Russia: A History

THE period 1855–90 marks Russia’s transition from counterrevolution to revolution—from the ‘Gendarme of Europe’ to the bastion of revolutionary forces. That transition reflected the profound impact of the ‘Great Reforms’, which brought not only far-reaching changes (the emancipation of serfs and a host of other Westernizing, modernizing reforms), but also a new kind of politics and relationship between state and society. In so many respects, the epoch of reform and counter-reform encapsulated the fundamental processes at work in the history of Russia: the dangerous and unpredictable consequences of reform, the awakening of unfulfilled expectations, the unleashing of liberal and revolutionary movements, and the powerful, implosive impact of borderland minorities on politics in the central heartland.

Why Reform?

Despite its odious reputation as the bulwark of brutal reaction, the Russia of Nicholas I had incessantly, if clandestinely, pondered the prospects and process of reform. From the very first years of his reign, and partly in response to the Decembrist uprising, Nicholas I (1825–55) did not fail to discern the fundamental problems afflicting his land—from its corrupt bureaucracy to the serfdom that seemed so similar to slavery. Although the state under Nicholas recognized the need for reform, even in the case of serfdom, it had resisted taking decisive and especially public measures and, instead, contented itself primarily with cautious and (above all) secret reforms. Fear of uncontrolled social disorders, an unquestioning belief in the power and omniscience of bureaucracy, a smug assurance of Russia’s military prowess despite its markedly un-Western system and economic backwardness—all this encouraged the conceit that Russia could be a great power and maintain its traditional social and political order. That order alone seemed immune to the revolutionary bacillus that had infected the rest of Europe in 1830 and 1848; Russia’s very distinctiveness (samobytnost) seemed responsible for its unparalleled stability at home and its military power abroad.

With Nicholas’s death, however, the regime soon embarked on wide-ranging reform, including the Gordian knot of serf emancipation. To explain why the Russian state finally embarked on reform, historians have advanced a number of theories. One explanation, popular among pre-revolutionary and Western historians, emphasized the triumph of liberal humanitarian ideas within the higher ranks of state and society: imbued with Western values and culture, these élites could not fail to recognize the contradiction to their own status as serf-owners. While the influence of Western ideas can hardly be denied for some parts of the élite, it certainly did not extend to the nobility as a whole; most, in fact, vehemently opposed emancipation. Some Marxist historians, chiefly Soviet, have emphasized the economic factor:as the nobility found their estates becoming less productive, as their debts and the spectre of bankruptcy increased, the serf-owners themselves supposedly came to recognize the inefficiency of serfdom and the validity of criticism by Western liberal economists. Again, although isolated expressions of these views can be found, such sentiments were hardly prevalent among most members of the government or the nobility. A third interpretation stresses fear of peasant unrest: cognizant of the statistics on murder and the incidence of peasant rebellion (which swelled from 990 disorders in 1796–1826 to 1,799 disorders in 1826–56), nobles and bureaucrats purportedly came to realize that emancipation alone, not procrastination, could ensure social stability in the countryside. While fear certainly did grip many members of the provincial nobility, it did not figure significantly in the calculations of the high-ranking state officials who actually engineered emancipation. The latter, the emperor concluded, were indeed wont to exploit noble fears, but they themselves did not evince real concern for their own safety.

Why, then, did the regime finally take the fateful step towards emancipation? Although the factors cited above to some degree did abet the process, the key linchpin in fact was the débâcle of the Crimean War. That foreign fiasco led to domestic reconstruction, for it exposed the real backwardness and weakness of the old servile order and all that it connoted. The Crimean War not only exacted a high cost in lives, resources, and prestige, but also vitiated the main impediment to reform—the belief that the existing order was consonant with stability and power. As a liberal Slavophile Iurii Samarin wrote in 1856: ‘We were vanquished not by the foreign armies of the Western alliances, but by our own internal weaknesses’. The same year a liberal Westernizer Boris Chicherin wrote that, without the abolition of serfdom, ‘no questions can be resolved—whether political, administrative, or social’. Even before the war had been irrevocably lost, conservatives as well as liberals had come to much the same conclusion.

Emancipation of the Serfs

The critical question became not whether, but how the serfs were to be emancipated. In part that ‘how’ concerned the terms of emancipation—whether they would receive land (in what quantities and at what price) and whether they would become full-fledged citizens. These two issues became the central focus of the reform debates inside and outside the government. But emancipation also raised a further question: how was reform to be designed and implemented, what indeed were to be the politics of reform? Was the state simply to promulgate emancipation (perhaps with the assistance of secret committees, to use the previous tsar’s methods) or was society itself somehow to be involved in this process? The politics of reform were as important as the terms of emancipation, for they were fraught with long-term implications about the relationship between state and society and, especially the status and role of old élites.

