II

★

The Young Scholar

PROFESSOR POBEDONOSTSEV educated all of his eleven children at home, but it was Constantine who drew his father’s closest attention, in part because he was the youngest son and in part because Professor Pobedonostsev retired from Moscow University in 1835, when he was sixty-four years old and the boy only seven. The future Russian statesman was educated entirely by his father until he went to St. Petersburg to attend the School of Jurisprudence in 1841, two years before Professor Pobedonostsev died. It is clear that Constantine P. Pobedonostsev never escaped the stamp his father impressed upon him. Even his literary style, which is clear, marked by eighteenth century words and expressions, and remarkably rich in vocabulary, resembles that of Kheraskov and Lomonosov, whose works his father often read in class to Belinsky and other bored students and at home to his bright young son.

As a teacher, Professor Pobedonostsev emphasized rigorous work, the mastery of fundamental rules and of good habits, memorization, and imitation of the masters. He believed that “nature does not produce results quickly,” and that wide reading of the most significant works was essential because “reading cultivates all of the talents of the spirit.” It is evident from his essays on education, his career as a teacher and professor, and the later writings of his son that the boy’s childhood was devoted almost entirely to study. Constantine learned how to read Old Church Slavonic, French, Latin, and German at home from his father. He became a student of the Bible, which the professor was certain contained both the highest truths and a key to accuracy of expression. While still a youngster, he studied the Russian Orthodox Church fathers, who Professor Pobedonostsev thought would bring deep human feeling, wisdom, and morality to anyone who studied them attentively. He also devoted intensive effort to the Greek and Roman classics, which his father thought would awaken his interest in nature and in government, develop a critical mind, strengthen his appreciation of beauty and his sense of taste, and add strength and variety to his written and spoken language. Finally, of course, he studied Russian history and literature, especially Professor Pobedonostsev’s favorites and Karamzin.¹

In these early years, Constantine Pobedonostsev therefore acquired a deep knowledge of and love for the Bible and for Russian and Western religious writings, the Latin classics, and the history and literature of Russia. He developed an interest in western European literature which he retained throughout his life. In addition, he learned early in life to work, and he was trained to remember what he had read. As a consequence, his published works, particularly those which appeared before 1880, are distinguished by truly remarkable learning. Everyone who became acquainted with him, from his closest colleagues to foreign visitors such as Marquis Hirobumi Ito, Japanese statesman, Bishop Mandell Creighton of Peterborough, later of London, and Senator Albert Beveridge, was astonished at his capacity and love for intellectual work and at the depth and range of his knowledge.²

When Constantine was thirteen years old, his father obtained admission for him to the School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg, from which he graduated in 1846 after five years of study. This institute, which became the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in 1885, had been founded in December, 1835, by Prince Peter G. Oldenburg, a nephew of Nicholas I, who had been horrified by the poor quality of the Senators and of the Senate staff after he had been made a Senator and who had been permitted to establish a new institution “to educate and prepare young noblemen for legal work in the civil services.” Most of the students came from aristocratic families (there were four Obolenskiis in the Institute while Constantine was a student), so admission represented a signal achievement for Professor Pobedonostsev and a great opportunity for his bright and well-trained son, who was first in his class at the end of three years and who graduated second in his class of twenty-five.³

The Oldenburg School was designed to create a flow of educated and honorable jurists for work in the various departments of the Senate, so the curriculum naturally emphasized the study of Russian law. However, Oldenburg and his small faculty, some of whom were German, hoped to produce a group of young men who were well informed also concerning Roman, French, and German law. Moreover, the curriculum included theology, canon law, Russian history, and foreign languages. In his five years in the school, Pobedonostsev completed twenty-five of the thirty-six courses offered, and received training, some of it of dubious quality, in legal institutions and philosophy. In addition, he improved his competence in Latin, German, and French and began the study of Greek and English. He excelled in the languages he had studied with his father, made a hobby of singing Latin songs, and was often called upon to recite in French or German when Prince Oldenburg, the Minister of Education, Count Sergei S. Uvarov, or some other dignitary visited classes.

Pobedonostsev’s principal characteristic as a student was his devotion to his studies. He completed his assignments on time, studied intensively for his examinations, and read so much that he had to wear glasses after his first year. At the same time, however, he enjoyed the cultural activities which the school arranged in St. Petersburg, particularly the opera and the theater, and he found time to read Paul de Kock, the contemporary light French dramatist and novelist, Gogol’s Dead Souls, and Otechestvennyia zapiski. He had some popularity with his classmates, although the diary which he kept in the last four years of his student days (and of which he published substantial extracts in a private edition in 1885) reveals that he had only a recluse’s interest in the parties and escapades of his fellows, and that he did not participate in them. Indeed, he never liked parties or friendly celebrations. His most pleasant experiences were taking long lonely walks in St. Petersburg and, on occasion, rising at five o’clock in the morning to attend an early Mass at the Alexander Nevsky monastery, which he compared favorably to the Monastery of the Holy Trinity at Sergiev Posad (now Zagorsk).⁴

It is, of course, difficult to measure the impact of any educational experience, even when quantities of data are available. In some ways, the School of Jurisprudence had remarkably little effect upon Pobedonostsev. His study habits, his love of reading, and his interests, for example, had been established under his father and were not changed by the school. There is no evidence in his writings or in his later activities in St. Petersburg that he had any particular admiration or friendship for his instructors or that his political and social views were sharply influenced. Similarly, he did not retain close ties or friendships with any of his classmates, although most of them worked in the Senate, as did he, following graduation. Even St. Petersburg itself had little influence upon him; his great dislike of Peter’s capital had its origins not in these school years but in the 1860’s.

