Oleksandr Bezborodko was born 255 years ago on March 14, 1747 by the Julian calendar, in Hlukhiv, Chernihiv province. His father, a general clerk, had been investigated for almost ten years for alleged bribery. Under these circumstances, the family lived in a far from ideal atmosphere. So the apt and diligent boy began quite early to show signs of self-reliance. The Kyiv Theological Academy gave an excellent education to the inquisitive Oleksandr. He developed outstanding literary abilities in the academy, which stood him a good stead, for knowing how to write in a fine and clear hand was a special asset in the age of Catherine. The youth stunned his contemporaries with phenomenal memory, quoting whole pages from the Bible and chronicles.
The talented youth managed by the age of 18 to secure a place at the chancery of President of the Little Russia Collegium and Governor General of Ukraine Count PСtr Rumiantsev, who aimed to finally destroy the autonomy of Ukraine and subject it to Russian imperial laws. In Hlukhiv, the count and his chancery occupied a huge building. In his service Bezborodko managed to win the respect and trust of his superior and was appointed chancery chief in 1767 (at the age of 20). In the course of his work he made friends with his peer and fellow countryman Petro Zavadovsky, later destined to be the Russian Empire’s first minister of education. As time passed, Fortune generously rewarded both of them for their talent and efforts.
When Rumiantsev was appointed commander of the Russian Army in the 1768-1774 war against Turkey, he also took his chancery to the battlefield. Bezborodko showed himself as a gallant officer, successively commanding the Nizhyn, Lubny, and Myrhorod regiments. He made a tour de force in the battles of Larga and Cagule. In addition, he was in charge of the field marshal’s secret correspondence and other important tasks. Yet, it is not in the military that Bezborodko’s destiny took a sharp turn.
Although Catherine II was rather cool toward Count Rumiantsev, she highly appreciated his experience. She asked him to name a few young people deserving the office of state secretary in her chancery. Rumiantsev recommended (it was 1775) Bezborodko and Zavadovsky. The state secretaries’ range of duties was quite wide: they conducted the empress’s correspondence with all public offices and their heads as well as coordinated the activities of the Senate, Synod, Foreign Collegium, and Admiralty. They received reports from local rulers, provincial governors, the emission bank governor, and the food supply minister. They communicated to institutions imperial instructions on civil servant appointments, dismissals, promotions, the award of ranks and honors, etc.
Of course, as a state secretary, Bezborodko never made independent decisions, but he took part in drafting many documents and could thus influence the most august decisions of Catherine II. The state secretaries’ chancery was a well-organized institution, where everything was subjected to the will of the empress who could not stand red tape. She demanded that her secretaries be efficient and present short and clear reports. Moreover, the state secretaries took the most active role in drawing up ukases and decrees, had various reports endorsed, and prepared materials for legislative acts. In the summer and fall of 1775 Bezborodko and Zavadovsky were involved in drafting the Provincial Regulations approved on November 7, 1775.
Catherine II could see and appreciate the young functionary’s innate intellect and thought it necessary to use his services in complicated situations. She even jocularly called his new secretary my factotum. Unlike many of his predecessors, Bezborodko remained the empress’s chief briefer for almost 20 (!) years, combining this job with other important official functions: he was Post director, member of the Senate’s Privy Council, and a host of all kinds of committees and commissions. But what became Bezborodko’s main bailiwick was foreign policy.
Catherine II’s diplomacy was oriented by that time toward reinforcing the dictatorship of the nobility, implementing further projects in the Eastern and Polish Questions, and taking advantage of Russia’s international position that resulted from the First Partition of Poland (1772) and the Russian-Turkish War of 1768-1774. The Right Bank Ukraine issue was assuming ever greater importance in light of Russia’s further expansion toward the Black Sea. The whole foreign policy of Russia was at that time tied in a solid Baltic-Polish-Eastern knot.