The ‘reform party’ was a coalition of different interests with a common objective. It was, in any event, not the mere handiwork of a reformist monarch. Although the traditional historiography inclined to personalize politics and ascribe much to the emperor himself, and although Alexander II (1855–81) acquired an official accolade as ‘Tsar-Liberator’, he was in fact highly conservative and a deeply ambivalent reformer. Far more important was the constellation of what W. Bruce Lincoln has called the ‘enlightened bureaucrats’, the gosudarstvenniki (state servitors) who identified more with the interests of the state than those of their own noble estate. Indispensable because of their superior education and practical experience, the enlightened bureaucrats (such as Nikolai Miliutin and Ia. S. Solovev) played a critical role in the reform process. Another influential party of reformers was to be found in the military; generals such as Mikhail Gorchakov concurred that ‘the first thing is to emancipate the serfs, because that is the evil which binds together all the things that are evil in Russia’. And some members of the imperial family (especially the tsar’s brother, Konstantin, and his aunt Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna) were also instrumental in the reform process. Although the reformers encountered significant resistance (above all, from the nobility, certain segments of the bureaucratic élites, and the police), the catastrophe in the Crimea had made the argument for reform, including emancipation, irresistible.

The process of emancipation, however, was by no means unilinear: it was only gradually, through trial and error, that the regime finally formulated the specific terms of the Emancipation Statutes in 1861. In his first year, in fact, Alexander deliberately tried to discourage the wild expectations that traditionally accompanied each new accession to the throne and often ignited a wave of rumours and peasant disorders: he replaced reputed reformers (such as the Minister of Interior, D. G. Bibikov, and the Minister of State Domains, P. D Kiselev) with men known for their arch-conservative opinions.

By 1856, however, the defeat in the Crimea was not to be denied and neither could the exigency of fundamental reform. In a famous speech to the nobility of Moscow on 30 March 1856, Alexander ostensibly endeavoured to reassure the serf-owners, but ended his comments with a clear intimation of the imperative need for reform ‘from above’:

Rumours have spread among you of my intention to abolish serfdom. To refute any groundless gossip on so important a subject, I consider it necessary to inform you that I have no intention of doing so immediately. But, of course, you yourselves realize that the existing system of serf-owning cannot remain unchanged. It is better to begin abolishing serfdom from above than to wait for it to begin to abolish itself from below.

Although Alexander may have hoped that the nobility, mindful of its traditional ‘service ethos’ would take its own initiative, nothing of the sort transpired. As the Third Section (secret police) was well aware, ‘the majority of the nobility believe that our peasant is too uncultured to comprehend civil law; that, in a state of freedom, he would be more vicious than any wild beast; that disorders, plundering, and murder are almost inevitable’.

On 1 January 1857 Alexander resorted to the favourite device of his father: he appointed a secret commission with the charge of designing the reform of serfdom. The commission was, however, dominated by old-regime officials, most of whom were adamantly opposed to reform; moderates were a distinct minority. Over the next several months the commission slowly worked out an extremely conservative reform project whereby peasants were to compensate the squire for their homestead, to receive no arable land, and to obtain freedom, but only through an extremely protracted process. A vexed emperor, dismayed by the snail’s pace of work, castigated the commission for lethargy and procrastination: ‘I desire and demand that your commission produce a general conclusion as to how [emancipation] is to be undertaken, instead of burying it in the files under various pretexts’. Coming under the influence of Western advisers, who warned of the dire social consequences of a landless emancipation, Alexander reiterated that his ‘main anxiety is that the matter will begin of itself, from below’.

A major turning-point came on 20 November 1857, when the government issued a directive to the governor-general of Vilna that became the famous ‘Nazimov Rescript’. The directive (which shortly afterwards was also sent to all other governors) instructed the governor to organize provincial assemblies of the nobility to discuss the terms of emancipation most suitable for their own region. However, the rescript did not give the nobles carte blanche, but set the basic parameters of reform: the landlord was to retain the land and police powers, but some provision was also to be made for peasant land purchases and self-administration. The underlying strategy was to shift the reform process from the pettifogging bureaucracy to society and to propel reform forward by mobilizing the support of the nobility itself. The Minister of Interior made it perfectly clear that local officials were to engineer assent: ‘[The serf-owner] must be brought to his senses and persuaded that at this point there is no turning back, and that the nobility is obligated to execute the will of the Sovereign, who summons them to cooperate in the amelioration of peasant life’ (a euphemism for serfdom). Shortly afterwards, Alexander established the ‘Chief Committee on Peasant Affairs’ to oversee the reform process. At the same time, the government significantly relaxed censorship (the word glasnost′ for the first time, in fact, coming into vogue). A dramatic break with the reform politics of Nicholas I, this very publicity made reform appear all the more irrevocable and inevitable.

