Alexander the First, A Reappraisal (Book Two): Book Two: The Country

Ludmila Evreinov was born in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd) in August, 1917. She emigrated to France in 1922 and graduated from the French lycée. After spending some years on the stage, she came to the U.S. and had a long and rewarding business career.

Widowed in 1980 and retired in 1982, Evreinov decided to study the history of Russia, something which had fascinated her late husband. Equally fluent in Russian, French, and English, she was able to immerse herself in the primary sources available in the main branch of the New York Public Library, and in particular its Slavic and Baltic Division. Hence her shock when she began to research the first Russian nineteenth-century sovereign, Alexander I (1801-25), and noticed the enormous amount of data glossed over or not even mentioned in existing works on the subject. She soon understood the reasons.

Two or three generations must elapse before historians can obtain the necessary scholarly detachment. Russian pre-Communist historians were still too close to the developments, still arguing the crucial question Alexander had raised: autocracy or a constitutional regime; their colleagues of Soviet days were operating under strict orders to defame the tsarist past. Western scholars of the first half of the twentieth century relied on the data provided by these two groups; later ones trusted the judgment of their predecessors. The general direction of the resulting texts is remarkably similar, predictably; but is it correct?

Evreinov chooses a different approach. While not discarding the works above, she bases her investigations on primary sources. In foreign affairs, she studies the official correspondence of the major protagonists: heads of state, ministers, generals, and other statesmen; their memoirs, if available; international conventions and treaties; and all with exact quotes for every point. No less important are her analyses of Alexander’s legislation in every field: religion, the press, serfdom, social services (including medical care for the poor), criminal justice (including the deportations to Siberia), as well as the large-scale immigration from various European countries. Quoting from hundreds and hundreds of laws, Evreinov paints a comprehensive panorama of early nineteenth-century Russia, a subject virtually ignored by Western historians. Many of the subjects are of relevance today, including the status of the various peoples who comprised the Russian Empire: the Belarussians, the Ukrainians, the Jews, the Asian and other minorities in European Russia, and the people of the Caucasus and Siberia. Succinct historical background notes introduce her analysis of the legislation. In every case she presents all the available pertinent data, thus enabling readers to form their own opinions.

While the book is most scholarly, with over 2,000 reference notes, it is written in an unpretentious style which makes for easy, engrossing reading.