The night from 5 to 6 November 1796 in St. Petersburg turned out to be restless. Empress Catherine II had a stroke. Everything happened so unexpectedly that she did not have time to make any orders about the heir.

According to the Petrine law on succession to the throne, the emperor had the right to appoint an heir at will. Catherine's desire in this regard, although unspoken, has long been known: she wanted to see her grandson Alexander on the throne. But, firstly, they could not (or did not want to) find an official will drawn up in favor of the Grand Duke. Secondly, 15-year-old Alexander himself did not express an active desire to reign. And, thirdly, the Empress had a legitimate son, Alexander's father, Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, whose name had not left the lips of the courtiers since morning.

Pavel arrived in Zimny ​​in the middle of the night, accompanied by hundreds of soldiers from the Gatchina regiment, and immediately went to his mother's bedroom to make sure that she was really dying. His entry into the palace was like an assault. The guards in German uniforms placed everywhere shocked the courtiers, accustomed to the elegant luxury of the last years of Catherine's court. The Empress was still alive at that time, as the heir and Bezborodko, locked in her office, burned some papers in the fireplace. In the square under the windows of the palace, a revival was noticeable. The townspeople mourned the death of the “mother empress”, but noisily expressed their joy when they learned that Pavel would become king. The same was heard in the soldiers' barracks. Only in the court environment it was completely unhappy. According to Countess Golovina, many, having learned about the death of Catherine and the accession of her son to the throne, tirelessly repeated: “The end has come for everything: both for her, and for our well-being.” But in order to understand what kind of person ended up on the Russian throne on that November day in 1796, one must carefully look at the history of his life.

He waited 34 years

This story begins on September 20, 1754, when a long-awaited and even required event took place in the family of the heir to the Russian throne: the daughter of Peter I, the Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, had a great-nephew Pavel. Grandmother was much more pleased with this than the father of the child, the nephew of the Empress, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp Karl-Peter-Ulrich (Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich) and even more so the mother of the newborn, Sophia-Frederick-Augusta, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst (Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna ).

The princess was discharged from Germany as a delivery vehicle. The car turned out to be a secret. From the first days of her arrival, the seedy princess of Zerbst set herself the task of achieving supreme power in Russia. The ambitious German woman understood that with the birth of her son, her already weak hopes for the Russian throne were crumbling. All subsequent relationships between mother and son developed in this way - as the relationship of political opponents in the struggle for power. As for Elizabeth, she did everything possible to widen the gap between them: special signs of attention to the newborn, emphasized coldness towards the Grand Duchess, who had not been very spoiled with attention before. The hint is clear: you gave birth to what you ordered - you can leave the stage. Did Elizaveta Petrovna understand what she was doing? In any case, at the end of her reign, she changed her attitude towards her daughter-in-law, finally waving her hand at her nephew. She saw that the modest Princess of Zerbst had become an important political figure at the Russian court, appreciated her efficiency and organizational talent. Too late, Elizabeth realized what a serious enemy she had created for her beloved grandson, but there was no time left to correct mistakes.

Elizaveta Petrovna died on December 24, 1761, when Pavel was only 7 years old. Those first seven years were probably the happiest of his life. The child grew up surrounded by the attention and care of numerous palace servants, mostly Russian. In early childhood, the Grand Duke rarely heard foreign speech. The Empress spoiled her grandson, spent a lot of time with him, especially in the last two years. The image of a kind Russian grandmother, who sometimes came to visit him even at night, remained forever in the memory of the Grand Duke. Occasionally, his father also came to see him, almost always drunk. He looked at his son with a hint of some sad tenderness. Their relationship could not be called close, but Pavel was offended to see how those around him openly neglected his father and laughed at him. This sympathy and pity for his father increased many times after his short reign, which ended with a palace coup in favor of Catherine.

The death of Elizabeth, the unexpected disappearance of Peter, vague rumors about his violent death shocked the eight-year-old boy. Later, pity for the murdered father grew into real worship. The grown-up Pavel was very fond of reading Shakespearean tragedies and secretly compared himself with Prince Hamlet, called to avenge his father. But real life was complicated by the fact that the "Russian Hamlet" did not have an insidious uncle and a deceived mother. The villain, who did not hide his involvement in the murder, was the mother herself.

It is known what a heavy imprint the lack or absence of maternal affection leaves on a person's whole life. It is difficult to imagine the destruction that must have been produced in the sensitive soul of Paul by many years of unceasing war with his own mother. Moreover, Catherine was the first to strike and always won. Having seized the throne, Catherine hurried to take out all her eighteen-year humiliations at the Russian court, and little Pavel turned out to be the most convenient and safe target. He was reminded of both the gentleness of his father and the caresses of his grandmother. But too many of those who supported the coup hoped for the accession of the heir soon after his coming of age. And Catherine yielded, firmly deciding in the depths of her soul not to allow Paul to the throne. The new empress, who suffered so much from the “state” approach of Elizabeth, openly adopted it.

First of all, they tried to deprive the heir of any systematic education. The first mentor, beloved by Pavel, Poroshin, was soon dismissed, and the new skillfully selected teachers did not enlighten Pavel, but rather overloaded his childish mind with many incomprehensible and scattered details that did not give a clear idea of ​​anything. In addition, many of them guessed their role and boldly taught on the principle of "the more boring the better." Here, the teacher of "state sciences" Grigory Teplov was especially zealous, filling up the teenager with court cases and statistical reports. After these classes, Pavel hated all his life the rough painstaking work with documents, trying to solve any problem as quickly as possible, without delving into its essence. It is not surprising that after seven years of such an “education”, supplemented by painful impressions from rare meetings with his mother, who poured out “witty remarks” about his mental development, the child developed a capricious and irritable character. Rumors spread at court about the wayward acts of the heir, and many thought seriously about the consequences of his possible reign. Ekaterina brilliantly won the first bout.

But Paul was too small for retaliatory strikes. He grew up under the supervision of the Russian diplomat Nikita Panin, who was chosen as a teacher by Elizabeth. Panin spent 13 years with the boy and sincerely became attached to him. Of all the Russian court nobility, he was best able to understand the reasons for the strange behavior of the heir and ardently supported the idea of ​​​​transferring the throne to him.

Catherine, seeking to quarrel her son, who had barely reached the age of majority, with a mentor, finally stops his studies and in 1773 autocratically marries her son to the Hesse-Darmstadt princess Wilhelmina (who received the name Natalya Alekseevna in baptism). However, the new Grand Duchess turned out to be a very determined woman and directly pushed Paul to seize power, which he refused. Panin was at the head of the conspiracy. He, unfortunately for the heir, was also a major Freemason, the first Russian constitutionalist. The coup was doomed to failure. Catherine had too many admiring admirers and voluntary assistants at court. When in 1776 the empress learned that her son could ascend the throne, and even with a constitution, measures were taken immediately. Panin was removed from state affairs (it is impossible to execute: he is too big a political figure), he was forbidden to see the heir. Grand Duchess Natalya died after an unsuccessful birth (presumably she was poisoned on the orders of the Empress). Six years later, Pavel also lost Panin. The Grand Duke himself went either into exile or into exile for 20 years - from St. Petersburg to Gatchina. He was no longer dangerous.

These 20 years finally shaped the character of Paul. He was remarried to the Princess of Württemberg Sophia (Maria Feodorovna) for the same purpose as his father had once been. Two children born next - Alexander and Konstantin - Catherine took away from their parents and raised the eldest as the future heir. Occasionally, Catherine called her son to the capital to participate in the signing of diplomatic documents in order to humiliate him once again in the presence of others. Locked up in Gatchina, he was completely deprived of access to even the most insignificant state affairs and tirelessly drilled his regiment on the parade ground - the only thing he could really manage. All the books that could be obtained were read. He was especially fascinated by historical treatises and novels about the times of European chivalry. The heir himself was sometimes not averse to playing in the Middle Ages. The fun is all the more forgivable, because at the mother's court, completely different games were in vogue. Each new favorite sought to outdo its predecessor in enlightened refined cynicism. The heir had one thing to do - to wait. Not a desire for power, but a constant fear of death at the hands of murderers hired by his mother, that was what tormented Paul. Who knows, maybe in St. Petersburg the Empress was no less afraid of a palace coup? And maybe she wished her son dead...

Meanwhile, the general position of the empire, despite a number of brilliant foreign policy successes of Catherine II and her associates, remained very difficult. The 18th century was in many respects decisive for the fate of Russia. The reforms of Peter I placed it among the leading world powers, advancing it a century ahead in technical terms. However, the same reforms destroyed the ancient foundations of the Russian state - strong social and cultural ties between the estates, in order to strengthen the state apparatus by opposing the interests of landowners and peasants. Serfdom finally turned from a special "Moscow" form of social organization (service service) into a standard aristocratic privilege. This position was extremely unfair. Indeed, after the death of Peter the Russian nobility bore less and less burdens of the official class, continuing to actively oppose the general equalization of rights. In addition, the nobility, which since the time of Peter the Great has been swept over by the stream of Western European culture, has become increasingly detached from traditional Russian values, was less and less able to understand the needs and aspirations of its own people, arbitrarily interpreting them in the spirit of newfangled Western philosophical teachings. The culture of the upper and lower strata of the population already under Catherine began to develop separately, threatening to destroy national unity over time. Pugachev's uprising showed this very clearly. What could have saved Russia from an internal rift, or at least pushed it back?

The Orthodox Church, which usually united the Russian people in difficult times, ever since the time of Peter I was almost deprived of the opportunity to seriously influence the development of events and the policy of state power. In addition, she did not enjoy authority among the "enlightened class". At the beginning of the 18th century, the monasteries were actually removed from the business of education and science, shifting it to new, “secular” structures (before that, the Church had successfully carried out educational tasks for almost seven centuries!), And in the middle of the century, the state took away from them the richest, inhabited by wealthy peasants earth. It was taken away only in order to get a new resource for the continuation of the policy of continuous land distributions for the military-noble corporation that was growing by leaps and bounds. But if the former, outlying distributions and redistributions of land really strengthened the state, then the instant destruction of dozens of the oldest centers of cultural agriculture and trade in non-Black Earth Russia (most of the fairs were timed to coincide with the holidays of the Orthodox monasteries that patronized them), which were at the same time centers of independent small credit, charity and wide social assistance, led only to further undermine local markets and the economic power of the country as a whole.

The Russian language and national culture, which at one time made it possible to save the cultural integrity of Russia from fragmentation into principalities, were also not held in high esteem at court. There remained the state, the endless strengthening of which was bequeathed by Peter to all his heirs. The machine of the bureaucratic apparatus launched by Peter possessed such power that in the long run it was capable of crushing any class privileges and barriers. In addition, it relied on the only ancient principle, not violated by Peter and sacredly revered by the majority of the population of Russia, the principle of autocracy (unlimited sovereignty of the supreme power). But most of Peter's successors were too weak or indecisive to use this principle in its entirety. They dutifully followed in the wake of the noble estate policy, deftly using the contradictions between the court groups in order to at least slightly strengthen their power. Ekaterina brought this maneuvering to perfection. The end of the 18th century is considered the "golden age of the Russian nobility". It was strong, as never before, and calm in the consciousness of its strength. But the question remained open: who, in the interests of the country, would risk disturbing this calm?

What did he want?

On November 7, 1796, the "golden age of the Russian nobility" ended. The emperor came to the throne, having his own ideas about the significance of estates and state interests. In many ways, these ideas were built "from the contrary" - as opposed to the principles of Catherine. However, a lot was thought out on their own, since 30 years were allotted for reflection. And most importantly, a large supply of energy has accumulated, which for a long time had no way out. So, redo everything in your own way and as soon as possible! Very naive, but not always meaningless.

Although Paul disliked the word "reform" no less than the word "revolution", he never discounted the fact that since the time of Peter the Great, Russian autocracy has always been at the forefront of change. Trying on the role of a feudal overlord, and later - the chain of the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Pavel completely remained a man of the new time, dreaming of an ideal state structure. The state must be transformed from an aristocratic freemen into a rigid hierarchical structure, headed by a king, who has all possible powers of authority. Estates, classes, social strata are gradually losing their special inalienable rights, completely submitting only to the autocrat, who personifies God's heavenly law and earthly state order. The aristocracy must gradually disappear, as well as the personally dependent peasantry. The class hierarchy should be replaced by equal subjects.

The French Revolution not only increased Paul's dislike for the philosophy of the Enlightenment of the 18th century, but also once again convinced him that the Russian state mechanism needed serious changes. Catherine's enlightened despotism, in his opinion, slowly but surely led the country to ruin, provoking a social explosion, a formidable harbinger of which was the Pugachev rebellion. And in order to avoid this explosion, it was necessary not only to toughen the regime, but also to urgently reorganize the country's governance system. Note: Paul was the only autocratic reformer after Peter who planned to start it “from above” in the literal sense of the word, that is, to curtail the rights of the aristocracy (in favor of the state). Of course, the peasants in such changes at first remained silent extras, they were not going to be involved in management for a long time. But although, by order of Paul, it was forbidden to use the word “citizen” in printed publications, he, more than anyone else in the 18th century, tried to make peasants and philistines citizens, taking them out of the class system and “attaching” them directly to the state.

