"Respect the Law, and by your example teach others to respect it. If the Law is broken by the Tsar it will not be obeyed by the people. Spread education. The benefits of Order and Law are appreciated only by an educated people. Give heed to public opinion: it often enlightens the Tsar. It is his faithful ally and a stern judge of those who carry out its will. Love freedom. It stands for Equity. It interprets the generosity of the Tsar and the liberty of the people. The Tsar's love of freedom strengthens the obedience of his subjects. Govern not by Force, but by Order. The true might of the Tsar lies not in the size of his armies, but in the prosperity of his people. Chose worthy and capable counselors. Pride blinds the Tsar and places him in the power of service courtiers, unmindful of his honor and of the public good. Respect your people and they will be worthy of respect. Love your people. The people will not love the Tsar if he does not love them. Be not disheartened by the World, but keep forever in your heart the vision of the beautiful and a belief in good, which is your faith in God. You will thus be saved from despising humanity, for to despise humanity is deadly for one who is called on to reign."
— Nicholas I
It is fairly clear, therefore, that the rebellion against the monarch derived from the interests of the oligarchy itself. It is often the case that a political group with a certain agenda will couch its personal and corporate interests in "universalized" rhetoric for the purposes of mobilization. It is one thing to speak of Razin and Bolotnikov, which were Orthodox and nationalist rebellions, the traditionalist "land" against the urban and cosmopolitan liberals and centralizers. It is another to deal with the existence of an abstract liberalism, that is, abstract in the sense that it posited "rights" and "duties" that were not part of any specific lifestyle or extant structure concerning "freedom," but not a freedom to do anything in particular. There was the concept of liberty, but little in the way of exactly what one was supposed to do with it. Liberalism in Russia during the time of Nicholas I and afterwards was purely the interests of the upper oligarchy demanding their share of power. They demanded the destruction of traditional communal arrangements (always in the name of a purely abstract and theoretical "liberty") in the countryside so this class could exploit "free" labor — rather than having to go through layers of authority to get to the individual peasant -and dominate what had heretofore been a fairly free and prosperous peasantry, left alone and governed by very traditional structures of power and bargaining.
To destroy the commune, to destroy peasant governance and their traditional checks and balances was to isolate the peasant as an "individual." Once he was removed from the communal structure, ultimately protected and empowered by the Tsar, this poor soul was now at the mercy of the oligarchy without the myriad protections of the traditional peasant structure of authority. It might be true that the peasant did not have the abstract "rights" liberal political theory posits, but his commune did have substantial juridical power. To destroy some of these traditional arrangements by destroying royal power was, therefore, the primary goal of the new bourgeois developing during the time of the Decembrist "revolt."
But outside of the necessary "material conditions" that would lead to oligarchical government, other influences were at work. The increasing influences of the sects have been mentioned. Nearly all promised an easy life, one without the rigors of fasting and monastic discipline Orthodox traditional life had always, and properly, said were necessary to root out die effect of sin, that is, the lack of self control and discipline and increasing laxity of the mind against the demands of the "flesh." It was fairly easy, therefore, for sectarians, who would provide the impressionable and presumptuous salon ladies with their exoteria: sexual liberation (of course), no dogma (they would find the dogma after they were initiated), no fasting, no long Church services, no clergy etc. Of course, to further diminish the influences of the episcopacy was also very important to die liberal revolutionaries as well, and therefore a clear symbiotic relationship — at least ideologically -developed between liberalism and the sects. The rise of contemporary New Age exoteria and its completely leftist agenda is a continuation of the same notions and connections.
Further, the sectarians also fed into the development of the secret societies that began to function after the defeat of Napoleon. James Billington, in his very prosaic The Icon and the Axe, makes a common mistake by claiming that some of the secret societies were monarchist and traditionalist. Billington is normally very bourgeois in his interpretations of Russian culture (that he ultimately does not understand), but to believe that such societies supported the royal order is absurd. Of course, if they were truly supporters of Russian Tsarism, they would not need to be secret. Furthermore, it is clear from the papers of the Masonic cults in America, such as from Albert Pike or Manley Hall, to name two major examples, or the Carbonari in Italy, to name another, that to put on a "patriotic" front (exoteria) so as to disguise the inner core of doctrine (the esoteria) is generally a common tactic. Billington is generally naive when he takes the alleged ideas of the secret societies at face value. For if Russia was a "despotism" under Nicholas I as he claims (it was not), then it would be in the interest of the cults to lie about their intentions. They would not need to be secret cults if they were merely patriotic organizations.
