The French under the supervision of Nikolai Palkin

The united efforts of the free historical society, the publishing house The New Literary Review and the Educational project of Arzamas published a book by Vera Milchina 1 “The French useful and harmful” with the subtitle “Supervision of foreigners in Russia under Nicholas I”. The book consists of two unequal in volume, but equal to entertaining parts. The text is decorated with absolutely wonderful, accurate and witty illustrations by the artist Dmitry Epifanov.

The first (smaller in volume) part explains what bureaucratic, customs and police procedures all foreigners passed, and the French in particular, to get to Russia. The deep kinship of all border services is emphasized. The work of the III department of its own imperial majesty of the office and the gendarmes corps is especially described in detail.

The second part tells about the fate of ordinary Frenchmen in Russia, and also talks about publications about Russia in the French press, the work of French diplomats and Russian spies. All together creates the history of mutual seduction, disappointments and fears in Russian-French relations of the middle of the last century.

In the preface, the author writes: “Leopold von Ranke, who called for historians to show,“ how it really was ”, was repeatedly accused of naivety; However, it seems to me-and not for me alone-it seems that, without such an intention, it is not worth doing history. ”

The third branch was repeatedly cursed in Russian literature as a strangler of all the good and kind. Thanks to the talent of Russian writers and publicists, this was done so convincingly that, I suppose, few people thought of asking, "how really was everything."

This organization was “arranged according to His Majesty’s own thought, developed according to his personal instructions” (quote from “Review of the III Department of the III Department for 25 years from 1826 to 1850”). With great surprise, I learned the following: “At the time of my creation, the III department totaled only 16 people (along with four officials of special assignments - 20). Three foreigners were in charge of the affairs of the Titular Advisers P.I. Dolst (forwarder), A. G. Golst (senior assistant) and A. A. Zelentsov (junior assistant). The total number of officials serving in the III department increased, but very slowly: in 1841 there were 27 people; In 1850, after a quarter of a century after the creation, 35, and in 1880, when this organization replaced the police department of the Ministry of the Interior, officials there were still negligible, given the scale of the Russian Empire, only 58 people. ”

Numerous examples show how the third branch interacted with the provincial authorities, customs, the border service, ordinary police and the gendarmes corps. The legislation of the Russian Empire was extremely complicated and constantly changed. A description of the interaction of departments creates a complete impression of a mechanism with spinning wheels and gears. It was very difficult to stop this car.

For example, in 1824, under Emperor Alexander I, a French dealer Mauris Moren was taken under secret supervision. In 1837, the chief of the third branch of the Count Alexander Khristoforovich Benkendorf, apparently, was tired of reading the reports of the St. Petersburg Governor General Essen on how the merchant regularly travels from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and from there abroad and back, with a mandatory note, “that nothing was noticed by the foreigner’s referenced”. The St. Petersburg Ober-Police-Master suggested the supervision to remove.

Then the count wished to find out for what reason the merchant was secretly monitored for 13 years. By 1837, Emperor Alexander I, who commanded to establish supervision, and the chief of the General Staff of Count Dibich, who transferred the highest command to the St. Petersburg Governor General, had not been alive for a long time. They sent a request to the Minister of War Count Chernyshev. And they received the answer that there are no such information in the affairs of the military ministry. The supervision of the merchant was removed when Benckendorf realized that Emperor Alexander I ordered him to follow him simply because in 1824, during the first arrival of the Frenchman to Russia, the police did not know anything about him.

The Finnish researcher Peter Mustonen was not too lazy to consider that from the entire community of cases passing through the third branch, the emperor managed to view one percent. But things about suspicious Frenchmen were honored quite often.

There is an explanation for this close imperial interest. When Emperor Nicholas I in 1825 ascended the Russian throne, Karl X, a representative of the senior line of Bourbons, and the relations between the states were good in France. But in 1830, a revolution took place in France; On the throne was Louis-Philipp Orleans, a representative of the younger branch of Bourbons. From the point of view of Nicholas I, the absolute monarch, the King of the French was a usurpator, because there was a legitimate heir - the young Duke of Bordeaux. In addition, Louis-Philipp started a constitution, parliament, free print, public opinion and other excesses in the same spirit.

The Russian emperor understood that together with fashionable goods, novels and French actresses, these ideas would penetrate into Russia. It was impossible to prohibit trade and the French theater - it remained to strengthen censorship and supervision of foreigners in the hope of missing only useful, and harmful to detain police methods on the border. Hence the division of the French into "useful" and "harmful". For the same purpose - to protect against foreign infection - the emperor limited the departure and stay of Russian subjects in France. And then he was linked by a great surprise from the side of the person, exclusively close to the throne.

Princess Daria Khristoforovna Lyvens refused to return to Russia from Paris, where she lived since 1835. She was his own sister to the chief of the third branch to Count Benkendorf. Her husband was the brightest Prince Christopher Andreevich Liven, a long -term (from 1812 to 1834) Russian ambassador to London, and since 1834, a trustee with a person of the heir, Tsarevich Alexander Nikolaevich. The husband, brother and Emperor Nicholas demanded that she return. In response, the princess complained about poor health and begged to leave her in Paris. In 1837, Prince Liven in a letter to the emperor admitted his defeat: he could not persuade the princess to return to his homeland. She remained in Paris, in her famous political salon, with her no less famous lover-the ex-minister of education Francois Gizo.

In the book, this story is presented as part of a rather loud scandal, which began with the publication on the topic of Russian-French relations in the legitimist newspaper and who followed the trial between the newspaper and the French government. The mechanism for creating sensations from scratch, plexus of fiction and reality, the interaction of different social forces - the court, press, government - is disclosed and described in action.

In general, Vera Milchina’s book “The French is useful and harmful” is not only an outstanding study on the declared topic, but also a brilliant example of a story about how everything was actually in one specific area. This is the craft of the historian.

Ekaterina Buz

Read more about the book, see www.nlobooks.ru/node/8921

1 V. A. Milchin - Cand. Filol. Sciences, Vedas. scientific. sore. Institute of Higher Humanitarian Research. E. M. Meletinsky RSUSU, member of the Administrative Council of the Russian Institute in Paris. - Ed.