Stones on the Prairie: Acculturation in Texas

Peter the Great in the Writings of Soviet Dissidents

Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2008, 189–212.       Peter the Great in the Writings of Soviet Dissidents Jay Bergman In  every  nation’s  history  there  are  figures  who  come  to  embody  it.  Whether   because   of   their   outsized   personalities   or   the   enormity   of   the   actions   they   carried  out,  or  through  a  combination  of  the  two,  such  individuals  transcend   the  period  in  which  they  lived  and  become  timeless  symbols  of  their  country.   In  Russian  history  Peter  the  Great  was  such  an  individual.  Virtually  everyone   of  significance  in  Russian  politics  and  culture  who  followed  Peter  expressed   an  opinion  of  him,  and  entire  books  have  been  written  on  how  Russians  over   the   centuries   have   explained   not   only   the   man   himself,   but   the   policies   he   pursued,   the   reforms   he   enacted,   and   the   changes   in   Russian   politics   and   culture  he  made  or  was  unable  to  make  because  the  forces  opposing  him  were   too  strong  and  intransigent  even  for  someone  of  Peter’s  will  and  seemingly   inexhaustible  energy  to  overcome.1   But   there   was   a   category   of   Soviet   citizens   for   whom   Peter   had   special   significance,  namely  the  critics  of  the  Soviet  Union  in  the  Brezhnev  era  com-­‐‑ monly  referred  to  in  the  West,  then  and  now,  as  dissidents.  For  them,  deter-­‐‑ mining  what  they  thought  of  Peter  was  a  way  of  clarifying  the  contours  of   their  dissidence  and  also  a  means  of  situating  their  dissidence  on  the  temporal   expanse  of  Russian  history.  What  is  more,  whether  they  realized  it  or  not,  the   dissidents   were   the   product   in   the   Soviet   era   of   the   paradigm   Peter   intro-­‐‑ duced  earlier  into  Russian  history  of  a  modernizing  autocracy  seeking  simul-­‐‑ taneously   to   perpetuate   its   monopoly   of   power.2   Peter   himself   once   stated   that  the  Russian  people  were  like  children  who  “will  not  study  the  alphabet   unless  a  master  forces  them  to.”3  What  is  significant  in  this  is  not  only  that   Peter  thought  little  of  the  people  he  ruled,  but  that  he  did  not  exempt  from  his   imputation  of  immaturity  those  of  his  subjects  on  whom  he  simultaneously   conferred   a   semblance   of   adulthood   by   entrusting   them   to   build   the   ships,   command  the  armies,  and  collect  the  taxes  he  considered  necessary  for  Russia   to  become  a  European  power.  Peter  expected  the  educated  elite  he  created,  in                                                                                                                             1  See,  for  example,  Nicholas  V.  Riasanovsky,  The  Image  of  Peter  the  Great  in  Russian  His-­‐‑ tory  and  Thought  (New  York:  Oxford  University  Press,  1985).   2  This  is  Marshall  Shatz’s  thesis,  which  I  find  convincing,  in  Soviet  Dissent  in  Historical   Perspective  (New  York:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1980),  12–38.   3  Quoted  in  M.  Bogoslavskii,  Oblastnaia  reforma  Petra  Velikago:  Provintsiia  1719–27  gg.   (Moscow:  Universitetskaia  tipografiia,  1902),  24.     190 JAY BERGMAN other  words,  to  support  the  tsar  and  the  status  quo  politically,  and  to  do  so   with  the  same  child-­‐‑like  deference  he  demanded  of  the  uneducated  masses.   The  only  autonomy  this  elite  would  enjoy  would  be  vocational  autonomy,  be-­‐‑ cause   allowing   this   elite   autonomy   outside   the   workplace   would   be   tanta-­‐‑ mount  to  treating  them  as  mature  and  responsible  individuals—in  short,  as   adults—who   might   for   that   reason   demand   individual   rights   and   political   freedom,  neither  of  which  Peter  believed  he  could  grant  without  losing  power   himself.     In  the  Soviet  Union  a  similar  dynamic  prevailed.  Like  Peter  the  Soviets  al-­‐‑ lowed  their  educated  elite  a  modicum  of  vocational  autonomy,  while  simul-­‐‑ taneously   denying   that   elite   any   political   freedom;   since   some   members   of   that  elite—but  by  no  means  all  of  them—wanted  freedom  as  well  as  auton-­‐‑ omy,  the  inevitable  result  was  Soviet  dissidence,  a  particular  form  of  opposi-­‐‑ tion  to  the  Soviet  system  emphasizing  its  violation  of  ethical  principles,  which   the   dissidents   called   human   rights   and   considered   timeless,   absolute,   and   universal.  Not  surprisingly,  the  Soviet  leadership  recognized  the  challenge  to   their  moral  legitimacy  the  dissidents  posed,  and  did  what  they  could,  short  of   reintroducing  Stalinist  terror,  to  silence  them.   When  they  offered  their  opinion  of  Peter,  the  Soviets  seemed  instinctively   to  feel  a  bond  with  him,  not  least  because  their  objectives  and  Peter’s,  if  one   excludes  the  whole  matter  of  Marxist  ideology,  were  so  much  alike:  both  the   Soviet  Union  and  Peter’s  Russia  were  modernizing  autocracies  intent,  at  least   in   domestic   affairs,   on   perpetuating   the   political   status   quo.   Indeed,   by   the   time  the  dissidents  appeared  in  the  late  1960s  and  early  1970s,  the  Soviet  lead-­‐‑ ership  had...