Nevertheless, attending the School of Jurisprudence did constitute a critical turning point in Pobedonostsev’s life. First of all, it nourished and strengthened his interest in western Europe, in its scholarship and learning in particular. He emerged from the school with excellent command of Latin, French, and German, with good reading knowledge of Western judicial institutions, law, and literature, and with a fixed assumption, which his father had first instilled in him, that an educated Russian must devote especial attention to western Europe and its achievements. Thus, the fundamental tension which affected Pobedonostsev’s official and intellectual life, the strife between the magnetic fascination European ideas exerted upon him and his growing admiration for Russian traditions and institutions, was reinforced.

Pobedonostsev first attained eminence as an historian of Russian judicial institutions and as a specialist on Russian civil law, in both of which he had received training in the School of Jurisprudence, and later in the official career for which that institution had helped prepare him. Thus, the particular direction his career in state service took was determined by the school, most of whose graduates were employed immediately by the Senate.

Established in 1711 by Peter the Great as “the highest governing authority,” the Senate had its functions and responsibilities changed several times during the history of the empire. In April, 1866, two years before Pobedonostsev became a Senator, two cassation departments were created as courts of last resort in the new judicial system, one for civil cases and the second for criminal cases. By 1888, seven of the previous twelve departments had been abolished, and the two cassation departments not only predominated in the Senate but strengthened the belief which had been prominent throughout the nineteenth century that the Senate was “the guardian of the law” and a kind of Supreme Court, although its authority was greater concerning judicial procedures than concerning the essence of legal cases brought to it.

However, in May, 1846, when Minister of Justice Panin assigned the new law school graduate to the eighth department of the Senate in Moscow, the institution’s responsibilities and reputation were not clearly defined. At that time, the Senate was considered the supreme tribunal or court of last resort for judicial matters and for appeals against administrative acts of the government, but its authority was not clear, nor its administration effective, nor the channels to it carefully defined. Six of its ten departments were in St. Petersburg, two (the seventh and eighth) in Moscow, and the ninth and tenth (with responsibility for the most western parts of the empire) in Warsaw. In 1847, the department of heraldry was established to resolve questions concerning the status of members of the nobility and of other classes, and another department was created to handle the growing number of disputes over boundaries and surveys. The first department in theory decided questions concerning the legality of administrative actions and had a vague disciplinary power over state functionaries. The other departments were review courts in civil cases, with each department having responsibility for a particular part of the empire. Thus, the eighth department, to which Pobedonostsev was originally assigned, included the governments or provinces of Penza, Riazan, Orlov, Saratov, Simbirsk, Tambov, Tula, and Kharkov, as well as the government of Tavrida, Ekaterinoslav, and Kherson in southern Russia. Cases were referred to this department from areas south and east of Moscow, along the Volga river, and from areas acquired within the previous century which were inhabited at that time largely by non-Russians and where trade centers such as Kerch, Taganrog, and Odessa provided interesting commercial cases, often involving foreigners as well as Russians.⁵

Pobedonostsev’s rise in government service was impressive, reflecting his excellent mind, the training he had received, his regular habits, his love of work, and the opportunities provided in the Senate for his generation of Law School graduates. His success in the years after 1846 was considerably greater than that of the sixteen classmates and other recent graduates of the school assigned to Moscow with him. His initial salary was twenty rubles (about ten dollars) a month, but within two years he had received a promotion to assistant secretary of his department at twenty-three rubles a month. In 1853, he was made secretary of the seventh department. Four years later, he became secretary of the two Moscow departments when they were in joint session, at a salary of six hundred rubles a year. In 1859, he was appointed Lecturer in Russian Civil Law at Moscow University. Two years later, he was named a tutor in Russian history and law for the heir to the throne and at the same time named a state counsellor, awarded the Order of Anne, second class, and transferred temporarily to St. Petersburg, where he was made executive secretary of the first department of the Senate, at a salary of a thousand rubles a year. In the fall of 1863, just after he had accompanied the heir on a trip through much of European Russia, he was named executive secretary of the eighth department in his beloved Moscow. This rapid series of promotions, and congratulations from Alexander II himself for his most recent advance, are a measure of his rapid progress to prominence.⁶

Pobedonostsev’s service in the Senate was of extraordinary importance for the direction of his career. He was particularly fortunate in that during his first fifteen years in the bureaucracy, his superiors were two able and friendly men, eager to make the Senate efficient and modern, quick to recognize the ability and the dedication of their new apprentice, and delighted to share with him their knowledge of Russian judicial institutions and their understanding of Russian political ways. As Pobedonostsev’s memoirs indicate, the pre-reform Senate was a relaxed and comfortable institution in which a young man eager to learn and willing to listen could acquire an immense amount of information and understanding. The Senators themselves were often not competent; they considered their positions sinecures and relied heavily upon the heads of the departments for advice. The department heads were dependent to a considerable degree upon the chancery clerks, the men whom Oldenburg and Panin wished to replace, because over the years they had acquired the detailed knowledge of practice and tradition and fact upon which any judicial system, particularly a creaking and conservative one, must rest. The bright new law school graduate, voraciously eager to learn, especially interested in details, and accustomed to listening to old men, began to acquire from the chancery clerks an enormous store of information about Russian law and institutions and about the way in which the empire was in fact administered.

