Life for the Tsar
PETER THE GREAT. By C. de Grunwald. (Douglas Saunders with MacGibbon and Kee, 21s.) M. DE GRUNWALD is an old hand at the popularisation of Russian history. Rather too old a hand, we begin to fear, as we meet in his introductory chapters most of the clichés and bromides that adhere to this subject. Holy Russia, Moscow the third Rome, the Peasant soul—they are all here. The modern note is, however, introduced when we are told that peasants drank kvass, a beverage not altogether unlike our contemporary Coca-Cola.' And unusual evidence is drawn upon to make the old Russia visible to the dullest of us: 'The scenery of various famous operas has made us familiar with this legendary country.' Other sources, however, arc used as well as the backcloth of Parisian stages. M. de Grun- wald's book is innocent of footnotes, those tiresome obstacles between author and reader; but his impressionistic sketch of Russian society before Peter the Great, so far as can be judged, is drawn from sources which extend over 150 years of history— from the reign of Edward VI to that of Queen Anne in England— as though Russia had remained static during those years. The impression given, of a turbulent, uncouth but vigorous society, may be correct : but difficulties are constantly evaded. 'The people seemed happy; on feast days jolly crowds strolled about in the gardens and other pleasure grounds.' On that simple logic there has never been an unhappy people. We may, in charity, attribute to the translator phrases like 'without batting an eyelash'; the proof-reader may be responsible for post-dating a treaty by sixty Years and for ungallantly describing Princess Sophia as a virago aged fifty-two when her age was in fact twenty-five. But what arc we to make of English vessels that bear 'cloth from Man- chester' and sugar from Jamaica to Russia in the sixteenth century?
But with the advent of Peter himself in Chapter 5 the backcloth ceases to worry us. M. de Grunwald suddenly rises to his theme, Using recent Soviet research to make Peter at once alive and convincing. The heroic aspects of the traditional Peter arc still there—the, contempt for ceremonial, invented `to punish the great and the rich for their sins'; the curiously impersonal attitude towards the state and its service which led him to say 'Less abase- ment, more zeal and fidelity towards me and the state—these arc the real honours I seek'; and, when urged not to risk his life under fire, to reply, `To take one's pay and not to do one's service Would be shameful.' (He took exactly the pay of his rank, starting from the bottom.) But Peter was no ideological reformer, no 'enlightened despot.' His starting-point was war, Russia's need to recover the Baltic coast-line from Sweden. Even in the eighteenth century war neces- sitated heavy industry and Peter's ferocious drive for industrialisa- tion followed from that. The command of a fleet and the running of industry, as well as the more complicated administration needed to provide the needs of war—all these called for an educated class : and so we get Peter's educational reforms.
The publisher's blurb promised 'analogies between Russia then 'd now' to 'illuminate Soviet policy,' but fortunately M. de Grunwald ignored this invitation to half-truth and cold war. He compares Peter and the Soviet regime in their educational policy, rout in order to point out the differences. Peter's educational reforms were designed to produce a governing elite; and so their benefits were, necessarily, restricted to the ruling class. Their ultimate effect on society was, therefore, divisive. M. de Grunwald finds 'among the Russian exiles now domiciled in France nearly all the family names once borne by Peter the Great's "travellers"' —those sent to be trained in western Europe, whose descendants cut themselves off from their own people by their French speech and foreign customs. The Soviet educational reforms which have so impressed Professor Sir F. E. Simon and Lady Simon of Wythenshawe, though they have advanced at the same breakneck speed as Peter's, have extended over the whole population, and so have the opposite social effect to Peter's. Sir Winston Churchill, like Peter the Great a warrior first and a reformer only by con- sequence, has been one of the first to see the implications and sound the alarm.
CHRISTOPHER HILL
Previous page
