RUSSIA AS EUROPE'S OTHER Iver B. Neumann European ...

This amounted to a construction of Russia as a bulwark not only of
contemporary legitimism, but of the ideas of the European ancièn regime.
Indeed, throughout the period, ultraconservatives throughout Europe employed
constructions of Russia in their interventions in general political debates (and,
by the same token, it is hardly coincidental that texts in conservative journals
and newspapers were generally much more relaxed about Russia’s strategic
intentions than were texts in liberal publications). For example, the British Tory
Thomas Raikes wrote about a travel in Russia in a book published in 1838 that,
If a comparison were drawn between the respective situations of these
classes in the two countries, I mean as to physical wants and
gratifications, how much would the scale lean towards this population of
illiterate slaves? The Englishman may boast his liberty, but will it procure
him a dinner? - will it clothe his family? - will it give him employment
when in health? - or when sick, will it keep him from the poorhouse or
the parish? The Russian hugs his slavery; he rejects the airy boon of
liberty and clings to more substantial blessings. He lives indeed without
care for the present, or anxiety for the future. The whole responsibility for
his existence rests with the lord [...] the result is, that, while beggars
abound in other countries, none are seen here; each mougik has a master
and consequently a home (quoted in Gleason 1950: 225).
Most famously, Baron von Haxthausen, a conservative whose study of Russian
peasant life established him as a central Russianist, was convinced that their
communal life made Russians inherently peaceful (cf Cadot 1967: 100-103).
In counterpoint to these different conservative constructions, liberals of the
period were not only quick to criticise Russia as a reactionary country, they also
drew on what they saw as the fortunate experiences of their own countries to
explain why Russia lagged behind Europe. As the French chargé d’affaires in
Petersburg, Comte de la Moussaye, reported back to his foreign ministry:
Domestically she is without law, without administration, and almost
without industry. Some men, chosen bizarrely from all the classes and
throughout the whole country, united under the name, ’legal commissars,’
are engaged in the task of compiling all the ancient and modern legal
catalogues, in order to extract that which would be applicable to Russia...
Before them rises an unsurmountable barrier; no code can exist without
civil liberty, and, in one word, everyone trembles in the councils of the
sovereign and at the head of the army. [...] It is a colossus which will
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