Lieven D. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 2: Imperial Russia, 1689-1917

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The reign of Alexander II: a watershed?

larisa zakharova

The abolition of serfdom in 1861, under Alexander II, and the reforms which

followed (local government reforms, the judicial reform, the abolition of cor-

poral 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 his-

tory 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’.

However, mainstream scholarship still accepts the more subtle term ‘the

Great Reforms’.

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 (includ-

ing 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, ‘Revoliutsiia sverkhu’v Rossii (Moscow:Kniga, 1989); T. Emmons, ‘“Revoli-

utsiia sverkhu” v Rossii: razmyshleniia o knige N. Eidelmanaiodrugom’, in V razdum’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. Eklof and J. Bushnell (eds.), Velikie reformi v Rossii, 1856–1874(Moscow:

Izd. MGU, 1992), American version: B. Eklof, J. Bushnell and L. Zakharova (eds.), Russia’s

Great Reforms, 1855–1881 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). Both books were

based on the papers presented at an international conference at Pennsylvania University.

593

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Reform, war and revolution

‘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.

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 serf-

dom, 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 (dis-

patches 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 werecoming 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 gov-

ernment. ‘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.

3 G. Freeze, The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-reform

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 350; P. Gatrell, Znachenie velikikh reform v

ekonomike Rossii, in Zakharova, Eklof and Bushnell, Velikie reformi v Rossii, pp. 106–26.

4 M. P. Pogodin, Istoriko-politicheskie pis’ma i zapiski v prodolzhenie Krymskoi voiny (Moscow:

Izd. V. M. Frish, 1874), p. 315.

594

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The reign of Alexander II: a watershed?

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.’

But even earlier, in 1856, N. A. Miliutin, the main author of the

GreatReforms,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.

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.

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 of politics 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,l.1.

6 GARF, Fond. 722,op.1,d.230, ll. 1–22.

7 D. Field, The Reforms of the 1860s: Windows of the Russian Past. 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 osvobozhdeniia krest’iian v 1861 godu:Noveishiepodkhodyk izucheniiuistorii

Rossii i SSSR v sovremennoi zapadnoevropeiskoi istoriograﬁi (Yaroslavl: Izd. Iaroslavskogo

pedagogicheskogo universiteta, 1997), pp. 3–51.

595

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Reform, war and revolution

autocratic-monarchical system and while remaining true to his predecessors’

traditions.

Speaking in Moscow in front of the leaders of the nobility shortly after the

conclusion of the Peace of Paris in 1856, the tsar said: ‘There are rumours

that I want to announce the emancipation of the peasants. I will not say to

you that I am completely against this. We live in such an age that this has

to happen in time. I think that you agree with me. Therefore, it is much

better that this business be carried out from above, rather than from below.’

This short speech tells us much that is important in the history of the 1861

reforms: about the fact that the initiative came from Alexander II himself; that

he imposed his will on the nobility; that he recognised the necessity to forestall

the initiative of the peasantry, and that he took into account the overall trends

of the century. Subsequent events show that Alexander II did not step back

from this ﬁrst declaration about the abolition of serfdom. Some years later in

a rather didactic tone he wrote to Napoleon III: ‘the true condition of peace

in the world lies not in inactivity, which is impossible, and not in dubious

political manoeuvrings . ..,butinpractical wisdom, which is necessary in

order to reconcile history, this unshakeable behest of the past, with progress –

the law of the present and the future.

These words afﬁrm Alexander II’s

conﬁdence in the correctness of the course undertaken by him to transform

Russia, as do many of his handwritten letters to his brother, the Grand Duke

Konstantin Nikolaevich, and to his viceroy in the Caucasus and friend Prince

A. I. Bariatinskii.

In general the role of Alexander II in the Great Reforms has

not been sufﬁciently explored in the literature.

What were the preconditions of the reform? There is no single opinion on

the objective socioeconomic preconditions for the emancipation of the serfs.

Soviet historians wrote about the crisis of the feudal-serf system. The majority

of Western historians (following P. Struve and A. Gershchenkron) have come to

the conclusion that serfdom as an economic system was still fully viable on the

eveofthe1861 reforms.

This problem clearly needs further research bringing

to bear data on macro- and micro-socioeconomic development during the

8 Golosminuvshego. 1916,Nos. 5–6,p.393;L.G.Zakharova,AleksandrII, 1855 –1881:Romanovy.

Istoricheskie portrety (Moscow: Armada, 1997), pp. 400–90.

9 D. A. Miliutin, Vospominaniia, 1863–1864 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2003), p. 319.

10 Perepiska imperatora Aleksandra II s velikim kniazem Konstantinom Nikolaevichem. Dnevnik

velikogo kniazia Konstantina Nikolaevicha, 1857–1861 (Moscow: Terra, 1994); A. Rieber,

The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii. 1857–1864 (Paris:

Rieber, 1966).

