It is worth remembering that Tsar Nicholas II's general mobilization order in 1914 was the point of "no return" in terms of initiating the Great War or World War I.  According the many historians, Count Sergi Witte, a storied figure in late Russian Imperial history, warned the Tsar that the war would forever change everything. He died in 1915 but his prediction, based on a lifetime of experience in foreign affairs, became a new reality. The same advice could be given today, rather than war mongering threats from the French president and the German Chancellor. History does repeat itself.

Book Censorship One Step from Book Burning.

 

The phrase, “Give me 26 lead soldiers and I will conquer the world,” has been attributed to both Benjamin Franklin and Karl Marx. It is an affirmation that the pen is mightier than the sword. Throughout history, however, the written thoughts of mankind have been subject to divergent philosophic and religious beliefs that saw existing writings as a threat. Today it is called “book burning” or censorship. At other times in human history it was heresy. Regardless of the reasons given, great works of ancient and modern thought have been lost because new movements strove to eradicate writings deemed dangerous.

 

Destroying Records of the Past

 

Historians of the Ancient Near East point to Nineveh as a repository of one of the first libraries. Nineveh was the capital city of the hated Assyrians. Incessant warfare ultimately led to the destruction of Nineveh at the time the Medes and the Persians ended Assyrian domination of the greater Middle East region. The library was destroyed with the city, perhaps viewed as an extension of Assyrian religion. Scholars believe the library contained over 12,000 texts, many of which have been recovered through archaeological endeavors.

 

Although the Nineveh library was most likely burned because it was a part of the palace grounds, this was not true of the most famous of all ancient libraries located at Alexandria, Egypt. Estimates of the library’s holdings range from 400,000 works to 900,000. The library endured through the early Roman Imperial period but after Christianity became the state religion in the 4^th Century CE, it deteriorated. Part of the reason rests with Egyptian Christians that had a long history of zealotry.

 

When Christians destroyed the temple of Serapis, their anger resulted in the destruction of the Museion or House of Muses. In the process, many library texts were burned. Muslims conquered Alexandria in the 7^th Century, but according to Philosophy of Religion Professor Camden Cobern (deceased), there is no evidence to support the commonly held view that Caliph Omar burned the library in 641 CE.

 

Books Threaten Shared Values and Control

 

Historian Carlo Ginzburg recounts the saga of a 16^th Century miller whose desire to read books caused his eventual execution after a trial by the Inquisition (The Cheese and the Worms, Penguin Books, 1985). Once the Christian Church dominated religious thought and practice in Western Europe, available texts were strictly controlled. St. Jerome’s Vulgate defined the canon of scripture and any conflicting writings were banned. This continued throughout the Middle Ages. At the 16^th Century Council of Trent, Erasmus’ Greek New Testament was burned and the Catholic Church began a more rigid evaluation of books.

 

But book burning was not unique to the Catholic hierarchy. Reformer Martin Luther sanctioned the burning of Jewish sacred writings when Jews refused to convert. In the 20^th Century, the Nazis celebrated their victory of achieving dominance in the German government by burning the writings of Jewish scholars in a Berlin bonfire. This infamous “book burning” has been captured on film and recreated in several movies.

 

The Threat to Religious and Social Values

 

Even in the United States, certain books have been deemed inappropriate, removed from libraries, and banned from public school reading lists. In Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man,” Marian the librarian is accused of advocating “dirty books” like Rabelais and Balzac. In reality, however, books like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye have been censored by local school boards in more recent decades.

 

Historically, evidence suggests that book burning and censorship derives from acute religious convictions of particular societies and communities seeking to preserve a belief system and viewing non-acceptable writings as threats. It is an extension of the debate between Darwin’s Origin of the Species and creationism in Genesis. Like Ray Bradbury’s “fireman” in Fahrenheit 451, book burning is the ultimate way to ensure control and the obliteration of opposing views.

 

Sources:

 

Camden M. Cobern, “Alexandria,” International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, Volume I, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1939).

