Victories of the Counter-Revolution 477
The conflict in Eastern Europe was not between social classes. Or, at least, social
classes were not the protagonists. The pattern of a conflict between bourgeoisie
and aristocracy, or between new men and old hereditary corporate groups, a pat-
tern that can be seen roughly to fit in Western Europe, is hard to detect in Ger-
many at the close of the eighteenth century, and invisible further east. Burghers
and peasants were too weak to engage in any protracted struggle. Measures taken
in their behalf were taken by others.
The conflict was between monarchy, bureaucracy, or the intelligentsia on the one
hand, and the conservative interests of the serf- owning nobilities on the other. In
Eastern Europe, as elsewhere, there was a clash between what may be called dem-
ocratic and aristocratic principles. These terms themselves were sometimes used.
But in Eastern Europe the democratic principle (as in the West, only more so)
stressed the equalization of rights more than the liberty of self- government. The
democratic principle in Eastern Europe was characteristically upheld, so far as it
was upheld at all, by monarchy and its bureaucratic servants or by the intelligentsia
either in or out of the government.
Twice, before 1793, there had seemed almost to be a “revolution” in Eastern
Europe. The reign of Joseph II in the Hapsburg empire had signalized one such
occasion, the Polish constitution of 1791 the other.^2 Joseph’s attempted reforms
had implied a revolution from above; the work of the Four Years’ Diet in Poland
represented more of a movement from below. But both were revolutionary in their
assault on the powers and privileges of the landowning magnates, both involved a
strengthening of monarchical government, and both sought to broaden the rights
and opportunities of certain disadvantaged categories of people, notably burghers
and Protestants, and in the case of Joseph II even the serfs, and even the Jews.
Both had failed. In both cases (in the Polish case with Russian and Prussian inter-
vention) the forces of agrarian noble conservatism, allied with certain ecclesiastical
powers, had proved stronger than the sponsors of innovation.
The continuation of this story is the theme of the present chapter.
The Impact of the Western Revolution in Russia
Russia in the eighteenth century, behind the facade of its tsarist autocracy, was a
country of chronic instability and violence, whose history was a series of palace
revolutions and assassinations at the upper level, and of bizarre pretenders and
peasant revolts among the common people. The horrors of the Pugachev rebellion
of 1773 were not soon forgotten. The better to keep control, the Empress Cathe-
rine had issued her Charter of Nobility in 1785, which codified and extended cer-
tain liberties of the nobles, including the liberty for them to do as they liked with
their serfs. It was precisely at this time that serfdom reached its high (or low) point
in Russia. Discontent continued in both the servile and the courtly classes: Cath-
erine’s son, Paul I, was assassinated in a palace revolution in 1801, and no less than
2 See above, Chapters XII and XIII.