Russia: Tsarist Autocracy {1}
In the middle of the 19th century, Russia differed fundamentally from Western Europe. The great movements that had shaped the outlook of the modern west—Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution—had barely penetrated Russia. Autocracy, buttressed by the Orthodox Church, reigned supreme; the small and insignificant middle class did not possess the dynamic, critical, and individualistic spirit that characterized the Western bourgeoisie, and the vast majority of the people were illiterate serfs.
In the middle of the 19th century, Russia differed fundamentally from Western Europe. The great movements that had shaped the outlook of the modern west—Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution—had barely penetrated Russia. Autocracy, buttressed by the Orthodox Church, reigned supreme; the small and insignificant middle class did not possess the dynamic, critical, and individualistic spirit that characterized the Western bourgeoisie, and the vast majority of the people were illiterate serfs.
Following the reforms of Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century, Russia turned its gaze to the West, seeking to modernize to a level comparable to major powers such as France and England. Despite the varied success of Peter's reforms, Russia managed to present itself as a major player on the world stage, particularly due to its numerous military victories against Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Additionally, however, these reforms awakened Russia to a new era of social and cultural improvements: in the following century, Russia reformed education and developed its own voice in artistic, and most importantly, literary spheres. By the early nineteenth century, Russia began to produce numerous poets and authors whose names would be known throughout both the country itself, and the world. Simultaneously however, Russia began to develop a voice of social awareness. Following the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s, educated soldiers received the opportunity to interact with French and German philosophers, bringing concepts of constitutional monarchies, and generally, the French revolutionary ideologies of liberty and social equality, back with them to Russia. These educated military figures began contemplating a Russian constitutional government, and in December of 1825, led a rebellion against the new Tsar, Nicholas I, in St. Petersburg's Senate Square. Although the rebellion – later referred to as the Decembrist Revolt – was brutally suppressed, it marked a significant shift in the mentality of the educated Russian elite. Eventually furthered by the 1848 Revolutions throughout Western Europe, this group – known as the intelligentsia – would contemplate Russia's socio-political future for the remainder of the century in their outspoken writings and revolutionary 11 activities. Beginning with the Slavophile and Westernizing debates of the 1830s, the Russian intelligentsia took Russia on a journey through a myriad of social ideologies including socialism, nihilism, anarchism, and eventually, Marxism.2
After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, some returning Russian officers, asking why Russia could not share the civilized life they had seen in Western Europe, turned revolutionary. The unsuccessful Decembrist uprising in 1825, during the brief interlude between the death of Alexander I (1801 – 1825) and the accession of Nicholas I (1825 – 1855), was the effort of a small group of conspirators demanding a constitution. Fear of revolution determined the character of the reign of Nicholas I and of tsarist governments thereafter.
Aware of the subversive influence of foreign ideas, Nicholas decreed an ideology of Russian superiority, called Official Nationality. The Russian people were taught to believe that the Orthodox creed of the Russian church, the autocratic rule of the tsar, and Russia’s Slavic culture made the Russian Empire superior to the West. To enforce this contrived invincibility, Nicholas I created the Third Section, a secret agency of police spied, and controlled access to his country from Europe. Indeed, toward the end of his reign, he drew a virtual iron curtain to keep out dangerous influence. His ideal was a monolithic country, run like an army by a vigorous administration centered on the monarch; all Russians were to obey his wise and fatherly commands. Nicholas’s successor, Alexander II (1855 – 1881), was determined to preserve autocratic rule. However, he wanted Russia to achieve what had made Western Europe strong; the energetic support and fee enterprise of its citizens. Whether stimulating popular initiative was possible without undermining autocracy was the key puzzle for him and for his successors to the end of the tsarist regime.
Alexander’s boldest reforms included the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. They were liberated from bondage to the nobility and given land of their own, but not individual freedom. They remained tied to their village and to their households, which owned the land collectively. Emancipation did not transform the peasants into enterprising and loyal citizens. For the non-peasant minority, a package of other reforms brought new opportunities: limited self-government for selected rural areas and urban settlements, an independent judiciary, trial by jury, and the introduction of a profession novel to Russians: the practice of law.
Meanwhile, Alexander reopened the borders, allowing closer ties with Europe and westernizing Russian society. The rising class of businesspeople and professional experts looked west and conformed to Western middle-class standards. There was some relaxation in the repression of non-Russian minorities. Railroads were constructed, which facilitated agricultural exports and permitted the import of Western goods and capital. For some years, the economy boomed.
After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, some returning Russian officers, asking why Russia could not share the civilized life they had seen in Western Europe, turned revolutionary. The unsuccessful Decembrist uprising in 1825, during the brief interlude between the death of Alexander I (1801 – 1825) and the accession of Nicholas I (1825 – 1855), was the effort of a small group of conspirators demanding a constitution. Fear of revolution determined the character of the reign of Nicholas I and of tsarist governments thereafter.
Aware of the subversive influence of foreign ideas, Nicholas decreed an ideology of Russian superiority, called Official Nationality. The Russian people were taught to believe that the Orthodox creed of the Russian church, the autocratic rule of the tsar, and Russia’s Slavic culture made the Russian Empire superior to the West. To enforce this contrived invincibility, Nicholas I created the Third Section, a secret agency of police spied, and controlled access to his country from Europe. Indeed, toward the end of his reign, he drew a virtual iron curtain to keep out dangerous influence. His ideal was a monolithic country, run like an army by a vigorous administration centered on the monarch; all Russians were to obey his wise and fatherly commands. Nicholas’s successor, Alexander II (1855 – 1881), was determined to preserve autocratic rule. However, he wanted Russia to achieve what had made Western Europe strong; the energetic support and fee enterprise of its citizens. Whether stimulating popular initiative was possible without undermining autocracy was the key puzzle for him and for his successors to the end of the tsarist regime.
