Pavel Miliukov, excerpt from Outlines Of The History Of Russian Culture
Pavel Miliukov (1859-1943) was educated at Moscow University. There he studied under V. O. Kliuchevskii, Russia's leading historian. After completing a well-reputed dissertation in 1893 on State Administration under Peter the Great, Miliukov began a short-lived career as a lecturer at Moscow University. However this came to an abrupt end in 1895, when he was dismissed for his political views. Miliukov went on to become one of the founders of the liberal Kadet party and one of the major political figures of the last years of Tsarist Russia. After the revolution of 1917, in which he played a prominent role, he continued to be active in exile as a writer, scholar and editor. The passage below is from his major work Outlines of the History of Russian Culture. First published in the late 1890s and revised and republished in the 1930s, this famous excerpt concerns the impact of Peter the Great and his reforms.
1. How does Miliukov characterize Peter's personality?
2. According to Miliukov, how were Peter's personality traits reflected in his reform attempts?
3. How does Miliukov describe the foundation of St. Petersburg? What were some of the problems he lays at Peter's (oversized) feet?
4. What does Miliukov mean when he says that under Peter, "Russia received the only reform that it was capable of receiving"?
In the absence of a [consciously developed plan of reform] there remained only one feeling, continually raising Peter above all the trifles and details, in which he was constantly entangled. This feeling was very strongly developed in Peter and was the only thing that could discipline him, or take the place of all the restraint that his upbringing could not provide. This was the feeling of responsibility, the feeling of duty, of obligation imposed from without. It is curious with Peter how even this consciousness of duty toward the motherland takes on the form of military discipline, the form most comprehensible for him and for those around him... He served the fatherland -- not only as a Tsar, as the "first servant" in the manner of Frederick the Great; no -- he served above all as a drummer boy, a bombardier, a night watchman, a vice admiral.... In all of Peter’s activity we find nothing more deeply rooted, almost to the point of instinct, no other guiding idea than this idea of service.... The feeling of duty, without a doubt, helped Peter -- amidst all the fluctuations and vicissitudes of fortune, amidst his own impulses and caprices -- to hold his will steady, to outlast his enemies, his allies, his helpers and his nation in the quest to attain the goals he had set. But this feeling could never take the place of a clear plan or make Peter’s actions systematic.
The absense of such a plan and system, without a doubt, could only deprive the reformer of the chance to control the reforms, to guide their progress in a fully conscious and expedient manner. In other words, his personal influence on the reforms was significantly diminished in scope under these circumstances. But this condition only casts into particularly sharp relief...the degree of personal participation that nonetheless remained.... One only has to go over in one’s mind the main objects of Peter’s reform to become convinced of the truth of this point.... Let us look at the one area of reform that would seem to be the most personal, the most dependent on the will of the reformer and, consequently the most accessible to planned implementation.
Petersburg -- this was the embodiment of all Peter's passions and antipathies: his love for the sea and the navy, his need for wide open space, his habit of dabbling in the external cultural environment, and his fear in the face of the hollow hostility of the old capital. This Petrine "paradise," (created, according to the picturesque Finnish legend, entirely in the air and then lowered all at once into a marsh so that it would not sink in separate pieces). (1) This Petersburg also reflected not only the full substance of the reforms in miniature, but also all of their methods. On the small patches of land divided up by the mouth of the Neva, Peter thrashed about for ten years without tiring. The result was again a mass of unproductive wasted efforts, a mass of beginnings without ends, of magnificent and expensive plans left without realization, with nothing coherent. One day Petersburg was to be located on the present-day Petrograd side of the delta. And so they began to build there churches, an exchange, shops, buildings of the colleges, and private houses, which every nobleman in service was required to build, depending on his wealth. The next day it seemed better to move the trade and the main settlement to Kronstadt. And there again, every Province had to erect an enormous stone building, in which no one would live and which would gradually fall into ruin over time.
Meanwhile, the city was emerging in a new place, between the Admiralty and the Summer Garden, where the river banks were higher and the danger from floods not as great. And again, Peter was not satisfied. In his leisure time during his last years, a new idea came to mind: turn Petersburg into Amsterdam, replacing the streets with canals, and for this to move the entire city to the very lowest place, Vasil’evskii Island (which had earlier been given in its entirety to Prince Menshikov). To protect against floods and hostile attacks, dykes would have to be built. And once again the entire nobility, which had already built its homes in other parts of Petersburg, received mandatory invitations to build obligatory houses on Vasil’evskii Island. Peter died, and the building that had started was abandoned. The houses fell into disrepair and served merely as the butt of jokes. In other countries time creates ruins, but in Russia we build them on purpose....
The personality of Peter is visible everywhere in his reforms. His imprint lies in every detail. And it is precisely this feature that imparts to the reforms to a significant degree their elemental nature. This endless repetition and accumulation of experiences, this uninterrupted cyclone of destruction and creation, and in the midst of it all a kind of inexhaustible life force which no sacrifice, no loss, no failure has the power to break or even to stop. These are all features which are more reminiscent of the wastefulness of nature in all its blind elemental creativity than of the political art of a statesman. In drawing this conclusion, we must not forget yet another feature.... It is precisely due to the particular form that the reforms took that they cease to appear as a miracle and descend to the level of their surrounding reality. They had to be the way they were in order to correspond with this reality. Their randomness, arbitrariness, individuality, and violence are all necessary features. And despite their sharply anti-national appearance, they are completely rooted in the conditions of national life. Russia received the only reform that it was capable of receiving.
(1) A post-Petrine folk legend popular in the Finnish portions of the Russian Empire had to do with the initial efforts to construct a city in the Neva swamps: Peter's designated builders were having trouble, since one individual foundation after another would sink into the mud. Peter then came along, juggled the various buildings in the air while they were being finished, and dropped a completed city into place. This has all the earmarks of a metaphor (perhaps originating in the Church) taken as reality by peasants.
Source: P. N. Miliukov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi kul’tury (Moscow, 1995), v. 3, pp. 161-162, 166.
Original translation by Nathaniel Knight, 1/18/00. Syntax clarifications, emendations, and note by Jon Bone.