April 15 In 1797, the coronation of Emperor Paul I took place in Moscow. With his first decree, Paul abolished the rule established by Peter I order of succession to the throne by will and entered inheritance by primogeniture in the male line(“Institution on the Imperial Family”).

The procedure for succession to the throne in Rus' was quite simple; it was based on a custom dating back to the founding of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, when succession to the throne was carried out on a clan basis, i.e. the throne almost always passed from father to son.

Only a few times in Russia the throne passed by choice: in 1598, Boris Godunov was elected by the Zemsky Sobor; in 1606, Vasily Shuisky was elected by the boyars and the people; in 1610 - Polish prince Vladislav; in 1613, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov was elected by the Zemsky Sobor.

The order of succession to the throne was changed by Emperor Peter I. Fearing for the fate of his reforms, Peter I decided to change the order of succession to the throne by primogeniture.

On February 5, 1722, he issued the “Charter on the Succession to the Throne,” according to which the previous order of succession to the throne by a direct descendant in the male line was abolished. According to the new rule, inheritance of the Russian Imperial Throne became possible according to the will of the sovereign. According to the new rules, any person worthy, in the opinion of the sovereign, to lead the state could become a successor.

However, Peter the Great himself did not leave a will. As a result, from 1725 to 1761, three palace coups took place: in 1725 (the widow of Peter I, Catherine I, came to power), in 1741 (the coming to power of the daughter of Peter I, Elizaveta Petrovna), and in 1761 (the overthrow of Peter III and transfer of the throne to Catherine II).

In order to prevent further coups d'etat and all sorts of intrigues, Emperor Paul I decided to replace the previous system introduced by Peter the Great with a new one, which clearly established the order of succession to the Russian Imperial Throne.

On April 5, 1797, during the coronation of Emperor Paul I in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, the “Act of Succession to the Throne” was promulgated, which, with minor changes, existed until 1917. The Act determined the preferential right to inherit the throne for male members of the imperial family. Women were not excluded from succession to the throne, but preference was reserved for men by order of primogeniture. The order of succession to the throne was established: first of all, the inheritance of the throne belonged to the eldest son of the reigning emperor, and after him to his entire male generation. After the suppression of this male generation, the inheritance passed to the clan of the emperor’s second son and to his male generation, after the suppression of the second male generation, the inheritance passed to the clan of the third son, and so on. When the last male generation of the emperor's sons was suppressed, the inheritance was left in the same family, but in the female generation.

This order of succession to the throne absolutely excluded the struggle for the throne.

Emperor Paul established the age of majority for sovereigns and heirs at the age of 16, and for other members of the imperial family - 20 years. In case of accession to the throne of a minor sovereign, the appointment of a ruler and a guardian was provided.

The “Act of Succession to the Throne” also contained an extremely important provision about the impossibility of ascending to the Russian throne by a person who does not belong to the Orthodox Church.

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Adoption of the decree on succession to the throne in 1722

On February 16, 1722, Tsar Peter the Great signed the so-called Decree on Succession to the Throne, according to which the procedure for transferring supreme power in the state was changed. From that moment on, the emperor himself determined his successor, and who he would become no longer depended on whether the candidate was the eldest son of the existing ruler of Russia.

This law became so new for the Russian state that its actual approval in society required a certain explanation, which was an ideologically substantiating document called “Truth of the Monarch’s Will,” the creation of which was entrusted to the sovereign’s associate, as well as one of the leaders of the Holy Synod, Feofan Prokopovich .

Reasons for the creation of the decree on succession to the throne in 1722

The direct need for this document arose due to an acute conflict between Peter the Great and his eldest son Alexei Petrovich, who did not at all share the need for Peter’s reforms. Little by little, a circle of like-minded people arose around the prince.

It is worth noting that this was not an ordinary quarrel between fathers and children. Alexey Petrovich was forced to flee to Europe and seek the support of European rulers to fight his father.

Although Peter the Great eventually managed to return his son to his homeland, the prince did not abandon his own views. As a result, in the winter of 1718, the prince was forced to abdicate the Russian throne in favor of his brother Pyotr Petrovich.

