The Icon and the Axe

Like De Maistre, Magnitsky's main concern was the mobilization of Russia to combat the infection of Russia with the rationalism that had been spawned by the Protestant Reformation in religion and by the French Revolution in politics. But there were critical differences between the absolutist remedies proposed by the two men. Whereas De Maistre had sought the rule of an international church hierarchy subordinate to the pope, Magnitsky looked rather to the Russian tsar as supreme authority and to his civil and ecclesiastical bureaucracy as the "hierarchy." Whereas De Maistre assumed that the new Christian civilization would be suffused with the classical culture of the Latin world, Magnitsky insisted that Russian civilization must deepen its sense of identification with the East.

Magnitsky's fascination with the East was in part a reflection of occult Masonry and the related vision of a new church coming from the East. Masonic temples were always built facing the East, and the term "Orient" was used as a synonym for a city in which Masons were active.104 Pietist

missionaries and the vernacular translators of the Russian Bible Society had spoken excitedly of the rich "harvest" they hoped to reap in the Russian East; and Lopukhin had insisted that Russia's "most sincere collaborators" in combating revolution and secularism were to be found among "Asians [Aziattsy] from Peking to Constantinople."105 Magnitsky criticized Karam-zin for saying that the Mongol period was one of decline for Russia, since the Tatars saved it from Europe and enabled it to preserve the purity of its Christian faith at a time when all others were failing into heresy. Beginning with his proposal of 1819 for evangelizing the Tatars, Magnitsky displayed a romantic fascination with the idea that the cultivation of Eastern links would help qualify Russia for the role of redeeming the fallen West.

Orientalism received a new boost with the establishment of a chair in Arabic at St. Petersburg in the same year; and in 1822 Magnitsky drew up a plan for an "Institute of the East" to be established in Astrakhan to train future Russian civil servants and place them "in touch with the learned circles of India." He cherished the belief that an unspoiled apostolic Church still flourished in India and claimed to see Biblical influences in Hindu sacred writings. The wife of Brahma, Sara-Veda, was thought to be Sarah, the wife of Abraham in the Old Testament. He organized the search for lost treasures in the monasteries of Armenia and sought to sponsor cultural safaris to Siberia and Samarkand.106

The career of Magnitsky illustrates the vulnerability of the Russian body politic to extremist pressures. The very extremity of his denunciations exercised a certain fascination and made some of his victims almost anxious to believe that they were as powerful and purposeful as Magnitsky alleged them to be. In a confused intellectual atmosphere he offered a simple explanation for all difficulties: an enemy to replace Napoleon as a stimulus to national unity. All difficulties came from the "illuminists." Revolutions in Spain, Naples, and Greece were interrelated parts of their eastward-moving plot. Students in Germany had already been infected; but Orthodox Russia, the anchor of the Holy Alliance, was its principal target. In denouncing a Masonic leader in Simbirsk, Magnitsky added the accusation of secret links with the Carbonari; in denouncing Fesler, he hinted at Jewish and Socinian connections.

In the absence of dispassionate investigation, the confused impression grew that some kind of spiritual invasion was indeed underway. Concealment and suspicion grew apace and helped encourage nervous displays of loyalty to the Tsar. With relentless logic, the denunciations and purges ran their course until Magnitsky himself fell a victim. An accusation that Magnitsky was a secret illuminist was among Alexander's papers at the time of his death. Shortly thereafter his administration of Kazan University was in-

vestigated and his foes treated to the revelation that he had employed a Jew as supervisor of studies, had spent as much in seven years as his predecessor had been accused of spending in twelve, and so on. In vain Magnit-sky argued that the apostles themselves were converted Jews and that his accusers were repeating the arguments of Voltaire. He journeyed to St. Petersburg to plead his case and wrote two eleventh-hour detailed analyses of the "world-wide illuminist plot" for the new Tsar from his exile in Es-thonia early in 1831.

The illuminists were attacking at four levels: academic, political, ecclesiastical, and popular. "Levelers," "millennarians," "methodists," and "schismatics" were bracketed together as part of a giant conspiracy to substitute a "Tsar-Comrade" for the "Tsar-Father" of simple Russians. Even conservative Austria was alleged to be sending in agents to subvert Russian institutions.107