Journal of Baltic Studies

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Iurii Samarin's Baltic Escapade

Richard Pipes

To cite this article: Richard Pipes (2011) Iurii Samarin's Baltic Escapade, Journal of Baltic
Studies, 42:3, 315-327, DOI: 10.1080/01629778.2011.597127

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Published online: 08 Sep 2011.

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Journal of Baltic Studies
Vol. 42, No. 3, September 2011, pp. 315327

IURII SAMARINS BALTIC ESCAPADE

Richard Pipes

Iurii Samarin, a leading Russian Slavophile, was early in his life assigned to Riga
to help reform the Russian administration there. He was shocked and outraged
by what he regarded as Russias abdication of authority in the Baltic region to the
German minority. He urged St. Petersburg to reduce the powers of that
minority in favor of Russians and the native population. His views were rejected
by tsars Nicholas I and Alexander II, who regarded their German subjects as
loyal citizens, but they influenced Alexander III.
Keywords: Iurii Fedorovich Samarin; Letters from Riga; imperial Russia; Baltic
Germans

In 1721, by virtue of the Treaty of Nystadt, which terminated her long and victorious
Northern War with Sweden, Russia acquired the provinces of Livonia, Courland and
Estonia. This region had been ruled since the thirteenth century by the Teutonic
Knights and their descendants, even as successive sovereigns of Poland and Sweden
exercised over it nominal suzerainty. The powers of the German nobles were
guaranteed by numerous charters, which they jealously guarded. These charters, of
which the most important was that granted by the Polish king Sigismund August in
1561, accorded them virtually unlimited authority over the Latvian and Estonian
peasantry, who constituted nine-tenths of the population, as well as over the soil. They
administered the region through several institutions, the highest of which was the Diet
(Landtag). Peter I found it expedient to leave these privileges intact because he lacked
adequate means to administer his immense empire and was content to have the
German aristocrats govern this region (Thaden 1981).
The situation did not change under Nicholas I, arguably the most pro-German of
Russian rulers. Nicholas saw the Baltic nobility as an element of order and state
loyalty (Seraphim 1911, p. 241). More than that, he viewed them as a stabilizing

Correspondence to: Richard Pipes, FAS Department of History, Widener O, Harvard Yard, Harvard University, Cambridge
MA 02138, USA. Email: RPipes23@aol.com
ISSN 0162-9778 (print)/ISSN 1751-7877 (online) ! 2011 Journal of Baltic Studies
DOI: 10.1080/01629778.2011.597127
316 JOURNAL OF BALTIC STUDIES

factor in a world that, in his eyes, was rapidly abandoning the principles on which
Christian societies had been built:
The feelings of the tsarist family [toward the Germans] encompassed, apart from its
Russian members, the numerous kinfolk from Prussia, Wurtenberg, Meklenburg,
Saxony-Weimar, Baden, etc. . . . The family-possessive conceptions of the German
princely houses exerted strong influence on Russian political conceptions. Nicholas
grew up in this atmosphere, it was for him his own and innate. These links grew
profounder and strengthened with his marriage in 1817 to Charlotte, the daughter
of Friedrich Wilhelm III [of Prussia] . . . His father in law replaced his [own] father,
whom, having been born in 1796, he virtually did not know . . . Prussian patriarchal
monarchism combined with model military discipline and religious-moral
foundations in the form of service duty and devotion to the relations of the
traditional regime attracted him as the bases of those principles of authority which
(as he dreamt) had to be restored in Europe that had forgotten them . . . The circle
of the Baltic gentry with its aristocratic and monarchic traditions was especially
close to the tsarist family at the anxious period of vacillations of the European
political world. Russian gentry serve the state, the German ones serve us,
Nicholas would say later, revealing with rare frankness the special motive of his
good will toward the Baltic Germans. (Presniakov 1990, pp. 2501).
The pro-German orientation of the Russian court under Nicholas also found
expression in a friendly diplomatic relationship with Berlin that, in time, led to the
League of Three Emperors (Dreikaiserbund). Several officials of ministerial rank in the
cabinet, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, were of German origin.
These facts have to be borne in mind to understand the audacity of a young
Russian aristocrat in the imperial service, Iurii Fedorovich Samarin (18191876), to
challenge Russias hands-off policy in the Baltics. The challenge, articulated in a book-
length manuscript distributed by him and read by him in various salons in 18481849,
under the title Letters from Riga, was every bit as brazen as that issued half a century
earlier by the radical Radishchev, with that difference that whereas Radishchev defied
the monarchy from a radical position, Samarin did so from a conservative,
nationalistic one.
Samarin descended from old nobility whose record of service to the crown
reached back to the fifteenth century. His father, a general, had served in almost all
the wars that Russia had waged in the early nineteenth century. The tsar Alexander I
was godfather of Iurii, while the widow of Alexanders father, Maria Fedorovna, was
his godmother (Nolde 1926, p. 8). Iurii received an excellent home education. He
knew French better than Russian and was able to converse with his tutor in Latin
(Samarin 1904, p. 135). In the fall of 1834, at the age of 15 and a half, he enrolled at
the University of Moscow, from which he graduated four years later at the top of his
class. The patriotic historian, M.P. Pogodin, had the greatest influence on him of all
the professors. Samarin immediately proceeded to work on his Masters thesis dealing
with two prominent Russian publicists of the early eighteenth century, Stefan Iavorskii
and Feofan Prokopovich. It was published in 1844.
Samarins intellectual interests were broad. He studied theology as well as
philosophy and for a while was entranced by Hegel. In the 1840s he had established
 IURII SAMARINS BALTIC ESCAPADE 317