Alexander’s boldest reforms included the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. They were liberated from bondage to the nobility and given land of their own, but not individual freedom. They remained tied to their village and to their households, which owned the land collectively. Emancipation did not transform the peasants into enterprising and loyal citizens. For the non-peasant minority, a package of other reforms brought new opportunities: limited self-government for selected rural areas and urban settlements, an independent judiciary, trial by jury, and the introduction of a profession novel to Russians: the practice of law.
Meanwhile, Alexander reopened the borders, allowing closer ties with Europe and westernizing Russian society. The rising class of businesspeople and professional experts looked west and conformed to Western middle-class standards. There was some relaxation in the repression of non-Russian minorities. Railroads were constructed, which facilitated agricultural exports and permitted the import of Western goods and capital. For some years, the economy boomed.
More significant in the long run was the flowering of Russian thought and literature among the intelligentsia. These were educated Russians whose minds were shaped by Western schooling and travel, yet who still were prompted by the “Russian soul.” They quarreled with fierce sincerity over whether Russia should pursue superiority by imitating the West or by cultivating its own Slavic genius, possibly through a Pan-Slavic movement. Pan-Slavism, which glorified the solidarity of Russians with other Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, was a popular cause. Even more than the tsars, the intelligentsia hoped for a glorious Russia that would outshine the West.
Yet tsarist autocracy undercut their hopes. The tsar would not permit open discussion likely to provoke rebellion. Liberals advocating gradual change were thwarted by censorship and the police. The 1860’s saw the rise of self-righteous fanatics who were ready to match the chicanery of the police and foment social revolution. By the late 1870’s, they organized themselves into a secret terrorist organization. In 1881, they assassinated the tsar. The era of reforms ended.
The next tsar, Alexander III (1881 – 1894), a firm if unimaginative ruler, returned to the repressive policies of Nicholas I. In defense against the revolutionaries, he perfected the police state, even enlisting anti-Semitism in its cause. He updated autocracy and stifled dissent but also promoted economic development. Russia had relied too heavily on foreign loans and goods; it had to build up its own resources. It also needed more railroads to bind its huge empire together. So in 1891 the tsar ordered the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Soon afterward, Minister of Finance Sergei Witte used railroad expansion to boost heavy industry and industrialization generally.
Yet forced industrialization also brought perils. It propelled the country into alien and often hated ways of life and created a discontented new class of workers. In addition, it promoted literacy and contact with Western Europe and thus helped to increase political agitation among the professional classes, intelligentsia, workers, peasants, and subject nationalities. Indispensable for national self-assertion and survival, industrialization strained the country’s fragile unity.
The first jolt, the revolution of 1905, followed Russia’s defeat by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War. Fortunately for Nicholas II (1894 – 1917), his soldiers stayed loyal. The autocracy survived, although, as a concession to the revolution, it was now saddled with a parliament, called the Imperial Duma. The new regime, inwardly rejected by Nicholas II, started auspiciously. Under its freedoms, Russian art and literature flourished and the economy progressed. Agrarian reforms introduced the incentives of private property and individual enterprise in the villages. The supporters of the new constitutional experiment hoped for a liberal Russia at last, but in vain.
How did Russia’s autocracy differ from the reaction of other European nations to the rise of liberalism and nationalism?
[1] Excerpted from Marvin Perry, Western Civilization, 7th edition, (Wadsworth, Cengage Learning 2008) pgs. 376 - 378
Yet tsarist autocracy undercut their hopes. The tsar would not permit open discussion likely to provoke rebellion. Liberals advocating gradual change were thwarted by censorship and the police. The 1860’s saw the rise of self-righteous fanatics who were ready to match the chicanery of the police and foment social revolution. By the late 1870’s, they organized themselves into a secret terrorist organization. In 1881, they assassinated the tsar. The era of reforms ended.
The next tsar, Alexander III (1881 – 1894), a firm if unimaginative ruler, returned to the repressive policies of Nicholas I. In defense against the revolutionaries, he perfected the police state, even enlisting anti-Semitism in its cause. He updated autocracy and stifled dissent but also promoted economic development. Russia had relied too heavily on foreign loans and goods; it had to build up its own resources. It also needed more railroads to bind its huge empire together. So in 1891 the tsar ordered the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Soon afterward, Minister of Finance Sergei Witte used railroad expansion to boost heavy industry and industrialization generally.
Yet forced industrialization also brought perils. It propelled the country into alien and often hated ways of life and created a discontented new class of workers. In addition, it promoted literacy and contact with Western Europe and thus helped to increase political agitation among the professional classes, intelligentsia, workers, peasants, and subject nationalities. Indispensable for national self-assertion and survival, industrialization strained the country’s fragile unity.
The first jolt, the revolution of 1905, followed Russia’s defeat by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War. Fortunately for Nicholas II (1894 – 1917), his soldiers stayed loyal. The autocracy survived, although, as a concession to the revolution, it was now saddled with a parliament, called the Imperial Duma. The new regime, inwardly rejected by Nicholas II, started auspiciously. Under its freedoms, Russian art and literature flourished and the economy progressed. Agrarian reforms introduced the incentives of private property and individual enterprise in the villages. The supporters of the new constitutional experiment hoped for a liberal Russia at last, but in vain.
How did Russia’s autocracy differ from the reaction of other European nations to the rise of liberalism and nationalism?
[1] Excerpted from Marvin Perry, Western Civilization, 7th edition, (Wadsworth, Cengage Learning 2008) pgs. 376 - 378