Ilya Lepikhov. Olga Yumasheva. Osterman to himself

Myself Osterman
Ilya Lepikhov, Olga Yumasheva

Publication date: August 29, 2000

M.Yu. Sokolov, sad man of the Russian land

The practical steps taken by Vladimir Putin and his administration evoke the brightest pages of the past of our dear Fatherland. No one knows what will happen during the four (eight, nine, eleven?) years of his reign, but we believe that the brilliant beginning will never be forgotten. Only the lack of qualified poets presenting the head of state with some “Ode on the Capture of Gudermes” or “Reflections on the Divine Majesty during the approval of the new concept of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation” prevents society from realizing the full justice of the convergence of the policies of the new Russian leadership and the management practices of the great Russian sovereigns: Peter and Catherine. However, remembering the eternal servility of the domestic, so to speak, “establishment,” we would venture to assume that this will not be the case, and soon we will witness the full-scale glorification of the new sovereign, who has shone in the Russian land.

Needless to say, in this case, any meaningful conversation about the correspondence of modern government to its glorious, although not always successful, models will turn out to be extremely difficult. The prospect is very, very sad, since the degree of productivity of historical analogies for the Russian political process is well known. The point is not only in its proverbial repetition, but also in the literal identity of the tasks that confront the supreme power whenever it seriously takes on the business of governance. Tsars are replaced by party functionaries, reforms are followed by counter-reforms, political and economic life makes a full circle, so that at one fine moment everything returns to its original level. On one side of it is the government, trying in vain to modernize Russia, on the other side is Russia itself, consistently evading forced reorganization. Therefore, as soon as you cross the cherished boundary, historical analogies suggest themselves.

Thus, every Russian statesman who does not want to put up with the prevailing state of affairs condemns himself to comparison with Peter the Great. The greatness of the plan, as well as the inconsistency of its implementation, makes Peter an ideal model for any Russian reformer. Neither the emperors Nikolai Pavlovich and Alexander Pavlovich, nor the plebeians Lenin and Stalin managed to avoid comparison. This will not escape Putin either, especially since the first legislative movements of the new President of the Russian Federation, it would seem, could not be more consistent with the stereotyped image of a modernizing sovereign. In this case, Chechnya easily rhymes with the suppression of Streltsy riots (internal pacification), the establishment of federal districts with the provincial reform of 1708-1709 (internal structure), the project of the presidential council with the formation of the Senate in 1711 (internal administration). It turns out well, but not entirely fair.

Peter did not so much rule as dominate. He saw his task as laying the foundations on the foundation of which, over time, it would be possible to build a new type of state on the site of the former semi-Asian kingdom. Naming himself emperor (1721) only formally completed the protracted process of laying the first brick, burned in the furnaces of rivalry with Sofia Alekseevna and the battles of the Northern War.

How difficult it was for both those in power and their subjects along this path can be judged at least by the fact that the legislative framework of post-Petrine Russia was never reduced to a consistent unity either after a hundred or two hundred years. The good intentions of Nicholas I, who tried to codify, that is, lead to consistent unity, all the laws and by-laws of the empire, remained nothing more than intentions. It is difficult to say whether the Russian Empire was, as some publicists tend to imagine, a colossus with feet of clay, but the fact that its legislation most of all resembled a straw man does not raise the slightest doubt.

In legislative, and in many other respects, the activities of Peter the Great correspond to a high degree with the management practice of the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. In both cases, the pathos of the discoverer and founder replaces expediency, and uncritical adherence to the models chosen for imitation turns out to be detrimental to the development of organic institutions of Russian reality. Suspicion of organic phenomena, in general, should be considered a distinctive property of these rulers. This is understandable: any public activity comes into involuntary conflict with state affairs. Both Yeltsin and Peter were forced to take into account the deep social opposition both to the policies he pursued and to themselves personally - hence the distrust of any form of initiative, partly destructive, but partly constructive. The oblivion of the organic structure - in principle understandable and excusable - led to a complete loss of all sorts of guidelines, which in practice resulted in extreme forms of social behavior and the heterogeneity of government orders, as if uncentered, aiming at everything in a row with goals that turned up in the path of the legislator.

