XIV

★

Fading Away

THROUGHOUT the twenty-five years in which he was Director General of the Most Holy Synod, Pobedonostsev was generally considered the man most responsible for Russian domestic policy, particularly for those decisions which affected education, access to information, civil rights, and national and religious minorities. This view is reflected in the memoir literature of that time and is firmly implanted also in the histories of that era. His influence was decisive during the critical spring of 1880, and it was important in the 1880’s in the appointment of officials in the Ministeries of Education, Interior, and Justice in particular. He also had considerable authority then on policies affecting Russian intellectual life. However, his interest in and influence upon policies outside his own special spheres of interest, such as foreign policy, were minimal. Moreover, after 1890, especially after 1896, his influence throughout the government declined perceptibly. During the last decade or so of his official life, except for a few key appointments with which he was concerned, he had virtually no power.

His decline was concealed because the outward trappings of authority remained the same. He retained his conspicuous positions in the Synod and the Council of State, the Council of Ministers, and the Senate, and his role at the court appeared unchanged. He was honored on a number of occasions by the last two tsars: Alexander III bestowed a number of awards upon him, of which the most important was the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky in 1888, and he appointed him a secretary of state, or a kind of privy councillor, in 1894. Nicholas I gave him the Order of Vladimir, first class, and also arranged a special celebration in 1896 in honor of his fifty years of service in the bureaucracy. Later he was given the highest award the government could then give a civilian. Both in 1898 and at his retirement in October, 1905, he was honored with an imperial rescript.¹

Portrait of Pobedonostsev made in 1902 by Serov. (From Igor E. Grabor, Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov. Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo [Moscow, 1913], 159.)

The laurels and awards on one hand were balanced by criticism and attacks on the other. His imagined power created such obloquy that he was widely blamed among political and intellectual circles for every unpopular action or inaction of the government. He received a large number of threatening letters. He was the gloomy, forbidding symbol of the Old Regime even for Lenin.² Moreover, in an era when several Russian political leaders were assassinated, five attempts were made to kill him, all during those years of his political life when his authority had gravely diminished. He escaped a number of other such attacks only because he failed to attend funerals or other public gatherings that he had been scheduled to attend.³

The evidence of his declining influence is clear. The rich archival materials simply indicate that both his interest and authority disintegrated. Except over the Church, education, and access to information, in which his power also declined to some degree, he failed to exert any jurisdiction. During the last decade of his life, he rarely attended sessions of the Council of State or other high institutions, often sending his deputy, Sabler, to represent him. He was not appointed to the significant committees of the Council of State. His correspondence with the tsars declined progressively, and his private meetings with them became rare. After 1896, he consulted with Nicholas II only on Church affairs. During the last ten years of his life, he lamented the way in which the tsar and his ministers failed to consult him on matters on which he had once had the decisive voice. In 1896, he did assist Witte in persuading Nicholas II to reject a proposal by the ambassador in Constantinople, Nelidov, that the Russians seize the Bosporus during the Armenian crisis in order to ensure a strong position when the anticipated disintegration of the Ottoman Empire occurred. Privately, he was bitterly opposed to Russian policy in the Far East, but his views were not sought or considered. The policy of rapid industrialization carried out by the energetic Witte during the years he was Minister of Finance, from 1892 until 1903, was not influenced in any way by Pobedonostsev, although he was convinced the system of landholding had to be revised along American lines and that modern industrial technology had to be introduced.⁴

The reasons for his declining influence after 1890 and the precipitate collapse of it after 1896 are quite obvious. Alexander III had been deeply annoyed by his role in the fiasco of Ashinov in the Abyssinian project in 1889 and by the way in which the government was embarrassed at the same time by Pobedonostsev’s policies toward the Baltic Germans and Lutheranism.* Shortly thereafter, the rise of Witte and the new concentration of government interest and policy on economic development inevitably reduced his significance. Similarly, the death of most of Pobedonostsev’s retainers in the administration and their replacement by younger men whom he did not know crippled his influence, which was almost always exercised behind the scenes. The decline and death of Alexander III removed his faithful pupil from the throne. Pobedonostsev had been the tutor of Nicholas II as well as of Alexander III, but their first meetings took place a year after he had been appointed, which reveals much concerning their importance. The relationship was never so close as it had been between Alexander III and Pobedonostsev, and he did not acquire the same ascendance over his new charge’s mind. Nicholas II did not have the same interests as his father, particularly in religion and in the Orthodox Church. He was in fact indifferent to most of his professor’s concerns.⁵

In addition, Pobedonostsev about 1890 began progressively to lose the burning concern he had previously felt. One cause of this was the disaffection which grew between him and the tsars. Another was his resigned annoyance with the public criticism and the private gossip about his political fortunes which floated around the St. Petersburg world, which he had always despised. He was so wearied by criticisms he considered petty and misguided that he ceased defending himself. Finally, his health, which was never robust, became increasingly delicate. He was seventy years old in 1897, but he was infirm several years before that.

