Two hundred years ago, in 1816, about 500 thousand peasants and soldiers of the Russian Empire were transferred to the position of military settlers. Was it excessive cruelty or a failed social experiment? To answer this question, let us turn to the personality of the main executor of the large-scale plan.
During his lifetime he was nicknamed "The Serpent" by his contemporaries. And he was dying in the spring thaw, when his village of Gruzino was cut off from the outside world. There was no one nearby - only a priest and an officer on duty sent from the capital.
The former omnipotent courtier suffered from pain, and even more from the knowledge that not a single person would regret his death. He was wrong - a week later, a writer familiar to him, Pushkin, wrote to his wife: “Arakcheev died.
A. Moravov. Military settlement. Photo: Homeland
Young cadet
Jacob von Lude. The uniform of the cadet corps. 1793. Photo:
In Russian history, Alexey Andreevich Arakcheev remained the embodiment of cruelty, stupidity, stick discipline. His very appearance was disgusting. Major General Nikolai Sablukov recalled: "In appearance, Arakcheev looked like a big monkey in a uniform. He was tall, thin … had a long thin neck, on which it was possible to study the anatomy of the veins. He had a thick ugly head, always tilted to the side; the nose is wide and angular, the mouth is large, the forehead is overhanging … The whole expression on his face was a strange mixture of intelligence and anger."
He was born in September 1769 in a remote corner of the Tver province, in the family of a retired guards lieutenant. A gentle and dreamy man, he completely shifted the economy and the upbringing of four children onto the shoulders of his active wife. It was she who instilled in her eldest son Alexei hard work, frugality and love of order. Parents wanted to make him a clerk and sent him to study with a local sexton. But one day Alyosha saw the sons of a neighbor, a landowner, who had come for a vacation from the cadet corps. Their red uniforms and powdered wigs impressed the boy so much that he threw himself on his knees in front of his father: "Daddy, send me to the cadets, or I will die of grief!"
In the end, the parents sold three cows and, with the proceeds, took 12-year-old Alexei to the St. Petersburg Artillery Cadet Corps. Long months of waiting began - officials sent father and son to the authorities, hinting that the issue could be resolved for a modest bribe. But there was no money - what they had taken from home had long been spent, and the Arakcheevs even had to beg for alms. However, fate took pity on them. During a regular visit to the corps, Alexei saw its director, Count Melissino, and, falling at his feet, began to shout: "Your Excellency, accept me as a cadet!" The count took pity on the skinny ragged youth and ordered him to be enrolled in the corps.
Officer of the "funny regiment"
At that time it was the best school for training artillerymen in Russia. True, the pupils were poorly fed and flogged for every offense, but this did not bother young Arakcheev - he was determined to make a career. "He is especially distinguished by his successes in the military-mathematical sciences, but he has no particular inclination towards verbal sciences" - lines from his certificate for the first year of study. Alexey loved mathematics, and until the end of his life he easily multiplied complex numbers in his mind. At the age of fifteen, he became a sergeant, having received the right to punish negligent comrades. By his own boastful admission, he wielded his stick and fists so zealously that "the most awkward and clumsy he turned into dexterous, and the lazy and incapacitated proved their lessons."
At the age of 18, he graduated from the corps with the rank of lieutenant, but remained with him the head of the library, from where he mercilessly expelled all the fiction that contributed to the "confusion of the mind."
And soon an event happened that provided Arakcheev with a brilliant career takeoff. The heir to the throne, Pavel Petrovich, asked Count Melissino to provide him with an intelligent artilleryman to serve in the Gatchina "amusing" army. It was created by Empress Catherine in order to keep her unloved son away from power - his mother allocated him three thousand soldiers, let him play war. However, Paul made of them a real army with strict discipline. And he immediately noted the knowledge and service zeal of the young lieutenant, who brought the "amusing" artillery into exemplary order.
Soon, Arakcheev received the right to dine at the same table with the heir, and then he was entrusted with the command of the entire Gatchina garrison. He served not for fear, but for conscience - from morning to evening he went around the barracks and parade grounds, looking for the slightest disorder. Paul had told him more than once: "Wait a little, and I will make a man out of you."
This hour came in November 1796, when the heir ascended the throne after the long-awaited death of his mother.