friendship with a group of intellectuals known as Slavophiles, notably Alexis

Khomiakov, and became one of their spokesmen. Had he had his way, he would have
become an academic but his father urged him to enter state service and he followed
this advice. He was the only Slavophile to become a government official, holding a
variety of posts for over eight years (Samarin 1904, p. 136). In August, 1844, he
moved to St. Petersburg to work in the Ministry of Justice; half a year later he
transferred to the Senate. This work he found boring but a year later, in February
1846, things brightened when he was assigned to work on the so-called Stackelberg-
Khanykov Commission, set up in the capital to investigate the situation of peasants in
Livonia. These committees were created in response to an order by the tsar, issued the
preceding month, which called for an inquiry into the status of peasants in the area, an
order inspired by the violent hunger riots that were periodically breaking out there
(Samarin 1889, pp. xviixviii). Samarin at once plunged into this work and what he
learned about the privileges of the German Baltic nobles and the condition of the
native peasantry aroused his anger.
During those years Samarin developed a political philosophy that was at once
conservative and radical. It was conservative in that it rejected not only anarchism and
socialism, but also constitutionalism, insisting on absolute monarchy. He justified this
position on two grounds. One was that the Russian masses, i.e. peasantry, were
illiterate and apolitical. Any constitutional arrangement, therefore, would of necessity
be fraudulent, with the gentry exploiting democratic institutions to their own
advantage. At this time, he wrote,
we cannot as yet have a popular (narodnaia) constitution and any other, including
the rule of a minority lacking confidence of the majority but ruling in its name, is
a lie and deception. (Rus 1881)
His other conservative-radical argument derived from reading a treatise by the
German theoretician Lorenz von Stein, published in 1842 under the title Der
Socialismus und Kommunismus des heutigen Frankreichs a work that exerted great
influence in its day on political and social thought, including that of Marx, though it is
little known in the English-speaking world. Having resided in Paris during the
turbulent 1840s, Stein concluded that the outstanding problems of the modern world
were not political but social, pitting the lower classes, especially the industrial
working class (the proletariat), against the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. The task of
resolving this conflict fell on governments, which had to restore the ideals of freedom
and equality by supporting the strivings of the lower classes. Such ideas were to exert
a strong influence on Samarin when, in his capacity of government official studying the
situation in the Baltics, he would become aware of the discrepancy between the
privileges of the German aristocracy and the sordid status of the indigenous
population. Indeed, it is known that after reading Steins book, in 1843 Samarin wrote
an unpublished essay in which Steins ideas played a crucial role (Muller 1967,
pp. 57596).
In July 1846, Samarin was assigned to Riga, where he would spend the next two
years studying the history of the city and its political and economic conditions. He was
shocked by what he learned. Essentially, the three Baltic provinces were self-
governing, that is to say, not truly subject to the Imperial government. No other
318 JOURNAL OF BALTIC STUDIES

