At first the initiative for reform came from the government. During the Crimean War, however, Herzen and other émigré radicals had raised their voices, and inside the country even conservatives among the gentry and intelligentsia began to circulate memoranda proposing reforms of various kinds. None of this had any effect, as these groups were too small and had little echo even among the educated sectors of the social elite. The situation changed with the Peace of Paris in March 1856, which put an end to the war. The war had revealed that the unreformed autocracy was no longer capable of maintaining Russia’s position in the world, and would have to develop a more modern economy. Serfdom was the main obstacle. Soon after the signing of the peace, Tsar Alexander spoke to the assembled gentry of the province of Moscow (that is, to much of the top aristocracy) in his first major public pronouncement. The mere fact of such a pronouncement was unusual and the content even more so. He warned the nobles that the peasant question now had to be addressed. It was much better, he told them, that it be resolved from above than from below. In other words, the state had to reform the countryside or the nobles would face a peasant revolt.
The virtually simultaneous relaxation of censorship meant that the issues raised in the tsar’s speech as well as other pressing concerns could now be addressed, albeit cautiously. Debate appeared in unexpected places such as the publications of the Ministry of the Navy, headed by the tsar’s more liberal brother, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich. While Alexander’s government, or at least part of it, was convinced of the need for reform, every step met opposition from conservatives within the corridors of power and also from the gentry, who now could express their views publicly and still had access to the court and the important ministries. The first committee appointed by the tsar in January 1857, to deal with the peasant questions was thus secret. The reformers in the government showed their hand only at the end of the year, when the Ministry of the Interior sent a memorandum to one of the provincial governors ordering him to require the local gentry to form committees to provide suggestions on the emancipation of the serfs, its desirability, and paths to achieve it. The Ministry published the memorandum in its official printed register, and now the gentry and the educated part of the population knew what was afoot.
Not surprisingly most noblemen were against the idea of emancipation, and hoped that if it did come, all the land would remain in the hands of the gentry. This would be a landless emancipation like that earlier in the Baltic provinces, and peasants would have to rent their land from the gentry or go to work as day laborers. The government reformers did not like this idea, for they feared that it would produce a vast landless proletariat that would be the source of endless revolts and upheavals. Instead the committee, blandly called the “Editorial Committee,” proposed that the peasants be freed with land, for which they would have to pay the landowners, and furthermore they would have to pass through a period of temporary obligation to the owners of the estates. The redemption payments would be spread over sixty years, the state giving the gentry a lump sum that the peasants were to repay to the treasury. This plan evoked intense hostility among the gentry, who thought it would undermine their livelihood and their place in Russian society. Throughout 1859–60 battles raged in the committee, in government ministries, and the court itself.
The reformers were a powerful and well-connected group. Much of the responsibility fell on the Ministry of the Interior, whose vice-minister was Nikolai Miliutin. Miliutin’s brother Dmitrii, a professor at the General Staff Academy and adjutant to the Minister of War, had come to the attention of Grand Dutchess Elena Pavlovna, and in the 1850s attended her “Thursdays,” the weekly gathering of her friends and allies. In the new atmosphere, the Grand Dutchess’s salon added political reform to its agenda, and Nikolai Miliutin, a well-educated and progressive younger official, joined his brother in the Grand Dutchess’s good graces. Both Miliutins had strong reformist views, and Nikolai was appointed to the Editorial Committee on its inception. In the committee Nikolai Miliutin could count on the support of its chairman, General Iakov Rostovtsev, an officer whose career had not been in the field but in the role of adjutant to Tsar Nicholas and who had been close to Alexander in his years as heir to the throne. During the Crimean War he rather unexpectedly became a strong reformer and exploited his access to the new tsar to the fullest. Grand Duchess Elena also monitored the progress of reform, and her network of informants at the palace insured that the reformers knew who was trying to influence the tsar and in what direction. Dmitrii Miliutin, after several years in the Caucasus, in 1860 went on to head the Ministry of War. With Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich in charge of the Navy, both military ministries as well the Minstry of the Interior were in the reform camp. The reformers were a tightly interconnected group, well educated, highly placed, and ready for action.
Figure 10. Alexander II and his dog Milord.
At the beginning of 1860 General Rostovtsev died suddenly, but the committee continued its work moving on toward a reformist solution. Then in September the tsar appointed his brother Konstantin to chair the committee, and by that act ensured an outcome favorable to emancipation. The result was a swift conclusion to support the original idea of emancipation with land for the peasants on the basis of redemption payments, as the reformers had proposed two years before. The proposal went to the Council of State, the highest body of government, which debated the proposal for several weeks. On February 17, it voted against the proposal. The majority wanted more land for the gentry and the Council sent the two opinions on to the tsar, the majority against and the minority for emancipation with land for the peasants. The fate of twenty million serfs hung in the balance, for Russia was an autocracy, and the tsar had no obligation to accept the majority of the Council of State, or the minority for that matter. After two days of deliberation, Alexander II chose to accept the minority report and signed the decree of emancipation. In the tsar’s mind, disaster loomed if he went with the majority: the peasants should not be made “homeless and harmful to the landowners as well as to the state.” The government decided to wait until the beginning of Lent to announce the decree, and it was read in churches everywhere in the country beginning on March 5/17, 1861. The hope was that the Lenten atmosphere would encourage a quiet response to the decree among the people. Whatever the reason, there were only a few minor disturbances among the peasantry.
The balance of power inside the government was the only thing that really mattered, but the reformers also looked to societal support and in some sectors they found it. Early in 1856 the exiled radical Herzen realized that reform was coming in Russia and he decided to help it along. His first act was to use his base in London to begin publishing a series of essays, Voices from Russia, that provided background information and uncensored discussion of the current problems. Herzen understood that his own views were too extreme for most of his potential audience, so he found contributors who were liberals rather than radicals, even quite moderate liberals. In 1857 he began to publish a monthly newspaper, Kolokol (the Bell), which did reflect his own views, though in many cases he held his fire to avoid alienating the readers. Both the essays and Kolokol were smuggled into Russia and quickly became widely available. The Third Section acquired copies and circulated them to high officials and even to the tsar himself. Herzen’s vivid prose and clear perspective gave him popularity with many readers who did not share his particular views, his peasant socialism, and his opposition to autocracy. His was not the only voice heard, for the (at first temporary) relaxation of censorship allowed newspapers and journals to appear in increasing numbers. This new phenomenon was not only a function of change in the censorship rules, for technological innovations in printing now made daily newspapers possible for the first time in Russia. They were, to a large extent, commercial enterprises, and many of the editors learned to combine sale-ability with liberal ideas. Newspapers whose editors were critical of the authorities from a conservative point of view began to appear as well. Many topics were beyond the pale, such as the personalities and views of the tsar himself and the imperial family, but the editors were able to find ways to discuss current issues and at the same time present a mass of information on Russian life and on the affairs of the world. In the conditions of wide debate over the reforms, even a bare account of village life or a criminal trial could take on relevance to the reform process. Detailed accounts of Western politics, of English parliaments, French foreign policy, or even American presidential elections offered Russian readers regular accounts of political systems different from their own. The reformers inside the state bureaucracy were not unhappy with these developments, as the press allowed them to assess the degree of support or lack of it for their actions, although they had no intention of following suggestions from anyone outside the government. Much of their effort went to keeping the gentry and the aristocrats from influencing opinion or the reform process, as they correctly believed the nobility, high and low, to be mainly against reform. Thus the government reformers kept the government’s deliberations as secret as they could.