G. Schwartz. Parade in Gatchina. 1847 Photo: Homeland
Chief Inspector of Artillery
All Russian emperors loved the army, but Pavel adored it infinitely, striving to transform the whole of Russia on the model of his "amusing" regiment. Arakcheev became his first assistant. Immediately after accession to the throne, the emperor made him a general, commandant of the capital and chief inspector of artillery. Summoning his son Alexander, he joined his hand with the hand of Arakcheev and commanded: "Be friends and help each other!"
The newly-minted general was ordered to restore discipline in the army - Pavel believed that her mother had completely dismissed her. Alexey Andreevich immediately began to go around the troops, mercilessly punishing the violators. There are stories about how he personally cut off the mustache prohibited by the new charter from the soldiers, and bit off an ear of one of the private in fury. At the same time, he also took care of the arrangement of the soldier's life - good food, the presence of a bath, cleaning the barracks. He severely punished officers who stole soldiers' money.
They tried to butter him up with gifts, but he meticulously sent them back.
One of the officers, driven to despair by his constant nagging, committed suicide, and in February 1798 Pavel sent his pet into retirement. However, two months later, Arakcheev returned to the service, and in May of the following year he received the title of count "for excellent diligence". Its new coat of arms was decorated with the famous motto "Betrayed without flattery", which the ill-wishers immediately changed to "devil, betrayed by flattery." However, this did not save him from a new disgrace - this time because of his brother Andrey, who was threatened to be expelled from the regiment. Arakcheev made it so that the expulsion order was lost …
Upon learning of this, Pavel became furious and ordered the now former favorite to leave the capital in 24 hours. Arakcheev went to the village of Gruzino, Novgorod province, presented to him. After the treacherous murder of Paul, Alexander ascended the throne, who spoke very unflatteringly about his former tutor - he said that he would not bring "this monster" closer to him even on pain of death. It seemed that Arakcheev had no chance to return to the capital …
Coat of arms of the family of counts Arakcheev. Photo: Homeland
Rural reformer
Arakcheev spent four years in disgrace in Gruzina, where he took up the farm with his usual zeal. Peasant huts were demolished, instead of them stone houses were built, stretched out in a row along perfectly straight streets. The center of the village was decorated with a magnificent temple and the house of Alexei Andreevich with a vast park and a pond in which swans swam. An infirmary was set up in Georgia, where a doctor discharged from St. Petersburg treated peasants for free. There was a school where children learned to read and write - also for free. Every Saturday, the villagers were gathered on the square to read them new instructions from the master - always indicating how many lashes were due to violators. However, Arakcheev used not only a stick, but also a carrot: he gave out money awards to the best workers, and to the elders of the villages, where there was the most order, he gave clothes from his shoulder.
Not a single aspect of peasant life was left without the attention of the corrosive reformer. He was also involved in arranging the personal life of his subjects - once a year he gathered girls and boys who had reached marriageable age and asked who they wanted to live with. When the pairs were made up, Aleksey Andreevich resolutely reshuffled them, saying: "Debt makes you forget pleasures." True, the count did not forget about his pleasures - he regularly bought young beautiful girls from his ruined neighbors, whom he determined to be his maids. And after a couple of months he gave the annoying servant in marriage, providing him with a modest dowry.
Nastasya Fedorovna Minkina. Georgian. 1825 Photo: Homeland
This continued until in 1801 the 19-year-old daughter of the coachman Nastasya Minkina entered the estate. Dark-skinned, black-eyed, sharp in movements, she knew how to guess without words the wishes of her master and instantly fulfill them. The village women considered her a witch who bewitched their master. He was harsh with everyone, with her he was gentle and considerate, showered with gifts, took with him on trips. She did her best to become not just a friend to him, but also an assistant - having received the post of housekeeper, she looked for disturbances and immediately reported them to Arakcheev. According to her denunciations, they mercilessly flogged those who drank, were lazy at work, missed church services, or pretended to be sick. The count's mistress strictly observed moral standards, punishing those seen in "sinful intercourse." These were flogged for several days in a row, in the morning and in the evening, and the most vicious were put in the "edikul" - a damp and cold basement that played the role of a home prison.
Gradually, Nastasya grew bolder and began to play the role of a sovereign mistress in the estate. To bind the count more tightly to her, she gave birth to a son for him - or, according to other sources, she simply bought a newborn child from a young widow. Having received the name Mikhail Shumsky, he later became an aide-de-camp, a drunken drunkard and a card player, which spoiled a lot of blood for his father. Nastasya also had a penchant for drinking, which soon deprived her of her natural beauty. One of Gruzin's guests remembered her as "a drunken, fat, pockmarked and vicious woman."
