Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev

Russian religious leader

• Born: May 21, 1827
• Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
• Died: March 23, 1907
• Place of death: St. Petersburg, Russia

As director general of the Holy Synod and tutor to Czars Alexander III and Nicholas II, Pobedonostsev was a major contributor to the preservation of the autocratic governmental system in Russia against the forces of modernization.

Early Life

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (pah-bye-dah-NAH-tsef) was one of eleven children. His father was the son of a Russian Orthodox priest and trained for the priesthood but instead became a professor of rhetoric and Russian literature at the University of Moscow. Little is known about Konstantin’s mother, except that she was a descendant of an old-service noble family from near Kostroma. Konstantin, educated at home by his father, entered the School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg at thirteen; the school prepared him and others from gentry families for service in law courts and the judicial and legal branches of the imperial bureaucracy. Pobedonostsev spoke, read, and wrote in seven foreign languages and read widely throughout his life in the classics and in Russian and Western history and literature. Although he believed that an educated Russia must give special attention to western Europe and its achievements, there remained a basic tension in him throughout his life between a fascination with European ideas and a growing admiration for Russian traditions and institutions.

Upon his graduation in 1846, Pobedonostsev returned to Moscow as a law clerk in the eighth department of the senate. Established by Peter the Great as the highest state institution to supervise all judicial, financial, and administrative affairs, by the nineteenth century the senate had evolved into the supreme court for judicial affairs and appeals against administrative acts of the government. Pobedonostsev’s rise in senate employment was rapid and steady. By 1853, he was secretary of the seventh department; in 1857 he became secretary to both the seventh and eighth departments; and by 1863 he was named executive secretary of the eighth department.

Pobedonostsev’s education and training in the senate, along with his numerous publications, singled him out as an unusually promising young scholar, teacher (he was appointed lecturer in Russian civil law at the University of Moscow in 1859), and administrator. As the government of Alexander II struggled with reforms following Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-1856, Pobedonostsev’s work singled him out as one who could make an important contribution. The reforming decade of the 1860’s was a turning point in both Pobedonostsev’s career and his thinking.

Life’s Work

In 1861, Pobedonostsev was appointed tutor in Russian history and law for the heir to the throne, Nicholas Alexandrovich. Upon the death of Nicholas from tuberculosis in 1865, Pobedonostsev continued as tutor for the new heir, the future Alexander III. This appointment was a key one in Pobedonostsev’s life, removing him from the study and classroom and placing him in a position from which he would eventually exercise a profound influence on the course of late nineteenth century Russian history.

From 1866 to 1880, Pobedonostsev’s rise through the bureaucracy continued to be steady and rapid. In 1868, he was named a senator, and in 1872 he was appointed a member of the Council of State, the major advisory body to the czar on projected laws and administration of the non-Russian areas of the empire. In April, 1880, he was appointed director general of the Holy Synod. The synod, also established by Peter the Great, replaced the patriarch as head of the Russian Orthodox Church and was one of the most important branches of the central government. As director general, a position he would hold for the next twenty-five years, Pobedonostsev was the czar’s representative to this ruling body of the state church. Through this position, Pobedonostsev came to wield considerable influence over such aspects of government policy as education, access to information, social legislation, and civil rights.

The decade of the 1860’s, associated with the Great Reforms of Alexander II, was an exhilarating time, but it proved to be the last time the autocratic system attempted to reform itself. Although the reconstruction of society was concerned mainly with the emancipation of the serfs, most state institutions were subjected to intense scrutiny that resulted in various degrees of reorganization. Pobedonostsev’s numerous studies advocating reform of the judicial system resulted in his appointment to work on the draft of the judicial reform of 1864.