To the government’s dismay, however, virtually the entire nobility either opposed emancipation or demanded that its terms be cast to serve their own selfish interests. The Third Section reported that ‘most of the nobles are dissatisfied [with plans for emancipation]’, and explained that ‘all their grumbling derives from the fear that their income will diminish or even vanish altogether’. Resistance was especially strong in the blackearth areas, where land was valuable and nobles fiercely opposed any scheme for compulsory alienation of their property. In special cases (for example, where land was poor in quality) some nobles were more inclined to support emancipation, but only on condition that they be compensated for the person of the serf, not just the land itself.

Distressed by this response, persuaded of the perils of a landless emancipation (which threatened to create a ‘rural proletariat’), the emperor was persuaded to resume ‘emancipation from above’—by the state, with only nominal participation of the nobility. By December 1858 a liberal majority had come to prevail on the Main Committee. It shared a consensus on two critical points: the peasantry must become a free rural class (with the commune replacing the squires’ police powers), and must have the right to purchase an adequate land allotment. Although the government retained the fiction of noble participation (a special ‘editorial commission’ was to rework the recommendations of provincial noble assemblies), in fact the liberal majority now proceeded to design a reform that would deprive the nobility not only of their police powers but also of a substantial portion of their land.

Without the police powers to coerce peasants to work their lands, without a complete monopoly on land, many nobles feared total ruin. As a ranking member of the ministry wrote, ‘the landlords fear both the government and the peasantry’. To consult and ostensibly to mollify the government invited representatives of the nobility to come to St Petersburg and express their views in August 1859 (from the non-blackearth provinces) and January 1860 (from the blackearth provinces). On both occasions the government encountered fierce criticism and, more shocking still, even audacious demands for political reform. Although the tsar officially rebuked such demands and protests, the Editorial Commission none the less made some gratuitous attempts to represent emancipation as an expression of the nobility’s collective will. The commission had completed the main work by October 1860; after a final review by the State Council (an extremely conservative body that inserted some last-minute, pro-noble provisions), Alexander signed the statute into law on 19 February 1861. Fearful of peasant protests, public announcement was delayed for another two weeks—when the onset of Lent (and the end of the merry-making of Shrovetide was past) promised to produce a more sober and docile peasantry.

The government had good reason for anxiety: the 360–page statute was mind-boggling in its complexity, but one thing was clear—it corresponded little to the expectations of the peasantry. Although they were granted ‘the status of free rural inhabitants’ (with the right to marry, acquire property, conduct trade, and the like), they were still second-class citizens. Emancipation did foresee a gradual integration of peasants into society, but for the present they remained separate, bound to their own local (volost′) administration and courts. To ensure police power over the former serfs, the government shifted authority from the squire to the commune and resorted to the traditional principle of ‘collective responsibility’ (krugovaia poruka), which made the ex-serfs collectively accountable for taxes or indeed all other social and financial responsibilities. For the next decades the peasantry were to be the subject of special disabilities and obligations—such as the poll-tax (until 1885), corporal punishment (until 1904), and passports to restrict movement (until 1906).

For the peasants, however, the most shocking part of their ‘emancipation’ was the land settlement. In the first place, it was not even immediate; for the next two years peasants were to continue their old obligations to the squire as the government compiled inventories on landholdings and the peasants’ obligations as serfs. Thereafter these ‘temporary obligations’ were to remain in force until both sides agreed to a final settlement, whereupon the peasants would acquire a portion of the land through government-financed redemption payments. Peasants who had customarily assumed that the land was theirs now discovered that they would have to make immense redemption payments over a forty-nine-year term. The redemption payments were, moreover, increased by inflated evaluations of the land (up to twice its market value before emancipation). And worst of all, the emancipation settlement had special provisions to ensure that the nobility retained at least a minimum part of their estate; as a result of ‘emancipation’, peasants suffered a loss of land that they had utilized before emancipation—from 10 per cent in the non-blackearth provinces to 26 per cent in the blackearth provinces.

The government itself wondered, with deep anxiety, ‘what will happen when the people’s expectations concerning freedom are not realized?’ The answer was not long in coming. Whereas the number of disorders had been low on the eve of emancipation (just 91 incidents in 1859 and 126 in 1860), the announcement of emancipation ignited a veritable explosion of discontent in 1861—some 1,889 disorders. The most serious confrontations took place in the blackearth provinces (about half of the disorders were concentrated in ten provinces) and, especially, on the larger estates. In many villages peasants—incredulous that these could have been the terms of the ‘tsar’s’ emancipation—adamantly refused to co-operate in compiling inventories. As a peasant in Vladimir province explained, ‘I will not sign the inventory, because soon there will be another manifesto—all the land and forests will be given to the peasantry; but if we sign this inventory, then the tsar will see this signature and say: “they’re satisfied, so let it be”’. In many cases military troops had to be summoned to pacify the unruly peasants; among the worst incidents was the bloody confrontation in a village called Bezdna in Kazan province, where the troops panicked and started to shoot, killing and wounding hundreds of unarmed peasants. Although the number of disorders gradually declined (849 in 1862, 509 in 1863, 156 in 1864), the village continued to seethe with resentment and discontent.

