The 12 Apostles of Law – Lawyers who Changed Law, State and Society

Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia

THE 12 APOSTLES OF RUSSIAN LAW LAWYERS WHO CHANGED LAW, STATE AND SOCIETY

by Pavel Krasheninnikov Translated from the Russian by Christopher Culver Book cover and interior design by Max Mendor Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia Š 2019, Pavel Krasheninnikov Š 2019, Glagoslav Publications

www glagoslav com ISBN: 978-1-911414-93-3

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This book is in copyright No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

G l a G o S l av p u b l I C at I o n S

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Gavrila Derzhavin: the forerunner . . . . . . . . . . 16 Count Speransky: an ambassador from the future . . . 32 Modest Korf: the scribe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Dmitry Nabokov and his son Vladimir Nabokov: the contributor to reforms and the knight of law . . 51 Sergei Muromtsev: the chairman . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Gabriel Shershenevich: the Mozart of law . . . . . . 82 Vasily Maklakov: the defender . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Vladimir Terebilov: the patriarch of law . . . . . . . 105 Yuri Kalmykov: the man of the Caucasus . . . . . . . . 113 Stanislav Khokhlov: the “comrade-in-arms� . . . . . 124 Sergei Alexeyev: the legal romantic . . . . . . . . . 134 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Introduction For Russians who studied their country’s history in the Soviet era, without evincing any especial curiosity, that history seems a wide and straight path, which starts from the October Revolution of 1917.

Before that, as the comedian Arkady Raikin put it, times were tough and everything was bad. And then, under the leadership of the Party, the Soviet people went from one victory to another on the path to a bright future. But it was only when this high-speed highway suddenly gave way under the catastrophic collapse of the economy and people’s complete loss of trust in that same Party, and the image of a “bright future” dissipated like the morning fog, that many thinking people started to show a genuine interest in those “tough times”.

Now there was access to works by pre-revolutionary historians and writers, archival materials, all kinds of samizdat writings and publications imported from abroad. Today, when Russians read of events from a century or two ago, they might feel a powerful deja vu. It might seem that what was written in that era was actually written about our own.

It is no accident that the satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin is now among the most widely quoted authors in Russia. These days, history no longer seems any kind of straight path, but rather a Möbius strip, where you think you are going straight but constantly returning to the starting point.

This can be especially seen in the history of attempts to establish the rule of law in Russia. For example, many writings by Mikhail Speransky seem today to be completely modern and relevant to us. The works of Gabriel Shershenevich might have been written just yesterday.

And the thoughts of Vasily Maklakov about why the Constitutional Democrats in 1905–1917 failed in their efforts to lay the foundation of a state ruled by law, appear too to serve as an epitaph for the efforts of reformers in the 1990s.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a turning point in Russian history. It was at this time that the Russian intelligentsia Introduction

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began to form, and a movement of liberalism arose in opposition to the arbitrariness of autocracy and called for the creation of a constitutional state grounded in law. As Yuri Lotman noted in his series of television lectures Intelligentnost', the beginnings of this process go back to a decree by Peter III of February 20, 1762 (“Manifesto on Freedoms for the Aristocracy”) and one by Catherine the Great of April 21, 1785 (“Charter for the Rights, Freedoms, and Privileges of the Noble Russian Gentry”). These granted the aristocracy certain class rights: exemption from compulsory service to the state and corporal punishment, the right to “travel unhindered to foreign lands” and “provide service to other European states allied with Russia.” Before this, all aristocrats had been obliged to personally serve the state (the sovereign), mainly in military affairs. Even among the state officials of the Russian Empire, it is difficult to find one who did not wear an officer’s uniform for several years in his youth.

The strict regulation of practically all aspects of state service, society, and sometimes even people’s personal lives according to an army model that Peter the Great introduced, came to clash with real life, which could never be forced into such a strict mold. This led to an unprecedented rise in corruption and all kinds of abuses. For example, Peter the Great decreed that before attaining the first officer rank, an aristocrat should serve for a lengthy period of time as a common soldier. However, in the real world such rules were easily worked around: a newborn baby would be enlisted in the military and considered merely on leave, but all this time counted as years of service, and when the now-fourteen-year-old adolescent entered his regiment, he was immediately promoted to sergeant, then higher ranks, especially if he had someone highly placed to intercede for him. Someone who did not enjoy such opportunities (such as the great poet Gavrila Derzhavin) had to serve his full stint as a common soldier before being promoted to officer.1 Aristocrats who had shied away from service to the state were to some extent stripped of their rights. If a nobleman had really never served – something only the very wealthy could allow themselves – and mainly resided abroad, then his family would create a fictitious service 1 Lotman Yu.M. Besedy o russkoi kul'ture. Byt i traditsii russkogo dvoryanstva (XVIII – nachalo XIX veka). SPb.: Iskusstvo-SPb., 1994, pp. 18–45.

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history for him. Now the serving and non-serving were equal in rights and in public opinion. A psychology of servitude not only ceased to dominate among the aristocracy, but also came to seem unattractive in their eyes. The quip of Alexander Griboyedov “I’d be keen to serve, but not to be servile” was widely taken up. Among the aristocracy there arose such “native traits” of an intelligentsia as a sense of their own worth, independence, and a belief in justice. It is remarkable that all of the Decembrists served, almost all were active-duty officers, but it was precisely in their circles that a distinction arose between the concepts of merely “being a servant to the state” and truly “serving”. For merely being a servant, one got promotions in rank or military honors and was granted estates, but for truly serving, the sole reward was often exile or hard labor. One member of the aristocracy, who never even nominally served, was Alexander Pushkin. When Nicholas I awarded him the rank of valet de chambre, it was a mere mockery of things.

