Among Russia's modern tsars, Paul I (1754-1801) remains significantly controversial. His murder on March 11/12,1801, has been variously laid to his violent and despotic temperament, his anti-dvorianstvo policies, the hatred he engendered among his mother's committed supporters, his military reforms (which struck at the prestigious guards regiments), and his foreign policies which ended by making enemies of both Austria and Britain, and, through the latter, threatened the interests of both foreign and domestic trading communities. Indeed, it appeared that there was scarcely a single important constituency which Paul did not offend. On the other hand, beginning with Dmitri Miliutin's study of the Second Coalition, another and much more favourable view of Paul emerged which reflected both new sources and new thinking. And these two competing themes carried into the Soviet period.
In the monograph under review, Dr. A. V. Skorobogatov analyses the literature on Paul from the memoirists and anecdotalists of the later eighteenth century through the systematic historical studies which began to appear at the mid-point of the nineteenth century, and the burst of publications which followed the revolution of 1905. Intensive censorship and its gradual release through the nineteenth and the early twentieth century distorted Paul's historical image. His character, reign, and death were forbidden subjects until the middle of the nineteenth century, and even after they had to be handled gingerly until the revolution of 1905, and the comprehensive censorship reform of 1906. Despite the censorship, writing about Paul reflected both the developing characteristics of Russian historiography, and the ideological and political shifts occurring in a modernising then a revolutionary culture. It is this which gives Skorobogatov's work its theme and its special interest. But there is more, for by concentrating on the issues of Paul's personality as well as the substance of his reign, Skorobogatov is able to raise both the question of how important individual personalities may be in influencing a society's history, and how they become enmeshed with the imperatives which govern a culture's evolution. Skorobogatov also makes it clear that the actual materials available for studying a subject are themselves critical determinants in forming interpretations. In Paul's case, the relative paucity of data, and the self-interested nature of the memoirs and anecdotes available, shaped Paul's historical persona. The accounts of his murder, for example, reflected the prevailingly negative attitudes of the men responsible for his overthrow: the court aristocracy, governing bureaucrats, and army officers, and their testimony, not surprisingly, justified the conspiracies and coup. There was the conviction, for example, that Paul was literally insane (a view for which no serious medical evidence exists, though circumstantial arguments abound), and thus had to be removed to prevent him from doing further damage to the state. And other so-called raisons d'etat were adduced. His actual death, however, appears from these same accounts to have been less a planned murder than a consequence of the conspirators' profound personal hatred for this tsar intensified by alcohol and the horrible excitement of the moment. This may or may not be true. Paul alive would have been a serious embarrassment to Alexander's government. But however this might be, the idea that Russia lost something of value when Paul died was, according to these materials, simply laughable.
By contrast, there were balanced assessments of Paul's reign which, by the second decade of the twentieth century had already mined a rich vein of official documents and publications. Moreover, the mounting interest in liberal-constitutional antecedents for the revolutionary changes emerging in 1905, and a heightened sensibility to the importance of social groups and their special interests throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, framed new questions to be asked of the documentary record. Dmitri Miliutin's major work on Russia's role in the Second Coalition against France, which appeared on the eve of the Crimean War, used a wealth of primary documentation to portray Paul sympathetically as a statesman of principle who was a victim of Austrian machinations, Prussian self-interest, and British bad faith. Subsequently a host of writers from Peter Lebedev through V. O. Kliuchevskii (probably the best of Russia's new breed of social-cultural historians), V. I. Semevskii (who saw Paul taking the first steps on the road to peasant emancipation) and above all M. V. Klochkov, limned Paul as a military and political reformer, an absolutist with concern for the whole society, and an individual who in important ways saw a new path for Russia. The most fully developed position was Klochkov's who not only impeached the whole of the memoirist tradition as essentially unreliable but portrayed Paul as a thoughtful reformer whose program amounted to transforming the entire administrative structure, and whose initial legislative efforts involved a baseline ministerial development, anticipating reforms which were carried out in the first years of Alexander's reign. There was as well a host of specific changes intended to protect society against recurrent famines, to modify the gentry's absolute authority over its serf population, and even to guarantee the peasants time to work on their own lands. Klochkov, if taken seriously, gives us a wholly different view of Paul, and even suggests the point made above, that Paul's murder was a loss to Russia's future modernity. These judgements rested on close analysis of institutional records and were a universe removed from the memoirs and anecdotes which framed the conventional interpretation of Paul's life and reign.