Of course, it is very clear that the Masonic ideology in Russia was no different than elsewhere. To the extent the cults came from France, which is a common opinion in the literature, then the esoteria was likely the most radical of all. Liberal politics, the destruction of Tsarism, the creation of an ecumenical "living Church" with its equally vapid "living tradition," and, of course, complete freedom of trade and commerce is basically — culled from numerous Masonic tracts from the continent, then and now — the program of Masonry at the political level. The modern Baha'i cult is a contemporary example of this same phenomena: a fashionable and well funded group who claims to be merely about "tolerance" and self-improvement (exoteria), is actually an organization preaching revolution and leftist, one world government and religion (esoteria). But this level of its agenda is generally not spoken of except to convinced insiders. This is why secret societies are secret: they have a secret doctrine known only to initiates. Otherwise they would not have any "secrets." Hosking (2000) writes that the Union of Welfare's public arm was devoted "like the Masons, to philanthropy, education, justice and morality." Of course, he does not bother to wonder why one would need for form a secret society anywhere (such as in America or England) dedicated to such principles. Liberal historian S. Utechin, writes in his (1963) Russian Political Thought:
The political Masonic organization ... largely prepared the overthrow of the monarchy in 1917, supplied most of the leading members of the provisional government, and inspired many of the Provisional governments administrative and social reforms.
Nonetheless, these are the basic ideas that informed the creation of leftist, esoteric cults throughout Russia, the various organizations of the Decembrists, who wished to overthrow Tsardom after the death of Alexander I, merely being a drop in the bucket. Historians generally deal only with the public pronouncements of such groups as the "United Slavs" or the "Union of Salvation" without attempting to delve into their inner ideological core, the agenda that they did not feel comfortable talking about in public. Gregory Mazour Anatole's (1961) The First Russian Revolution, because it is largely a puff piece about the events surrounding Nicholas I's ascension to the throne, does not attempt to provide anything about the ideological bases of these groups except the most trite liberal phrases and slogans.
Paul Pestel, leader of the Decembrist Southern Society (from a schism within the liberal movement) and was an admitted Jacobin. Normally spoken of in the most glowing terms, he actually wanted a Directorate and terror in Russia to impose his plans for a "unitary state" dedicated to a "New Order." As always, he demanded the liberation of serfs (from the commune as well as from the landlords) to the tender mercies of the New Order and the upper oligarchy and the expropriation of land from the lower gentry who were the most numerous in terms of serf control. Hosking (2000), a friend of the Decembrists — which is a condition for being hired to teach Russian history — writes: "The Northern Society was run by a triumvirate from ancient aristocratic families, Nikita Muraview, Evgnii Obolenskii and Sergei Trubetskoi+.... The conspirators had little support among the common people or even among the rank and file soldiers, for whom their ideas had little resonance." (263). Riasanovsky (1993) admits that the Decembrists came from "aristocratic families and elite regiments." (320)
In other words, the exoteria might well be reconstructed as a New Order based on oligarchical control and French revolutionary methods, disenfranchising the Church as well as the lower gentry, in other words, the guardians of the traditional order. The "ancient aristocracy," then, was a modernist oligarchy, who demanded "liberal reforms" because it was these which would destroy serfdom, the commune, and thereby introduce a capitalist order where the upper classes could exploit peasant labor, completely unprotected by communal structures. The very fact that scholars such as Florinsky or Billington refuse to wonder why it was always the upper reaches of the oligarchy who demanded "liberal reforms," and why the rebellions of the lower classes were always explicitly populist, nationalist and Orthodox certainly casts doubt on their analytic ability, or even their willingness to buck the system in interpreting the motives of the "revolutionaries."
Alexander I died on November 19,1825. There was some confusion as to the succession. By normal procedure, it would have been Constantine, Alexander's oldest brother. However, his libido got the best of him and he found himself in sexual thrall to a Polish aristocratic salon woman who likely made him renounce the throne. Thank God, for the throne went to a brilliant, motivated and energetic man named Nicholas. Alexander had confirmed the succession to him in his own writing shortly before his death. Unfortunately, Nicholas Viad not seen the document, and, upon Alexander's death, Nicholas quickly swore allegiance to Constantine. Nicholas, however, even after reading the manifesto, still insisted that Constantine, following proper procedure, should be Tsar. Constantine, unsurprisingly, had another "agenda." Finally, Nicholas gave in and took the throne. No one in the English language literature even provides a stray comment of how extraordinary Nicholas' behavior during this time was. He could have easily taken the throne right after Alexander's death, but, given proper procedure, he insisted it go to his elder brother. The reign of Nicholas I was not about his own self interest, unlike his brother's interest in his libido. Nicholas in many ways was a model monarch, selfless and disciplined.
