Romantic friendship in the Nicholaevan University

Russian Review

Volumn 62, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 262-280

  Friedman, Rebecca ^a  

^a FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33644820446     PISSN: 00360341     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9434.00276     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. Lev Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (New York, 1972), 179
2. Sergei Aksakov, A Russian Schoolboy (Oxford, 1983), 128
3. Scholarship that addresses the question of friendship and makes this connection includes Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (Cambridge, MA, 1961)
4. Edward J. Brown, Stankevich and His Moscow Circle: 1830-1840 (Stanford, 1966)
5. Lidiia Ia. Ginsburg, "The 'Human Document' and the Formation of Character," in The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History (Ithaca, 1988), 188-224
6. and Edward Hallett Carr, The Romantic Exiles (HarmonsWorth England, 1949)
7. Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (Berkeley, 1973), 62
8. Nicholas Riasanovsky, A Parting of the Ways: Government and the Educated Public in Russia, 1801-1855 (Oxford, 1976)
9. See also Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Chicago, 1960)
10. and Gary M. Hamburg, Boris Chicherin and Early Russian Liberalism, 1828-1866 (Stanford, 1992)
11. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York, 1985), 1-20
12. Dan Healey discusses at length the regulation of homosexuality in the late Imperial and Soviet periods. See his Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent (Chicago, 2001)
13. Long before Nicholas I's ascension, intimacy between men had been an accepted part of European culture. From the biblical story of David and Jonathan through the nineteenth century, men declared their attachments to one another as part of the normal patterns of everyday life. There is a growing literature on American and European male friendships and expressions of desire before the invention of homosexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality (Chicago, 2001)
14. M. J. Ailes, "Love, Separation and Male Friendship: Words and Actions in St. Anselm's Letters to His Friends," in Masculinity and Medieval Europe, ed. D. M. Hadley (New York, 1999)
15. Stepan-Ludwig Hoffmann, "Civility, Male Friendship, and Masonic Sociability in Nineteenth-Century Germany," Gender and History 13 (August 2001): 224-48
16. George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe, (Madison, 1988)
17. Tim Hitchcock and Michèle Cohen, eds., English Masculinities: 1600-1800 (New York, 1999)
18. E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York, 1993)
19. Jeffrey Richards, "Passing the Love of Women: Manly Love and Victorian Society," in Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940, ed. J. A. Mangan and James Walvin (Manchester, 1987), 92-122
20. and Sedwick, Between Men. In addition, writing on the post-Soviet context, Brian Baer argues that there is an inverse relationship between the acceptability of homosociability and the visibility of homosexuality
21. See his "Russian Gays/Western Gaze: Mapping (Homo) Sexual Desire in Post-Soviet Russia," GLQ: Gay and Lesbian Studies Quarterly (forthcoming)
22. On the boundaries of male relationships and homosexuality in Medieval Russia see Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 (Ithaca, 1989)
23. A background sketch of pobratimstvo can be found in Dan Healey, "Moscow," in Queer Sites: Gay Urban Histories since 1600, ed. David Higgs (London, 1999), 41-43
24. I would like to thank my "Referee B" for this suggestion
25. Mary Wells Cavender, '"Kind Angel of the Soul and Heart': Domesticity and Family Correspondence among the Pre-Emancipation Gentry," Russian Review 61 (July 2002): 391-408
26. Baron von Haxthausen, The Russian Empire (London, 1856), 103
27. (quoted in Jessica Tovrov, "Mother-Child Relationships among the Russian Nobility," in The Family in Imperial Russia: New Lines of Historical Relationships, ed. David Ransel [Urbana, IL, 1978], 16)
28. Jessica Tovrov, The Russian Noble Family: Structure and Change (New York, 1987), 2, 112-13
29. While the rise of domesticity in Mneteenth-century England inspired the narrowing of family membership to include almost exclusively the nuclear family, in Russia in the same period family membership remained relatively fluid. On domesticity and masculinity in Victorian England see John Tosh, A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven, 1999)
30. On the arrival of domesticity in the Russian context see Tovrov, Russian Noble Family
31. Iakov Petrovich Polonskii, "Moi studencheskii vospominaniia," Ezhemesiachniia literaturnyiia prilozheniia k Nive 12 (December 1898): 645
32. Ibid
