Between the Transit Prison and the Nobleman’s Drawing-room: Doctor Haas’s Publishing Projects in the 1840s

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the publishing projects of doctor Haas, a Moscow medical man and philanthropist, and is based on the materials of the ecclesiastical censorship archival holdings. Haas published books aimed at the reforming of convicts who went to Siberia through transit prison. ‘On the margins’ of his enlightenment activities missionary publishing projects, addressed to the educated urban society, were established. Haas could not confine himself to working with prisoners; he wanted to offer the Russian society Christian literature following the traditions of post-Tridentine spirituality. By this time, books and reading had taken shape as a specific sociocultural institute in the educated noble society, where the knowledge of French was acquired from childhood. In such circumstances Haas aimed to ensure not the influence, but the assimilation of Western (Roman Catholic) Christian texts into the Russian culture. The state ban on proselytism rendered the implementation of the most of these projects impossible. However, the institute of the ecclesiastical censorship itself did not rouse inner remonstrance in him. The opinions of Haas and of censors, governmental officials, who regulated the publishing, concerning conversion were hardly divergent. All of them assessed religious conversion positively. The censors followed the orders of the government, accepting in Haas’s publishing projects everything that was in line with state legal norms and political attitudes of those times. The censors did not contradict when the members of the Prison Committee preached Christian kindness to rude and aggressive prisoners. But Haas’s attempts to promote Catholic authors in educated circles turned out to be inacceptable.