Tony Perrottet, Route 66 A.D.: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists (New York: Random House, 2002)

 

 So much for globalization and a new world order. Everyone thought the world was on the cusp of a utopian dream when students began filling their Instagram slots with pictures of them walking China's Great Wall while eating a Big Mac in Beijing. Score one for internationalism. Student travel companies were building resumes detailing student jogs up the most remote peaks and traipsing through old ruined castles in what was once only considered East Europe or the "Third World." The Peace Corps had done it's job. Kids in Fiji could read (and similar places). The world was being made safe for democracy (thank you Woodrow Wilson) through Americanism: consumerism, entertainment, Disney Parks, Fast Foods, etc. 

But all was not going well in Russia where an ever deranged Vladimir Putin began to cast himself as the incarnation of Tsar Alexander III, a man whose three reasons for living were autocracy, orthodoxy and nationalism. The rest of the world, especially those break-away nations, were out to destroy Russia. Or, if you like, a Putin in the model of Ivan the Terrible, the so-called gatherer of Russian lands." But Putin doesn't have a thing for dogs.

In the early 1990's I was with a small group of Americans, mostly students, allowed to visit the Armory in the Kremlin while on a student visit to Moscow. We marveled at the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, and Red Square. We were told that we were the first western group to see the Armory, but only for two hours.

It was a time we all thought would lead to greater openness. Russians no longer traded those marvelous black hats for a carton of Marlboro's. They wanted cash or some of those early video games.

We noticed American and European companies opening, and ate lunch at the largest McDonald's. It was New Year's and we were not just cold but frozen. But we loved the country, the people, and city. St. Petersburg was an oasis of art of beauty. We toasted the New Year with imported Belgian beer.

I took students and adults all over Europe and the South Pacific. I also joined Educator Conferences in places like Turkey and Russia. We learned from each other and looked forward to a world were all people would eventually be citizens of a planet, working together for the common good. In my latter years I taught global studies at a traditional black university and was thrilled when students spent a year abroad in African or South American Countries. 

But now all of that is moot. Alexander Dugin is much like an "Old Believer," much like the men who thought Peter the Great was an antichrist for wanting to leave Russia. And the Russian people, for the most part, either don't know the story is false or are too afraid to contradict it. Very similar in the United States with the myths perpetrated by a former president.

And so globalization may be dead. It may take decades to rebuild and restore old relationships. And for that, we have Russia to blame.

I heard a story on NPR yesterday morning dealing with water quality in America. (August 8, 2022 on 1A). What immediately struck me was the plight of poor communities and communities of color who seem to have no recourse to healthy water. This is particularly true of the Navajo Nation where water pipes have not been replaced for decades. Is water inequity not a human rights violation?

The BBC recently reported on migrant children in an army camp (Fort Bliss) near San Antonio, Texas (US Migrant Camp Kids 'Feel Like They're in Prison', 23.June 2021). Similar reports by the BBC purport that thousands of migrant children are in camps, living in deplorable conditions and in desperate need of medical attention." 

According to the Washington Examiner as well as local Greensboro, NC media reporting outlets, the Biden Administration has signed a five year contract for the housing and care of migrant children to be housed at the vacant Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, NC. (June 26, 2022)

All of these examples - and there are many more - remind us that we Americans are not immune to human rights violations. But we have a habit of criticizing our adversaries for their national programs and sins such as the Uyghurs in China. Or human rights violations in North Korea. Or Human rights violations on the part of Turkey against the Kurdish people. How many nations can say that they do not practice human rights violations?

Of our Allies, the Australians have, for hundreds of years, practiced an abysmal human rights policy toward the Aboriginal indigenous peoples. Canada has only recently hosted Pope Francis for a joint mea culpa regarding the treatment of indigenous peoples, especially children brutalized in Catholic-run schools

In Japan, home of our noble allies, there exists a shadow caste, known as the burakumin or eta. These are Japan's "untouchables" and never spoken of. Asian societies are full of such inequities: India is but the largest nation to segregate it's people, often harshly. Only in New Zealand have the white people developed a rapprochement with the Maori peoples. But we Americans don't dare point out fingers at our allies! There should be fingers pointed back at our own streets and parks.

