Konstantin Pobedonostsev

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev

(born May 21, 1827, Moscow, Russia — died March 23, 1907, St. Petersburg) Russian government administrator. He wrote and lectured on civil law at Moscow University (1859 – 65), tutored the sons of Tsar Alexander II, and later became a close adviser to Alexander III, influencing him to adopt reactionary policies. As director general of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox church (1880 – 1905), he assumed great power over domestic policy in education, religion, and censorship. Nicknamed "the Grand Inquisitor," he became the symbol of Russian monarchical absolutism.

For more information on Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, visit Britannica.com.

Search unanswered questions...

Browse: Unanswered questions | Most-recent questions | Reference library

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev

Top

The Russian statesman and jurist Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1827-1907), as director general of the Holy Synod, became a champion of czarist autocracy, orthodoxy, and Russian nationalism.

Konstantin Pobedonostsev was born on May 21, 1827, in Moscow. His father, Peter V. Pobedonostsev, a professor at the University of Moscow, educated Konstantin at home until he enrolled at the St. Petersburg School of Jurisprudence in 1841. From his father, he learned to read Old Church Slavonic, French, Latin, and German. He also studied the Bible, the writings of the Russian Orthodox Church Fathers, Greek and Roman classics, Russian history, and Russian literature. He graduated from the School of Jurisprudence with a wide knowledge of Western judicial institutions, laws, and literatures.

Pobedonostsev first won acclaim as a historian of Russian judicial institutions and as a specialist in Russian civil law. In 1846 Pobedonostsev was assigned to the eighth department of the Senate in Moscow. In 1853 he became secretary of the seventh department. In 1859 he was named lecturer in Russian civil law at Moscow University.

In 1861 Pobedonostsev was appointed tutor in Russian history and law to the heir to the throne, the future Alexander III, and was named executive secretary of the Senate. He moved to St. Petersburg into a life of great influence in the central governmental bureaucracy and the court. He employed his tutorial position to mold the views of the imperial heir. Pobedonostsev emphasized the ties between Russian Orthodoxy and Russian national history. By the late 1870s his influence on Alexander had become overwhelming.

In 1872 Pobedonostsev became a member of the State Council, a body that advised the Czar concerning projected laws. Most of the significant legislation and decrees of the 19th century received their final review and drafting in this Council. Pobedonostsev's main responsibility as a Council member was civil and ecclesiastical matters. His work in the Council contributed to his appointment in 1880 as director general of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. For the remainder of his life he was a member of both the Council and the Senate. His service in the highest organs of the czarist government naturally gave him power in shaping Russia's domestic policies.

Pobedonostsev's reputation in Russian history rests largely upon his accomplishments as director general of the Holy Synod. For 25 years his influence on the religious and political life of Russia was enormous as a result of his official positions and his relations with the czars, their wives, the imperial family, and the court.

In 1881 Pobedonostsev advised Alexander III concerning the selection of his ministers, most of whom were named upon his recommendation. The Czar consented to Pobedonostsev's policy of the Russification of minority groups, particularly Jews and dissenters. As director general, Pobedonostsev attempted to restrict the number and the rights of other religious groups in Russia. Under his influence Alexander III opposed any limitation of his autocratic powers, tightened censorship, tried to suppress all opposition opinion, and persecuted religious nonconformists.

Pobedonostsev also tutored the future Nicholas II and was one of his most influential advisers until the Revolution of 1905. In his writing Pobedonostsev strongly attacked Western rationalism and liberalism. He died in St. Petersburg on March 23, 1907.

Konstantin Pobedonostsev

Top

(1827 - 1907), conservative statesman, professor and chair of civil law at Moscow University (1860 - 1865), senator, chief procurator of the Holy Synod (1880 - 1905).

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev has often been seen as one of the primary conservative influences on Alexander III and Nicholas II. Although the "grey eminence" undoubtedly exerted influence upon domestic policy and was influential in bringing about a new version of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality," historians have disputed the degree of his direct influence on policy formation.