It is evident that the increasingly widespread quality of being a freethinker served as a fertile ground for the concept of the rule of law to emerge, one based on the primacy of the law and the rejection of arbitrary actions characteristic of authoritarian regimes.

The history of the creation, development, and promotion of the idea of a state ruled by law in Russia, is an important part of the history of the country, and we feel it has not been sufficiently appreciated and still awaits the attention of scholars and thinkers. I hope that the essays presented herein on various legal minds who changed law, state, and society, will serve an initial step towards this important and challenging task.

In speaking of the establishment of rule by law, we distinguish three main stages. The first is the creation of systematic and consistent legislation based on the principles of individual freedom and the right to private property. Second is the creation of an effective system of law enforcement and laws governing law-enforcement authorities. Finally, the third stage is when the norms of a culture of law enter into the public consciousness, i.e. the development of the legal consciousness of the masses.

Although Russia had never lacked talented legislators, and many laws that they had drawn up over a two-hundred-year history were, one might say, at an international level, the two other situations were much more problematic.

Introduction

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The introduction of cultural norms into social practice is the hardest and most complicated of tasks. “Cultural norm” refers to a set of actions (either mental or “physical”) that a person carries out in certain situations of his/her life in what might be called an automatic fashion.

In our case it means the habit of relating one’s actions mainly to the law, and not to one’s own individual desires or the present moment.

However, Russian society was dominated by completely different cultural norms, which can be described by well-known sayings like “when something is not allowed, but it is greatly desired, then it can be done”, “the severity of the law is compensated by the laxity of its enforcement”, “every law has a loophole”, “judge not according to the law but according to one’s conscience”, etc.

When such legal nihilism dominates, it is difficult for a society to carry out the second task, that of creating effective law enforcement, for the police, judges, lawyers, and other ministers of the law are fully representative of their society. Where then could one find totally incorruptible police, fair judges and disinterested lawyers?

Introducing a cultural norm means that it becomes applied in social practice and is then retained for a long period of time, in spite of resistance from the norms that previously prevailed. To accomplish this, adepts of a new norm often have to give up comforts, if not their own lives. The most famous example is the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. An unimaginably large number of new Christians gave up their lives so that Christ’s teaching would become an indisputable truth for other people.

Another instructive example is the spread of heliocentrism as a key part of society’s view of the world: the brilliant Copernicus, Giordano Bruno burned at the stake, the humiliations of Galileo… Just try to convince a “normal” person, who sees with his own eyes that the sun goes around the Earth, of the opposite view, and purely on the basis of a few tables of the motion of the planets and vague conclusions…

Nonetheless, already for over four centuries this has been the indisputable truth.

The history of promoting the idea of the rule of law in Russia can be viewed as a series of attempts to introduce the corresponding cultural norms among society and hold to them. The success of these attempts can be judged by changes in how law, the state and society operate.

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One forerunner of the whole illustrious series of outstanding legal minds who dedicated their lives to serving the law, was Gavrila Derzhavin. He was not a lawyer, and was essentially self-taught. Derzhavin was a real trooper, who made his way through civil service from the lowest depths to the greatest heights. However, he distinguished himself by his total rejection of the widespread corruption and other wrongdoing of those who held authority at that time. In all the many posts he held, Derzhavin actively fought against bribe-taking, and on more than one occasion he was dismissed from these posts. Catherine the Great, Paul I, and Alexander I appreciated his efforts, but they could not understand his extreme zeal, which led him into conflicts with each of them. Nonetheless, Alexander I would appoint him in 1802 the first minister of justice and attorney-general of the Russian Empire. This was, first and foremost, because the word “law” had become for Derzhavin a source of the highest and purest feelings, an object of sincere affection. The law came to serve as a sort of new religion, and in Derzhavin’s poetry the word “Law”, like God, was associated with love and fear.2 Thus, the idea of the supremacy of the law was first introduced into the social practices of the Russian Empire.

This idea was increasingly taken up by the leading minds of the day. One vivid exponent of it was Mikhail Speransky. His work, though it never enjoyed wide application, nevertheless became what one might call the first rough sketch of Russia as a state ruled by law. One could think it was written today, against the outrages of our time. It is no accident that the Decembrists, whom in some sense he engendered, saw him as a leader for a Russian republic, but the reactionary policies that came after the Decembrists’ uprising and Nicholas I’s accession, long slowed the spread of the idea of the rule of law. This was a time when thinkers had to hold on to the achievements they had made and not let the flame die out, even if they sometimes had to take a step backward. As one of those “preservers”, Modest Korf can be mentioned. He was associated with important historical events of the mid-nineteenth century that played a role in the further history of introducing the norm of rule by law in Russia. At the same time, work on the development of a theory of civil law began. In this, the works of Dmitry Meyer (1819–1856) played a prominent role. He was the first 2

Khodasevich V.F. Derzhavin. M.: Statut, 2011, p. 88.

Introduction

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such thinker in Russia, the father of Civil Law in Russia. Incidentally, Meyer also had a significant influence on the thought of Leo Tolstoy.

On February 18, 1855, Nicholas I was succeeded on the throne

by Alexander II. It was under the latter’s reign that many principles of Russia’s administrative structure and legislative system were established. In 1864 legal reforms were carried out, providing for trial by jury, a court of elected judges and applying to every citizen, and bar. The reform proclaimed all equal before the court, the independence of courts from state administration, the irremovability of judges, openness of proceedings, the adversarial system, the accused’s right to defense, and presumption of innocence. The role of prosecutors was also reorganized. A prominent role in these reforms was played by the famous lawyer and secretary of the State Council, Sergei Zarudny. The implementation of the reforms was led by the Minister of Justice, Dmitry Zamyatin.

