Maxwell, John S. The Czar, His Court and People. London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1848. (243 pages)

Darcey Quinn

SCAND 344, Summer 2005

The Czar, His Court and People: 19^th Century Russia in Conflict with Democracy

The Czar, His Court and People: Including a Tour in Norway and Sweden was written by American John S. Maxwell and was published in both the United States and England in 1848. Maxwell’s book, a travel log during his visit through the Russian Empire, expresses an early 19^th century American popular belief that the autocratic government of Russia suppressed its people and was therefore in conflict with the principles of the democracy of the United States.

Nikolai I Pavlovich, Emperor during Maxwell’s travels through the Empire, was a totalitarian ruler. In an attempt to restrain Russian society, Nikolai I created a secret police that ran a huge network of spies and informers throughout the Empire. In order to control his subjects, Nikolai I restricted the curriculum in universities, enforced strict censorship laws and persecuted any religions or nationalities that did not support the ideals of the Czar. In 1833, a program of "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality", was created by the Russian Minister of Education, Sergey Uvarov. This program did not gain support throughout the populace, however, and subsequently led to the suppression of the ethnic peoples and non-Orthodox religions within Russia (Wikipedia).

Maxwell encounters the program of "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality" throughout his travels in the Russian Empire. Maxwell begins his trip in modern-day Estonia. At the time, the ruling class was still the German Baltic nobility. Whilst visiting Revel (today’s Tallinn), Maxwell comments how the Russians have removed the German Lutheran professors from the University of Dorpat, (the University of Tartu in Tartu, Estonia today) and, "replaced them with Russian professors of the Greek faith, and every inducement (was then) presented to the nobles to learn the language and embrace the creed of Russia."  Young nobles from Livonia (Northern Latvia and Southern Estonia), Courland (Western Latvia), and Esthonia (Northern Estonia) were now "induced" to learn the Russian way.  Maxwell goes on to say that this "process by which Finland and the Baltic provinces are to be firmly bound to the Russian Empire… prepares the way for conquest and final subjugation" (43).

Later, while traveling in the interior of Russia, Maxwell meets the impoverished Tchuwashes (Chuvash, today), a tribe he described as being "reduced to extreme misery through the extractions of the officers of the Government."   He notes that, "However oppressive the conduct and character of despotism may be to Russians, it is among the subjugated tribes that this oppression is exercised without mercy and without appeal" (201).  While visiting with the Tchuwashes, Maxwell witnesses a parade of prisoners from various parts of the Empire on their way to Siberia. Some were obviously poor, others were obviously of noble birth, but all had a look of desperation on their faces knowing that they were being sent in exile, most likely never to return. To prove his point of desperation amongst the people, Maxwell even recounts a story he had heard of a German noble having his nostrils ripped out and then sent to Siberia because the man the Emperor wanted to exile was away.

Maxwell encounters the secret police, more than once, during his journey. Upon his initial arrival into St. Petersburg, he comments that, "no foreigner during the last hundred years, has entered Russia in a time of peace, whose name and movements were not perfectly well known to the police." Maxwell retells the story of an American businessman who first visited the Empire in 1820 and who then again returned in 1843. Supposedly, upon entering the Alien Office in St. Petersburg and stating his name, the police reminded the businessman that he had been in Russia twenty-three years earlier (55). The day after leaving the Tchuwashes, Maxwell and his American traveling companions were awakened late one evening by police rushing into their room at the inn, ready to arrest them. The American businessmen narrowly escaped imprisonment by producing their special passport granted them from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During the reign of Nikolai I, there were two political and social movements within the Empire. There were the Westernizers, who believed that the advancement of Russia could only happen through more Europeanization and the Slavophiles, who rejoiced in the culture and customs of the Slavs. The Slavophiles condemned the rational and materialistic culture and customs of the west and promoted the culture and customs of the Slavs citing that this was the true identity of Russia and epitomized what it meant to be Russian (Wikipedia). Maxwell supports the Westernizers’ ideas by repeating the story of the Varangian Rossi, a Scandinavian people, who conquered the Slavic people of the Baltic regions. He notes that the Russ, or Russian, probably came from this people, not the Slavs. To validate his story, he cites as evidence of trading between this region and Arabia coins and monumental inscriptions that had been found.

The American idea of free trade was in direct conflict with the principles used to promote the "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality" program. Maxwell sees the Czar’s philosophy in direct conflict with the rights of the people. Maxwell exclaims:

Maxwell’s plea for the betterment of the Russian citizen was one echoed by the American press. In an 1848 U.S. book review of Maxwell’s Czar, the writer applauds Maxwell for his "most welcome publication at such a juncture." Maxwell’s book supports the ideas in American society that "Russia alone remains untouched by civil progress" and that between Russia and Europe is "a curtain behind which all is dark and terrible" (United States Democratic Review). 

Although there was a popular American belief that the Russian Emperor was oppressive, the American government was acting friendly towards the Russian government, and there was a purely political reason why. In 1834, a ten-year term of Article IV of the Convention of 1824, which permitted American ships to enter interior Russian American waters for purposes of fishing and trading with the natives of the country, expired (Bolkhovitnov, 7). By 1842, the U.S. had been forced out of trade in the Northwest by Russians and the British. Because of this, the U.S. government implemented cordial relations with the Russian government hoping that the Russians, in turn, would help force the English out of the Pacific Northwest, thus allowing the Americans to renew trading in the region. Following the principles of the United States’ Manifest Destiny, (whose philosophy was incorporating the entire continent of the North America into the United States) the goal of the American politicians was to divide with Russia the territories of Oregon and California, and, ultimately, what is today Alaska (Bolkhovitnov, 28-29). In a political document released after Maxwell’s book, but surely reminiscent of the political rhetoric surrounding Russian-American political relations at the time, The US Railroad and Mining Register, in wrote in April 1867:

Once the U.S. got what it wanted, however, its "sympathies" and its political rhetoric towards Russia changed. The period after 1867, when the sale of Alaska was complete, has been called a time of increased controversies and diverging interests. John Gaddis, author of Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States, in 1978, wrote, "Ideology began to make a difference; questions began to be raised as to whether a democracy could, or should, maintain friendly relations with the most autocratic nation in Europe" (quoted by Bolkhovitnov, 330).

"The dark picture we have drawn takes no shade from democratic prejudices. Truth alone has supplied the materials and colouring," begins the Preface for Maxwell’s Czar. Maxwell, validating his belief that the autocracy of the Russian Empire was in direct conflict with the principles of the United States, exposes the oppression of the Russians and of the ethnic tribes. His Preface concludes by hoping that his own countrymen "will not feel less devotion to their own free institutions or less solicitude to guard them from anarchy and decline."

Works Cited

Bolkhovitnov, Nikolai N. Russian-American Relations and the Sale of Alaska, 1834-1867. ed. Richard A. Pierce. The Limestone Press: Kingston, Ontario and Fairbanks, Alaska, 1996.

The United States Democratic review Volume 23, Issue 123, Sept 1848. Cornell University Library http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.journals/usde.1848.html

Maxwell, John S. The Czar, His Court and People: Including a Tour of Norway and Sweden London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1848.

Wikipedia. "Nicholas I of Russia" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_I_of_Russia