The program is quite harmonious, corresponding to its time, but it did not take into account the ambitions of the Russian ruling stratum at all. It was precisely this tragic discrepancy, generated by the Gatchina isolation and emotional unrest experienced, that was taken by contemporaries, and after them by historians, for “barbaric savagery”, even for madness. The then pillars of Russian social thought (with the exception of the amnestied Radishchev), frightened by the revolution, were either in favor of carrying out further reforms at the expense of the peasants, or not carrying them out at all. If the concept of "totalitarianism" had already existed at the end of the 18th century, contemporaries would not have hesitated to apply it to the Pavlovian regime. But Paul's political program was no more utopian than the philosophy of his day. The 18th century is the heyday of social utopias. Diderot and Voltaire predicted the creation of a unitary state by enlightened monarchs on the basis of the Social Contract and saw elements of their program in the reforms of the beginning of Catherine's reign. If you look closely, the real supporter of the idea of ​​​​a single equal state was her son, who hated the French "enlighteners". At the same time, his political practice turned out to be no more cruel than the democratic terror of the French Convention or the counter-revolutionary repressions of the Directory and Napoleon that followed it.

The army became the first "victim" of the transformations already in 1796. Many times scientists and journalists have analyzed the notorious "Gatcha heritage": parades, wigs, sticks, etc. But it is worth remembering the loose recruitment of 1795, half of which was stolen by officers for their estates; about the total revision of the army supply department, which revealed colossal theft and abuse; about the ensuing cuts in the military budget; about the transformation of the guard from the court guard into a combat unit. (The entire officer corps was summoned to the review of 1797, which put an end to the service on the estates and the entry into the regimental lists of unborn babies, like Pushkin's Grinev.) The same endless parades and maneuvers laid the foundation for the regular exercises of the Russian army (which was very useful later, in the era of the Napoleonic wars), which had previously been in winter quarters in the absence of war. Under Paul, the soldiers, of course, were driven more on the parade ground, more severely punished, but at the same time they were finally fed regularly and dressed warmly in winter, which brought the emperor unprecedented popularity among the troops. But most of all the officers were outraged by the introduction of corporal punishment. Not for soldiers in general, but specifically for the noble class. It smelled of unhealthy class equality.

Landowners also tried to squeeze. For the first time, serfs began to take a personal oath to the emperor (earlier, the landowner did this for them). When selling, it was forbidden to separate families. The famous decree-manifesto “on the three-day corvee” was issued, the text of which, in particular, read: “The Law of God, given to us in the Decalogue, teaches us to dedicate the seventh day to God; why on this day, glorified by the triumph of faith and on which we were honored to receive sacred chrismation and the royal wedding on our ancestral throne, we consider it our duty before the Creator of all blessings, the Giver, to confirm throughout our empire about the exact and indispensable fulfillment of this law, commanding everyone to observe so that no one, under any circumstances, would dare to force the peasants to work on Sundays ... "

Although there was no talk yet of the abolition or even a serious restriction of serfdom, enlightened land and soul owners became worried: how could power, even royal, interfere in how they dispose of their hereditary property? Catherine did not allow herself such a thing! These gentlemen did not yet understand that the peasants were the main source of state income, and therefore it was unprofitable to ruin them. But it would not be bad for the landlords to pay the costs of maintaining the elected bodies of local government, because they consist exclusively of the nobility. There was another attempt on the "sacred right of the noble class" - freedom from taxation.

Meanwhile, the overall tax burden has eased. The abolition of grain duty (according to the Russian agronomist A.T. Bolotov, which produced “beneficial actions throughout the state”) was accompanied by the addition of arrears for 1797 and the preferential sale of salt (until the middle of the 19th century, salt was actually the national currency). As part of the fight against inflation, palace expenses were reduced by 10 (!) times, a significant part of the silver palace services was poured into a coin put into circulation. In parallel, an unsecured mass of paper money was withdrawn from circulation at public expense. More than five million rubles in banknotes were burned on Palace Square.

Officials were also in fear. Bribes (which were given openly under Catherine) were mercilessly eradicated. This was especially true of the capital apparatus, which was shaken by constant checks. An unheard of thing: employees must not be late and be in their place all day! The emperor himself got up at 5 in the morning, listened to current reports and news, and then, together with his heirs, went to revise the capital's institutions and guard units. The number of provinces and uyezds has been reduced, and hence the number of bureaucrats required to fill the respective positions.

The Orthodox Church also received certain hopes for a religious revival. The new emperor, unlike his mother, was not indifferent to Orthodoxy. His clergyman and spiritual mentor, the future Metropolitan Platon (Levshin), who later crowned Paul to the throne, wrote about his faith in the following way about his faith: pleasant. This, according to the note, was introduced to him with milk by the late Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, who dearly loved him and brought up very pious female persons assigned from her.

According to some testimonies, the emperor often showed traits of clairvoyance under the guise of foolishness. Thus, a case is known from memoir literature when Pavel Petrovich ordered to send an officer to Siberia who had performed unsatisfactorily at military maneuvers, but, bowing to the requests of those around him for pardon, he nevertheless exclaimed: “I feel that the person for whom you are asking - scoundrel!" Subsequently, it was revealed that this officer killed his own mother. Another case: a guards officer who had a wife and children decided to take away a young girl. But she did not agree to go without a wedding. Then a comrade of this officer in the regiment disguised himself as a priest and played a secret rite. After some time, a woman left with a child born from a seducer, having found out that her imaginary husband had a legitimate family, filed a complaint with the sovereign. “The emperor entered the position of an unfortunate woman,” E.P. Yankov, - and made a wonderful decision: he ordered her kidnapper to be demoted and exiled, the young woman to be recognized as having the right to the surname of the seducer and their legitimate daughter, and the crowning officer to be tonsured a monk. The resolution said that "since he has a penchant for spiritual life, then send him to a monastery and take the vows as a monk." The officer was taken somewhere far away and had a haircut. He was beside himself with such an unexpected denouement of his frivolous act and did not live at all like a monastic, but then the grace of God touched his heart; he repented, came to his senses and, when he was no longer young, led the most strict life and was considered an experienced and very good old man.

All this, however, did not prevent Paul from taking the title of head of the Catholic Order of Malta. However, this was done not only for political reasons. It was an attempt to resurrect within the order (by the way, never before submitted to the Pope of Rome) the ancient Byzantine brotherhood of St. John the Baptist, from which the Jerusalem “Hospitallers” once arose. In addition, it is worth noting that the Order of Malta, for the purpose of self-preservation, gave itself under the protection of Russia and Emperor Paul. On October 12, 1799, the shrines of the order were solemnly brought to Gatchina: the right hand of St. John the Baptist, a particle of the Cross of the Lord, and the Philermo Icon of the Mother of God. Russia possessed all these treasures until 1917.

In general, Paul is the first emperor who softened in his policy the line of Peter I to infringe on the rights of the Church in the name of state interests. First of all, he strove to ensure that the priesthood had a more “image and state corresponding to the importance of the rank.” So, when the Holy Synod made a proposal to deliver priests and deacons from corporal punishment, the emperor approved it (it did not have time to enter into force until 1801), continuing to adhere to the practice of restoring such punishments for noble officers.

Measures were taken to improve the life of the white clergy: salaries were increased for those on a regular salary, and where there was no salary, the parishioners were entrusted with the care of processing priestly allotments, which could be replaced by an appropriate grain contribution in kind or in cash. In 1797 and 1799, the state salaries from the treasury for the spiritual department, according to the annual state estimates, were doubled against the previous one. State subsidies to the clergy thus amounted to almost one million rubles. In addition, in 1797, plots of land for bishops' houses were doubled. In addition (for the first time since Catherine's secularization!) bishops and monasteries were given mills, fishing grounds and other lands. For the first time in the history of Russia, measures were legalized to provide for the widows and orphans of the clergy.

Under Emperor Paul, the military clergy was separated into a special department and received its head - the protopresbyter of the army and navy. In general, in order to encourage a more zealous performance of their service, the emperor introduced a procedure for awarding clergy with orders and insignia of external distinction. (Now this order is deeply rooted in the Church, but then it caused some embarrassment.) On the personal initiative of the sovereign, a pectoral cross was also established. Before the revolution, on the reverse side of all synodal crosses was the letter "P" - the initial of Pavel Petrovich. Under him, theological academies were also established in St. Petersburg and Kazan, and several new seminaries.

Unexpectedly, he received part of the civil rights and such a large layer of Russian society as schismatics. For the first time, the sovereign compromised on this issue and allowed loyal Old Believers to have their own prayer houses and serve in them according to the ancient custom. The Old Believers (of course, not all), in turn, were ready to recognize the synodal Church and accept priests from it. In 1800, the regulation on the churches of the same faith was finally approved.

The Peter's traditions of cooperation with the merchants were also revived. The establishment of the College of Commerce at the end of 1800 looked like the beginning of a global reform of government. Indeed, 13 of its 23 members (more than half!) were chosen by merchants from among themselves. And this at a time when the nobility's elections were limited. Naturally, Alexander, having come to power (by the way, with the slogan of the constitution), was one of the first to cancel this democratic order.

But it never occurred to any of Paul's heirs to cancel the most important of the state acts adopted by him - the law of April 5, 1797 on succession to the throne. This law finally closed the fatal breach made by the Petrovsky decree of 1722. From now on, the succession to the throne (only through the male line!) Acquired a clear legal character, and no Catherine or Anna could no longer claim it arbitrarily. The significance of the law is so great that Klyuchevsky, for example, called it "the first positive fundamental law in our legislation"; after all, by strengthening the autocracy as an institution of power, it limited the arbitrariness and ambitions of individuals, served as a kind of prevention of possible coups and conspiracies.

Of course, next to serious innovations, one can notice a huge number of detailed details: the prohibition of certain types and styles of clothing, instructions on when citizens should get up and go to bed, how to drive and walk the streets, what color to paint houses ... And for violations of everything this - fines, arrests, dismissals. On the one hand, the fatal lessons of Teplov had an effect: the emperor was not able to separate small cases from large ones. On the other hand, what seems to us trifles (the style of hats) at the end of the 18th century had an important symbolic meaning and demonstrated to those around them adherence to one or another ideological party. After all, "sans-culottes" and "Phrygian caps" were not born in Russia at all.

Perhaps the main negative feature of the Pavlovsk government is uneven trust in people, the inability to select friends and associates and arrange personnel. Everyone around - from the heir to the throne Alexander to the last lieutenant of St. Petersburg - were under suspicion. The emperor changed the highest dignitaries so quickly that they did not have time to get up to speed. For the slightest fault, disgrace could follow. However, the emperor also knew how to be magnanimous: Radishchev was released from prison; a quarrel with Suvorov ended with Pavel asking for forgiveness (and then he promoted the commander to generalissimo); the killer of his father, Alexei Orlov, was given a "severe" punishment - to walk several blocks behind the coffin of his victim, taking off his hat.

And yet the personnel policy of the emperor was highly unpredictable. The people most devoted to him lived in the same constant anxiety for their future as the notorious court scoundrels. In promoting unquestioning obedience, Paul often lost honest people in his circle. They were replaced by scoundrels, ready to carry out any hasty decree, caricaturing the imperial will. At first they were afraid of Pavel, but then, seeing an endless stream of badly executed decrees, they began to laugh at him quietly. Even 100 years ago, mockery of such transformations would have cost dearly to the merry fellows. But Paul did not have such indisputable authority as his great great-grandfather, but he understood people worse. Yes, and Russia was no longer the same as under Peter: then she dutifully shaved off her beards, now she was indignant at the ban on wearing round hats.

In general, the whole society was outraged. The memoirists then presented this mood as a single impulse, but the reasons for the indignation were often opposite. The combat officers of the Suvorov school were irritated by the new military doctrine; generals like Bennigsen were worried about cutting their income at the expense of the treasury; the young guards were dissatisfied with the new strict service regulations; the highest nobility of the empire - "Catherine's eagles" - are deprived of the opportunity to mix state interests and personal gain, as in the old days; officials of a lower rank still stole, but with great care; city ​​dwellers were angry at the new decrees about when they should turn off the lights. The enlightened “new people” had the hardest time: they could not come to terms with the revival of autocratic principles, calls were heard to put an end to “Asiatic despotism” (who would have tried to declare this under Peter!), but many clearly saw the injustices of the previous reign. Most of them were still convinced monarchists, Paul could find support for his transformations here, it was only necessary to give more freedom in actions, not to tie his hands with constant petty orders. But the king, not accustomed to trusting people, interfered literally in everything. He alone, without initiative assistants, wanted to manage his empire. At the end of the 18th century, this was already decidedly impossible.

Why was he not loved?

Moreover, it was impossible to play the European diplomatic game on a knightly basis. Pavel began his foreign policy as a peacemaker: he canceled both the impending invasion of France, and the campaign in Persia, and the regular raids of the Black Sea Fleet to the Turkish shores, but it was not in his power to cancel the all-European world fire. An announcement in a Hamburg newspaper proposing to decide the fate of states by a duel between their monarchs and the first ministers as seconds caused general bewilderment. Napoleon then openly called Paul "the Russian Don Quixote"; the rest of the heads of government remained silent.

Nevertheless, it was impossible to stand aside from the European conflict for a long time. Frightened European monarchies turned to Russia from all sides: the request for patronage was brought by the Knights of Malta (whose island was already under the threat of French occupation); Austria and England needed an allied Russian army; even Turkey turned to Paul with a plea for the protection of its Mediterranean shores and Egypt from the French landing. As a result, a second anti-French coalition of 1798–1799 emerged.