Obviously, such a significant step towards the rule of law could not have happened without the efforts of those who had earlier called for this idea and kept it alive in public consciousness. Now the seeds sown by Derzhavin and Speransky, and carefully cared for by their successors, bloomed.

In the last years of Alexander II’s reign, against the backdrop of protest movements in society, unprecedented police measures were introduced. They essentially wiped out the Judicial Charter of 1864.

The authorities and police gained the right to imprison anyone they suspected, to carry out searches and arrests without approval of a court, and to refer political crimes to military tribunals with punishments established for wartime.

Alexander II was assassinated by the Narodnaya Volya movement on March 1, 1881. This tragic event put a final stop to any reforms. Alexander III then ascended to the throne. His council of ministers rejected the so-called Loris-Melikov constitution drawn up under Alexander II, a document which had called for, among other things, the creation of a representative body with full powers to pass legislation. Instead, the Manifesto on Unshakable Autocracy was signed on April 29, 1881, and promulgated the following day.3 3

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“O prizyve vsekh vernykh poddannykh k sluzheniyu veroyu i pravdoyu THE 12 AP OSTLES OF RUSSIAN LAW

The counter-reforms of the late nineteenth century put an end to democratic reforms. The idea of a state ruled by law was again on the sidelines of political life, and a new era of merely keeping the flame was ushered in. For example, Alexander II’s minister of justice Dmitry Nabokov, who managed to remain in his post under Alexander III (a rare achievement), managed to protect one of the main gains of the reform era: trial by jury and the irremovability of judges. Significant roles were also played by outstanding attorneys of this period such as Fyodor Plevako, Vladimir Spasovich, Vasily Maklakov, and others.

In their fiery speeches before the courts in defense of the law against arbitrary actions, the desire to not step away from a strictly lawbased approach merely for the sake of political expediency served to protect the norm of rule by law under the conditions of this new rollback.

The next decisive attempt to introduce the idea of rule by law into the mass culture came during the inter-revolutionary period of 1905–1917. This attempt led to the creation of the first fully empowered legislative and governmental body in Russian history, the State Duma.

An extremely important role in this was played by the Constitutional Democratic Party (the “Cadets”), whose leadership included such outstanding legal minds as Sergei Muromtsev, Gabriel Shershenevich, Maxim Vinaver, Vladimir Dmitriyevich Nabokov (son of Dmitry Nakobov), and Vasily Maklakov.

The establishment of a new body to represent the people and pass laws was met with great enthusiasm by the public. Some deputies, such as Dmitry Nabokov, became real stars. Their speeches were printed in newspapers and widely discussed. It might have seemed that this institution ensuring the rule of law in Russia had been established forever. However, the Bolshevik coup put an end to these promising developments. Sergei Muromtsev and Gabriel Shershenevich would not live to see October 1917, while Vladimir Dmitriyvich Nabokov died soon after in 1922, and Maxim Vinaver in 1926. Vasily Maklakov lived a long life as a Russian emigre, through World War II and beyond.

Yego Imperatorskomu Velichestvu i Gosudarstvu, k iskoreneniyu gnusnoi kramoly, k utverzhdeniyu very i nravstvennosti, dobromu vospitaniyu detei, k istrebleniyu nepravdy i khishcheniya, k vodvoreniyu poryadka i pravdy v deistvii uchrezhdeny Rossii”, Pravitel'stvenny vestnik. 1881. No. 93.

Introduction

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His reflections on the reasons for why the rule of law in Russia was defeated remain very instructive for modern readers.

The totalitarian regime that was established from 1917 seemed to bury any hopes that a state ruled by law would be established in Russia. The formal, outer signs of legal institutions were retained, but the extrajudicial executions and special hearings (troikas) that reached verdicts without the accused present, just as before the reforms of 1864, as well as the use of “punitive psychiatry” left no doubt about the real nature of the regime. One can also mention the new civil law that denied private property. The time of the men who sought to serve the law, the innovators, was now over.

It was again an era when one could only keep the flame alive, and this was done by men of law from before the revolution, who had miraculously survived the bloody repressions and found opportunities to teach in law schools, as well as legal experts who came of age in the Soviet era and who simply felt a sense of justice and decency that prevented them from being any part of the outrages of their time.

The first group included Alexander Vinaver, a disciple and personal secretary to the first chairman of the State Duma, Sergei Muromtsev; Boris Cherepakhin, Vladimir Reicher, Anatoly Venediktov, Kateryna Fleyshyts, Lazar Lunts, and others. Representatives of the latter group were Vladimir Terebilov, Yuri Kalmykov, Vladimir Kudryavtsev, and many other lawyers, sometimes unknown to the general public, who chose serving the law, and not the Communist regime, as their destiny.

After the beginning of perestroika in the mid-1980s, the time of lawyers seeking to build the rule of law came round again. After the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of a new Russia, there was a need for a radical transformation of legislation, based on the principle of the rule of law. An outstanding role here was played by such faithful followers of pre-revolutionary legal thinkers as Sergei Alexeyev, Anatoly Sobchak, Stanislav Khokhlov, Oleg Kutafin, Mikhail Braginsky, and Yuri Kalmykov.

Two cornerstone documents that now serve as the basis for Russia’s legislative system, the Constitution and the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, are the fruit of their labors. A considerable contribution was made by scholars of law who are still living among us today, but we have decided in these essays to focus on those who have already left us.