The state of his health may explain much concerning Pobedonostsev’s ideas and actions. He was always slight. Even as a boy, he had frequently been ill. He possessed no physical reserve strength, so that minor colds often were prolonged and kept him in bed for a week or even several weeks. His correspondence and that of his friends is filled with references to his being unwell. He was ordinarily in bed for a week with a cold after his return from his summer vacations, whether they were on the Baltic coast, in the Crimea, or in Salzburg. February and March were always months of sickness for him, and his correspondence for these months had a particularly baneful and gloomy character. He always disliked St. Petersburg, in part because its weather was not salubrious. It is likely that the colds and influenza from which he suffered, which often affected his eyes, were due in part to the damp climate of the capital city. The various frequent illnesses from which his wife suffered no doubt influenced his own health and also contributed to his morose view of the world.⁶

Often unwell, a hypochondriac with a sickly wife who was also a hypochondriac, he apparently suffered from poor health with increasing frequency during the last fifteen years of his life. He aged quickly after 1890; his acquaintances noticed that he complained bitterly about trifles and that his voice had become a constant whine. He failed to attend an ever larger number of official meetings because of illness. He did not even visit Moscow at any time in 1900. He often remained at home simply because he was exhausted. He spoke and talked frequently of resigning from his various posts, but inertia so gripped him that he failed to act. He took a holiday from May through September in 1896, in part to celebrate the golden anniversary of his years of service and in part because he was simply decrepit. In effect, except for a flash of resistance to reform within the Church in 1905, he resigned in 1896.⁷

He had always had a somber view of human nature and of man’s prospects in this world. The gloom and pessimism which pervaded his view became even more bleak in his last years. As early as 1881, when he was only fifty-four years old, he became depressed by the death of colleagues and began to wonder how long he would live. He was always a frightened and fearful man, but even the German ambassador was perplexed by his fear of war when not a cloud threatened the horizon of international politics. As his political influence waned and he felt ever more neglected and isolated, his pessimism deepened. He was ever more impressed that the growing “maladies of our time” would overwhelm Russia and the world. His old fears concerning constitutional and democratic government, freedom of the press, and religious freedom were swollen by concern over the growing number of suicides, the sensual appetites of the young, the rule of the false and artificial and meaningless. “All fades, all vanishes, all disintegrates, all deceives.” The sensible goal of the state was to delay the collapse of society because it could not be prevented. “There is no light visible anywhere, and the horizons are closed.”⁸

The revolutionary events of 1904 and 1905 naturally confirmed the correctness of these pessimistic views. Ill much of the winter of 1904–1905 and embittered because no one visited or asked his advice, he was convinced that the unrest he could hear from his windows would lead to disorders such as Russia had never seen and to slaughter throughout the country. He was especially moved by the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who had been his favorite pupil and the one over whom he had had the greatest influence. He confessed in February, 1905, that he had long since given up hope for restoring sanity in Russia. When he talked with the Empress dowager in May, he told her that all was lost and that she should “go back home and cry.”⁹

His role during the exciting days of 1904 and 1905 was unimportant, except for one briefly successful intervention with Nicholas II in March, 1905, to preserve the established system of Church administration. He had ignored the vigorous campaign of leading churchmen and religious journals which, after 1902 in particular, urged review and reorganization of the Church’s administration and its role in the state. Indeed, he ignored the crucial Council of Ministers meetings in November, 1904, which led to the ukase of December 12 that promised religious toleration and gave assurance that this would be defined soon in legislation. In 1905, he did not attend the sessions of the high institutions of which he was a member, except for the October 3 meeting of the Council of State, when the situation was most critical and a decision had to be made concerning the form of government Russia was to have. During these crucial months, when the position of the Church was being debated, he did not call a meeting of the Synod or consult at any time with leading clerics. He sent Sabler to the special committee chaired by Witte in January, February, and March, 1905, to discuss the Church’s role and the principle of toleration. He made only one or two brief attempts to sway Nicholas II, an approach quite different from the one he had adopted in the spring of 1881 with Alexander III. He did redraft the manifesto of February 18, 1905, which he made into a critique of reform and a rousing old-fashioned defense of autocracy. He also presided over a committee which on July 30 reviewed a draft of the August 6 manifesto on electoral procedures, but neither his role nor the manifesto itself was important. In short, the mounting pressure for change, which seemed irresistible as Russia stumbled from one disaster to another in its war against Japan, paralyzed his will.¹⁰