The Russian expeditionary corps under the command of Suvorov was already in April 1799 ready to invade France. But this did not fit in with the plans of the allied Austrian government, which sought to round off its possessions at the expense of the "liberated" Italian territories. Suvorov was forced to submit, and by the beginning of August, northern Italy was completely cleared of the French. The republican armies were defeated, the fortress garrisons surrendered. The joint Russian-Turkish squadron under the command of the now canonized Admiral Fyodor Ushakov proved to be no less serious, liberating the Ionian Islands off the coast of Greece from September 1798 to February 1799. (By the way, one of the reasons for the emperor’s consent to this campaign was the danger of the French desecrating the relics of St. Spyridon of Trimifuntsky, which had been kept on the island of Corfu (Kerkyra) since the 15th century. Paul greatly revered St. Spyridon as the patron of his eldest son and heir Alexander. Almost impregnable the fortress of Corfu was taken by storm from the sea on February 18, 1799.) It is noteworthy that Ushakov established an independent republic on the islands he liberated (later the archipelago was occupied and held by the British for more than half a century) and organized the elections of local authorities with the full approval of Paul, who showed amazing political tolerance here. Further, Ushakov's squadron, having a minimum number of marines, carried out operations to liberate Palermo, Naples and all of southern Italy, which ended on September 30 with a throw of Russian sailors to Rome.

Russia's coalition allies were intimidated by such impressive military successes. They did not want to strengthen the authority of the Russian Empire at the expense of the French Republic. In September 1798, the Austrians left the Russian army in Switzerland alone with fresh superior enemy forces, and only the skill of Suvorov as a commander saved it from complete annihilation. On September 1, the Turkish squadron left Ushakov without warning. As for the British, their fleet, led by Nelson, blockaded Malta and did not let Russian ships near it. The Allies showed their true colors. Enraged, Pavel recalled Suvorov and Ushakov from the Mediterranean.

In 1800, Pavel concluded an anti-English alliance with Napoleon, which was beneficial for Russia. France offered Russia Constantinople and the complete division of Turkey. The Baltic and Black Sea fleets were put on full alert. At the same time, with the approval of Napoleon, Orlov's 30,000-strong Cossack corps was moving to India through the Kazakh steppes. England is facing the most terrible threat since the time of Elizabeth I.

And what if the interests of England and the internal Russian opposition coincided?.. British diplomacy in St. Petersburg used all its means and connections to stir up a smoldering internal conspiracy. The secret sums of the British embassy poured like golden rain on fertile soil. The dissatisfied finally found a common language: Benigsen represented the army, Zubov represented the higher nobility, and Nikita Panin (the nephew of Pavel's teacher) represented the pro-English bureaucracy. Panin also attracted the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Alexander, to participate in the conspiracy. Having learned about the possible cancellation of the boring army routine, dozens of young guards officers happily joined the cause. But the heart of the conspiracy was the favorite of the emperor, the governor-general of St. Petersburg, Count von der Pahlen. Paul was sure of his devotion until the last day.

The conspiracy very clearly illustrated the paradoxical situation that developed at the Pavlovsk court. The fact is that the emperor was not sure of anyone, but it was precisely because of this that he had to show his trust in fits and starts, in general, random people. He had no friends, no like-minded people - only subjects, and even then not of the very first class. It was not possible to destroy the conspiracy as such, also because it had always existed. The latent dissatisfaction of various noble groups with certain government measures in the Pavlovian reign reached a dangerous height. When anyone who disagrees is considered a conspirator in advance, it is psychologically easier for him to cross the line that separates passive rejection of changes from active opposition to them. With all this, it must be remembered that there were still many "Catherine" at court. The emperor's anger was just as terrible as it was fleeting, so Paul was incapable of any consistent repression. His gentle nature was not suited to the kind of political system he himself was trying to introduce.

As a result, when after midnight on March 11, 1801, the conspirators broke into the Mikhailovsky Palace, there was not a single officer capable of defending the emperor. The main concern of the conspirators was to prevent soldiers from entering the palace. The guards were removed from their posts by their superiors, two lackeys had their heads smashed. In the bedroom, Pavel was finished in a few minutes. Like once Peter III, he was strangled with a long officer's scarf. Petersburg met the news of his death with fireworks prepared in advance and general rejoicing. As funny as it may seem, everyone hastened to appear on the streets in the recently banned outfits. And in the front hall of the Winter Palace, all the highest dignitaries of Russia gathered, the name of the young Emperor Alexander was already on everyone's lips. A 23-year-old young man came out of the chambers and, to the joyful whisper of those present, solemnly said: “Batiushka died of apoplexy. With me, everything will be like with my grandmother.

These words seemed to be the posthumous and final victory of Catherine II over her son. The loser paid with his life. How should Russia pay?

The books of Russian historians available today to the mass reader evaluate Pavlovian reign in different ways. For example, N.M. Karamzin, in his “Note on Ancient and New Russia” (1811), written in hot pursuit, said: “Let conspiracies frighten sovereigns for the peace of peoples!” In his opinion, no useful lessons can be learned from despotism; it can only be overthrown or adequately endured. It turns out that the inconsistency of the Pavlovian decrees is nothing more than the tyranny of a tyrant? By the end of the 19th century, this view already seemed primitive. IN. Klyuchevsky wrote that "the reign of Paul was the time when a new program of activity was announced." “Although,” he immediately made a reservation, “the points of this program were not only not implemented, but even gradually disappeared from it. This program began to be carried out much more seriously and consistently by Paul's successors. N.K. Schilder, the first historian of Paul's reign, also agreed that the anti-Catherine state-political orientation "continued to exist" throughout the first half of the 19th century, and "the continuity of the Pavlovian legends largely survived." He blamed them both for the military settlements, and for December 14, for the “knightly foreign policy”, and for the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War. The same point of view, apparently, was held by the historical publicist Kazimir Valishevsky, and the famous Russian writer Dmitry Merezhkovsky. Only the work of M.V. Klochkova - the only one where Paul's legislative policy was scrupulously studied - objects to these reproaches by the fact that it was under Paul that the military reform began, which prepared the army for the war of 1812, the first steps were taken to limit serfdom, and the foundations of the legislative body of the Russian Empire were laid . In 1916, in church circles, a movement even began to canonize the innocently murdered emperor. At the very least, his grave in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg was considered miraculous among the common people and was constantly strewn with fresh flowers. There was even a special book in the cathedral, where the miracles that happened through prayers at this grave were recorded.

Left-liberal, and after them, Soviet historians were inclined to downplay the importance of Pavlov's reign in the history of Russia. They, of course, did not feel any reverence for Catherine II, however, they considered Paul only as a special case of a particularly cruel manifestation of absolutism (what “special cruelty” consisted of was usually silent) that did not differ radically from either his predecessors or his heirs. Only in the mid-1980s did N.Ya. Eidelman tried to understand the social meaning of Pavlov's conservative reformist utopia. This author also has the merit of rehabilitating the name of Pavel in the eyes of the intelligentsia. The books published over the past 10-15 years basically summarize all the points of view expressed, without drawing particularly deep and new conclusions. Apparently, the final judgment about who exactly was Emperor Pavel Petrovich, as well as how real his political program was and what place it occupies in subsequent Russian history, has yet to be made. The Russian Orthodox Church, once again confronted with the question of the possibility of glorifying Paul I as a martyr for the faith, will have to make such a judgment.

I would like to once again draw attention to the fact that Paul was not only a far-sighted or, on the contrary, an unsuccessful statesman. Like the recently glorified martyr Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich, Pavel Petrovich was, first of all, a man of a very tragic fate. Back in 1776, he wrote in a private letter: “For me, there are no parties, no interests, except for the interests of the state, and with my character it’s hard for me to see that things are going at random and that the reason for this is negligence and personal views. I would rather be hated for a just cause than loved for an unrighteous one.” But the people around him, as a rule, did not even want to understand the reasons for his behavior. As for the posthumous reputation, until recently it was the most terrible after Ivan the Terrible. Of course, it is easier to explain the actions of a person that are illogical from our point of view by calling him an idiot or a villain. However, this is unlikely to be true. Therefore, I would like to end this article with a quote from the reflections of the poet Vladislav Khodasevich: “When Russian society says that Paul’s death was a retribution for his oppression, it forgets that he pressed those who spread themselves too wide, those strong and multi-rights who should be constrained and curbed for the sake of the disenfranchised and the weak. Perhaps this was his historical mistake. But what is the moral highness in it! He loved justice - we are unfair to him. He was a knight - killed around the corner. Scolding from around the corner ... ".

LECTURE III

The reign of Paul I. - His place in history. - Biographical information. —The general character of Paul's governmental activities. - The peasant question under Paul. - Paul's attitude towards other estates. - The attitude of society towards Paul. - The state of finance in the reign of Paul and his foreign policy. - Results of the reign.

Significance of Paul's reign

Portrait of Emperor Paul. Artist S. Schukin

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries lies the four-year reign of Paul.

This short period, which until recently was in many respects under the censorship ban, has long aroused the curiosity of the public, like everything mysterious and forbidden. On the other hand, historians, psychologists, biographers, playwrights, and novelists were naturally attracted to the original personality of the married psychopath and the exceptional setting in which his drama, which ended so tragically, took place.

From the point of view from which we consider historical events, this reign is, however, of secondary importance. Although it lies at the turn of the XVIII and XIX centuries. and separates the “age of Catherine” from the “age of Alexander”, in no case can it be considered as transitional. On the contrary, in the historical process of the development of the Russian people that interests us, it is some kind of sudden invasion, some kind of unexpected squall that swooped in from outside, confused everything, turned everything temporarily upside down, but could not interrupt or profoundly change the natural the course of the ongoing process. In view of the significance of the reign of Paul and Alexander, as soon as he ascended the throne, there was no choice but to cross out almost everything done by his father and, having quickly healed the shallow but painful wounds inflicted by him on the state organism, to start from the place where Ekaterina's hand, weakened and wavering under old age, stopped.

Such a view of this reign does not, of course, prevent us from being fully aware of the profound influence that his horrors had personally on the emperor Alexander and on the final formation of his character. But more on that ahead. We also do not deny the significance of some individual government acts of Paul and do not deny the unfortunate influence on Alexander, and then on Nicholas, of that court-military parade ground system that has since been established at the Russian court. But even these circumstances do not, of course, convey to the reign of Paul the significance of a transitional, connecting era between two adjacent reigns ...

In any case, the reign of Paul itself is interesting for us not for its tragicomic phenomena, but for the changes that nevertheless took place at that time in the position of the population, and for the movement in the minds that the terror of government power caused in society. Even more important for us is international relations, which were conditioned, on the one hand, by the peculiarities of Paul's character, and, on the other hand, by the great events that took place in the West.

Personality of Emperor Paul

Therefore, we will not deal here with a detailed presentation of Paul's biography and refer everyone who is interested in it to the well-known work of Schilder, who dealt specifically with Paul's personal biography, and to another, shorter biography, compiled to a large extent according to Schilder, Mr. Shumigorsky. Actually, for our purposes, the following brief biographical information will suffice. Pavel was born in 1754, eight years before Catherine's accession to the throne. His childhood passed in completely abnormal conditions: Empress Elizabeth took him away from his parents as soon as he was born, and took up his upbringing herself. As a child, he was surrounded by various mothers and nannies, and all his upbringing was of a hothouse character. Soon, however, a person was assigned to him, who in himself was an outstanding personality, namely c. Nikita Ivanovich Panin. Panin was a statesman, with a very broad mind, but he was not a thoughtful teacher and was not attentive enough to his work.

Catherine was distrustful of Panin, and it was clear to her that he was a bad teacher, but she was afraid to eliminate him, because, having taken the throne not by right, she was afraid of the rumors that circulated in well-known circles that she wanted to eliminate Paul completely . Fearing to give rise to these rumors and knowing that public opinion was such that Pavel was safe as long as he was in Panin's care, Catherine did not dare to eliminate Panin, and he remained Pavel's tutor with her. Pavel grew up, but Catherine did not feel any closeness to him, she had a low opinion of his mental and spiritual properties. She did not allow him to participate in state affairs; she even removed him from the affairs of military administration, to which he had a great inclination. Paul's first marriage was short-lived and unsuccessful, and his wife, who died from childbirth, managed to further spoil the already bad relationship between Paul and Catherine. When Pavel married for the second time to the Württemberg princess, who received the name Maria Feodorovna during the transition to Orthodoxy, Catherine gave Gatchina to the young couple and left them to lead the lives of private people in it; but when they had children, she acted towards Paul and his wife in the same way as Elizabeth had done to her herself, that is, she selected the children from the very birth of them and brought them up herself. The removal of Paul from public affairs and the disrespectful treatment of him by the empress's favorites, especially Potemkin, constantly added fuel to the fire and aroused in Paul hatred for the entire Catherine's court. He waited impatiently for thirty years when, finally, he himself would have to reign and manage in his own way.

Portrait of Maria Feodorovna, wife of Emperor Paul. Painter Jean-Louis Voile, 1790s

It must be added that at the end of the reign of Catherine, Paul even began to fear that Catherine would remove him from the throne; it is now known that such a plan was indeed outlined and did not materialize, apparently only because Alexander did not want or did not dare to take the throne in addition to his father, and this circumstance made it difficult to implement Catherine's already ripened intentions.

