The Emergence of Russian Liberalism: Alexander Kunitsyn in Context, 1783-1840 (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History)

273 Pages·2011·4.01 MB·English

by  Julia Berest

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The Emergence of Russian Liberalism: Alexander Kunitsyn in Context,
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The Emergence of
Russian Liberalism
Alexander Kunitsyn in
Context, 1783–1840
Julia Berest
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THE EMERGENCE OF RUSSIAN LIBERALISM
Copyright © Julia Berest, 2011.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
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this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
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ISBN: 978–0–230–11173–8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berest, Julia, 1976–
The emergence of Russian liberalism : Alexander Kunitsyn in
context, 1783–1840 / by Julia Berest.
p. cm.—(Palgrave studies in cultural and intellectual history)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978–0–230–11173–8 (hardback)
1. Kunitsyn, Aleksandr Petrovich, 1783–1840. 2. Kunitsyn, Aleksandr
Petrovich, 1783–1840—Political and social views. 3. Intellectuals—
Russia—Biography. 4. Law teachers—Russia—Biography.
5. Philosophers—Russia—Biography. 6. Liberalism—Russia—History—
19th century. 7. Natural law—History—19th century. 8. Russia—
Intellectual life—1801–1917. 9. Russia—Politics and
government—1801–1917. 10. Russia—History—Alexander I,
1801–1825. I. Title.
CT1218.K827B47 2011
947(cid:1).07092—dc22 2010045410
[B]
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: May 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Formative Years 13
2 Years in the Tsarskoe Selo Lyceum 31
3 Kunitsyn in the Son of Fatherland 59
4 Kunitsyn and Nicholas Turgenev: “The Society of
the Year 1819” 85
5 The Natural Law Tradition in Russia 105
6 Kunitsyn on Natural Law 143
7 In the Midst of Conservative Reaction 161
Epilogue 185
Conclusion 193
Notes 199
Bibliography 245
Index 259
v
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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Charles
Ruud from the University of Western Ontario, whose guidance dur-
ing my years as a graduate student made this book possible. He gen-
erously spent his time helping me, an immigrant scholar from
Eastern Europe, to adjust to the English-speaking academic culture. I
am also extremely grateful to Professor Eli Nathans, who provided
many valuable and insightful comments on selected parts of my
work. His knowledge and enthusiasm for intellectual history have
been a source of inspiration for me. Among my graduate teachers,
Professor Neville Thompson showed much support and kindness to
me. To David Murphy, Library Assistant at the Weldon Library
(UWO), I owe my debt of gratitude for helping me locate rare Russian
books in the libraries of the United States and Canada. Without his
help this book would have been much shorter. Ekaterina Budagova
from the Russian National Library at St. Petersburg also assisted me
with obtaining some pre-revolutionary Russian publications. I also
wish to thank Professor László Kontler from Central European
University, whose stimulating classes on comparative intellectual
history awakened my interest in Russian and European thought. Last
but not least, I am grateful to my parents and my husband, who have
supported me throughout the years of research and writing. Their
love is precious to me.
vii
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Introduction
As a law professor and philosopher, Alexander Petrovich Kunitsyn had
an unusual career, which mirrored major progressive and conserva-
tive policies of the Russian government under Alexander I (1801–25).
A person of obscure social origin from a small provincial town, he
was one of the few Russian students selected to study at state cost at
St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute and later Göttingen University as
part of the government project for creating the cadres of native teach-
ers in Russia. Upon graduation in 1811 Kunitsyn was appointed to
the position of professor in the elite Tsarskoe Selo Lyceum, where he
earned a reputation as a talented educator and a favorite teacher of
Alexander Pushkin, the greatest poet of Russia’s romantic age.
Taking advantage of the improved publishing opportunities,
Kunitsyn made himself known as a liberal-m inded publicist and an
author of one of the first Russian works on natural law, which, alas,
appeared at a time when Alexander I’s liberal era was already drawing
to an end. The first signs of the impending change began to appear
shortly after the Napoleonic Wars, but to Kunitsyn, a beneficiary of
the government’s educational policies, they did not become obvious
until much later. Kunitsyn’s intention to present his Natural Law to
Alexander I was indicative of the reformist hopes created by the tsar’s
liberal pronouncements during the early nineteenth century.
The government’s interest in promoting legal education in Russian
universities must have further encouraged Kunitsyn’s expectations.
Courses in natural law were first established in Russia by Peter the
Great, who sought to borrow from the West not only technical knowl-
edge but also the ideology useful for building a modernized version
of the autocratic state. German natural law in its Wolffian tradition,
which emphasized the ethos of public duties over individual rights,
appeared more suitable for the tsar’s purposes than any other vari-
ants of natural law.1 The ambition to improve legal education was
1
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