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Some monumentalized the peasants' daily toil; they raised it to the status of patriotic sacrifice. The duty of the poet, as they saw it, was to be a citizen, to dedicate himself to the national cause. Like all the men of 1812, they saw their work as part of a democratic mission to learn about and educate the common people so as to unite society on Russian principles. They rejected the Enlightenment idea that 'all the nations should become the same' and, in the words of one critic, called on 'all our writers to reflect the character of the Russian folk'.³³

Pushkin holds a special place in that enterprise. He was too young - just thirteen in 1812 - to fight against the French, but as a schoolboy at the lycee he watched the Guards from the garrison at Tsarskoe Selo march off to war. The memory remained with him throughout his life:

You'll recollect: the wars soon swept us by, We bade farewell to all our elder brothers, And went back to our desks with all the others, In envy of all those who had gone to die Without us…³⁴

Though Pushkin, unlike them, had never been to Europe, he breathed the European air. As a boy he had immersed himself in the French books of his father's library. His first verse (written at the age of eight) was composed in French. Later he discovered Byron's poetry. This European heritage was strengthened by the years he spent between 1812 and 1817 at the lycee at Tsarskoe Selo - a school modelled on the Napoleonic lycees that drew heavily on the curriculum of the English public schools, stressing the humanities: classical and modern languages, literature, philosophy and history. The cult of friendship was strong at the lycee. The friendships he formed there strengthened Pushkin's sense of European Russia as a spiritual sphere:

My friends, our union is wondrous! Like a soul, it will last for eternity -Undivided, spontaneous and joyous, Blessed by the muse of fraternity. Whatever partings destiny may bring, Whatever fortunes fate may have in hand,

We are still the same: the world to us an alien thing, And Tsarskoe Selo our Fatherland.³⁵

Yet, for all his Western inclinations, Pushkin was a poet with a Russian voice. Neglected by his parents, he was practically brought up by his peasant nurse, whose tales and songs became a lifelong inspiration for his verse. He loved folk tales and he often went to country fairs to pick up peasant stories and turns of phrase which he then incorporated in his poetry. Like the officers of 1812, he felt that the landowner's obligation as the guardian of his serfs was more important than his duty to the state.³⁶

He felt this obligation as a writer, too, and looked to shape a written language that could speak to everyone. The Decembrists made this a central part of their philosophy. They called for laws to be written in a language 'that every citizen can understand'.³⁷ They attempted to create a Russian lexicon of politics to replace imported words. Glinka called for a history of the war of 1812 to be written in a language that was 'plain and clear and comprehensible by people of all classes, because people of all classes took part in the liberation of our motherland'.³⁸ The creation of a national language seemed to the veterans of 1812 a means of fostering the spirit of the battlefield and of forging a new nation with the common man. 'To know our people', wrote the Decembrist poet Alexander Bestuzhev, 'one has to live with them and talk with them in their language, one has to eat with them and celebrate with them on their feast days, go bear-hunting with them in the woods, or travel to the market on a peasant cart.'³⁹ Pushkin's verse was the first to make this link. It spoke to the widest readership, to the literate peasant and the prince, in a common Russian tongue. It was Pushkin's towering achievement to create this national language through his verse.

Volkonsky returned to Russia in 1815 and took up the command of the Azov regiment in the Ukraine. Like all the Decembrists, he was deeply disillusioned by the reactionary turn taken by the Emperor

Alexander, on whom he had pinned his liberal hopes. In the first years of his reign (1801-12) Alexander had passed a series of political reforms: censorship was immediately relaxed; the Senate was promoted to the supreme judicial and administrative institution in the Empire -an important counterbalance to the personal power of the sovereign; a more modern system of government began to take shape with the establishment of eight new ministries and an upper legislative chamber (the State Council) modelled on Napoleon's Conseil d'Etat. There were even some preliminary measures to encourage noblemen to emancipate their serfs. To the liberal officers, Alexander seemed like one of them: a man of progressive and enlightened views.