Pobedonostsev, son of a Moscow University professor, grew up in Moscow in an atmosphere of scholarship, discipline, and close family ties. He was the youngest of eleven children, and his father closely supervised his early education before sending him off to the School of Jurisprudence from 1841 to 1846. Pobedonostsev graduated second in his class and upon graduation was assigned a position in the eighth department of the Senate in Moscow. He worked diligently in his position while also pursuing scholarly research and writing. Throughout his life Pobedonostsev remained a prolific writer, publishing articles on law, education, philosophy, and religion in book form and in journals such as Grazhdanin (The Citizen), Moskovskie Vedomosti (Moscow News) and Russky Vestnik (Russian Newsletter). In 1853 he became secretary of the seventh department of the Senate, and in 1855 he served as secretary to two Moscow departments. By 1859 he had received a lectureship in Russian civil law at Moscow University.

His scholarship, publications, translations, and reputation as an interesting and respected professor brought him to the attention of the court in 1861, and he was asked to tutor Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich, heir to the throne. In that capacity he went on a tour of Russia with the heir and his entourage in 1863. According to several scholars, this journey profoundly influenced Pobedonostsev's view of Russia and his ideas about its future. When Nicholas died in 1865, Pobedonostsev was asked to tutor Grand Duke Alexander and became executive secretary to the first department of the Senate. Although Pobedonostsev was honored by his appointments and felt bound by duty to accept them, he apparently missed Moscow and felt uncomfortable in court life. According to Pobedonostsev's biographer, Robert Byrnes, this appointment "removed him from the library, the study, and the classroom and placed him in a position in which he was to develop a most inflexible political and social philosophy and to exert profound influence upon the course of Russian history" (p. 35). Pobedonostsev served in the senate from 1868 and in the State Council from 1872. He received his most important post, Ober Procurator of the Holy Synod, in 1880 and was to remain in it until his retirement in 1905.

Pobedonostsev worked closely with education ministers as well and was instrumental in developing policies he hoped would prevent radicalism in the universities. Contemporaries and historians have usually felt that Pobedonostsev worked for the appointment of Ivan Delyanov (Minister of Education, 1882 - 1898) and that together they worked toward establishing a quota system in order to restrict the numbers of non-Russian and non-Orthodox students admitted to Russian universities. He also reestablished a separate network of primary schools, which came under the jurisdiction of the Holy Synod rather than the Ministry of Education. Despite concerns about the level of education that could be delivered in church schools, Pobedonostsev believed that the moral benefits of church schools would outweigh any intellectual deficiencies.

Pobedonostsev has been considered one of the "most baleful influences on the reign" of Nicholas II and the ultra-conservative and reactionary force behind many of Alexander III's and Nicholas II's manifestos. Peter Banks, minister of finance from 1914 to 1917, noted that Pobedonostsev was the teacher who had the most influence on the tsar. Despite Pobedonostsev's reputation as an archconservative, he was actively involved in work on preparing the liberal judicial statute of 1861. He also read widely, communicated with Boris Chicherin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Slavophile thinkers, and was aware of the intellectual debates of his day.

The year 1881 was a significant one for Pobedonostsev and for Russia. After the assassination of Alexander II, Pobedonostsev became one of the strongest forces arguing against the Mikhail Loris-Melikov constitution and Western-style reforms. He was responsible for drafting the manifesto that Alexander III read in April 1881 pledging to "preserve the power and justice of autocratic authority from any pretensions to it." Pobedonostsev is usually assumed to be the writer responsible for Nicholas II's "senseless dreams" speech in 1895 when he proclaimed "it is known to me that voices have been heard of late in some zemstvo assemblies of persons carried away by senseless dreams of the participation of zemstvo representatives in the affairs of internal government."

If the height of Pobedonostsev's influence was after the assassination of Alexander II, his influence had significantly waned by 1896. His last years were quiet ones. He had never enjoyed court life, and in his later years he went out even less frequently. He did not officially retire until 1905, but by then younger men had been appointed, Nicholas II had ascended to the throne, and many of Pobedonostsev's policies were once again being disputed. Pobedonostsev died of pneumonia in 1907. By the time of his death, other statesmen had assumed power, and his funeral was little noticed, with only a few in attendance.

