One might regard all this ideological work as so much theory, removed from reality. Certainly Viktor Zhivov declared that the eighteenth-century "mythology of the state" ultimately "destroyed" the state by transferring cultural authority from ruler to poet as state policy turned conservative and new spokesmen for Enlightenment emerged. Perhaps in the rhetoric of poetry and odes Zhivov is right. But at the level of political practice, the new ideas, imagery, dress, and practices of power created a new politics for new times. Eighteenth-century monarchs refreshed Russia's imperial imaginary in powerful ways. Deploying the language of European Enlightenment and Roman classicism, they laid claim to a place among European nations and developed a political vocabulary to define and mobilize Russia's social elites as never before. At the same time, like their European counterparts and true to their Russian heritage, they continued to ground ideology in the overarching legitimacy of religious justification, producing a powerful amalgam of sacred, charismatic authority and secular mandates for action.
THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUALS
Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of political legitimacy and power in Russia's eighteenth century was the dynamic role ofindividuals. This might be an accident of the sources, inasmuch as we simply lack sources that would tell us how much personal control was exerted by tsars such as Ivan IV and Aleksei Mikhailovich (to name some of the most dynamic Muscovite tsars). But it is entirely possible that the forcefulness of eighteenth-century rulers (Peter I, Catherine II) was new in Russian sovereign power and that this was enabled by European theories of absolutism.
Not all eighteenth-century rulers were dynamic; the majority were not. It was a century when the nobility waxed in power, winning concession after concession in the economic realm. Autocrats did not always surround themselves with talented individuals or exert force to curb their favorites from corruption and favoritism. Two rulers of the eighteenth century in particular have come in for blistering criticism, deserved but unfortunately gendered. Anna Ioannovna and Empress Elizabeth were dismissed as frivolous, petty, or uninterested in power, even in their own century, and with some justification. Neither was raised to rule or given the proper education to do so, and neither seemed to have Catherine II's inclination to teach herself with voracious reading. Anna's reign witnessed widespread corruption in her entourage and ruthless campaigns of arrests by her favorite Ernst Biron. Elizabeth is criticized for her obsession with fashion (she owned thousands of dresses) and with budget-breaking palace ensembles; in this she was excessive, but rule through display was a precept of absolutist rule across Europe. Gendered cliches about Russia's female rulers, which started in the eighteenth century and persist in modern scholarship, are a way of dismissing female power and distracting attention from the collective achievements of government. In these cases, Anna's corrupt entourage did manage to bring the state budget into order after Peter I's riotous spending and Elizabeth assembled an officialdom capable of accomplishing military and economic reform and achieving significant success in the Seven Years War. In their reigns the Russian economy steadily grew, along with the empire's stature in European geopolitics.
The most arresting story of eighteenth-century rulership is the dynamic personalities of Peter I and Catherine II, who together ruled for fifty-nine years of the century. Each was competent, decisive, and successful. As noted, Peter I transformed many Russian institutions and practices and has left in his wake a rich historiography. Lionized in Russia until the late nineteenth century, the image of Peter was first subject to influential criticism in the work of Russian historians V. O. Kliuchevskii and Pavel Miliukov, who dismiss him as impetuous and unguided by any master vision and criticize him for producing more suffering than gain. Current historiography reshapes a positive evaluation. Marc Raeff, James Cracraft, Paul Bushkovitch, and others set Peter's quarter-century of rapid change in a larger context, arguing that by the end of his reign he was executing a coherent policy of Polizeistaat institutions and practices. They also recognize the broader social support that made his work possible, crediting the depth of talent assembled around Peter. While his friend and confidant Alexander Menshikov ended his career mired in corruption, many of Peter's men acted with innovation and competence: diplomats Boris Kurakin, Andrei Matveev, and Peter Tolstoi, political theorists Prokopovich, Javorskij, and Shafirov, trusted comrades in the Dolgorukii family, homegrown administrators like Andrei Vinius and Pavel Iaguzhinskii, foreign advisors Patrick Gordon, Francois Lefort, James Bruce, Anton Devier, and scores of imported engineers and entrepreneurs.
Catherine II's greatness as a ruler is equally undeniable (Figure 13.5). She worked to present herself as a devoted servant of her people, consulting her people, awarding rights and privileges, patronizing the arts. In private she was a demonic worker, insisting on personal control, putting in long hours daily, and always keeping minions in check. She was intelligent, well read, and a stern manager. She selected excellent, qualified military and administrative leaders to guide her ambitious reforms, talented men who well deserved the tasks she assigned, such as governor-generalships of vast territories (Potemkin) or managers of her new imperial bureaucracy (Aleksander Viazemskii, Jakob Sievers, Aleksander Bezborodko). Her accomplishments are myriad: she was responsible for empire-wide administrative reforms, vast imperial acquisitions, skillful geopolitical positioning, expansion of cultural institutions and expression.
Even more than with Empresses Anna and Elizabeth, Catherine's reputation has been tarnished by gendered slander. European writings of her day and much modern historiography have accused her of excessive sexuality, citing her many favorites. Certainly she had a monogamous series of lovers, but most European
Figure 13.5 Catherine II, like Peter, commissioned myriad portraits of herself to shape her public image; this by Vigilius Erichsen (painted between 1749 and 1782) emphasizes her cultured sophistication. With permission of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
monarchs did, and she kept them, as John Alexander has detailed, at arm's length from power. But contemporary English and French press slandered her with pornography to diminish her reputation, a tactic of Enlightenment political discourse also used against Marie Antoinette and Frederick the Great. Meanwhile, in Russia contemporaries grumbled about her favorites squeezing them out of access, but a specifically sexual discourse did not develop until late in her reign, itself inspired by French erotic writing. The future fabulist Ivan Krylov, reeling from having three journals of political critique shut down between 1789 and 1793, published in 1792 and 1793 allegorical tales and poems laced with sexual double entrendres known to anyone familiar with French pornographic literature, and clearly directed at the ageing Catherine. M. M. Shcherbatov at the same time criticized the loose morals of Catherine's court, but not in explicitly sexual terms. Insulting the Romanov dynasty as illegitimate and immoral through pornography found some currency among dissidents of the early nineteenth century, but neither these ideas, nor pornographic images, became common Russian parlance. Rather, Catherine was extolled in Russian history writing and public opinion for her achievements, her Enlightenment culture, and complete devotion to Russia, an image honed by her grandson Alexander I. She is memorialized in a statue in St. Petersburg that can be read as a celebration of her cultural contributions, as it surrounds her with the writers, poets, diplomats, and officials that thrived in her glittering reign.