Every street corner features one or more beggars holding cardboard signs,"will work for money," or "Wife and three children." Frequently the children are on the side of the street also.

Our diplomats and top government leaders love to bring up the issue of human rights all over the world while ignoring our own. We berate the Cubans and point to the many braving the waters - and the sharks, to swim to Miami. Yet we speak not a word about "Gitmo," the infamous camp that should have been closed during the first Obama administration. And this does not take in the shame of Iraq's abu Ghraib.

Human rights violations should be addressed but first by the countries willing to point fingers at themselves. Before we tell our neighbors to change policies, we must be willing to do so in our own communities. Who in America spoke for the Jewish people in the Holocaust where men, women, and children were gassed and cremated at Auschwitz  and other death camps. There were people, Like Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary who braved the Nazis to save countless Jews, but few nations. The United States and Canada knew what was happening but said and did nothing.

Before we criticize and point fingers, we need to look at our own deficiencies and treatment of people. All men might have been created equal, but all men are clawing up the mountain of democracy, oblivious to these around them or below them. And those were white men, no women and no people of color.

United States foreign policy has frequently criticized adversary nation for committing atrocities. In China, an estimate one million Muslim Uighurs are kept in concentration camp-like conditions with the goal of turning them into good Chinese communists. Not very different from what the Canadian government in conjunction with the Roman Catholic Church did to thousands of indigenous children in schools resembling prison orphanages. And in the United States the treatment of indigenous peoples has not been very different. Americans cloak it in the missionary movement, a forced effort to obliterate Native American culture and language. Do High School Students still read about the Trail of Tears or, for that matter, the prison cages at "Gitmo" that may never be empty despite President Obama's pledge many years ago.

Americans have a bad habit of criticizing  other nations about their internal affairs that may well be horrendous. But we have and continue to do the same. Where was the Congressional outcry over the events in Myra mar (formerly Burma)?  Why didn't Nancy Pelosi fly into Naypyidaw? She seems to appear at dangerous war zones such as Kiev and her contemplated flight to Taiwan, enraging the Chinese leadership. 

In short, American have no monopoly when it comes to championing the cause of freedom, integrity, and justice. We water boarded Filipino soldiers early in the 20th Century during the Filipino War, an act TR Roosevelt at first approved. 

America is no longer a knight on shining armor. That armor has been tarnished. And there are many many other examples of US policy not in tune with our Constitutional freedoms. And it wasn't always a matter of national security. How many conflicts could have been averted? Vietnam? Korea? Iraq? 

We need to play with China honestly. American policy toward Taiwan always maintained that it was not under the sphere of protection of the US or the so-called nuclear umbrella. That culminated with the Taiwan Relations Act (April 10, 1979). There is no guarantee of intervention. We sent the wrong message regarding Korea; President Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin Resolutions to hoodwink the Congress and the American population in of to justify war in Vietnam.When Eisenhower was president there was talk if using atomic bombs in the Taiwan Straits. 

But this is 2022 and the world has dramatically changed. And we have no leaders of stature other than Trump-like Fascists and red-neck types that would easily double as brown shirts.

 

Never before, in the history of the American nation, has a Speaker of the House disregarded the cautionary warnings of the President and the Pentagon to embark on a visit to Asian nations, a visit that includes a stop in Taiwan. Whether it was for two days or two minutes, the very act was viewed as a provocation by China, and rightly so. At some point in the last several decades China, Japan, and Korea have claimed all or part of Taiwan. Even though Chairman Mao said Taiwan was not part of China, much has transpired in history since World War II and Mao's transformation of a peasant society.