When Paul ascended the throne, then the hatred accumulated in his soul for everything that his mother did began to be realized. Not having a clear idea of ​​the real needs of the state, Pavel began to indiscriminately cancel everything that his mother had done, and with feverish speed to carry out his semi-fantastic plans, worked out by him in Gatchina seclusion. In appearance, in some respects, he was returning to the old. Thus, he restored almost all the old economic colleges, but did not give them a properly delimited competence, and meanwhile their old competence was completely destroyed by the establishment of state chambers and other local institutions. He had long ago come up with a special plan for the reorganization of the entire central administration; but this plan, in essence, amounted to the abolition of all state institutions and the concentration of the entire administration directly in the hands of the sovereign himself, and could hardly be carried out in practice.

Emperor Paul's reign

At the beginning of Paul's reign, however, two serious government measures were taken, the significance of which has been preserved for the future. The first of these measures was the law on succession to the throne, which Pavel worked out when he was his heir and which was published by him on April 5, 1797. This law had in mind to eliminate that arbitrariness in the appointment of the heir to the throne, which had dominated Russia since the time of Peter and thanks to which happened in the 18th century. so many palace coups. The law issued by Paul, which was in force with minor additions until recently, introduced a really strict procedure for the succession to the imperial throne in Russia, mainly through the male line. In this regard, a detailed regulation on the imperial family was issued, and in the types of material support for its members, a special economic institution was formed under the name "destinies", in whose jurisdiction were listed those palace peasants who had previously been exploited for the needs of the imperial court and to whom individual estates belonging to members of the royal family were now included. All these peasants received the name "appanage", and special institutions and special rules were created to manage them, thanks to which later their situation turned out to be more satisfactory than that of ordinary serfs and even state peasants, who were in charge of the zemstvo police shamelessly exploiting them.

Especially persistently Paul sought to destroy all those rights and privileges that were granted by Catherine to certain estates. So, he canceled letters of grant to cities and the nobility and not only destroyed the right of noble societies to file petitions about their needs, but even canceled the release of nobles from corporal punishment by court.

There is an opinion that Paul, being completely negative about the privileges of the upper classes, was sympathetic to the people and even allegedly sought to free the people from the arbitrariness of the landlords and oppressors.

Measures of Emperor Paul against the peasants

Perhaps he had some good intentions, but one can hardly ascribe to him any seriously thought-out system in this respect. Usually, as proof of the correctness of such a view of Paul, they point to the manifesto of April 5, 1797, which established Sunday rest and a three-day corvee, but this manifesto is not quite accurately conveyed. They were categorically forbidden only to work on holidays for the landowner, and then, already in the form of a maxim, it was said that even three days of corvée was enough to maintain the landowner's economy. The very form of expression of this desire, in the absence of any sanction, indicates that it was not in essence a specific law establishing a three-day corvee, although it was subsequently interpreted as such. On the other hand, it must be said that, for example, in Little Russia, a three-day corvee would not have been beneficial for the peasants, since there, according to custom, a two-day corvee was practiced. Another law issued by Paul on the initiative of Chancellor Bezborodko in favor of the peasants - on the prohibition of the sale of serfs without land - applied only to Little Russia.

Extremely characteristic is the position that Paul took in relation to the peasant unrest and the complaints of the serfs about the oppression of the landowners. At the beginning of Paul's reign, peasant unrest broke out in 32 provinces. Pavel sent whole large detachments to pacify them with Field Marshal Prince. Repnin at the head. Repnin very quickly pacified the peasants, taking extremely drastic measures. During the pacification in the Oryol province of 12 thousand peasants, the landowners Apraksin and Prince. Golitsyn, a whole battle took place, and from the peasants there were 20 people killed and up to 70 wounded. Repnin ordered the dead peasants to be buried outside the cemetery fence, and on a stake placed over their common grave, he wrote: “Here lie criminals before God, the sovereign and the landowner, justly punished according to the law of God.” The houses of these peasants were destroyed and razed to the ground. Pavel not only approved all these actions, but also issued a special manifesto on January 29, 1797, which, under the threat of such measures, ordered the uncomplaining obedience of the serfs to the landowners.

In another case, the yard people of some landowners living in St. Petersburg tried to complain to Pavel about the cruelty and oppression they were suffering from. Pavel, without investigating the case, ordered the complainants to be sent to the square and punished with a whip "as much as their landlords themselves want."

In general, Paul is hardly guilty of striving to seriously improve the position of the landowning peasants. He looked at the landlords as if they were free police chiefs - he believed that as long as there were 100 thousand of these police chiefs in Russia, the tranquility of the state was guaranteed, and he was not averse to even feasibly increasing this number, distributing state peasants to private individuals with a wide hand: in four years he managed to in this way, to distribute 530 thousand souls of both sexes of state peasants to various landowners and officials, seriously asserting that he was doing these peasants a good deed, since, in his opinion, the position of the peasants under state administration was worse than under the landlords, with which, of course, could not agree. The significance of the given figure of state peasants distributed into private hands can be judged from the data given above on the number of peasants of different categories; but this figure is even more striking if we remember that Catherine, who willingly rewarded her favorites and other persons with peasants, nevertheless managed to distribute no more than 800 thousand souls of both sexes in all 34 years of her reign, and Paul distributed 530 thousand .

To this it should be added that at the very beginning of Paul's reign, another act was issued against the freedom of the peasants: by a decree on December 12, 1796, the transfer of peasants who settled on private lands among the Cossack lands in the Don region and in the provinces of Yekaterinoslav, Voznesenskaya, Caucasian and Tauride.

Russian education and clergy in the reign of Paul

Of the rest of the estates, the clergy, to whom Paul favored, or at least wanted to favor, had more reason to be pleased with Paul than others. Being a religious man and considering himself to be the head of the Orthodox Church, Paul cared about the position of the clergy, but even here the results were sometimes strange. These concerns of his were sometimes ambiguous, so that one of his former mentors, his clergyman - and at that time already the Moscow metropolitan - Platon, to whom Paul in his youth, and even then, after his accession to the throne, treated with great respect, was among the protesters against some of the measures that Paul took. The protest with which Plato had to speak concerned, among other things, a strange innovation - the awarding of clergy with orders. It seemed to Plato that from a canonical point of view it was completely unacceptable for civil authorities to reward the ministers of the church, not to mention the fact that wearing orders in general does not at all correspond to the significance of the priestly, and even more so, the monastic dignity. The Metropolitan asked on his knees that Paul not award him the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, but in the end he had to accept it. In itself, this circumstance does not seem to be particularly important, but it is characteristic of Paul's attitude towards the class that he most honored.

Much more important in a positive sense is Paul's attitude towards spiritual educational institutions. He did quite a lot for them - he allocated a significant amount of money for them from the income from the estates that previously belonged to bishops' houses and monasteries and confiscated by Catherine.

Under him, two theological academies were reopened - in St. Petersburg and Kazan - and eight seminaries, and both the newly opened and the former educational institutions were provided with regular amounts: the academies began to receive from 10 to 12 thousand rubles. per year, and seminaries on average from 3 to 4 thousand, i.e., almost twice as much as compared to what was released to them under Catherine.

Here we should also note the favorable attitude of Paul towards the non-Orthodox clergy, even non-Christian ones, and in particular his favorable attitude towards the Catholic clergy. This is due, perhaps, to his sincere religiosity in general and his lofty conception of pastoral duties; as for the Catholic clergy proper, their attitude towards the Maltese spiritual order of chivalry was still of great importance. Pavel not only assumed the supreme patronage of this order, but even allowed him to form a special priory in St. Petersburg. This circumstance, explained by the strange fantasies of Paul, later led, as we shall see, to very important consequences in the field of international relations.

Portrait of Paul I in the crown, attire and insignia of the Order of Malta. Artist V. L. Borovikovsky, circa 1800

Another important fact in the sphere of church life under Paul was his rather peaceful attitude towards schismatics. In this one respect, Paul continued the policy of Catherine, the traces of whose reign he tried with such energy to destroy with all his other measures. At the request of Metropolitan Platon, he agreed to take a rather important measure - namely, he allowed the Old Believers to publicly celebrate divine services in the so-called congregational churches, thanks to which, for the first time, a serious opportunity was opened for reconciliation of the most peaceful groups of the Old Believers with the Orthodox Church.

As for Paul's attitude to secular education, his activity in this direction was clearly reactionary and, one might say, downright destructive. Even at the end of the reign of Catherine, private printing houses were closed, and then the publication of books was already extremely reduced. Under Paul, the number of published books was reduced, especially in the last two years of his reign, to a completely negligible number, and the very nature of the books also changed a lot - textbooks and books of practical content began to be published almost exclusively. The import of books published abroad was completely banned at the end of the reign; since 1800, everything printed abroad, regardless of content, even musical notes, had no access to Russia. Even earlier, at the very beginning of the reign, the free entry of foreigners into Russia was prohibited.

Another measure was even more important - namely, the call to Russia of all young people who studied abroad, of which there were 65 people in Jena, 36 in Leipzig, and the prohibition of young people to travel to foreign lands for educational purposes, in return for which it was supposed to open a university in Dorpat.

Government oppression in the reign of Paul

Out of hatred for revolutionary ideas and for liberalism in general, Paul, with the persistence of a maniac, pursued all external manifestations of liberalism. Hence the war against the round hats and cuffed boots worn in France, against tailcoats and tricolor ribbons. Quite peaceful persons were subjected to the most serious punishments, officials were expelled from service, individuals were arrested, many were deported from the capitals and even sometimes to places more or less remote. The same penalties were imposed for violating that strange etiquette, the observance of which was mandatory when meeting with the emperor. Thanks to this etiquette, a meeting with the sovereign was considered a misfortune, which they tried to avoid in every possible way: when they saw the sovereign, subjects hurried to hide behind gates, fences, etc.

Under such circumstances, those exiled, imprisoned and in fortresses, and in general those who suffered under Paul for trifles, were considered thousands, so that when Alexander, upon accession to the throne, rehabilitated such persons, according to some sources, they turned out to be 15 thousand, according to others - more than 12 thousand people.

The oppression of the Pavlovian reign was especially hard on the army, starting with soldiers and ending with officers and generals. Endless drill, severe punishments for the slightest errors in the fruit, senseless teaching methods, the most uncomfortable clothes, extremely embarrassing for the common man, especially when marching, which then had to be brought almost to the ballet art; finally, the obligatory wearing of curls and braids, smeared with lard and sprinkled with flour or brick powder - all this complicated the difficulty of the already difficult soldier's service, which then lasted 25 years.

Officers and generals had to tremble every hour for their fate, since the slightest malfunction of one of the subordinates could lead to the most cruel consequences for them if the emperor was out of sorts.

Assessment of Paul's reign by Karamzin

Such were the manifestations of government oppression, which developed under Paul to its highest limits. An interesting review about Pavel, made 10 years after his death by a strict conservative and a staunch supporter of the autocracy N.M. Karamzin in his "Note on Ancient and New Russia", presented to Alexander I in 1811 in the form of an objection to the liberal reforms that Alexander then planned. Being an antagonist of the liberal emperor, Karamzin, however, described the reign of his predecessor as follows: “Paul came to the throne at that favorable time for autocracy, when the horrors of the French Revolution cured Europe of the dreams of civil liberty and equality; but what the Jacobins did in relation to the republics, Paul did in relation to the autocracy; forced to hate the abuse thereof. By a miserable delusion of mind and as a result of many personal displeasures he endured, he wanted to be John IV; but the Russians already had Catherine II, they knew that the sovereign must fulfill his sacred duties no less than his subjects, the violation of which destroys the ancient covenants of power with obedience and overthrows the people from the degree of citizenship into the chaos of private natural law. The son of Catherine could be strict and deserve the gratitude of the fatherland; to the inexplicable surprise of the Russians, he began to reign in general horror, not following any charters, except for his whim; considered us not subjects, but slaves; he executed without guilt, rewarded without merit, took away the shame from the execution, from the reward - the charm, humiliated the ranks and ribbons with wastefulness in them; frivolously destroyed the long-term fruits of state wisdom, hating in them the work of his mother; killed in our regiments the noble spirit of the military, brought up by Catherine, and replaced it with the spirit of corporalism. Heroes, accustomed to victories, taught to march, turned the nobles away from military service; despising the soul, respected hats and collars; having, like a man, a natural inclination for doing good, he fed on the bile of evil: daily he invented ways to frighten people and he himself was more afraid of everyone; I thought of building an impregnable palace for myself - and built a tomb ... Let's note, - adds Karamzin, - a feature that is curious for the observer: in this reign of horror, according to foreigners, Russians were even afraid to think; No! they spoke and boldly, falling silent only from boredom and frequent repetition, trusted each other and were not deceived. Some spirit of sincere brotherhood dominated the capitals; the common calamity brought the hearts together, and the generous frenzy against the abuse of power drowned out the voice of personal caution. There are similar comments in the notes of Vigel and Grech, also people of the conservative camp...

It should, however, be said that the "generous frenzy" by no means turned into action. Society did not even try to express its attitude towards Paul by any public protest. It hated in silence, but, of course, it was precisely this mood that gave the few leaders of the coup on March 11, 1801, the courage to suddenly eliminate Paul.

