For some officers it was not enough to identify themselves with the common people's cause: they wanted to take on the identity of common men themselves. They Russified their dress and behaviour in an effort to move closer to the soldiers in the ranks. They used Russian words in their military speech. They smoked the same tobacco as their men; and in contravention of the Petrine ban, they grew beards. To some extent such democratization was necessary. Denis Davydov, the celebrated leader of the Cossack partisans, had found it very hard to raise recruits in the villages: the peasants saw his glittering Hussar uniform as alien and 'French'. Davydov was forced, as he noted in his diary, to 'conclude a peace with the villagers' before he could even speak to them. 'I learned that in a people's war it is not enough to speak the common tongue: one must also step down to the people's level in one's manners and one's dress. I began to wear a peasant's
Volkonsky took command of a partisan brigade and pursued Napoleon's troops as far as Paris during 1813-14. The next year, with 20,000 roubles in his chest, a carriage and three servants provided by his mother, he travelled to Vienna for the Peace Congress. He then returned to Paris, where he moved in the circles of the political reformers Chateaubriand and Benjamin Constant, and went on to London, where he saw the principles of constitutional monarchy in operation as he watched the House of Commons discuss the lunacy of George III. Volkonsky had planned to go to the United States - 'a country that had captured the imagination of all Russian youth because of its independence and democracy' - but the resumption of the war
with Napoleon's escape from Elba obliged him to return to Petersburg.16 None the less, like those of many Decembrists, Volkonsky's views had been deeply influenced by his brief encounter with the West. It confirmed his conviction in the personal dignity of every human being - an essential credo of the Decembrists which lay at the foundation of their opposition to the autocratic system and serfdom. It formed his belief in meritocracy - a view strengthened by his conversations with Napoleon's officers, who impressed him with their free thought and confidence. How many Neys and Davouts had been stifled by the rigid caste system of the Russian army? Europe made him think of Russia's backwardness, of its lack of basic rights or public life, and helped him focus his attention on the need to follow Europe's liberal principles.
The young officers who came back from Europe were virtually unrecognizable to their parents. The Russia they returned to in 1815 was much the same as the Russia they had left. But they had greatly changed. Society was shocked by their 'rude peasant manners'.17 And no doubt there was something of a pose - the swagger of the veteran - in these army ways. But they differed from their elders in far more than their manners and dress. They also differed from them in their artistic tastes and interests, their politics and general attitudes: they turned their backs on the frivolous diversions of the ballroom (though not their own revelry) and immersed themselves in serious pursuits. As one explained: 'We had taken part in the greatest events of history, and it was unbearable to return to the vacuous existence of St Petersburg, to listen to the idle chatter of old men about the so-called virtues of the past. We had advanced a hundred years.'18 As Pushkin wrote in his verse 'To Chaadaev' in 1821:
The fashionable circle is no longer in fashion.
You know, my dear, we're all free men now.
We keep away from society; don't mingle with the ladies.
We've left them at the mercy of old men,
The dear old boys of the eighteenth century.19
Dancing, in particular, was regarded as a waste of time. The men of 1812 wore their swords at formal balls to signal their refusal to take
part. The salon was rejected as a form of artifice. Young men retreated to their studies and, like Pierre in
