The Army Takes to the Countryside 283
'with a veritable network of Gruzinos, hundreds of villages which the army
would make as neat, orderly and elegant as the estate cf /\rakcheyev'. lo
Henceforth this simple-minded but extravagant concept would guide official
thinking about the military settlements and obscure their essential purposes,
which were to save money by making the troops more self-sufficient in regard
to food supply and to improve their condition. After the harrowing experi-
ences of the great campaigns of 1812-14 the tsar became still more obsessed
with the idea. The soldiers' sufferings aroused his humanitarian sentiments
and he came to see the settlement scheme as a personal moral obligation which
he ought to fulfil at any cost. This attitude communicated itself to members of
his entourage. Arakcheyev himself was one of several senior officers who,
eager to curry favour with the ruler, suppressed their initial doubts as to the
project's feasibility and devoted all their energies to implementing it.
For some zealots in high places the scheme would not only improve the em-
pire's military posture but also transform its cultural life. One of Arakcheyev's
correspondents contended that, unlike regular recruits whose martial virtues
had been debased by serfdom, the settlers, 'born to the military calling, will
drink in its spirit with their mothers' milk; ... they will have the chance to
develop their innate talents, [and so] this class will bring forth great men like
Lomonosov and Menshikov. No longer will those endowed with natural genius
be swallowed up by the plough.'·" Such sentiments might have seemed
dangerously revolutionary to Alexander I or Arakcheyev, both firm upholders
of serfdom in the empire's heartlands; but they too had an exaggerated notion
of what the reform could accomplish. If soldiers became farmers and farmers
soldiers, might not Russia's social and geopolitical problems be solved at a
single stroke?
The deeper implications of these ideas were not lost on foreign observers. A
French diplomat noted in 1818 that the reform would strengthen the autocratic
state by making it less dependent on the gentry for the provision of recruits.32
One of his compatriots, writing some years later, reckoned that it would
enable Russia to pursue a more adventurous foreign policy.^33 In a similar vein
liberal-minded Russian officers feared that the settlers might form a militarized
caste which the government could use to crush internal dissent. 34 Such appre-
hensions were not entirely groundless. It was no coincidence that the informer
who denounced Pester belonged to a settled regiment. In general, however,
the Praetorians tended to believe that the experiment was bound to fail. It
was one of their principal grievances against the regime. Pester thought it
misconceived in principle and noted correctly t~e shaky economic calculations
30 Pipes, 'Colonies', p. 207.
31 Mel'gunov, Delo i lyudi, p. 284.
32 'E1lpose des forces militaires de la Russie .. .' (1818), MAE, Met D, Russie 26 (1808-20),
f. 192v; cf. H. H. de Dre111l-Breze, 'Notes recueillies ... sur le~ colonies militaires .. .' (1826),
ibid., Russie 29 (1807-27), f. 199.
33 De la Rue to Maison, July 1834, ibid., Russie 37 ( 183 1-52), f. 139v_
34 Zavalishin, Zopiski, p. 98.