The Russian Empire’s increased might also determined the stand taken by Catherine’s government during the American Revolution. Russia turned down the request of England to engage its forces in the war in America. On February 28, 1780, Saint Petersburg issued a declaration on “armed neutrality” in fact aimed against England. The declaration said: any neutral vessel is under protection of all neutral states and has the right to armed defense at sea. Accordingly, in case of violence against a neutral ship, all responsibility lies with the ships of the attacking country. This declaration was joined by most European states.
The empress abruptly changed Russia’s foreign political course once mapped out by Count N. I. Panin (the so-called Northern Accord). This resulted in an obvious cooling of Russian-Prussian relations but, on the other hand, brought about rapprochement between Russian and Austria. The Romanovs and the Habsburgs concluded a defensive alliance based on the common interests in the Polish and Turkish issues. This course of events was bound to make Count Panin quit the office of foreign policy chief. Catherine II set the goal to “solve” the Turkish problem, which was manifest in the so-called Greek project whereby the Turks were to be ousted from Europe and Turkey’s European colonies be transformed into a revived Byzantine Empire which, as the empress planned, was to be nothing but a branch of the Russian Empire. A new state, Dacia, was to be formed on the basis of Danubian principalities Moldavia and Wallachia, while the western Balkans would fall under Austrian influence. It is Bezborodko who was first to spell out this idea in the memorandum he submitted to the empress in 1780. Although this daring scheme was never implemented, its author was seconded in the same year to the Foreign Affairs Collegium, assuming, immediately after Count Panin’s death in 1783, the No. 2 position. In 1784 he was promoted to the rank of major general. Aleksandr Bezborodko remained in this office until Catherine II died, but, as the chancellor’s post was vacant all this time, he was in fact the main executor of the empress’s orders and her number one foreign policy advisor. It is he whom Russian ambassadors sent dispatches to from abroad and with whom foreign envoys in Petersburg negotiated. He also regularly reported to the empress on everything being discussed and decided at the Collegium.
The Russian Empire was determined to make its presence felt on the Black Sea coast. The last Crimean Khan Shagin-Girey had to relinquish power in 1783 after talks with Prince PotСmkin, which let Russia annex the Crimea. Simultaneously England was trying to set Russia against Turkey. The latter, demonstratively ignoring the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, declared war on Russia in 1787, while Vienna sided with Saint Petersburg. Yet, English diplomacy managed to set the Swedish Kingdom, which dreamed of winning back the Baltic provinces from the Russian Empire, on the latter. After suffering a number of defeats at the hands of the Russians, the Swedes had to conclude a status quo ante bellum peace treaty on August 14 in Verele on August 14, 1790.
The Russian Army dealt the Turks several heavy blows: Ochakov fell on December 6, 1788, while the battles of Focsani and Rimnic became a virtual nightmare for the Sublime Porte. Finally, the impregnable fortress of Izmayil was taken by storm on December 11, 1790. This war fully revealed the military genius of Aleksandr Suvorov. But the separate peace treaty signed between Austria and Turkey as well as the danger emanating from Sweden in the north caused Russia to drop more ambitious plans in the Balkans. Under the 1791 Treaty of Jassy signed on behalf of Russia by Bezborodko, Turkey pledged to strictly obey the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, accept a new border with Russia along the Dnipro and annexation of the Crimea. In a long series of eighteenth century Russian- Turkish wars, a tremendous role was played by ethnic Ukrainians, mostly the Cossacks, who accounted for more than half the strength of some units.
Undoubtedly, Russian diplomacy owed to a great extent its successes to now Aleksandr Bezborodko who had in fact headed this office since 1783. Catherine II did not forget her favorite’s merits: when a patent came from Vienna in 1784 for the title of Count of the Holy Roman Empire, she wrote to him, “Industry and zeal should be rewarded. The emperor bestows the title of count on you. You will be a count! There will be no diminution to your ardor toward me. This is what the empress says, while Catherine friendly advises and requests you not to be lazy or haughty.” Bezborodko was elevated to active state counselor in 1790 and to court grand master in 1793.