11 For sources on the historiography of the question, see P. Gatrell, ‘Znachenie velikikh

reform v ekonomicheskoi istorii Rossii’, in Zakharova, Eklof and Bushnell, Velikie reformy

v Rossii,pp.106–26.

596

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The reign of Alexander II: a watershed?

pre-reform decades. The effects of the banking crisis at the end of the 1850son

the preparation of the reforms has been convincingly and comprehensively

studied in the works of Steven Hoch.

The question of the economic goals and perceptions of the reformers them-

selves has been illuminated well in the work of Olga Crisp, A. Skerpan and

Bruce Lincoln. Economic liberalism and the recognition of the role of private

initiative in the development of the economy formed the core of their views.

In this light the assertion that the liberal bureaucracy was not aware of the

realities of the Russian situation and was only copying the experience of the

West looks highly dubious. Rather it can be said that the key reformers took

into account the experience of Europe but acted in the awareness of Russian

realities and traditions, with which they were very well acquainted. Above all

this concerns the Statutes of 19 February. For example, already at the begin-

ning of the 1840s Nikolai Miliutin and A. P. Zablotskii-Desiatovskii carried

out detailed on-the-spot studies of serf estates. With this same aim in mind,

in the summer of 1860 A.V. Golovnin was sent with Grand Duke Konstantin

Nikolaevich to the central provinces. Before he wrote his 1855 memorandum

on the emancipation of the peasants, K. D. Kavelin had direct experience with

serf-based agriculture.

On the whole, thanks primarily to the work of Bruce Lincoln, it is now

clear that a key precondition of the Great Reforms was the existence of cadres,

people who were prepared to take upon themselves the massive work of the

transformation of Russia, a project which their predecessors in the ﬁrst half

of the nineteenth century had tried to embark on but had not managed. This

stratum of progressive, educated people, united in their common views about

the forthcoming transformations and the methods for carrying them out,

began to take shape in the heart of the bureaucratic apparatus during the reign

of Nicholas I in the 1830s and especially in the 1840s. It was characterised by the

practically identical conceptions of the ‘liberal’ or ‘enlightened’ bureaucracy.

Certain ministries (state domains, internal affairs, justice and navy) and the

State Chancellery formed its core. The liberal bureaucracy was not shut off

from society: it co-operated closely with liberal public ﬁgures, academics and

12 S. Hoch, ‘Bankovskii krizis, krest’ianskaia reforma i vykupnaia operatsiia v Rossii, 1857–

1861’, in Zakharova, Eklof and Bushnell, Velikie reformy v Rossii,pp.95–105.

13 The term ‘enlightened bureaucracy’ has been accepted in the Western literature, ‘liberal

bureaucracy’ in the Russian literature. See W. B. Lincoln, In the Vanguard of Reform:

Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825–1861 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press,

1982); R. S. Wortman, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (Chicago: Chicago

University Press, 1976); L. G. Zakharova, Samoderzhavie i otmena krepostnogo prava v Rossii

1856–1861 (Moscow: Izd. MGU, 1984).

597

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Reform, war and revolution

writers. These links were maintained through personal contacts, interactions

in groups and in fashionable salons (especially the salon of Grand Duchess

Elena Pavlovna). Iu. F. Samarin, K. D. Kavelin, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, P. N.

Mel’nikov (Pecherskii), V. I. Dal’ and others were members of the bureaucracy

at different times. This collaboration of civil servants (among whom Dmitrii

and Nikolai Miliutin stood out particularly) and social and academic ﬁgures

found an outlet in the Russian Geographical Society which was set up in

1845 under the chairmanship of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich. Terence

Emmons, a leading expert on the 1861 peasant reform, is convinced that the

‘bureaucratic “third element”’, which had formed during Nicholas’s reign ‘can

undoubtedly be considered one of the preconditions of the 1860 reforms’.

Although the study of the enlightened bureaucracy in Russian historiography

has far from been exhausted, there is no doubt about the pivotal role it played

in the transformations.

Another such precondition was the institutional reforms which were carried

out in the reign of Alexander I, including the creation of ministries in which

the cadres of the future reformers were trained. It is also important to note

the signiﬁcance of the legacy of M. M. Speranskii. He put large-scale reforms

of the state system on the agenda during the reign of Alexander I and during

the subsequent reign ordered and codiﬁed legislation by producing the Com-

plete Collection of Laws (Pol’noe sobranie zakonov) and the Code of Laws of

the Russian Empire (Svod zakonov). He also did his bit in the education of

the future Tsar-liberator (for a year and half Speranskii gave the heir to the

throne lectures on law). In addition, the educational reforms in the ﬁrst half

of the nineteenth century created the institutions (universities, School of Law,

Tsarskoe Selo Lycee) from which many of the key reformers graduated.