V. P. Zubkov, the head of the eighth department of the Senate, and his deputy, Sergei N. Urusov, also contributed to the education of young Pobedonostsev in judicial and political matters. Zubkov was a learned and experienced administrator who had entered government service in 1814 and who became head of the eighth department in 1840. Well educated, a student of both Russian and European history and institutions, fluent in French and German, eager to reform judicial procedures in Moscow, and a relaxed and comfortable host for the young men in his office, Zubkov introduced Pobedonostsev to a new level of interest and understanding. Urusov, who came from a more urban and higher level of society than Zubkov, was the ideal aid, because he shared Zubkov’s qualities and interests and was especially eager to replace the power of the old chancery clerks with the bright young men of Pobedonostsev’s generation. These men, and, somewhat later, Prince Vladimir F. Odoevskii, who as a Senator had a special responsibility for the eighth department, helped give Pobedonostsev opportunities in his work, confidence in himself, and social assurance and relations which were crucial in the unfolding of his career and in the development of his political philosophy. In fact, Pobedonostsev’s years in the Senate in Moscow were so pleasant and fruitful that he later declared that “the Senate is the first state institution in Russia, that its authority stands higher than that of any other institution among the people (narod), that it is the equivalent of a constitution, that all classes have confidence in it, and that all without hesitation accept its decisions.”⁷

Pobedonostsev’s outstanding contribution in the Senate office, his publications after 1858, and the advice and assistance of his superiors ultimately brought him to the attention of scholars, the most important salons, and leading court officials. But until the early 1860’s, Pobedonostsev remained a lonely young man on Bread Lane, where he lived with his widowed mother and his spinster sisters. His life was consumed entirely by his labors in the Senate, to which he walked every day, by wide reading among a range of European authors from Milton and Macaulay to Le Play and Heinrich Thiersch, by deep immersion in the works of Russian poets, especially A. A. Fet and Apollon N. Maikov, by intensive religious devotion, and by long hours of research and writing. Much of the impressive learning which so dazzled his Russian contemporaries and foreign acquaintances was acquired during these busy and lonely years. His interest in reforming Russian administration and the Russian judicial system grew from his experience in the Senate. In addition, the Senate was the principal source of his waning interest in change, as he became disillusioned about the bureaucracy, aware of the difficulties in the way of reform, and alert to the hazards of tampering with ancient institutions and ideas.⁸

The life of a bureaucrat in an institution as elevated as the Senate was not a demanding one, and it was customary then, in Russia and in other countries as well, for those state employees interested in research to combine their private studies with their official duties. Pobedonostsev was led by his education into a strong interest in the history of Russian judicial institutions and of serfdom. It was therefore easy for him to collect materials on these and other subjects while engaged in Senate functions. The flood of historical essays which he published in the years after 1858 was based on materials he accumulated and analyzed in his Senate office. Of course, having been brought up to waste no time and lacking other interests and ambitions, he also devoted most of his time away from his official duties to research and writing. He often indicated later that the two decades after 1846 were his happiest years, and it is evident that he truly enjoyed the lonely but blissful life of the dedicated scholar. In fact, the working habits he had developed and which he enforced during these years were so strongly imbedded that he continued to devote every free minute of his time until he died to reading and writing. Catherine Tiutchev in the 1860’s found it almost impossible to persuade him to spare an evening to visit the Tiutchev or Aksakov families. Similarly, in the 1890’s, a demented seminary student waited six hours outside Pobedonostsev’s study for the old man to rise from his desk so that he might attempt to shoot at him with some hope of success. After his forced retirement in 1905, when he was seventy-eight years old, he concentrated upon a new Russian translation of the New Testament, which he completed just before his death in March, 1907. In the 1850’s, Pobedonostsev’s primary goal was to publish a history of Russian judicial procedure since the middle of the seventeenth century, with particular emphasis upon the influence which the notaries and clerks of the courts had had in shaping the judicial system. It is revealing that he did not abandon this aim until the 1880’s.⁹

Pobedonostsev was a prolific author, editor, and translator from 1858, when his first publication appeared, until his death in 1907. However, his most fruitful decade was that following 1858, which was marked by a kind of thaw in Russia somewhat similar to that following Stalin’s death a century later. During this period, the young amateur scholar published thirty-two books and articles, varying in length from only two to more than four hundred pages and reflecting a wide range of interests in the field of history. Two of these were translations, one of a Roman poet, and the second of a full-length book, Henrich Thiersch’s Uber christliches Familienleben, published originally in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1854 and translated into several European languages soon after it appeared. One of his most interesting essays was a long review article on Near Eastern travel literature and recent archeological work in the Holy Land, while a second short article reviewed a recent English book on Madagascar. Another article published materials Pobedonostsev had discovered on the establishment and early years of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a fourth essay analyzed several books and articles on Russia and Russian history which had recently appeared in England, France, and Germany. His longest book published during these years was a detailed account which he and Professor Ivan K. Babst produced of the trip he and a number of others had made through European Russia in the summer of 1863 with the heir to the throne, which appeared originally in the newspaper, Moskovskii vestnik (Moscow Herald).¹⁰

