Kruzhok - Friendship under Autocracy

The Kruzhok-REEES Reading Group presents Victoria Frede, Associate Professor of History, UC Berkeley 

Title: "Friendship under Autocracy: The Ideology of Russia’s Political Elites, 1750s-1840s"

This paper is the second chapter of a book project, titled “Friendship under Autocracy: The Ideology of Russia’s Political Elites, 1750s-1840s.” The book argues that within the Russian nobility, friendship was a political relationship. Its first half investigates how a specific ideal of friendship—as a bond between adults who selected one another to cultivate virtue in tandem—was instituted during the mid-1750s as a tool to bind the elites to the state, explaining why it gained remarkable traction. The chapter is titled “Friendship as a Disciplinary Force Among the Mid-Ranking Service Elite.” It shows that the cult of friendship was disseminated among members of the mid-ranking nobility through Russia’s early literary journals, and that the model of friendship they disseminated was disciplinary. Authors encouraged readers, and one another, to imagine themselves as members of a political community of virtuous friends. The role of the friend was to ensure that others adhered to the right path, of dedication to the “fatherland,” empress, and the promotion of the common good.  The chapter then shows how the highest-ranking members of the elite practiced this ideal, using it to train the generation they hoped would succeed them.

Date: Monday, March 02, 2026 | 4:00 pm ET

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