Defenders of the old regime: Russian conservatives in the Age of Napoleon and the Holy Alliance

A self-conscious Russian conservative movement first arose in 1801-25, in response to the French Revolution, the Napoleonic threat, and the reform plans of Alexander I. However, since Russia\u27s Westernization in the eighteenth century had weakened the cultural ties linking state and nobility to Muscovite tradition, it was difficult to follow the contemporary European pattern of defending the existing social order by invoking Russian national tradition or Orthodox religion. Consequently, Russian conservatives were unable to agree on a common political and ideological response to the challenges confronting them. This dissertation examines the three main conservative currents that emerged, and discusses their most influential exponents: conservative utopianism, which glorified an idealized national past (represented by Aleksandr Shishkov and Sergei Glinka); gentry conservatism, concerned mainly with protecting noble privilege (Fedor Rostopchin, Nikolai Karamzin, and Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna); and the cosmopolitan, Pietistic religious conservatism associated with the Holy Alliance (Aleksandr and Roksandra Sturdza, Dmitrii Runich, Vasilii Popov). These conservative groups are studied through the intellectual development and political role of their leaders, their interaction with upper-class public opinion, and their impact on the domestic and foreign policies of the state. The dissertation particularly focuses on conservative figures who have received little attention in modern scholarship, such as Shishkov, Rostopchin, and the Sturdzas, and makes extensive use of archival material as well as rarely-used printed primary sources. It concludes that these conservatives, unable to formulate a cohesive defense of the ancien regime and politically at odds with one another, were superseded after 1825 by Nicholas I\u27s statist policy of Official Nationality. Yet they made significant contributions to nineteenth-century Russian culture, by advocating a nationalism based on the non-Europeanized culture of the lower classes and by drawing attention to Russia\u27s ties with other Slavic and/or Orthodox nations. This helped give currency to the idea, later developed by the Slavophiles, that Russia\u27s character and destiny were fundamentally at odds with the West