The official campaign to revise radically the Orthodox Church’s role within the government and to reorganize the structure and spirit of the Church itself was initiated by the ukase of December 12, 1904. Nicholas II named a special committee under the chairmanship of Witte to recommend the specific legislation necessary. This released the floodgates. When Pobedonostsev failed to attend these committee meetings during the first ten weeks of 1905, Witte summoned Metropolitan Antonii of St. Petersburg to speak for the Church. A humane, generous, educated, and knowledgeable man, Antonii in memoranda and in oral discussion emphasized that the December ukase, which he approved, placed the Orthodox Church in a disadvantageous position in competing with other religious groups, because it was paralyzed and “chained” by its relationship with the state. Antonii even suggested that the arrangements made possible by the December ukase would create a state church on one hand and popular, national beliefs on the other, with the state church eternally at a disadvantage in the struggle. Antonii, a number of Orthodox bishops and directors of seminaries, a large number of priests and interested laymen, and some of the most important religious journals asserted that every aspect of the Church and its activities required searching review to enable it to face the new challenges. The relationship between the Church and the state, the central administration of the Church, administrative arrangements within the Church, the role and strength of the parishes, the system of education for priests, the kind of education provided by the parish schools—all, Antonii and others suggested, were shoddy and decaying. He therefore recommended that a sobor (or council) of bishops, priests elected within each bishopric, and interested laymen be called immediately to conduct a careful review and to transform the Church from a dusty government department ruled throughout by bureaucrats into the ancient, free, canonical institution which Peter the Great had abolished, with a patriarch again at the head.

Witte’s views were generally identical to those of Antonii. He was quickly persuaded of “the urgency of establishing the canonical freedom of the Russian Orthodox Church,” particularly because he was convinced that the government in such a crisis could no longer continue to ignore vivid and powerful expressions of public demand. The memorandum Witte submitted to the committee and the reports of the committee’s work which he presented to Nicholas II recommended the steps which Antonii and his supporters had proposed.¹¹

Witte was a great admirer of Pobedonostsev, whom he considered the most highly cultured and intelligent Russian he knew and whom he also called “the last of the Mohicans.” As soon as the Witte committee was appointed, the two men engaged in a vigorous and frank private correspondence and series of talks, in which their opposing views were clearly outlined. Pobedonostsev agreed that ideally Church and state should be separated, but argued that this was and would remain impossible in Russia. In fact, separation would be dangerous and perhaps even fatal for both. The establishment of the Synod by Peter had been a necessary and fruitful act. No Church Council could administer such a large body in such a disorganized country. The patriarchate was not a Russian institution, but an importation from Byzantium. The most serious weakness within the Church was not administrative, but the quality of the clergy, who were what they had always been and who must continue their role as servants of the state, even as policemen and detectives. The absence of vitality within parishes was inevitable and would not be affected by administrative changes, because the parishes reflected faithfully the character and quality of Russian life. Education of the clergy and of children was forever being expanded and improved. In short, anyone who advocated significant changes simply did not understand conditions within Russia.¹²

His memorandum to the Witte committee was late and ineffective. He gave no instructions to Sabler concerning his views, in part because Sabler apparently disagreed with him and in part because he wanted to preserve the fiction that the Synod had not been represented in the committee discussions. He carefully maintained no relations with Antonii and other leading churchmen who were invited by Witte to present their views.

When it was clear that the committee report would override his position and reflect fully the views of Witte and Antonii, he made his last effort to affect state policy, temporarily a successful one, by sending a memorandum and a long letter to Nicholas II. These documents combined all of his skills in delaying or preventing action. He emphasized that the committee’s considerations were grossly improper, because Church affairs by law and tradition were the sole responsibility of the Church. The Director General of the Synod, the responsible body, had attended none of the sessions, and the appearance of Antonii and other churchmen was without precedent or sanction. Antonii’s proposals had never been discussed with him or by the Synod. If the committee’s apparent recommendations should be adopted, the tried and effective arrangements created by Russia’s greatest tsar would be hastily overturned. Reestablishment of the patriarchate would surely sometime lead to the rise of another Nikon, who might use his authority and the ambitions of social groups to rival the power of the tsar, threatening Russia with disunity at a time when hostile states encircled her. Among the immediate consequences would be the eruption of Catholic influence to power in provinces “Russian since time immemorial,” and the expansion throughout the Volga and in Central Asia of the authority of Mohammedanism, assisted mightily by the English. Kazan, one of Russia’s most sacred cities, would become a Moslem center. The tsar must therefore stand strong and true. He should not yield to a “panic-stricken crowd.” He should “guard the ideals and the principles of power, because without these there is no salvation anywhere, especially in Russia.”¹³

This last appeal, on March 12, 1905, persuaded Nicholas II to surrender to the Synod the functions concerning the Orthodox Church which the Witte committee had assumed. The tsar therefore asked the Synod to arrange a review of the Church’s position and role. Pobedonostsev’s tactics were thus much like those of 1881 and of 1894, and the tsar’s response was initially the same also.