Due to this confusion, the secret sects began to realize that they had a unique situation. Normally, the esoteria of secret cults is the famous Masonic slogan "ordo ab chao"; order from chaos. Chaos and confusion are necessary to bring about social change because people are more suggestible in a state of agitation than a state of peace. The revolutionaries of the next generation utilizing terror bombings were well aware of that basic psychological fact. Because of the confusion — the army was also confused as to the situation — the occult decided to stage a rebellion and bring the Jacobin revolution to Russia. They did it as they always have: through lies and manipulation, all for the "greater good," of course. They were able to convince a few regiments that there was no such "manifesto" granting the throne to Nicholas, and that Constantine was the true Tsar.
It is ironic that the Jacobins were using the loyalties to Tsardom of the soldiers to stage their republican revolution. The soldiers who were talked this way into supporting the Masonic conspiracy were confused and refused to fight upon reaching the Senate Square. Nicholas was aware of these difficulties and refused, as well, to use force. He sent the governor general of Petersburg to speak to the rebels and get them to reconsider their silly action, but the "lovers of humanity" shot him dead for absolutely no reason (this incident is left out of Riasanovsky's account). After an entire day of standoff, Nicholas reluctantly brought out cannon, and the mindless murderers were scattered. Hundreds were arrested, though the overwhelming majority were soon released, as they were merely simple soldiers who were lied to by the Masonic conspiracy. This in short, was the "Decembrist rebellion."
Because of Nicholas' insistence on royal tradition over Jacobin lawless oligarchy, he receives the most biased and unfair treatment by historians who should know better. There is no support for Nicholas in the English language literature whatsoever, so tight is the academic noose around writing in this field. As always, however, it was the most autocratic, Orthodox and traditional of the monarchs who were the best leaders and greatest reformers. This is so for one important reason: a monarch must be rather aloof from the other centers of power that exist in any society. He must be able to fairly adjudicate disputes from each estate or class according, not by class bias or any other such thing, but from the interests of national and state unity and stability. This is his job. It is a particularly difficult and lonely one. Without this, he cannot be considered a monarch, never mind a good monarch. What is more pleasing is that Nicholas I did his job splendidly. He was stem but fair, harsh on leftist revolutionism but, as he proved in the aftermath of the Decembrist oligarchical "uprising," merciful and, in short, very Orthodox in his vision of the state and his role in it.
Riasanovsky claims, with some justification, that Nicholas preferred to go outside of established channels to run the state machinery. In other words, he would use ad hoc committees and meetings to put forth his agenda, making the normal channels, the Senate and his body of appointed ministers, increasingly unimportant. This shows one important thing: that, regardless of Nicholas' admiration for Peter I, he, like his grandson, did not trust the increasing centralization and regularization of the state and society. Knowing full well that such elite bureaucratic devices were a major means of undermining autocratic authority in favor of the control of the new bourgeois and careerist "civil servants," he simply bypassed these channels. What became the major organ of reform was His Majesty's Own Chancery, which Nicholas made into his specific organ of governmental administration. Further, given the legacy of the liberal Decembrists and his knowledge of the oligarchical designs on his throne, he strengthened the police and created a new bureaucracy for it, the famous Third Department of His Own Chancellery. As always, since at least Basil III, the perennial worry was the oligarchs and members of the aristocratic far reaches where the revolution was being hatched, not among the workers or peasants. As always, authors rail against Nicholas' attacks on the "Russian people," when in fact by "people" here, is meant the upper oligarchy who were plotting against Nicholas, his predecessors and his successors.
Nicholas' major victories as Tsar (apart from instilling fear in the spoiled, dilettante revolutionaries) were major improvements in the life of state peasants,1 as well as a serious revision of Russian law which lasted until 1917. This reform was carried out in 1838, when the state peasants were given full self government. The reforms of Nicholas concerning the state peasants were the model Alexander II would use for his emancipation of all private peasants, though this obvious fact is mentioned nowhere in the literature, so determined are English-speaking academics to make Nicholas to look like a tyrant.