Among the preconditions for the abolition of serfdom, the accumulated

experienceofdiscussion and decision-making regarding the peasant problemin

the ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century also played a signiﬁcant role. The Decree

of 1803 on ‘Free Agriculturalists’ and of 1842 on ‘Obligated Peasants’, which

were not binding on landowners and as a result had little effect, nevertheless

meant that ideas about emancipation linked to land-redemption and about the

unbreakable link of the peasant with the land had been afﬁrmed in legislation.

Local reforms also created models: the abolition of serfdom in the Baltic

provinces (Livonia, Kurland and Estonia) in 1816–19 and the introduction of

inventories in the south-west of the country (in Kiev, Podolia and Volhynia)

14 Emmons, ‘“Revoliutsiia sverkhu” v Rossii’, p. 380.

15 See F. A. Petrov, Rossiiskie universitety v pervoi polovine XIX veka i formirovanie sistemy

universitetskogo obrazoviniia, vols. 1–4 (Moscow: Izd. MGU, 1996–2003).

598

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

The reign of Alexander II: a watershed?

in 1847–8 were obligatory for landowners and provided two models for the

solution of the peasant problem which would be taken into account at the

time of the preparation of the abolition of serfdom. The reform of the state

peasantry, carried out by P. D. Kiselev in 1837 created the model of peasant

self-government. The materials from the Secret Committees (particularly of

1835 and 1839), which in 1856 were transferred from the II Department of the

Emperor’s Personal Chancellery to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the

preparation of the emancipation of the serfs was started, also received some

attention.

How does the legislation of 1861 relate to the preconditions of the reform

that were taking shape in the middle of the century? This is the main question

of the next section of my work.

The programme and conception of the reformers,

the legislation of 19 February 1861 and the other

Great Reforms

Terence Emmons rightly observed that ‘recently historians have begun to

pay particular attention to the interconnections among the reforms of the

1860–1870s’. The view that serfdom was the ‘cornerstone’ of the state struc-

ture (the army, laws, administration), and that it was impossible to leave them

unchanged because they simply could not function as before, has been increas-

ingly corroborated in the historiography and is virtually undisputed. However,

Emmons stresses that this is only part of the truth and in concentrating too

much attention on it we risk losing ‘sight of that “ideology” of reforms, which

usually unites all large-scale transformations in one epoch and one system’.

This important conclusion deserves close attention.

In order to analyse this question we need to consider the ideas of the

reformers, their understanding of the aims of the reforms, their views on

the interrelationships of all the transformations and the prospects for Russia’s

development. Without research into this aspect of the history of the Great

Reforms, it is impossible to appreciate their depth and scale. One must not

forgetthat the reforms were carried out by an autocratic monarchy,and that the

reformers could not clearly and openly state their ﬁnal aims in the legislation.

16 N. M. Druzhinin, Gosudarstvennye krest’iane i reforma P. D. Kiseleva (Moscow: Izd. AN

SSSR, 1946–58), vols. I and II; Also his Russkaiaderevnia na perelome 1861–1880gg. (Moscow:

Nauka, 1978); S. V. Mironenko,Samoderzhavie i reformy. Politicheskia bor’ba v Rossii v nachale

XIX v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), pp. 101–46; also his Tainye stranitsy istorii samoderzhaviia

(Moscow: Nauka, 1990), p. 238.

17 Emmons, ‘“Revoliutsiia sverkhu” v Rossii’, p. 383.

599

Reform, war and revolution

For this reason many fundamental aspects of the Statutes of 19 February 1861,

of the Zemstvo Statute of 1864 and other legislative acts have been somewhat

obscured.

Take one of the outstanding leaders of the Great Reforms, the minister

of war under Alexander II, the historian, professor and brilliant memoirist

D. A. Miliutin. In the middle of the 1880s, in retirement after the death of

Alexander II and the change of course, he wrote in his memoirs, ‘The Law

of 19 February 1861 could not have been a separate, isolated act, it was the

foundation-stone of the restructuring of the entire state system’ (my emphasis).

Miliutin considered that in order to understand ‘our state regeneration’ which

happened in the ﬁrst ten years of the reign of Alexander II, it was necessary

to examine ‘the course of the three main reforms – the peasant reform, the

zemstvo reform and the judicial reform.’

V. O. Kliuchevskii came to an even

broader conclusion about the interconnections of the reforms: ‘The peasant

reform was the starting point and at the same time the ﬁnal aim of the whole

transformation process. The process of reform had to begin with it, and all the

other reforms ﬂowed from it as inevitable consequences and were supposed to

ensure that it was carried out successfully. These reforms would ﬁnd support

and justiﬁcation in the peasant reform’s successful realisation.’

