Antique Books of the Patriotic War and the Russian Society 1812 - 1912 Historical Commission of the Educational Department O.R.T.Z. Editorial A.K. Dzhivelegova, S.P. Melgunova, V.I. Picheta. Anniversary Edition in 7 volumes. Edition T-va I.D. Sytin. From the editorial: The Patriotic War is one of the most dramatic and together the most significant in the consequences of the moments of Russian history. It captures everything and makes scientific thought work. In it and in the events that unfolded from it, will find an inexhaustible storehouse and artist, and sociologist, and politician, and diplomat. For it played out passions, high and unchanging, it produced changes in the social structure of society, it marked the beginning of a certain trend in both domestic and foreign policy of Russia. The struggle against Napoleon was, on the one hand, a struggle against the revolution, and on the other, a struggle against France. The fact that Napoleon was the founder of the revolution raised against him all the leading groups of Russian society, because for them the night of August 4 did not seem at all unthinkable in Russia. Therefore, all attempts of social and political reforms of the days of Alexander the great beginning after Napoleon brought to Russia the old legions of the republic, were replaced by a band of reactions in internal affairs. And this band stretched to another war, the Crimean one, which showed all the spectre of Russian international power. The fact that Napoleon was the emperor of the French pushed Russia into the arms of France’s sworn enemies. After the last remnants of the great army, which were not captured, crossed back the border, we had to go for some reason to liberate Europe, that is, to lay the first stones to the very power of Prussia and Austria, in which all our political troubles are rooted. It is not for nothing that old Kutuzov, with his sober mind, understood all the unnecessary and all the danger of such political charity and spoke sharply against going to Europe. He knew that in international affairs the winner is not the one who gives vent to sentimentalism, but the one who, speaking with the formula of Austrian diplomats, in time will be able to surprise the world with ingratitude. And we with Alexander 1's light hand only did that to return the flowers of sensitivity on the rocky soil of diplomacy. We did this in 1813-1814, we did it in 1849, when we saved Austria from the Magyars and gave her the opportunity to look beyond the Danube, we did it in 1878, when, for some unknown reason, we stopped at the gates of Constantinople, as if inviting Beaconsfield to shout: enough! The reason for this insincere sentimentalism is clear. It lies in the fact that the government did not want to take into account the interests of the country, but was guided only by personal views. And the fact that we persisted in this path, to find their explanation again in the fact that the government throughout the 19th century did not want to forget the personal species and take over the leadership of the interests of the largest social groups. In 1812, the decisive moment that determined the direction of our policy for a long time was the interests of the local nobility, which was threatened by the anti-feudal aspirations of the revolution and which the continental system inflicted losses. The bourgeoisie, as a political group, was powerless, and the large peasantry too uncultured and little conscious. The fact that the peasantry was weak was rooted in one of the mistakes in Napoleon’s calculations. For some reason, he hoped that if he promised the will of the peasants, something like what happened in Belgium or on the left bank of the Rhine in 1792 would immediately happen. And the peasants were the most bitter opponent of the great army, during the period of retreat - the enemy is dangerous and merciless. It is not for nothing that this last period of the war is called a people's war. The Russian peasant was her hero, a peasant - courageous, selfless, who forgot his own serf chains when it came to the struggle for his homeland, and returned under the patriarchal landlord yoke, when not a single Frenchman remained in Russia. Because, feeling the power of the liberation principles that Napoleon tried to bring to Russia, representatives of the Russian public authorities tried to oppose them with the same principles. They promised, then deafly, then quite clearly, the will of a man, if he would help to crush the host. The man believed and helped. And when it came time to reward him, about the will, and not only about the masculine will - they forgot very thoroughly. In drawing up the plan of our book, we were guided by precisely such views on the Patriotic War and Russian society. It is for these reasons that we could not consider it an event exclusively military. Through the smoke of fires, through the bloody fog rising from countless battlefields, we wanted to make an attempt to see the appearance of Russian society, to determine the share of participation in the war of Russian public groups, to find out the measure of gratitude that descendants owe to each of them. In turn, this formulation of the task forced us to abandon the view of the Patriotic War and Russian society as a separate phenomenon that lasted for some months. We considered it impossible to begin its history with the passage through the Neman and even with Tilsit. We thought that only the framework of European history, studied in close connection with the entire era, could be understood and evaluated properly. And we started with Catherine 2. Franco-Russian and