In the same year, the office created by Peter Taina began work, the first task of which was precisely the investigation of the “Case of Tsarevich Alexei.” According to him, the heir himself was accused of attempting to seize power and organizing a conspiracy against the king. Already in the summer, Tsarevich Alexei was accused and tried as a traitor, and on July 7 he died in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

At the same time, Tsarevich Pyotr Petrovich, who was declared heir to the throne, also could not take it. He died at the age of four. Of all Peter's children, except for Tsarevich Alexei, only Anna Petrovna and Elizaveta Petrovna were able to survive to adulthood.

After the death of Pyotr Petrovich, the tsar again began to think about who would take the Russian throne. According to the existing law, power was supposed to pass to Tsarevich Pyotr Alekseevich, the son of the disgraced Alexei Petrovich. This did not suit the ruler at all, because a circle could have formed around the boy, which also did not support the transformation of Peter the Great.

Only the Decree on Succession to the Throne could change the current situation and turn it in favor of the king. However, ironically, Peter the Great himself was never able to take advantage of the introduced innovation of choosing a successor.

After his death, power passes (with the help of the guard) to the wife of the late emperor, Ekaterina Alekseevna. At the same time, no one decided to cancel the considered Peter’s Decree due to fears of unrest in society.

Taking into account the experience of Tsar Peter, the Empress appoints Tsarevich Peter Alekseevich as the heir, and also determines the detailed order of priority for other candidates for the highest position in the state. No one expected that the Decree on Succession to the Throne would fail already in 1730. And all because young Peter the Second dies without identifying a successor. The fate of the royal throne is decided by the Supreme Privy Council, which elevates Anna Ioannovna to the throne.

In 1740, before her death, this empress named her nephew Ivan Antonovich as heir, who was soon overthrown by Peter the Great's daughter Elizabeth. It is worth noting that during the revolution, Elizabeth herself referred to her mother’s will, according to which Elizabeth should have sat on the throne even then.

This empress planned to take full advantage of Peter's Decree on succession to the throne. After her accession to the throne, she appoints her nephew Peter Fedorovich as her successor, whom the ruler decides to marry a German princess in order to subsequently transfer power to their son, personally raising a worthy successor.

But the planned maneuver did not work out, because at the time of the empress’s death, Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich was only seven years old and the throne passed to Pyotr Fedorovich, who already designated his son as heir. A year later, the throne, as a result of a palace coup organized by Peter's wife, passes to his wife, who ascended the throne under the name of Catherine the Second.

Repeal of the succession decree of 1722

After her death, Paul the First, who ascended the throne, decided to cancel the Decree on the succession to the throne of Emperor Peter the Great. It is worth noting that the Abolition Manifesto was prepared by him during his mother’s lifetime. Paul himself considered this Decree a source of arbitrariness and injustice in relation to the legitimate heirs of the throne. By canceling Peter’s decree after such a long period of time, he argued that in this way he was saving his descendants from many of the sorrows that he himself had experienced because of this document.

Historical consequences of the decree

Historical Table: Consequences of the Decree of Succession of 1722

Video lecture: Reasons for the adoption and consequences of the Decree on Succession to the Throne of 1722

In the history of Russian state law, the “Act on the Succession to the All-Russian Imperial Throne,” issued on April 5, 1797, was one of the most important in its significance. He created a solid and unambiguously interpreted hereditary order in the succession of supreme state power. According to M.F. Florinsky, the law on succession to the throne was the tsar’s successful response to the demands of the time.

The conflictual development of the Russian state system in the course of implementing the principles of succession to the throne, introduced by the decree of February 12, 1722, showed the need not only to establish normative principles for the succession to the throne, but also to consolidate a strict order of succession to the throne, which would best meet the requirements of an absolute monarchy and meet the principles regulation of inheritance legal relations that developed in the 18th century.

In the “Act” itself, the purpose of its publication is formulated as follows: “so that the state would not be without an heir. So that the heir is always appointed by law itself. So that there is not the slightest doubt about who will inherit. In order to preserve the right of birth in inheritance, without violating natural rights and to avoid difficulties during the transition from generation to generation.”
The Act of Succession legitimized the Austrian or "half-Salic" system. Imperial power was inherited from father to son, and in his absence - to the next most senior brother of the emperor; women were allowed to inherit only in the case of the complete absence of all male descendants of a given dynasty. Paul I “by natural right” appointed his eldest son Alexander as his heir, and after him all his male offspring. After the suppression of the eldest son's descendants, the right to inherit the throne passes to the family of the second son, and so on until the last male descendant of the last son. When the last male generation of the sons of Paul I is suppressed, the inheritance passes to the female generation of the last reigning emperor, in which males also have priority, with the only obligatory condition that “the female person from whom the right directly came never loses the right.” In case of suppression of the direct descending line of succession to the throne (both in the male and female lines), the right of succession to the throne could pass into the lateral line.

