Russia in the nineteenth century: Alexander II and Alexander III

Tsar Alexander II.
Public domain.

Alexander II (1855-81): the 'Tsar Liberator'

Alexander Nikolayevich succeeded his father during the Crimean war and the first year of his reign was taken up with military affairs. His foreign policy was, in many respects, a continuation of his father's - to suppress Polish nationalism and expand into the declining Ottoman Empire -  but after the fall of Sevastopol this ambition had to be put on hold.  He had to negotiate for peace, and the terms of the resulting treaty were unfavourable to Russia. The defeat impressed him with a profound conviction that the country needed to modernise and reform. 

Alexander's reign saw a dramatic expansion of Russia's railway network. Defeat in the Crimea exposed Russia’s lack of a railway network, with the only major line being the link between St Petersburg and Moscow (450 miles). In 1853 there were just 620 miles of railway, by 1866 there were 3,000 miles and by 1877 the mileage had trebled. The railways served a dual military and economic purpose. They enabled men and military hardware to be delivered to the field of conflict and they speeded up the transport of goods.

The emancipation of the serfs: In March 1856 he told the nobility of Moscow,

it is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until the serfs begin to liberate themselves from below.

However, the bulk of the landowning class was determined to give the freed peasants as little as possible. 

The emancipation settlement, proclaimed on 19 February (3 March NS) 1861, was therefore a compromise, but one particularly aimed at winning over the landlords. 

1. Peasants were granted their existing allotments and no longer owed labour duties or services. Legally, they were now free.
2. The government compensated the landlords by paying them eighty per cent of the capital value of the land they were surrendering to the peasants. The peasants then had to pay twenty per cent of the capital value of their allotments to the landlord and the rest to the state over a period of forty-nine years. 

This meant that emancipation was not, in practice, a good deal for the peasants. 

1. From 1863, they were bound to 'temporary obligation', which meant that they had to continue providing their old dues and services until they had redeemed the value of their allotments. This could take many years. 
2. On the other hand, if they wished to be free of these obligations, they could receive 'beggars' holdings', which were very small and often less than the land they had had for their own use when they were serfs. Only half a million peasants, or five per cent of the total peasant population, most of them from the fertile 'black earth' provinces of the south, accepted this offer, and many of those who did so were forced to return to the estates of the landowners in search of paid labour. 

Emancipation therefore fell short of the hopes of the idealists, leaving many peasants economically worse off than when they had been serfs. 

Grigory Myasoyedov,
 Peasants Reading the Emancipation Manifesto (1873)
Public domain.

Further reforms: Other measures followed the emancipation. Local assemblies (zemstva) were introduced in 1864. They were elected by the nobility, urban dwellers and peasants under a voting system based on property qualification. The zemstva were empowered to levy taxes and to spend their funds on schools, public health, roads, and other social services. This meant the creation of new posts that were filled by professional people. More than half were teachers, who presided over a remarkable expansion of primary education. The remainder were largely medical professionals and administrators. On the other hand, local government lacked the powers and finance it needed to do its job properly. 

Russia in the nineteenth century: Alexander I and Nicholas I

Alexander I of Russia,
by George Dawe
Public domain.

The extent of the country 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Russia was geographically the world’s most extensive country and its empire was expanding: Finland in 1809, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1815. In 1800 Georgia was annexed. In 1859 the rest of the Caucasus was conquered and the Chechen hero Imam Shamil captured. In 1860 the Amur and Maritime provinces were acquired from China, and Turkestan from Persia in 1875. Turkmenistan was annexed in 1881. The Pacific port of Vladivostok was founded in 1860. The only territory lost was Alaska, which was sold to the United States in 1867 for $8 million.

The economy 

This vast area was sparsely populated with only two major cities, St Petersburg and Moscow, but the population grew from 68 million in 1850 to 124 million in 1897 and nearly 170 million in 1914 (compare with just under 146 million in 2019). An estimated 45 per cent of the male population were serfs.

Agriculture remained primitive with the three-field system still the norm, though Russia was exporting grain to pay for the manufactures she needed. The Russian iron-smelting industry dated from the eighteenth century. The second major industry was cotton-spinning.

Autocracy and repression 

Russia was officially an autocracy headed by a tsar who ruled by divine right. There was no tradition of opposition or protest. 

Alexander I (1801-25)

Alexander came to the throne following his father's murder, and he could never rid himself of his guilt by association. His reign was beset by a contradiction he never resolved. He had imbibed his grandmother's Enlightenment principles, and carried on her educational reforms. He believed in liberty for all social classes, but he was never clear how this could work in a country with such a huge serf population. In order to carry out any reforms and over-ride vested interests, he needed to retain his autocratic powers. 

Alexander and Napoleon: His reign was dominated by the figure of Napoleon. The two men were similar in age and came to power at about the same time. Both combined the language of Enlightenment rationalism, while ruling autocratically. Alexander was to prove Napoleon’s nemesis. He saw the French emperor as both ‘the transcendent talent’ and ‘the infernal genius of his time’. 

Catherine II ('the Great')

Catherine, by J. B. Lampi, 1780s
Kunsthistorisches Museum
Public domain

The century of the empresses

Russia in the eighteenth century saw four reigning empresses. This was made possible because of a degree of Peter the Great in February 1722 which overturned the traditional laws of succession and decreed that the tsar would have absolute right to choose his successor. The crown thus became a piece of personal property that he could dispose of at will. 

Catherine I: In 1724 Peter signed a decree bequeathing the crown to his second wife, Catherine, a Lithuanian of very obscure origins, who was then crowned in the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow. But later in the year Peter learned of her affair with the court chamberlain. He was executed and Peter tore up the succession decree. He died in January 1725, without naming his successor. Catherine was then proclaimed empress. She died in 1727 and was succeeded by Peter’s grandson, Peter II, who died without naming a successor in 1730. 

Anna: The Supreme Privy Council offered the throne to Peter the Great’s niece, Anna Ivanovna, a childless widow, who became the first female sovereign to rule in fact as well as in name. She died in 1740.

Elizabeth: After a complicated transition period, in which the unfortunate  child tsar Ivan VI was overthrown and then imprisoned for life, Peter the Great’s daughter, Elizabeth seized power in November 1741. 

A year later she named as her heir her nephew, Peter the Great’s grandson, Duke Peter of Holstein. She brought him to Russia, made him convert from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy and began to search for a bride for him. Her choice fell on his second cousin, a German princess Sophie Auguste Fredericke, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst. 

Grand Duke Peter,
later Tsar Peter III.

Catherine in Russia

Sophie was born in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) in Pomerania in 1729, the daughter of the reigning prince, Christian August of Anhalt-Zerbst, who was in the service of Frederick II ('the Great'). Her mother, Joanna, was the sister of the prince-bishop of Lübeck. The marriage to Peter was promoted by Frederick, who wished to cement his relationship with Russia and to prevent an alliance between Russia and Austria.

Sophie and her mother arrived in St Petersburg in February 1744. She learned Russian quickly and was received into the Orthodox Church in June 1744 where she was given her Russian name Ekaterina Alekseyevna in honour of the Empress Catherine I. On 21 August she and Peter were married. By this time Peter had already been ill twice – first with measles and then with smallpox.

 Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseyevna
around the time of her wedding,
 by George Christoph Grooth, 1745
Hermitage Museum.
Public domain.

The court at St Petersburg was presided over by Elizabeth and her lover, Alexei Razumovsky, whom diplomats privately called ‘the night emperor’. She then took a lover eighteen years her junior, Nikita Beketov, who founded Moscow University, a newspaper and the Academy of Arts. He gradually became the real power in Russia.