It is interesting to note that Rousseau wrote this text during the reign of tsarina Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796 and was a great admirer of the French encyclopaedists. She corresponded with Diderot and Voltaire, and she actually invited Diderot to Saint Petersburg for five months. Like Peter the Great before her, she displayed an energetic drive to modernize the country, and she herself wrote the 655 articles of the Nakaz, a radical law reform based on the works of Montesquieu. She even introduced some pseudo-democratic measures, such as convening an All-Russian Legislative Commission. But all this had no lasting consequences. Back in Paris, Diderot wrote his Observations, in which he expressed a sharp critique of the Nakaz. “There is no true sovereign except the nation,” he wrote. “There can be no true legislator except the people. It is rare that people submit sincerely to laws which have been imposed on them. But they will love the laws, respect, obey and protect them as their own achievement, if they are themselves the authors of them.”[6] Diderot made no effort to flatter the tsarina. “The Empress of Russia,” he wrote, “is certainly a despot.”[7] Catherine only saw Diderot’s critical Observations after the death of the philosopher, when his library was transferred to Saint Petersburg under a contractual agreement. When she finally read Diderot’s comments, wrote Jonathan Israel, “she flew into a rage and apparently destroyed the copy she received.”[8]
However, Catherine, this modern, enlightened despot, became less enlightened and more despotic during the Pugachev revolt (1774–1775). This popular uprising in the southwestern part of her empire, led by a Cossack leader who claimed to be acting on behalf of the assassinated tsar Peter III, Catherine’s former husband, changed her ideas. During this peasants’ revolt over a thousand noblemen and their families were killed, which was approximately 5 percent of the Russian nobility.[9] Instead of abolishing serfdom and giving the Russian people a parliament as she had promised to do, she signed in 1785 the Charter of Nobility, which gave the Russian nobility the same special rights as in Western Europe. Ironically, this happened at a time when in Western Europe these rights began to be questioned and would be abolished some years later during the French Revolution.[10] In the end Catherine’s “democratic revolution” created precisely the opposite: it “created an aristocracy, the better to govern, or rather to dominate the mass of the people. For some to have a sphere of rights due to special birth or rank was doubtless better than for no one to have any assured rights at all.”[11] Catherine remained a convinced autocrat and is mainly remembered for her exuberant love life and the Russian expansion into the Crimea.
HOW LOST WARS LED TO SHORT-LIVED REFORMS
The despotic character of Russian rule was criticized not only by foreigners, but equally by the Russian intelligentsia. However, reform periods in Russia were, in general, short-lived. They were mostly introduced after lost wars, when the absolute power of the tsar and the ruling elite was temporarily weakened. In the last two centuries there were at least four such lost wars that led to deep and important reforms: the Crimean War (1853–1856), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), the First World War, and the Cold War.[12] The Crimean War had the effect of a wake-up call. Despite the fact that tsarist Russia mobilized 1,742,297 officers and men, plus 787,197 irregulars and militia, it was unable to deal with a force of 300,000 French, British, Sardinian, and Ottoman troops.[13] The rank and file of the Russian army consisted of serfs, who were conscripts for life. The officers came from the nobility. It became clear that in an epoch of mounting nationalism one could not win a war with an army of unmotivated and illiterate serfs.[14] A direct consequence of the lost war was the Era of the Great Reforms, initiated by tsar Alexander II, who during his reign (1855–1881) abolished serfdom in Russia.
However, these social reforms were less inspired by a genuine concern for the situation of the exploited Russian muzhik, as by the geopolitical needs of the Russian empire. Walter Pintner rightly remarked that it was “Russia’s military requirements [which] dictated major social changes.”[15] A similar situation arose in 1905 after the defeat in the war against Japan. This defeat led to a revolution and subsequently to the formation of the first parliament, the State Duma in Saint Petersburg. Another lost war: the defeat of the tsarist army in the First World War gave birth to the February Revolution of 1917 that laid the foundation for a Western-style democracy. Unfortunately, at the end of the same year the fragile democratic government of Kerensky was swept away by the Bolsheviks, who installed an autocratic and totalitarian system that endured for the next seventy years. Although during the communist era Khrushchev’s rule brought a short period of cultural “thaw” after Stalin’s death, it did not bring internal democratization, and one had to wait until 1989 before the autocratic communist system began to crumble.
THE HIGH EXPECTATIONS OF 1989
When this finally happened expectations were high. At last Russia would take its rightful place amongst the ranks of the democratic countries of Europe. At last it would build a viable Rechtsstaat with an independent judiciary and abolish the almost inborn fear that the police and secret services instilled in Russian citizens. Inside, as well as outside, Russia there was a sense of relief: finally Russia would become a “normal” country. Western powers were so eager to let this transformation happen that they offered Russia access to democratic forums even before Russia had shown itself worthy of this honor and had acquired the necessary democratic credentials. Rather prematurely Russia was invited to the G7 meetings (renamed G8) and became a member of the Council of Europe. In retrospect this early embracing of a new democratic Russia was too optimistic and too hasty, granting Russia a position among the democratic nations it did not yet deserve.[16] It was as if the West, by granting Russia the status of a fully fledged democratic state, wanted to invoke a “democratic spirit,” hoping that Russia, having been accepted as a member of the club, would automatically behave as a member of the club.
6
Cf. Denis Diderot, “Observations on the Instruction of the Empress of Russia to the Deputies for the Making of Laws,” in
7
Diderot, “Observations,” 82. Another contemporary who expressed his doubts concerning Catherine’s democratic credentials was the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder. “The monarch of Russia,” he wrote, “presupposes a motivating force that her language, nation, and empire do not possess: honor. One should read Montesquieu on this and the Russian nation and state of mind is exactly its opposite: one should read him on despotism and fear, and both are exactly present.” (Johann Gottfried Herder,
8
Cf. Jonathan I. Israel,
10
Cf. R. R. Palmer,
12
It is still a subject of discussion whether the Cold War could be called a “war” that ended in a defeat. This interpretation is defended by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wrote: “The Cold War did end in the victory of one side and in the defeat of the other. This reality cannot be denied.” (Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Cold War and its Aftermath,”
13
Cf. Walter Pintner, “Russian Military Thought: The Western Model and the Shadow of Suvorov,” in
14
According to Benedict Anderson, as late as 1840, almost 98 percent (!) of the Russian population was illiterate. (Cf. Benedict Anderson,
16
As concerns Russia’s membership of the G-8, even Moscow’s mayor and 1999 presidential hopeful, Yury Luzhkov, remarked: “Its [Russia’s] full membership of the ‘Big Eight’ is obviously also a self-deceit.” Luzhkov, however, was here not so much referring to Russia’s deficient