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Of course, the ups and downs of the idea of the supremacy of law over a period of two centuries, was determined mainly by the sociopolitical situation in the country. The granting of liberties to the aristocracy, the freeing of the serfs, and the collapse of a state based on a single ideology led society to seek the enshrinement of the supremacy of the law. These were periods of innovative legal thinkers who significantly pushed the legal system further, and in doing so changed the state and society. However, “revolutionary” periods and times of reform gave way to a period of reactionary policies and counterreforms, when the task of holding to what one had achieved was on the minds of leading figures. It is difficult to answer the question of who played the more important role: the “innovators” or the “preservers”.

It is hardly possible to even list all of Russia’s outstanding lawyers over the past two hundred years, let alone those whose names have sunk into obscurity but who faithfully served the law from their sometimes little-noticed posts. In other words, there were what we might call apostles of the law and unknown servants of it.

The choice of “apostles”, to whom we dedicate the present essays, was naturally to a certain degree a subjective one. These are people whose work is closest to my heart, and some of them I knew personally. I hope that other curious readers will find them to be interesting personalities and ones worth appreciating.

Introduction

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Gavrila Derzhavin: the forerunner I built myself a monument, eternal and miraculous, It’s higher than the Pyramids, than metal it is harder; Swift winds and thunder cannot knock it down The flight of time cannot demolish it.

Gavrila Derzhavin

Gavrila Derzhavin was such a massive and complex personality, and the story of his life is so amazing that it might serve as a source for many adventure novels. Interested readers will find their own way through all the twists and turns of his life story. However, this essay seeks to draw attention to some lesser-known pages from his biography.

I first learned about Derzhavin back in the 1970s. My image of him was much the same as for the majority of Soviet citizens who were not experts in history and literature. Alexander Pushkin’s famous words about Derzhavin were known to anyone who had been to school. In the Soviet Union people knew also of Stepan Razin, Pugachev, and others who were essentially criminals against the state, and bandits and murderers too, but whom state propaganda had transformed into nearly warriors against tsarism, fighting for freedom and equality.

In the 1980s, when fate gave me an opportunity to study law, I learned that this Derzhavin had been Russia’s first minister of justice, an outstanding civil servant, and one of the founding figures of the Russian language as it is spoken today both inside Russia and in other countries. Most surprising for me, however, was the fact that Derzhavin was the first influential aristocrat to speak of the law and legality. He introduced to the Russian public the idea of the supremacy of the law, and by doing so he became the forerunner for many outstanding legal thinkers who promoted the rule of law in Russia over the next two centuries.

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In 1997, I first visited Gavrila Derzhavin’s grave at the Khutyn Monastery near Novgorod. In 1998, when I was appointed Minister of Justice, my colleagues who knew of my fondness for this great man of the people, presented me with a portrait of Derzhavin which still hangs in my office today.

Gavrila Derzhavin was born on July 3, 1743, in Kazan. His father’s line can be traced back to Morza Bagrim, who hailed from the Golden Horde and converted to the Orthodox faith. One of his descendants, Narbekov, was given the nickname Derzhava (“Power”) and thus the family came to be called the Derzhavins.4 Gavrila’s father Roman Nikolayevich had served in the army and married Fyokla Gorina. Both were of aristocratic lineage but poor, and therefore Gavrila had no opportunity to study in Moscow or Saint Petersburg.

He was however taught to read and write by his mother, and by the age of five he began to do so quite actively.5 He was educated mainly by men of the church, though after the family moved to Orenburg he went to a school for aristocratic children. In spite of the coarseness of his teachers and their by and large low level of literacy, Gavrila managed to squeeze out as much as possible from this schooling and even learned German, his teacher of which was a German living there in exile. Soon the family returned to Kazan, where Derzhavin enrolled at the gymnasium that had just been founded.

After three years of studying there, Derzhavin enlisted as a common soldier in the Preobrazhensky Regiment. This young man, who had had humanitarian inclinations practically since birth, was now trained in marching, shooting, etc. and read books by night.

The Preobrazhensky Regiment supported the overthrow of Peter III and his replacement on the throne by Catherine the Great.

Derzhavin was there, too, and along with everyone else he swore allegiance to the young Catherine. Derzhavin was nineteen years old.

The period from the death of Peter the Great until Catherine the Great’s ascension to the throne had been dubbed by the Russian 4 Khodasevich V.F. Derzhavin. M.: Statut, 2011, p. 5 (some sources give a date of birth of June 3, 1743 and a birthplace near Kazan').

5 Savelyev N. “Zhizn' G.R. Derzhavina”, in: Sochineniya Derzhavina. Ch. 1.

SPb.: Tip. Il'i Glazunova i Ko, 1845, p. II. Gavrila Derzhavin: the forerunner

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historian Vasily Klyuchevsky the era of palace coups. Over this period, six monarchs sat on the Russian throne after winning it by complex palace intrigues or coups directly supported by the military.

In fact, ascending to the throne in an extra-legal fashion through a military coup was more the rule in those times than the exception.

In 1722, Peter the Great had abolished succession by means of a will or conciliar appointment, replacing it instead with personal appointment. However, Peter himself did not manage to name his successor. With the help of the Guard Regiments, the throne passed to Catherine I. After the death of Catherine I in 1727, according to her will Peter the Great’s grandson was proclaimed Peter II. However, he died quickly thereafter and Anna Ioannovna, Duchess of Courland and the daughter of Peter the Great’s brother Ivan Alexeyevich, proclaimed herself empress, abolished the Supreme Privy Council, and sent its most active members to Siberia.

Not long before her own death, Anna Ioannovna declared as her successor Ivan VI, grandson of Catherine Ivanovna (daughter of Ivan V). During a further coup, carried out on November 25, 1741, Peter the Great’s daughter Elizabeth was proclaimed empress.

