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Так сложилось шаткое равновесие во взаимоотношениях Пастернака с властями, продержавшееся до смерти Сталина.

Как мы видим, первоначальное выдвижение Пастернака на Нобелевскую премию в январе 1946 года сразу оказалось в фокусе столкновений разнонаправленных векторов общественной и культурной жизни в разных странах Европы. Появление в 1957–1958 годах «Доктора Живаго» заставляло искать прототипа Евграфа, с его «защитной» ролью, в реальной жизни автора и даже предлагать Фадеева в кандидаты. Такое предположение лишено основания потому, что на деле именно на Фадеева (в ком некоторым захотелось увидеть такого защитника поэта) и было возложено в сентябре 1947 года осуществление антипастернаковского сегмента общей кампании. Относительная «мягкость» нападок на поэта не была следствием личного благоволения или могущества высокопоставленного чиновника; она явилась результатом того, что развернувшаяся борьба шла «на равных». Не таинственные покровители в верхах, не «Евграф», не Фадеев и не Симонов «спасали» Пастернака в той, чреватой грозными последствиями, атмосфере — судьбу его определила сложившаяся конфигурация международно-политических факторов. И какие бы ограниченные задачи ни ставил перед собой Н. О. Нильссон в заметке о Пастернаке в «Expressen», рассмотрение ее в целостной литературно-политической картине позволяет считать, что она действительно сыграла «защитную» роль в пастернаковской биографии. Она раскрыла особую высоту статуса поэта за рубежом в момент, несший в себе особую угрозу ему на родине.

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Магнус Юнггрен, Лазарь Флейшман

Russian Diplomats and their Image of Germany before World War I

The relations between Russia and Germany have a long and colourful history, which has been studied thoroughly in most of its aspects[1348]. Religion, politics, philosophy, economy, wars, the arts and culture — these are just some of the areas in which Germans and Russians have been in contact over many centuries. Literary relations have frequently provided some of the most prominent and fruitful links, which Konstantin Azadovskii has for many years explored and actively promoted. The correspondences of writers, their mutual visits, their love for the culture of the other country and their translating activities have all been subjects of distinguished studies by Konstantin Markovich, not to forget his own translations from German literature into Russian.

Mutual perceptions and images of the other have always played an essential role in the relations between Germans and Russians and have been explored accordingly[1349]. They are particularly well known in popular culture and in literature — just think of the archetypical Petersburg Germans in the works of Gogol or of Rilke’s fascination with the Russian spirit, or recall the many cartoons, jokes and popular broadsheets making fun of stereotypical Ivans and Russian bears on the one hand or немцы шмерцы and колбасники on the other[1350]. But mutual perceptions have also affected (and continue to affect) other areas of Russo-German relations, beyond the spheres of high and low cultures. Foreign policy, for example, is one such area While its decisions are ideally based on cold reason and national interest, they are, in the end, still taken by human beings and thus prone to personal influences.

The following essay is a study of attitudes towards Germany among members of Russia’s foreign office in the years before 1914. According to historians, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, just as Russian politics more generally during that time, was effectively divided into a pro- and an anti-German group[1351]. How much these predispositions influenced actual foreign policy is hard to ascertain. But they did sometimes affect personnel decisions and thus had at least indirectly an effect on the practical diplomatic discourse between Russia and Germany. Most of what will be discussed is based on memoirs of politicians and diplomats, i.e. sources, which many serious historians have been reluctant to use, because of their inherently tendentious nature. And they are indeed not particularly helpful if one wants to investigate actual foreign policy issues, international relations and diplomatic crises. Yet for studying perceptions and stereotypes, such ego-documents are of immense value[1352]. They still provide the most authentic voice for the convictions of their authors, even if they were written years after the events which they relate.