Plainly Skorobogatov is sympathetic to both the more inclusive and objective methodology, and the more favorable view of Paul the new writing produced But he also seems aware that there was much in Paul's personality which reinforced hostilities generated by his reforming zeal. Nor were all of his reforms well conceived. On the contrary certain of them were simply abused (the Bank of Assistance for the Nobility is an obvious instance), or totally misunderstood. Here Paul's cheveleresque invocation of the Knights of Malta would be a notable case in point. Nor can even Miliutin entirely gloss over the persistent threat the tsar's “inconsequence” posed to his allies in 1798-99, while for excess of punctilio, his treatment of marshall Alexander Suvorov could stand for a host of other instances. What we may call Paul's negative side was thoroughly adumbrated in general N. K. Shil'der's massive political biography which, in the Russian edition stops just short of openly justifying the tsar's deposition and murder. (A French abridgement, published in Paris, was either more careless or more open.) Shil'der, in contrast with Klochkov et.al. gives Paul virtually no credit for positive achievements while relating a whole host of errors and instances of malfeasance. Paul was a pathologically bad ruler according to Shil'der, and behind his comprehensive criticisms, voiced in tones of historical objectivity, lies N. M. Karamzin’s bitter conclusion set down in 1810, though published much later, that Paul was one of only two authentic despots in Russia's history, and thereby a major blot on the autocratic record.
A position between the Klochkov school and the Shil'der tendency came to be occupied by E. S. Shumigorskii who, in sheer volume, eclipsed any other historian writing on Paul. Skorobogatov is very good on Shumigorskii, devoting a long and by no means uncritical section to his work. Shumigorskii insisted on the importance of understanding how Paul was viewed by his contemporaries throughout Catherine's reign as well as in his own time, and hence expanded the use of memoirs, personal correspondence, and anecdotes. He toyed with the importance of Paul's emotional instability, and developed the idea of a crisis in the last months of the reign. He was inadequate in dealing with Paul's political thinking, including the legislative program, though he accepted Paul as a reforming absolutist rather than a mere despot. Certainly his vision of Paul was superior to Shil'der's, more rounded, more effective in analysing the roots of action, but it was weak on the underlying potential of Paul's “Prussianism” and what may have been Paul's vision for Russia's future.
Ultimately, Paul appears in Skorobogatov's summary as a bifurcated figure though the split is less dramatic than the opposition of “democratic” to “despotic” Paul. Certainly Paul believed in the hereditary principle as well as monarchical absolutism. He also saw himself as an interventionist monarch who drilled his own troops and personally disciplined those who needed it. The elements of a rule of laws, not men, Klochkov, Kizevetter, or even Kliuchevskii to the contrary notwithstanding, were not part of Paul's practice of governance. He plainly intended to discipline the officer corps, the court aristocracy, the state administration, and the landed gentry. But his purpose, it might be suggested, was to recall those elements to their social responsibilities, and to make them a worthy governing class. His intentions toward the peasants seem less certain. The ukaz on work days was, in fact, a suggestion with no means of enforcement, though one must also recognise that where Paul was concerned, his suggestions were intended to have the force of law. His sons and successors, Alexander and especially Nicholas, expended enormous legislative energy to render gentry rule over their peasants more humane, and to devise punishments for those serf-owners who were dissolute, wasteful, abusive, drunken, and above all poor custodians of the property they held. Paul, whose commitment to the people who worked his lands was widely attested, could have written those later statutes, (This “campaign for virtue” is the subject of Dr. Michelle Marrese's current, though as yet unpublished, research in the local archives of the former central gubernii.) Such efforts, whether by Paul or his successors, would be consistent with making serfdom at least a supportable institution within the autocracy rather than preparing the ground for emancipation.
The major virtue of A. V. Skorobogatov's excellent monograph is that he gives us a full and objective picture of the varied emphases found in the literature, and effectively relates those emphases to both historiographical development and to materials and methodology. He might have noted the virtual absence of personal writings by Paul (the contrast with his mother is dramatic) and the importance of the few scraps which we do have from, for example, his time under count Panin's tutelage. Perhaps Dr. Skorobogatov knows of archival depositories which hold examples of Paul personalia. If so, this would be an important find indeed, as would further reliable information on Paul's work habits and modes of communication with his servitors after he became tsar. Finally, this excellent book needs an index and a bibliography of cited works and authors. The footnotes are full, but the book, though short, is so rich and so wide ranging that individual works and the comments on them are often difficult to find, while the bibliography would be a useful starting point for anyone wanting to pursue further the character and reign of tsar Paul I.