The economic and financial situation of Russia in the reign of Paul

The economic situation of the country could not change too much under Paul, in view of the brevity of his reign; the financial position of Russia under him was highly dependent on his foreign policy and those bizarre changes that took place in it. Paul began by making peace with Persia and abolishing the enlistment of Catherine; refused to send 40 thousand army against the French Republic, to which Catherine agreed in 1795 thanks to the insistence of the English ambassador Whitworth, and demanded back the Russian ships sent to help the English fleet. Then a start was made on the repayment of the assigned debt. The government decided to withdraw part of the banknotes put on the market; a solemn burning took place in the presence of Paul himself of banknotes in the amount of 6 million rubles. Thus, the total number of banknotes issued decreased from 157 million rubles. to 151 million rubles, i.e., by less than 4%, but in this area, of course, any, even a small, reduction is important, because it indicates the government's intention to pay off debts, and not increase them. At the same time, measures were taken to establish a stable exchange rate for the silver coin; a constant weight of the silver ruble was established, which was recognized as equal to the weight of four silver francs. Then the restoration of the relatively free customs tariff of 1782 was of great importance. At the same time, Paul was guided, however, not by sympathy for free trade, but did so out of a desire to destroy the tariff of 1793 issued by Catherine.

The introduction of a new tariff was supposed to serve to develop trade relations. For large-scale industry, the discovery of coal in the Donets Basin was of great importance. This discovery, made in the south of Russia, in a country poor in forests, immediately affected the state of industry in the Novorossiysk Territory. Important for the development of internal trade relations and for the transportation of certain products to the ports was the digging of new channels under Paul, partly begun under Catherine. In 1797, the Oginsky Canal was started and completed under Paul, connecting the Dniester basin with the Neman; Sievers dug a channel to bypass about. Ilmen; one of the Ladoga Syassky canals was started and work continued on the construction of the Mariinsky Canal. Under him, a porto franco was established in the Crimea, beneficial for the revival of the Southern Territory.

The foreign policy of Emperor Paul

But the improvement in the economic situation of the country did not last long, and public finances soon had to experience new fluctuations. In 1798, the peaceful course of affairs suddenly stopped. Just at this time, Napoleon Bonaparte went on his campaign to Egypt and in passing captured the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. Malta, which belonged to the Order of Malta, had an impregnable fortress, but the grand master of the order, for unknown reasons (treason was suspected), surrendered the fortress without a fight, took the archive, orders and jewelry and retired to Venice, the St. for some time, to everyone's surprise, Paul, who considered himself the head of the Orthodox Church, personally assumed the grand mastership in this Catholic order, subordinate to the pope. There was a tradition that this strange step in Paul's mind was connected with a fantastic enterprise - with the universal destruction of the revolution at the root by uniting all the nobles of all countries of the world in the Order of Malta. Whether this was so is difficult to decide; but, of course, this idea did not come to fruition. Declaring war on France and not wanting to act alone, Paul helped the English minister Pete to create a fairly strong coalition against France. He entered into an alliance with Austria and England, which were then in hostile or strained relations with France, then the kingdom of Sardinia and even Turkey, which suffered from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and Syria, were drawn into the coalition. The alliance with Turkey was concluded on very favorable terms for Russia and, with a consistent policy, could be of great importance. In view of the fact that various Turkish lands were occupied by French troops (among others, the Ionian Islands), it was decided to expel the French from there by combined forces, and for this the Port agreed to let through and for the future let through the Straits of Constantinople and the Dardanelles not only Russian merchant ships, but also warships, at the same time assuming the obligation not to let foreign warships into the Black Sea. The force of this treaty was to last eight years, after which it could be renewed by mutual agreement of the contracting parties. The Russian fleet immediately took advantage of this right and, having carried a significant landing force through the straits on warships, occupied the Ionian Islands, which after that were under the rule of the Russians until the Treaty of Tilsit (that is, until 1807).

On the continent of Europe, it was necessary to act against the French armies in alliance with the Austrians and the British. Pavel, following the advice of the Austrian emperor, appointed Suvorov to command the combined armies of Russia and Austria. Suvorov at that time was in disgrace and lived on his estate under police supervision: he had a negative attitude towards Paul's military innovations and knew how to let him feel it under the guise of jokes and foolishness, for which he paid with disgrace and exile.

Now Pavel turned to Suvorov on his own behalf and on behalf of the Austrian emperor. Suvorov gladly accepted command of the army. This campaign was marked by brilliant victories in northern Italy over the French troops and the famous crossing of the Alps.

But when northern Italy was cleared of the French, Austria decided that this was enough for her, and refused to support Suvorov in his further plans. Thus, Suvorov could not carry out his intention to invade France and march on Paris. This "Austrian betrayal" led to the defeat of the Russian detachment of General Rimsky-Korsakov by the French. Pavel became extremely indignant, withdrew the army, and thus the war between Russia and France actually stopped here. The Russian corps sent against the French in Holland was not sufficiently reinforced by the British, who did not pay timely and monetary subsidies, to which they were obliged by the agreement, which also aroused the indignation of Paul, who withdrew his troops from this point.

Meanwhile, Napoleon Bonaparte returned from Egypt to carry out his first coup d'etat: on Brumaire 18, he overthrew the legitimate government of the directory and became the first consul, that is, in essence, the actual sovereign in France. Paul, seeing that things were thus moving towards the restoration of monarchical power, albeit from the side of a "usurper", changed his attitude towards France, expecting that Napoleon would deal with the remnants of the revolution. Napoleon, for his part, deftly pleased him, sending without exchange all Russian prisoners to their homeland at the French expense and providing them with gifts. This touched the knightly heart of Paul, and, hoping that Napoleon would turn out to be his like-minded person in all other matters, Paul entered into negotiations with him about peace and an alliance against England, to which Paul attributed the failure of his troops in Holland. It was all the easier for Napoleon to restore it against England, because at that time the British took Malta from the French, but did not return it to the order.

Immediately, ignoring all international treatises, Paul imposed an embargo (arrest) on all English merchant ships, introduced drastic changes in the customs tariff, and in the end completely banned the export and import of goods into Russia, not only from England, but also from Prussia, since Prussia was in contact with England. With these measures directed against the English, Paul caused a shock in all Russian trade. He did not confine himself to customs restraints, but ordered even in the shops to seize all English goods, which was never done in such circumstances. Instigated by Napoleon and not content with this series of hostile actions against England, Paul finally decided to stab her in the most painful place: he decided to conquer India, believing that he would do it easily by sending only Cossacks there. And so, on his orders, 40 regiments of Don Cossacks suddenly set off to conquer India, taking with them a double set of horses, but without fodder, in winter, without true maps, through impenetrable steppes. Of course, this army was doomed to perish. The senselessness of this act was so obvious to Paul's contemporaries that Princess Liven, the wife of Pavel's close adjutant general, even claims in her memoirs that this undertaking was undertaken by Paul with the aim of deliberately destroying the Cossack army, in which he suspected a freedom-loving spirit. This assumption, of course, is wrong, but it shows what thoughts could be attributed to Paul by his associates. Fortunately, this campaign began two months before the elimination of Paul, and Alexander, having barely ascended the throne, on the very night of the coup, hastened to send a courier to return the ill-fated Cossacks; it turned out that the Cossacks had not yet managed to reach the Russian border, but had already managed to lose a significant part of their horses ...

This fact especially vividly depicts the madness of Paul and the terrible consequences that the measures that he took could have had. On the state of finances, all these campaigns and wars of the last two years of Paul's reign, of course, were reflected in the most detrimental way. At the beginning of his reign, Paul burned, as we have seen, 6 million banknotes, but the war required emergency expenses. Paul had to resort again to issuing banknotes, since there were no other means for waging war. Thus, by the end of his reign, the total amount of banknotes issued from 151 million rose to 212 million rubles, which finally dropped the exchange rate of the paper ruble.

Results of the reign of Paul

Summing up now the results of Paul's reign, we see that the borders of the state territory remained under him in their former form. True, the Georgian king, pressed by Persia, in January 1801 declared his desire to become Russian citizenship, but the final annexation of Georgia took place already under Alexander.

As for the condition of the population, however harmful many of the measures taken by Paul were, they could not produce profound changes in four years. The saddest change in the position of the peasants was, of course, the transfer from state peasants to serfs of those 530 thousand souls that Pavel managed to distribute to private individuals,

As for trade and industry, despite a number of favorable conditions at the beginning of the reign, by the end of his reign, foreign trade was completely ruined, while domestic was in the most chaotic state. Even greater chaos turned out in the state of higher and provincial government.

Such was the state of the state when Paul ceased to exist.

See Paul's note about this, found in 1826 in the papers of imp. Alexandra. It is printed in vol. 90. “Collection. Rus. ist. general.», pp. 1–4. Currently, Paul's government activities are being re-examined and revised in the book prof. V. M. Klochkova, treated her very favorably. Despite the significant material collected by Mr. Klochkov in support of his apologetic attitude towards this activity, I cannot recognize his conclusions as convincing and, in general, I remain with my previous view of the reign of Paul. I expressed my opinion about the work of Mr. Klochkov in a special review published in Russian Thought, 1917, No. 2.

Here it should be mentioned, however, that among the cancellations of the measures taken by Catherine were good deeds. These include: the release of Novikov from Shlisselburg, the return of Radishchev from exile to Ilimsk, and the solemn release from captivity with special honors of Kosciuszka and other captive Poles held in St. Petersburg.

Pavel really sought to regulate and improve the position of the state peasants, as can be seen from the study of Mr. Klochkov, but all the assumptions related to this remained, in essence, only on paper until the formation under imp. Nicolae of the Ministry of State Property with c. Kiselev at the head.

The first volume of Op. Storch's "Gemälde des Russischen Reichs" was published in 1797 in Riga, the rest of the volumes were printed abroad; but Storch was persona grata at the court of Paul: he was the personal reader of imp. Maria Fedorovna and dedicated his book (volume 1) to Pavel.

"Russian Archive" for 1870, pp. 2267–2268. There is a separate edition, ed. Sipovsky. SPb., 1913.

The story of Paul 1 actually began with the fact that the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, the premarital daughter of Catherine the Great (who was supposedly a Baltic peasant by origin), having no children of her own, invited the future father of Paul to Russia. He was a native of the German city of Kiel, K. P. Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp, the duke, who received the name Peter at baptism. This fourteen-year-old (at the time of the invitation) young man was Elizabeth's nephew and had rights to both the Swedish and Russian thrones.

Who was the father of Paul the First - a mystery

Tsar Paul 1, like all people, could not choose his parents. His future mother arrived in Russia from Prussia at the age of 15, on the recommendation of Frederick II, as a potential bride for Duke Ulrich. Here she received an Orthodox name, married in 1745, and only nine years later gave birth to a son, Paul. History has left a double opinion about the possible father of Paul the First. Some believe that Catherine hated her husband, so paternity is attributed to Catherine's lover Sergei Saltykov. Others believe that Ulrich (Peter the Third) was still the father, since there is an obvious portrait resemblance, and Catherine’s strong dislike for her son is also known, which may have arisen from hatred for his father. Pavel disliked his mother, too, throughout his life. A genetic examination of the remains of Paul has not yet been carried out, so it is not possible to accurately establish paternity for this Russian tsar.

Birth celebrated throughout the year

The future emperor Paul 1 was deprived of parental love and attention since childhood, since his grandmother Elizabeth, immediately after his birth, took her son from Catherine and transferred her to the care of nannies and teachers. He was a long-awaited child for the whole country, since after Peter the Great, the Russian autocrats had problems with the succession of power due to the lack of heirs. Festivities and fireworks on the occasion of his birth in Russia continued for a whole year.

The first victim of the palace conspiracy

Elizabeth thanked Catherine for the birth of a child with a very large amount - 100 thousand rubles, but showed her son to her mother only six months after his birth. Due to the absence of a mother nearby and the stupidity of the overzealous staff serving him, Pavel 1, whose domestic and foreign policy in the future was not logical, grew up very impressionable, painful and nervous. At the age of 8 (in 1862), the young prince lost his father, who, having come to power in 1861 after the death of Elizabeth Petrovna, was killed a year later as a result of a palace conspiracy.

More than thirty years before legal power

Tsar Paul 1 received a very decent education for his time, which he could not put into practice for many years. From the age of four, even under Elizabeth, he was taught to read and write, then he mastered several foreign languages, knowledge of mathematics, applied sciences and history. Among his teachers were F. Bekhteev, S. Poroshin, N. Panin, and the future Metropolitan of Moscow Platon taught him the laws. By birthright, Pavel already in 1862 had the right to the throne, but his mother, instead of a regency, came to power herself with the help of the guard, declared herself Catherine II and ruled for 34 years.

Emperor Paul 1 was married twice. The first time was at the age of 19 on Augustine-Wilhelmina (Natalya Alekseevna), who died in childbirth with her child. The second time - in the year of the death of the first wife (at the insistence of Catherine) on Sophia-August-Louise, the Wurttember princess (Maria Feodorovna), who will give birth to Paul's ten children. His older children will suffer the same fate as his own - they will be taken to their upbringing by the reigning grandmother, and he will rarely see them. In addition to children born in a church marriage, Pavel had a son, Semyon, from his first love - the maid of honor Sofya Ushakova and a daughter from L. Bagart.

Mother wanted to deprive him of the throne

Pavel 1 Romanov ascended the throne at the age of 42, after the death of his mother (Catherine died of a stroke) in November 1796. By this time, he had a set of views and habits that determined his future and the future of Russia until 1801. Thirteen years before the death of Catherine, in 1783, he reduced his relationship with his mother to a minimum (it was rumored that she wanted to deprive him of the right to the throne) and in Pavlovsk began to build his own model of the state. At the age of 30, at the insistence of Catherine, he became acquainted with the works of Voltaire, Hume, Montesquieu, and others.

