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Authors: David Priestland
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larger groups of the population.
II
In May 1896 the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II was celebrated in Moscow with extraordinary pomp – ‘Versailles relived’, according to one contemporary. The Tsar entered the city on a ‘pure white horse’, followed by representatives of subject peoples, each in national costume. The procession also included delegates of the social estates and the local governments (
zemstva
), as well as foreigners. 3 Despite the profusion of social and ethnic groups, though, the procession was designed to stress the empire’s unity. The newspaper
Moskovskie Vedomosti
declared:
No one lived his own personal life. Everything fused into one whole, into one soul, pulsing with life, sensing and aware that it was the Russian people. Tsar and people created a great historical deed and, as long as the unity of people and Tsar exists, Rus’ will be great and invincible, unfearing of external and internal enemies. 4
The correspondent was mistaking propaganda for reality. As part of the government’s paternalistic attempts to involve the ordinary people in the coronation events, it had become customary to hold a ‘people’s feast’ on Khodynka Field, featuring plays and games for the entertainment of all. This year, however, more numbers than expected came and too few Cossack troops were deployed to control the crowds. As the festival began, there was panic, and between 1,350 and 2,000 were killed in thecrush. The public, domestic and international, were horrified by reports in the press. It was clear that for all his claims to be the head of the invincible Rus’, the Tsar’s government was a poorly managed shambles. Nor was the much-vaunted unity of Tsar and people in evidence. Though Nicholas expressed his regret at the events, the festivities were not cancelled, and that same evening he attended a lavish ball given by the French Ambassador. An English observer wrote, ‘Nero fiddled while Rome was burning, and Nicholas II danced at the French ball on the night of the Khodynskoe massacre.’ 5 The future Bolshevik worker Semén Kanatchikov, arriving at the festival shortly after the disaster, similarly railed at the ‘irresponsibility’ and ‘impunity’ of the authorities. 6 The Khodynka affair was a bad omen for the Tsar – his grandiose pretensions at the coronation had been humiliatingly exposed, and he had responded with insouciant arrogance. There could be no clearer display of despotic decadence.
As the coronation rituals made clear, the Russian empire at the end of the nineteenth century was proud to be an
ancien régime
. Indeed, it consciously overtook pre-1789 France as the embodiment of reactionary principles. Paradoxically, its
ancien régime
was of relatively recent vintage. Just as Enlightenment
philosophes
were condemning hierarchy and difference, the tsars were entrenching them, and after its defeat of revolutionary France in the Napoleonic wars, the regime self-consciously styled itself the bastion of tradition and autocracy against enlightenment and revolution. Russia continued to be made up of a series of unequal estates, status groups and nationalities, each with their own specific legal privileges and obligations. 7 The peasants were notoriously disadvantaged, and before 1861 they were unfree – the last serfs in Europe.
As the French monarchy discovered in 1789, such a system could persist only so long as the state did not make too many demands of its subjects. But once it sought to compete with rival states – to the West and the East – which could mobilize large, well-trained armies, raise high levels of taxation, and build modern munitions, it had to do the same. Inevitably the peasants, and later the industrial workers and ethnic minorities in the Russian empire, who were expected to make these sacrifices, demanded something in return. If they were to contribute money or their lives to the state, they wanted to be treated with dignity, as valued participants
II
In May 1896 the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II was celebrated in Moscow with extraordinary pomp – ‘Versailles relived’, according to one contemporary. The Tsar entered the city on a ‘pure white horse’, followed by representatives of subject peoples, each in national costume. The procession also included delegates of the social estates and the local governments (
zemstva
), as well as foreigners. 3 Despite the profusion of social and ethnic groups, though, the procession was designed to stress the empire’s unity. The newspaper
Moskovskie Vedomosti
declared:
No one lived his own personal life. Everything fused into one whole, into one soul, pulsing with life, sensing and aware that it was the Russian people. Tsar and people created a great historical deed and, as long as the unity of people and Tsar exists, Rus’ will be great and invincible, unfearing of external and internal enemies. 4
The correspondent was mistaking propaganda for reality. As part of the government’s paternalistic attempts to involve the ordinary people in the coronation events, it had become customary to hold a ‘people’s feast’ on Khodynka Field, featuring plays and games for the entertainment of all. This year, however, more numbers than expected came and too few Cossack troops were deployed to control the crowds. As the festival began, there was panic, and between 1,350 and 2,000 were killed in thecrush. The public, domestic and international, were horrified by reports in the press. It was clear that for all his claims to be the head of the invincible Rus’, the Tsar’s government was a poorly managed shambles. Nor was the much-vaunted unity of Tsar and people in evidence. Though Nicholas expressed his regret at the events, the festivities were not cancelled, and that same evening he attended a lavish ball given by the French Ambassador. An English observer wrote, ‘Nero fiddled while Rome was burning, and Nicholas II danced at the French ball on the night of the Khodynskoe massacre.’ 5 The future Bolshevik worker Semén Kanatchikov, arriving at the festival shortly after the disaster, similarly railed at the ‘irresponsibility’ and ‘impunity’ of the authorities. 6 The Khodynka affair was a bad omen for the Tsar – his grandiose pretensions at the coronation had been humiliatingly exposed, and he had responded with insouciant arrogance. There could be no clearer display of despotic decadence.
As the coronation rituals made clear, the Russian empire at the end of the nineteenth century was proud to be an
ancien régime
. Indeed, it consciously overtook pre-1789 France as the embodiment of reactionary principles. Paradoxically, its
ancien régime
was of relatively recent vintage. Just as Enlightenment
philosophes
were condemning hierarchy and difference, the tsars were entrenching them, and after its defeat of revolutionary France in the Napoleonic wars, the regime self-consciously styled itself the bastion of tradition and autocracy against enlightenment and revolution. Russia continued to be made up of a series of unequal estates, status groups and nationalities, each with their own specific legal privileges and obligations. 7 The peasants were notoriously disadvantaged, and before 1861 they were unfree – the last serfs in Europe.
As the French monarchy discovered in 1789, such a system could persist only so long as the state did not make too many demands of its subjects. But once it sought to compete with rival states – to the West and the East – which could mobilize large, well-trained armies, raise high levels of taxation, and build modern munitions, it had to do the same. Inevitably the peasants, and later the industrial workers and ethnic minorities in the Russian empire, who were expected to make these sacrifices, demanded something in return. If they were to contribute money or their lives to the state, they wanted to be treated with dignity, as valued participants
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