Taiwan, after World War II, was a refuge for Chinese and Europeans, several of them missionaries, fleeing the Communist takeover of the Chinese mainland. China also dispelled the occupiers - the Japanese who, since the 1930's had ravaged both China and Korea. Who can forget the infamous "Rape of Nanking" (actually a book written by Iris Chang) which fits into the same categories of Nazi atrocities. 

We have no business wading into the  complexities of Chinese-Taiwanese-Japanese affairs. Previous presidents and secretaries of state recognized this. Americans like Douglas MacArthur recognized the Chinese genius and what it would mean for the future of America.

Yet, in one ill-thought out moment, Speaker Pelosi has offered up a conflict of perhaps massive proportions. Winston Churchill might have said we bet on the wrong horse. That is certainly true in Europe where energy concerns, or a lack of it may unravel the EU. I'm glad I still have a few Deutsch Marks and Drachmas for my next visit. 

 Death of Democracy in Germany 1933 with the Rise of Hitler

Germany in the late 1920's and early 30's was a hotbed of political violence as the weak Weimar Republic, established after the Great War, demonstrated it's inherent weakness and lack of capability to govern. Emerging Nazis, trumpeting Adolf Hitler, were in a fierce combat, often with bloody riots, against the Communists and Social Democrats. There were also Monarchists who clung to the notion that the Hohenzollern dynasty might one day return as well as the Catholic party.

Nazi strategy was to crush the Social Democrats, perceiving them to be the greatest opposition threat. German Communists, however, also prioritized debilitating the Social Democrats and listed them as a greater oppositional fear than the Nazis, despite some KPD (Kommunist Party Deutschland) activists believing the Nazis should be the first priority.  Joining the Nazis against the Social Democrats was a major mistake that would lead to catastrophe for the nation in 1933. Communist leaders that saw the obvious outcome were silenced.

In the several parliamentary elections preceding Hitler's rise to power as Chancellor, Communists and Nazis used every opportunity to browbeat the Social Democrats and dwindle away their parliamentary numbers. But as soon as Hitler gained absolute power, following the February 27, 1933 Reichstag fire, The proverbial die was cast and within hours every Communist leader was arrested, primitive concentration camps had already been erected and were being rapidly filled with men and women considered enemies of the state, and the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) took over many city police stations such as in the large northern city of Hamburg, often considered the "red-est city" in the Republic.

Particular effort was placed on the destruction of key unions, such as those controlling shipping and the harbor docks, and Catholic groups that posed possible threats to Nazi rule. Often, this resulted in fierce fighting within city areas controlled by the Communists. Invariably, the Nazis rooted out all opposition and made prolific use of the axe, cutting off the heads of thousands of opposition activists. Some historians estimate that more Nazi enemies were beheaded during the Third Reich than during the French Reign of Terror. 

Communists and Nazis battled in the streets of many cities. Guns were plentiful, smuggled from Belgium and Russia. Ultimately, the Nazis won and proceeded to ruthlessly suppress Communist opposition.

The Nazi takeover and ultimate German reign of terror could have been avoided if Communist strategies had seen the primary enemy as Hitler and his Brown shirts. But Communist directives were coming from Berlin, Europe's Communist "hub" which was receiving marching orders through the Comintern and ultimately Stalin himself. In Russia it was a period of mistrust, purges, show trials, long sentences served in Siberian labor camps, or death in the dungeons of the Lubyanka. European leaders within the Communist organization often found themselves called to Moscow, never to return.

Everyday Germans faced a choice that involved not only politics but a way of life. Neighbors acting suspiciously were to be denounced to the local Gestapo. Good Nazi children entered the Nazi Youth organizations and the female auxiliary groups. If your family was not a member of the Party, you were literary an outcast. In schools, their children sat in the back of the class. Once Jews were identified, this became a norm in classrooms.