Pobedonostsev’s first published work, and among his most important, was a long article on the history of serfdom in Russia which appeared in Russkii vestnik (Russian Herald) in the summer of 1858 and which was supplemented by a second article in the same journal in 1861. Within twelve months after this first long article, nine other articles appeared, the product of concentrated research during the period since 1846 and of the relaxations of controls which marked the first years of the reign of Alexander II. The most interesting of these was a long and bitter attack on the administration of Minister of Justice Panin, which was published anonymously in London in Herzen’s Golosa iz Rossii (Voices from Russia) and which is an index of his views at that time and of his willingness to attack his superior in the radical press, even under a pseudonym.¹¹

However, Pobedonostsev’s main contributions in 1859 and in the years immediately after were in two other areas, the need for reform of the Russian judicial system and the history of Russian civil law. Thus, the Pobedonostsev study which attracted the most attention was “On Reforms in Civil Law Procedure,” which he submitted to the School of Law of Moscow University in 1859 as his thesis for his Master’s degree and which was published that summer. This was a critique of the established system and an analysis of the principles upon which Pobedonostsev believed new institutions should be based. It was followed by a series of individual case studies which demonstrated that some judicial decisions had been delayed from thirty to forty years by red tape and by political pressures; that innocent people had been tortured and sentenced; and that the wealthy and powerful when guilty usually went unpunished.¹²

Pobedonostsev’s principal interest as a scholar gradually moved from studies which were critical of some of Russia’s central institutions and which provided ideas for reformers to the study of Russian civil law, especially wills, mortgage law, property rights, and various forms of landholding. Most of these early essays were incorporated in substance into the first volume of his massive three-volume Kurs grazhdanskago prava (Course on Civil Law), the first edition of which appeared between 1868 and 1880 and which won him high repute as a legal scholar, particularly as a specialist on wills and on inheritance law. The first volume of this work dealt with patrimonial law; histories of various kinds of landholding in Russia and of Russian property law occupied about half of this volume. The second volume, which appeared in 1871, dealt with domestic relations, wills, and inheritance rights; about one quarter of this volume consisted of historical material. The third volume, which was published in 1880, analyzed contracts and obligations and had very little historical data. The amount of historical material used in each of these three volumes was clearly influenced by the subject studied, but it is significant that as Pobedonostsev advanced, first to become a Senator in 1868 and then to become a member of the Council of State in 1872, each successive volume of this massive study and of the successive editions had less historical material. Indeed, the third volume relied very heavily on data derived from law cases which Pobedonostsev reviewed as a member of the Senate.¹³

Pobedonostsev’s considerable achievements as a scholar in an age of great intellectual excitement and ferment had the paradoxical consequence of setting in motion a series of events which led him in 1865 to abandon both his scholarship and Moscow for St. Petersburg, an important role in the court, and ultimately a position of great authority at the center of government. This route began with a lectureship in civil law at Moscow University, where his circle of acquaintances began to widen, drawing him on occasion into some of the more interesting salons. More important, he was so effective as an instructor that in 1861 he was asked to serve as a tutor to the heir to the throne, which helped break down his self-imposed isolation, weaken his commitment and dedication to scholarship, and widen further the circle in which he lived. Finally, when he accepted an invitation to move to St. Petersburg to tutor the new heir to the throne and to be the executive secretary of the first department of the Senate, he abandoned his beloved Moscow, the Law School, and historical and juridical research for a life high in the central bureaucracy and the court.

Photograph of young Pobedonostsev, taken about 1861. (From Russia, Gosudarstvennaia kantseliariia, Gosudarstvennaia kantseliariia 1810–1910 [St. Petersburg, 1910].)

Pobedonostsev’s master’s thesis, on reform in civil law procedure, was considered so excellent that he was asked to serve as a lecturer in Moscow University. There this “well-known jurist’’ taught eight hours each week for six years, except for 1861–62, while at the same time continuing his work in the Senate, maintaining his research and writing, and playing a significant role in the preparation of the 1864 reform of the Russian judicial system. There is considerable evidence that he was a particularly good teacher and that both his colleagues and his students intensely regretted his resignation in 1865. His years of quiet research had provided him an enormous fund of information from a wide variety of sources, especially the Full Collection of Russian Laws, the records of the Senate, various state and private archives, and the burgeoning field of Russian law, which began to thrive after the middle of the century. He was stimulated enormously by contacts with other scholars, particularly Boris N. Chicherin, who taught state law at Moscow University from 1861 until he resigned in 1866; Ivan K. Babst, who taught political economy, shared Pobedonostsev’s interest in German scholarship, and with him was a tutor to the heir; and Fedor I. Buslaev, a specialist in Russian literature and art who was also a tutor to the heir.¹⁴

Vasilii Kliuchevsky, the great Russian historian, who was a student in Moscow University at this time, found especial pleasure in Pobedonostsev’s lectures because of the remarkable clarity with which they were organized and with which they explained accurately even the most complicated affairs. Anatole F. Koni, later a distinguished scholar in the field of Russian law, described Pobedonostsev’s course on civil law procedure as “clear, compact, accurate, and instructive,” qualities which one does indeed find in the set of lectures he gave at Moscow University from January 15 through March 25, 1863, which survived in a version lithographed by an unknown student. Pobedonostsev was especially helpful in identifying the areas of Russian law about which little was known and to which young scholars might most usefully devote their energy. His students considered the variety of instructional techniques he used most helpful. He devoted great attention to the facts of Russian law and procedure as they were revealed by the oceans of available material through which he had waded and from which he had selected relevant illustrations. At the same time, he urged his classes to devote especial attention to the classics in the field of civil law, especially to Friedrich Carl von Savigny, the German scholar whose works he admired and whose historical approach to the development of law influenced him powerfully. Finally, he emphasized that practice and practical knowledge were central to full understanding of the law. His classes thought especially valuable his detailed descriptions of the operation of the courts and of the Senate in Russia, the effective picture he provided of the routes cases followed, or were supposed to follow, and his suggestions for reform. In these years, he was the only Moscow University professor who took his students to the courts and to the Senate so that they could see in action the principles and practices they were studying in class. Indeed, he even arranged that some of his students work part-time in the Senate, which was considered a revolutionary step at that time.