We do not find anything similar in the activities of President Putin. He fulfills his social representative role impeccably. He takes public opinion into account only to the extent necessary to maintain the image of a tough but polite politician. As for the regulatory acts... Yes, too little time has passed to judge the direction of the lawmaking of his administration, yes, the public’s disposition is a fickle thing, and today’s favorite of housewives and retirees will be subjected to even more fierce persecution in a couple of months than before Greater, usually unsubstantiated hopes are pinned on him today. But there is already successful experience of passing laws through the Duma; already - or still - he has a relative legislative majority; and √ finally - for the first time in many years, state power is opposed by a society that, in principle, understands the need and, in principle, has come to terms with the direction of change, which retains hope for at least relative consistency in the adoption and implementation of new legislation.

Perhaps this is a utopia, and the force of social inertia will once again triumph over the force of the social movement. Although this time, it seems, the matter is not so hopeless. The key to this is the notorious historical analogies.

Whenever Russian reforms are discussed, everything is talked about except their economic feasibility. It often seems that respected publicists (political scientists, historians, journalists) either miraculously bypass this obvious consideration in their mental calculations, or deliberately mislead the public. The second is more likely, since the truth, as often happens, is very inconvenient. It lies in the fact that, perhaps, none of the largest post-Petrine reforms in the field of economics was in any way caused by economic necessity itself. Landownership, coupled with serfdom, as is now becoming quite clear, by 1861 functioned quite well. There was absolutely no reason, other than the hysterical lust of progressive public figures and the understandable desire to stand on an equal footing with the century, to abolish it.

The same consideration should be fully extended to the establishment of industry in Russia. Peter's decree on the establishment of guilds in cities (1722), which in theory created new economic mechanisms, recalls the most medieval regulations. Instead of developing crafts, it - like any qualification that legislated age and professional restrictions - in practice led to their stagnation. Another decree of Peter the Great, which apparently contributed to the industrial development of Russia, the decree on possession peasants (1724), which allowed the opening of private manufactories, on the one hand strengthened entrepreneurial initiative, but on the other, imposed extensive production, practically indifferent to the efficient market, and besides further aggravated the already plight of the domestic agricultural producer. The desire of Russian sovereigns to conform to enlightened Europe very often backfired.

Needless to say, material and technical progress is a cruel thing, but in Russia it strove to take some completely ruthless forms. Therefore, we can so easily explain the constant conservatism and indifference of the majority of its population, who sincerely did not understand the meaning, and therefore were unable to accept the essence of social changes imposed from above.

Vladimir Putin received a fundamentally different country. It seems that she is internally ready for change and therefore is simply doomed to welcome almost any violation of the current status quo. Moreover, this understanding was achieved, perhaps for the first time, in the notorious organic way: not through fruitless ideological battles, to which everyone remains indifferent except those involved in them, but through the mass experience - it would be more accurate to say “living” - of socio-economic illusions. The economic feasibility of reforming the economy is now fully understood by society. The understanding of the direction that should be followed is equally clear.

The predominantly constituent Petrine-Yeltsin model of activity management should naturally be replaced by a protective-administrative model. Following the logic we have chosen, it should have been dubbed ...-Putin, replacing the ellipsis with a qualitative adjective formed on behalf of Sovereign/Empress X, the tasks of whose rule can be most closely correlated with the modern tasks facing the President of Russia. Fun word game? Maybe. But winning it means, in our opinion, not just solving an ingenious charade or drawing an intricate historical parallel. Having established the degree of continuity of the two eras, we receive at least approximate grounds to judge the dangers standing in the way of reforming Russia, the relative pace of its development and the general outlines of the method that, according to analogous tools, will be most effective under the current conditions.

The temptation of the simplest comparison is great. Just as Putin replaced Yeltsin, Peter the Great was succeeded by Catherine I. Simple, but unconvincing. Even a superficial search for the truth reveals the approximate nature of such logic. Catherine, being only and exclusively the wife of the emperor, and not belonging to a noble family, could not be an independent political figure. Behind her, the Supreme Privy Council (established in 1726), which actually led the state, was easily visible. The Council, as is known, was called upon to reconcile the so-called “old” and “new” aristocracies, to consolidate the traditional and Peter the Great elite on the basis of conciliatory governance of Russia. How can one not recall the government of V.S. Chernomyrdin, where Messrs. worked hand in hand on similar grounds. Rak, Pike, Soskovets and Chubais.

The reign of Peter II, who replaced Catherine, is in no way comparable to modern times. The only thing that the fifteen-year-old Tsar became famous for was his passion for hunting and his love affair with his aunt, the future Empress Elizaveta Petrovna. No comments.

