66 ROSSIYA
When on the day of my departure, I ordered that all the students of the institutions in
Vilna under my authority, some one thousand persons in number, be gathered in the
palace courtyard, a pupil of the boarding school for the gentry, Brohski, stepped forward
from the ranks, and in the name of his comrades greeted me with a brief address. After
saying, in excellent Russian, that they thanked me for my visit and that they thanked
me for my fatherly treatment of them, he added in conclusion, 'Be also and always our
protector before the Most Gracious Monarch. Tell Him, that we remember Him, that we
love Him, that we shall be worthy of Him, that we too are His good children.. .' Here,
this thirteen-year-old youth dissolved in tears, and rushed to embrace me. Of course, not
a single spectator remained unaffected by this exptession of sentiment which was
undoubtedly unfeigned and flowed straight from the heart.^3
For the Minister, who had not expected such devotion during his visit to a
fiercely Polish city, the incident was a sign of success. What he did not hear or
record were the comments of Bronski's Polish classmates after the visit was
over.
The Principle of Nationality evolved in several important ways during the
modern period. In the eighteenth century, it demanded little more than
loyalty to the Tsar and to the established social order. As the instrument of a
Court where French was the common language, and where Baltic Germans held
positions of special prominence, it had none of the ethnic or cultural overtones
of later decades. As late as 1840, Kankrin could suggest that the name of the
Empire be changed from Rossiya to Petrovia in honour of its founder, Peter the
Great, or to Romanovia in deference to the dynasty. 'An unusual idea', Bulgarin
noted, 'but an essentially correct one.' Others stressed that 'Russian-ness' some-
how involved an expression of social virtues, of submissiveness on the part of
the people, and of dutiful service on the part of leaders. Serfdom came to be seen
as a Russian practice par excellence, and as such an essential pillar of autocracy.
Thus, it was not till the second quarter of the nineteenth century that
Nationality was associated with any recognizable features of modern national-
ism. By that time, the growth of a native intelligentsia naturally led to attacks on
the Francophone and Prussophile court; and the government recognized the
value of the Russian language in unifying the heterogeneous peoples of the
realm. The Russian language was quickly raised to the touchstone of
Nationality. Not only did Russian writers from Turgenev to Gogol extol the
objective characteristics of their language; they implied that all other languages
were markedly inferior. 'One can confidently affirm', wrote Grech, the gram-
marian, 'that our language is superior to all the modern European languages.'
The Russian language', wrote Bulgarin, 'which without doubt holds first place
in melodiousness and in the richness and ease of word construction, is the lan-
guage of poetry and literature in all the countries of the globe.' Once these
extreme views began to be officially propagated, the government was but one
step removed from the idea that to speak a foreign language, or to promote a
culture other than Russian, was to be unpatriotic, and politically disloyal. In
mid-century, with the appearance of the Slavophil and Pan-Slav movements,