After Elizabeth’s death, the Russian throne was briefly occupied

by Peter III from 1761 until 1762. He proved incapable of governing the state. There was yet another coup by his wife, Catherine the Great, and aided by the Ismailovsky and Semenovsky Regiments, and Catherine proclaimed herself empress in 1762. The other Guards Regiments also supported the coup. The Senate and Synod swore allegiance to her. Attempts by Peter III to enter into negotiations came to nothing, and he was forced to personally sign a document that Catherine sent him according to which he, “by his own will”, was abdicating from the throne. Thus, the era of palace coups came to an end.

A year after this coup, Derzhavin was promoted to corporal. In the evenings and nights after work he read Lomonosov, Sumarokov, and German authors. He wrote short poems and played cards (and not only for fun, especially on leave). In 1769, Derzhavin and his associated Maximov were prosecuted for what would today be called fraud. The consequences might have been severe, but they managed to avoid punishment. As Vladislav Khodasevich writes, this

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“immediately sobered him up”.6 He continued his service, and at the beginning of Pugachev’s rebellion in 1773 Derzhavin was promoted to junior officer.

During Catherine the Great’s reign, by 1773 (i.e. the outbreak of Pugachev’s rebellion), historians of the Russian peasantry count some forty uprisings, but there were likely even more.7 The revolt of the Yaik Cossacks, which grew into a full-scale war against Catherine the Great under the leadership of Yemelyan Pugachev, began on September 17, 1773, and lasted until the middle of 1775 in spite of the Bashkir-Kazakh forces’ defeat and Pugachev’s capture in September 1774.

The uprising swept across the lands of the Yaik Cossack forces, the Orenburg region, the Urals, the Kama River region, Bashkiria, part of Western Siberia, and the Middle and Lower Volga regions. In the course of the uprising, the rebel ranks were swelled by members of the indigenous peoples of the Volga region and the Urals (Bashkirs, Tatars, etc.), workers at factories in the Urals, and part of the peasantry of the provinces that saw fighting.

In November 1773, Catherine appointed Gen. Alexander Bibikov as leader of the efforts to suppress the uprising. He was also tasked with investigations into Pugachev’s accomplices.8 Derzhavin convinced Gen. Bibikov to include him in the investigative commission. For Gavrila, who had no legal training (but who did at the time anyway?), this would serve simultaneously as both law school and law practice.

This training might have been of an unorthodox sort, but it served him well. Derzhavin investigated treason, robbery, murder, prepared speeches to recruit forces against Pugachev, rushed through towns with secret orders, and personally took part, when necessary, in suppressing the uprising. He made lists of those involved in the rebellion, kept records of those who had suffered from it, and sometimes his detachment carried out punishments (from caning to the death penalty). Several times he was nearly killed himself.

6

Khodasevich V.F. Op. cit., p. 25.

7 See Firsov N.N. “Krest'yanskiye volneniya do XIX v.”, in: Velikaya reforma: Russkoye obshchestvo i krest'yansky vopros v proshlom i nastoyashchem / Istoricheskaya komissiya uchebnogo otdela ORTZ; ed. by A.K. Dzhivelegov, S.P. Mel'gunov, V.I. Pichet. Vol. II. M.: Tov-vo I.D. Svetina, 1911, p. 44.

8

See Khodasevich V.F. Op. cit., p. 31

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After the defeat of Pugachev’s forces, Derzhavin led one of the groups seeking to apprehend him. However, Pugachev was handed over by some of his closest comrades after they were encircled… In Simbirsk the captive Pugachev was shown to Derzhavin, who had come to report to commander-in-chief Pyotr Ivanovich Panin. Derzhavin described Pugachev as follows: “He had a roundish face, his hair and his beard were black and unkempt. He was of average build, with large black eyes. He was thirty-five or forty years old.”9 After the uprising was put down, Pyotr Ivanovich Papin gave the order, with tacit agreement from his superiors (and perhaps with their direct consent), to “whip severely all peasants” who had been involved in the rebellion, “and cut an ear off every plowman unfit for military service to serve as a lasting memory”… Even that was not enough: out of every three hundred men in the provinces that had seen rebellion [i.e. not necessarily rebelling peasants but merely peasants in those regions. – P.K.], Panin ordered that one be hanged, and the bodies of the executed were to be placed along all the roads…10 Of course, all this was done without any trials or consequences. Gavrila took no part in this: war is one thing, but terror is another.

After executions and other punishments were carried out on the main participants in the rebellion, Catherine the Great sought to wipe out any memory of the events connected with Pugachev’s movement, which had shown her rule not in the best light among European states, and so she ordered that all places associated with the uprising be renamed. Thus, the stanitsa Zimoveyskaya on the Don where Pugachev was born, was renamed to Potemkinskaya, and the house where Pugachev was born was ordered burnt. The Yaik River was renamed the Ural, the Yaik Cossack Host was renamed the Ural Cossacks, the town of Yaitsk became Uralsk, and Verkhneyaitskaya was 9 [Derzhavin G.R.] “Zapiski iz izvestnykh vsem proisshestviev i podlinnykh del, zaklyuchayushchiye v sebe zhizn' Gavrily Romanovicha Derzhavina”, in: Derzhavin G.R. Soch., in 9 volumes. Ed. by Ya.K. Grot. Vol. 6. SPb., 1871, p. 514.

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Firsov N.N. Op. cit., pp. 54–55.

THE 12 AP OSTLES OF RUSSIAN LAW

changed to Verkhneuralsk. Pugachev’s name was declared anathema by the Church just as Stepan Razin’s was. To talk about the events, one had to use terms like “the well-known popular unrest” and so on.

