(^252) Gentlemen to Officers
The schools also stimulated a professional spirit among their more success-
ful pupils, who after they had graduated naturally sought to update their
knowiecige and IO spread it among their less well-endowed fel~w-officers.
In 1809 M.A. Fon-Vizin, a lieutenant in the lzmaylovsky guards regiment
(and a nephew of the celebrated writer), helped to set up an informal ~ircle to
study military history. The group included Major P. A. Rakhmanov, .of the
(substitute) General Staff, a remarkable mathematician who founded at his
own expense Russia's first military periodical, Voyennyy zhurnal. This pub-
lished·articles with a patriotic emphasis on current and historical themes. Not
only Suvorov and Potemkin were singled out for praise, but even the tenth-
century Prince Svyatoslav, portrayed as 'the first Russian hero in name and
deed'.^14 The implication here was that the 'national school' had developed
strategic and tactical doctrines that were superior to those of alieli$. According
to one participant in these gatherings, they discussed the democracy of ancient
Athens in a manner too free for the taste of their regimental c6mmander, who
packed them off to serve in war-torn Finland. is Officers such as these had no
subversive intent, but their superiors, who looked Or) their activities with ill-
concealed suspicion and harassed them, accelerated the drift towards political
opposition. The episode was a harbinger of what would become almost
commonplace after the Patriotic War of 1812 and its sequel.
By this time a growing minority of Russian officers spent their leisure
moments in more cultured fashion than had been customary hitherto. Already
in the 1790s the traditional pastimes-carousing, gambling, and pursuing the
fair sex-no longer seemed fitting to men of honour, who instead patronized
the theatre or, if stationed in some dismal provincial garrison town, put on
amateur dramatic productions themselves.^16 Around 1793 S. A. Tuchkov,
then a subaltern in Moscow, joined a literary and cultural association, the
'Free Russian Society for the Propagation of the Sciences'; when posted to the
capital he was admitted to a similar group.^17 Such activities were scarcely
possible under Paul, but when a new wind began to blow after 1801 they
regained popularity. In 1809-11 Muromtsev, a subaltern in the lzmaylovsky
regiment, went to the theatre 'almost every Sunday' and, through a dramatist
friend with whom he shared an apartment, was introduced to the Russian
Literary Assembly, where he heard Krylov read his fables. The group met at
the house, 'not far from our barracks', of the esteemed poet (and former
minister) G. R. Derzhavin, who had himself spent 15 years in the army.^18
When such officers went off to fight in 1812 they tried to sustain an interest
in the finer things of life, so far as front-line conditions allowed. Such
'cultured' pursuits gave them spiritual strength when they were confronted
14 Prokof'yev, Bor'ba. pp. 50-1; RBS xv. 512-17.
is Muromtsev, 'Vospominaniya", p. 71; Semcvsky. 'l'on-Vizin', p. 2.
16 Pishchevich, Zhizn', pp. 87, 133; Eyler, 'Zapiski'. p. 335.
17 Tuchkov, Zapiski, pp. 19-20, 43.
18 Muromtsev, 'Vo~pominaniya', pp. 69, 81; on Derzhavin, see Wortman, legal Consciousness,
p. 98.
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(Wang)
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