Not only peasants, however, would have cause to bemoan emancipation: the former serf-owners were also appalled by its terms. They lost all their police powers, effectively depriving them of any opportunity to force their former serfs to fulfil their old obligations. Nor could squires be certain that they would be able to secure, at reasonable prices, what had earlier been ‘free’ serf labour to cultivate their lands. Most important, the nobles lost a substantial portion of their land; although in theory they received compensation, much of this went to pay off old debts and mortgages (62 per cent of all serfs had already been mortgaged before emancipation). In short, nobles found themselves short of capital and uncertain of labour, hardly a formula for success in the coming decades. Not surprisingly, emancipation provided a new fillip for gentry liberalism and, especially, demands for the formation of a national assembly of notables to serve as a counterweight to the ‘reds’ in the state bureaucracy. In 1862, for example, the nobility of Tver issued an address to the emperor: ‘The convocation of delegates of all Russia is the sole means for achieving a satisfactory solution to the problems that the [emancipation] statutes of 19 February have posed but not resolved.’ Dismayed by the terms of emancipation and by their de facto exclusion from the decision-making process, even the socially conservative among the nobility could give their assent to the political programme of ‘gentry liberalism’.

The Other Great Reforms

Although emancipation was the most explosive and significant reform, the government also undertook to carry out reforms on many of the other fundamental institutions of the realm. In part, this reformist zeal derived from the general ‘Crimean syndrome’, which had seemed to demonstrate not only the evil consequences of serfdom, but the general bankruptcy of the old administrative and social order. In addition, many of the reforms derived from the consensus of liberal officials that not only serfs, but society more generally must be ‘emancipated’ from the shackles of state tutelage, that only this emancipation could liberate the vital forces of self-development and progress. The centralized state had clearly failed to ensure development; freedom thus must be accorded to society. But emancipation itself mandated some changes: abolition of serfdom had eliminated the squire’s authority (which had been virtually the only administrative and police organ in the countryside) and hence required the construction of new institutions.

One was a new set of local organs of self-government called the zemstvo. Because the pre-reform regime had been so heavily concentrated in the major cities (with only nominal representation in rural areas) and plainly lacked the human and material resources to construct an elaborate system of local administration, in 1864 the government elected to confer primary responsibility on society itself by establishing a new organ of local self-government, the zemstvo. The reform statute provided for the creation of elected assemblies at the district and provincial level; chosen from separate curiae (peasants, townspeople, and private landowners), the assemblies bore primary responsibility for the social and cultural development of society’s infrastructure. Specifically, by exercising powers of self-taxation of the zemstvo, ‘society’ in each province was to build and maintain key elements of the infrastructure (such as roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, asylums, and prisons), to provide essential social services (public health, poor relief, and assistance during famines), and to promote industry, commerce, and agriculture.

A second major sphere of reform was education, both at the elementary and higher levels. Of particular urgency was the need for elementary schooling: if the former serfs were to become part of the body politic and good citizens, it was essential that the massive illiteracy be overcome. First through the initiative of the Orthodox Church, later the Ministry of Education and the zemstvo, a host of schools sprang up across the countryside. In contrast to the clandestine reformism under Nicholas I, the liberal bureaucrats not only drafted legislation but also published these plans to solicit comment at home and abroad; they then drew heavily on these critical comments as they prepared the final statutes on schools and universities. The Elementary School Statute of 1864 provided the legal framework for this multi-tier system but left financing as the legal responsibility of the local community. A parallel statute sought to regulate and promote the growth of secondary schools. More complex, and political, was reform at the university level, which had been shaken by student unrest and appeared to be a hotbed of radicalism. Nonetheless, the University Statute of 1863 generally dismantled the crippling restrictions of Nicholas I’s rule and transformed the university into a self-governing corporation, with far greater rights for its teaching staff and even some recognition of student rights.

The third (and arguably most liberal) reform was the judicial statute of 1864. Russian courts had been notorious for their corruption, inefficiency, and rank injustice; indeed, so notorious were they that Nicholas had initiated reform by establishing a commission in 1850 to rebuild the court system. But that commission had been dominated by old-regime bureaucrats who lacked formal legal training; in 1861 Alexander, persuaded of their incompetence, abolished that commission and established an entirely new committee, which was dominated by liberal gosudarstvenniki (civil servants devoted to the state and its interests). Drawing heavily upon European models, the commission adumbrated the following ‘fundamental principles’ of the new order: equality of all before the law; separation of the judiciary from administration; jury trial by propertied peers; publicity of proceedings; establishment of a legal profession and bar; and security of judicial tenure. As in the educational reform, the commission published its basic principles and invited commentary by the public and legal specialists. It then reviewed these comments (summarized in six published volumes) and made appropriate adjustments before the statute was finally promulgated in November 1864.

