Scenarios of the Revolutionary Unification of Germany in Vasily Zhukovsky's Reflection (on the Material of Journalistic and Epistolary Works of 1848-1850)

On the material of Vasily Zhukovsky's political journalism and correspondence of 18481850, his attitude to the scenario of Germany's unification, formed during the revolutionary events of 1848, is described. The writer believed the main vector of history was man's and society's moral perfection motivated by Divine Providence. The ability to organically follow it ensures the correct historical development, and autocratic power is the only legitimate institution that embodies the will of Providence. This power is guided by law and conscience, and acts as a guarantor of the social contract. The antithesis of evolution is a rapid historical change, which invariably leads to a catastrophe. For Zhukovsky, such a catastrophe was the scenario of Germany's unification proposed by the revolutionary events of 1848. It was then that the modernization of the autocracy through new legal, social and economic forms was opposed to constitutionalist and republican ideas, including a socialist doctrine. The subject of Zhukovsky's categorical condemnation was, first of all, the main driving forces of the revolutionary unifying process: the masses, generally characterized as the proletariat, and the common intelligentsia that became the mouthpiece of grass-roots political movements, including those in the Frankfurt German Parliament. The writer denies the legitimacy of the both. Thus, Zhukovsky's journalism and correspondence of 1848-1850 focused mainly on the figure of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Two stages can be distinguished in Zhukovsky's writings. The articles and letters of 1848 brought to the fore the problems of the internal political structure of Prussia (the constitutional reform). Even in 1847, having convened a united Landtag, Friedrich Wilhelm IV did not recognize its right to political debate and to the creation of a draft constitution. His consent to adopt the constitution in December 1848, in Zhukovsky's opinion, was a forced compromise, which was later to be revised in favor of a genuine and historically justified agreement between the sovereign and his subjects. Since 1849, Zhukovsky's interest shifted to the competing scenarios for the unification of Germany, which also initially welcomed the preservation of historically established forms of statehood, i.e. the federal structure of the German Union. The preservation of the dynastic principle, however, opened up the possibility of not only the cooperation of the sovereigns, but also their competition for dominance. Zhukovsky, without sympathizing with the egalitarian Pan-Germanism, perceived these separate tendencies, especially those from Austria, painfully. The only position he was willing to approve was Prussian. It was a consistently counter-revolutionary position based on the elimination of liberal concessions and the return of the full executive and legislative powers to the monarch. In the appendix to the article, Zhukovsky's letter to Grand Duke Alexander Nikolayevich of late August 1847 is first published.

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