Birth of the Military Intelligentsia 241
49 generals (26.5 per cent) were of non-Russian stock.^58 During the 1730s Anna
!vanovna, worried abo1Jt the sen1ri!y 0f her rt'gimf' .Rft('r tht' !Um•J!!l.!01Js events
surrounding her accession, encouraged the appointment of foreign officers,
especially to the new guards regiments which she founded,^59 and one of them,
Field-Marshal B. C. von Mtinnich (Minikh), became commander-in-chief.
Nationalistic historians have often misrepresented her reign as a time when
Russia groaned under an• alien yoke'.^60 In doing so they have projected back into
this era attitudes that did not become current until later in educated circles, as
Russian national consciousness developed.^61 The empress Elizabeth helped to
foster this myth by presenting her own rule as a return to the 'national' principles
that had allegedly guided Peter the Great. In^1742 chauvinistic sentiment among
guardsmen led to some violent incidents. Later the Seven Years War against
Prussia naturally fostered antagonism towards officers of German background
in Russian service.^62 However, one should be careful not to exaggerate the signi-
ficance of this. The prevailing spirit was still cosmopolitan rather than national-
istic. The non-Russians did not form a homogeneous or isolated group in the
army or in noble society generally. Many of them assimilated without much
trouble into the Russian milieu, spoke the language, attended the same schools as
Russians, and shared the same service ethos; religious differences were ceasing to
be of much account.
Where there was hostility, this was often due to clumsy and irresponsible
action by the autocrat. Thus on his accession Peter III arbitrarily changed
sides in the war with Prussia, so nullifying the gains achieved at such cost and
making it appear as if the heavy casualties had been suffered in vain. He also
took a number of other measures that might have been expressly designed to
offend his subjects. The· military men among them were particularly incensed
by the favouritism overtly shown toward the emperor's personal guard,
recruited from his duchy of Holstein, and by the introduction of Prussian-style
uniforms and drill manuals.
These grievances gave a powerful stimulus to the coup d'etat of 28 June 1762.
Yet this remained a purely dynastic affair, the work of a few dozen courtiers
and guards officers. It would be wrong to think of Catherine II being hoisted
to power on the crest of a wave of national sentiment-even though she was
not averse to presenting herself in this light for propagandist effect. At the
'8 Peter I to Senate, 11 Jan. 1722, SJRIO xi (1873), 440-2. For data on the ethnic composition
of the officer corps in 1700: Rabinovich, 'Formirovaniye', pp. 225, 228-9; and for contemporary
opposition to non-natives: Pososhkov, Kniga, p. 255.
59 Keep, 'Secret Chancellery', p. 179.
60 For a more balanced evaluation see A. Lipski, 'The "Dark Era" of Anna lvanovna: a Re-
examination', American Slavic and East European Review 15 (1956), pp. 477-88.
61 On the latter topic see H. Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia,
Cambridge (Mass.), 1960.
62 On the 1742 incidents: Manstein, Zapiski, pp. 251, 254-6; Wich to Carteret, 24 Apr. 1742,
SJRIO xci. 464; Chetardie to Amelot, 12 July 1742, SIRIO c. 280; F., 'O sostoyanii', p. 9;
[Schwan(?)), Merkwurdigkeiten, pp. 115-17, 215-17.