jul 1, 1833 - Tsar's letter

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öur common obligation consists in this: that the education of the people be conducted, according tot eh Supreme intention of our August Monarch, in the joint spirit of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationhood." This trio of interdependent values to which Russians would henceforth be expected to subcribed was formulated in direct rebuttal to the familiar French revolutionary slogan of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity". Nationhood would function as ä worthy tool of the government" and as än ideological weapon in support of serfdom and autocracy,"suppressing the lower classes and upholding the absolute authority of the Tsar. The Russian nation was conceived in entirely dynastic and religiious terms, the tsar's autocracy or absolute monarchy being related to Orthodoxy as "the ultimate link between the power of man and the power of God."

One of the cornerstones of Official Nationalism was teh creation of a national mythology, a process not unlike what poet Adam Mickiewicz did for Poland with his literary ballads. The creation of myths and legends about an imagined past oculd help create and support a new kind of national present.

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