Nonetheless, the local level of state peasant organization was to transform the commune into a communal village, where the village, with delegations consisting of two people for every 10 households, was to vote to elect a elect a starshina (headman) as well as set up the local court system which was chaired by this elder with 2 other judges elected by the communal assembly. Several of these rural communes would be combined into a township, consisting of about 6,000 heads of household. A mayor was then elected that was answerable to and could be removed by the peasants. Above this was the district or county, led by a superintendent whose powers varied from place to place and time to time. Lastly, the provincial level was run buy a board of state domains answerable directly to the Tsar.
Many abuses in serfdom were corrected, such as the practice of separating families. This practice was always against the law anyway, but, given the inability of the Tsardom to reach the countryside, such laws remained — like western "rights" — mere formalities. Thankfully, under Nicholas, the method of deciding levels of taxation was shifted from people (a modern invention from Peter I) to land, which was closer to Russian tradition.
Further, in the realm of foreign policy, Russia's vibrant system of rule led to two major victories, one against the Persians (again) in 1828, and another against the Turks in 1829. Russia, in order to counter British and Turkish moves in the southwest and in central Asia, continued to press southward, a necessity that led to the present problems between Russia and "Chechnya." Furthermore, Nicholas, determined to right the wrongs committed by Poland against traditionally Orthodox and Russian areas, ordered a campaign of Russification in the regions formerly controlled by Poland, and Russian language and Orthodoxy were reimposed where Poland had imposed Latin and Catholicism centuries earlier. The program was naive, but clearly just in its theoretical basis. Russification, in short, was a means to reclaim areas that had been controlled by Catholic powers and converted by force for 300 years. Millions of "Uniates" came back to Orthodoxy under this program in 1839-40.
The Convention of Berlin was signed in 1833, which was a continuation of Alexander's Holy Alliance, and included Russia, Prussia and Austria. It was designed to fight liberal and communist revolutions in Europe and to save their peoples from the bloodbaths such "revolutions" bring. Nicholas I saved the Austrian Empire in 1848 when revolutionaries in Vienna nearly toppled the monarchy. Nicholas I invaded the country and reinstalled its legitimate government. However, liberalism and communism had captured the moneyed classes and therefore, made this diabolical hydra a difficult monster to defeat. As always, the common people were generally traditional and Christian, while the oligarchy, seething with resentment against legitimism, joined (or more accurately created) revolutionary groups to topple them. Nicholas wisely understood the ongoing fraud and interceded to defend the peace and justice that royal rule had created in Europe. Unfortunately, his legacy eventually lost as World War I destroyed the remainder of tradition in Europe, leading, of course, to the immediate imposition of financial control, smokestack industries and the destruction of the communal peasant order. Unsurprisingly, the trajectory of revolution was to end in its esoteria, Bolshevism for Russia and nearly so for Germany and Italy. "Mass society" was created on the corpse of Nicholas I's vision for Europe. Unfortunately for European culture — though fortunate for academic careers — royalism gave way to its only substitute, oligarchy, soon enough. Power was now directed at the naked and ignorant individual (who was armed with a group of theoretical "rights" as a cheap Rousseauian substitute for communal protection) in a way that traditional monarchy could not conceive.
Ironically, despite leftist scholars' prattle about Nicholas' "reign of terror" and his "censorship," literary culture flourished in Russia under his reign. Nicholas personally applauded the first stage production of Nicholas Gogol's The Inspector General, which was a satire on the incompetence of the civil service. It had been banned in Berlin. The Slavophile/Western debate flourished, and "subversive" ideas were bandied about regularly. Karamzin, Pushkin, Polevoi, Khomiakov, Kavelin and a host of others functioned under Nicholas "reign of terror," creating a lively literary culture still terribly misunderstood by western intellectuals. The Church at this time was increasingly vibrant, with missionary efforts that had long reached southern California. A host of American saints were added to the Russian calendar commemorating new found sanctity in America. The Aleut natives, without literacy or even the most fundamental attributes of a culture of any kind, were provided with an alphabet and literature by the great St. Innokentii of Moscow and North America, who later, due to his superhuman abilities, became Metropolitan of Moscow near the end of his life. The resurgence of monastic life through the Optima and Valaam sketes proceeded apace, and the rejection of asceticism in the West was easily challenged and answered by this new crop of monastic writers and scholars such as Macarius or Leo of Optina.