region in the Empire enjoyed such autonomy. The German aristocracy justified its
powers by insisting that it had not been conquered by Russia but voluntarily submitted
to Russian sovereignty on condition that St. Petersburg respect the charters that it had
been granted since the Middle Ages. It even claimed the right to veto instructions
emanating from the Russian capital (Schirren 1869).
Samarin felt that the local Germans treated Russians with disdain. In a letter to his
teacher, Pogodin, he wrote: everything here breathes hatred of the weak for the
strong, of the beneficiary of favors for the benefactor, and, along with it, with the
proud contempt of the teacher who has lost his faculties for the pupil who has
surpassed him. The environment here is such that every minute you are conscious of
being Russian, and, as a Russian, offended (Nolde 1926, p. 44).
The condition of the native peasants was deplorable. Throughout the
eighteenth century they had been enserfed and landless. In 1804, under Russian
pressure, the Baltic landlords granted their tenants a certain degree of security in that
they consented not to sell them without land. This law was reversed in 18161819
when new regulations provided for the personal emancipation of the serfs but
without land, which the German nobles claimed as their own. The landless Latvians and
Estonians found themselves in a precarious situation which led them to rebel.
It must be noted that the Baltic provinces, despite their minuscule size, were no
backwater. Riga, its main city, was the fourth largest in the Russian empire. Local
ports handled 30% of Russias foreign trade, and Rigas trade exceeded that of St.
Petersburg (Thaden 1981, p. 56).
The more Samarin studied the local situation the more it appeared to him as not
only unjust but untenable. Things got worse in March 1848, with the arrival in Riga as
Governor General of the three provinces of Prince Alexander Arkadevich Suvorov
(18041882), the grandson of the Generalissimo famous for his military exploits in
the late eighteenth century. Educated in Switzerland and Gottingen, and outspokenly
pro-German, the new Governor General was accused of addressing his German
subordinates in their native language and failing on his arrival to visit the Russian
church where the Russian community was awaiting to welcome him (Chumikov 1890,
p. 61; Seraphim 1911, p. 258). Yet he was said to have enjoyed the complete
confidence of the tsar (Chumikov 1890, p. 64). For Samarin, his installation as the
representative of Imperial Russia was the last straw. It was the event that inspired him
to write his Letters from Riga, a work that although it circulated at the time only in a
limited number of manuscript copies it had to await publication for 40 years was
to become a cause celebre.
It is fairly certain that when he wrote this work Samarin hoped that it would
eventually attract the attention of Nicholas I, for he prepared for him a personal copy.
He apparently desired to open the monarchs eyes to what he considered an
intolerable situation in the Baltic provinces and take steps to remedy it. He forwarded
a copy to the Minister of the Interior, Lev Alekseevich Perovskii (17921856), a
liberal official and a family friend whom had known since childhood and who
sympathized with his views, as well as to Pavel Dmitrievich Kiselev, the Minister of
State Properties, Nikolai Alekseevich Miliutin, a high official in the Interior Ministry,
and Khomiakov (Samarin, Pisma iz Rigi). In July, 1848 Samarin left Riga on four
months leave during which he read excerpts from the Letters to various groups in
 IURII SAMARINS BALTIC ESCAPADE 319