Coalitions with Europe during the reign

At the same time, in Gatchina, removed from business at that time, the future emperor was engaged in training military battalions. His love for military affairs and discipline will partly determine what will be the foreign policy of Paul 1. And it will be quite peaceful, compared to the time of Catherine II, but inconsistent. First, Pavel fought against revolutionary France (with the participation of A. V. Suvorov) together with Britain, Turkey, Austria, and others, then broke off the alliance with Austria and withdrew troops from Europe. Attempts to go with the expedition together with England to the Netherlands were unsuccessful.

Paul 1 defended the Order of Malta

After in 1799 Bonaparte in France concentrated all power in his hands and the possibility of the spread of the revolution disappeared, he began to look for allies in other states. And I found them, including in the face of the Russian emperor. At that time, a coalition of joint fleets was discussed with France. The foreign policy of Paul 1 towards the end of his reign was connected with the final formation of a coalition against Britain, which became too aggressive at sea (attacked Malta, while Paul was the Grand Master of the Order of Malta). So, in 1800, an alliance was concluded between Russia and a number of European states, which led a policy of armed neutrality towards England.

Utopian military projects

Paul 1, whose domestic and foreign policy was not always clear even to his entourage, wanted to harm Britain and its Indian possessions at that time. He equipped an expedition to Central Asia from the Don army (about 22.5 thousand people) and set the task for them to go to the Indus and Ganges region and “disturb” the British there, without touching those who oppose the British. By that time, there were not even maps of that area yet, so the campaign to India was stopped in 1801, after the death of Pavel, and the soldiers were returned from the steppes near Astrakhan, where they had already managed to reach.

The reign of Paul 1 was marked by the fact that during these five years no foreign invasions were carried out into the territory of Russia, but no conquests were made either. In addition, the emperor, taking care of the interests of the knights in Malta, almost dragged the country into direct conflict with the most powerful maritime power of that time - England. The British were perhaps his greatest enemies, while he had great sympathy for Prussia, considering the organization of the army and life in those lands his ideal (which is not surprising, given his origin).

Reducing public debt by fire

Paul 1 was aimed at trying to improve life and strengthen order in Russian reality. In particular, he believed that the treasury belongs to the country, and not to him personally, as the sovereign. Therefore, he gave the order to melt down some silver sets from the Winter Palace into coins and burn two million rubles worth of paper money in order to reduce the state debt. He was more open to the people than his predecessors, and even his followers, hanging on the fence of his palace a box for submitting petitions addressed to him, where caricatures of the king himself and lampoons often fell.

Strange ceremonies with dead bodies

The reign of Paul 1 was also marked by reforms in the army, where he introduced a single uniform, charter, single weapons, believing that in the time of his mother the army was not an army, but simply a crowd. In general, historians believe that much of what Paul did, he did in spite of his deceased mother. There were even more than strange cases. For example, having come to power, he removed the remains of his murdered father, Peter III, from the grave. After that, he crowned the ashes of his father and the corpse of his mother, placing the crown on the coffin of his father, while his wife, Maria Feodorovna, placed another crown on the deceased Catherine. After that, both coffins were transported to the Peter and Paul Cathedral, while the murderer of Peter the Third, Count Orlov, carried the imperial crown in front of his coffin. The remains were buried with a single burial date.

Pavel 1, whose years of reign were short, due to such events, gained misunderstanding among many. And the innovations he introduced in various areas did not arouse support from the environment. The emperor demanded from all the fulfillment of their duties. A story is known when he gave the rank of officer to his batman because the first one did not independently carry his military ammunition. After such cases, discipline in the troops began to increase. Pavel also tried to instill strict rules in the civilian population, introducing bans on wearing certain styles of dress and demanding to wear German-style clothes of a certain color with a given collar size.

The internal policy of Paul 1 also touched the sphere of education, in which, as expected, he contributed to the improvement of the position of the Russian language. After accession to the throne, the emperor banned ornate phrases, ordering to express himself in writing with the utmost clarity and simplicity. He reduced French influence on Russian society by banning books in this language (revolutionary, as he considered it), even forbidding playing cards. In addition, during his reign, it was decided to open many schools and colleges, restore the university in Dorpat, and open the Medical and Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg. Among his associates were both gloomy personalities, like Arakcheev, and G. Derzhavin, A. Suvorov, N. Saltykov, M. Speransky and others.

How did the king help the peasants?

However, Paul 1, whose reign was 1796-1801, was rather unpopular than popular with his contemporaries. Taking care of the peasants, whom he rightly considered the breadwinners of all other classes of society, he introduced free farmers from work on Sunday. By this, he incurred the discontent of the landowners, for example, in Russia, and the discontent of the peasants in Ukraine, where there was no corvee at that time, but it appeared for three days. The landlords were also dissatisfied with the ban on separating peasant families during the sale, the ban on cruel treatment, the removal of duties from the peasants to keep horses for the army and the sale of bread and salt from state stocks at reduced prices. Paul 1, whose domestic and foreign policy was contradictory, at the same time ordered the peasants to obey the landlords in everything under pain of punishment.

Infringement of the privileges of the nobility

The Russian autocrat tossed between prohibitions and permits, which, perhaps, led to the subsequent assassination of Paul 1. He closed all private printing houses so that it would not be possible to spread the ideas of the French revolution, but at the same time he gave shelter to high-ranking French nobles, such as Prince Condé or the future Ludwig VIII . He forbade corporal punishment for the nobles, but introduced for them twenty rubles per soul and a tax on the maintenance of local governments.

The short reign of Paul 1 included such events as a ban on the resignation of nobles who had served less than a year, a ban on filing collective petitions of the nobility, the abolition of noble assemblies in the provinces, lawsuits against nobles who evaded service. The emperor also allowed state-owned peasants to register as tradesmen and merchants, which caused dissatisfaction with the latter.

Actually founded dog breeding in Russia

What other acts did Paul 1 go down in history, whose domestic and foreign policy is a thirst for large-scale transformations? This Russian tsar allowed the construction of churches according to the Old Believer faith (everywhere), forgave the Poles who participated in the Kosciuszko uprising, began to buy new breeds of dogs and sheep abroad, in fact, founding dog breeding. Important is his law on succession to the throne, which excluded the possibility of women ascending the throne and established the order of the regency.

However, with all the positive aspects, the emperor was unpopular with the people, which created the prerequisites for repeated attempts on his life. The murder of Paul 1 was committed by officers from several regiments in March 1801. It is believed that the conspiracy against the emperor was subsidized by the government of England, which did not want the strengthening of Russia in the Maltese region. The involvement of his sons in this action was not proven, however, in the 19th century, some restrictions were introduced on the study in Russia of the reign of this emperor.

Pavel I Petrovich (1754-1801)

The ninth All-Russian Emperor Pavel I Petrovich (Romanov) was born on September 20 (October 1), 1754 in St. Petersburg. His father was Emperor Peter III (1728-1762), who was born in the German city of Kiel, and received the name Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp at birth. By coincidence, Karl Peter simultaneously had the right to two European thrones - Swedish and Russian, since in addition to kinship with the Romanovs, the Holstein dukes were in direct dynastic connection with the Swedish royal house. Since the Russian Empress Elizabeth Petrovna had no children of her own, in 1742 she invited her 14-year-old nephew Karl Peter to Russia, who was baptized into Orthodoxy under the name of Peter Fedorovich.

Having come to power in 1861 after the death of Elizabeth, Pyotr Fedorovich spent 6 months in the role of the All-Russian Emperor. The activity of Peter III characterizes him as a serious reformer. He did not hide his Prussian sympathies and, having taken the throne, immediately put an end to Russia's participation in the Seven Years' War and entered into an alliance against Denmark, Holstein's longtime offender. Peter III liquidated the Secret Chancellery - a gloomy police institution that kept all of Russia at bay. In fact, no one canceled the denunciations, just from now on they had to be submitted in writing. And then he took away the lands and peasants from the monasteries, which even Peter the Great could not do. However, the time allotted by history for the reforms of Peter III was not great. Only 6 months of his reign, of course, cannot be compared with the 34-year reign of his wife, Catherine the Great. As a result of a palace coup, Peter III was dethroned on June 16 (28), 1762 and killed in Ropsha near St. Petersburg 11 days after that. During this period, his son, the future Emperor Paul I, was not yet eight years old. With the support of the guards, the wife of Peter III came to power, proclaiming herself Catherine II.

The mother of Paul I, the future Catherine the Great, was born on April 21, 1729 in Stettin (Szczecin) in the family of a general in the Prussian service and received a good education for that time. When she was 13 years old, Frederick II recommended her to Elizabeth Petrovna as a bride for Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich. And in 1744, the young Prussian princess Sophia-Friederike-Augusta-Anhalt-Zerbst was brought to Russia, where she received the Orthodox name of Ekaterina Alekseevna. The young girl was smart and ambitious, from the first days of her stay on Russian soil she diligently prepared herself to become a Grand Duchess, and then the wife of the Russian Emperor. But the marriage with Peter III, concluded on August 21, 1745 in St. Petersburg, did not bring happiness to the spouses.

It is officially believed that Pavel's father is Catherine's legal husband, Peter III, however, in her memoirs there are indications (however, indirect) that Pavel's father was her lover Sergei Saltykov. In favor of this assumption is the well-known fact of the extreme hostility that Catherine always had for her husband, and against - the significant portrait resemblance of Paul to Peter III, as well as Catherine's steady hostility to Paul. The examination of the DNA of the remains of the emperor, which has not yet been carried out, could finally reject this hypothesis.

September 20, 1754, nine years after the wedding, Catherine gave birth to Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich. This was a major event, because after Peter I, Russian emperors had no children, confusion and confusion reigned at the death of each ruler. It was under Peter III and Catherine that there was hope for the stability of the state system. In the first period of her reign, Catherine was worried about the legitimacy of her power. After all, if Peter III was still half (by mother) a Russian person and, moreover, was the grandson of Peter I himself, then Catherine was not even a distant relative of the legitimate heirs and was only the wife of the heir. Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich was the legitimate, but unloved son of the empress. After the death of his father, he, as the only heir, was supposed to take the throne with the establishment of a regency, but this, by the will of Catherine, did not happen.

Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich spent the first years of his life surrounded by nannies. Immediately after his birth, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna took him to her. In her notes, Catherine the Great wrote: “Just as they swaddled him, her confessor appeared on the orders of the empress and named the child Paul, after which the empress immediately ordered the midwife to take him and carry him along, and I remained on the maternity bed.” The whole empire rejoiced at the birth of the heir, but they forgot about his mother: "Lying in bed, I continuously cried and moaned, I was alone in the room."

Paul's baptism was performed in a magnificent setting on September 25th. Empress Elizaveta Petrovna expressed her good will to the mother of the newborn by the fact that after the baptism she herself brought her a decree to the cabinet on the issue of 100 thousand rubles to her on a golden platter. After the baptism at the court, solemn holidays began - balls, masquerades, fireworks on the occasion of the birth of Paul lasted about a year. Lomonosov, in an ode written in honor of Pavel Petrovich, wished him to compare with his great great-grandfather.

Catherine had to see her son for the first time after giving birth only after 6 weeks, and then only in the spring of 1755. Catherine recalled: “He was lying in an extremely hot room, in flannel diapers, in a bed upholstered in black fox fur, they covered him with a satin blanket quilted on wadding, and, moreover, with a pink velvet blanket ... sweat appeared on his face and all over his body "When Pavel grew up a little, the slightest breath of wind caused him a cold and made him sick. In addition, a lot of stupid old women and mothers were assigned to him, who, with their excessive and inappropriate zeal, caused him incomparably more physical and moral evil than good." Improper care led to the fact that the child was characterized by increased nervousness and impressionability. Even in early childhood, Pavel's nerves were upset to the point that he hid under the table with any strong slamming of doors. There was no system in caring for him. He went to bed either very early, at 8 o'clock in the evening, or at the first hour of the night. It happened that he was given food when he “pleased to ask”, there were also cases of simple negligence: “Once he fell out of the cradle, so no one heard it. They woke up in the morning - Paul was not in the cradle, looked - he was lying on the floor fast asleep."

Pavel received an excellent education in the spirit of the French Enlightenment. He knew foreign languages, had knowledge of mathematics, history, and applied sciences. In 1758, Fyodor Dmitrievich Bekhteev was appointed his tutor, who immediately began to teach the boy to read and write. In June 1760, Nikita Ivanovich Panin was appointed chief chamberlain under Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, Semyon Andreevich Poroshin, the former aide-de-camp of Peter III, was the tutor and teacher of mathematics for Pavel, and Archimandrite Platon, hieromonk of the Trinity- Sergius Lavra, later Metropolitan of Moscow.

On September 29, 1773, 19-year-old Paul marries, marrying the daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, Princess Augustine-Wilhelmina, who received the name Natalya Alekseevna in Orthodoxy. Three years later, on April 16, 1776, at 5 o'clock in the morning, she died in childbirth, and the child died with her. The medical report, signed by doctors Kruse, Arsh, Bock and others, speaks of the difficult birth of Natalya Alekseevna, who suffered from a curvature of the back, and the "large child" was incorrectly positioned. Catherine, however, not wanting to waste time, begins a new matchmaking. This time, the queen chose the Württemberg princess Sophia-Dorotea-August-Louise. A portrait of the princess is delivered by courier, which Catherine II offers to Pavel, saying that she is "meek, pretty, charming, in a word, a treasure." The heir to the throne falls more and more in love with the image, and already in June he goes to Potsdam to marry the princess.

