The Russian occupation of Konigsberg established a colonial regime that was not unique in Europe but was unusual for German lands. From 1757 to 1762, eastern Prussia was a colony of the Russian Empire, as Livonia had been earlier (since 1710) and eastern Poland would be later (since 1772). Nobody in the land could know what we know now, that the Russian regime in Konigsberg would end in less than five years, any more than they could know that it would be re-established centuries later.
One could agree that the Russian occupation of Prussia was not too painful, relatively speaking. The Russian administration there struggled with cultural and political problems that are typical for any colonial regime. Troops were stationed in the city, a Russian governor took over the administration, and Russian currency was introduced. The burgers of Konigsberg became Russian subjects. However, Elizabeth promised to respect their traditional rights, including religious liberty. Wartime taxes were reduced, but the draft of recruits, which was tough under Frederick, was replaced by an additional tax. Only one of the many Lutheran churches of the city was converted to Russian Orthodox. Various projects streamed from St. Petersburg, some of them utopian or, rather, dystopian. By special decree, citizens of eastern Prussia were invited to resettle in Russia, though no results were achieved at that time (Bartlett 1979: 20; Kretinin 1996). This project of inward resettlement, in which the victors invited the defeated to settle on their territory rather than the other way around, was unusual in the history of imperial conquests. In his attempt to play a political strategist for the Russian crown, Denis Diderot propagated population transfers and used the Russian-Prussian war as a case in point:
If the Russians had done the right thing when they were in Berlin, they would have taken away the whole capital - men, women and children, workers, manufacturers, furniture - and left behind only the walls. . . . If this transfer of population had been proposed to me, I would have taken care that it should occur in the most orderly way possible. (Diderot 1992: 112)
Diderot wrote this retrospective advice to Catherine II after his return from Russia in 1774, when the Seven Years War had become history but a civil war between the Empire and the colonized peoples of the Southern steppes, led by Pugachev, was under way. The philosopher did not fail to instruct Catherine about what to do with the Cossacks: "What I say of the Prussians, I say too of the Cossacks." What was good for external colonization was good for internal colonization too. In fact, there was not much difference between the two.
The colonization of Konigsberg encountered silent resistance on the part of the natives, who were convinced of their superior culture, complied with Russian rule and rulers, detested them in their quiet way, and responded with a pioneering nationalist movement that had tremendous consequences for European thought. I submit that Russian rule established a "domination without hegemony" (Guha 1997), a typically colonial situation in which the rulers practiced coercion without managing to persuade the natives of their right to do so, or even of their ability to rule. This situation invited deep questions about power, reason, and humanity, some of them for the first time ever. The Russian attempt at colonizing Konigsberg became an entry point into modernity, a prototype of the condition that has been re-enacted myriad times later and often, with reference to those who experienced it then, in Konigsberg.
Kant
In 1755, Kant defended his dissertation and became a university lecturer. His major work of this period, Universal Natural History, began with a dedication to Frederick II, "the mightiest king and master," from his "most humble servant." In the same formula, he promised to serve his king "with the utmost devotion until my dying day." Scholars do not doubt that he was sincere: "Kant's identification with the king's program has long been recognized" (Zammito 2002: 58). But only two years later, Kant had to take an oath to Frederick's mortal enemy, Elizabeth, promising her that he would be "loyal and true to the Illustrious and All-powerful Empress of all the Russias . . . and to her heir"; moreover, if anything were undertaken against them, not only would he "inform the authorities forthwith, but also try to thwart the deed" (Gulyga 1987: 31). In 1758, Kant submitted to Elizabeth his application for a professorship, calling her, oxymoronically, "the most enlightened, the most autocratic Empress" and signing his letter, "in the deepest humiliation," "the most faithful subject and slave" of Her Imperial Greatness. Separated by three years, these ritual constructions promised perpetual service to two mortal enemies. Later, Kant would call such flip-flopping people, "turnspits." It was precisely this lack of autonomy that was the target of the great critical offensive that Kant later undertook.
The professorship was given to one of Kant's rivals. A Soviet scholar of Kant believed that the reason for his failure was the interference of a Russian officer, Andrei Bolotov (Gulyga 1987: 36). Bolotov, a translator who worked for the Russian governor of Konigsberg, brought a small group of Russian students to lectures at the University. Having discovered philosophy among the other pleasures of Konigsberg, Bolotov preferred Pietism to what he perceived as the spoiling, even criminal, influence of the Enlightenment. For many months, he attended lectures on philosophy given at the university by Kant's rival, Daniel Weymann. On top of the university course, Bolotov took private lessons with Weymann "almost daily." Weymann refused to charge fees for these lessons, but when departing from Konigsberg, Bolotov left his teacher of philosophy "a Kalmyk fur coat," a perfectly Russian present (1986: 382).
We know only that Bolotov liked Kant's enemy, but there is no evidence that Bolotov influenced Kant's promotion case, though he probably could have. Together, Bolotov and Weymann read the works of philosopher-theologians such as Christian August Crusius, whom Frederick II declared his enemy and banned from Prussian universities (Zammito 2002: 272). Under Russian occupation, these right-wingers came into vogue again. Bolotov felt that their moralistic, scrip- turalist philosophy helped him to discipline his mind, to live a moral life, and to resist the seduction of gallant balls and commercial sex that were booming under Russian rule (Bolotov 1986: 347). One can understand that he responded better to this instruction than to those exercises in natural history that were Kant's official interest in the time. When Kant called Weymann "a Cyclops" (1992: lvi) and declined to participate in a public debate with him, he probably knew about Weymann's connections in the Russian administration. The long-standing conflict between Kant and Weymann was re-opened by their publications on optimism, a crucial issue in the occupied city. "Why, I ask in all humility, did it please Thee, Eternal Being, to prefer the inferior to the superior?" asked Kant in an essay written in 1759. In response, he reverted not just to Leibniz but much further back, to the Stoics: "To all creatures, who do not make themselves unworthy of that name, I cry, 'Happy are we - we exist. And God is well pleased with us' " (Kant 1992: 71, 76). This is indeed optimistic, the source of which is not the wisdom of God but a solidarity with all existing creatures, such as animals or slaves. As for Weymann, Kant was right in being optimistic: the owner of the Kalmyk fur coat was expelled from the university 15 years later (Kuehn 2001: 215).