33. The letter from his sister found in Arkhiv gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzeia g. Moskvy (GIM), f. 312, op. 1, ed. khr. 5. Cavender notes the same language of friendship in the Mershcherskii brothers' correspondences ("'Kind Angel of the Soul and Heart,'" 400)
34. Rukopisnyi otdel, Rossiiskaia Gosudarstvermaia Biblioteka, f. 42, op. 12, d. 58
35. Any discussion of elite family relationships and friendship in this era must acknowledge Marc Raeff's well-known assertions about the impact of friendship and domestic ties on the birth of the intelligentsia. Raeff emphasizes how little influence the family had on the lives of young noblemen. Friendship, in his assessment, "became more meaningful than [a young man's] family." This lack of family connection, Raeff argues, contributed to the rootlessness felt by future members of Russia's first generation of intelligenty. See his Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York, 1966), 128-29. My own research on the period during Nicholas I's rule suggests quite the contrary. Students remained closely tied to their families at the same time that they developed intimacies with their peers
36. On this see the chapter "The Loyal Son," in my "In the Company of Men: Student Life and Russian Masculinity, 1825-1855" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2000)
37. Prince Dondukov-Korsakov, "Vospominaniia kniazia Dondukova-Korsakova," Starina i novizma, 1902, no. 5:170
38. Boris Chicherin, Vospominaniia B. N. Chicherina (Moscow, 1991), 31
39. On Granovskii's own romantic friendships while a student see Priscilla Reynolds Roosevelt, Apostle of Russian Liberalism: Timofei Granovsky (Newtonville MA, 1986) 17-19
40. Chicherin, Vospominaniia, 9
41. Grigorii Pavlovich Galagan, "Otryvki iz iunosheskogo dnevnika G. P. Galagana," Kievskaia starina 62 (1898): 203
42. Quoted in Hamburg, Boris Chicherin, 37
43. Hamburg speculates that such male-male closeness was due in part to the fact that "social arrangements... segregated women from the education process" (ibid., 37-38)
44. This scholarship includes Malia, Alexander Herzen
45. Brown, Stankevich
46. and Marc Raeff, "Russian Youth on the Eve of Romanticism: Andrei I. Turgenev and His Circle," in Revolution and Politics in Russia: Essays in the Memory of B. I. Nicolaevsky (Bloomington, 1972), 339-55
47. Cynthia Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education: An Intellectual Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov, 1786-1855 (DeKalb, IL, 1984), 154
48. Konstantin Aksakov, "Vospominanie studentstva: 1832-1835 godov," in Russkoe obshchestvo 30-kh godov XlX veka: Memuary sovremennikov, ed. I. A. Fedosov (Moscow, 1989), 317
49. Whittaker, Origins of Modern Russian Education, 165. Moscow University professor M. G. Pavlov admired Schelling and lectured to his students on German philosophy both in the classroom and in his home. In addition, his colleagues, including Timofei Granovskii, Petr Redkin, and Nikita Krylov, introduced their students to European, as well as Russian, theories of philosophy and history
50. Aleksandr Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii v tridstsati tomakh (Moscow, 1954-64), 2:403
51. Quoted in Malia, Alexander Herzen, 46 38-56
52. Hamburg also comments on the impact of Schiller on the nature of Chicherin's friendships (Boris Chicherin, 35-37)
53. Raeff, "Russian Youth on the Eve of Romanticism," 45-46. In Raeff's assessment, the friendships in the Turgenev kruzhok "played a seminal role in the revolutionary movement" (p. 54)
54. The new university statute, which was published in 1835, insisted that the inspector no longer be a member of the faculty chosen by his peers, but a bureaucrat approved of by the tsar himself. Nicholas introduced this change as away of exerting control over the university and ultimately ensuring that Russia's future servitors were overseen by loyal, obedient inspectors. On this see my "From Boys to Men: Manhood in the Nicholaevan University," in Russian Masculinity in History and Culture, ed. Barbara Clements, Rebecca Friedman, and Dan Healey (London, 2002), 33-50
55. Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia 5 (May 1957): clxxx
56. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvermyi istoricheskii arkhiv g. Moskvy (TsGIAM), f. 418, op. 251, d. 1
57. and Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), f. 733, op. 44, d. 26
58. N. Auget de Rancour, "V dvukh universitetakh," Russkaia starina 86 (June 1896): 571-82
59. The prison cell, or kartser, was a small, dark room located within the main university building, where students were sent for periods of twenty-four hours to several weeks
60. Auget de Rancour, "V dvukh universitetakh," 574-75
61. GIM, f. 404, op 1, d. 24, ll. 7ob.-8