Pobedonostsev’s lectures on Russian civil law so impressed his colleagues on the law faculty that Count Sergei G. Stroganov, the curator of the Moscow Educational District, who was also responsible for educating the sons of Alexander II, invited Pobedonostsev to instruct the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich, in Russian civil law and institutions. Pobedonostsev interpreted this as an imperial command and accepted, moving from Moscow to St. Petersburg during the academic year 1861–62 to perform this function and also to serve on the committee preparing the reform of the Russian judicial system. Alexander II had a deep appreciation for the tutoring in Russian law he had received from Speransky and a powerful desire that his son understand both the old and the new judicial systems, so he insisted that his heir’s education emphasize law. Professor Boris Chicherin therefore served as a tutor the following year, concentrating on Russian state law. Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich had other tutors in other fields of law and also occasionally attended lectures on law in the universities in both Moscow and St. Petersburg.

However, Pobedonostsev was apparently the most impressive and effective instructor, because in the summer of 1863 he was invited to accompany the heir on a three-month trip through European Russia, explaining Russian institutions, while his colleagues, Professor Ivan Babst and painter A. P. Bogoliubov, commented on the Russian economy and the arts, respectively. This trip was of enormous importance for Pobedonostsev. With Babst he published a long series of travel letters in Moskovskii vestnik from June through October of that year and a book the following year. Prior to 1863, Pobedonostsev had seen very little of Russia. He had naturally traveled to and from St. Petersburg while in law school, he had gone on brief pilgrimages to the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Sergiev Posad northeast of Moscow, and he had traveled as a boy with his father to the estate of the historical novelist Lazhechnikov on the Volga. The tour in 1863 was conducted in highly artificial circumstances because it was designed to instruct the grand duke and at the same time to show him to the dignitaries and the people of the provincial cities. However, Pobedonostsev learned a great deal about the economy and the peoples of Russia. Indeed, his view of Russia and his philosophy of history in particular were quite profoundly shifted by this journey.¹⁵

Pobedonostsev’s responsibilities as a tutor to the heir also introduced him to the court and to the powerful and ambitious men and women who surrounded the tsar and his family. He naturally reported frequently to Count Stroganov, one of the few notables to oppose the emancipation of the serfs openly, a fervent opponent of the reforms of Alexander II, and a close friend of Pobedonostsev’s until Stroganov died shortly after the 1881 crisis. At this time, Pobedonostsev also became acquainted with Prince Vladimir P. Meshcherskii, a powerful courtier who was a confidant of the last three Romanovs and who introduced him to a number of leading conservatives, most notably Dostoevsky, of whom Pobedonostsev became a close friend.

Pobedonostsev’s friendship with Anna Tiutchev, daughter of the famous poet and later wife of Ivan Aksakov, and an intelligent and ambitious Slavophil, and with her sister Catherine, an immensely intelligent woman who became Pobedonostsev’s closest friend and correspondent, began in 1863, when the Tiutchev daughters were ladies-in-waiting and he was a tutor. The Tiutchevs introduced him into the important salons in St. Petersburg, first that of the Grand Duchess Helen, widow of the Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich, brother of Nicholas I, who was influential in the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and in the liberal tone of the first decade of the reign of Alexander II, and later into more conservative circles, such as that of Countess Bludov, who helped lead the reaction against the reforms of Alexander II.¹⁶

The principal consequence of Pobedonostsev’s service as a tutor, however, was his appointment as a tutor for the new heir to the throne, Alexander Alexandrovich, after Nicholas died in Nice in April, 1865. The period which Pobedonostsev had spent in St. Petersburg in 1861–62 had been a constant torment; at that time he developed the aversion to St. Petersburg which he retained throughout the remainder of his life. Convinced after this experience that it was impossible for him to complete any effective work in the new capital, he told Anna Tiutchev in February, 1865, that leaving Moscow for St. Petersburg was “like throwing myself into the grave.” He had refused a splendid appointment as Director of Religious Education in the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, heart-broken by the death of Nicholas Alexandrovich, whom he had come to admire and to love and for whose death he privately blamed Nicholas’ tutors, Pobedonostsev quickly accepted appointments as tutor of the new heir and executive secretary of the first department of the Senate when these posts were offered to him in August, 1865. This decision was of capital importance for him and perhaps for Russia, for it removed him from the library, the study, and the classroom and placed him in a position in which he was to develop a most inflexible political and social philosophy and to exert profound influence upon the course of Russian history.¹⁷

Pobedonostsev’s interest in research and writing remained high, but his ability to devote time and energy to scholarship began to decline rapidly when he moved to St. Petersburg, married in 1866, and began to acquire influence, first, as an imperial tutor and later as a Senator, member of the State Council, Director General (Ober-Prokuror)* of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, and closest adviser to the tsar. Pobedonostsev never took a prominent part in St. Petersburg social life. Indeed, he resented the time which social affairs and official functions consumed. He remained a voracious and unsparing reader, devoting to this so much of the time left free from official duties that his wife must often have felt completely abandoned. Moreover, while he was not able to maintain the publication pace he set between 1858 and 1865, he continued to produce scholarly and other works at a remarkable rate.

