Mikhail Miloradovich - Governor of Saint Petersburg

Governor of Saint Petersburg

After the Treaty of Fontainebleau Alexander appointed Miloradovich commander of the Russian Imperial Guard; in 1818 Miloradovich became Governor of Saint Petersburg, assuming command of all the troops, police and civil administration of the imperial capital. He had the unconditional trust of Alexander, who could hardly have found a worse candidate for the job. As chief of police, Miloradovich controlled political surveillance and investigation in Saint Petersburg, but the events of 1825 demonstrated that he ultimately failed to respond to the real threat: he dismissed the evidence against the Decembrists, saying "It's all stuff; leave these young blockheads alone to read to each other their trash of miserable verses."

His affection for the arts and his ex officio duty as a censor at the peak of the Golden Age of Russian Poetry resulted in frequent contacts with authors and actors, and, apart from his death and his actions during the disastrous flood of 1824, his administration was remembered largely through anecdotes and artists' memoirs of varying reliability. This was not uncommon for Russian commanders; Nikolay Raevsky said "They turned me into a Roman, Miloradovich into a great man, Wittgenstein into the saviour of the fatherland, and Kutuzov into Fabius. I am not a Roman, and neither are these gentlemen."

Alexander Herzen who met Miloradovich in early childhood and fondly remembered him as a storyteller "with the greatest vivacity, with lively mimicry, with roars of laughter" ridiculed Miloradovich as an administrator yet called him "a warrior poet who understood poetry ... grand things are done by great means." Herzen's memoirs provide a number of anecdotes about Miloradovich the administrator (none of which could have been witnessed by the narrator).

In 1820 Miloradovich interrogated Alexander Pushkin on suspicion of political propaganda. Pushkin's name had already become a blanket cover for all kinds of incendiary pamphlets and he was desperate to clear himself of dangerous misattributions. Pushkin said that he burned his "contraband poems" and recited some from memory. Miloradovich said "Ah, c'est chevaleresque", dismissed the charges and sent Pushkin on a well-paid tour of the south. Vladimir Nabokov noted that all of Pushkin's influential friends could not have saved him had it not been for Miloradovich's "amiable conduct of the whole affair". There was a rumor that Pushkin was flogged on orders of Miloradovich, who fought a duel with at least one person who repeated it.

Author and publisher Nikolai Grech recounted another, less inspiring episode: in 1824 Miloradovich vigorously investigated an alleged breach of censorship rules at a printshop owned by Grech and Bezacque. Fifteen years earlier, when Miloradovich and Pyotr Bagration had a feud, Bezacque was Bagration's secretary and apparently became a lifelong enemy of Miloradovich. Grech easily refuted "factual evidence" and could have escaped unharmed, but Miloradovich brought his belated revenge down on Grech, inflicting on him a full police and court inquiry that dragged on until 1828. Miloradovich probably did not realise that the whole case was set up by Aleksey Arakcheyev and Mikhail Magnitsky to unseat Alexander Golitsyn.

The lifestyle of the "bizarre administrator" was just as bizarre. Miloradovich lived alone in a luxurious apartment "in complete disarray coupled with the most exquisite taste", without a single bedroom; "I spend the night where I feel like", he used to say. Family fortune and rewards from the tsar could not match his spending, and he sold off most of his lands and serfs. Posthumous sale of his remaining estate barely covered his debts.