However, in 1905, the power and determination of Witte were such that Pobedonostsev’s victory was a fleeting one. Witte informed the tsar that the Synod had no canonical foundation in law and was only an inefficient bureaucratic college. The clergy had been the cultural leaders of Russia in the seventeenth century; in the twentieth century, everyone agreed that they lagged in a nation which itself trailed other countries. Any religious organization which would die if it were separated from the state must surely be a feeble one. The demand for reform from within and without the Church was powerful. It was supported by any candid review of the situation, so reform there must be.¹⁴

Pobedonostsev’s victory quickly evaporated. On April 17, the tsar yielded to Witte’s arguments and announced that anyone might leave the Orthodox Church and join another faith, with no penalty or loss of rights. Within two years, more than 300,000 officially made this decision. Moreover, the meetings within the bishoprics which Pobedonostsev organized quietly under the guardianship of the Synod and which were attended by clerics whom he trusted themselves adopted Witte’s proposals. They urged the calling of a Council like that proposed by Antonii, the naming of a patriarch, reform of diocesan administration and courts, improvement of the seminaries, and provision of greater autonomy for the parishes. These suggestions received wide support from ecclesiastical journals and papers, and some high clerics in the summer and fall bypassed Pobedonostsev and the Synod and presented their views directly to the tsar.¹⁵

The height of the revolution in the fall of 1905 led to the overthrow of autocratic government in Russia and the apparent establishment on October 17 of a constitutional monarchy, with civil liberties and an extended franchise for a new legislative assembly. Pobedonostsev played no role in the crisis during which Nicholas II chose between trying to preserve the system through a military dictatorship or yielding some of his authority. The series of decisions made in those crucial days introduced institutions and values he had unceasingly resisted and indicated that Pobedonostsev could no longer remain as Director General of the Synod. At Witte’s suggestion, he was therefore quietly replaced two days after the October Manifesto. Witte arranged that he remain in the Council of State, that his full salary be continued, and that he be allowed to live in his official residence. After Pobedonostsev’s death, he also arranged for a generous pension for his wife. During the height of the uproar in St. Petersburg, while crowds poured along the streets beneath his windows, Pobedonostsev in his study peacefully worked upon his translation of the New Testament. His last day of service, October 24, he called one of “sorrowful happiness.” He said goodbye to the Synod staff and from that time forward was not even informed or consulted concerning the changes made at the upper levels of the Synod’s administration.¹⁶

His last days were pitiful. He was exhausted and hopeless. Both he and his wife were almost constantly ill. Except for a few weeks in a dacha on the Gulf of Finland in the summer of 1906, and occasional visits to St. Vladimir’s School, which his wife still directed, he did not leave his rooms. He had no visitors. His only correspondent was S. D. Voit, the business manager of the Synod bookstore in Moscow. He was wracked by worry concerning his wife, and his letters were full of worried financial calculations. Apparently, while his salary was continued, he was not certain that this practice would be followed until his death, and he had no other source of income. He owned no property, except for the family home on Bread Lane in Moscow, which was heavily mortgaged. He had about 20,000 rubles (about $10,000) in a reserve fund, but he had no pension and no provision for one for his wife. Moreover, he felt a moral obligation to continue to assist some orphans and aged teachers whom he had helped to support for years.

He felt so dispirited and ill that on occasion he could not even read. However, he did summon the energy to read the current Russian press and several Russian and foreign journals. He even found time and energy to translate and arrange for the publication of two essays, one attacking the Church sobor or council and the other parliamentary government, precisely symbolizing two of his permanent concerns. He also thoroughly enjoyed reading Kliuchevsky’s Kurs russkoi istorii (Course of Russian History), the several volumes of which were published at his suggestion by the Synod Press and all of which he hoped would be published before he died.¹⁷

He chose the garden of St. Vladimir’s School for his final resting place. He was bedridden throughout the winter of 1906-1907 and succumbed to pneumonia on March 10, 1907. As his will had insisted, his funeral was simple and modest. Metropolitan Antonii presided over one of the services, which were attended by the Wittes but by few others. The tiny cortège was surrounded by priests and policemen as it made its way from the church to the schoolyard, thus providing a final accurate symbol of his position in Russia. The members of the Council of State stood briefly when his death was officially announced. For a few days, newspapers throughout Russia commented at length concerning the importance of the role he had played, but then the quiet of the graveyard descended over him and his career.

__________

*See pp. 187-92, 231-37.