It is not surprising that Arakcheev began to lose interest in his beloved. Moreover, in the spring of 1803, Alexander I appointed him an artillery inspector, and he returned to the capital.
Saltychikha. Illustration by P. V. Kurdyumov to the encyclopedic edition Photo: Rodina
The minister
After sitting in Gruzina, Arakcheev launched a vigorous activity and in a short time made the artillery units the best in the army. From under his pen, orders were issued almost daily for the manufacture of new weapons according to the European model, on the organization of the supply of gunpowder, horses and provisions, on the training of recruits. In early 1808 he was appointed Minister of War and in the same year he commanded the Russian army in the war with Sweden. With "remarkable energy" he organized a winter expedition across the ice of the Gulf of Bothnia, which brought the Russians under the walls of Stockholm and forced the enemy to surrender. True, Alexey Andreevich did not participate in a single battle - at the sound of shooting he turned pale, did not find a place for himself and tried to hide in shelter.
The great organizer turned out to be a worthless commander and, in addition, a coward.
In 1810, Arakcheev left the post of minister, but throughout the war with Napoleon he remained at headquarters, next to the tsar. “The entire French war went through my hands,” he admitted in his diary. The “loyal without flattery” favorite bore considerable responsibility both for the successes and for the miscalculations of the Russian strategy. The day after the fall of Paris, the tsar issued a decree on his promotion to field marshal, but Arakcheev refused. Appreciating such modesty, Alexander entrusted him with the realization of his cherished dream - the creation of a system of military settlements in Russia. Later, all the blame for this was placed on Arakcheev, but the facts say that the initiative came precisely from the emperor - Alexey Andreevich, as always, was only a faithful executor.
In 1816, about 500 thousand peasants and soldiers were transferred to the position of military settlers - after exhausting drill exercises, they had to also engage in rural labor. This caused discontent, uprisings began, which were brutally suppressed. And yet the settlements continued to exist, and many of them flourished - through the efforts of Arakcheev, schools and hospitals were built there, as in Georgia, roads were laid, and economic innovations were introduced. According to the Count, the "ideal" system of settlements was to help the peasants earn money and buy themselves and their land from the landlords. He even drew up and submitted to the emperor a draft of the gradual abolition of serfdom - according to historians, more progressive than the one that was implemented in 1861.
Alas, contemporaries did not notice this - they saw only the intention of Arakcheev to make the whole of Russia march in formation and continued in an undertone to honor him as a "cannibal" and a "bogeyman".
The last opal
In the fall of 1825, the count's servants, tired of enduring Nastasya's nagging and punishment, persuaded the cook, Vasily Antonov, to kill the hated housekeeper. In the morning Vasily entered the house, found Minkina sleeping on the couch and cut her throat with a kitchen knife. Arakcheev was in despair. Day and night he carried with him a handkerchief soaked in the blood of the slain. By his order, the cooks were pinned to death, and the customers of the murder were showered with a hundred whips and sent to hard labor. While the count was investigating, he received the news of the death of the emperor in Taganrog …
Having lost almost simultaneously two closest people, Arakcheev fell into a stupor. The new tsar called him to court more than once, but he did not react. The imperious Nicholas I could not stand such insubordination and handed over to his father's favorite an unspoken order - to ask for resignation himself, without waiting for dismissal. Arakcheev did so, and in April 1826 he finally retired to Gruzino "for treatment."
The remaining years of his life were gray and dreary. In the summer, he could still manage chores or plant flowers in memory of Nastasya, who loved them. But in winter boredom came. No guests came to him, Alexey Andreevich never got used to reading and spent whole days wandering around the rooms, solving mathematical problems in his mind.
House of Count Arakcheev and a monument to Alexander I in front of him. 1833 Photo: Homeland
On his estate, he created a real cult of the late Alexander I. In the room where the emperor once spent the night, his marble bust was installed with the inscription: "Whoever dares to touch this, be damned." The tsar's pen, his letters and papers, as well as the shirt in which Alexander died, in which Arakcheev bequeathed to bury himself, were also kept there. In front of the church in Georgia, he erected a bronze monument to the "sovereign-benefactor", which reached Soviet times. Other buildings briefly outlived their creator - the peasants ravaged the park with foreign flowers, dismantled the fence along the main street, caught and ate the swans that lived in the pond.
All this happened after April 21, 1834, Arakcheev died of pneumonia.