In addition to describing the order of succession to the throne, the Act spelled out issues relating to the status of imperial spouses, the age of majority of the sovereign and heir, guardianship of the minor sovereign and suitability for the throne from a religious point of view.

The Act of Succession to the Throne of 1797 excludes the possibility of the wife or husband of the reigning person inheriting the throne. “If a woman is to inherit, and such a person is married or leaves, then the husband should not be honored as a sovereign, but given honors on an equal basis with the spouses of sovereigns, and enjoy other advantages of such, except for the title.” Marriages of members of the imperial family were not recognized as legal without the permission of the reigning sovereign. However, the law does not clearly state the rule on the exclusion from inheriting the throne of persons born from marriages concluded without the permission of the monarch.

Announcement:

The age of majority for the heir to the throne was determined to be 16 years old; for other representatives of the reigning house it was set at 20 years old. In case of accession to the throne of a minor heir, a regency was provided. In the absence of an order to the government regarding guardianship, the father and mother of the young sovereign were called to regency (the stepfather and stepmother were excluded), and in the event of their death, the next adult person of the royal house closest to the throne. Being a ruler and guardian is hindered by “insanity, even temporary, and widows entering into a second marriage during government and guardianship.”

The Act of Succession to the Throne also contains an important provision about the impossibility of occupying the Russian throne by a person who does not profess the Orthodox faith: “When the inheritance reaches the female generation that already reigns on another throne, then it is left to the heir to choose faith and throne, and renounce along with the heir from another faith and throne, if such a throne is connected with the law so that the Russian sovereigns are the head of the church, and if there is no denial of faith, then the person who is closer in order will inherit.”

Thus, the Act of Succession to the Throne of 1797 regulated the problem of succession to the throne and created a strict order of succession to the throne, which remained unchanged until 1917. In fact, this normative legal act was the first step towards the formation of the Russian constitution, defining the conditions for the functioning and transfer of supreme power. The essential conditions necessary for the heir to the throne, and therefore imposed on the future emperor, were: belonging to the imperial house of the Romanovs; origin from legal marriage; equality of parents' marriage, i.e. so that the spouse (or spouse) belongs to some reigning (or reigning house); primogeniture in the male line (that is, the son is higher than the brother); confession of the Orthodox faith.

In September 1781, the grand ducal couple, under the name of Count and Countess of the North, set off on a long journey across Europe, which lasted a whole year. During this trip, Paul not only saw the sights and acquired works of art for his palace under construction.

The journey also had great political significance. The Grand Duke had the opportunity to personally meet European monarchs and paid a visit to Pope Pius VI. In Italy, Paul, following in the footsteps of his great-grandfather Emperor Peter the Great, is seriously interested in the achievements of European shipbuilding and becomes acquainted with the organization of naval affairs abroad.

During his stay in Livorno, the Tsarevich finds time to visit the Russian squadron located there.

Thoughtfulness of reforms

In 1787, going into the active army for the first and last time, Paul left his “Order”, in which he outlined his thoughts on governing the state.

The reign of Emperor Paul I was very short - only 4 years and 4 months (from November 1796 to March 1801), but unusually eventful. During his reign, Emperor Pavel Petrovich signed 2,179 legislative acts (that is, an average of 42 documents per month) - this is an unprecedented number.

Among these documents were documents of significant volume, for example, military regulations. Contemporaries of Paul I were not ready for such intensive lawmaking, and to this day his legacy has not been thoroughly studied. There is an opinion that these laws were allegedly contradictory, insufficiently prepared and were justified only by the desire to destroy the state system created by Catherine II. However, this opinion does not stand up to criticism.

On the contrary, everything indicates that the transformations begun by Pavel Petrovich were thought out in advance and in detail by him before accession to the throne. This applies to most of the laws he adopted and the reforms he carried out: the law on succession to the throne, the reform of the army and navy, and changes in class politics.

