14 The Imperial Century, 1725-1825ighly critical verses that circulated about Arakcheyev, who is blamed for hav-
1g 'destroyed all of Russia' and taken away one-third of the soldiers' pay.^59
The emperors and empresses are uniformly depicted in a favourable light as
:>spitable. generous. and caring; but these topoi are compatible with a certain
:epticism about their fitness to wield the sacred power entrusted to them. This
itical undertone comes into the open in the lionization of Pugachev or in the
1pport for Grand Duke Constantine, seen (wrongly) as a rival to his brother
icholas in 1825; in one version Constantine even has the guards regiments
ghting on his side.^60 The songs also tell us something about the soldiers' atti-
1de towards the empire's institutions. One or both of the tsar's brothers (not
lentified) is smuggled by a loyal sentry into the Senate, where he finds a
eacherous officer threatening the emperor's life; they promptly despatch the
1iscreant and then discuss whether they should or should not burn down this
:ntre of subversion.^61 This was a curiously distorted reflection of the Nor-
1ern Society members' hopes that the Senate, the supreme judicial body in the
>Untry, might legalize their coup and help turn Russia into a constitutional
,onarchy.upport for an idealized autocracy went hand in hand with national
iauvinism. As is only natural, soldiers' songs contain plenty of uncompli-
1entary references to the country's historic enemies, with the Muslim peoples
irring fiercer hatreds than Europeans. A ditty about the second~Russo
urkish war of Catherine's reign has the soldiers celebrating the fall of
chakov and (rather prematurely) the fact that 'all the Turks have come
~neath our power'.^62 In another song a wounded soldier staggers home after
:i.ving received three blows from 'the Turkish tsar' (or, in another variant, 'a
)Ung Frenchman') but gloatingly informs his anxious mother that he had cut
ff his assailant's head (indeed, that he had done so with a bayonet, which
ould have required considerable dexterity).^63 As a rule, however, the folklore
,aterial contains little glorying in martial violence for its own sake. Such
,otifs are found rather in the stirring verses that were occasionally made up
il the men's behalf by bellicose officers.^64
Russian soldiers behaved with moderation towards prisoners of war and the
vilian population of the lands in which they fought-or so at least official
urces and memoirs would have us believe. In Europe generally at this time
fatively civilized standards prevailed in warfare, at least until the paroxysms
f the Napoleonic era, and Russia's leaders were anxious to demonstrate their
s^9 Alekseyeva and Yemel'yanov, !st. pesni XVIII v., pp. 106, 305; Domanovsky et al., !st.
•sni XIX v., pp. 150 ff.
(^60) Domanovsky et al., /st. pesni XIX v., p. 148; cf. Chistov, Narodnye sots. utopii, pp. 196 ff.
61 Domanovsky et al., /st. pesni XIX v., p. 129. In Moscow a rumour circulated that a soldier
11ioned at Taganrog had saved Alexander I from assassination by substituting himself for him:
. K. Shirder, 'Pokhoronnyy god', RS 90 (1897), p. 22.
62 Pesni sobr. Kireyevskim, viii. 255.
63 Ibid., pp. 118-19. 64 For example, Glinka, Pis"ma, iv. 22-3.