62. The disciplinary codes are published in Sbornik rasporiazhenii po Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia (St. Petersburg, 1866), 2:43
63. and GIM, f. 404, op. 1, d. 24, l. 2 lob
64. Materials on Kazan students can be found in Natsional'nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstan, f. 977, op. Ins., d. 12
65. In his analysis of Nicholaevan society, Marc Raeff notes the autocracy's aversion to close friendship ties. "The Imperial government, fearful as it was of a revival of the secret societies, the breeding ground of the Decembrist uprising, reacted to any manifestation of friendship and solidarity among noble youths with suspicion and mistrust." See his Understanding Imperial Russia: State and Society in the Old Regime (New York, 1984), 166
66. GIM, f. 404, op. 1, d. 24, l. 10ob. Students lived in a variety of locations: students on a state stipend lived in the dormitory free of charge, while self-supporting students lived in boarding houses, small apartments, and sometimes the wealthier among them lived in family homes in the city
67. Ia. Kostenetskii, "Vospominaniia iz moei studencheskoi zhizni," Russkii arkhiv, 1887, no. 1:329
68. William Mills Todd, The Familiar Letter as a Literary Genre in the Age of Pushkin (Evanston, 1999), 40-42, 76-77
69. Cavender, '"Kind Angel of the Soul and Heart,'" 394
70. GIM, f. 371, op. 1, ed. khr. 1,180
71. Ianvar Neverov, "Glava iz 'Avtobiografii Ia. M. Neverova," Vestnik vospitaniia 26 (September 1915): 107-8
72. Foremost among those perpetuating this view is Alexander Herzen himself in My Past and Thoughts. Historians writing on this subject include Malia on Herzen and Brown on Stankevich
73. Raeff, "Russian Youth," 52-54
74. See also idem, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia
75. On this see Rotundo, American Manhood, 76
76. and Richards, "Passing the Love of Women," 110
77. GIM, f. 372, op. 1, ed. khr, 1, l. 186ob
78. Aleksei Stankevich, ed., Perepiska Nikolaia Vladimirovicha Stankevicha: 1830-1840 (Moscow, 1914), 208
79. S. I. Mashinskogo, Poety kruzhka N. V. Stankevicha: N. V. Stankevich, VI Krasov, K. S. Ahakov, I. P. Kliushnikov (Moscow, 1964), 116
80. Nikolai P. Ogarev, Izbrannye sotsial'no-politicheskie i filosofskie proizvedeniia, ed. M. T. Evchuk and N. G. Tarakanov (Moscow, 1956), 1:304-5
81. Edward Acton, Alexander Herzen and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary (Cambridge, England, 1979), 106
82. Abbott Gleason, Young Russia: The Genesis of Russian Radicalism in the 1860s (New York, 1980)
83. Edward Hallett Carr, Mikhail Bakunin (New York, 1975)
84. and Venturi, Roots of Revolution
85. Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii 21:19-20
86. Ogarev, Izbrannye 2:314
87. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 64
88. Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Sičcle Russia (Ithaca, 1992), 57-58
89. Daniel Healey, "The Russian Revolution and the Decriminalisation of Homosexuality" Revolutionary Russia 6 (June, 1993): 29
90. According to Healey, the "queen" did not become a social prototype until the 1870s ("The Disappearance of the Russian Queen, or How the Soviet Closet was Born," in Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, 152-71)
91. Evgenii Bershtein, "The Russian Myth of Oscar Wilde," in Self and Story in Russian History, ed. Laura Engelstein and Stephanie Sandler (Ithaca, 2000), 169
92. Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, 80-81
93. Engelstein emphasizes how in 1845 the issue of morality became even more pronounced; the 1845 code explicitly prohibited "vices contrary to nature" (Keys to Happiness, 59)
94. These provisions appear in Art. 677 of the Svodzakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii: Zakony ugolovnye (St. Petersburg, 1835), 213
95. Speculation has been made as to the relationship between Nicholas's extending punishments for sodomy to the civilian population and the alleged rise in pederasty in boys' boarding schools. Healey mentions this in Homosexual Desire, 291n.14
96. D. Naguevskii, Professor Frants Ksvarii Bronner (Ego dnevnik I perepiski) (Kazan', 1902), 128
97. Scholars of Imperial Russiahave understood the flourishing of passionate friendship between educated men as the result of political oppression, sublimated erotic desire, and an emergent androgynous aesthetic. Igor S. Kon attributes the intensity of male connections in the nineteenth century to a variety of causes, including sublimation and androgyny. See his The Sexual Revolution in Russia: From the Age of the Tsars until Today, trans. James Riordan (New York, 1995), esp. 23-38
98. I would like to thank Dan Healey for his comments on my conclusions and especially on the question of the silences in the texts. All errors are of course my own
99. Hoffmann, "Civility, Male Friendship, and Masonic Sociability," 225