Until the actual emancipation decree of 1861 the government, however secretive, enjoyed the guarded support of emerging opinion among the educated classes. After that moment tensions began to arise between the government and the pro-reform wing of the educated classes, for many of the liberals felt that the reforms did not go far enough. At the same time the pro-reform elements of society began to divide into moderate and radical wings. Herzen was highly critical of the inadequacies of the emancipation, and his views contributed to the formation of a radical camp inside Russia. Most liberals, the intelligentsia, and the liberal minority of the nobility, continued to support the government and enthusiastically plunged into the reform process, the nobles serving on local committees to implement the reforms. Moreover, the government continued with additional reforms, the next steps being the reform of the judiciary, local government, and the army.
Other factors, however, complicated the politics of the reform. In January 1861, there were a series of disturbances in Warsaw, the first such manifestations of Polish discontent since the 1830 revolt. Tsar Alexander and the ministers sent Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich to Warsaw as viceroy with the hope that he could manage a compromise that would introduce some reform into Russian Poland and defuse discontent. The attempt was a failure, and a new revolt broke out in 1863. This revolt undermined Grand Duke Konstantin’s authority in St. Petersburg, and he never again played a major role. It also created a permanent split between Herzen and the liberals, for Herzen supported the Polish effort and the liberals came out for Russian national interest. Kolokol quickly declined into insignificance. Fortunately for Russia the revolt was largely a matter of small guerilla groups operating within the countryside, and in the western Ukrainian provinces the peasants even joined the government troops against the rebels. By the end of 1864 Russian authorities had restored order in Poland, and in the meantime they even managed to decree two important measures for the rest of the Empire, judicial reform and the establishment of a new form of local government.
The new decrees established a series of local administrative boards, the zemstvos, which were to take care of roads, bridges, public schooling, health, and other matters of local concern. The innovation was that the members of the boards were to be elected. Most delegates to the zemstvos were noblemen, but the newly emancipated peasantry was also regularly represented. Liberals correctly complained that the zemstvos were too closely supervised by the bureaucracy and lacked many of the powers needed to carry out even their modest tasks. The provincial governors and the Ministry of the Interior kept a close watch on the new institutions and had the power to override their decisions. At the same time the zemstvos took on an important role in Russian life, both for the practical problems they addressed and as elected institutions. Whether the government liked it or not, they became centers of modest political activity and provided the local nobility with an outlet for their energies and the experience of political and administrative activity. The zemstvos also employed large numbers of experts from the intelligentsia, teachers, doctors, and statisticians, and this group also became a force for the politicization of the zemstvos as time went on. Ultimately the zemstvos became centers for liberal political organization.
More radical were the judicial reforms. Nicholas I had codified the laws, but the judicial system remained largely as Catherine II had left it at the end of the eighteenth century. The judiciary was not completely separated from administration, the judges lacked independence and often legal training as well, and judicial procedure still depended on written testimony. Proceedings were not public, and the judges decided cases without a jury. The 1864 decree changed all that, paradoxically giving Russia one of the most progressive judicial systems in Europe. Trials were henceforth conducted in public as an adversarial trial with both a public prosecutor and a defense attorney. In the great majority of criminal cases the decisions on guilt or innocence were made by a jury. The Ministry of Justice appointed the judges, but they could not be removed except for misbehavior. Overnight, Russia acquired a legal system up to European standards and a legal profession. Trials, criminal and civil, became news and were reported in the newspapers, often at length. Unfortunately this brilliant judicial system had to enforce laws that were far from progressive in many areas from family law to commercial matters, but the many areas of ambiguity in the legislation allowed judges to reshape the law in a more modern direction. A more basic flaw in the system was the continued existence of laws allowing the state administration to issue various punishments outside the courts. The most notorious was the use of administrative exile, by which the provincial governors and the Minster of the Interior could sentence anyone they found problematic to exile (not prison) for a number of years merely by decree. Liberal publicists and zemstvo activists increasingly found themselves the target of this practice.
The other exception to the new system was the formation of a separate court system for the peasants, the township courts. These courts were to formalize the older informal village courts, with a panel of judges elected from among the peasants and a clerk (often the only literate person in the court) to record its actions. Peasants were to settle all civil cases and minor crimes in these courts, which worked not by the law of the state but by the customs of the villages orally transmitted, or simply on the basis of “conscience.” Their decisions could not be appealed to state courts. The township courts often decided cases on the basis of the reputation of the plaintiff and defendant, and the main punishment was flogging. This system kept the peasantry separate from the rest of society, conserving the village community and its values.