St. Petersburg and Moscow. Word soon got around about his work. In the silence of
public opinion of Nicholass last years it created something of a sensation.
The Letters from Riga are six in number, with a brief conclusion (Samarin 1889,
pp. 1160). The style is not notable. On the whole it is rather dense with few
highlights. Letter 1 states bluntly the authors basic thesis: The Germans have taken
from the Russians the Baltic land, Catholicism took it from Orthodoxy. It then goes
on to assert that the native population has been eliminated from any participation in
public life and that the region lacked any sense of statehood.
In Letter 2, Samarin accuses the German aristocrats of refusing to acknowledge
Russian sovereignty and being utterly self-absorbed:
The estates of Baltic region submitted to the governmental principle against their
will, as to an unavoidable evil, but inwardly they did not renounce their claims
which were incompatible with the new conditions. Each of these estates viewed
itself, as before, as something complete and closed within itself; it did not
acknowledge any higher goals than its own benefits, it did not deem itself morally
bound by any other obligations and concerns. All that existed apart from it was
for it, in its essence, alien . . . For this reason, all strivings of [these] estates were
diametrically contrary to those of the state. (Samarin 1889, p. 20)
In Letter 3, Samarin asserts that the Baltic Germans have no fatherland except an
abstract Deutschtum. They know English and French but hardly any Russian. Even local
Russians prefer to speak German.
Letter 4 deals with the estates, while Letter 5 the only one that Nicholas would
read insists that the current status of the Baltic provinces contradicted Russias basic
governmental and social principles. Either the Russians will rule the Baltic Germans
or the Baltic Germans will rule the Russians. In Letter 6, he considers the situation of
the various churches. In the concluding chapter, he speaks bluntly: The relation of the
Baltic land to the Russian land, to the government, the situation of Russians, all this is
unnatural: it calls for and demands fundamental reform.
All this was very bold especially given that Samarin was a low-level official in the
civil service, holding the rank 9 of Titular Counselor, corresponding to that of a First
Lieutenant in the armed forces.
Word of Samarins opus reached Governor General Suvorov, who saw himself as
its target. On 14 February 1849, he dispatched a letter to Perovskii requesting a copy
on the grounds that it was not a private document but one based on privileged
governmental information. Perovskii declined this request saying that he had neither
the time nor the means to satisfy it, whereupon Suvorov addressed himself directly
the tsar.
Samarin was aware he was in trouble, as evidenced by a letter to his father dated
February 27, 1849:
You think that I should strive to bring my manuscript to the attention of his
Majesty. But I could not do so directly from myself. I had only one way and that
was through Perovskii under whom I serve. To take another path would mean to
fall out with him forever, the more so that to some degree he shares with me
responsibility for my manuscript. But after having read it, Perovskii promptly
320 JOURNAL OF BALTIC STUDIES

informed me that he does not take it upon himself to give it directly to his
Majesty, but he will do so if his Majesty demands it, and for this contingency he
instructed me to revise certain passages and to keep the cleansed copy in
readiness. As you see, after that one had to wait until public talk about the
existence of this manuscript reached the ears of his Majesty. I have read it in
Moscow and Petersburg to close acquaintances and friends but it did not circulate
in manuscript because only three persons Stroganov, Ermolov and the
Metropolitan possessed it.
After noting that Suvorov had probably written Nicholas a request for a copy, he
continued:
It is most likely that this matter will not have for me any evil consequences . . . but
it is not a bad thing to be prepared for everything. The worst that can happen to
me is that, without excluding me from the service, they will transfer me
temporarily to Vologda or Viatka. (Samarin 1889, pp. lxxxlxxxi)
But the skies grew cloudy and on March 3 Samarin wrote his father a more
alarming letter:
Today his Majesty called for Perovskii and communicated to him anger at me for
violating chancery secrets and his intention of confining me in the fortress. But
Perovskii prevailed upon his Majesty not to punish me without asking me for an
explanation and giving me an opportunity to vindicate myself. I have just received
from the Ministry a formal inquiry which I shall answer . . . The Minister
immediately asked me to see him. As behooves an Orthodox Christian, prior to
seeing him, I visited the church of All Sorrows (Vsekh Skorbiashchikh), prayed for
myself and especially for you and mommy, so that the news would not overly
distress you and surrendered unconditionally to the will of God. (Samarin 1889,
p. lxxxi)
On March 4, Perovskii sent the tsar Letters from Riga along with an explanation by
Samarin. The following day in the afternoon Samarin was arrested and escorted to the
Peter and Paul fortress, where he was to spend the next 12 days. Formally, he was
charged not with criticizing his government but divulging state secrets; but this charge
was merely a pretext. As we know from Nicholas I (see below), the purpose of this
incarceration was not punishment but an opportunity for reflection and possible
contrition. Hence, Samarin was treated more like a guest than a prisoner, allowed to
enjoy wine and cigars as well as to receive mail and books. The commander of the
Peter and Paul Fortress, General Ivan Nabokov (the brother of the future novelist
Vladimir Nabokovs great grandfather), was a kindly man. Ten days after having been
incarcerated, Samarin had a visit from the tsars father-confessor, who discussed with
him at length his opinions and beliefs. He had been sent by the tsar to determine
whether the prisoner was a hardened rebel or merely a misguided youth. His report
apparently pleased the monarch because at 9 p.m. on 17 March, Samarin was released
and escorted to the Winter Palace for a meeting with the tsar. He appeared before
him as he was, unshaven and in coarse clothing (Nikitenko 1955, p. 328). We know of
the meeting, which lasted over an hour, in some detail because as soon as it had ended
 IURII SAMARINS BALTIC ESCAPADE 321