Much of this is not even remotely alluded to in the blissful world of the spoiled and tenured. The censorship was little different in Russia under Nicholas I than it presently is in American universities, where even the slightest "offense" taken by a "minority" student can lead to the expelling of any poor white student not yet initiated into the Tenured New Order. While it is true that those who recommended violent destruction and revolution as their creed (such as Herzen, who Isaiah Berlin called "his hero") were exiled to America, American universities take action against harmless teenagers who may have expressed mildly politically incorrect opinions. The censorship over what gets published on the academic presses on Russian history, where only the most hackneyed, virulent and jejune diatribes against the Romanovs get published, is far harsher than anything Nicholas I ever imposed. It never seems to dawn on academic elites such as Riasanovsky or Bruce Lincoln that the censorship in Revolutionary France was far more totalitarian than anything in Nicholas I's Russia. Russian Tsardom was imposed by explicit consent; liberalism must be imposed by force.
It would be a strange omission if this section did not make mention of Nicholas I's official motto for the governance of Russia: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality. It is almost, at this point in the narrative, unnecessary to explain why these three ingredients were chosen. All three are absolutely necessary for Russia to have functioned at all, and all three were necessary for revolution and bloodshed to be stopped. All three, most importantly, were necessary for anyone to understand Russian history or to understand what makes Russia a unique cultural and political entity, rather than merely as a superficial "cultural unit" of the New World Order.
Orthodoxy had long proved itself as the chief unifier of the Russian people and the primary means whereby she identified herself. Now, this present book is not meant to be apologetic in nature (that is for a later book), and therefore, the question of western papism and Protestantism will not be dealt with, but suffice it to say that Orthodoxy was Russia's link with Greece and Rome, its link with Byzantium and the Mideast, and made up nearly the entirety of its culture until the present period in this narrative. Nevertheless, contrary to tenured opinion, an official religious denomination does not mean the "suppression" of others. It is one thing to keep watch on Roman Catholics, who historically had been part of the military efforts of Russia's enemies, but it is quite another to deal with Muslims, who received a Russian translation of the Quoran and swore their oath of allegiance to the Emperor, not on a Bible, but on the Koran itself. Official Orthodoxy had nothing to do with disenfranchising other "religions," it merely stated a fact: that there could have been no Russia without Orthodoxy and that the Orthodox faith and hierarchy maintained the idea and independence of Russia through the harshest times in human history, times that western Europe never experienced.
Riasanovsky writes in his famous Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia 1825-1855: "Furthermore, throughout his life Nicholas I was bent on improving himself morally and spiritually; and while one may question the results of his efforts, there is no reason to doubt his sincerity" (86). And further, "Nicholas I, Uvarov [his Minister of Education], Pogodin, Shevrev, Gogol and even Bulgarin, as well as many others, all wanted to educate their fellow countrymen morally and spiritually, to make them good Christians and perfect Russians. The main means for the achievement of this purpose were the family and the school" (91). In other words, "official nationality" was not merely a slogan, it was a plan to regenerate Russian morality and their communion with God. It was an attempt to do what modern political science says cannot be done: uplift the moral basis of the citizens. It was a means to unify the country that, as always, had many enemies and still faced areas of vulnerability, as the wars in Crimea or Port Arthur were to show.
It has been charged by the likes of Riasanovsky and many others that "religion" did little more than preach obedience to the Tsar. Of course, as the massive amount of ascetic literature churchmen were producing at this time goes unnoticed by "Russia scholars," this author wonders why the preaching of obedience to an Orthodox Tsar is such a problem to the self-appointed preachers of "liberty." The Tsar was Orthodox, he subsidized the Church, he subsidized missionary efforts throughout the empire and beyond it. He was personally pious and just in his dealings with people. He insisted on the primacy of Russian tradition. Why exactly should the Church oppose him? The leftists who dominate Russian historiography in America despise the Church's loyalty to the Tsar because they realize what Herzen realized before them: that the union between Tsar and Church meant that the system was reinforced and maintained the loyalty of the massive majority of the Russian population in most respects. Simply, the Church acting in concert with a Christian Tsar meant that the system was that much more reinforced and insulated from their well-subsidized propaganda.
