ABSTRACT
As noted in Chapter 2, the Russian state saw the Decembrist uprising as a Russian aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. The Decembrists embodied the revolutionary thought of the new, ‘false’ Europe. Consequently, the state saw them as the ‘enemy within’. One corollary of such a view is that the Russian debate about Europe, dominated as it was by reactions to the uprising, was still being shaped by a perceived Russian need to come to terms with Europe’s double revolution. The introduction of the doctrine of official nationality did nothing to solve this dilemma. The distance between the state’s position and the other positions in the debate did not diminish. The most significant development of the 1830s was therefore not the change of positions but rather the way public political space was redefined. The debate about Europe forced its way from the margin of public debate onto centre stage, and became the divisive political issue of the day.