Samarin wrote down what he remembered of it (Nolde 1926, pp. 479; Samarin
1889, pp. xcxciii). The record of their conversation is reproduced below in its
entirety.
Nicholas: Do you understand your situation?
Samarin: I realize, your Majesty, that I am guilty.
Nicholas: In such an event, according to the Russian proverb, a repentant head
even the sword does not sever. I was always a friend of your parents and I wanted
not to execute you but to save you. Now do sit down. Do you understand of what
you are guilty? You were sent on a commission by your superior, and you
discharged it, as I like to think, conscientiously. But on the side you kept notes
and you injected into them judgments about subjects which are no business of
yours. This is not yet a sin. What a man thinks and writes for himself God alone
can judge. But you went further. You made of your notes a book and
communicated it to your close friends, as you wrote in your first report, and in
the second you counted 13 persons. I am surprised that you have so many friends.
I have lived longer than you and found among them no more than three to whom
I can open my heart. Some of your friends turned out to be undeserving of your
trust. This was already a crime against your service obligations, and you know the
laws better than I. You know what this exposed you to. But I like to think that you
were carried away by authors vanity, the desire to shine with learning and
intelligence with which God had endowed you. But did you consider the
consequences of your action? You say that you did not give copies of your letters
yet you did not forbid copies to be made and your book circulated so widely that
now even I cannot stop it. I turn to its content (at this point his Majesty picked up
the book). Not to say that much of what you write is not true and false,
something that I could prove with one word . . .
Samarin: Your Majesty, I may be wrong but there is in my book no conscious,
deliberate lie.
Nicholas: You evidently aroused the enmity of Germans against Russians. You
caused them to quarrel whereas one should bring them closer. You reproach
whole estates which have rendered loyal service; beginning with Palen, I could
count up to 150 [German] generals. You want by compulsion, by force, to make
Germans into Russians, with a sword in hand, like Mohammed. But that is not
something we should do because we are Christians. You wrote under the
influence of passion. I like to think that it was provoked by personal
unpleasantness and insults. But you also attacked the government and me,
because the government and I are one and the same although I have heard that
you detach me from the government, but I do not accept this. How can you judge
the government? The government knows much that it does not make public for
the time being and keeps to itself. You write: if we will not be masters among
them, i.e. if the Germans wont turn into Russians, then the Russians will become
Germans. This was written in some kind of delirium. Russians cannot become
Germans, but we should with love and gentleness attract the Germans to us. You
have directly aimed at the government. You wanted to say that from the reign of
Emperor Peter I until mine we have been surrounded by Germans and for that
322 JOURNAL OF BALTIC STUDIES

