Episodic Decembrists and Eternal Benckendorff

Ridiculous precautions? Murder will out? Or is the price of a high motivation for playing silent – the preservation of peace in a society prone to instability? The secret police, led by Count Benckendorff, pursued just such a goal. The department was called “security”. In common parlance – “guardian”.

Only Herzen, in The Bell published abroad, violated the plot, the obligation of muteness. His name and his editions were, of course, under the strictest taboo. Ivan Turgenev, in order to get the right to come from France to Russia, had to renounce his long-term friendship with Herzen. Otherwise they wouldn’t have let me in.

* * *

The specifics, methods and techniques of concealing the truth vaguely resemble … an episode not of our history and not of our literature – a scene from Hamlet: visiting actors play a plot similar to that that gave rise to Hamlet’s torment, show the murderers gathered in the auditorium their bloody reflections in the mirror of the theater stage .

The murder of a father… Is it possible to forgive this grave sin – uncle, mother, crafty courtiers? Alexander I, presumably, was familiar with the work of Shakespeare. Aware of the atrocity being prepared against his father, the future monarch (who took an indirect part in the elimination of his own pope) – does he resemble a hesitant, reflective prince of Denmark? Which sometimes behaves inadequately, as if quietly crazy (and in the end really falls into the deepest melancholy and prostration).

Literature is able to suggest a lot, to warn against a lot. Why didn’t the Russian tsar listen to the dramatic Anglo-Saxon parable, didn’t learn a lesson from Shakespeare’s chronicle? Or taken out? Later, being aware that the Decembrists were preparing an assassination attempt on him, Alexander I did not take decisive measures to prevent reprisals against himself (except for deforestation and laying new roads in order to travel through deserted tracts where they would not be on the lookout) – is this not a sign of Hamlet’s insanity? Or maybe the parricide king is looking for death, going to meet it? And in the end he finds it – after a strange cold in Taganrog. His death was overgrown with conflicting rumors: he did not die, but left the palace and the throne in order to wander around his native side in the guise of the elder Fyodor Kuzmich …

The body was buried with honors under a poisonous whisper: “Here one king splendidly sees off, what will the other king meet there?”

* * *

The radical plans of the Decembrists leaked out of the “secret” society they had created. (Many secret pro-government and anti-government organizations in early 19th century Russia.) Dueling master Yakubovich (he crippled Griboedov’s hand in a duel) was going to settle accounts with Alexander I for underestimating the selflessness of Yakubovich’s military service in the Caucasus (nonsense reason!). Pushkin testifies about his friend of youth: “The melancholic Yakushkin unsheathed his regicide dagger…”.

Let’s digress for a while and try to interpret the definition given by Pushkin to the Russian rebellion – “senseless and merciless.” Can it be applied to the October Revolution? Compatriots mercilessly crushed brother brother and nominally proclaimed the victory of the working people over the world-eaters. Has anything changed since then? No, even bigger bloodsuckers and monsters came to rule than the landlords and bourgeoisie. A pointless attempt at change!

* * *

Russia is a peasant country, with a peasant psychology and an inertial way of perceiving everyday life (including an attitude to sacrificial rituality): they raise sheep, goats, cows in their own hut, the time comes – and with the same equanimity, calmness with which they cared for living creatures, she is stabbed. Acceptance of death – urgently needed, everyday – does not apply to human slaughter?

The contradiction between a handful of the Decembrist elite and the dark mass of the population is very arbitrary, because the heralds of a just future, rhetorically rejecting the prevailing murderous philosophy, theoretically justify the upcoming executions.

PETER AND PAUL

It is extremely curious: for what sins were planning an attempt on Peter the Great, dissatisfied with his reforms, those close to him. You won’t guess anything! Young people did not want to go to study abroad! This royal command was perceived by them as a humiliating exile. And the fathers were indignant that the emperor was forcing them to take part in the technical re-equipment of the fleet.

