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cahnLast post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.
How not to raise a child: the Tsarevitch Alexei edition
Date: 2023-03-15 02:39 pm (UTC)So that was Ferdinand of Parma, religious fanatic of the late 18th century. Earlier in the century, there was another child who got a brutal, modernizing upbringing and turned into a religious reactionary who wanted to turn the country back to the 17th century: the Tsarevitch Alexei.
Let us remember that Peter the Great set out to single-handedly bring Russia into the modern age at the turn of the 18th century. Let us also remember that his first wife was sent to a nunnery so he could marry Lithuanian peasant Marta, future Catherine I, and that Alexei was the product of the first marriage. This is going to shape his sympathies somewhat. There are two parties in Russia: the ones who support Peter's Westernizing efforts, and the "OMG WTF are you doing Peter???!" that used to carry around their forcibly shaven off beards in their pockets so that on Judgment Day, they could show God that they had never willingly been separated from their beard. So reactionary, is what I'm saying.
It's worth noting here that there were similarly two parties in Parma: the French party, that leaned toward the Enlightenment, and the Italian party, the reactionaries. Ferdinand's mother was French, and his Spanish father was apparently on board with the more modern and liberal approach to education too. Ferdinand himself liked hanging out with Italians, both the ultra-conservative clergy, and the servants and soldiers, who were inclined to a more "simple" faith that the philosophes looked down on. As noted, I suspect these were the people who were NICE to him. And I suspect the same was true to a certain extent for Alexei.
Now, unlike Ferdinand, I'm not aware that Alexei's tutor was awful to him. His tutor, at least according to the essay I read, seems to have relatively little time and influence on him. My impression was that if anyone was awful, it was his father Peter, and in much the same way as FW: he wanted to be the fun friendly dad, but when he realized his life's work was going to be destroyed, he got harder and harder on the kid. And Peter expected his son to have 1) his commitment to a life of service to the state, 2) his exact superhuman levels of energy for physical activity. Much like FW, he could not cope with his child being different from him.
The tutor wanted to teach Alexei book learning and proper behavior, but Peter kept pulling Alexei away from him to come join Peter at the army and do practical things. And Menshikov, who is basically Peter's Old Dessauer, supposedly undermined all the tutor's efforts to teach Alexei anything, because Menshikov didn't want the heir to the throne being a threat to him after Peter died, Menshikov wanted to continue being the powerful favorite. (Selena could have told him what his odds were.) Now, I don't know that this is true, but this is what the essay author said contemporaries said about Menshikov.
What *was* similar between Alexei and Ferdinand was that the tutor wrote letters to all the publishers in Europe about how Alexei's education was coming, so they could publish his updates in newspapers and books for the reading public, and the answer to how the education was coming was always "just swimmingly." While at the same time, writing Alexei letters about how he'd better shape up and learn to behave himself, because character defaults were harder to correct the older you got.
I was particularly struck by the tutor's criticism of the "grimaces" Alexei always made, and how he should have a relaxed, natural, pleasant facial expression. Isn't that exactly what FW wrote to young Fritz in one of his diatribes?
Anyway, apparently if you look at the state of his actual education and the claims that were being published in western European countries, there was a big discrepancy. So exactly like Ferdinand.
Unlike Ferdinand, I don't have evidence that the intellectual education was super burdensome...but his father's idea of how much energy he should have for being exactly like Peter was definitely burdensome, and I suspect the Russian reactionary party, and his mother's people, and his mother when he got to see her, were much more chill. And we know that Peter drank a lot, had a vicious temper, was over 2 meters tall, and was physically violent with pretty much everyone.
So it's really not all that hard to see how Alexei got driven into a reactionary camp just like Ferdinand.