reason have turned into Germans. Do you understand what you have arrived at:
you have aroused public opinion against the government: this readied a repetition
of December 14.1
Samarin: I never had any such intention.
Nicholas: I believe that you had no such intention but this is where you were
heading. Your book leads to something worse than December 14 inasmuch as it
strives to undermine confidence in the government and its bond with the people
by accusing the government of sacrificing the interests of the Russian people to
the Germans. You should be turned over to a court and you would be judged as
an offender against service obligations, against the oath you have taken, against the
government. You yourself know that you would perish forever. There are many
young people who have suffered for this, people whom I dont know personally
and cannot know. But you I knew; I know your talents, I knew that you were
brought up by your parents on firm principles, and thought that you have a good
heart, and for this reason I did not want to let you perish. I sent you to the
fortress so that you would have time in private to think things over. I did not turn
you over to a court but put you in a fortress, wishing to save you. I did this by
virtue of that despotic power against which, probably, you too have more than
once risen. You stood on the edge of the abyss. An accident gave me the
opportunity to get to know a worthy man whom I respect. God Himself placed in
my heart the thought of sending him to you in order to test you.2 I wanted to
know whether you had not become hardened. He attested that you have accepted
the punishment as appropriate, that you have a good heart. I was not mistaken.
Now you must undergo complete change, serve as you had sworn, with faith and
truth, and not assail the government. All of us should serve thus. I myself serve
not myself but all of you. And I have the duty to draw those who have lost the way
onto the path of truth. But I will not allow anyone to forget themselves. I cannot
allow this because of the same oath to which I, too, remain faithful. Now this
matter is finished. Let us make peace and embrace. Here is your book. You can
see that it is with me and remains here.
Samarin: Your Majesty, I will strive all my life to deserve this minute.
Nicholas: Travel now to Moscow and calm your parents. Go tomorrow, if you get
ready. Go at once to the Minister of the Interior and tell him that I am letting you
go. I hope that in Moscow we shall meet, and there you will learn what kind of
service I have assigned you. You will serve in Moscow, under the eyes of your
parents. This is better for you than here where you can be exposed to
unpleasantness and evil influences.
This unusual conversation between the autocratic ruler of all the Russias and a
junior functionary of his civil service contains several interesting features. One is
Nicholass conception of himself as the embodiment of the state: the government and
I are one and the same. Now it is common knowledge that Louis XIV of France is
reputed to have made a similar statement (Letat, cest moi) though in fact this epigram
is apocryphal. His true sentiments he expressed on his deathbed when he said I am
going but the state lives forever (Pipes 1995, p. 127n). Nicholas, by contrast,
meant it, which is why he took any criticism of his government as a personal insult.
 IURII SAMARINS BALTIC ESCAPADE 323

Secondly, striking is his bizarre comparison of Samarins criticism of Russias

administration of the Baltic provinces with the Decembrist revolt. The latter was a
conspiracy to topple the autocracy and replace it either with a constitutional
monarchy or a republic a genuine and full-blown revolutionary movement. Nothing
was further from Samarins mind since he believed that autocracy was the only
appropriate form of government for his country. In September 1840 he had written a
letter to a French parliamentary deputy in which he tried to explain why this was the
case (Samarin 1911, pp. 609, 44757).
The monarchic principle is the great concern of our history. It is in its entirety
nothing but the development of this principle . . . we had neither conquest, nor
feudalism, nor aristocracy . . . and no agreement (contrat social) between the tsar
and the people. (Samarin 1911, pp. 454, 456)
His complaints about Russian policies in the Baltic provinces were that they
weakened autocratic authority and his recommendations were intended to enhance it.
As he would later write Alexander II, Nicholass successor, his works were from the
first to the last line dedicated to the defense of Russias state interests against the
intemperate and ever expanding claims of Baltic provincialism (Samarin 1890,
p. xiv).
It is said that his Riga Letters and incarceration endowed him with respect of all
fashionable youth of that time (Davydov 1877, pp. 423). Shortly after being
released, he received an affectionate letter from Perovskii in which he assured him of
his friendship (Graf Vasilii Alekseevich Perovskii 1878, pp. 37980). It was possibly
under Samarins influence that a law was passed in 1850 making the use of Russian
obligatory in all official business in the Baltic provinces but it was not observed in
practice and in 1858 it was indefinitely shelved. Russian became the official language
of the Baltic provinces only in the 1880s (Thaden 1981, pp. 23, 58, 13840). Two
decades later, looking back on this incident, Samarin saw much to criticize in what he
had done:
Exactly twenty years ago, having spent nearly three years in Riga, at the very time
when, with the change of the chief of the region, there occurred an abrupt break
in the system of the administration by the Russians of the Baltic coastal region, I
put down on paper, in the shape of letters, the conclusions of my studies of the
past destinies of this region and my observations of its current situation. All this
was immature, written straight from the shoulder, under the influence of
irritating impressions and the bad habit, characteristic of youth, of reproaching. In
a word: according to the ideas of that time, this was inexcusable impertinence, and
the late Sovereign, to whose attention good people had brought my manuscript,
having kept me for a few days in the fortress, treated me (again, according to ideas
of that time) leniently and even kindly. A titular counsellor, who had recently
joined the [civil] service [and] who had not been authorized by his superiors,
dared to pronounce judgment on the higher administration, [such a person] could
not escape punishment; but, at any rate, the sincerity and intentions of the guilty
person were not questioned. One hardly needs to add that I recall now this long
gone time not only without bitterness but also without regret. On the contrary: I
324 JOURNAL OF BALTIC STUDIES

