THE “PARIS COMMITTEE” PLOT: CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND IMPERIAL ELITES IN RUSSIA IN THE LATER YEARS OF ALEXANDER I’S REIGN

Abstract

Despite the recent surge of interest in studies of conspiracy theories in Russia and post-Soviet countries, scholars still largely neglect the early nineteenth-century period, which is nonetheless crucial for the understanding of the Russian conspiratorial tradition. This paper aims to bridge the existing gap by offering a new interpretation of the conspiracism and dynamics of its production and dissemination in the later years of Alexander I’s reign. Echoing ongoing historiographical debates, it identifies the 1820s as a starting point for the intervention of the conspiratorial discourse into Russian political culture and public opinion. Several crucial factors predetermined the actualization of the myth of global conspiracy at this time: the reception of Western conspiracy theorists’ works, growing mystical sentiments in the court, and the revolutionary crisis in Southern Europe. By applying the “generative” model from the latest conspiracy studies and the theory of political myth, the essay argues that functionality was a core element of the conspiracy mythology in Alexandrine Russia. Civil servants, diplomats, and clergymen at multiple levels of the ruling hierarchy utilized conspiracy narratives to satisfy their demands. Through the myth’s articulation, they helped themselves to comprehend the causality of political events, solve various career problems, pledge loyalty to the monarchy, identify with power hegemony, and struggle in an intra-elite competition. To substantiate the outlined theses, a wide array of archival and published materials related to specific cases of conspiracy rhetoric’s implementation was deployed and analyzed. Overall, the findings presented here might help to open unexplored perspectives for the reexamination of the instrumental relevance of conspiracy theories for the educated classes, to come up with a modified approach for studying Russian conspiratorial culture and the continuity of its modern form with the imperial one.