Seeing the princess for the first time on July 11, 1776 in the palace of Frederick the Great, Paul writes to his mother: “I found my bride the way I could only mentally wish for: not ugly, great, slender, answers intelligently and quickly. As for her heart, then she has it very sensitive and gentle ... She loves to be at home and practice reading and music, she is greedy to learn in Russian ... "Acquainted with the princess, the Grand Duke fell passionately in love with her, and after parting, he writes tender letters to her from the road with a declaration of love and devotion.

In August, Sophia Dorothea arrives in Russia and, following the instructions of Catherine II, on September 15 (26), 1776, she accepts Orthodox baptism under the name of Maria Feodorovna. Soon the wedding took place, a few months later she writes: "My dear husband is an angel, I love him to the point of madness." A year later, on December 12, 1777, the young couple had their first son, Alexander. On the occasion of the birth of the heir in St. Petersburg, 201 cannon shots were fired, and the sovereign grandmother Catherine II gave her son 362 acres of land, which laid the foundation for the village of Pavlovskoye, where the palace-residence of Paul I was later built. 1778. The construction of a new palace designed by Charles Cameron was carried out mainly under the supervision of Maria Feodorovna.

With Maria Feodorovna, Pavel found true family happiness. Unlike mother Catherine and great-aunt Elizabeth, who did not know family happiness, and whose personal life was far from generally accepted moral norms, Pavel appears as an exemplary family man who set an example for all subsequent Russian emperors - his descendants. In September 1781, the Grand Ducal couple, under the name of the Count and Countess of the North, set off on a long journey through Europe, which lasted a whole year. During this trip, Paul did more than just sightseeing and acquiring works of art for his palace under construction. The journey also had great political significance. For the first time escaping from the tutelage of Catherine II, the Grand Duke had the opportunity to personally get acquainted with European monarchs, paid a visit to Pope Pius VI. In Italy, Paul, following in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, Emperor Peter the Great, is seriously interested in the achievements of European shipbuilding and gets acquainted with the organization of naval affairs abroad. During his stay in Livorno, the Tsarevich finds time to visit the Russian squadron stationed there. As a result of assimilation of new trends in European culture and art, science and technology, style and way of life, Pavel largely changed his own worldview and perception of Russian reality.

By this time, Pavel Petrovich and Maria Feodorovna already had two children after the birth of their son Konstantin on April 27, 1779. And on July 29, 1783, their daughter Alexandra was born, in connection with which Catherine II presented Pavel with the Gatchina manor, bought from Grigory Orlov. Meanwhile, the number of Paul's children is constantly increasing - on December 13, 1784, daughter Elena was born, on February 4, 1786 - Maria, on May 10, 1788 - Catherine. Pavel's mother, Empress Catherine II, rejoicing for her grandchildren, wrote to her daughter-in-law on October 9, 1789: "Really, ma'am, you are a craftswoman to bring children into the world."

The upbringing of all the older children of Pavel Petrovich and Maria Feodorovna was personally handled by Catherine II, in fact, taking them away from their parents and not even consulting with them. It was the Empress who came up with the names for the children of Paul, naming Alexander in honor of the patron saint of St. Petersburg, Prince Alexander Nevsky, and gave this name to Konstantin because she intended her second grandson for the throne of the future Constantinople Empire, which was to be formed after the expulsion of the Turks from Europe. Catherine personally engaged in the search for a bride for the sons of Paul - Alexander and Constantine. And both of these marriages did not bring family happiness to anyone. Emperor Alexander only at the end of his life will find in his wife a devoted and understanding friend. And Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich will violate generally accepted norms and divorce his wife, who will leave Russia. Being the vicegerent of the Principality of Warsaw, he will fall in love with a beautiful Polish woman - Joanna Grudzinsky, Countess Lovich, in the name of preserving family happiness, he will renounce the Russian throne and will never become Constantine I, Emperor of All Rus'. In total, Pavel Petrovich and Maria Feodorovna had four sons - Alexander, Konstantin, Nikolai and Mikhail, and six daughters - Alexandra, Elena, Maria, Ekaterina, Olga and Anna, of whom only 3-year-old Olga died in infancy.

It would seem that Paul's family life developed happily. Loving wife, many children. But the main thing was missing, which every heir to the throne strives for - there was no power. Pavel patiently awaited the death of his unloved mother, but it seemed that the great empress, who had an imperious character and good health, was never going to die. In previous years, Catherine wrote more than once about how she would die surrounded by friends, to the sounds of gentle music among the flowers. The blow suddenly overtook her on November 5 (16), 1796, in a narrow passage between two rooms of the Winter Palace. She had a severe stroke, and several servants with difficulty managed to pull the heavy body of the empress out of the narrow corridor and put it on a mattress spread on the floor. Couriers rushed to Gatchina to tell Pavel Petrovich the news of his mother's illness. The first was Count Nikolai Zubov. The next day, in the presence of her son, grandchildren and close courtiers, the Empress died without regaining consciousness at the age of 67, of which she spent 34 years on the Russian throne. Already on the night of November 7 (18), 1796, everyone was sworn in to the new emperor - 42-year-old Paul I.

By the time of accession to the throne, Pavel Petrovich was a man with established views and habits, with a ready-made, as it seemed to him, program of action. Back in 1783, he broke off all relations with his mother, among the courtiers there were rumors about the deprivation of Paul of the right to the throne. Pavel plunges into theoretical discussions about the urgent need to change the management of Russia. Away from the court, in Pavlovsk and Gatchina, he created a peculiar model of the new Russia, which seemed to him a model for governing the whole country. At the age of 30, he received from his mother a large list of literary works for in-depth study. There were books by Voltaire, Montesquieu, Corneille, Hume and other famous French and English authors. Paul considered the purpose of the state "the blessedness of each and all." He recognized only the monarchy as a form of government, although he agreed that this form "is associated with the inconvenience of mankind." However, Paul argued that autocratic power is better than others, as it "combines the power of the laws of the power of one."

Of all the occupations, the new king had the greatest passion for military affairs. The advice of the combat general P.I. Panin and the example of Frederick the Great drew him to the military path. During the reign of his mother, Paul, removed from business, filled his long hours of leisure with the training of military battalions. It was then that Paul formed, grew and strengthened that "corporal spirit", which he sought to instill in the entire army. In his opinion, the Russian army of Catherine's time was more of a disorderly crowd than a properly arranged army. Embezzlement flourished, the use of the labor of soldiers in the landowners' estates of commanders, and much more. Each commander dressed the soldiers to his liking, sometimes trying to save in his favor the sums of money allocated for uniforms. Pavel considered himself a successor to the cause of Peter I to transform Russia. The ideal for him was the Prussian army, by the way, the strongest in Europe at that time. Pavel introduced a new uniform form, charter, weapons. Soldiers were allowed to complain about the abuses of their commanders. Everything was strictly controlled and, in general, the situation, for example, of the lower ranks became better.

At the same time, Paul was distinguished by a certain peacefulness. During the reign of Catherine II (1762-1796), Russia participated in seven wars, which lasted more than 25 years in total and inflicted heavy damage on the country. Having ascended the throne, Paul declared that Russia under Catherine had the misfortune to use its population in frequent wars, and inside the country things were running. However, Paul's foreign policy was inconsistent. In 1798, Russia entered into an anti-French coalition with England, Austria, Turkey and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. At the insistence of the allies, the disgraced A.V. was appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian troops. Suvorov, to whose jurisdiction the Austrian troops were also transferred. Under the leadership of Suvorov, Northern Italy was liberated from French rule. In September 1799, the Russian army made the famous crossing of the Alps. For the Italian campaign, Suvorov received the rank of Generalissimo and the title of Prince of Italy. However, already in October of the same year, Russia broke off the alliance with Austria, and Russian troops were withdrawn from Europe. Shortly before the murder, Paul sent the Don army on a campaign against India. It was 22,507 men without a wagon train, supplies, or any strategic plan. This adventurous campaign was canceled immediately after the death of Paul.

In 1787, leaving for the first and last time in the army, Paul left his "Instruction", in which he outlined his thoughts on the administration of the state. Enumerating all the estates, he stops at the peasantry, which "contains all the other parts by itself and by its labors, and therefore worthy of respect." Pavel tried to enforce the decree that serfs work no more than three days a week for the landowner, and on Sunday they did not work at all. This, however, led to their even greater enslavement. After all, before Paul, for example, the peasant population of Ukraine did not know corvée at all. Now, to the delight of the Little Russian landlords, a three-day corvee was introduced here. In Russian estates, it was very difficult to follow the implementation of the decree.

In the field of finance, Paul believed that the revenues of the state belonged to the state, and not to the sovereign personally. He demanded that expenditures be coordinated with the needs of the state. Pavel ordered that part of the silver services of the Winter Palace be melted down into coins, and up to two million rubles in banknotes should be destroyed to reduce the state debt.

Attention was also paid to public education. A decree was issued on the restoration of a university in the Baltic states (it was opened in Dorpat already under Alexander I), a Medical and Surgical Academy was opened in St. Petersburg, many schools and colleges. At the same time, in order to prevent the idea of ​​"depraved and criminal" France from entering Russia, the study of Russians abroad was completely prohibited, censorship was established on imported literature and notes, and it was even forbidden to play cards. Curiously, for various reasons, the new tsar turned his attention to improving the Russian language. Shortly after accession to the throne, Paul ordered in all official papers "to express themselves in the purest and simplest style, using all possible accuracy, and grandiloquent expressions that have lost their meaning should always be avoided." At the same time, strange, arousing distrust in the mental abilities of Paul, were the decrees that forbade the use of certain types of clothing. So, it was impossible to wear tailcoats, round hats, vests, silk stockings; instead, a German dress was allowed with an exact definition of the color and size of the collar. According to A.T. Bolotov, Pavel demanded that everyone honestly fulfill their duties. So, driving through the city, writes Bolotov, the emperor saw an officer walking without a sword, and behind a batman carrying a sword and a fur coat. Pavel went up to the soldier and asked whose sword he was carrying. He replied: "The officer who goes ahead." "Officer! So, is it difficult for him to carry his sword? So put it on yourself, and give him your bayonet!" So Pavel promoted a soldier to an officer, and demoted the officer to the rank and file. Bolotov notes that this made a huge impression on the soldiers and officers. In particular, the latter, fearing a repetition of this, began to treat the service more responsibly.

In order to control the life of the country, Pavel hung a yellow box at the gates of his palace in St. Petersburg for filing petitions addressed to him. Similar reports were accepted by mail. This was new for Russia. True, this was immediately used for false denunciations, libels and caricatures of the king himself.

One of the important political acts of Emperor Paul after accession to the throne was the reburial on December 18, 1796 of his father Peter III, who was killed 34 years ago. It all started on November 19, when "by the order of Emperor Pavel Petrovich, the body of the buried late Emperor Pyotr Fedorovich was taken out in the Nevsky Monastery, and the body was laid in a new magnificent coffin, upholstered with a golden eyelet, with imperial coats of arms, with an old coffin." On the same day in the evening, "his majesty, her majesty and their highnesses deigned to arrive at the Nevsky Monastery, at the Lower Annunciation Church, where the body stood, and upon arrival, the coffin was opened; they deigned to kiss the body of the late sovereign ... and then it was closed" . Today it is difficult to imagine what the tsar "applied" to and forced his wife and children to "apply" to. According to eyewitnesses, the coffin contained only bone dust and pieces of clothing.

On November 25, according to the ritual developed by the emperor in the smallest detail, the ashes of Peter III and the corpse of Catherine II were crowned. Russia has never seen this before. In the morning in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, Pavel laid the crown on the coffin of Peter III, and in the second hour of the day, Maria Feodorovna in the Winter Palace laid the same crown on the deceased Catherine II. There was one terrible detail in the ceremony in the Winter Palace - the chamber junker and the empress's valets during the laying of the crown "raised the body of the deceased." Obviously, it was imitated that Catherine II was, as it were, alive. In the evening of the same day, the body of the empress was transferred to a magnificently arranged mourning tent, and on December 1, Pavel solemnly transferred the imperial regalia to the Nevsky Monastery. The next day, at 11 o'clock in the morning, a funeral procession slowly set off from the Lower Annunciation Church of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In front of the coffin of Peter III, the hero of Chesma Alexei Orlov carried the imperial crown on a velvet pillow. Behind the hearse, the whole august family marched in deep mourning. The coffin with the remains of Peter III was transported to the Winter Palace and installed next to the coffin of Catherine. Three days later, on December 5, both coffins were transferred to the Peter and Paul Cathedral. For two weeks they were put up there for worship. Finally, on December 18, they were interred. On the tombs of the hated spouses, the same date of burial was indicated. On this occasion, N.I. Grech remarked: "You would think that they spent their whole lives together on the throne, died and were buried on the same day."

This whole phantasmagoric episode struck the imagination of contemporaries who tried to find at least some reasonable explanation for it. Some argued that all this was done in order to refute the rumors that Paul was not the son of Peter III. Others saw in this ceremony a desire to humiliate and insult the memory of Catherine II, who hated her husband. Having crowned the already crowned Catherine at the same time as Peter III, who did not have time to be crowned during his lifetime, with the same crown and almost simultaneously, Paul, as it were, again, posthumously, married his parents, and thereby nullified the results of the palace coup of 1762. Paul forced the killers of Peter III to carry the imperial regalia, thereby exposing these people to public ridicule.