Autocracy is important for one reason: the Jacobins, champing at the bit to plunge Russia into their own brand of the French Terror, knew that the only real force acting against them that had any coercive power was the monarchy. Whether it be France in 1780, Austria in 1848 or Germany in 1918, the extreme left in politics, romanticized by the hallucinogenic radicals in American universities, knew that once the monarchy was gone, the society will not long have the focus of unity necessary to resist them. Therefore, no matter what else, the Masonic revolutionaries, in whatever country they were found in this era, had one thing in mind: to destroy the monarchy and those loyal to it. Nicholas Gogol, the famous Russian writer and believer in "Official Nationality," had this to say of the necessity of autocracy in Russia:
Why is it necessary that one of us should require a position above all others and even above the law? Because law is wooden; man feels that law contains something harsh and unbrotherly. One will not get far merely with a letter-perfect execution of the law. But none of us should break the law or fail to comply with it. That is why we need supreme grace to mitigate the law, as it can come to men only in the form of absolute power. A state without an absolute monarch is an automaton, (quoted in Riasanovsky, 1967: 98).
This statement is profound and needs interpreting. Riasanovsky quotes it and then moves on, not mentioning it again. From his point of view, such a passing mention of Gogol's opinion makes sense, for it refutes the smug and unargued assumptions of that fraud "liberal democracy," a belief in which is such a requirement of academic thinking and promotion. Within that famous quote from that equally famous writer comes the arguments and justification for the autocratic state.
The first sentence is telling. In liberal democracies, those who have the most ambition to rule are those who run for office. Nicholas showed the opposite that, even when the crown was handed to him, he rejected it in favor of the (formal) heir apparent. Only under pressure did he accept the crown. In democratic thinking, only the ambitious and obnoxious are capable of doing what is necessary to get elected. American politicians are whores. They are forced to alter their views depending on the group that the politician is meeting with or speaking to. He is constantly asking for money with far less grace than a common prostitute. He often is entirely ignorant on the basic principles of political philosophy, including the philosophy that informs his own government. He is constantly campaigning, and therefore simply does not have the time to reflect, reason and improve himself. The American politician does not know the content of the bills he is voting on, as the average bill in the American Congress is between 500 and 2,000 pages long. His desire is single: to have some semblance of power and the ability to exploit it for personal gain. The average turnout from the American sheeple on an off-year Congressional election is — at best — 20 percent, proving that even the easily manipulated American populace no longer takes the charade seriously. Gogol has been proven absolutely correct through historical experience, not prosaic academic phrases and meaningless philosophical hairsplitting.
The notion of law here is also significant. Liberal democracy means that the "rule of law" dominates. This is another way of saying that whoever the oligarchy is capable of financing to electoral victory will make laws in their favor. Again this is a historical fact that derives from experience, not political philosophy. The notions of "natural rights," "free elections" and the "rule of law" are theoretical constructs, ideal types, so to speak, that are not realizable when society is largely controlled by those who have seized sufficient resources to control the application of those meaningless phrases in practice. In the United States, the "rule of law" has been "reinterpreted" to mean that corrupt judges control what is "law" and what is not. The social revolution since the late 1960s was controlled almost entirely by judges.
The idea of the law being "wooden" is the object of the criticism of the Slavophiles (see chapter 12), to wit, that the law, without the power of mercy behind it, becomes an alien force, an imposition. The average American does not understand the millions of pages of precedent and regulation that is daily put out in the Federal Register. Joe Sixpack and Sally Soccer Mom, further, have nothing to do with its formulation and absolutely nothing to do with its imposition. In other words, law is radically alien to western "liberal" and "modem" man. It is the product of moneyed interests who actually write the law, and faceless staffers and judicial clerks who write the actual text. For traditional and Christian societies, the law is manifested in the historical institution of the monarch, who can overthrow the law temporarily for hard cases and for the sake of mercy. Of course, for the overwhelming majority of the Russian peasants, law emanating from Petersburg was meaningless anyway, as their lives were governed by communal custom that had been ingrained on their consciousness, indeed was formative of that consciousness, since birth. For example, it was common in Orthodox Byzantium and Russia, every few years or so, to cancel the collection of back taxes and even order the cancellation of private debts. This was done for specific religious holidays, the ascension of a new monarch, victory in battle or just because the state was no longer able to afford the collection process. This, of course, is contrary to the rule of law. In modern oligarchical societies, the cancellation of private or public debt, for any reason, is unthinkable.