In the Soviet years, however, the memory of Pugachev and his peers was celebrated. In Russia and Ukraine there are streets named after Pugachev, for example, and in Saransk (capital of Russia’s Mordovia region) a monument was erected to Pugachev.

After all the fighting, destruction, blood, and intrigues, Derzhavin got a chance to turn to literary endeavors. In 1775, he wrote a great deal of poetry. According to the rules of writing verse that prevailed then, Derzhavin mainly wrote in the style of Mikhail Lomonosov. Derzhavin began writing poetry already as a young soldier, but he became known to a wide reading public only later, after he published the ode Felitsa in 1783. He was forty years old.

Derzhavin’s odes, which are universally recognized as the summit of Russian literary classicism, are marked by a high degree of individuality. Derzhavin questioned and lowered lofty ways of writing, adapting them to the norms of the spoken language, in a time when classicist poets only used vernacular language in “low” genres such as fables, epigrams, and satire. As Gogol wrote, “His tone is vaster than any Russian poet. Cut it with a scalpel, and you’ll find that this comes from his unusual combination of the loftiest words with the simplest and lowliest ones.”11 On January 1, 1777, Derzhavin was promoted to captain-lieutenant of the guard. However, things were not easy in the service. His debts and, especially, backbiting instead of a reward for the Pugachev campaign drove him on February 15, 1777, to leave the army for the civil service. He was given the rank of collegiate councilor and three hundred serfs in Belorussia.12 In August 1777, Derzhavin was sent to the Senate’s State Treasury Department, under Alexander Vyazemsky.

On April 18, 1778, Derzhavin married Yekaterina Yakovlevna Bastidon, daughter of a former valet to Peter III and a mother of unknown maiden name who had been nurse to Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich (later Emperor Paul I).

11 Gogol' N.V. “V chem zhe, nakonets, sushchestvo russkoi poèzii i v chem yeyo osobennost'”, in: Sobr. soch., in 6 volumes. Vol. 6. M.: Khudozh. lit., 1952, p. 374.

12

Savelyev N. Op. cit., p. XX.

Gavrila Derzhavin: the forerunner

21

Acknowledgements I would like to take the opportunity to thank my teachers, comrades in arms and colleagues who have influenced the writing of this book.

It has drawn on a large number of sources, both printed and oral testimony. Without them, the book would not have been the same.

It would be impossible to name everyone, but I would like to single out Alexander Makovsky, Veniamin Yakovlev, Maria Kirillova, Sergei Stepashin, Bronislav Gongalo, A. R. Urmanov, Oleg Shilokhvost, Konstantin Belyayev, Sergei Stepanov, Mikhail Kazantsev, Oktyabrina Kalmykova, N.S. Alexeyeva, Anna Sirotkina, N. A. Abramushkina, N. V. Sopryakov, Vera Stankovskaya, T. V. Malchikova, A. G. Dolgov, A. L. Solovyev, and my wife Yekaterina, as well as the staff of the Parliamentary Library, the publisher Statut, Consultant Plus, and the administration of the Donskoye Cemetery.

148

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Index of Names Adamovich, G. V. – 99, 103 Alexander I – 11, 25, 34-35, 37, 39, 44 Alexander II – 12, 13, 30, 42, 47, 48, 50, 54, 58 Alexander III – 12, 13, 47, 58 Alexandrov, P. A. – 55 Alexeyev, S. N. – 136, 137 Alexeyev, S. S. – 14, 116, 117, 126, 127, 128, 130, 132, 133, 134-145, 147 Alexeyeva, I. S. – 139 Alexeyeva, N. N. – 136 Alexeyeva, N. S. – 139, 148 Alexeyeva, Z. M. (maiden name Golubtsova) – 139, 144 Alexis, Tsar (Aleksey Mikhailovich) – 46 Andreyev, A. M. – 33 Andropov, Y. V. – 112 Anna Ioannovna, the Empress of Russia – 18 Arkhipov, I. L. – 61, 62, 63, 64 Astrakhan, Ye. I. – 83 Auden, W. H. – 110 Avilov, G. Y. – 116 Azef, Ye. F. – 99 Baten'kov, G. S. – 38 Batyushkov, K. N. – 29 Beilis, M. M. – 65, 96, 97-98 Belyayev, K. P. – 132, 133, 145, 148 Bibikov, A. I. – 19 Biskupsky, V. V. – 68 Bogolepov, N. P. – 95 Bogolyubov, A. S. – 55 Braginsky, M. I. – 14, 116, 117, 143 Brezhnev, L. I. – 107, 109, 112 Index of Names

149

Brodsky, J. A. – 109-110 Bruno, G. – 10 Bulgakov, S. N. – 99 Bunin, I. A. – 68 Butkov, V. P. – 53 Butskovsky, N. A. – 53 Catherine I – 18 Catherine the Great (Catherine II) – 8, 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 36 Chaplygin, S. A. – 91 Chelyshev, M. Yu. – 84 Cherepakhin, B. B. – 14, 139 Chernenko, K. U. – 112 Chukovskaya, L. A. – 110 Chukovsky, K. I. – 66 Constantine, Grand Duke (Konstantin Pavlovich of Russia) – 39 Copernicus, N. – 10 Danevsky, P. N. – 53 Delvig, A. A. – 28 Derzhavin, G. R. – 8, 11, 12, 16-31, 124, 146 Derzhavin, R. N. – 17 Derzhavina, D. A. (maiden name Dyakova) – 23, 30 Derzhavina, Ye. Ya. (maiden name Bastidon) – 21, 23 Diderot, D. – 33 Dmitrevsky, I. A. – 30 Dmitriev, I. I. – 23 Dozortsev, V. A. – 116, 129, 143 Dzhanshiev, G. A. – 53 Dzhivelegov, A. K. – 19 Elizabeth of Russia (Elizabeth I) – 18 Estulin, I. V. – 84 Fabrichny, S. Yu. – 31 Faibishenko, V. – 109 Fedorenko, A. P. – 60 Filippov, A. N. – 41

