less
than a new class: the military intelligentsia.
This useful term, recently coined by Soviet scholars, needs clarification.
Taken literally, it refers to those officers who acquired, along with their educa-
tion, broader cultural (and in some cases political) interests: a prefiguration,
so to speak, of the later civilian intelligentsia. But such a definition does less
than justice to those educated officers-perhaps the majority-who were
preoccupied with professional matters and, if pressed, would have defined
their political views as conservative and monarchist. Two points need to be
made here. First, Russian officers preserved much of the traditional service
mentality. Second, the critical attitude which some of them adopted was moral,
not political, in origin. The cultural awakening of the late eighteenth century
did not destroy the old gentry ideal of service, but rathet gave it a new focus: the
nation, as an entity distinct from the monarch. Naturally, these 'officer-
intellectuals' took the view that they themselves were the best judges of the
nation's true interests: it is an anachronism to speak of them as democrats, but
they might with justice be termed nationalists. As nationalists they implicitly
rejected conventional ideas about the legitimation of power and the natural
order in society. Respect for hierarchy of rank remained, but the criterion was
now personal merit rather than seniority, aristocratic lineage, wealth, or even
the sovereign's accolade. Merit was assessed according to ethical criterja. Those
who exercised power were expected to be responsible and virtuous. in their
private as well as in their public lives. The virtuous man should be brave,
truthful, honest, just-and above all, earnest; he was to abandon frivolous
pleasure-seeking for an appreciation of the arts and sciences; to use the classical
imagery in vogue, Minerva was to be the ally of Mars. One cultivated stoicism
in the face of adversity and showed loyalty to kinsmen and comrades, but
analysed their strengths and weaknesses of character as severely as one's own,
and drew upon literary models for inspiration in shaping one's conduct.^75
This credo may strike a modern social critic as naive, but in the Russia of
1800 it was revolutionary. It explains why the tepid humanism of the young
74 F. N. Glinka. Pis'ma, iv. 29.
75 For stimulating elaborations or this theme, see Raeff, Origins, and Lotman, 'Dekabrist'.
wang
(Wang)
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