12
THE .A .. R!\1Y Tl\KES TO THE COUNTRYSIDE
T111<ot11,11rn11 h1rope lhe biller experie1H:es of the Frcm:h revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars accelerated lhe trend towards professionalism among the
milirary. Russia was no exception. Already by the late eighteenth century a
distinction had emerged within the privileged dass between those who served
the state as offkcrs in the armed forces and those who did so in the civilian
bureaucracy. Gradually men in each calcgory came to sec themselves as
belonging to separate, although inrcr-rclalcd, groups. The process gathered
speed afrer 1801, and again aflcr the victory over Napoleon. Nevertheless there
was also a powerful counrcrvailing trend, so that the two sections of the
establishment never became entirely divorced from one another.^1 The
Romanov rulers relied heavily on military officers, serving or retired, to staff
those administrative posls I hal callc<l for expertise in the arts of coercion. This
was particularly rruc under Nicholas I. Frightened by the Decembrist revolt,
the 'iron tsar' took firm measures to reassert control over the army and to
make it once again a wholly tlependable instrument of the Crown. It was given
broad responsibilities which considerably undermined its professional effec-
tiveness, as the Crimean War amply dcmomtralcd. Meanwhile the process of
'civilianization' was continuing apace in the lower echelons of the bureau-
cracy, and this prepared the way for qualiiativc changes in the nature of the
regime alkr Nicholas l's death in 1855.
II is against this background, which will he examined more closely in ch. 13,
that we must consider a particular phenomenon which exemplifies better ihan
any other the military's predominance in Russian civil society during the early
nineteenth century: the military selllcmcnts (or 'colonies', as they are
sometimes misleadingly calle<l). It is important at the outset to correct two
common misapprehensions about these settlements. First. the grandiose and
contentious scheme set up by Alexander I after 1816, and entrusted lo his
favourite Arakcheycv, was a modification of arrangements that had existed
for a hundred years or so in the southern border areas and which had been
reasonably successful in achieving rheir more limited objectives. Second,
Nicholas I reverted in some respects to the earlier pattern during the first years
of his reign, and ir was in rhis modifie<l form that the settlements survived until
the 1860s. Fach pha~e dcsnvl'\ to he evaluated separately, with an objectivity
that was unfor111natcly olfrn lacking in earlier accounts.^2
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