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Additional Notes on the Beseda Circle, 1899-1905

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Terence Emmons
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A previously untapped source of evidence about the Beseda circle, a seminal institution in the development of the Russian opposition movement on the eve of the 1905 Revolution, has come to the author's attention since the appearance of his article on Beseda in the Slavic Review (“The Beseda Circle, 1899-1905,“ September 1973, pp. 461-90). This is the unpublished personal notes of Prince D. I. Shakhovskoy, a member of the circle throughout its existence. Although Shakhovskoy's transcriptions of the circle's discussions are much less systematic and detailed than those preserved in the circle's papers in the Maklakov archive which served as the basis for the Slavic Review article, his notes are of considerable value because they are devoted precisely to those early years of the circle's existence (1899-1903) which are poorly represented in the Maklakov papers. (The transcripts of only two meetings prior to 1904 are preserved there.)

Type
Notes and Comment
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , December 1974 , pp. 741 - 743
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1974

References

1. Institut russkoi literatury (Pushkinskii Dom), Otdel rukopisei, f. 334 (D. I. Shakhovskoy), no. 651. Zapisnaia tetrad' “Khronologiia poslednego desiatiletiia,” 1901-34, pp. 33, 44-61. There apparently were a few additional meetings of the group in St. Petersburg, but they are not included in Shakhovskoy’s numbered listing.

2. Shakovskoy’s numbered list is as follows: (1) Nov. 17, 1899, (2) Jan. 4, 1900, (3) Apr. 16, 1900, (4) Nov. 17, 1900, (5) Feb. 7-8, 1901, (6) Sept. 1-2, 1901, (7) Jan. 8, 1902, (8) Mar. —, 1902, (9) May 27, 1902, (10) Aug. 22, 1902, (11) Jan. 6-8, 1903, (12) Feb. 6, 1903, (13) May 26, 1903, (14) Aug. 24-25, 1903, (IS) Nov. 10, 1903, (16) Jan. 11-12, 1904, (17) Feb. IS, 1904.

It is clear that 1902 and 1903 were the years of greatest activity for the circle, with four and five meetings respectively. Altogether the circle had twenty-two meetings over the nearly six years of its existence.

3. According to Shakhovskoy’s attendance list (complete for all meetings to the beginning of 1904), there were six participants at the first meeting on November 17, 1899: V. M. Petrovo-Solovovo, Iu. A. Novosiltsev, D. A. Olsufiev, P. S. Sheremetev, and the Dolgorukov brothers Pavel and Peter. It may be noted that identification of Pavel Dolgorukov as the circle’s founder in newspaper stories about his election to the Second Duma was objected to by two former members of Beseda in letters to the editor of Novoe vremia: by Count Pavel Sheremetev, who merely denied that Dolgorukov was the circle’s founder (February 28, 1907); and by Count Vladimir Bobrinsky, who claimed that in fact the founder was Sheremetev (March 1, 1907). (The author is indebted to Michael Brainerd for the references to the letters.).

4. These aims were spelled out in detail in a long letter from Pavel Dolgorukov to Prince P. N. Trubetskoy (January 25, 1903) written in response to Trubetskoy’s report to him that Pleve knew of the circle and apparently attributed “some kind of agitational and conspiratorial character” to it (pp. 44-46: a copy of the letter in Shakhovskoy's hand).