Russia

G

4

Alexander I

Catherine II died in 1796 and was succeeded by her son, Paul I. His increasingly despotic and unbalanced policies prompted court nobles to conspire against him, and he was murdered in 1801. Paul’s eldest son, Alexander I, then ascended to the throne and ruled until 1825. Under Alexander, Russia achieved unprecedented prestige and glory as a result of its victory over Napoleon’s invading army in 1812 and subsequent military victories in Germany and France. Russian rule was extended to much of the South Caucasus, Finland, and further regions of Poland. After the patriotic euphoria caused by the victory over Napoleon, part of the nobility increasingly resented Alexander’s failure to live up to his reputation as a reformer. Upon Alexander’s death in 1825, a group of military officers who became known as the Decembrists launched a coup to prevent Alexander’s brother Nicholas I from ascending to the throne. The Decembrists wanted a constitutional monarchy led by Alexander’s other brother, Constantine. They sought to increase civil and political rights and to end serfdom and the brutal mistreatment of the peasantry.

G

5

Nicholas I

In the end the Decembrists were easily suppressed, but the revolt had threatened Nicholas’s life and the empire’s stability. Furthermore, Polish nationalists expelled the Russian imperial authorities from Poland in 1830, although Russian troops regained Warsaw in 1831. In 1848 a wave of nationalist revolutions swept across Europe. These events persuaded Nicholas that the threat of revolution in both Europe and Russia was real. In foreign policy Nicholas responded by entering into a conservative alliance with Austria and Prussia. This alliance was intended to ensure peace and stability among the European powers and to ensure the suppression of any revolts that might occur. In 1849 Russian troops helped the Austrian emperor repress the rebellion of his Hungarian subjects.

Domestically, Nicholas’s answer to revolution was to create a state security police, the gendarmerie, and to tighten censorship. The emperor imposed stifling controls over Russian universities and cultural life, alienating part of the younger generation from the state. Nicholas’s reign also witnessed the great growth of the bureaucracy, whose incompetence and frequent corruption were immortalized by novelist Nikolay Gogol in such works as The Inspector General (1836). Nevertheless, Nicholas’s regime did have some achievements to its credit. The quality and size of the educational system increased greatly, as did the number of cultured, public-spirited, would-be reformers among the younger generation of the bureaucracy and the landowning class. When Nicholas I’s regime was discredited by defeat in the Crimean War, these men were able to lead a program of radical reforms under the emperor’s successor, Alexander II, who reigned from 1855 to 1881.

G

6

Alexander II

The Crimean War occurred partly because of Nicholas I’s miscalculations, but also because the French and British were looking for opportunities to weaken Russia, whose position in Europe and the Middle East seemed dangerously strong. In the wake of defeat, Alexander II abolished serfdom, introduced a Western-style legal system, created elected local government institutions (zemstvos), eased censorship, and radically modernized the army and the communications system. His reforms did not, however, create stability or consensus in Russia. Both the peasants and the landowning nobles believed that the land rightfully belonged to them and were dissatisfied by the emancipation settlement that had ended serfdom. Many young upper- and middle-class Russians felt that Alexander’s reforms had not gone far enough to improve the peasant’s lot, to bring Russia up to Western levels of prosperity and freedom, or to allow Russians the right to express their political opinions and to participate in government. A terrorist movement emerged in the 1870s, and the campaign of assassination of senior officials culminated in Alexander II’s murder in 1881.

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G

7

Alexander III

The increasing terrorism and social conflict in the empire’s last decades strengthened the emperors’ conviction that the empire would disintegrate into anarchy without a resolute authoritarian regime. They believed that Russia was too poor and too divided by class and ethnic differences for any form of democracy to work. In the last weeks of Alexander II’s reign, he was persuaded to introduce modest constitutional reforms that would have allowed a very limited degree of public participation in government. His son Alexander III, however, abandoned the reforms and embarked on a policy of repression when he became emperor after his father’s assassination. Alexander III curtailed the rights of the zemstvos and the universities. Civil freedoms were further infringed by emergency decrees that allowed anyone suspected of political opposition to be exiled by administrative order without recourse to the courts.

G

8

Russification

Traditionally the imperial regime had been relatively tolerant of non-Russian cultures, languages, and religions. Much of the empire’s aristocracy was of non-Russian origin, spoke French by choice, and was not Orthodox in religion. In the second half of the 19th century, and in particular under Alexander III, the regime began emphasizing its Russianness. Increasing constraints were placed on non-Russian languages and cultures. Schools began teaching exclusively in Russian, administrative bodies could use only Russian, and publication in some languages was forbidden. To a degree these limitations followed trends evident elsewhere in Europe. The policy of Russification was also a response to fears that the multiethnic empire would disintegrate unless its population was drawn more closely together in culture and language. Whatever its motives, however, the policy of Russification caused great indignation among many non-Russians. The Jews were treated especially poorly: They were forced to live in certain areas, were not permitted to enter specific professions, and sometimes fell victim to murderous attacks by local Slavic mobs (see Pogrom).

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