Constantin Pobedonostsev
Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (Константин Иванович Победоносцев in Russian) (1827 - 1907) was a Russian jurist, statesman, and thinker.
Pobedonostsev studied at the School of Law in St.Petersburg, and entered the public service as an official in one of the Moscow departments of the senate. From 1860 to 1865 he was professor of Russian civil law in the Moscow State University, and instructed the sons of Alexander II in the theory of law and administration. In 1868, he became a senator in St.Petersburg, in 1872 - a member of the council of the empire, and in 1880 - chief procurator of the Holy Synod. He always showed himself an uncompromising conservative and never shrank from expressing boldly his opinions. Consequently, in the liberal circles he was always denounced as an obscurantist and an enemy of progress.
In the early years of the reign of Alexander II Pobedonostsev maintained, though keeping aloof from the Slavophils, that Western institutions were radically bad in themselves and totally inapplicable to Russia. Parliamentary methods of administration, modern judicial organization and procedures, trial by jury, freedom of the press, secular education - these were among the principal objects of his aversion. He subjected all of them to a severe analysis in his Reflections of a Russian Statesman. To these dangerous products of Western rationalism he found a counterpoise in popular vis ineriiae, and in the respect of the masses for institutions developed slowly and automatically during the past centuries of national life. Among the practical deductions drawn from these premisses is the necessity of preserving the autocratic power, and of fostering among the people the traditional veneration for the ritual of the national Church.
In the sphere of practical politics he exercised considerable influence by inspiring and encouraging the Russification policy of Alexander III, which found expression in an administrative nationalist propaganda and led to a good deal of religious persecution. After the death of Alexander III, he lost much of his influence for Nicholas II, while clinging to his father's Russification policy and even extending it to Finland, disliked the idea of systematic religious persecution, and was not wholly averse from the partial emancipation of the Russian Church from civil control. During the revolutionary tumult, which followed the disastrous war with Japan, Pobedonostsev, being nearly 80 years of age, retired from public affairs.
He died on March 23, 1907.
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