A fourth important focus of reform was the military, which had acquitted itself so badly during the Crimean War and was plainly in need of thoroughgoing reconstruction. The military leaders, indeed, proved to be energetic reformers, eager to rebuild the army and to borrow freely on Western models. The result was a protracted and far-reaching set of reforms—measures for technological rearmament, administrative reorganization, professionalization of military schools. But one essential reform—replacement of a huge standing army without reserves by universal military training—proved politically difficult, chiefly because the reform abrogated the nobility’s right not to serve (conferred in 1762 and deemed a fundamental privilege). Nonetheless, military reforms prevailed: the Universal Military Training Act of 1874 established all-class conscription, with the terms of service determined solely by education, not social origin or rank. The statute inadvertently had the effect of strengthening peasant interest in popular education, since a two-year elementary schooling could reduce the term of service from six to two years.

A fifth reform was the reform of city government in 1870. The main problem with the existing urban system was that it excluded important residential categories (above all, the nobility) from tax and other obligations, thereby weakening the social and fiscal basis of city government. A commission established in 1862 first conducted a massive survey of public opinion (obtaining formal reports from commissions in 509 cities and towns) and then designed a new self-governing order based on the election of a city council (with curiae weighted according to property ownership). Like the zemstvo, the city council was to provide basic social services, promote commerce and industry, and generally assume responsibility for the development of its own city.

A sixth reform was censorship, which had exercised so notorious and pernicious an influence in pre-reform Russia. The late 1850s had already witnessed a gradual relaxation of censorship (as the regime tolerated public comment on serf emancipation and other reform plans), but the pressure for reform accelerated with the proliferation of journals and newspapers in the 1860s. To a considerable degree, the government found it practically impossible to engage in pre-censorship. It therefore issued the ‘Temporary Regulations’ of 1865, which abolished most pre-censorship in favour of punitive measures (involving suspensions or closing). Although censorship was by no means eliminated, the new regulations significantly enhanced the ability of the press to publish quickly and, within limits, to exercise some freedom of expression.

The seventh reform concerned the Russian Orthodox Church, which had internalized many norms, structures—and problems—of state and society. Critics emphasized the deplorable condition of seminaries, the caste-like profile of the parish clergy (who had to marry and whose own sons replaced them), the corrupt and inefficient condition of ecclesiastical administration and courts, and the poor support accorded most parish clergy. Special commissions designed a broad range of reforms, including the establishment of parish councils in 1864 (to raise funds for local needs), the reform of ecclesiastical schools in 1867 (modernizing curriculum and opening the schools to youths from all social classes), the formal abolition of the clerical caste in 1867, and a radical reorganization of parishes in 1869 (essentially combining small, uneconomic parishes into larger units). Still more reforms were in preparation, including a liberalization of ecclesiastical courts and censorship.

These Great Reforms thus affected a broad set of social, administrative, and cultural institutions. Most reflected a common set of principles—vsesoslovnost′ (‘all-estateness’, i.e. all estates were to participate), glasnost (‘publicity’, i.e. with societal participation in planning and implementing reform), and clear willingness to draw upon Western models. Moreover, most reforms aspired to shift power—and responsibility—from the state to society or particular social groups. Aware that the state lacked the capability or even financial means to modernize, the reformers endeavoured to liberate society’s own vital forces and to create structures (from the zemstvo to parish councils) where local initiative could sponsor development.

Economic Development

Although the government appeared to have won the political struggle, in fact deep structural changes were dramatically reshaping society and economy—and not necessarily in the direction of stability or controllable change. By the late 1890s the realm would be shaken by profound unrest—from the factory to the village—that ultimately derived from the pattern of economic and social change in the preceding decades. The key dynamic here was the explosive combination of agricultural crisis and industrialization.

The roots of the agricultural crisis clearly go back to the very terms of emancipation: emancipation transferred the land to the peasant commune, not the individual peasant. The system was partly designed so as to ensure payment, for communal ownership also meant communal (not individual) responsibility for tax and redemption payments. This arrangement greatly facilitated tax-collection (sparing the state the onus of tracking down individual defaulters); given collective accountability, the commune had a powerful motive for ensuring that land was apportioned according to the ability to use it (i.e. according to the number of able-bodied workers in a family). Since family composition naturally changed over time (through births, marriages, and deaths), the commune periodically redistributed land to take these changes into account. Communal landownership also had another appealing feature: it guaranteed each peasant the right to a fair share of land and therefore served to avoid creating a landless proletariat. Indeed, the statute made it virtually impossible for a peasant to alienate his land even if he so wished.

