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3 March 2015
ALEXANDER II
Serfdom | Reform | Unrest
Tsar Liberator?
Historians generally have
moved away from the idea that
Alexander II was a genuinely
liberalising figure. Instead
Alexander is perceived as a
ruler who above all things was
seeking to preserve the
autocracy and believed that
limited reform was the way to
achieve it.
A revolutionary era?
The Russian revolution was not
contained only to the year
1917. Instead 1917 represents
just a turning point in a
revolutionary period that
began in 1861. The
emancipation of Russia’s serfs
unleashed powerful social
forces in Russia, in no small
part because the outcome of
the emancipation left most
peasants in a worse situation
than under the conditions of
serfdom
Reaction
Alexander’s reformist zeal had to
compete with a tendency among
the royal family and the aristocracy
to see reform simply as trouble.
The anti reformists began to
dominate towards the end of his
reign. believing that Russia could
only be ruled through brute force.
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Alexander and the Serfs
When Alexander II inherited the throne, mid way through
the Crimean War, it became clear to him that Russia was
backward and weak. The humiliation of the Crimean War
exposed how modernisation had given small nations like
Britain powerful advantages. Alexander came to believe that
Russia’s problems could only be resolved by reforming her
society and ending the practice of serfdom. A free peasantry
in Alexander’s eyes would hopefully become a prosperous
class, loyal to the autocracy and able to generate wealth for
Russia by owning land and developing new farming practices.
This wealth would be spent in towns and cities, fuelling
Russia’s industrial development. The alternative was to leave
matters as they were and allow poverty in the countryside to
add to Russia’s backwardness.
Opponents of reform
The nobility knew that reform would ruin them.
Emancipation would deprive them of free labour. When the
Emancipation Edict was delivered in 1861, the landlords were
compensated by the state, but the government could not
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afford to pay out without being compensated itself. Therefore
heavy indemnities (stretching over 40 years) were placed on
the peasants, leaving them free but crippled by debt. In
addition to this the landowners tended to parcel off only the
most infertile and useless land to the peasants, keeping ‘black
earth’ land for themselves.
Legal and
Government Reforms
Knowing that Russia lagged
behind Europe, many of the
country’s institutions were
reformed
• The Zemstva: Alexander
created a whole tier of local
government across Russia.
Each council or Zemstvo was
responsible for education,
public health, agronomy, roads
and sanitation and a variety of
other jobs. Centralised
autocratic government was too
remote and ineffective for this
task. Russia’s small and
growing middle class became
involved in running the
Zemstva.
• The legal system was reformed
and peasants had more rights
before the courts and rights to
land. A jury system was
introduced, making the courts
fairer.
• Dmitri Miliutin reformed the
Russian Army after Crimea. He
made conscription compulsory
for all social classes and made
sure that Russia’s officers were
properly educated.
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The nobles not only felt threatened by a newly liberated
peasantry, but by the possibility of a new middle class being
brought into government and administration. They were
aware that the middle classes were their rivals for jobs and
positions in government and often viewed them as their
inferiors.
Alexander’s reforms generated immense debate amongst
Russia’s educated and often radical thinkers. Students
particularly found the prospect of reform exciting. By the
1870s Alexander began to fear that reform had gone too far,
but by this point, expectations amongst radicals had grown
far beyond anything that was realistic.
A radical protest group Land and Liberty divided into two
groups in 1879, one branch of which formed the terrorist
group Narodnaya Volya (the People’s Will). They attempted to
assassinate Alexander twice, demanding free elections and an
end to censorship. Alexander was considering constitutional
reform in 1881 when he was finally assassinated by the group.
Some historians have speculated that Narodnaya Volya was
motivated to kill Alexander precisely because of the gradual
nature of his reforms. The revolutionaries within the group
feared that they would be unable to bring about a revolution
if reforms gradually improved Russia.
This gradual growth in prosperity and the institutions of state
might simply lead Russia on a path to modernity that would
leave the autocracy in tact.
Some in the revolutionary underground believed that the only
option was to kill the Tsar and end the reform period. The
following reaction would result in Russians becoming
radicalised and politicised and would bring real revolution
closer.
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