The new prince and count actively worked on new laws, helping the empress. Many legislative acts of that time, published in the name of Catherine II, were written by him personally. In addition to awarding her protОgО all kinds of titles, the empress also provided him with material benefits, such as manors, serfs, and money. By the end of his life, Bezborodko was one of the empire’s richest dignitaries.
The ascension of Paul I to the throne opened a new page in Bezborodko’s career. He was Catherine’s only minister to retain his office. Moreover, he was appointed senator, the most illustrious prince, and state chancellor by a royal decree in 1797. This in turn spread rumors that Prince Bezborodko had done some special favors for Catherine II’s successor, for example, handed Paul the empress’s confidential testament whereby the throne was to be taken by grandson Aleksandr, bypassing the son. At the turn of the nineteenth century, an anonymous manuscript titled A Conversation in the Kingdom of the Dead circulated around the country, in which Catherine II, who has allegedly met Bezborodko in the next world, bitterly reproves him of not having executed her will. Yet, no documentary evidence of such a testament has ever been found, so the new emperor’s special grace toward Bezborodko remains a puzzle.
The Chernihivshchyna talent was unusually active and prolific. Bezborodko wrote several books on the history of Ukraine, Moldavia, and the Russo-Turkish wars. In 1798, at the request of his nephew V. P. Kochubei who was close to Grand Prince Alexander, heir to the throne, the aging chancellor drew up “A Note on Drafting Russian Laws,” in which he showed himself as an ardent enthusiast of the ideas of French Enlightenment and particularly of Montesquieu. The Note also reviewed, in a way, the unfulfilled legislative projects of Catherine II. In 1796 Bezborodko managed to convince Paul I to partially restore the hetman period administrative and judicial system in Left Bank Ukraine.
Bezborodko, a true son of his time, adhered to the ideas of enlightened monarchism. In his vision, true monarchy was a stratified society, where the rights of each stratum, including the peasantry, are to be determined by the law alone. For instance, the Note suggested establishing clear duties for peasants and prohibiting their sale without land in addition to allowing in principle the transfer from one stratum to another. Bezborodko believed that representatives of all estates should sit in the Senate and the General Court. His Senate would have considered bills and make representations to the sovereign if senators object to certain laws. Thus the Most Illustrious Prince Bezborodko in fact proposed attracting all the estates to public administration, which he thought would help Russia avoid the horrors of the French Revolution. The Note was scrupulously studied by Alexander I’s young friends and used by them later, when the Private Committee mapped out a number of public administration reforms. But Aleksandr Bezborodko was not destined to see the enthronement of his namesake, Emperor Alexander I. He died in 1799, leaving his heirs the richest collection of paintings (as soon as in the mid-nineteenth century, 330 original canvases of European masters were transferred to the Hermitage) and other artistic treasures. In addition, Bezborodko, who had no male heirs apparent (he had a daughter from a morganatic marriage with ballerina Karatygina), willed a huge amount of money to his brother Illia Bezborodko for charitable purposes. This money (210,000 gold rubles) made it possible to found the Nizhyn Lyceum (Bezborodko Historical and Philosophical Institute from 1875 to 1920, Gogol Pedagogical Institute from 1920 on) in his native city. It is here that Gogol, Hlibov, Zabila, Hrebinka, and others were educated. The chancellor of Russia “returned’ to his homeland well after his death. Therefore still important even today are the words of Gavrila Derzhavin who composed the following eloquent epitaph on his death, “It is his Deeds, not the noisy crowds of people at a splendid funeral, that sing praise of him.”
Aleksandr Bezborodko, the eighteenth century’s most eminent diplomat after Count N. I. Panin, used to say to young diplomats at the end of his career, “I don’t know how things will go in your time, but in our time no cannon in Europe dared to fire without our permission.”
soon to be published)
(To be continued)
THE DAY’S REFERENCE
Heorhy MELNYCHUK, a journalist by education, works at UT-1 and CT television channels, has served in law enforcement bodies, as a diplomat, is the author of many songs and verses, and fantasy stories for children. He is also a composer, singer, and artist.