While this arrangement ensured tax-collection and averted the formation of a rural proletariat, it was nevertheless fraught with significant long-term consequences. First, it tied the peasant to the village: since he could not alienate the land, he could not relocate permanently to the city (but, at most, obtain seasonal passports from his commune). Because of this impediment to migration to the city and because of the high rate of demographic growth (the population nearly doubled between 1863 and 1913), the inevitable result was the shrinking average size of peasant allotments—from 5.1 dessiatines (1860) to 2.7 (1900). Although the peasantry did purchase and lease private lands, such acquisitions failed to compensate for the steady demographic growth in the peasantry. The result, heard all across the empire by the late nineteenth century, was the central battle-cry of rebellious peasants—‘Land! Land! Land!’

Apart from encouraging peasants to eye jealously the huge fields of the nobility, the individual utilization of small allotments meant that the peasantry (despite their aggregate holdings) could not take advantage of economies of size and afford new technology. Moreover, communal landholding also proved highly inefficient: to ensure that each peasant had a share of the different kinds and quality of communal land, to link land allotment with a family’s labour resources, the Russian commune divided its fields into tiny strips (sometimes a yard wide) and periodically redistributed these (taking strips from families with fewer workers and giving them to families with more). This system of land utilization may have been socially just, but it was also economically regressive: it wasted much land on pathways, discouraged individual peasants from improving their strips (which were only temporary allotments), and forced all the peasants to observe the traditional three-field system (to avoid cross-fertilization, no peasant could violate communal practices).

The nobility, at least in theory, were far more advantageously positioned: they retained at least one-third of their entire arable land and obtained capital as compensation for the land redeemed by peasants. While many did seek to modernize and rationalize their estates, they soon encountered serious problems. One was a dearth of investment capital: much of the compensation vanished to cover old debts, and venture capital was as yet difficult to obtain. Labour constituted an additional problem; emancipation had taken away the ‘free’ corvée and obliged landowners to hire peasant workers, who were exceedingly expensive and notoriously unproductive. Nor were most estates easily linked to the domestic or foreign grain markets; until the railway knitted the empire together and cut transportation costs, many landowners had little incentive to modernize their estates in hopes of increasing productivity and output.

Saddled with all these disadvantages, peasant and gentry agriculture were soon to experience the most devastating factor of all: the collapse of the world grain markets in the 1870s and 1880s. The key was a steady increase in supply, as the railway and new oceanic shipping enabled a massive influx of grain from North American and other grain-producing areas outside Europe. The result was a sharp drop in grain prices between 1870 and 1890—about 38 per cent for wheat, 29 per cent for rye, and 41 per cent for barley. By the late 1870s a noble official in the blackearth province of Orel wrote that ‘anyone who looks at [this district] might well think that it has been ravaged by a hostile army—so pitiful has its position become’. The steady rise in peasant arrears (overdue tax and redemption payments) and a sharp increase in noble bankruptcies signalled the emergence of a full-scale agrarian crisis.

Industrialization, which had been so retarded and even discouraged by the pre-reform regime, faced considerable obstacles. The country still lacked a proper institutional infrastructure; its regressive business law made it possible to establish a mere thirty-two corporations by 1855. Nor was it easy to mobilize and attract venture capital, either from domestic or foreign sources, because of the lack of a domestic banking network and Russia’s low credibility on international money markets. Transportation, especially the virtual non-existence of railways (the only line before 1855 ran between the two capitals), meant that key resources (such as iron ore and coal) and markets could not be easily and economically linked. Russia was also technologically backward; it still imported 70 per cent of all machinery and relied heavily upon outmoded technology. And labour, whether under serfdom or emancipation (which deliberately restricted mobility), was problematic in terms of quantity, skills, and cost.

As in agriculture, emancipation did not primarily seek to serve economic needs or to foster development. Indeed, its initial impact on industrial production proved negative: emancipation of factory serfs brought production at many plants to a standstill, especially in the important metallurgical plants in the Urals. Still, the regime now had a new and deeper appreciation for the importance of industrialization, especially in the wake of the débâcle of the Crimean War. As one highranking official explained: ‘Russia is not Egypt or the Papal States—to be content to purchase materials for her entire army from abroad; we must build our own factories to make arms in the future.’ Supported by the military lobby and a small but influential corps of economists, the government was far more sensitive to the needs of industrial and commercial development.

Although the aggregate growth was relatively modest (especially in the 1860s and 1870s), by the mid-1880s the country embarked on an extraordinarily high rate of growth. A considerable part of the growth was concentrated in the vital area of transportation; the total of railway lines increased nearly thirteenfold (from 2,238 versts in 1861 to 28,240 versts in 1887). Simultaneously, the industrial base grew substantially: from 15,000 to 38,000 enterprises (with a corresponding increase in fixed capital, labour force, and output). The corporate structure also expanded substantially; during the years 1861–73 alone, the number of joint-stock companies increased from 78 (with capital of 72 million roubles) to 357 (with 1.1 billion roubles capital). Altogether, industrial production roughly doubled in the quarter-century after emancipation.

