The reign of Alexander II: a watershed?
LARISA ZAKHARQYA
The abolition of serfdom in 1861, under Alexander II, and the reforms which followed (local government reforms, the judicial reform, the abolition of corporal punishment, the reform of the military, public education, censorship and others), were a 'watershed', 'a turning point' in the history of Russia. This is the verdict of the reformers themselves and their opponents, people who lived at the time in Russia as well as beyond its borders, and many researchers. This theme remains crucial for historians. But in particular periods such as during the 1905 Revolution or Gorbachev's perestroika, interest in the history of Alexander II's reforms has acquired a particular topicality and political colouring. At such times instead of the already established term 'the Great Reforms', new terminology emerges particularly in the academic literature for wider audiences such as 'revolution from above', 'a revolutionary break with the past' and 'coup d'etat'.1
However, mainstream scholarship still accepts the more subtle term 'the Great Reforms'.2 If the question of the suitability of the term for designating this epoch is unlikely to evoke serious doubts and disagreements, that is not true of the issues raised in the title of this chapter as well as others (including the personal role of Alexander II in the realisation of the reforms, the interconnection among them, their subsequent fate), on which there is no consensus in the academic literature. It is sufficient to refer to contemporary Western and Russian research whose authors consider the boundary between 'the pre-reforms' of Nicholas I, 'the Great Reforms' of Alexander II and the
1 N. Ia. Eidelman,'Revoliutsiiasverkhu' vRossii (Moscow: Kniga, 1989); T. Emmons, '"Revoli- utsiiasverkhu" vRossii: razmyshleniia o knige N. Eidelmanaiodrugom',in Vrazdum'iakh o Rossii (XIX vek) (Moscow: Arkheograficheskii tsentr, 1996), pp. 365-6; B. G. Litvak, Perevorot 1861 goda v Rossii: pochemu ne realizovalas' reformatorskaia al'ternativa (Moscow: Politizdat, 1991).
2 L. G. Zakharova, B. EklofandJ. Bushnell(eds.), VelikiereformivRossii, 1856-1874 (Moscow: Izd. MGU, 1992), American version: B. Eklof, J. Bushnell and L. Zakharova (eds.), Russia's GreatReforms, 1855-1881 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). Both books were based on the papers presented at an international conference at Pennsylvania University.
'counter-reforms' of Alexander III relative and even artificial. They present the whole process of reforms as an unbroken continuum spanning the entire nineteenth century.[1] This approach contradicts the other, more traditional one, which views the epoch of the Great Reforms as delimited on the one side by the failure of the Nicholas system with the conclusion of the unsuccessful Crimean War and on the other by the tragic end of the Tsar-liberator on 1 March 1881. There is no doubt that this subject demands further attention and additional research. In this chapter, I will attempt to give my own view of the complex, contested questions that to date remain inadequately addressed in the historiography of the period.
The reasons and preconditions for the abolition of serfdom
Tsar Alexander II himself was the initiator of the transformations in Russia. The question as to what induced the autocratic monarchy to abolish serfdom, which had been its foundation-stone for centuries, has been sufficiently elucidated in the literature. The defeat in the Crimean War (1853-6), which interrupted the one-and-a-half-century-long victorious advance to the Black Sea and was incurred on home territory; the surrender of Sebastopol; the conditions of the Peace of Paris of 18 (30) March 1856, which deprived Russia of its fleet and naval bases on the Black Sea and parts of Bessarabia and shed doubt on Russia's prestige as a great power: all these things exposed the extent to which Russia was lagging behind other European countries. The outdated equipment and system of recruitment for the army, the absence of a railway network and telegraph communications with the south of the country (dispatches from military leaders from the Crimea to the Winter Palace took seven and a half days by courier, whereas telegraph communications about the siege of Sebastopol were coming from Paris, the enemy capital) as well as many other indicators of the country's backwardness left little doubt as to the need for change. 'Sevastopol had an impact on stultified minds.' This pithy expression of V O. Kliuchevskii referred to every layer of Russian society, including the government. 'The former system had outlived its time' - this was the judgement of one of the former apologists of this system, the historian M. P. Pogodin.[2]
Alexander II, who ascended to the throne on 19 February 1855 inherited a difficult legacy.
Later, soon after the abolition of serfdom, the minister of finance M. Kh. Reutern wrote in a report to the tsar: 'If the government after the Crimean War had wished to return to the traditions of the past, it would have encountered insurmountable obstacles, if not openly, then at the very least in the form of passive opposition, which over time may even have shaken the loyalty of the people - the broad foundation, on which the monarchical principle is based in Russia.'5 But even earlier, in 1856, N. A. Miliutin, the main author of the Great Reforms, acknowledged in a memorandum that the further preservation of serfdom and continued delay of the reforms could lead to an uprising of the peasantry within fifteen years.6 The explanation for the abolition of serfdom as a response to the rise in peasant disturbances, which dominated Soviet historiography, has now been superseded. In the Western literature, the concept of 'a revolutionary situation' and of the decisive role played by actions taken by the peasantry, which supposedly forced the government to undertake reforms, has been convincingly criticised in the work of Daniel Field, Terence Emmons and Dietrich Beyrau, all of whom spent time at Moscow University under P. A. Zaionchkovskii in the 1960s and 1970s.7
Alexander II embarked on the emancipation reforms not because he was a reformer in principle but as a military man who recognised the lessons of the Crimean War, and as an emperor for whom the prestige and greatness of the state took precedence over everything. Particular aspects of his character played a significant role, including his kindness, warmth and receptivity to humane ideas and the effects of his education under the guidance of V A. Zhukovskii. A. F. Tiutcheva aptly defined this characteristic in Alexander II's nature: 'The instinct of progress was in his heart.' Not a reformer by calling or temperament, Alexander II became a reformer in response to the demands of the time. His character, upbringing and world outlook equipped him with a sufficient understanding of the given situation to take non-traditional decisions. He lacked fanaticism or a rigid conception ofpolitics and this allowed him to pursue new and radical paths, though still within the framework of the
5 RGIA, Fond 560, op. 14, d. 284,1.1.
6 GARF, Fond. 722, op. 1, d. 230, ll. 1-22.
7 D. Field, TheReforms ofthe 1860s: Windows ofthe RussianPast. Essays on Soviet Historiography since Stalin (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1978), pp. 89-104; T. Emmons, 'The Peasant and Emancipation', in W. Vucinich, The Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968), pp. 41-71; D. Beyrau, Agrarnaia struktura i krest'iianskii protest:k usloviiam osvobozhdeniiakrest'iianv 1861 godu: Noveishie podkhodykizucheniiu istorii Rossii i SSSR v sovremennoi zapadnoevropeiskoi istoriografii (Yaroslavclass="underline" Izd. Iaroslavskogo pedagogicheskogo universiteta, 1997), pp. 3-51.
autocratic-monarchical system and while remaining true to his predecessors' traditions.
1
G. Freeze,
2
M. P. Pogodin,