There is evidence that the idea of ​​a secondary burial of Peter III was suggested to Paul by the Freemason S.I. Pleshcheev, who wanted to take revenge on Catherine II for the persecution of "free masons". One way or another, the ceremony of reburial of the remains of Peter III was performed even before the coronation of Paul, which followed on April 5, 1797 in Moscow - the new tsar paid so much attention to the memory of his father, emphasizing once again that his filial feelings for his father were stronger than feelings for the imperious mother. And on the very day of his coronation, Paul I issued a law on succession to the throne, which established a strict order in the succession to the throne in a direct male descending line, and not at the arbitrary desire of the autocrat, as before. This decree was in effect throughout the 19th century.

Russian society was ambivalent about the government events of the Pavlovsk time and personally to Paul. Sometimes historians said that under Paul, the Gatchina people became the head of the state - ignorant and rude people. Among them, A.A. Arakcheev and others like him. The words of F.V. Rostopchin that "the best of them deserves to be wheeled". But we should not forget that among them were N.V. Repnin, A.A. Bekleshov and other honest and decent people. Among the associates of Paul we see S.M. Vorontsova, N.I. Saltykova, A.V. Suvorov, G.R. Derzhavin, under him the brilliant statesman M.M. Speransky.

Relations with the Order of Malta played a special role in Paul's politics. The Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which appeared in the 11th century, was associated with Palestine for a long time. Under the onslaught of the Turks, the St. Johnites were forced to leave Palestine, settling first in Cyprus, and then on the island of Rhodes. However, the struggle with the Turks, which lasted for more than one century, forced them to leave this refuge in 1523. After seven years of wandering, the Johnites received Malta as a gift from the Spanish King Charles V. This rocky island became an impregnable fortress of the Order, which became known as Maltese. By the Convention of January 4, 1797, the Order was allowed to have a Grand Priory in Russia. In 1798, Paul's manifesto "On the Establishment of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem" appeared. The new monastic order consisted of two priors - Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox with 98 commanderships. There is an assumption that Paul wanted to thereby unite the two churches - Catholic and Orthodox.

On June 12, 1798, Malta was taken by the French without a fight. The knights suspected Grand Master Gompesh of treason and defrocked him. In the autumn of the same year, Paul I was elected to this post, willingly accepting the signs of the new rank. Before Paul, an image of a knightly union was drawn, in which, in contrast to the ideas of the French Revolution, the principles of the order would flourish - strict Christian piety, unconditional obedience to elders. According to Paul, the Order of Malta, having so long and successfully fought against the enemies of Christianity, must now gather all the "best" forces of Europe and serve as a mighty bulwark against the revolutionary movement. The residence of the Order was moved to St. Petersburg. A fleet was equipped in Kronstadt to expel the French from Malta, but in 1800 the island was occupied by the British, and soon Pavel also died. In 1817 it was announced that the Order no longer existed in Russia.

At the end of the century, Pavel moved away from his family, and his relationship with Maria Feodorovna worsened. There were rumors about the infidelity of the Empress and the unwillingness to recognize the younger boys as her sons - Nikolai, born in 1796, and Mikhail, born in 1798. Trusting and straightforward, but at the same time suspicious, Paul, thanks to the intrigues of von Palen, who became his closest courtier, begins to suspect all people close to him of hostility towards him.

Pavel loved Pavlovsk and Gatchina, where he lived in anticipation of the throne. Having ascended the throne, he began to build a new residence - Mikhailovsky Castle, designed by the Italian Vincenzo Brenna, who became the chief court architect. Everything in the castle was adapted to protect the emperor. Canals, drawbridges, secret passages seemed to make Paul's life long. In January 1801, the construction of the new residence was completed. But many plans of Paul I remained unfulfilled. It was in the Mikhailovsky Palace that Pavel Petrovich was killed on the evening of March 11 (23), 1801. Having lost his sense of reality, he became maniacally suspicious, removed loyal people from himself, and himself provoked the disaffected in the guard and high society to a conspiracy. The conspiracy was attended by Argamakov, Vice-Chancellor P.P. Panin, favorite of Ekaterina P.A. Zubov, Governor-General of St. Petersburg von Palen, commanders of the guards regiments: Semenovsky - N.I. Depreradovich, Kavalergardsky - F.P. Uvarov, Preobrazhensky - P.A. Talyzin. Thanks to treason, a group of conspirators entered the Mikhailovsky Castle, went up to the emperor’s bedroom, where, according to one version, he was killed by Nikolai Zubov (Suvorov’s son-in-law, Platon Zubov’s older brother), who hit him on the temple with a massive golden snuffbox. According to another version, Paul was strangled with a scarf or crushed by a group of conspirators who piled on the emperor. "Have mercy! Air, air! What have I done wrong to you?" Those were his last words.

The question of whether Alexander Pavlovich knew about the conspiracy against his father remained unclear for a long time. According to the memoirs of Prince A. Czartoryski, the idea of ​​a conspiracy arose almost in the first days of Paul's reign, but the coup became possible only after it became known about the consent of Alexander, who signed a secret manifesto, in which he pledged not to pursue the conspirators after accession to the throne. And most likely, Alexander himself was well aware that without the assassination, a palace coup would be impossible, since Paul I would not voluntarily abdicate. The reign of Paul I lasted only four years, four months and four days. His funeral took place on March 23 (April 4), 1801 in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Maria Fedorovna devoted the rest of her life to her family and perpetuating the memory of her husband. In Pavlovsk, almost on the edge of the park, in the middle of the wilderness, above the ravine, the Mausoleum to the benefactor spouse was erected according to the project of Thomas de Thomon. Like an ancient temple, it is majestic and silent, all nature around seems to mourn along with a porphyry-bearing widow sculpted from marble, crying over the ashes of her husband.

Paul was ambivalent. A knight in the spirit of the outgoing century, he could not find his place in the 19th century, where the pragmatism of society and the relative freedom of representatives of the top of society could no longer coexist. Society, which a hundred years before Paul tolerated any antics of Peter I, did not tolerate Paul I. "Our romantic tsar", as A.S. called Paul I. Pushkin, failed to cope with the country, which was waiting not only for the strengthening of power, but, above all, for various reforms in domestic politics. The reforms that Russia expected from every ruler. However, due to his upbringing, education, religious principles, experience of relationships with his father and, especially, with his mother, it was in vain to expect such reforms from Paul. Pavel was a dreamer who wanted to transform Russia and a reformer who displeased everyone. The unfortunate sovereign, who accepted death during the last palace coup in the history of Russia. The unfortunate son who repeated the fate of his father.

Madam dearest mother!

Take a break, do me a favor, please, for a moment from your important activities in order to accept the congratulations that my heart, submissive and obedient to your will, brings on the birthday of Your Imperial Majesty. May the Almighty God bless your precious days for the whole fatherland until the most distant times of human life, and may Your Majesty never run out of tenderness for me as a mother and ruler, always dear and revered by me, the feelings with which I remain for you, Your Imperial Majesty , the most obedient and most devoted son and subject Paul.

The fate of the Russian Emperor Paul I, the inconsistency of his reign and the tragic death. The same events and reforms of the short reign of Paul I are often regarded as diametrically opposed.

The fate of Catherine's sonIIPavel Petrovich

By the time of the beginning of his reign, Pavel Petrovich had reached the age of 42 years. In the first years of his life, the upbringing of the future emperor was carried out by his grandmother, Empress Elizabeth, who brought up the qualities of a ruler in her grandson, not wanting to leave the throne to her son Peter III. Pavel received an excellent education for those times. Among the disciplines he studied were:

• the law of God;
• foreign languages;
• dancing;
• painting;
• story;
• geography;
• physics;
• chemistry;
• fencing;
• arithmetic;
• astronomy.

At the disposal of the grandson of the Empress was the library of Academician Korf. On his own, Pavel enthusiastically studied military sciences. With his parents, "thanks" to the efforts of his grandmother, he met extremely rarely. From life outside his rooms he was limited by a crowd of nannies and teachers, whose main goal was to serve Elizabeth.

Throughout his life, gossip about his origins was reflected. From the moment of birth, the question arose: "Paul I - whose son is really?". And the thing is that to this day it is believed that there were no marital relations between the parents of Paul I. An indirect confirmation of this is the birth of an heir in the 10th year of marriage. Moreover, Grand Duchess Catherine periodically secretly gave birth to children who did not live long. These children are attributed to her lovers. There are several main versions of the birth of Paul I:

1. Father of the heir to the chamberlain of the grand duke's court S. Saltykov. According to one of the assumptions, the rapprochement between Catherine and Saltykov took place on the secret instructions of the ruling empress.
2. Father - Catherine's legal husband, Grand Duke Peter, who, at the insistence of his mother, the ruling Empress Elizabeth, produced an heir. There is a version that Catherine managed to get pregnant from her husband after some kind of operation performed by the Grand Duke.
3. The child died during childbirth, and instead they planted it to satisfy Elizabeth's demand for an heir, a newborn Chukhon child.

All questions could be answered by a genetic examination of the surviving remains, but it has either not been carried out, or its results have not been made public, at least they are not in the history books. Maybe someone still needs to hide the truth.

The outward similarity and similarity of the characters of Peter and Paul, as well as the general dislike for Catherine unambiguously confirm that the father of the heir is the Grand Duke and the legitimate husband of the future Empress.

During her long reign, Catherine II did not allow her son to solve state issues, most likely out of fear that a competitor to the throne would appear, because there was a party supporting Peter's rights to the throne. This party relied on a promise (or a written commitment, which has not been preserved) to transfer power to his son when he reaches the age of majority.

In addition, Paul could not help but hear that his grandmother, Empress Elizabeth, wanted to leave the throne to him, and not to Peter III, and the candidacy of Paul's mother Catherine was not considered at all.

Having long reached the required age and by 1776 married for the second time, by the way, very happily, Pavel believed that his mother had usurped his throne.

Another circumstance that spoiled the relationship with his mother on the part of Paul was that he blamed her for the death of his father Peter III.

All these reasons gradually became the reason for the development of his own, unlike the maternal, approach to the further development of the Russian Empire by Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich.

How many years did Paul ruleIand what is its role in the history of Russia

The first thing Paul I did when he came to power after the death of Catherine II was to change the order of succession to the throne. Now the throne should be passed only through the male line and only from father to son. The main purpose of this innovation was to prevent palace coups in the future. The last goal was not achieved, but the order of succession to the throne was preserved until the end of the reign of the Romanov dynasty.

In the reforms that the new emperor began to carry out, one can clearly feel the opposition to what Catherine did. In many ways, one can feel the influence of Prussia and, in particular, the “alignment” with Frederick the Great. On the other hand, Peter I was his idol.

In the interweaving of these contradictions, Pavel Petrovich began to rule the country. The main events of the reign of Paul I Petrovich:

• reforming the army according to the Prussian model - almost all punishments became disproportionate to the misconduct, the army was reduced due to the dismissal of officers on vacation and underage enlisted in the army, etc. All this restored the Russian military against the emperor;
• the emperor returned from exile and exile almost all those who suffered from the power of Catherine II - turned against the emperor, many of those who were amnestied became opponents of the reign of Paul I;
• attempts to combat serfdom - set the nobles against the emperor, corvee and other duties were reduced only on paper;
• organization of ostentatious Arakcheev villages with cane discipline;
• attempts to turn the nobility into an all-serving class - intensified the mood against the emperor of the nobles;
• the ban on everything French (books, dances, fashion, etc.) in the form of a fight against the ideas of the French Revolution led to a misunderstanding of what was happening in society;
• the abolition of the ban on corporal punishment for nobles, clergy and higher merchant guilds;
• the conflict with England and Spain over the island of Malta led to a rapprochement with France. Paul became Master of the Order of Malta;
• the alliance with Napoleon, dreams of capturing India, the continental blockade of Great Britain - caused a violent reaction of misunderstanding of what was happening and significantly undermined the welfare of the country;
• issued many decrees and orders, sometimes contradicting each other. The main problem was that no one followed the performance;
• introduced the most severe censorship;
• study in foreign educational institutions is prohibited.

All the above actions of the emperor turned against him a significant part of the privileged society. Painful suspicion quarreled the emperor with his family and court. At least three assassination attempts were prepared on the emperor. The last assassination attempt on March 24, 1801 ended in the assassination (suffocation) of the emperor. According to the official version, Emperor Paul I died suddenly of apoplexy. The commanders of the guards regiments and senior officials took part in the murder and its organization.

The Russian throne was taken by Alexander I Pavlovich, who was warned by the conspirators about the impending coup, but did nothing to prevent it. The only thing that somehow removes the label of “parricide” from Alexander is that he hoped to do without a fatal outcome.

There is a version that Paul I himself knew about the impending assassination attempt and was familiarized with the list of conspirators, but did nothing. Maybe in order not to expose his son to a blow?

The Russian Orthodox Church considered the issue of canonizing Pavel Petrovich, but was not resolved positively.

We know what Emperor Pavel Petrovich, the son of Catherine II, really was from the reviews of his contemporaries and surviving documents. Modern researchers admit that many of the reforms of Paul I had, which could benefit the empire, but the emperor did everything spontaneously and halfway, without thinking about the country's readiness for transformations, without controlling execution, often exchanging for trifles.