am grateful to fate which had given me the opportunity to see the late Emperor
face to face, to hear his straightforward speech and to keep in memory, from the
brief meeting with him, the image of an historical personality, who unexpectedly
appeared before me in the severe and noble simplicity of his fascinating greatness.
(Samarin 1890, pp. xcv-xcvi).
In the years that followed his meeting with Nicholas, Samarin held a number of
responsible posts in the government. He was initially assigned to the Simbirsk
province, where his father had an estate, but because the local authorities believed he
exerted a harmful influence, he was soon transferred to Kiev, where in time he was
placed in charge of the local Governor-Generals chancery. In February 1853 he was
retired from state service. For the next five years he administered his family estates,
which gave him an excellent opportunity to familiarize himself with the problems of
serfdom. During the five years that followed he was actively engaged in the various
committees charged with drafting legislation that would emancipate private serfs
committees in which he firmly defended the governments position against landlords.
He travelled frequently abroad and died in 1876 in Berlin.
In the early 1860s Samarin became acquainted with a Baltic German lady,
Baroness Edita Fedorovna Rahden (18251885), and the acquaintance soon evolved
into friendship. Rahden was Maid of Honor of Princess Elena Pavlova, the wife of
Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, the younger brother of the reigning tsar. The
celebrated jurist, A. F. Koni, writing about her in the encyclopedic dictionary of
Broghaus and Efron, was so carried away praising her as one of the most remarkable
women of Russian high society that he forgot to tell his readers where she was born.
Descended from old Courland nobility, she maintained a salon in her modest quarters
at the Mikhailovskii Palace where gathered some of the outstanding intellects of the
time. Konis offhand remark that she had incorrect (nepravilnye) facial features was
probably a polite way of calling her unattractive (Koni pp. 678; Korsakov 1910, pp.
36971). During the Crimean war she helped organize nursing services for wounded
Russian soldiers, and continued philanthropic activities to the end of her life
(Korsakov 1910, pp. 36971). Samarin, who had made her acquaintance in
Switzerland in 1864, attended her salon. When apart, they corresponded. Their
letters were subsequently published, apparently with the help of Pobedonostsev
(Byrnes 1968, p. 83; Calder et al. 1974; Samarin 1894).
A Baltic German, she resented Samarins views of her native country and their
disagreements induced Samarin to write another work on this subject, a series of
essays called Okrainy Rossii [The Borderlands of Russia]. These were published in Prague
and Berlin between 1868 and 1876 because censorship prevented them from being
printed in Russia. The first two installments appeared in Prague in the summer of
1868 (Samarin 1890).
In the first installment, Samarin restated the argument of his Letters from Riga.
As he explained in a note to Alexander II, all he wanted was that imperial laws
apply to the Baltic provinces, that the Orthodox Church and the peasants there
prosper, and that Russian become the language of official communication
(Samarin 1890, pp. xiiixiv). To him, the integrity of the empire was a precondition
of Russias survival.
 IURII SAMARINS BALTIC ESCAPADE 325