The goals and objectives that Emperor Paul set for himself were stated quite clearly by him in his testamentary letter, dated back to 1788 (8 years before his accession to the throne). These notes represent a comprehensive program of government reforms.

Succession to the throne

The decree on succession to the throne was issued by Paul I on April 5, 1797. With the introduction of this decree, the uncertainty of the situation in which the Russian imperial throne found itself with every change of reign and with constant coups and seizures of supreme power after Peter I as a result of his legislation ceased.

From that moment on, the throne was inherited in the male line, after the death of the emperor it passed to the eldest son and his male offspring, and if there were no sons, to the next oldest brother of the emperor and his male offspring, in the same order. A woman could occupy the throne and pass it on to her offspring only if the male line was terminated.

State goals

Paul considered the goal of the state to be “the happiness of each and all,” which views show him not just as a monarch, but as a statist manager, although he recognized only monarchy as a form of government. But he agreed that this form is “associated with the inconveniences of humanity.” In those historical conditions, Paul did not see a different structure of society, but felt that autocratic power was better than others, since it “combines the power of the laws of the power of one,” opening up opportunities for acquiring conceptual power in the future.

Autocracy- this is, at a minimum, the independence of society in developing its policies and ideology in line with a certain concept, and, at a maximum, the conceptual authority of society and its statehood. It was the tendency of the autocracy of the Russian emperors to become the autocracy of the Russian Empire that became the reason for the special operation “February Revolution”, designed to forever solve this Russian question, but autocracy, contrary to all forecasts and the current political situation, was demonstrated by the Bolsheviks in October 1917.

Administrative reform

The main task of the reform of the administrative division of Emperor Paul I was to achieve good governance of the country. “The decree of December 12, 1796 completely abolished 13 provinces” (Olonets, Kolyvan, Bratslav, Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversk, Voznesensk, Ekaterinoslav, Tauride regions, Saratov, Polotsk, Mogilev, Vilna and Slonim), dividing their territories between neighboring . “During the Pavlovsk reform, the number of provinces decreased from 51 to 42, and districts were also enlarged. The main idea of ​​Paul I’s reform was the consolidation of provinces.”

Having ascended the throne, Emperor Alexander I “began to restore the previous grid of provinces, retaining, however, a number of new ones established by Emperor Paul I. Thus, the decree of September 9, 1801 restored the five abolished provinces within their borders until 1796.

According to Speransky’s unrealized project, the territory of Russia was supposed to be divided into 12 governorships with 3, 4 or more provinces in each (with a semblance of a cabinet of ministers in each governorship), that is, some decentralization of power was assumed. However, the project was not implemented and later, during the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, this decentralization was finally abandoned. The position of governor-general (viceroy) became an exception and was established only in border areas or for special political reasons.

Emperor Nicholas I finally proclaimed the principle of centralization and uniformity of provincial government, to which Emperor Paul I strove in his reforms. Although 25 years later, the ideas of a clear vertical of power, subordination to the autocratic monarch, to which Emperor Paul I attached so much importance, received their development during the reign of Nikolai Pavlovich.

Boards in ministries

By the time Catherine II ascended the throne, the Russian Empire had a collegial system of sectoral management created by Peter I. Then the collegiums came to replace the outdated system of orders.

Paul I, appreciating the “speed of power of one,” rather coldly treating the collegial principle, usually gave preference to the beginning of individual ministerial management, which, in his opinion, was more flexible and effective. It was also quite natural that under Paul the importance of the Prosecutor General as the closest collaborator and assistant to the Sovereign in matters of internal government of the state sharply increased.

- who actually becomes prime minister.

Intensifying the centralization of management, Pavel recreated Manufactory-, Kamer-, Berg-, Revision-; Justits-; Commerce Collegiums: he placed directors at the head, giving them the right to personally report to the emperor, and independence of action from the members of the collegiums.

That is, in fact, these were no longer collegiums, but ministries subordinate directly to the emperor, which is the system we still use today.

There was only one step left to the final redistribution of the boards into ministries.

And this step was taken by his heir, Alexander I. “The formation of the ministerial management system in Russia was initiated on September 8, 1802 by the Manifesto “On the Establishment of Ministries” and the Decree to the Senate “On the formation of the first three boards in the manner of conducting cases on the previous basis and on persons elected to manage ministries."