Although these early years might be termed his “liberal” period, the Polish uprising of 1863 and the resulting revolutionary unrest in Russia’s major cities and towns came as a deep shock. Pobedonostsev began to turn against the introduction of new ideas and institutions, arguing instead that what Russia needed was more, not less, government control and supervision. His scholarly interests soon reflected this overall change in his outlook. Whereas up to 1864 his research reflected a certain criticism of some of Russia’s central institutions, Pobedonostsev now devoted more time to the study of Russian civil law. His research resulted in the publication of his most important work, the three-volume Kurs grazhdanskago prava (1868-1880; course on civil law), which won for him high repute as a legal scholar. At the same time, Pobedonostsev became increasingly vocal in his belief that Russia must rely on its traditional values and institutions and reject the importation of alien ideas.

The rise of the revolutionary movement, culminating in the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, turned many in government and society against his policies of reform. Pobedonostsev was among those who saw liberalism as a fundamental threat to the principle of autocratic government and advised Alexander III that the czar’s duty was to protect his people from the projects of constitutional reform associated with the last years of his father’s reign. It was Pobedonostsev who drafted the famous manifesto of April 19, 1881, that ended all serious consideration of political reform in Russia for the next generation. From then on, the tall, thin, balding Pobedonostsev, peering out at the world from behind small, wire-rimmed glasses, was associated with the reactionary policies linked to the reign of Alexander III. His appointment as tutor to the future Nicholas II ensured that the autocratic system would not adjust itself to the new social and political movements of the day.

Pobedonostsev’s political philosophy was spelled out coherently and succinctly in his most famous book, the collection of essays entitled Moskovskii sbornik (1896; Reflections of a Russian Statesman , 1898). Like many reactionary philosophers before and after him, Pobedonostsev vilified human nature as evil, worthless, and rebellious. Therefore, he believed that those who advocated reason instead of faith as the proper guide for human actions were fundamentally wrong. The enormous size of Russia, plus its complex national composition and the ignorance and economic backwardness of its peasantry, all pointed to the folly of introducing any concept of responsible government, freedom of the press, secular education, or laissez-faire economics. Instead, Pobedonostsev believed, society should be based on those traditional values and institutions that had shaped its character over the centuries. Thus Pobedonostsev, although widely read in European and American social and political literature, opposed any and all arguments for their application in the case of Russia.

There was a basic inconsistency in Pobedonostsev’s thinking that can best be seen in his attitude toward Russia’s minority peoples and religions. Although he always insisted that human beings were products of a historical tradition, Pobedonostsev refused to concede to Russia’s minorities the right to defend their cultural and historical form of life against the encroachments and bureaucratic enactments of the Russian state. In this case, he was more interested in the stability and extension of the autocratic system and argued continuously in support of those Russification policies that so alienated the minorities in the empire.

The revolution of 1905 overthrew autocratic government in Russia and established a constitutional monarchy with civil liberties and an extended franchise for a new legislative assembly. Pobedonostsev played no role in this crisis. The results of the revolution, by introducing institutions and values he had consistently resisted, merely confirmed his pessimism about human nature and the future of Russia. In October, 1905, he retired quietly from his position as director general of the Holy Synod. Although he remained on the Council of State, he no longer played a role in government. His last days, filled with illness, were passed quietly in his residence, working on his ongoing project of translating the Bible into Russian. It was there that he died in 1907. He was buried with little fanfare in the garden of Saint Vladimir’s, a finishing school for young women planning to marry priests and work in parish schools.

Significance

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev is an excellent example of the conservative bureaucratic statesman associated with the reigns of the last two czars of Russia. Convinced as he was of the evil and weak nature of human beings, Pobedonostsev believed that the only institutions that might save the Russian people were the state, the Orthodox Church, and the family. Of these he believed the state was central. These beliefs were used to justify his support for arbitrary and authoritarian government. Thus, in facing the momentous changes engulfing Western civilization during the late nineteenth century, Pobedonostsev set himself squarely against them all in the name of Russia’s traditional values and institutions.

Because Pobedonostsev believed that a people’s educational system reflected their society, it is not surprising that he had a deep interest in the educational policies of the empire. He believed that the educational system must remain firmly under the control of the autocratic system and the state church. The system he envisioned had as its first priority the instillation of a firm religious foundation in its students, along with an emphasis on patriotism and love of autocracy. Pobedonostsev bears considerable responsibility for the ruling that kept Russian higher education in shackles until the 1905 revolution restored some semblance of autonomy.

