10
BIRTH OF THE
MILITARY INTELLIGENTSIA
How could the Russian soldier of the early Imperial era hope to escape hi
sorry plight? Mutinous acts could at best win short-term local easements an
generally called forth draconian reprisals. The alternative was to awa;
a change of heart among his superiors. Reformist ideas were in the air, par
ticularly during the reign of Alexander I. But in Russia the state power did nc
work together with enlightened elements in the officer corps, as it did i:
Prussia after Jena. The tsarist empire emerged victorious from the Napoleoni
Wars and there was no sense of a national emergency that required drasti
solutions. Such a mood was not engendered until 40 years later, when Russi;
suffered major reverses during the Crimean War. To be sure, Alexander I wa
sincerely concerned for his soldiers' welfare, but unhappily the measures h,
took did little to improve their lot and in some respects even worsened it. Th,
military settlements, to be examined in ch. 12, were introduced under the aegi
of state paternalism, not of liberalism, and their main purpose was to buttres
the autocratic power. They were opposed with good reason by liberal-mindec
officers as well as by many civilian administrators, and after 1815 the reforrr
movement in educated society was driven underground. Guards officers ir
particular were active in setting up masonic lodges and secret societies
Political programmes were drawn up and plots hatched. Finally, in Decembei
1825 a few bold spirits took the desperate step of insurrection. The so-callee
'Decembrists' ended their lives on the gallows or were sent into Siberian exile.
The new tsar, Nicholas I (1825-55), devoted himself to maintaining the statu~
quo, in the army as elsewhere. During his reign, to be considered in ch. 14, tht
old military system by and large survived, with all its well-known faults, unti
the 'great reforms' of the mid-nineteenth century.
The insurgents of 1825 left behind them an attractive myth that has power-
fully shaped all writing on the subject. For a century or so historians anc
publicists looked on them as martyrs for the cause of progress, sacred to later
generations of the intelligentsia. They were viewed as heroic 'forerunners·
whose noble ideals deserved respect and emulation. Apart from the writers·
own preferences the nature of the sources available led them to favour a
biographical or ideological approach to the study of 'Decembrism'. Not until
the twentieth century were archival materials made accessible and published.
Yet the traditional interpretation has lived on in Soviet historiography.