In fact, Alexander continued his father's transformations. And we can say with complete confidence that he did it very successfully.

Finance

In the area of ​​finance, Paul believed that state revenues belonged to the state, and not to the sovereign personally. Therefore, he demanded that expenses be coordinated with the needs of the state (and the goals of the state are “the happiness of each and all”). Paul ordered part of the silver services of the Winter Palace to be melted down into coins, and up to two million rubles in banknotes to be destroyed to reduce the state debt.

Army

Paul introduced a new uniform uniform, regulations, and weapons into the army. Soldiers were allowed to complain about abuses by their commanders. Everything was strictly controlled and, in general, the situation, for example, of the lower ranks became better. In fact, it was Paul I who created the army that “beat the Frenchman.”

Peasantry

Listing all classes in the “Nakaz”, he dwells on the peasantry, which:

contains in itself and through its works all other parts, therefore, it is worthy of respect

- what thought shows his understanding of the fact that society is capable of developing as much as agriculture can feed it, which again shows his state mentality.

Paul tried to implement a decree that serfs should work no more than three days a week for the landowner, and on Sunday they should not work at all. This is a good initiative, lying in the same vein as Stalin’s:

First of all, you need to reduce the working day to at least 6, and then to 5 hours. This is necessary to ensure that members of society receive enough free time necessary to receive a comprehensive education

- however, not being supported by supervisory practices led to greater enslavement of the peasants by the landowners. After all, before Paul, for example, the peasant population of Ukraine did not know corvée at all. Now, to the joy of the Little Russian landowners, a three-day corvee was introduced here. But on Great Russian estates it was very difficult to monitor the implementation of the decree, which was what the landowners used.

Education

Attention was also paid to public education. A decree was issued to restore the university in the Baltic states (it was opened in Dorpat already under Alexander I), the Medical-Surgical Academy, many schools and colleges were opened in St. Petersburg. In fact, it was Paul who laid the foundations of the educational system that later gave birth to a galaxy of figures of the “Golden Age”.

Information Security

At the same time, in order to prevent the idea of ​​“depraved and criminal” France from entering Russia, the study of Russians abroad was completely prohibited, and censorship was established on imported literature and music. That is, a barrier was formed to trends from abroad, which, given the lack of expression of one’s own development concept, ensured information security at some level.

Forerunner of Pushkin

The new tsar paid attention to improving the Russian language. Soon after ascending the throne, Paul ordered in all official papers:

express yourself in the purest and simplest style, using all possible precision, and always avoid pompous expressions that have lost their meaning.

Thus, Paul was the first to prepare the ground for the arrival of its great reformer, Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, in the Russian language.

Order of Malta

The Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which Paul I established in Russia, could not organically fit into the system of views of the noble class, which was already a Freemason (who was a member and who sympathized ideologically).

For the “progressive part” of society, the Order of Malta was a strange anachronism. Members of numerous Masonic lodges did not accept him due to disagreements regarding their relationship to the church. Among the conservative part of the Russian nobility, the appeal of the Orthodox emperor to Catholic knighthood, especially, could hardly find a response.

However, Paul I partially merged the hierarchy system of the Order of Malta with the system of government officials of the Russian Empire. Relics of the Hospitallers (the icon of the Philermo Mother of God, a piece of the life-giving cross and the right hand of St. John) ended up in Gatchina, and then in the Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands near the Winter Palace.

Malta was not only officially accepted as a protectorate, but they even intended to make it a Russian province, about which the Emperor’s decree was received by the Academy of Sciences.

The outpost on the Mediterranean Sea was geopolitically beneficial to the Russian emperor. Therefore, to refer solely to Paul I’s sympathies for medieval knightly ideas in justifying the defense of the Order of Malta would be completely wrong.

Paul I, as it seems to us, tried, through the structures of the Order of Malta, to “saddle” the Masonic movement as a whole in Russia, thereby preventing the revolution that was already gaining strength, which resulted in the Decembrist Uprising of 1825. It’s as if Vladimir Putin led an orange protest today (although there are rumors about Navalny that he is an agent of the Kremlin).

However, from the very beginning of the appearance of the “Maltese” at court, the highest ranks of the Russian Empire ceased to have any sympathy for the already unpopular Paul I. And among the freemasonry, a conspiracy against the emperor began to mature.