Bibliography

Byrnes, Robert F. (1968). Pobedonostsev: His Life and Thought. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

—MICHELLE DENBESTE

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Konstantin Petrovich Pobyedonostzev

Top

Pobyedonostzev, Konstantin Petrovich (kənstəntyēn' pētrô'vĭch pəbyĕdənôs'tsyĭf), 1827-1907, Russian public official and jurist. He was professor of civil law at Moscow when he attracted the attention of Czar Alexander II and was appointed (1865) tutor to the future Alexander III. As procurator of the holy synod (1880-1905), he became the champion of autocracy, orthodoxy, and Russian nationalism. He had great power and under his influence Alexander III opposed any limitation of autocratic powers, tightened censorship, attempted to suppress opposition opinion, persecuted religious nonconformists, and adopted a policy of Russification of all national minorities. Pobyedonostzev also supported Pan-Slavism and in his writings strongly attacked Western rationalism and liberalism. He tutored Nicholas II and was one of his most influential advisers until the Revolution of 1905. He wrote a three-volume work on Russian civil law.

Bibliography

See his Reflections of a Russian Statesman (tr. 1898).

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Konstantin Pobedonostsev

Top

Konstantin Pobedonostsev.

Konstantin Petrovich Pobyedonostsyev (Russian: Константин Петрович Победоносцев; May 21, 1827 – March 23, 1907) was a Russian jurist, statesman, and adviser to three Tsars.^[1] He is usually regarded as a prime representative of reactionary^[2] views and was the "éminence grise" of imperial politics during the reign of Alexander III of Russia, holding the position of the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod, the highest position of the supervision of the Russian Orthodox Church by the state.

Contents

1 Life
2 Jurisprudence
3 Doctrine
4 References and notes
5 Sources
6 See also
7 Works
8 External links

Life

Pobedonostsev's father Pyotr Vasilyevich Pobedonostsev was a Professor of literature at Moscow State University. In 1841 he placed his son, then aged 14, in the St. Petersburg School of Jurisprudence, which had been established to prepare young men for civil service. After graduation Konstantin Pobedonostsev entered public service as an official in the eighth Moscow department of the Senate. The task of the department was to resolve civil cases from guberniyas surrounding Moscow. He was promoted rapidly within the eighth department.

At the same time in 1859 Moscow State University requested him, then aged 32, to hold lectures in civil law instead of V. N. Nikolski, who had moved abroad. For the next six years Pobedonostsev was lecturing eight hours every week while continuing to work in the eighth Moscow department. From 1860 to 1865 he was professor of civil law at Moscow State University. In 1861 Alexander II invited him to instruct his son and heir Nicholas in the theory of law and administration. As a result, Pobedonostsev had to resign from Moscow State University due to the lack of time.

In 1865 at the age of 38, he was elected Professor Emeritus at the university. But on April 12, 1865 his pupil Nicholas died, but Pobedonostsev was invited to teach Nicholas's brother Alexander (the future tsar Alexander III). In 1866 Pobedonostsev moved to a permanent residence in St. Petersburg. Pobedonostsev and Tsarevich Alexander remained very close for almost thirty years, from Alexander's ascension as a Tsar until his death in 1894.

In 1868, he became a senator, in 1874 – a member of the Council of the Empire, and in 1880 – chief procurator of the Holy Synod. In the latter office Pobedonostsev was de facto head of the Russian Orthodox Church, just the year before the Tsar was assassinated. During the reign of Alexander III he was one of the most influential men in the empire. He is considered the mastermind of Alexander's Manifesto of April 29, 1881, shortly after Alexander III ascended the throne after his father was assassinated.

The Manifesto proclaimed that the absolute power of the tsar in Russia was unshakable thus putting an end to Loris-Melikov's endeavours to establish a representative body in the empire.

Actually, Pobedonostsev's ascension in the first days after the assassination of Alexander II resulted in subsequent resignation of Loris-Melikov and other ministers eager for liberal reforms. He always was an uncompromising conservative and never shrank from boldly expressing his staunch opinions. Consequently, in the liberal circles he was always denounced as an obscurantist, pedant, and an enemy of progress.