Nevertheless, the ‘take-off was yet to come. If 1913 industrial production was 100, by 1885 the empire had only achieved 21 per cent of that output. Despite the growth, Russian industry still suffered from such perennial problems as the lack of venture capital and low labour productivity. Both the heavy and light industrial branches relied heavily upon old technology, had a low level of mechanization, and made only limited use of steam power. Russia still had to import much of its machinery and even a substantial proportion of its iron and steel from abroad. Moreover, for the first time, the industrial sector was now becoming vulnerable to international business cycles; the economic depression in the empire in the 1870s coincided closely with that in Western Europe. Finally, industrialists also faced a remarkably soft domestic market; the mounting economic woes of the countryside—whether in peasant communes or on gentry manors—limited demand for the goods of the factory.

Despite the weakness of the countryside and gains in the factory, the country grew even more dependent upon grain exports. These had already risen from 16 to 31 per cent in the pre-reform period (1801–60); over the next three decades grain rose to represent 47 per cent of all exports, thereby constituting the backbone of foreign trade and the vital linchpin in the balance of payments. Like the rest of Europe, Russia also gravitated from free trade to protectionism, with an inexorable rise from the low tariffs of the 1850s and 1860s—first to a 10 per cent tariff in 1881, then 20 per cent in 1885, and finally to a prohibitive tariff of 33 per cent in 1891.

Society

The Great Reforms sought to permit some social change, but it also endeavoured to ensure that it was slow and gradual. Hence many of the reforms were consciously ‘all-estate’ (vsesoslovnyi), not ‘non-estate’ (vnesoslovnyi); that is, they deliberately sought to include all estates, but to include people qua members of the estate, not to disregard estates altogether. Hence the zemstvo included nobles, peasants, and townspeople, but segregated them in separate electoral curiae. And, as a famous contemporary painting by one of the ‘itinerants’ (peredvizhniki) showed, the social distances remained great indeed.

The nobility itself underwent profound change in the wake of emancipation. Juridically, it not only lost the right to own serfs but also surrendered important privileges and perquisites, especially those pertaining to its special access to civil and military service. The new legislation opened schools, including the élite military officer schools, to non-nobles; the inexorable result was a steady influx of non-nobles into institutions of higher learning and, subsequently, into the military and civil service. The change was most dramatic in that old bastion of noble privilege, the officer corps, where the proportion of hereditary nobles shrank from 81 per cent in the 1860s to a mere 12 per cent by the end of the century. The nobles not only forfeited old privileges but also had to bear new responsibilities and burdens. Most notable was the retraction of their right not to serve by the Universal Military Training Act of 1874. Economically, as already pointed out, many nobles fared badly under the conditions of post-emancipation agriculture; especially once the international grain crisis descended on Russia, their debts mounted rapidly, leading to a sharp increase in bankruptcies (from a handful in the 1870s to 2,237 in 1893) and in land sales (by 1905 nobles had sold over 40 per cent of their land held at emancipation). Little wonder that, amidst such distress, the nobility proved such fertile ground for opposition in the zemstvo and, from the 1890s, would spearhead the first phase of the ‘liberation movement’.

A second component of the élite was the ‘nobility of the pen’—the bureaucracy. Although it had early on become differentiated from the landholding nobility (and, especially at the provincial level, had been recruited from non-nobles), this ‘democratization’ accelerated sharply after 1855 and inexorably recast officialdom, even the élite bureaucracy in the two capitals. Although the very top rungs of the civil service remained the purview of blue-blooded nobles, the middling and lower ranks now drew primarily on other groups, especially the offspring of clergy, townsmen, and the educated professions. But even more remarkable than the change in social composition was the enormous growth in aggregate size of the civil service, which swelled from just 112,000 in 1857 to 524,000 in 1900 in the Table of Ranks (plus many others in lower positions). The ‘state’, which in pre-reform Russia had been chiefly myth, was rapidly being reified, even in the countryside, where the bureaucracy was gradually coming face to face with the peasantry.

A third component of élite society consisted of men of means—the old merchants but also the new stratum of rich industrialists and bankers. A relatively thin stratum of society, this ‘bourgeoisie’ actually consisted of several different groups. One important component included Muscovite industrialists and merchants, whose roots went back to the period of Nicholas I and who derived their wealth chiefly from the production and sale of consumer goods (especially textiles) on the domestic market. By all accounts they tended to be more conservative, even in religious matters (with a disproportionate share of Old Believers). Another group was quite different—the St Petersburg industrialists and financiers, who were active in banking and heavy industry. Since much of their activity depended on good relations with the government, they tended to be very conservative politically. The third, highly visible, group consisted of non-Russians, both those from minority groups (especially Jews) and from foreigners (like the Nobel family). In relative terms, this commercial-industrial élite remained very small and, for the most part, remote from politics.