Addendum on Alexei's tutor
I don't actually know that the tutor *wasn't* awful to Alexei too, I'm just presuming innocence until he's proven guilty. What I do know about him may be of some interest to salon:
His name was Heinrich von Huyssen. He was a Protestant German from Essen (western Germany, near the Rhine). He had close ties to "Severus Snape" Danckelmann and went to university with his sons, ad he'd hoped for a position in Brandenburg, but after Danckelmann's fall in 1697, all doors were closed to him in Brandenburg. So when Peter the Great started recruiting Westerners to help modernize Russia at the turn of the century, Huyssen was all in. His application was passed to Peter by none other than Johann Patkul, whom you may remember as the guy who helped convince Peter and August the Strong to go to war against Karl XII and set off the Great Northern War, and who was brutally tortured and executed when Karl got his hands on him. That incident inspired Manteuffel to write a diatribe against monarchs.
So Patkul recommends Huyssen to Peter, Huyssen gets to come to Russia, and his initial jobs are:
1. Help recruit more Westerners!
2. Translate Peter's "come join my country!" manifest into Western languages and get them printed in the West.
3. Convince Western publishers to dedicate their books to Peter and Alexei for the good PR.
4. Improve the postal service between Russia and the West.
If you are sensing a theme here, it is indeed the driving theme of Peter's life and the thing that his son ended up being a reactionary against.
Then Peter's like, "Well, I had to fire the last German tutor I had for Alexei, but I'm sure as hell not letting my heir be raised by a Russian tutor, so how about you?"
Huyssen: "How about no? Menshikov is going to fuck this up for me. You should put him in charge and not hold me responsible for the outcome."
Peter: "No, you'll do fine, I have full confidence in you! P.S. Do everything Menshikov says."
Huyssen: *facepalm*
Menshikov: *after years of undermining Huyssen, apparently finally gets him sent on diplomatic missions to Berlin and Vienna, far, far away from Alexei*
Then Huyssen comes back, but no time for book learning, it's time to take Alexei on a grand tour and arrange an unhappy marriage with him to a princess from Brunswick! Then he's officially an adult and doesn't need a tutor any more.
Huyssen continues working for Peter in various capacities until Peter's death; then his star falls. Finally, he wants to go home, but like Suhm, he sets out sick and dies on the way.
Sources
Der Infant von Parma: oder Die Ohnmacht der Erziehung, a monograph by Elisabeth Badinter, whom
"Heinrich von Huyssen (1666–1739) als Hofmeister des russischen Thronfolgers Aleksej", an essay by Svetlana Korzun, in the collection of essays Die Flucht des Thronfolgers Aleksej: Krise in der „Balance of Power“ und den österreichisch-russischen Beziehungen am Anfang des 18 Jahrhunderts," edited by Iskra Schwarz. I was hoping for more on the flight of the crown prince Alexei from this collection, but it's more about the crisis in the balance of power and Austrian-Russian relations at the beginning of the 18th century. So a lot of stuff I already knew.
Johann Friedrich Struensee: Arzt, Aufklärer und Staatsmann; Beitrag zur Kultur-, Medizin- und Seuchengeschichte der Aufklärungszeit, a book by Stefan Winkle, which I have only just started, but got far enough in to talk about Struensee's upbringing and also the ghetto or lack thereof in Altona. ;)
Re: How not to raise a child: the Tsarevitch Alexei edition
Date: 2023-03-16 05:37 pm (UTC)Indeed it is, and given FW was early on raised by Danckelmann's choice of tutor before SC had her showdown with Danckelmann, and that the tutor was a Danckelmann buddy, chances are "don't make grimaces" were a Prussian dogma. This said, probably not just Prussian. Looking gracious, pleasant, relaxed in most unnatural circumstances as court etiquette inevitably produces was a constant ideal for royals to live up to in that century.
My impression was that if anyone was awful, it was his father Peter, and in much the same way as FW: he wanted to be the fun friendly dad, but when he realized his life's work was going to be destroyed, he got harder and harder on the kid. And Peter expected his son to have 1) his commitment to a life of service to the state, 2) his exact superhuman levels of energy for physical activity. Much like FW, he could not cope with his child being different from him.
I had the very same impression.