Russian foreign policy before World War I has been studied in great detail, including the nationalist views of some of its actors. Dominic Lieven, for one, has discussed pro-German attitudes, focusing mainly on three high-ranking officials[1353]. However, he did not consider lower-ranking personnel and has little to say about anti-Germans, many of whom held leading positions. Several of these people have left memoirs and correspondences which allow additional insights into the кулуарная политика at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Pro-German writers, as may be expected, tended to draw a rather benign image of Germany and things German. In the writings of anti-German officials, pan-Slavist ideas about a final showdown between Germans and Slavs were often shining through as was the so-called German Drang nach Osten. This relatively new and thoroughly a-historical catchword was commonly mobilized to create a scenario of threat reaching back deep into the past. It allowed for conflating such different phenomena as German rearmament, economic power and 18th c. Volga-German colonists with anti-Russian diatribes by Baltic German activists and the contemporary political crises in the Balkans. Its appeal was such that it even appeared in official Russian diplomatic correspondence, while pan-Slavist ideas were part of the foreign policy programmes of almost all parties represented in the State Duma At least in this respect, politics and public opinion went hand in hand. In most of the Russian press after 1900, Germany was seen as a bastion of reaction and military expansionism. Only some conservative papers like «Grazhdanin» or «Rossiia» were more lenient with German positions, stressing the importance of a strong monarchy and of good relations with Germany in the fight against «anarchism, nihilism and social democracy»[1354].

The most prominent members of the anti-German group were, unsurprisingly, those politicians and officials who favoured close ties with France and Britain. Among them were the two foreign ministers, Aleksandr Izvol’skii (1906–1910) and Sergei Sazonov (1910–1916), as well as Aleksandr Savinskii, chief of the cabinet of the Minister for Foreign Affairs (1901–1910). In his memoirs, he identifies the Drang nach Osten as the most important reason for the outbreak of World War I. Already since Frederick the Great, the Germans «inaugurated their systematic method of the colonization of Russia» and used «the Slavonic nations for extending [their] greatness»[1355]. While one might have expected a more subtle and historically informed analysis of the reasons for the war from such a high-ranking official, the true source of his prejudices comes out when he writes about his Baltic German colleagues. A: cording to him, these people «for the greater number remained German in soul and sentiment and faithful servants of the German cause». While the large number of «Baltic barons» in Russia’s Foreign Service was an undisputed fact, most of them had been in Russian service for generations and had only little connection with the Baltic lands, let alone Germany proper[1356]. But still, their patriotic loyalty was repeatedly put into question, and they were sometimes even deliberately kept away from office.

When, for example, Izvol’skii was looking for an assistant in 1908, he chose Nikolai Charikov, not only as a former classmate, but also because he saw in him a man from «the traditional circle of Russian [as opposed to Baltic!] landed nobility», which he hoped would continue to dominate Russia’s political institutions[1357]. His opinion of officials with German background was in general utterly prejudiced. In his memoirs, he describes one of them in almost cartoon-like fashion as a person «qui représentait le type le plus accompli de ces fonctionnaires d’origine allemande […] souvent très laborieux, mais réussissant surtout à atteindre les degrés supérieurs de la hiérarchie russe à force d’intrigues et de bassesses»[1358]. Clearly, he did not want to have any such people around him. When he was selecting his staff at the Embassy in Paris and a Baron Uexkoll was suggested to him as attache, he responded acidly in a letter to Sazonov: «Is it really impossible to find a young man with university education and a plain Russian family name?»[1359] Despite such ethnic prejudices, Izvol’skii frequently enjoyed his summer holidays at Tegernsee in Bavaria, where he had served as the ambassador to Munich in the late 1890s.

While Izvol’skii’s attitudes towards Germany were quite obvious, the case of his successor, Sazonov, is more complicated. He was not a straightforward anti-German, as has been suggested[1360]. At some point, he was even rumoured to «cater to the whims and caprices of the Kaiser» and, in a letter by Izvol’skii from 1912, to be «a friend of Germany»[1361]. His attitudes apparently changed as a result of the Liman von Sanders crisis in 1913, when a German military mission to Constantinople seemed to pose a vital threat to Russia’s interests and to challenge his personal reputation as Foreign Minister. Although this crisis was peacefully resolved, by the time he was writing his memoirs, after World War I, Sazonov had become a convinced nationalist, who employed all the familiar anti-German cliches, including Drang nach Osten and the final showdown between Slavs and Germans. Yet his image of Germany was still much more complex than one might expect. He attaches it to a specific historic development which bothered him not just as a politician, but also as an individual human being. Like many other educated Russians, Sazonov had always admired German music and literature, and he even welcomed the positive influence that German culture exerted within Europe. But with the foundation of the German Empire, all of this allegedly changed. Under the influence of «blood and iron» ideology, German culture degenerated into «Prussian civilization», and German arts and sciences took on a «barracks-like character». In sarcastic language, Sazonov elaborates on the results of these changes, in particular the psychology of Germans and their politicians. He attributes their self-righteous attitudes to a «Prussian official education» which made them «physically incapable to face with impartiality a Frenchman and even more a Slav» and he identifies a certain «nationalist frenzy» as a main characteristic of German national psychology[1362]. Although one could argue that this perception of Germany actually reflected historical reality (nationalism and militarism did indeed run high there), it is still quite reductionist with its notion of a physically predetermined national psychology and its absurd historical claims. If anything, Sazonov’s memoirs reflect a deep feeling of disappointment and bitterness about a country that he had once admired.