If ever Russian society would turn its back on the Baltic lands, give up Poland as a
bad job, forget the Caucasus and Finland, unlearn altogether to interest itself in its
borderlands that would signify that it has ceased to love Russia as a whole. That
day would be the beginning of its disintegration. (Samarin 1890, p. xviii)
Okrainy generated a fierce literary response from Carl Schirren (18261910), a
specialist on Russian history at the Baltic University of Dorpat. In his Livlandische
Antwort an Herrn Juri Samarin [A Livonian Response to Mr. Iurii Samarin], published in
Leipzig in 1869, Schirren depicted Russian culture as inferior to the German and
Russians as a nation lacking in the qualities that would qualify it to rule Germans.
Furthermore he insisted that the powers enjoyed by the Baltic Germans were not
grants by the tsar but binding obligations. For these opinions, Schirren was removed
from his university chair and emigrated to Germany, where he assumed a
professorship at the University of Kiel (Haltzel 1981, pp. 12933).
Samarin replied to Schirren, and another Baltic critic, Woldemar Bock, at some
length (Samarin 1890, pp. 342418). He cited Schirrens words The Russians dont
know the past and have no future to express surprise that someone entertaining such
views could hold a university chair in Russian history financed by the Russian
government. He further cited him to the effect that Russians in the Baltic provinces
were guests and that altogether they were not a nationality but a race. Livonia,
according to Schirren, was not conquered but voluntarily subordinated itself to Peter
I. Samarin had little difficulty demolishing such jejune contentions.
A copy of Okrainy was sent to Rahden. She reacted in anger. In November, 1868,
she wrote Samarin that this work had hurt her very much, that it was not good, not
true and in part libelous. She implied that it would lead to a break in relations
between them by saying It seems to me that I am speaking to you for the last time
(Calder et al. 1974, pp. 868). Samarin responded calmly that she was ignorant of the
facts of the case. Rahden mellowed, writing I think that I shall be to the end your
irreconcilable enemy, but I know I shall remain your friend forever . . . (Calder et al.
1974, p. 92). And so she did.
Samarin spent the remaining years of his life away from public activity, many of
them abroad. He had no influence on government policy in the Baltics under
Nicholass successor, Alexander II, for the latter followed the pro-German policies of
his father. In 1856, shortly after ascending the throne, the new tsar confirmed the
privileges of the Baltic nobility. Samarins ideas were first adopted after his death by
Alexander III, who, under the influence of the conservative eminence grise, Konstantin
Pobedonostsev, began to rely on nationalism to contain the revolutionary movement.
Pobedonostsev called the attention of the new tsar to Samarins writings, and
Samarins ideas, previously spurned, became official policy (Thaden 1981, pp. 54, 68,
150). Russian practices combined with the rise of Estonian and Latvian nationalism
whittled down German influence in the Baltic region with the result that by the eve
of World War I it was clear that the Baltic Germans once-omnipotent position had
vanished forever (Haltzel 1981, p. 112).3
The significance of the Samarin episode lies in the fact that it underscores the
imperial mindset of the traditional tsarist government. Unlike the great empires of
western Europe, Russia became an empire before she had constructed a national state.
326 JOURNAL OF BALTIC STUDIES

In her case, the building of the nation-state and the empire occurred concurrently.
Furthermore, Russias colonial dependencies were not separated from the metropolis
by oceans but lived contiguously with it. With nearly one-half of its subjects consisting
of non-Russians, the crown felt that it had to balance the interests and ambitions of its
national minorities with those of its Russian majority. As a result of conquests and
open access to the ranks of the Russian upper class, the bulk of Russian nobles were of
foreign origin. Until the end of nineteenth century, Russias imperialism was,
therefore, ethnically neutral.
Samarin anticipated the trends of the twentieth century when the government
would promote the interests and ambitions of the Russian majority, until under Stalin
Russian nationalism would acquire grotesque dimensions. He obviously erred in
arguing that the end of the empire would mean the end of Russia. He never
entertained any federalist ideas for his country. But he correctly anticipated the
transformation of Russias ethnically neutral imperialism to one based on Russian
ethnicity.

Notes
1 i.e. the Decembrist revolt of 1825.
2 Reference to the tsars confessor, Bazhanov, whom he had sent to the fortress to
talk to Samarin.
3 Even so, in 1918 Germans, who constituted only 5% of the population of Estonia
and Livonia, owned 65% of the land (Erdmann 1972, p. 99).

References
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Richard Pipes was born and raised in Poland and came to the United States in 1940.
His BA degree is from Cornell University, and he received the PhD in History at Harvard
in 1950. He was promoted to professor at Harvard University in 1958. His specialty is
Russian history on which he has published 21 books.