Nazi police stations tortured people mercilessly, attempting to obtain names of other Communists, families that helped hide activists. Once found, entire families: men, women, and children were brought in for questioning and, often, brutalized. *

We, in this enlightened century, have slowly forgotten the dark times that represented Germany in 1932 and 1933. Dachau concentration camp was already built in Munich. And by 1933 it was being filled. The camp was built in a Munich suburb, on a Munich city bus line. Residential buildings virtually surrounded the camp. How can the presence of Dachau be disputed?

The Nazi camp system was like a large octopus, reaching to every part of the Reich. The camp system often starting as transitional camps and hubs, much later leading to the death camps through out occupied Europe.

It only took a few years for Democracy in Germany to be quashed and be replaced by a totalitarian dictatorship. German people were desensitized and stood by as Jews and other "undesirables"  were taken away to camps or, in the east, shot en masse and dumped into graves. 

All it took was people believing a lie, supporting a system whose party leaders lied constantly and spread propaganda. Listening to opposing viewpoints meant arrest and possibly death (such as listening to BBC on the radio or other foreign stations). 

People who lived through that time still recall the horrors and warn that if not careful, it could happen again, even in a solid democracy.

*my grandmother was called to her local gestapo office for not displaying a portrait of Hitler in her living room.

 Constitutional Supremacy Still A Good Idea

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once observed that, “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” In 1787, as the American nation’s founders gathered in Philadelphia in order to create a more perfect union, both history and philosophy influenced the resolve to write the new Constitution.

 

Americans left Europe, in part, to distance themselves from a history of warfare among the various European states. Following independence from Britain and the 1783 peace, however, growing sectional concerns helped fuel a feeling of disunity. As historian David Hendrickson correctly noted in his book on the founding of America, “…the corporate identity of the individual states would be far less secure under disunion than under the proposed constitution…”

 

The Absence of a Strong Central Government

 

The new American government under the Articles of Confederation, conceived during the years of war, was impotent against the looming national crisis involving debt, commerce, and national integrity; no European power took the Americans seriously.

 

Growing sectional concerns, notably between the commercially-minded Northeast and the agriculturally-geared South, threatened to disunify, enabling European states to manipulate Americans against each other. George Washington warned his colleagues about “relaxing the powers of union” which would expose the new country to the, “…sport of European politics…”

 

Independence also meant an end to the British mercantile system in regard to key American enterprises such as tobacco, rice, indigo, and naval stores in the South and lumber in the North. As soon as the war ended, European goods flooded the American market, hurting attempts to expand American industries. Agricultural prices also fell, hurting American farmers and contributing to the levels of popular discontent associated with events such as Shays’ Rebellion in 1786.

 

Unity, after 1783, was based on a loose confederation. The American Congress lacked any direct power to levy taxes. The individual states printed their own money and acted as sovereign states, thus contributing to the overall weakness of the confederation. Any moves toward greater centralization of power were equated with tyranny and the loss of liberty. As writer Robert Harvey noted, “…the new nation was a ragbag of competing authorities.”

 

Another source of friction involved the westward movement. Land claims regarding these territories frequently overlapped, pitting one state against another. The Articles of Confederation lacked an organized formula addressing territorial assumptions.

 

The need for a Constitution and Centralized Power

 

The Constitution gave power to the people, but not too much power. Through a series of compromises, the weaknesses that had left the nation vulnerable after 1783 were remedied: a bicameral legislature, a chief executive, a judiciary, and an enumeration of the rights of individual states. The Constitution was inspired both by history and philosophy.

 

Ratification, however, did not end the debate over personal liberties and sectional concerns. Additionally, European powers continued to threaten and manipulate the new nation. The realities of Paris mobs, with the outbreak of the 1789 French Revolution, hardened conservatives in Britain – men like Edmund Burke who referenced the mobs as “swinish multitudes.”

 

The Constitution helped unify the individual states but it would take a civil war to reign in the friction over the extent of state sovereignty. This debate has continued in American history, especially when federal centralization was perceived as interfering with individual liberties and threatening the powers of individual states.