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1348

For a concise overview, see: Stökl G. Osteuropa und die Deutschen. Geschichte und Gegenwart einer spannungsreichen Nachbarschaft. Stuttgart, 1982.

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1349

Goehrke C. Einige Grundprobleme der Geschichte Rußlands im Spiegel der jüngsten Forschung // Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas [hereafter JBfGOE], Vol. 34. 1986. P. 225–243.

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1350

For a general introduction, see: Unsere Russen — Unsere Deutschen. Bilder vom Anderen 1800–2000. Berlin, 2007; Obolenskaia 5. К Obraz nemtsa v russkoi narodnoi kul’ture XVIII–XIX w. // Odissei. М., 1991. P. 160–185; Rauch G. von. Streiflichter zum russischen Deutschlandbilde des 19. Jahrhunderts // JBfGOE. Vol. 12. 1964. P. 5–47; Jahn H. Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War I. Ithaca, 1995. P. 12 and passim.

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1351

Laqueur W. Russia and Germany. A Century of Conflict. Boston, 1965; Lieven. Pro-Germans and Russian Foreign Policy 1890–1914 // International History Review. № 2. 1980. P. 34–54.

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1352

Stökl G. Die historischen Grundlagen des russischen Deutschlandbildes // Deutsche im europäischen Osten. Verständnis und Mißverständnis / F. B. Kaiser, B. Stasiewski (eds.). Cologne, Vienna, 1976. P. 33.

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1353

Bestuzhev I. V. Bor’ba v Rossii po voprosam vneshnei politiki 1906–1910. М., 1961; Lieven. Pro-Germans.

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1354

Lemberg H. Der «Drang nach Osten». Schlagwort und Wirklichkeit // Deutsche im europäischen Osten. Verständnis und Mißverständnis / F. B. Kaiser, B. Stasiewski (eds.). Cologne, Vienna, 1976. P. 1–17; Bestuzhev I. V. Bor’ba. P. 147; Jablonowski H. Die Stellungnahme der russischen Parteien zur Außenpolitik der Regierung von der russisch-englischen Verständigung bis zum ersten Weltkriege // Forschungen zur Osteuropaischen Geschichte. Vol. 5. 1957. P. 60–92; Vogel B. Deutsche Rußland-politik. Das Scheitem der deutschen Weltpolitik unter Bülow 1900–1906. Düsseldorf, 1974. P. 24.

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1355

Savinsky A. A. Recollections of a Russian Diplomat. London, 1927. P. 143–145.

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1356

Lieven D. The Russian Civil Service under Nicholas II: Some Variations on the Bureaucratic Theme // JBfGOE. Vol. 29. 1981. P. 375.

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1357

Tcharykow N. V. Glimpses of High Politics. Through War à Peace 1855–1929. London, 1931. P. 22, 268.

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1358

Mémoires de Alexandre Iswolsky. Ancien ambassadeur de Russie à Paris (1906–1910). Paris, 1923. P. 131.

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1359

Stieve F. Der diplomatische Schriftwechsel Iswolskis 1911–1914. Vol. 1. Berlin, 1924. P. 24.

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1360

Lieven. Pro-Germans. P. 42 ff.

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1361

Kalmykov A. D. Memoirs of a Russian Diplomat. Outposts of the Empire, 1893–1917. New Haven, 1971. P.251; Stieve F. Schriftwechsel. Vol. 2. P. 67.

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1362

Sasonoff S. D. Sechs schwere Jahre. Berlin, 1927. P. 22, 44–46, 146–148, 203–204.