Finally, in the

contemporary research of Steven Hoch and M. D. Dolbilov the preparation of

the draft of the redemption scheme in the Editing Commissions is examined

in close connection with the work of the Banking Commission.

Apart from memoirs and letters, the ideas of the reformers are most fully

and openly revealed in the unofﬁcial chronicle of the Editing Commissions,

which prepared the codiﬁed drafts of the Statutes of 19 February. This detailed,

lively (virtually a stenographic report) record of the journals of the 409 meet-

ings which took place in the nineteen-month existence of this non-traditional

institution in the history of autocracy contains the actual words of the partici-

pants – their remarks, jokes, quarrels, and the arguments between the sides.

This chronicle was created at the initiative of the members of the Editing

18 D. A. Miliutin, Vospominaniia, 1865–1867 (Moscow: Rosspen, 2005), p. 202.

19 V. O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia v deviati tomakh, vol. V (Moscow: Sotsekgiz, 1989), p. 430.

20 M. D. Dolbilov, ‘Proekty vykupnoi operatsii 1857–1861 gg. K otsenke tvorchestva refor-

matorskoi komandy’, Otechestvennaia istoria 1 (2000): 15–33; Hoch, ‘Bankovskii Krizis’,

pp. 95–105.

21 Osvobozhdeniekrest’ian v tsartstvovanieimperatora Alexandra II. Khronika deiatel’nosti Redak-

tsionnykh komissii po krest’ianskomu delu N. P. Sememova (henceforth Khronika H. P. Semen-

ova) (St Petersburg: 1889–92), vols. I–III. The preparation of the peasant reform in the

Editing Commissions has been analysed in the following works: D. Field, The End of Serf-

dom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1855–1861 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1976); Zakharova, Samoderzhavie i otmena krepostnogo prava.

600

The reign of Alexander II: a watershed?

Commissions, who recognised the scale of the tasks that lay before them and

their responsibility ‘in the eyes of the people’, to ‘the public’ and the nobility

of Russia, and in the face of Europe.

The chairman and members of the Editing Commissions often stated that

although currently engaged in the transformation of the private serfs’ world

they were concerned with the fate of all categories of peasants – that is state

peasants, appanage peasants and others, who exceeded the numbers of serfs

(the peasantry as a whole made up 80 per cent of the population). V. A.

Cherkasskii declared that the drafts of the Editing Commissions signiﬁed ‘a

general revolution’ in land relations. The Chairman of the Commission Ia. I.

Rostovstev formulated the task even more broadly: ‘It is our duty to sort out

all the questions concerning the peasantry, because the statute on the eman-

cipation of the serfs must change our entire Code of Laws.’

N. A. Miliutin,

straight after his dismissal on 2 May 1861, wrote to Cherkasskii expressing his

concern about the fate of the peasant-reform initiative: ‘Now there is no longer

that same internal mechanism which led inevitably to the decisive break – there

are no Editing Commissions, which set the reform on its way’ (my empha-

sis).

In general Rostovtsev considered that ‘the creation of the Russian narod

(people, nation) began in 1859’.

Here it is worth remembering the task that

Speranskii laid down in his list of not yet completed projects at the beginning

of the nineteenth century: ‘To create our own nation [of free people – L.Z.], in

order to then give it a form of government.’

The ‘General Memorandum Covering the Drafts of the Editing Commis-

sions’, written by Samarin and signed by twenty-three members of the Com-

missions at the last meeting on 10 October 1860, revealed the concept under-

lying the legislation. These men saw Russia as a special case because it was

possible to decide the question of the abolition of serfdom and the future

arrangement of land relations in one legislative act – through peasant redemp-

tion of plots and the preservation of a signiﬁcant portion of gentry, that is,

noble, landholding. They noted:

In other states governments followed this path in several stages, and so to

speak groped their way because such a reform had never been experienced

before in practice, and at the beginning it was impossible to envisage how

22 Khronika N. P. Semenova, vol. III, part 1,pp.487, 119, 183, 273.

23 Khronika N. P. Semenova, vol. III, part 1,pp.487, 208.

24 RGIA, Fond 869,op.1,d.1149,l.246.

25 M. Borodkin, Istoriia Finliandii. Vremia imperatora Alexandra II (St Petersburg, 1908), p.

152.

26 M. M. Speranskii, Proekty i zapiski (Moscow and Leningrad: Izd. AN SSSR, 1961). M. M.

Speranskii, Zapiski ‘O korennykh zakonakh gosudarstva’ (1802).

601