Reply to Mikhail Dolbilov

Mikhail Dolbilov's discussion of volume 2 of Scenarios of Power is something more than a review. He uses the review format as an opportunity to explore new approaches to the study of Russian monarchy, a subject that has been peripheral to serious historical research for the last century. It is an astute and provocative consideration of the possibilities raised by the works reviewed as well as a critique of their limitations. I shall approach his comments in terms of two major issues he raises – first, the creation or "authorship" of the scenarios, and second, the functioning and very nature and significance of Russian autocratic government.

The two questions are closely related in my interpretation. The myth and its performance influenced the conduct of officials and the implementation of governmental policies. I agree that the message of imperial ceremonies concerning reform "was understood quite differently in gentry and bureaucratic circles, where it provoked a sharp competition for the monopoly of the true interpretation of the 'supreme will'" (781). Dolbilov's work on the formulation of the emancipation illuminates how the officials in the Editing Commission employed and adapted Alexander II's scenario of power to press their particular conceptions of reform. Their views did not necessarily coincide with the tsar's, but they had to justify their acts and argue their positions on the basis of the language and the narrative of the scenario. Dolbilov sees the scenarios penetrating "all layers of the imperial bureaucracy" but "with various degrees of intensity." In this respect, he observes that my reconstruction of political mythology is "a very important, but as yet only the first step toward resolving this historiographical problem" (787). I heartily applaud this statement, but without the word "only."

But reshaping by officials is not the same as authorship. The themes and forms of presentation of the scenarios, I have argued, arose within the personal and ceremonial milieu of the imperial family. The genesis of a persona that combined traits of the individual ruler with the image of transcendent embodiment of the state began with the upbringing of the tsarevich, developed under the influence of teachers and intellectuals close to the family, and emerged in the first years of his reign. Other figures may have influenced the creation of the scenario, but they were careful to conceal their contributions as expressions of the tsar's own wishes. I have found few traces in the sources of the work of "ceremonial specialists" like those who figured so prominently in the design of the presentations of Louis XIV's France, Victorian England, and Meiji Japan.

The officials in Alexander II's government may have accepted or rejected the assumptions and ideals of his scenario, but if they wished to serve they had to observe the dominant forms of conduct. For example, Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Obolenskii, whose diary, frequently cited in volume 2, expresses both his absolute belief in the scenario of love and his exasperation when Alexander II failed to live up to Obolenskii's notion of how the narrative should unfold. Such responses support Dolbilov's revealing observation that the very grandiosity of Alexander II's image contained "a destructive force," which alienated "the image from the person of the emperor." I do not suggest, however, that the scenarios commanded universal belief. The explicit criticisms of those who openly rejected the premises of the scenario, some of which I cite (perhaps not in sufficient number), set them apart from the official culture of Russian monarchy, which is the subject of my work.

My serious differences with Dolbilov regarding the first question concern the practical results of Alexander III's scenario, a subject on which we are both hampered by the paucity of scholarly work on the Russian state administration during his reign. It is not my contention that the measures Alexander III introduced sought to reproduce the organization of state service of the 17th century, which he and his advisors only vaguely understood. I rather contend that they used the 17th century as a metaphor for a strong and responsive administrative authority, operating to realize the personal will of the tsar...