In post-modern oligarchies, it is often the case that the only social interaction of significance occurs within the court system, which is expensive and slow. It is "harsh and unbrotherly" because the regime, instead of insisting that personal disputes be solved by private and traditional authorities (such as the Church), demands it be brought before itself as the "supreme judge" of all private affairs. High priced lawyers dominate the proceedings for those who can afford them, and large concentrations of capital, with a few well-publicized exceptions, can easily dominate the courtroom through their veritable armies of counsel. However, to appeal to an authority that is far above both parties, as well as representing national tradition and history, is something rather different than dealing with Judge Judy. In this case, far more than naked precedent can be utilized in decision making. Russian Tsars heard hundreds of such petitions weekly, and the decision was based on the common good of the ethno-nation, deriving from a royal authority that was beholden to no moneyed interest, rather than a modern judiciary that is largely the product of political spoils.
The question of the state being an "automaton" without a monarchy derives from the interests of the oligarchy, constantly plotting against royal power, to standardize the "law" so as to make it amenable to contract enforcement and profit. Because the Tsar had the power (only found in autocratic monarchs) to mitigate the control of large estates, powerful landlords and powerful manufacturing enterprises could be silenced with no negative repercussions for the monarch, who was not dependent upon their power. Because "republicanism" represents the victory of those kinds of classes, it is absurd that such a system can do anything other than to reinforce the ideas that benefit them. The notion of the "smooth" running of the law is to make the system amenable to those who control it. Monarchy, on the other hand, could not be controlled, for the Tsar himself was absolute and was "equidistant" from all alternative centers of power. For monarchy, in other words, law exists to the extent it is just and useful, not merely because it exists. There is nothing sacred about statutes or "constitutions" which are solely the product of compromise, legal wrangling and the influence of endogenous and exogenous social factors such as big money and media control.
Regardless, the "rule of law" empowers judges to distort the nature of any specific statute in any way according to their whims. The most any "citizen" can do is remain enmeshed in a web of legal technicalities for the remainder of his life, never receiving justice and likely going broke in the process. Again, the debate between modernism and monarchy needs to be handled on the level of experience, not on the level of high sounding phrases for the liberals, but bald history for the monarchists. The history, that is, the experience, of liberalism has been one of sordid oligarchical control, massification and moronization of citizens, the creation of the social atom, mass armies and massive world wars, the increasing gulf between the financial oligarchs and the working class, the removal of every conceivable protection for labor, judicial and media monopoly and control, mass suicide, occultism, abortion and divorce. That the corrupt and tenured academic class believes itself to have the authority to lecture their students on the "evils" of Nicholas I or Russian monarchy is outrageous, and comprises the cheap yellow journalism that marks the majority of "peer-reviewed academic publications" in what is left of "American republicanism" in 2003.
The notion of "nationality" in Nicholas' official motto creates a bit of confusion. As with the American literature on nationalism, the word still does not have an agreed upon meaning. Suffice it to say that the Slavophiles fully understood the distinctions between Russians and others. Russia was made in the furnace of invasion, poor soil and constant vulnerability; her language and customs reflect that. Her historical force was made by Orthodoxy, something that, in a radical way, made Russia completely distinct from the remainder of Europe as well as Asia.
For the Empire, the official ideologists of liberalism would intone in American universities that "nationality" made little sense because Russians only made up "half of the population, although Slavs made up the overwhelming majority, minorities such as Finns, Germans, and Tartars, though swearing allegiance to the Tsar, were given autonomy, and, indeed, as in Finland and Poland, their own constitutions. Oddly, such a notion of decentralization and autonomy that marked the Tsar's relations with the minorities generally does not enter into the official propagandist's idea of what "nationality" meant. In other words, different historical experiences meant different forms of rule and different sorts of political cultures. In the modem unitary state, the kind demanded by the leftist oligarchical revolutionaries in Russia or elsewhere, there is no room for ethnic pluralism; all are expected to assimilate. The Masonic United Slavs of the Decembrist "rebellion" believed in a version of this. On the other hand, traditional monarchy took the idea of nationalism far more seriously, making certain that the regions where non-Russians and non-Slavs predominated — the Baltics, for example — were not under the thumb of the Tsar, but were in enjoyment of their own notions of home rule, subject to the Tsar only in foreign policy. However, the question of nationality and its philosophical elucidation -will wait until chapter 12.
The Crimean War (1853-1856) has received far more than its fair share of historical ink. Almost without exception, having conveniently ignored the victories against Persia and Turkey, English-language histories claim that the war with the remainder of Europe, ultimately lost by the Russians, "proved" that the system of Nicholas I was faltering. Russia won far more than she lost in foreign affairs, but these long lists of victories never seem to verify the health of the system, however.
