The article focuses on the formation of the Polish-Lithuanian discourse by the French press and its interpretation by Russian intellectuals in 1815-1825. The image of Alexander I and his policy towards Congress Poland obviously underwent a complex transformation. French publicists rejoiced at the decisions of the Congress of Vienna and the declaration of constitution on the affiliated territories. The press articulated a liberator-tsar discourse: Alexander did not defeat Napoleon to become a new Napoleon himself. He only cared about the well-being of his new subjects: due to the Russian Emperor the Poles received long-awaited freedom embodied in the constitution. The French press featured Alexander I not only as a liberator-tsar, but as a ruler guided by a national idea about national interests. Praising its new idol the French press managed to convince Russian and Polish public of their protagonist's polonophilia. This gave rise to debates among the intellectuals, who mostly thought negatively of Alexander's intentions. Concerns intensified after his famous Warsaw Speech. However, in 1820, the Emperor's interest in the Polish-Lithuanian affairs subsided, with the policy towards them becoming more conservative. Eventually, French newspapers reverted to the discourse of an uncivilized eastern neighbor. Thus, the image of a liberator-tsar gave way to that of a cruel despot and usurper eager to subdue European territories. The rhetoric of liberal publicists found some support in the Russian society, but mostly it contributed to the growth of Anti-Polish sentiments. The same dialectic unity and clash of opinions, articulated both due to the French Journalism and contrary to it, is found in the Decembrist milieu.
The article provides an insight into the important and crucial event in the history of the Decembrist Movement-the Moscow Conspiracy. This episode is related to one of the first planned attempts of the Decembrists on the life of an emperor. The subject has been widely covered by historiography; nevertheless, the question about the real motives for the regicide plan remains open. Research analysis reveals that even at the stage of investigation the government attempted at concealing the peasant causes of the Moscow Conspiracy. This effort, which can be traced in the report of the Committee of Inquiry, predetermined the perception of this issue by the pre-revolutionary historiography. The attempts to revise this tendency were made. For example, N. F. Lavrov tried to reconstruct the text of S. P. Trubetskoi's letter and demonstrated that the conspiracy was caused by the peasant issues. However, the concept of the Russian history, developed under Stalin, changed the direction of the studies. Thus, M. V. Nechkina explicitly stated that the main objectives of the movement were the deposition of the autocracy and the abolition of serfdom. The idea of interpreting the Moscow Conspiracy as an attempted resistance of the nobility to the authorities' plans to liberate the peasants would have become.This view prevailed both in the Soviet and foreign historiography for a long time. However, in the period of Perestroika S. V. Mironenko in his monograph comes up with the opposite view on this issue, arguing that the idea of regicide was related to Alexander I's alleged plans of retiring to Warsaw and sending the Manifest on the Liberation of the Serfs from there. This opinion was supported by many scholars. Furthermore, two previously unknown primary sources, discovered by P. V. Il'in and T. V. Andreeva, indicate that the causes of the Moscow Conspiracy were rooted in the fact that in 1817 the Decembrists strongly objected to the idea of the immediate abolition of serfdom carried out exclusively by the decision of the supreme authorities.
This article is devoted to the analysis of the rhetoric presented in the Russian press in 1814—1818 regarding the imperial policy in the newly annexed Kingdom of Poland. The aim of the authors is to show that it is necessary to separate the real policy of the Russian autocracy in this territory from the images created first by French publicists, and then repeatedly exaggerated by Russian journalists. It is noted that Alexander I in 1814—1818 appears on the pages of French publications as a tsar-liberator. It is shown that these stories were quickly picked up by Russian newspapers and magazines and, as a result, a paradoxical picture emerged: for several years the mass media convinced the Russian society that the Russian Tsar was the new Polish national sovereign. It is argued that this, of course, caused rejection in conservative circles and among advanced Westerners such as Vyazemsky or Turgenev. It is concluded that it is the dominant discourse that can be considered, on the one hand, one of the factors in the emergence of the Decembrist movement, and on the other, a “trap” for Alexander I, since the liberal rhetoric of the press over time began to diverge more and more from the real policy of the Russian autocracy.
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