A Little About the Aristocracy and the Elite

Not about the “elite”, but about the genuine Russian elite!! I’m proofreading my article about Princess Lieven. She lived abroad almost all her life, first for 22 years in London, with her ambassador husband, then in Paris.

She left for France without the permission of Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, and he wrote to her husband in anger: “If your wife does not return, I will grind her into powder.” She didn’t return.

But even disgraced, she continued to send encrypted letters from Paris to her brother Alexander Benckendorf, transmitting information “from the wheels” on the most important matters. And she was very influential in diplomatic circles; her Parisian salon was called “an observatory for observing Europe.”

In 1843, the princess risked asking the emperor to allow her to stay in Paris. And he allowed it.

The Crimean War began. And the princess, as a Russian subject, left Paris, waiting out the war in Brussels.

And then, at the end of the war, the French authorities reluctantly allowed her to return, fearing that she would intrigue in favor of Russia. She did not intrigue, she simply acted in the interests of Russia.

And how does this differ from the behavior of those of our contemporaries who imagine themselves to be the “elite”, the “masters of thought” in our country, and who were simply “appointed” as such. If Princess Lieven immediately left France at the beginning of the war, where she lived for almost 20 years, then our “elite”, all these stars, hung with awards and prizes, immediately, headlong, fled from Russia and went to the enemies, to those who is fighting against our country and wants to destroy us.

Moreover, many of them not only fled, but are pouring buckets of dirt on Russia, which gave them everything. How does the cowardice, baseness and betrayal of this “elite” raised here differ from the behavior of the purebred German and Lutheran Princess Daria Khristoforovna Lieven, who wrote to Count Charles Gray: “Don’t be angry with me and with Russia, for I cannot help but be Russian.”