Although he was suspicious of higher education as destabilizing for society, Pobedonostsev emphasized the role of the parish school as best suited to serve the interests of order. During his years as director general of the Holy Synod, he was instrumental in allocating resources to develop the parish school system throughout the country. By 1900, half of all elementary schools were under the control of the synod, while slightly more than a third of all children receiving primary education were enrolled in parish schools, wherein they were taught the proper values of an autocratic society.

As tutor to the last two czars and as director general of the Holy Synod for twenty-five years, Pobedonostsev was in a position to wield considerable influence on late imperial Russia. His opposition to all elements of liberalism and his support for the Russification of the national minorities made him, in the popular eye, the “grey eminence” behind the reign of Alexander III. Thus Pobedonostsev contributed to those policies that eventually caused a revolution that destroyed the entire imperial order.

Bibliography

Adams, Arthur E. “Pobedonostsev’s Religious Politics.” Church History 22 (1953): 314-326. Pobedonostsev subordinated the Orthodox Church to the state in the name of political stability and state security. His efforts to strengthen and to extend Orthodoxy into the non-Russian provinces and among heretics and dissenters was motivated not by a desire to save souls but by a desire to preserve the Russian Empire.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Pobedonostsev’s Thought Control.” The Russian Review 11 (1953): 241-246. In his effort to control Russia’s thought, Pobedonostsev used his official position in the state and church to persecute those whom he found dangerous to the stability of the system and to promote the careers of those whose views were in harmony with his own.

Basil, John D. “Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev: An Argument for a Russian State Church.” Church History 64, no. 1 (March, 1995): 44. Analyzes the importance of Pobedonostsev’s thought and activities in the changing relationship of the church and state in late imperial Russia.

Byrnes, Robert F. “Dostoevsky and Pobedonostsev.” In Essays in Russian and Soviet History, edited by John Shelton Curtiss. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. Explores the close relationship between Pobedonostsev and Fyodor Dostoevski during the decade of the 1870’s. While Soviet historians have argued that Dostoevski was influenced greatly by Pobedonostsev, especially in the writing of his later novels, evidence indicates this was not so.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Pobedonostsev: His Life and Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968. A standard biography, presenting an account of Pobedonostsev’s life along with a discussion and analysis of his major writings and sociopolitical philosophy. Emphasizes his conservatism and his influence both at court and through the Holy Synod to maintain order and stability within the empire.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Pobedonostsev on the Instruments of Russian Government.” In Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought, edited by Ernest J. Simmons. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955. Analyzes Pobedonostsev’s political philosophy, emphasizing his view that the duty of absolute government was to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, and to ensure social stability. The character of the state was formed by its national religious faith and its traditional political and social institutions.

Pobedonostsev, Konstantin P. Reflections of a Russian Statesman. Translated by Robert Crozier Long. London: G. Richards, 1898. Reprint. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965. An eloquent and readable plea in support of the values and institutions of traditional Russia. Expounds Pobedonostsev’s belief in the evil and perverse nature of the human being and his social philosophy of stability and order through autocratic government and the Orthodox Church.

Polunov, A. Iu. “Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev: Man and Politician.” Russian Studies in History 39, no. 4 (Spring, 2001): 8. Profile of Pobedonostsev, examining his reputation, career, achievements, views on major issues, and role in imperial Russian politics and government.

Thaden, Edward C. Conservative Nationalism in Nineteenth Century Russia. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964. Chapter 13, entitled “Bureaucratic Nationalism,” discusses Pobedonostsev’s thought and contribution to Russification policies toward the national and religious minorities in the empire. In support of these policies, Pobedonostsev was not averse to the use of the power of the state to educate and coerce or to the use of the parish schools to indoctrinate youth in the values of traditional Russia.