As the bibliographical essay at the end of this volume indicates, Pobedonostsev was almost incredibly prolific as an author and publicist. Many of his publications in the last forty years of his life consisted of speeches, official reports, and polemical literature on one subject or another, from attacks on Leo Tolstoy, drinking, various Russian sects, and liberalism to a flood of articles on education, an essay contributed to a famine relief fund in 1873, and the translation of the New Testament. Even if we omit all of his translations, some of which are of great importance, and some other writings as well, Pobedonostsev’s continued interest in scholarship and in publication is clear.

The volume for which Pobedonostsev is best known, of course, is the collection of essays describing his political and social philosophy, Moskovskii sbornik (Moscow Collection), which he published in May, 1896, on the fiftieth anniversary of his entry into government service. Five editions of this tome were published between 1896 and 1901, three translations were produced in German, and English, French, and Spanish translations also were made.

However, Pobedonostsev’s most important work as a scholar was his three-volume Kurs grazhdanskago prava. The bulk of the research for this massive study was clearly completed during the twenty years in Moscow after 1846, but he continued to collect material and to incorporate information he acquired as a Senator after 1868. The basic structure of the three volumes was almost unchanged between the time when he prepared his original outline early in the 1860’s and the appearance of the final edition in 1896. Thus, while the fourth and last edition of the first volume contains ninety more pages than the first edition twenty-eight years earlier, the changes are all trifling, consisting usually of short footnotes or illustrations. The fourth edition of the second volume was only thirty-four pages longer than the second edition in 1875 (the first edition is not available), and the third and last edition of the third volume was only thirteen pages longer than the first edition sixteen years earlier. Even the bibliography in the final edition included few titles published in the previous quarter of a century.

In fact, the history and development of the Kurs grazhdanskago prava is quite similar to that of Pobedonostsev’s political and social philosophy. As this volume will demonstrate, the structure and main principles of Pobedonostsev’s thought were well established by 1865 or 1870. The only changes he made during the last forty years of his life were minor additions and illustrations, similar to the slight revisions and increments he introduced into the main body of his principal scholarly work.¹⁸

The Kurs grazhdanskago prava, designed for teachers of law, for jurists who needed to understand the new judicial system as well as the roots of Russian legal practice in earlier codes, and for administrators who had to deal with the problems it discussed, constituted a massive handbook or guide through the complexities of the Russian judicial system. Eschewing theory and emphasizing clear knowledge and actual practices, these volumes and his other publications in the field of civil law were of enormous utility. In an age in which Russian scholars produced a large number of excellent studies of Russian law, Pobedonostsev’s three volumes were extremely successful, even though the last full edition contained more than 2200 pages and cost nine rubles (approximately $4.50), a very high price at that time. Thus the 1896 edition was the fourth for the first and second volumes and the third for the third volume. The size of the printings for each volume varied from 2400 copies to 3000 copies, so it is clear, for example, that approximately 10,000 copies of the first volume alone were published and sold.¹⁹

Kurs grazhdanskago prava was supplemented in 1872 by Sudebnoe rukovodstvo (Guide to Court Procedure), a 553-page collection of principles, rules, and examples of court procedure which Pobedonostsev had compiled over the quiet years of study and of labor in the Senate. This volume was designed to assist both lawyers and judges confused by the new judicial institutions. Although it was not well organized, it did help shape trial law procedure and for a few years was a valuable book for the legal profession.

By 1885 or so, Pobedonostsev must have concluded that he was never to return to his scholarly labors, because he began to publish materials he had collected for his proposed history of the Russian judicial system, particularly of the role chancery clerks had played. He obviously hoped that the materials he had collected from various unpublished sources would thereby be put to some good use, and he was also satisfying the family urge to publish. In 1890 and 1895, he published the notes which he and his research assistants had compiled during the 1850’s from the Full Collection of Russian Laws and from various archives, especially those of the Senate, with the intention of stimulating study of these hidden materials and of promoting legal scholarship.²⁰

He also published in these years other historical materials he had collected earlier, such as some of the correspondence of his predecessor as Director General of the Synod, Count Dmitrii A. Tolstoy, letters illuminating the reign of Nicholas I, and data about his brother Sergei. Moreover, after he became a member of the Imperial Russian Historical Society, he was an active supporter of a program for publishing historical materials.²¹

When he became Director General of the Synod, Pobedonostsev devoted great attention to the Synod’s Press. By 1884 or 1885, he had reorganized and modernized the Synod’s publishing operation so that this Press became one of the largest and most efficient in Russia. He used this publishing office mainly to print and distribute enormous quantities of literature for the Orthodox Church and its new parish schools. However, he also used it to publish historical works. For example, under his direction the Synod’s Press in the 1880’s and 1890’s reprinted the works of Andrei N. Muraviev, who before his death in 1874 had written a large number of books about the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. In addition, it was the Holy Synod Press which first published Kliuchevsky’s famous Kurs russkoi istorii (Course on Russian History). Pobedonostsev, whose favorite historians had been Carlyle and Froude, became an enthusiastic admirer of Kliuchevsky. One of the principal pleasures of the last three years of his life was reading Kliuchevsky, and he fervently hoped that the Holy Synod Press would complete publication of Kliuchevsky’s volumes before he died so that he might read them all.²²