After the death of Alexander III, he lost much of his influence over unfortunate Tsar Nicholas II, who was assassinated with his whole family in 1918. While Nicholas II clung to his father's Russification policy and even extending it to Finland, he generally disliked the idea of systematic religious persecution, and was not wholly averse to the partial emancipation of the Russian Church from civil control.

In 1901, Nikolai Lagovski, a supporter of socialist ideas, tried to kill Pobedonostsev. He shot in the window of Pobedonostsev's office but missed. Lagovski was sentenced to 6 years of katorga.

During the revolutionary tumult, which followed the disastrous war with Japan, Pobedonostsev, being nearly 80 years of age, retired from public affairs. He died on March 23, 1907.

He was fictionalized as old senator Ableukhov in the great novel of Andrey Bely called Petersburg (1912). Arguably he was also depicted in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin.^[3]

Perhaps in revenge, he ordered Tolstoy's excommunication in 1901. (Tolstoy had in fact left the Russian Orthodox Church voluntarily years earlier.)

Jurisprudence

Though Pobedonostsev is mostly known as statesman and thinker, his contribution to Russian civil law is significant. He is generally regarded as one of the most educated Russian jurists of the 19th century. His main work was three-volume "Course of Civil Law" (Курс гражданского права) published in 1868, 1871 and 1880 respectively.

Before the 1905 October Revolution the Course was reprinted several times with minor changes. The Course was regarded as outstanding guide for practising lawyers. Quotations from the Course are reported to have been used as a ground for decisions of the Civil Board of the Senate. The author's profound knowledge of Russian civil law resulted in description of many previously insufficiently explored institutions such as communal land law.

In addition, Pobedonostsev published in 1865 in Moskovskie Vedomosti several anonymous articles on the judicial reform of Alexander II.

He criticized the reform because, as he thought, Russia lacked highly qualified judges and in that situation the creation of an independent judicial branch was unreasonable.

Doctrine

Pobedonostsev was known for his gaunt figure and pale, corpse-like countenance, as one may judge from this portrait by Ilya Repin.

Pobedonostsev held the view that human nature is sinful, rejecting the Western ideals of freedom and independence as "dangerous delusions of nihilistic youth."

In his "Reflections of a Russian Statesman" (1896),^[4] he promoted autocracy and condemned elections, representation and democracy, the jury system, the press, free education, charities, and social reforms. Of representative government, he wrote, "It is terrible to think of our condition if destiny had sent us the fatal gift—the all-Russian Parliament."^[1] He also condemned Social Darwinism as erroneous generalisation of Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

In the early years of the reign of Alexander II, Pobedonostsev maintained, though keeping aloof from the Slavophiles, that Western institutions were radically bad in themselves and totally inapplicable to Russia since they had no roots in Russian history and culture and did not correspond to the spirit of Russian people. At that period, he contributed several papers to Alexander Herzen's radical periodical Voices from Russia.

He denounced democracy as "the insupportable dictatorship of vulgar crowd". Parliamentary methods of administration, trial by jury, freedom of the press, secular education – these were among the principal objects of his aversion. He subjected all of them to a severe analysis in his Reflections of a Russian Statesman. He once stated that Russia should be "frozen in time", showing his undivided commitment to autocracy.

To these dangerous products of Western rationalism he found a counterpoise in popular vis inertiae, and in the respect of the masses for institutions developed slowly and automatically during the past centuries of national life. In his view, human society evolves naturally, just like a tree grows. Human mind is not capable to perceive the logic of social development. Any attempt to reform society is a violence and a crime. Among the practical deductions drawn from these premises is the necessity of preserving the autocratic power, and of fostering among the people the traditional veneration for the ritual of the national Church.

Spanish journalist Enrique Gomez Carrillo compared Pobedonostsev with the Grand Inquisitors of Spain, and quoted him as saying to the later assassinated Tsar, "You have no right to relinquish your power. You are the arm of the (Orthodox) Church. If you become weaker, if you kneel down, then Our Lord Jesus will be asking you for your cowardy".

In the sphere of practical politics he exercised considerable influence by inspiring and encouraging the Russification policy of Alexander III, which found expression in an administrative nationalist propaganda and led to Tsarist Russia's most elaborately justified and most thoroughly carried-out programs of religious persecution, largely centered upon Russia's Jews. These policies were implemented by "May Laws" that banned Jews from rural areas and shtetls even within Pale of Settlement.