 

References:

 

Colin B. Goodykoontz, “The Founding Fathers and Clio,” The Vital Past: Writings on the Uses of History, Stephen Vaughn, editor (The University of Georgia Press, 1985)

Robert Harvey, “A Few Bloody Noses”: The Realities and Mythologies of the American Revolution (The Overlook Press, 2002)

David C. Hendrickson, Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (University Press of Kansas, 2003)

Simon Schama, A History of Britain: The Fate of Empire 1776-2000, Volume III (Hyperion, 2002)

 

 Helping Students and Adults Explore History at the Source: My Dedication to Kim Eads

A special dedication to my longtime friend, Kim Eads, who passed away on June 9, 2022. Kim and I were colleagues and I knew her for over thirty years. But my fondest memories of Kim will always be the many educational trips we took student and adult groups on throughout the 1990's. We traveled across most of Europe, visiting some cities more than once and spent numerous summer weeks in Australia and New Zealand, educating students, sharing new cultures, and having fun. Kim was a tireless trip co-leader, getting up early and waiting in hotel halls long past evening curfews.

Prague is an excellent example. We were housed in a former Communist hotel with a number of other groups. One of our kids, the type to always break the rules, wasn't in his room. We were told he was after a girl from some other group. Kim knocked on the door of that other group. They reluctantly let us in, seeing we were teachers and traveling with the same group they were, EF Educational Tours.

The room, typical for most teenagers including our own, was littered with beer bottles and full ash trays. Someone was in the shower. Neither of us wanted to invade the privacy of a bathroom! Since we didn't see Bryan, our wayward kid, we left.

But Kim and I parked ourselves outside the door in the wide hallway, grabbed a table and two chairs, and played gin rummy for several hours. Finally the door opened. It was Bryan, amazed to find us siting there. We kept an extra eye on him for the rest of the trip and restricting him from any beer (although we allowed the rest of the group to have a beer with a meal).

 It was also in Prague that another teacher from Little Rock grabbed my arm at the elevator and told me some of our boys had just left the hotel. Kim and I looked at each other. We had not given permission. I rushed outside and ran to the back of the hotel. To my amazement, our guys were playing basketball with some neighborhood teens. This was what an educational tour was all about!

After a particularly grueling few nights in Budapest, Kim looked at me while on the bus to Vienna and said, "Want to call their parents and ask them to finish the trip with their kids so we can fly home?"

We had other great experiences - so many I could write a book. But I could always count on Kim. She also joined me every February as a faculty advisor in Boston at the Harvard University Model Congress.

After moving to Arkansas in 2000 to teach and pursue a graduate degree program, she had an accident at school that required knee replacement surgery. This didn't go well and ultimately she had several surgeries to correct problems arising from the first operation. She was in great pain and was forced to go on disability. Every time we talked she told me how much she missed the classroom and our foreign trips.. 

Kim was a dedicated, caring educator. She was the best human being I ever knew, never showing any negative feeling toward anyone.

She moved back home several years ago to care for her ailing parents but they passed away in late 2019. 

Kim and I often met at the Golden Coral when she came home to visit, to sit and reminisce for hours about our students, and adventures, and the many people we were fortunate to meet and call friends. I'll greatly miss her!

Kim and I at Neuschwanstein castle in southern Bavaria.
 

The historical equilibrium between obliteration and human existence has always managed to avoid the black hole of chaos. It has always been believed that good people are in greater abundance than bad people. Poets have given us this assurance. The mythological tales of ancient gods also point toward an ultimate goodness. Osiris would triumph for the people of Egypt. For the Greeks it was Olympus. And the Romans provided the Pax Romana which kept the peace of Rome for centuries. Every religion or belief system has a positive force, or "god" if you will, that ensures life will go on.

 But history shows us that there were anomalies. There were men motivated by blood-lust and conquest. Like Attila the Hun, Ivan the Terrible (or "Formidable." And so many others. Human life was cheap and the life of a peasant perilous.  The newly risen Christian Church offered graces to mitigate the death and destruction, but it never fully worked. Too often great numbers perished, as in the 13th Century Black Death or Plague that killed off half the population of Europe and came back several times. 

