And it was here in Novgorod province that the general, upon the Tsar’s command, had now undertaken one of the greatest social experiments in Russian history.
The moment they entered the huge estate, Alexis sensed something strange about the place. The peasants looked odd; the road had no ruts in it; but only when they came to the village itself did the party gasp with astonishment.
It was not a Russian village at all. The haphazard collection of peasant izbas that had once stood there had been completely razed; in their place, row upon row of neat cottages. They were identical – each painted blue with a red porch and white fence. ‘Good God,’ Alexis muttered, ‘it’s like a barracks.’ Then he noticed the children.
They were little boys, some no more than six years old. They came swinging by, in perfect step and singing, under orders from a sergeant. They were in uniform. And then Alexis realized what had seemed so strange since he arrived: everyone was identically dressed, and none of the peasants had a beard.
‘Yes, you’ll find perfect order,’ explained the young officer who showed them round. ‘We have three sizes of uniform for the children – quite enough. They wear uniforms at all times. The men are cleanshaven: it’s neater. Iron discipline – we beat a drum when it’s time to work in the fields.’ He grinned. ‘We can almost make them mow a meadow in step!’
And a few minutes later, when they were shown inside the cottages, Alexis was even more astonished. They were all spotless. ‘How do you do it?’ he asked.
‘Inspections. See,’ the young man pointed to a list hanging on a wall. ‘That’s an inventory of everything in the house. Everything has to be checked and clean as a whistle.’
‘How do you keep discipline?’ one of the officers asked.
‘The cane is enough. Any slip and they get it. We salt the cane, actually,’ he added.
Alexis soon noticed something else. Unlike a normal village, there seemed to be as many men of all ages as women.
‘Everyone has to marry,’ their guide explained, then laughed. ‘Whether they want to or not. The women should be grateful, actually. No widows or old maids here – we give them a man.’
‘You must have plenty of children then,’ Alexis remarked.
‘We certainly do. If the women don’t produce regularly, we fine them. The empire needs people to serve it.’
‘Are they happy?’ one of the others enquired.
‘Of course. Some of the old women wept,’ the young man conceded. ‘But the system is perfect, don’t you see? Everyone works, everyone obeys, and everyone’s looked after.’
For this was General Arakcheyev’s Military Colony. It covered a huge area in the province, where the army settled and the local peasants were forcibly converted into reservists and militarized state workers. Further colonies were already being set up down south in the Ukraine. ‘Within three years,’ their guide said, ‘a third of the entire Russian army will be settled like this.’ There was no doubt, it was impressive.
But why should the enlightened Tsar Alexander have encouraged his henchman to set up these totalitarian districts? Was it just for convenience? For they were certainly a cheap way of keeping a standing army occupied and fed in time of peace. Was it, as some suspected, that the Tsar – hoping one day to weaken the grip of a conservative gentry upon the army and the land – was experimenting with these colonies as a way of doing so? Or was it perhaps that Tsar Alexander, imbued with a military streak like his father, and frustrated almost beyond endurance by the chaotic, refractory nature of the endless Russian land, had resolved – like Russian reformers before and after – to impose order somewhere at least, whatever the cost? Whichever explanation comes nearest, it was certainly true that the military colonies with their iron discipline, terrible symmetry and their complete dedication to the state, would have delighted old Peter the Great himself if only he had thought of them.
To Alexis Bobrov, the colony was a revelation. Hadn’t he dedicated his life to military service? Arakcheyev’s creation was the most perfect thing he had ever seen. How far it was from the shabby chaos of Russka and a thousand estates like it. Just as the army was, for him, a relief from the ineptitude of his own family, this place seemed an escape from everything that irritated him in Russia. He saw only that the people here were industrious and well fed: he saw what he wanted to see. For just as one man will be attracted to power, another will be fascinated by order. He was quite seduced.
And from that day there was rooted in his mind a single, unalterable precept which, whatever difficulties he encountered, seemed to make sense of everything. It was simply this: the Tsar would be served by imposing order. And from this principle derived a second: that which is most conducive to order must be right. ‘Good enough,’ he told himself, ‘for a straightforward soldier like me.’
It was in the summer of the following year, when Ilya had already departed with a family friend on his tour abroad, that Alexis, visiting Russka, chanced one day to take down the battered volume of Derzhavin’s verse. When he discovered the bank-notes, he guessed at once what had happened. But there was nothing to be done. Suvorin was in Siberia. His son had run away, God knew where. Alexander Bobrov was unwell.
Besides, to suggest Suvorin’s sentence was a mistake would look bad for everyone: bad for the family, bad for their class, not congenial to order.
He put the money in a safe place, and said nothing.
1825
If a Russian is asked for the date of the most memorable event before the present century, he or she will almost invariably reply: December 1825.
For this was the date of the first attempted Revolution.
The Decembrist conspiracy – so named after the month in which it took place – is almost unique in human history on account of its curious character. For it was an attempt – a very amateurish one – on the part of a handful of nobles, acting from the highest motives, to secure freedom for the people.
To understand how this came about it is necessary only to go back to the reign of Catherine, when in Russian noble circles, the ideas of the Enlightenment and of liberty had first taken root. Despite the shock of the French Revolution and the fear of Napoleon, the idea of reform in Russia had continued to grow under the enlightened Tsar Alexander. And God knew there was much to reform: a legal system that might have come from the Dark Ages, the institution of serfdom, a government that, despite the nominal existence of a judicial Senate, was in reality a primitive autocracy. Yet what was to be done? No one could ever agree. The representatives of the gentry, merchants and serfs called together by Catherine had simply quarrelled with each other. There were no ancient institutions, as in the west, to build upon. Tsar Alexander had found the same thing: great schemes were drawn up, but any attempt to introduce them promptly foundered upon the great Russian sea of obstruction and inefficiency. The gentry were loyal, but would not hear of freeing their peasants: by 1822 the Tsar had even restored their official right to send serfs to Siberia. Everyone feared another Pugachev uprising. The government found in practice that it could only tinker with the system, try to maintain order, and conduct experiments like the military colonies, to seek new forms that might lift the country out of its ancient social stagnation.