Pobedonostsev was influential in promulgation of all anti-Jewish measures taken during the Alexander III's administration, such as deportations of Jews from large cities, proscriptions of property ownership in rural as well as urban areas, enrollment quotas in public education, and the proscription to vote in local elections.

Saying, that "a third of Jews will be converted, a third will emigrate, and the rest will die of hunger," is often attributed to Pobedonostsev.^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8] John Klier notes dubious provenance of this quote.^[9]

According to British author Arnold White, interested in Jewish agricultural colonisation in Argentina, who visited Pobedonostsev with credentials from Baron de Hirsch, Pobedonostsev said to him: "The characteristics of the Jewish race are parasitic; for their sustenance they require the presence of another race as "host" although they remain aloof and self-contained. Take them from the living organism, put them on a rock, and they die. They cannot cultivate the soil."^[10]

Although Pobedonostsev, especially during the later years of his life, was generally detested, there was at least one man who not only shared his views but also sympathized with him personally. It was the novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky^{[citation needed]}. Their correspondence is still read with the utmost interest. "I believe that he is the only man who can save Russia from the revolution", wrote the Russian novelist^{[citation needed]}.

References and notes

^ ^a ^b Thompson, Ronald. The Government of the Soviet Union, 2nd edition. D. Van Nostrand, 1949
^ http://books.google.com/books?id=W8ETvpyQ26wC&pg=PA23&dq=pobedonostsev+reactionary#PPA23,M1
^ http://www.arsenalband.ru/now169.php
^ http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=EhQUAAAAIAAJ
^ http://www.eleven.co.il/article/13248
^ Leo Errera. The Ruissian Jews: Exterminiationt or Emancipation?, trans. Bella Loewy (London, 1894), p. 18:
^ Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Polanld, trans. I. Friedlaender, 3 vols. (Philadelplhia, 1916-20), Vol 3, p. 10
^ Virginia Cowles (1977) The Last Tsar and Tsarina: 25
^ John D. Klier. State Policies and the Conversion of Jews in Imperial Russia. In Robert P. Geraci, Michael Khodarkovsky. Of religion and empire: missions, conversion, and tolerance in Tsarist Russia. 2001. pp. 92, 106-107.
^ Arnold White. The Jewish Question: How to Solve It. The North American Review, Vol. 178, No. 566 (Jan., 1904), pp. 10-24.

Sources

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Byrnes, Robert (1969). Russian Conservative Though Before the Revolution, in:
- Stavrou, Theofanis (1969). Russia Under the Last Tsar. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816605149, ISBBN 9780816605149. http://books.google.com/books?id=gjp_F0GMg74C.

Works

Reflections of a Russian Statesman by Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev. Published by G. Richards, 1898.
- University of Michigan Press. 1964. ISBN 0472061046.

External links

The Russian Empire, 1855 to 1900
Review of Pobedonostsev's doctrines (in Russian)
Encyclopedia article on Pobedonostsev (in Russian)

Persondata
Name	Pobedonostsev, Konstantin Petrovich
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	May 21, 1827
Place of birth
Date of death	March 23, 1907
Place of death

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Donate to Wikimedia

		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Gale Encyclopedia of Russian History. Encyclopedia of Russian History. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		Wikipedia on Answers.com. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Konstantin Pobedonostsev. Read more

	Metropolitan Filaret Drozdov (Russian history)
	Mikhail Tarielovich Loris-Melikov (Russian history)
	Ilya Yefimovich Repin (Russian history)

	How old was Konstantin Chernenko at death? Read answer...
	When did Konstantin Thon die? Read answer...
	What is Konstantin Tsiolkovsky\'s birthday? Read answer...

	Who was Konstantin Tslokovsky?
	What did Konstantin Tsiolkovsky do?
	What is the konstantin opal?

Konstantin Pobedonostsev

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev

Konstantin Pobedonostsev

Konstantin Petrovich Pobyedonostzev

Konstantin Pobedonostsev

Life

Jurisprudence

Doctrine

References and notes

Sources

See also

Works

External links