The Holy Places.
when Napoleon III. obtained for the Roman Catholics certain privileges with regard to the Holy Places in Palestine. At the same time Austria intervened in Montenegrin affairs and induced the sultan to withdraw his troops from the principality. In these two incidents the tsar perceived a diminution of Russian prestige and influence in Turkey, and Prince Menshikov was sent on a special mission to Constantinople to obtain reparation in the form of a treaty which should guarantee the rights of the Orthodox Church with regard to the Holy Places and confirm the protectorate of Russia over the Orthodox rayahs, established by the treaties of Kainarji, Bucharest and Adrianople. The resistance of the sultan, supported by Great Britain and France, led to the
The Crimean War.
Crimean War, which was terminated by the taking of Sevastopol (September 1855) and the treaty of Paris (March 30, 1856). By that important document Russia reluctantly consented to a strict limitation of her armaments in the Black Sea, to withdrawal from the mouths of the Danube by the retrocession of Bessarabia which she had annexed in 1812, and finally to a renunciation of all special rights of intervention between the sultan and his Christian subjects. Nicholas did not live to experience this humiliation. He had died at St Petersburg on the 2nd of March 1855 and had been succeeded by his eldest son, Alexander II.
The first decade of Alexander's reign is commonly known in Russia as “the epoch of the great reforms,” and may be described
Alexander II., 1855-81.
as a violent reaction against the political and intellectual stagnation of the preceding period. The repressive system of Nicholas, in which all other public interests were sacrificed to that of making Russia a great military power, the guardian of order in Europe and the predominant factor in the Eastern Question, had been tried and found wanting. Ending in a military disaster and a diplomatic humiliation, it had failed to attain even the narrow object for which it had been created. This was clearly perceived and keenly felt by the educated classes, and as soon as the strong hand of the uncompromising autocrat was withdrawn, they clamoured loudly for radical changes in the aims and methods of their rulers. Russia must adopt, it was said, those enlightened principles and liberal institutions which made the Western nations superior to her not only in the arts of peace but even in the art of War; only by imitating her rivals could she hope to overtake and surpass them in the race of progress. On that subject there was wonderful unanimity, and the few persons who could not join in the chorus had the prudence to remain silent. For the first time in the history of Russia public opinion in the modern sense became a power in the state and influenced strongly the policy of the government. Though the young emperor was of too phlegmatic a temperament to be carried away by the prevailing excitement and of too practical a turn of mind to adopt wholesale the doctrinaire theories of his self-constituted, irresponsible advisers, he recognized that great administrative and economic changes were required, and after a short period of hesitation he entered on a series of drastic reforms, of which the most important were the emancipation of the serfs, the thorough reorganization of the judicial administration and the development of local self-government. All these undertakings, in which the humane, liberal-minded autocrat received the sympathy, support and co-operation of the more enlightened of his subjects, were successfully accomplished. The serfs were liberated entirely from the arbitrary rule of the landowners and became proprietors of the communal land; the old tribunals which could be justly described as “dens of iniquity and incompetence,” were replaced by civil and criminal law courts of the French type, in which justice was dispensed by trained jurists according to codified legislation, and from which the traditional bribery and corruption were rigidly excluded; and the administration of local affairs—roads, schools, hospitals, &c.—was entrusted to provincial and district councils freely elected by all classes of the population. In addition to these great and beneficent changes, means were taken for developing more rapidly the vast natural resources of the country, public instruction received an unprecedented impetus, a considerable amount of liberty was accorded to the press, a strong spirit of liberalism pervaded rapidly all sections of the educated classes, a new imaginative and critical literature dealing with economic, philosophical and political questions sprang into existence, and for a time the young generation fondly imagined that Russia, awakening from her traditional lethargy, was about to overtake, and soon to surpass, on the path of national progress, the older nations of western Europe.
These sanguine expectations were not fully realized. The economic and moral condition of the peasantry was little improved by freedom, and in many districts there were signs of positive impoverishment and demoralization. The local self-government institutions after a short period of feverish and not always well-directed activity, showed symptoms of organic exhaustion. The reformed tribunals, though incomparably better than their predecessors, did not give universal satisfaction. In the imperial administration, the corruption and long-established abuses which had momentarily vanished, began to reappear. Industrial enterprises did not always succeed. Education produced many unforeseen and undesirable practical results. The liberty of the press not infrequently degenerated into licence, and sane liberalism was often replaced by socialistic dreaming. In short, it became only too evident that there was no royal road to national prosperity, and that Russia, like other nations, must be content to advance slowly and laboriously along the rough path of painful experience. In these circumstances sanguine enthusiasm naturally gave way to despondency, and the reforming zeal of the government was replaced by tendencies of a decidedly reactionary kind. Partly from disappointment and nervous exhaustion, and partly from a conviction that the country required rest in order to judge the practical results of the reforms already accomplished, the tsar refrained from further initiating new legislation, and the government gave it to be understood that the epoch of the great reforms was closed.
In the younger ranks of the educated classes this state of things produced keen dissatisfaction, which soon found vent
Revolutionary propaganda.
in revolutionary agitation. At first the agitation was of an academic character and was dealt with by the press-censure; but it gradually took the form of secret associations, and the police had to interfere. There were no great, well-organized secret societies, but there were many small groups, composed chiefly of male and female students of the universities and technical schools, which worked independently for a common purpose. Finding that the walls of autocracy could not be overturned by blasts of revolutionary trumpets in the periodical press and in clandestinely printed seditious proclamations, the young enthusiasts determined to seek the support of the masses, or, as they termed it, “to go in among the people” ( idti v naròd ). Under the disguise of doctors, midwives, school teachers, governesses, factory hands or common labourers, they sought to make proselytes among the peasantry and the workmen in the industrial centres by revolutionary pamphlets and oral explanations. For a time the propaganda had very little success, because the uneducated peasants and factory workers could not understand the phraseology and abstract principles of socialism; but when the propagandists descended to a lower platform and spread rumours that the tsar had given all the land to the peasants, and was prevented by the proprietors and officials from carrying out his benevolent intentions, there was a serious danger of agrarian disorders, and energetic measures were adopted by the authorities. Wholesale arrests were made by the police, and many of the accused were imprisoned or exiled to distant provinces, some by the regular tribunals, and others by so-called “administrative procedure” without a formal trial. The activity of the police and the sufferings of the victims naturally produced intense excitement and bitterness among those who escaped arrest, and a secret organization calling itself the Executive Committee announced in its clandestinely printed organs that the functionaries who distinguished themselves in the suppression of the propaganda would be “removed.” A number of prominent officials were accordingly condemned to death by this secret terrorist tribunal, and in some cases the sentences were carried out. General Mezentsov, the head of the political police, was assassinated in broad daylight in one of the principal streets of St Petersburg, and in the provinces a good many officials of various grades shared the same fate. As these acts of terrorism had quite the opposite of the desired effect, repeated attempts were made on the life of the emperor, and at last the carefully laid plans of the conspirators were successful. On the 13th of March 1881, when returning from a military parade to the Winter Palace, Alexander II. was terribly wounded by the explosion of a bomb, and died shortly afterwards. (For details of this revolutionary movement, see Nihilism .)