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Firsov, N. N. – 19, 20 Fleyshyts, K. A. – 14 Foinitsky, I. Ya. – 54 Frisch, E. V. – 57 Fuchs, E. Ya. – 58 Fyodorov, N. V. – 160 Galilei, G. – 10 Gamzatov, R. G. – 113 Gastfreind, N. A. – 46 Gdlyan, T. K. – 111 Gessen, I. V. – 62, 66, 68 Gessen, V. V. – 85 Gezhelinsky, F. F. – 46 Gogol, N. V. – 21 Golubov, G. D. – 117, 131 Gongalo, B. M. – 129, 130, 132, 144, 148 Gorbachev, M. S. – 110, 112 Goremykin, I. L. – 79 Gorina, F. A. – 17 Grin, Ts. I. – 48 Grinev, N. N. – 31 Guchkov, A. I. – 67 Herzen, A. I. – 43, 48 Ivan V of Russia – 18 Ivan VI Antonovich of Russia – 18 Ivanov, N. V. – 111 Jhering, R. von – 73, 74 Kalmykov, I. Kh. – 114 Kalmykov, Yu. Kh. – 14, 113-123, 128, 129, 143, 147 Kalmykova, O. R. – 120, 148 Karamzin, N. M. – 23, 29, 36 Kasso, L. A. – 41, 90 Kerensky, A. F. – 67, 108, 112 Index of Names

151

Khabibullina, A. Sh. – 84 Khalfina, R. O. – 116 Khodasevich, V. F. – 11, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 37 Khokhlov, A. V. – 124 Khokhlov, S. A. – 14, 116, 117, 118, 120, 124-133, 142, 143, 147 Khokhlov, V. A. – 124 Khokhlova, Ye. A. – 124 Khrushchev, N. S. – 27, 106, 109, 112 Khvostov, D. I. – 29 Kiesewetter, A. A. – 78, 79 Kirillova, M. Ya. – 135, 139, 148 Klimentova, M. N. (married name Muromtseva) – 77 Klyuchevsky, V. O. – 18, 78 Kochubey, V. P. – 30, 34, 38 Kofman, V. I. – 126 Koni, A. F. – 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 Korf, A. (H.) – 44 Korf, F. von – 60 Korf, M. A. – 11, 35, 38, 39, 43-50, 146 Korf, O. S. (maiden name Smirnova) – 44 Kosygi, A. N. – 107 Kozakov, A. V. – 133 Kozlov, A. F. – 139 Kozyr', O. M. – 116 Krasavchikov, O. A. – 125 Krasheninnikov, N. S. – 97 Krasheninnikov, P. V. – 25, 41, 118, 122, 129 Krasheninnikova, Ye. V. – 129, 148 Krasnokutsky, V. A. – 85 Kravtsov, B. V. – 106 Krylov, I. A. – 29 Krylov, N. I. – 73 Kudryavtsev, V. N. – 14 Kuprin, A. I. – 68 Kurakin, A. B. – 34 Kushner, A. S. – 105 Kutafin, O. Ye. – 14

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Lednitsky, A. R. – 88, 89, 95 Lenin, V. I. – 106, 108, 112, 140 Levin, N. F. – 52 Librovich, S. F. – 55, Lobanov-Rostovsky, D. I. – 45 Lomonosov, M. V. – 18, 21 Lopukhin, P. V. – 34 Loris-Melnikov, M. T. – 12, 58 Lotman, Yu. M. – 8 Lunts, L. A. – 14 Lushchikov, S. G. – 106 Maklakov, A. N. – 95 Maklakov, N. A. – 103 Maklakov, V. A. – 7, 13, 64, 80, 93-104, 146 Maklakova, L. F. (pen name L. Nelidova) – 95 Maklakova, Ye. V. (maiden name Cheredeyeva) – 95 Makovsky, A. L. – 41, 83, 117, 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 143, 148 Malenkov, G. M. – 112 Malinovsky, V. F. – 44 Mandelstam, M. L. – 80 Marienhof, A. B. – 84 Matusovsky, M. – 82 Medvedev, D. A. – 117 Mel'gunov, S. P. – 19 Merezhkovsky, D. S. – 68 Meshchersky, V. P. – 96 Meyer, D. I. – 11, 12, 126 Mezentsov, N. V. – 57 Mikeshin, M. O. – 30 Mikhail Vasilyevich (Speransky’s father) – 33 Milyukov, P. – 62, 66, 67, 68, 72 Mitrophan of Voronezh, Saint – 30 Mittermaier, C. J. A. – 41 Morozov, V. Ye. – 96 Muraviev, N. V. – 58 Muromtsev, A. A. – 72 Muromtsev, S. A. – 13, 14, 62, 70-81, 87, 88, 89, 92, 95, 126, 138, 146 Index of Names