As an historian, or at least as a former historian, Pobedonostsev was aware of the importance source materials possessed for scholars. He assumed that future historians would be interested in his activities and ideas, and he apparently believed that they would treat him fairly. His principal contribution as an historian in the last twenty years of his life was editing and publishing materials left him by his friends and letters and other documents of his own. For example, in 1893 he published the very lively and valuable correspondence of Baroness Edith Raden with the celebrated Slavophil historian of Russia’s Baltic provinces, Iurii Samarin. He also helped Samarin’s son publish a complete edition of his father’s works, which involved persuading the censors not to interfere.²³

Pobedonostsev was particularly helpful and generous in releasing correspondence he had received for publication. Thus, all of the letters Nicholas Ilminskii wrote to him from his Kazan school for non-Russians between 1882 and 1891 were published in 1895. He also released letters he had received from many leading churchmen and scholars so that complete editions of their correspondence could be printed.²⁴

Above all, Pobedonostsev published quantities of documents which cast illumination upon his own life. For example, in 1885 he published in a limited edition the diary which he had kept while a student at the School of Jurisprudence, and he produced a second edition of one hundred copies in 1901. He obviously intended that this diary ultimately be made available for scholars, since he gave a copy of it to Peter Bartenev, editor of the Russkii arkhiv (Russian Archive), to whom he gave much other material for publication. Bartenev published part of this extremely interesting and valuable diary in his journal immediately after Pobedonostsev’s death in 1907.²⁵

In 1894, Pobedonostsev published the extraordinarily sensitive religious poetry and meditations which he had written in Moscow between 1856 and 1864. In the 1890’s, he reprinted two translations he had issued in the 1860’s, but which were out of print. In addition, he published a series of biographical essays concerning some of his closest friends during the period before 1880. Most of these he collected into a volume in 1896; they are all precious sources concerning Pobedonostsev’s life and times.²⁶

Finally, in his last years he began to organize the letters and documents he had accumulated. He scattered a great many of the letters which he had not already given to others for publication through various historical journals in a flood too large to enumerate here. He neatly bound into bundles the letters which he had received from Alexander III, Nicholas II, and members of the Imperial family. He also carefully arranged the other letters which he decided should not be published during his lifetime. In his will, he provided that these materials should be placed in the Rumiantsev Museum (now part of the Lenin Library) for publication ten years after his death. Many of these letters and documents have been published. A great many still remain unpublished, but are now available for study in the Manuscript Division of the Lenin Library.²⁷

The training which Pobedonostsev had received at home from his father had helped prepare him for the scholarly activities that later claimed his attention. His intellectual activities and interests indicated that by character and temperament he was destined to be a scholar. When he made his decision to abandon scholarship and Moscow for service in the high bureaucracy in St. Petersburg, and often later in life, he complained that only the tsar’s command and his belief in God’s will persuaded him to accept this great transfer. From the very beginning, he lamented his absence from Moscow and his abandoned interests. Some of his friends, notably the liberal jurist, Boris N. Chicherin, saw this as the decisive turning point of his career. Chicherin, for example, became a friend and colleague of Pobedonostsev at Moscow University in the early 1860’s and remained in warm relations until after the 1881 crisis. When they first met, he thought Pobedonostsev modest, generous, and pious. He isolated himself from society, lived almost a monkish life, lacked political judgment, and was clearly “a man of the study.” Yet, according to Chicherin, he was completely transformed by his move and gradually became a dishonest, cynical manager of men.²⁸

As a scholar, Pobedonostsev was distinguished by his wide range of interests and his immense and carefully acquired knowledge. He was a firm believer in long, hard work in primary source material and in mastery of the scholarly secondary works. He insisted that books should be studied, not read, and that “just reading,” especially reading books devoted to theory, was “dangerous and deceiving.” He urged his students to acquire every tool of scholarship and to be fully prepared before they considered teaching or writing. Reasoning that strength and knowledge can be bought only at hard labor, he declared that “he who wants to argue, to issue glittering phrases, and to express general ideas . . . risks following the wrong road.” He had a special admiration and envy of the English and of English scholars in the fields of history and of law because of the enormous collections of historical and legal materials available in England, particularly for the period after the fourteenth century. He considered the great wealth of archival collections responsible in some degree for the care and moderation characteristic of English scholarship.

Pobedonostsev was convinced that the path “for the lover of true knowledge” in the field of Russian law lay first through the fortynine-volume Full Collection of Russian Laws for the period from 1649 to 1825, as well as the volumes for the period since the death of Alexander I. “Whoever wishes to study Russian law seriously must begin with this, . . . must force his way through the Full Collection, . . . beginning with the very first volume” and taking full notes. “I assure you that such a study of the law will at first require some strength, but that it will gradually become interesting and for some even absorbing reading. With each volume, the student will more deeply appreciate the power and strength of this remarkable work, this healthy and sensible knowledge, that very learning which is absolutely necessary for a Russian jurist.” Indeed, the student from this process will also attain mastery of the “pure and clear language” in which Russian laws were written. “In short, the study of the Full Collection of the Laws in my opinion constitutes a necessity for the Russian jurist. It is impossible to provide a better school for him than this school of dead but eloquent memorials.”²⁹

Pobedonostsev’s historical works and his civil law studies were distinguished by the vast amount of data which he had accumulated from the Full Collection of Russian Laws, the archives of the Senate and of the Ministry of Justice, other state and private archives, and other previously published collections of materials and studies of Russian institutions. Moreover, Pobedonostsev excelled in the clarity and simplicity with which he presented the data he had amassed.³⁰