Global politics

After Suvorov returned from foreign campaigns in 1799, Paul I, Emperor of Russia, broke off all diplomatic relations with England and Austria, left the alliance with them and no longer took part in the war with France. The war itself was soon stopped, since neither the British nor the Austrians, after Russia left the war, could do anything to oppose the commander Napoleon.

Napoleon understood that the determining factor in the further development of the situation would be Russia's participation or non-participation in the war. The Emperor of France openly wrote that in the whole world there is only one ally for France - this is Russia. Napoleon openly sought an alliance with the Russians.

July 18, 1800 The French government announced that it was ready to return all prisoners of war, totaling 6 thousand people, to Russia. Moreover, the prisoners had to return in full uniform, with weapons and banners. Paul I, Emperor of Russia, correctly appreciated this friendly gesture from France and moved towards rapprochement with Napoleon.

Paul I, Emperor of Russia, first of all demanded that the court of Louis XVIII and the exiled French king himself leave the territory of Russia. After this, a Russian delegation was sent to France, headed by General Sperngporten. It was no coincidence that this man became the head of the delegation: he always adhered to a pro-French position. As a result, for the first time the contours of a possible alliance between Russia and France began to be clearly visible.

At this time, the British began to actively act in order to keep Paul I from an alliance with Napoleon. They suggested that the Russians once again form an alliance against France. Moreover, the conditions of the alliance were so humiliating that Paul I, Emperor of Russia, was even more inclined to the idea of ​​​​friendship with France. The British proposed a policy of non-intervention to Russia and demanded that Russian troops capture Corsica, Napoleon’s homeland.

The steps of the British only strengthened the alliance between Russia and France. Paul I, who until that time still had doubts, finally agreed with Napoleon’s plan, who proposed to join forces and together capture India, a colony of England. It was assumed that both powers would send 35 thousand people for this campaign.

January 12, 1801 Paul I, Emperor of Russia, gave the order to advance 41 regiments of Don Cossacks, led by Orlov, towards India.

It was a decisive time for the British government. Their global colonial hegemony could have ended. The importance of India for England lay in the fact that India was a kind of money bag for the British. Because at that time India was the only country in the world that mined diamonds. The loss of India meant the loss of a huge amount of money for England, which in turn led to an economic crisis in Albion. And this meant the end of the British domination in the world. What happened next?

Assassination of Paul I

They tried to kill the emperor several times. One of the first conspiracies uncovered was the conspiracy of the Kanalsky workshop in Smolensk. The investigation materials were destroyed, and the group members were sent to hard labor, but information about this was preserved in other sources.

Rumors of a conspiracy against the Tsar spread in the St. Petersburg barracks and noble meetings. After Malta passed to the British, they increasingly began to find a common language with the capital and Moscow masons, who were increasingly dissatisfied with the ban on the activities of lodges.

Economic factors also played a role. Members of the Order of Malta began to feed themselves from Russian estates. The Russian nobility, in turn, was threatened with the loss of markets in England. Therefore, not only the English ambassador, but also the head of the secret police, Palen, and General Fyodor Uvarov, who was in a confidential relationship with the emperor, and, according to some sources, Golenishchev-Kutuzov, participated in the next conspiracy against Paul I.

In total, the number of conspirators was more than a hundred people, who represented the flower of the Russian nobility. In March 1801, Paul I was killed in his bedroom. It is not customary for historians to directly connect the murder of the Russian emperor with his protectorate over the Order of Malta, as well as with the allied relations of Paul I and Napoleon.

Let us give an opinion about war as a political instrument and a phenomenon of social life of one of the heroes of the “conquest of Central Asia” - Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev.

One day, regarding the heavy losses at Plevna, one of the generals frivolously remarked:

The forest is being cut down and the chips are flying.

Skobelev instantly flushed:

Of course, once a war has started, there is nothing to talk about humanity... But for me, in every sliver of this there is human life with its suffering and earthly worries.

He constantly repeated to his officers:

A commander must feel remorse when leading people to war.

This poet and war enthusiast, as he was called, once wrote in his diary:

War is excusable when I defend myself and my friends. It is vile and shameful to start a war so-so, in the wind, without extreme, extreme necessity. Wars undertaken out of ambition, out of predation, out of dynastic interests lie as black spots on kings and emperors. But it’s even more terrible when the people, having completed this terrible task, remain dissatisfied, when their rulers do not have the courage to take advantage of all the results, all the benefits of the war.

