Everybody knows about the Petrine revolutions. Peter the Great willed the westernization of Russia: its governance, its military capacity, the appearance both of its new cityscapes and the people in it, its science and technology and, underpinning all this, its education. The series of military schools that opened in Russia over the first half of the eighteenth century were direct or (after Peter's death) indirect products of his westernizing policy.
Wrong. In this intriguing and well-researched study, Igor Fedyukin distances himself from the top-down model. For him the schools were the projects of individuals pursuing their personal agendas and careers, often in competition with each other. In taking this approach, Fedyukin locates his study in the context both of recent reassessments of the Petrine divide in Russian history (stressing continuities across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rather than fundamental disruption), and in the context of analogous broader reassessments of the operations of power and the dynamics of change elsewhere in early modern Europe. To this extent his study is both revisionist and part of a modern paradigm shift that is becoming a tradition.
There are three main strands woven into Fedyukin's narrative. On one level it is a series of portraits of individual “projectors” (the “enterprisers” of the book's title), of the often colorful lives of the people who made their careers—and, if they played the game well, their fortunes—devising and advocating projects for the good of the realm, for the glory of the ruler, and for the advancement of themselves. Second, insofar as their stories, though all individual, also illustrate a set of embedded practices, the book explores what might be categorized as an aspect of political culture: the dynamics of policy making and implementation. Finally, this is a contribution to institutional history: Fedyukin offers an interpretation of the development not just of how the military schools were created and organized themselves but of what they reveal about how elite educational institutions were conceptualized.
The “enterprisers” were a varied bunch. There was the former Sheremet΄ev serf Aleksei Kurbatov: serial projector, social climber, and “profit-maker,” hijacker of the plans for the first Navigation School in 1700, patron of Leontii Magnitskii and well-connected among “Latinizing” bookmen. Burchard Christoff von Münnich was hired for his engineering skills under Peter: hyper-ambitious, supercilious, a Pietist, an effective courtier who reached the inner circles under Anna Ioannovna, yet for years was unwilling to become a Russian subject because it suited him to work contractually. Different again was Prince Mikhail Belosel΄skii, who faced scandal when it became known that his magnificent palace was a base for prostitutes. Then there were the Shuvalovs: Petr, adept at singing his own praises, commercially astute, and with a talent for taking credit for projects initiated by others; and his younger cousin Ivan, more bookish, more manipulative, who became Elizabeth's official favorite. Perhaps the most flagrant chancer of the lot was “Baron” Joseph de Saint-Hilaire: former double agent and jailbird, who bluffed his way to positions across Europe before arriving in Russia in January 1715. By mid-March he was engaged to a lady-in-waiting of the Crown Princess, and by mid-May Peter had accepted his proposal for a Naval Academy (with particularly careful stipulations about his own authority and privileges as Director).
The skill of the successful projector was in the timing: partly in the timeliness of the proposal itself, partly in the ability to maneuver oneself into the role of a proposal's main champion at the key moment of its approval, regardless of who had actually devised it; and, perhaps above all, in the ability to use to maximum effect the often-brief window of time before one was jostled into the shade by others equally ambitious. For Fedyukin, sincerity is irrelevant. It does not matter whether a projector was an idealist or a cynic. In the politics of self-advancement it can in any case be hard to disentangle the two. Either way, the point is in the process and the results.
As for the institutions themselves, Fedyukin develops an intriguing argument positing a contrast between the Petrine and post-Petrine foundations. Peter was interested in providing training for his navy, and he supported Aleksei Kurbatov's Navigation School and then Baron de Saint-Hilaire's project for the Naval Academy. However, these were not among the institutions whose structure and operations Peter was interested in micro-defining himself. Indeed, despite the fact that Saint-Hilaire based his project on a French institutional prototype, Fedyukin argues that both in their practices and in the way they were perceived by Peter the naval schools were close to more traditional Russian notions of education in which a school was a group of pupils clustered around a quasi-autonomous master (a role played here by Leontii Magnitskii and Henry (Andrei) Farquharson), rather than a formally structured institution and curriculum. This is important for Fedyukin's contribution to discussions of the extent of continuity or disruption under Peter. The object of study in the naval schools was modern, the mode in which study was conceived remained close to pre-Petrine convention. The significant change came with the foundation of the Noble Cadet Corps in 1731, located in the Menshikov Palace, with an immensely detailed code not only for its administration, curriculum, and timetable but also for its function as an institution designed to develop good conduct and character. The models here were German.
This is an important set of detailed case studies showing in considerable detail the roles and methods of projectors in institutional foundation and change. It is not a balanced account of causation in policy and innovation. Fedyukin does not deny a range of potential roles for the ruler, on a spectrum from active involvement through broad encouragement to fairly distant assent; but rulers have had plenty of attention, and the focus of Fedyukin's attention is elsewhere. Yet even among the energetic projectors, agency is not straightforward. As several of Fedyukin's narratives show, it can be hard to disentangle the decisive factors. Given the existence of a competitive, project-producing milieu, the successful projector was not necessarily the particular project's initiator, but the one who happened (or contrived) to be in its possession at the decisive moment. For example, von Münnich took credit for founding the Noble Cadet Corps in 1731, but he never claimed to have initiated the idea or to have drawn up the charter itself, which may well have been drafted either by his powerful supporter Andrei Ivanovich (Heinrich Johann Friedrich) Ostermann, or even by his recently ousted rival Pavel Iaguzhinskii. Here was an institution that could have emerged from either side of a factional struggle, and which also proved resilient enough to survive the further rivalries which consumed the original projectors (von Münnich himself was forced out and spent two decades in Siberian exile). Similarly, through the late 1740s the Shuvalovs and others advocated a series of proposals for reforming the Naval Academy, but it is probably no accident that the Naval Cadet Corps was eventually established only in 1752, in the wake of equivalent foundations elsewhere in Europe.
One can always quibble about minor points. Occasionally Fedyukin slightly over-plays his hand. For example, keen to keep Magnitskii in the “traditional” category, he stresses the fact that his Arifmetika of 1703 begins with a long preface in syllabic verses and an introduction that includes some moralizing; but put the Arifmetika next to any earlier product of Muscovite printing, and its radical innovation is astonishing and pervasive—technically, visually, intellectually, generically. Overall, however, Fedyukin is sure-footed. Although his argument is constructed to stress one aspect of a process, just often enough he produces a deft couple of phrases to reassure us that he knows what balance would look like. The real conclusions, summarizing the substance and significance of the analysis, are actually set out in the Introduction, while the chapter labelled “Conclusion” deals more with what came next. The running header for Chapter 4 does not match the chapter's title (referring to “reglaments” rather than “regulations”). There are a few more examples of such trivia. I spotted some misprints, but the book is nicely produced. A list of illustrations would have been helpful.
Fedyukin blends his extensive archival research into a lively and accessible study aimed not just at historians of eighteenth-century Russia. He engages with broader discussions about how things get done in the early modern state, and even about the agency of the individual in history. It will be essential reading in its field, useful reading beyond its field, and enjoyable reading even for those who have no stake in any of the issues.