His historical studies are cautious and limited in scope, for he believed that providing an “exact and conscientious account of the facts” was a very considerable achievement for an historian. In his monograph on serfdom, he emphasized that a full and clear history of serfdom could be written only after serfdom had been abolished, more materials were available, and scholars were able to analyze more objectively its institutional and intellectual foundations. He was enormously impressed by the way in which the common law had “grown” in England and suspected that much of Russian law had developed in the same slow, organic way. He based his own work solely on ukases, judicial practice, and other written evidence. He refused even to suggest generalizations or conclusions for which there was not clear written evidence. This reluctance to reach a conclusion, or to make a judgment, even on the basis of immense data, is demonstrated most clearly in his Kurs grazhdanskago prava. Pobedonostsev proclaimed that these volumes were to provide a comparative study of various systems of civil law. Accordingly, he began each section by describing the history of the particular institution or practice as it had developed in Roman Law and in the law of England, France, Germany, and Russia. However, only very rarely did he make any comparisons or comments on the similarities and contrasts, and he left the reader to make his own judgments from the information which he had presented.³¹

Pobedonostsev’s work as a scholar was marked especially by his lack of interest in, or even antagonism toward, the creation of any philosophy or theory concerning the development of Russian law. This was especially remarkable because of the powerful interest in Russia then in the general theory of law. The study of law in Russia had begun under the influence of the natural law approach of Pufendorff and Gross, and Dilthey had even lectured at the university in Moscow. Later, the historical school of Savigny exerted great influence; indeed, Pobedonostsev himself considered Savigny the preeminent jurist of the world in the nineteenth century. Moreover, at the time when Pobedonostsev was completing his most mature works, the influence of Hegel and of Comte was very great among leading Russian jurists, such as Chicherin and Korkunov. However, Pobedonostsev distrusted theory and preferred to concentrate on cases. One critic called him “a slave of the Full Collection of Laws.” Others noted that he was so obsessed by accumulated evidence that he did not realize that he worked in a series of deep grooves and was in fact only a compiler of procedures which everyone, including him, knew needed reform. The Kurs grazhdanskago prava thus became a guide through a labyrinth of ukases and decisions, through a museum of Russian law. Pobedonostsev believed that Russian civil law had no creative organization or working principles and that it was not the responsibility of the scholar to identify or repair that shortcoming. Indeed, he was convinced that any theoretic inner unity of Russian civil law must grow only from the forest of laws in which he and other scholars were working.³²

Pobedonostsev was particularly competent in writing review articles, which often required little imagination but which did enable him to use his immense fund of well-organized knowledge in a variety of areas and from a number of languages, his patience, and his skill in analyzing the use of sources and secondary works. Chicherin noted that Pobedonostsev was especially effective as a negative critic. He even said that Pobedonostsev’s favorite word was “but.” Pobedonostsev’s review articles were clear and precise, particularly when he dealt with careless histories or with collections of materials which were incomplete or inaccurate. On occasion they produced devastating effects. For example, his review of Michael M. Mikhailov’s Russkoe grazhdanskoe sudoproizvodstvo v istoricheskom razvitii (Russian Civil Judicial Procedure in Its Historical Development) destroyed the reputation of that young scholar. In this long review, he gave a page-by-page list of errors of fact, and carefully listed the errors Mikhailov had made in transcribing decrees. Pobedonostsev’s insistence as a young scholar on meticulous accuracy is especially worthy of note because of the intellectual dishonesty he often displayed later in life, when he frequently distorted the meaning of the books and articles he translated by omitting pages, paragraphs, sentences, and phrases, without any indication of this fact. He was also frequently guilty of plagiarism.³³

Even as a young man and as a supporter of judicial reforms in Russia, Pobedonostsev was dry and impersonal. His style was always clear and simple, although his vocabulary was remarkably rich and accurate. All of his research and writing were neat and orderly. His essays concerning celebrated court cases were factual and arid, although they could easily have been made effective emotional pleas for reform. His essays on serfdom are just as impersonal and cold, and they reflect no strongly felt feelings or convictions. Indeed, they are even more reserved than his studies of the judicial system. Even his travel writings contain excellent descriptions of landscapes and of buildings, especially churches, but rarely refer to or describe men and women. His historical studies are remarkable for lack of affection for Russia’s past. He insisted that “the aim of historical research, and of legal research . . . is first of all the impartial search for the truth” and not the support of any political or moral position. He often repeated that the historian must always remember that customs and beliefs of historical ages differ and that he errs grievously who criticizes the acts or beliefs of one age according to the views of another.³⁴

Thus, Pobedonostsev’s publications during the years when his primary concern was research and writing indicate that he possessed the interests and qualities required of a conscientious and objective historian. Although he lacked the large view, the interest in general conclusions, and the concern with the philosophy of history which usually identify the great historian, his talents as an historian and his vast general learning made his historical studies valuable contributions to the study of Russia’s past and reveal that he would almost certainly have enjoyed an outstanding career as a scholar. As this study will later demonstrate, however, Pobedonostsev as a bureaucrat, determined to safeguard the state and system he venerated, abandoned the qualities which had distinguished his work as a scholar and developed qualities, particularly intellectual dishonesty, which disgraced him and the system he sought to defend.

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* It is difficult to translate Ober-Prokuror into English. The functions of the Ober-Prokuror of the Synod were those of an executive director or director general.