In this case, there is no point in asking generosity towards the vanquished. This generosity is at the expense of others, it is not those who conclude peace treaties who pay for this generosity, the people pay for it - with hundreds of thousands of victims, economic and other crises. A person who loves his neighbors, a person who hates war, must finish off the enemy so that after one war another does not immediately begin (http://www.vupkro.ru/Enc.ashx?item=5601).

In our understanding of history, in the above excerpt from the diary of M.D. Skobelev, he characterized the “magnanimity” of Emperor Alexander I, whose break in the alliance with Napoleon, inherited from Paul I, led to Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 (he had to start a war against Russia under the pressure of circumstances , since without a war with Russia in the event of an impossibility of an alliance with it, he was guaranteed to lose power in the near future under the influence of economic problems organized by Great Britain), and turned out to be fruitless for Russia in the political perspective of events after 1814, even despite the victory over Napoleonic France.

This means that the murder of Emperor Paul I, at the instigation of London by domestic “elitists” corrupted in the “golden age of Catherine”, which occurred with the tacit consent of the heir to the throne who became emperor, Alexander I, was not only a violation of the oath to the tsar, but And crime against the peoples of Russia, India, Europe.

AfterWord

Based on the above, we can draw some conclusions about the mechanisms (and it is difficult to call these processes in any other way) the formation of the historical memory of Paul I.

The main conclusion: according to these “mechanisms” of modern research, Paul I does not fit into any ideologically coherent image of Russian history.

In addition, it also occupies a very low ranking position among objects of historical memory. At the same time, it can be assumed that literary texts in which Paul is presented mainly in a negative or contradictory light deprive him of even a ghostly hope of winning an objective assessment of his historical personality, which is reflected not only in the data of sociological surveys, but and in the content of online content related to his figure.

However, we note that taking into account the more positive image of Paul in educational texts than in fiction, certain hopes for increasing the level of objectivity in assessing his actions still remain...

Youth Analytical Group

Decree on succession to the throne of 1722 (briefly)

Decree on succession to the throne of 1722

The decree on the succession to the throne of Peter the Great, dated February 5, 1722, abolished the previously established ancient custom of transferring the ruling throne to direct descendants in the male line, and also provided for the actual appointment of an heir to the throne at the will of the monarch. This document came into force from the date of signing until April 5, 1797.

It should be noted that the document in question was considered a consequence of the rivalry between Peter the Great and Tsarevich Alexei, who was the center of the then opposition. After the death of Alexei in 1718, his father did not want to give power to his grandson Peter, since Peter the Great feared that a party that was opposed to his reforms would come to power in Russia.

At the same time, Peter the Great himself referred to important precedents of past years. For example, the appointment of Ivan the Third as heir first to Dmitry, and later to Vasily the Third. The tsar also referred to his own Decree on Single Inheritance of 1714. And for the ideological justification of the Decree on Succession to the Throne, Feofan Prokopovich wrote “The Truth of the Monarch’s Will.”

In addition to all of the above, this decree of the king is often associated with an atmosphere of rivalry for the throne, as well as the era of palace coups, which was marked in the eighteenth century. With all this, after the death of Peter, his authority was still great, and for this reason the applicants themselves did not dare to cancel his decree, counting on the strength of the document in the future. In addition, not all Russian rulers took advantage of the royal decree and appointed an heir for themselves. And Peter the Great himself did not have time to do this, and after his death, his widow Catherine the First, who relied on the oligarchic court group, was proclaimed as ruler. In her own will, the Empress appointed Prince Peter Alekseevich as her successor, outlining in detail the future order of succession to the throne in 1727.

Under Peter the Second, who was Alexei’s son, all copies of the document dated 1722 were confiscated. Peter the Second also died without leaving his will, after which Anna Ioannovna was elected as ruler by the Supreme Privy Council.

In 1731, the Empress again renewed the decree of 1722, appointing Ivan Antonovich as her own successor before her death, and Elizaveta Petrovna, who overthrew him, relied on the will of Catherine the First.

Thus, the Decree on Succession to the Throne was able to influence only a certain part of the Russian rulers.