But after the death of the young sovereign and before the accession of the daughter of Peter the Great, a whole era passed, the era of Anna Ioannovna. The years of her reign (1730-1740) are considered, probably with the light hand of I. Lazhechnikov, the author of the novel “The Ice House,” to be considered a period of darkness in the state’s mind. The former Duchess of Courland, once in St. Petersburg, refused to believe her happiness and lived every day as if it were her last. Attire was replaced by attire, fun was followed by fun, and the already not very receptive treasury was completely empty. That's what they say.

At the same time, the main achievement of her reign is somehow lost sight of - the restoration of a sovereign autocracy. The story of the conditions imposed on her by the Supreme Privy Council - the obligations of aristocratic privileges - has been described many times in the literature. Usually, after presenting all the facts, there is a sad afterword: once again Russian freedom was trampled upon. But these are the lyrics: “We wait with languorous hope // A leaf of holy condition, // As young Bironchik waits...” - and the truth was that the Russian aristocracy, who did not think about anything other than their own benefit, was pushed aside to the periphery of the political process. She met the new reign somewhat thinned out: Dolgoruky and Volynsky were executed, many other aristocratic families were subjected to disgrace until they were deported to Siberia - thinned out, but somewhat sobered. Alas, the price of sanity turned out to be great. The presumptuous Rurikovichs and Gedeminovichs had to be replaced by a huge number of Germans, who at that time were sent to St. Petersburg specifically for these purposes. But the Courlanders and Westphalians, no matter how many of them appeared, were not able to bring as much harm to Russia as the Mitavian standards would inevitably give rise to. The tribesmen of Minich and Levenwolde simply did not have sufficient connections and shamelessness for this.

The dominance of foreigners also served another noble purpose: it acted as a kind of catalyst for the process of forming the national consciousness of the traditional nobility. When, more than a century later, Vasily Rozanov in his “Apocalypse of Our Time” lamented: it’s a pity that the German occupation passed, he was not so much habitually acting the fool as telling the truth. The Germans already taught us Russian patriotism once.

Perhaps the only truly negative consequence of Anna Ioannovna’s reign was the secondary, after Peter, and much more intense rivalry between the two governing elites, conventionally called “German” and “Russian,” which succeeded each other in each subsequent reign until the reign of Alexander II. Needless to say, in conditions of autocracy such a situation is abnormal.

Today everything is different. Let's start with the fact that such a number of unemployed Germans can no longer be found. And thank God! The President of the Russian Federation is not a Russian emperor - he cannot simply reign, he needs to think and act. He is his own Sovereign, his own First Minister, Anna Ioannovna, Osterman and Minikh rolled into one. The irony of fate: Putin’s service in Germany has already established his reputation as a tough, punctual and even somewhat sensitive person - just like a “Russian German,” as the Decembrists once called Alexander I. Bestuzhev and Ryleev flattered Alexander. Only his pedigree and excessive tearfulness gave him away as a German. Is our president the same: by habit, by heartfelt inclination, by necessity, finally? Why not Osterman, why not Minich? And if we turn to etymology, it turns out beautifully: “Osterman” is a man from the East...

Like Anna Ioannovna once did, Putin faces the need for a serious renewal of the ruling elite. Like her, like any self-respecting ruler, she has her own, albeit very limited, personnel reserve, like the Pavlovsk Gatchinaites or the Nikolaev Baltic Sea people. One can and should argue about the qualities of this reserve, but one thing is quite clear - it is necessary. The experience of establishing autocracy in Russia shows how dangerous the splitting of elites is. Therefore, despite all the dissimilarity and at the same time the identity of the situation in 1730 and 2000, one thing is clear - the strategic task of the President’s team is to consolidate the ruling layer. Without this necessary and sufficient condition, Putin risks reproducing the post-Annin situation, in which elite disunity reached dangerous levels, leading to the riots of 1762, 1801 and 1825.

However, we are least eager to give advice. As can be seen over the past year, the Presidential Administration employs professionals. Our task is much more modest. Realizing the approximate nature of the historical parallels, I would like to understand where—at what point in the process of state formation—Russia is today. So as not to delude yourself and not despair. It seems like it turns out that in 1730.

Well... There are less than sixty years left before the capture of Ochakov.

Eighty-four before the capitulation of Paris.