The great-grandson of Peter the Great – Paul the First – was hated (and killed) for his Anglo-Saxon (from the point of view of the court camarilla) orientation and very obscure (plebeian?) pedigree, replete with many malicious slanderous conjectures. Some nobles insultingly disdainfully did not rise from their chairs when he appeared. Allegedly, Catherine (no matter what the Great) suffered not from her husband (Peter the Third, whom she killed – a normal practice among Gertrude), but from the handsome Saltykov, but gave birth to a dead child, who was replaced by a Chukhonian baby; the farm, from where the baby was taken, was wiped off the face of the earth and geographical maps. But recklessly they did not get rid of their twin brother, like two drops similar to a bastard son unloved by his mother; a double ghost from a terrible dream tormented a fake (?), illegitimate (?) accustomer. Instead of Paul, Catherine prepared for the accession to the throne of her grandson (future parricide) Alexander; her death played into the hands of Paul, a prophetic dream mystically informed him of a happy change in fortune.

Interesting are Paul’s own stories about infernal encounters with his great-grandfather, the late Peter the Great. It is unlikely that such a thing can be imagined. Then what – the other world is real? Why did the great-grandfather not warn the great-grandson about the impending assassination attempt? The shadow of Hamlet’s father would probably be more loyal to the Prince of Denmark. (Or was reprisal—providentally—certainly bound to take place?) It did not hurt to listen to the warnings of the monks, who openly predicted a quick disastrous ending, while Paul neglected it. Built – isn’t it ridiculous?! – not an underground bunker, but a ground palace, where he found himself in front of the conspirators at a glance. In addition, he did not minimize risks: he surrounded himself not with technical innovations – tablets, iPhones, gadgets – but with heavy antiques: candlesticks, snuff boxes, paperweights, paintings in massive frames; one of these objects dealt a fatal blow to the temple.

You involuntarily wonder: what would Paul have done in the current conditions? Perhaps he would have tried to find and confirm Finnish roots and asked for Suomi citizenship?

About the murder of Paul the First, of course, it was also forbidden to speak in print for many decades. Again, only Herzen told his contemporaries the truth about palace intrigues and coups. And if the topic of the illegal removal of the legitimate monarch was widely covered, discussed, would publicity help to avoid subsequent similar murders?

* * *

After the parricide of Alexander the First, his brother Nikolai Pavlovich took the throne. And he began with the gallows – he pulled up and sent to hard labor the Decembrists who had not been exterminated by Alexander.

Could use their brilliant talents in the interests of Russia? Or do traitors a priori not deserve to be admitted to the helm of power?

The brilliant, most educated Chaadaev, wishing to benefit the fatherland, turned to the sovereign with a message, where he offered himself and his services in the diplomatic field or the field of education, but the tsar assigned him a place in the Ministry of Finance. Chaadaev humbly asks Benckendorff to act as an intermediary and explain to the tsar that he does not understand finances. Benckendorff does not interfere. For the supreme ruler knows better where to serve his subject.

The pervasiveness and complicity of Benckendorff (Polonius? Iago?) in everything that is happening in the empire is striking … Maybe the tsar should have taken not him, but the great Chaadaev, as advisers, without subjecting the author of the famous Philosophical Letters to house arrest for freethinking and not declaring the unorthodox thinker insane ? But the smartest Chaadaev was still driven mad.

It is not difficult to call servants superior to you crazy, touched, or killed in a duel, like Pushkin and Lermontov; it is much more difficult with a wise look to find the best, most worthy associates, combining talents that the priest himself lacks, in order to effect transformations in the name of the common good. Moreover, you cannot ban geniuses, they show themselves “above the barriers”. It’s strange: not stupid – based on their high status – the leaders are not aware of this. If you rely on your own, sometimes meager abilities, and trample the gifted, a miracle will not happen.

The result of Nicholas’s thirty-year personnel policy was the collapse of Russia in the Crimean War (the generals he appointed were extremely clumsy) and the subsequent suicide of the tsar. Not having survived the shame, the hangman of the Decembrists asked his personal doctor for the appropriate powder, about which he left noteworthy evidence and, having issued the required remedy, hastily disappeared abroad.