153

Muromtseva, A. N. (maiden name Kostomarova) – 72 Nabok, Murza – 51 Nabokov, D. N. – 13, 51-60, 87, 146 Nabokov, N. A. – 51 Nabokov, V. D. – 13, 51, 52, 59-69, 85, 87, 95, 146 Nabokov, V. V. – 51, 63, 64, 68 Nabokova, A. A. (maiden name Nazimova) – 51, 52 Nabokova, M. F. (maiden name von Korf) – 60 Nabokova, Ye. I. (maiden name Rukavishnikova) – 60 Napoleon, B. – 32, 35, 37 Narbekov – 17 Naryshkin, S. Ye. – 71 Nazimov, G. P. – 52 Nemirovich-Danchenko, V. I. – 66 Neyland, A. V. – 109 Nicholas I – 9, 11, 12, 30, 39, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49 Nicholas II – 63, 64, 77, 100, 112 Novgorodtsev, P. I. – 85 Okudzhava, B. Sh. – 134 Orlov, Yu. K. – 53, 55 Pakhman, S. V. – 34, 40 Palen, K. I. – 55 Panin, P. I. – 20 Panin, V. N. – 52 Paul I – 11, 21, 24, 25, 34 Peter II – 18 Peter III – 8, 17, 18, 21 Peter the Great (Peter I) – 8, 17, 18, 24, 29, 40, 47 Petrazycki, L. I. – 85, 87, 126 Petrunkevic, I. I. – 62 Pichet, V. I. – 19 Pilikin, G. G. – 133 Platonov, A. P. – 40 Plavsky, A. M. – 53 Plenira see Derzhavina, Ye. Ya.

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Pletnev, V. A. – 133 Plevako, F. N. – 13, 96 Pobedonostsev, K. P. – 53 Pokrovsky, I. A. – 126 Prutkov, K. – 33 Pugachev, Ye. – 16, 19-21, 24 Pushchin, I. I. – 52 Pushchin, M. I. – 52 Pushkin, A. S. – 9, 16, 27, 28, 43, 44, 45, 46, 52, 76, 102 Pushkin, V. L. – 29 Putin, V. V. – 112 Radutnaya, N. V. – 53 Rasputin, G. Ye. – 100, 101 Razin, S. – 16, 21 Reicher, V. K. – 14 Renov, E. N. – 129 Rokotov, Ya. T. – 109 Romanov, K. N. – 52, 54 Romanov, M. A. – 66, 67, 101 Rostopchin, F. V. – 36 Rovinsky, D. A. – 53 Rudaki – 51 Rudokvas, A. D. – 73 Ruzhitskaya, I. V. – 44 Sadoven, O. A. – 84 Saltykov-Shchedrin, M. Ye. – 7, 44 Savelyev, N. N. – 17, 21, 22, 24, 30 Savigny, F. C. von – 41 Sedugin, P. I. – 116 Seredonin, S. M. – 35, 41 Shabelsky-Bork, P. N. – 68 Shakhovskoi, D. I. – 72, 79 Shakhovskoy, A. A. – 29 Shcheglovitov, I. G. – 97 Shershenevich, G. F. – 7, 13, 70, 47, 75, 82-92, 95, 126, 146 Shershenevich, V. G. – 84, 93 Index of Names

155

Shershenevich, Ye. L. (maiden name Mandelstam) – 84 Sheshenin, Ye. D. – 139 Shevchenko, T. G. – 30 Sheynin, L. R. – 108 Shilokhvost, O. Yu. – 116, 148 Shishkov, A. S. – 29, 37 Shubin, D. P. – 53 Shubin, Yu. A. – 31 Shumikhin, S. V. – 44 Smirnov, L. N. – 109 Sobchak, A. A. – 14, 116, 128, 142 Solovyov, A. K. – 58 Solovyov, V. S. – 85 Spasovich, V. D. – 13 Speransky, M. M. – 7, 11, 12, 29, 32-42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 146 Stakhovich, M. A. – 96 Stalin, I. V. – 106, 108, 111, 112, 140 Stasov, V. V. – 45 Stepanov, S. A. – 133, 148 Stepashin, S. V. – 106, 107, 110, 148 Stolypin, P. A. – 99 Stoyanovsky, N. I. – 53 Struve, P. B. – 99, 102 Sukhanov, Ye. A. – 133, 143 Sukharev, A. Ya. – 106 Sumarokov, A. P. – 18 Suslov, M. A. – 110 Suvorin, M. A. – 65 Suvorov, A. V. – 23, 24 Syrykh, V. M. – 82 Sysoyev, V.D. – 111, 123 Taboritsky, S. V. – 68 Tarasov-Rodionov, P. I. – 108 Terebilov, V. I. – 14, 105-112, 147 Teslenko, N. V. – 80 Timiryazev, K. A. – 91 Tolstoy, A. N. – 166

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Tolstoy, L. N. – 12, 102 Tolstoy, Yu. K. – 143 Trepov, F. F. – 55 Troubetzkoy, P. – 81, 92 Urusov, S. D. – 79 Usmonxo‘jayev, I. B. – 111, 112 Vasiliev, D. V. – 120 Venediktov, A. V. – 14 Verb, S. A. – 139 Vernadsky, V. I. – 91 Vilinbakhov, A. P. – 53 Vinaver, A. M. – 14, 138, 139 Vinaver, M. M. – 13, 41, 80, 87, 90, 138 Vinogradoff, P. G. – 85 Vitryansky, V. V. – 143 Voltaire – 33, 34, 73 Vyazemsky, A. A. – 21 Vyazemsky, P. A. – 29 Vysotsky, V. S. – 43 Wrangel, P. P. – 102 Yakovlev, D. – 109 Yakovlev, V. F. – 106, 116, 117, 129, 135, 136, 143, 148 Yakushev, V. S. – 139 Yeltsin, B. N. – 112, 121, 144 Yesenin, S. A. – 84 Yushchinsky, A. – 97, 98 Yusupov, F. F. – 100, 101 Zamyatin, D. N. – 12, 44 Zarudny, S. I. – 12, 53 Zasulich, V. I. – 55 Zaveryukha, A. Kh. – 120 Zhukovsky, V. A. – 29 Zor'kin, V. D. – 74, 82 Zvyagintsev, A. G. – 55

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