232 Gentlemen to Officersalthough with certain changes of emphasis necessitated by Marxist-Leninist
doctrine. From the 1930s onward the nationalist element in the 'Decembrists"
outlook was singled out for more positive treatment than their liberalism, and
thf"ir - - - • ----intPl1Pc-tm1J --------• rieht to • the West was .I. nlaved .. down.I Onlv .. in recent vears • have
some West em historians begun to question the canonical view.^2 The first step
in demystifying the officers' reform movement is to place it in its proper
military-service context and to treat' it as an early instance of Praetorianism.^3
This task will be attempted in ch. 11. First we have to examine the milieu in
which the movement developed.
During the eighteenth century most Russian officers continued to visualize
their situation as servitors of the Crown in terms of personal and family
advancement: that is to say, they combined loyalty to the autocrat with con-
cern for their own interest and that of their immediate kin group; some of
them were also conscious of belonging to an informal patronage network. This
'traditional' thought pattern may be contrasted-in theory-with a more
'modern' one in which officers see themselves, and are seen by others, primarily
as members of a corporation: an individual regiment, a branch of service
(cavalry, artillery), or the 'officer corps' as a whole. The latter term is inappro-
priate in the Russian context during our period, although it is sometimes used
for the sake of convenience. 'Corporatism' and a sense of professional loyalty
were certainly developing, but initially at least the social climate was not
favourable to the growth of horizontal ties. They became possible only as
a consequence of four major changes, which in the main may be associated
with the enlightened rule of Catherine II. These were: (a) the abolition of com-
pulsory state service by noblemen (1762, confirmed in 1785); (b) the assignment
to the dvoryanstvo, by the administrative reforms of 1775/85, of a definite role
in the social and cultural life of the provinces; (c) the victories won in successive
wars against Prussians, Poles, and, above all, Turks, which heightened Russian
army officers' self-esteem; and (d) the expansion of the military colleges,
known as 'cadet corps', and the broadening of their curriculum to include civil
Ats well as professional subjects.
As a result of these changes, and other factors too, by the 1790s Russian
nobles, not least those in military uniform, had acquired a taste for the fruits
of European culture and had even begun to acquire political ambitions. Poli-
ticization was accelerated by the often traumatic experience which officers of
all ranks, but especially the senior men, went through during the brief reign of
' This viewpoint was taken to an extreme by Prokof'yev, Bor'ba (1952), who turned the Decem-
, 6rists into proto-Zhdanovists-but did draw attention to their views on military subjects. The
standard Soviet work, richly documented, is Nechkina, Dvizheniye dekabristov.
2 Mazour, First Ru.ss. Revol., provides a good narrative account but the interpretation is now
somewhat outdated. Raeff, Decembrist Movement, is more thoughtful; Lincoln, 'Re-examination',
discusses the traditional approach and makes useful suggestions for further research.
l On this see riow A. Perlmutter, The Military and Politics in Modern Times, New Haven and
London, 1977, esp. pp. 89-114, who is however mainly concerned with twentieth-century
manifestations of the phenomenon.