The Treaty of Adrianopole, the result of Russia's victory against Turkey in 1829, ensured Russia's control over the Black Sea and the free passage of Russian trading ships through the Straits (including the Dardanelles), giving them access to the Mediterranean. Further, Russia had ensured that Turkey would acknowledge Russian protection over Christians living under Ottoman rule. England, of course, supported Turkey, for she wanted to penetrate further into central Asia, a course that Russia was thwarting with her victorious moves southward. Russia's annexation of central and western Asian territories was largely motivated to stop the expansion of the British Empire, as well as to control the theo-political ambitions of Persia and Turkey.
However, the provisions of the treaties (that is, Adrianopole in 1829, Unkiar Skelessi in 1833 and the later provisions of Kuchuk-kainardij) made many in Europe think that Russia was trying to convert the faltering Turkish empire into a client state. The British elite, who could not fathom further Russian advances in die south (specifically in the Mediterranean) that would threaten her position (she had a difficult enough time with Prussia in thus same respect) became alarmingly suspicious. It just was not possible that a "backward" society such as Russia could become this dominant. Perfidious Albion's conceptual crisis led her to prepare for war.
Nicholas I went to London in 1833 to try to avoid war, and even conceded that Russian warships, like all others, were barred from the Straits in the text of the so-called Straits Convention. However, the arrogance of French designs on the Mideast and the establishment of a "Latin patriarchate" in Jerusalem (Jerusalem had always been a Greek-speaking and Orthodox Church, the "Latin patriarchate" was a historical and political lie) continued to antagonize Russia. That the Near East had, since the dawn of Christianity, been Greek speaking and Orthodox did not seem to bother the arrogant and imperialist Catholic and pro-Catholic powers. That Russia was claiming to be the sole protector of Christians in the Mideast over the British (who could not protect their own British Christians, who now are forced to live in a pagan country) soon led to war, as the British envisaged Russian control over Constantinople as well as control over the entire corpse of the Ottoman Empire. Britain had met its rival on the international scene.
Britain and France landed troops in the Crimea to destroy the Black Sea fleet and its central base at Sevastopol in September of 1854- Further, it is clear why Russia would be so interested in this region: the famous interest in warm water ports, the defense of Orthodoxy against papal designs, as well as the protection of grain shipments from Russia to the rest of the world through the Mediterranean were legitimate causes for Russian concern. Britain, on the other hand, being an imperial power with no direct interest in the region, normally considered its colonies to be sources of raw materials and alternative markets for its capitalist overproduction. Nicholas I scrambled to avoid war by pulling troops out of the disputed regions and accepting many limitations on Russian power in Turkey. As Riasanovsky (1933) writes: "The war guilt at this stage should be divided principally among Turkey, France, Great Britain and even Austria, who pressed increasingly exacting demands on Russia" (337). The Russian position was clear: the Balkans and the remainder of the former Turkish Empire needed to be policed by the major European powers to keep them from decaying into civil war and power struggles as Turkey receded mercifully into history and dozens of new nations, each with their own agendas and ancient hatreds, became realities.
Russia won the earlier engagements in the war. She sank the Turkish fleet and took the "impenetrable" Turkish fortress at Kars. However, the fighting was concentrated at the fortified naval base at Sevastopol. The fortress held out for nearly a year even under daily bombardment by the coalition of France, England, Turkey and Sardinia. Europe controlled the seas and placed a complete blockade on the region. The Caucasus is very far from the major supply centers of Russia and, given the terrain, supply lines were easy to break and disrupt. The Russians were forced to take on all these nations by themselves, and the Austrians even occupied Moldova and distracted much of the Russian army there, though there were no hostilities. Russia's situation was extremely difficult and the European powers were using their most advanced weaponry on the isolated fortress, recently annexed to the Russian empire and therefore not well developed. Soon, typhus took the Russian camp. It was, without a doubt, one of the great heroic epochs of Russian history. Modern Anglo-American historiography, however, has done with its legacy what the American leftist press did with the Tet offensive: it took a heroic stand and turned it into an "embarrassment" for the system. The Crimea proved nothing except that western Europe needed to watch out for its military interests, for the Russians were willing to fight to the death to defend their homeland and the Tsar. The "Allies" suffered extremely heavy losses. Russia was forced, as part of the provisions of the Treaty of Paris in 1856, to give up its newfound possessions and to cede its right to protect Christians in the Holy Land, giving them to the tender mercies of the western European powers who were soon to give up the Christian faith altogether.