international relations of its time, Since the first clashes of the revolution with reactionary Europe. And the final line was not the entry of Russian troops into Paris or the Congress of Vienna, but the end of the reign of Alexander 1. It goes without saying that such tasks are achievable only with a purely scientific attitude to the matter. We know that at the same time as we were preparing our book, others were sitting on the works devoted to the Patriotic War. We know that among these works there will be those who will try to awaken in the reader the constant chauvinistic feelings. We're not going down that road. Our goal is to give a book that is objective in the full sense of the word, one that, paying tribute to the Russian and Russians, would not make of quasi-patriotic jubilation mockery of the French and their unwitting allies in the great army. Both deserve their dubious laurels along the way. We will be satisfied if Russian society recognizes that the book faithfully tried to draw the correct picture of the Patriotic War, put in the right historical framework. Scientific study of the era of the Patriotic War is currently a serious difficulty. True, it is impossible to complain about the lack of work in this area, but hardly existing works can be recognized as fully satisfying the requirements of scientific research. And with regard to the material, they in most cases leave much to be desired, so newly published, sometimes very random documents show how one-sided the old materials covered this or that issue and what a misconception it turned out to be. Unfortunately, even now the researcher is very difficult to choose the material. Most of the archives have not yet been fully developed and are little accessible, and meanwhile it was worthwhile, for example, to penetrate the archives of the Nizhny Novgorod or Vologda nobility in order to obtain a number of completely new data on the history of the noble militias and the role of the nobility in the era of 1812. It is safe to say that when the archival study of 1812 begins, the prevailing point of view in historical literature on many issues will have to change significantly and probably not far from the time when old literature will have only historiographical significance. But at present, in most cases, it is necessary to operate on the old, published material, subjecting it to the critical analysis, without which it is impossible to do with the scientific study of the issue. And it became sometimes only to touch it with a scientific scalpel in order to discover all its small historical value and authenticity. In particular, this has to be said about the literature of memoirs, written mostly in the heat of the struggle, and still almost not subjected to critical and methodological study. Meanwhile, most of the former researchers are too gullible about memoirs and build rather risky conclusions based on them. Hence the fire of Moscow, and the noble militias, and the people's war - all this was mostly described on the basis of memoirs - a source of incomplete and too subjective. Sometimes such judgments, based on materials of more than dubious merit, took the character of some dogma, to criticize which or to doubt which was considered a national heresy, a lack of patriotism. And this so-called patriotic point of view, so alien to scientific objectivity, runs a red line through many existing works. Hence the conscious silence of a number of negative phenomena, which were in 1812, and which are not bound by the nationalist point of view that prevailed in these works. This tendency interfered with the calm attitude to the actions of the enemy. It also explains the hidden desire of researchers to exaggerate the strength of the enemy and reduce our own. That is why the existing literature is sometimes very lenient to the mistakes of the commanders of the Russian army and is strict to the mistakes of Napoleon. Therefore, the entire history of the campaign before 1812 requires revision. The published documents of the Russian and French general staffs open up new prospects for the researcher and it is very possible that it will be necessary to remove clothes from old idols, unless free research meets some unexpected obstacles. Under the new formulation of the question, of course, the whole history of 1812 will appear before the reader in a different light - that is why it is impossible to study 1812 without connection with European events with which it is connected by strong threads. And the diplomatic relations between Russia and France in this formulation of the issue will be covered somewhat differently. Our task, as mentioned above, is more modest. Many of the authors involved in their literary work in the publication had the opportunity to use new archival data. Most, of course, had to deal with the already published material. And our publication gives, as it were, a summary of the material that until recently was largely known only to specialists. The editors did not consider themselves, of course, in the right to obscure the individuality of the authors’ views. With insufficient development of the material is not always, perhaps, it would be possible to establish any one common point of view. The reader can sometimes see some disagreement in the interpretation of different authors of a particular issue. This is to a certain extent an inevitable evil in every collective work, and mainly in an as yet undeveloped historical field as the epoch of the twelfth year. But only such collective work could be undertaken and carried out by the Historical Commission by the anniversary days.