Meanwhile, Christians tolerated their own and persecuted others, like Jews and Muslims. The love of Christ never extended to the millions who populated vast swaths of God's creation. In short, without recounting in bloody detail the history of the Christian Church, it is very obvious that the words of Jesus, ostensibly the founder, have been drowned out by the clash of swords or the bombardment of tanks.

Nuclear weapons, indeed, any so-called weapons of pass destruction, are still waiting in the wings until some truly mad person releases them on billions of people. Is this the so-called sign of the end?

The wars all over the globe, large and small, clearly show that mankind has not learned from the past. And in the advanced, wealthy countries, people do not even consider the possibility of annihilation. 

They go about their business, championing sports, keeping the shop keepers busy, and patronizing the super heroes on vast movie screens. It is a tale of two worlds. No wonder we no longer teach history in many institutions.  

 

 Pavel Pestal and the Decembrists in Russia: Attempt at Revolution and Change

 

On the morning of December 14, 1825, an attempt at revolution broke out at St. Isaac’s Square in St. Petersburg, Russia. The revolution’s leaders, many young and representative of some of Russia’s most important aristocratic families, intended to force a Manifesto on members of the Senate and thus proclaim a new government that included the abolition of serfdom. These were the Decembrists, idealistic revolutionaries who chief contribution would be in providing martyrs to the future generations of Russian radicals and revolutionaries.

 

Decembrist Goals

 

Formed as a secret society in 1816, the loose organization that would tie Northern and Southern conspirators together went through several phases of ideological maturity from advocating a constitutional monarchy to regicide. Not all members agreed with each other on proper actions to take nor could they all agree on exactly what form of government should ultimately replace the autocratic rule of Tsar Alexander I. Pavel Pestel, considered the greatest intellect among the group, would confess in 1826 that he had come to the conclusion, after years of reading and observing, that “the republican form of government was superior,” and referred to the United States as a model.

 

Decembrist leaders were, for the most part, highly educated and harbored hopes of a reformed Russia after Alexander I returned from the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Instead, the tsar became more reactionary, even closing Masonic Lodges which had gained in popularity. Decembrists viewed national salvation in terms of republican ideals, using historical guidelines as models. Pestel idealistically invoked Republican Rome, contrasting it “with its lamentable fate under the rule of emperors” and spoke of the “glorious time of Greece when it was a republic.”

 

Casting the Die

 

The death of Alexander I in late 1825 gave the Decembrists the opportunity they had been waiting for. Although everyone assumed Alexander’s brother, Constantine, would succeed him, this was not to be. Constantine had abdicated earlier through a secret letter to his older brother. Alexander then named Nicholas, his 29-year old younger brother to succeed him. So secret was the affair that even Nicholas was unaware of the new arrangement. The Decembrists used this turmoil in succession to launch their revolution in St. Petersburg. The affair would be short-lived. The feeble military units occupying St. Isaac’s Square were leaderless, Prince Trubetskoi, ostensibly the commander of the operation, had absconded. Eventually, Nicholas I, now the Tsar after Constantine’s letter had been made public, ordered grape shot fired into the motley crowd, dispersing them in a melee of fear.

 

In the South, Serge Muraviev, leader of the southern faction, refused to admit defeat and fermented a mutiny with the intent on marching to Kiev. An imperial army had little difficulty ending the affray and arresting the leaders. Although most of the Decembrists were banished to Siberia, five, including Pestel and Muraviev, were executed.

 

Martyrs of a Cause

 

In her book on Mikhail Bakunin, [1] Aileen Kelly refers to the memoirs of Alexander Herzen, the “father of Russian Socialism.” In the memoir, Herzen relates that he was fourteen when Pestel and the other leaders were executed. The impression on him was to act out Schiller’s Don Carlos with his cousin. Far from ending a movement, the repressive policies of Nicholas I, the “Iron Tsar,” forced revolutionary sentiment underground. The Decembrists bred a progeny of future radicals that identified with these early Russian Jacobins.

 

[1] Aileen Kelly, Mikhail Bakunin: A Study in the Psychology and Politics of Utopianism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) p.9ff.

 

Other Sources:

 

Imperial Russia: A Source Book, 1700-1917, Basil Dmytryshyn, editor (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1967)

 

Adam B. Ulam, Russia’s Failed Revolutions: From the Decembrists to the Dissidents (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1981)

 

 Comparing Peter the Great and Louis XIV of France

The mid to late 17^th century in Europe is defined by the lives of two men whose efforts greatly influenced the balance of power in the next century while creating competitive societies among the large and small European powers. Peter the Great of Russia and Louis XIV of France – the “sun king,” began their respective reigns with vision. Both would leave a legacy of strong leadership that resulted in the formation of powerful nations. Each ruler, alike in many ways, helped define the age.

 

The Early Years in France and Russia

 

Louis inherited a potentially prosperous kingdom with the largest population of any European nation. Yet for most of his twenty million subjects, everyday life in France reflected a day to day existence based on poverty, an inefficient and punishing tax system, and the continuance of a feudal system whereby a small group of powerful nobles controlled all aspects of society. Louis’ early years were marked by the Fronde, an uprising of nobles that forced him to flee Paris as a child.

 

Peter’s Russia was also a backward feudal society with a history of political and social unrest. Like Louis of France, Peter’s early childhood was marred by an unsuccessful attempt to seize power by his ambitious half-sister, Sophia. Both Peter and Louis took personal control of the state after coming of age, Louis’ reign identified as “Absolutism” while in Russia the rigid “Autocracy” was strengthened under Peter.

 

Building a Modern State

 

Although labeled “Antichrist” by the Orthodox Church, Tsar Peter’s determined efforts sought to modernize the feudal state along the lines of western European societies such as England and the Netherlands. His reforms, often called “revolutions,” affected everything from dress to architecture. His greatest act was the creation of the Russian navy. The traditional beard, so much a part of religious tradition, was outlawed and women were freed from their cumbersome clothes in favor of western-style fashion.

 

Much of this “fashion” came out of Louis’ France and the glittering court he presided over at Versailles. Like Peter of Russia, Louis transformed a semi-feudal society into a competitive mercantile nation. This involved an overhaul of the taxation system via the talents of treasury minister Colbert as well as the establishment of a modern, efficient army created by the Marquis de Lavois. Louis’ reforms helped to grow an urban middle class, the bourgeoisie.

 

Control of the Nobility and Symbols of Power

 

Louis’ most visible legacy was the great palace of Versailles, a model for all future rulers that wanted to demonstrate power and control. At the same time, Versailles was used to lure the restless nobility. At Versailles, the aristocracy was kept busy with endless parties and concerts, hunting and gambling, and dozens of diversions. In the midst of it all was the sun king, the epitome of absolute rule.

 

In Russia, Peter’s 1703 construction of St. Petersburg on the Neva River achieved similar purposes. It was his “window to the west.” Originally built as a fortress in the quest to deprive Sweden Baltic dominance, the city came to represent the ideals of Peter’s vision. Peter’s control of the nobility was linked to the “Table of Ranks,” which mandated state service for all nobles.

 

Death of Peter and Louis

 

Both Peter and Louis died leaving an uncertain future. In Russia, Peter’s second wife, Catherine, ruled with the help of advisors. Following her death, Russia experienced a brief second “time of troubles.” In France, a regency oversaw the interests of the infant king who would one day proclaim, “After me, the Deluge.”

 

Peter the Great and Louis XIV were larger-than-life figures at a pivotal time in western European history. Their lives saw many parallels and both men died bequeathing their people a stronger state.

 

Sources:

 

James Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great (Harvard University Press, 2003)

Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (Vintage Books, 1972)