The ‘semi-privileged’ social orders included the clergy of the Orthodox Church—the parish clergy as well as those serving in monasteries and convents. Although the Great Reforms had endeavoured to improve their status and material condition (indeed, publicists spoke of an ‘emancipation’ of the clergy, not unlike that of the serfs), in fact the reforms had catastrophic consequences. Above all, the reforms failed to improve the material condition of clergy, for neither the state nor the people proved willing to change the form or amount of material support. The parish statute of 1869, which proposed to amalgamate parishes into larger and more viable economic units, likewise proved a dismal failure: while it did reduce the number of clerical positions and hence increase the ratio of parishioners to priests, it failed to generate greater income, as parishioners pronounced traditional sums sacred or even reduced them. The seminary reform of 1867 may have improved the curriculum, but it also shifted much of the financial burden of seminaries to the parish clergy. At the same time, the reform gave the clergy’s sons new opportunities to leave the clerical estate, and they did so in vast numbers (comprising 35 per cent of university students in 1875, for example). As this mass ‘flight of the seminarians’ gained momentum, the Church suddenly encountered an acute shortage of candidates and had to ordain men of inferior education. By the 1880s observers could already discern an absolute decline in the educational level of the clergy, a process that would continue unabated until the end of the ancien régime and indeed beyond.

Another semi-privileged stratum consisted of the new professions, which gained markedly in numbers, status, and self-awareness in the decades after 1855. Previously, most professions had not even enjoyed legal recognition or, at most, simply comprised a subordinate unit of the civil service (for example, doctors and surveyors). After 1855 their number rapidly proliferated, in no small measure because of the rapid expansion of institutions of higher learning and specialized training. As a result, between 1860 and the end of the century, the total number of university and technical-school graduates increased from 20,000 to 85,000; beyond these graduates were many more who failed to graduate or who had an élite secondary-school education. Many of these discovered greatly expanded opportunities for employment not only in state service and the private sector, but also in the new organs of local self-government—the zemstvo and city council, which became a major employer for teachers, doctors, statisticians, agronomists, and the like. By the 1880s, for example, the zemstvo employed some 23,000 white-collar professionals, including 15,000 teachers, 1,300 doctors, and 5,000 registered ill-trained medical practitioners (fel′ dshery). Some, most notably lawyers and doctors, raised their corporate juridical status by establishing a professional organization, with the right not only to regulate but also to represent their profession. Because of their growing size, importance, and organization, the new professional intelligentsia was rapidly becoming a major force in Russian society and politics. It would play a central role in the liberation movement from the 1890s.

The rank-and-file ‘burghers’ (meshchane) constituted a highly variegated group in the towns, ranging from petty merchants and skilled artisans to the unemployed, unskilled, and unwanted. Certainly their number was increasing sharply, as the cities themselves grew rapidly in size, even more rapidly than the population as a whole. It remained more protean than powerful; while wielding little influence in state and society, it did absorb the steady influx of migrants from the countryside and also became a major source of the upwardly mobile into the new semi-professions and civil service.

The largest, and most disprivileged, segment of society was of course the peasantry. Apart from the economic problems bequeathed by emancipation, the peasants also suffered from legal discrimination (special obligations like the poll-tax, for example) and subordination to the commune. Despite the reformers’ attempt to inhibit a sudden social transformation of the traditional village, the peasantry none the less did undergo some far-reaching changes. One was a gradual stratification; despite the levelling effect of the commune, the village came to have its own ‘have-much’ and ‘have-nothing’ families, along with the mass of ‘have-littles’. And the families themselves began to change, with the gradual breakup of the patriarchal, extended family and formation of smaller, independent family units. Peasant society also came inexorably to reflect changes in urban culture, as increased contact with the city (especially through seasonal labour) helped to disseminate a new material culture, attitudes, and values to the countryside. Partly because of such changes, but also because of the Universal Military Training Act (which reduced service on the basis of education) and the opportunities open to the literate and schooled, the peasantry began to abandon its traditional antipathy towards the school as a useless luxury. Although the reduction of illiteracy was an enormous task, the new schools did have a distinct impact.

Another group, the workers, had antecedents in the pre-reform era, with some forebears going back to the metallurgical and textile plants of the eighteenth century. The steady, if modest, industrial growth from the 1850s to the 1880s brought a substantial increase in the number of workers, from roughly 700,000 in 1865 to 1,432,000 in 1890. While many of these were seasonal (returning part of the year to cultivate their communal plot of land), a small but growing number had been born in the city or had permanently relocated there. The workers also displayed the explosive volatility for which they would later become so renowned; the St Petersburg textile strike of 1870, a watershed in Russian labour history, heralded the onset of a new era of spontaneous outbursts and, ultimately, more conscious and organized strikes.

The condition and consciousness of women, more generally, underwent a significant transformation during these decades. From the mid-1850s the impact of the women’s movement in the West gradually became apparent, especially among those in élite status groups. By 1866 the first women’s journal appeared, followed shortly after by a ‘Proclamation’ (admittedly penned by a man) and the major infusion of radical women into the revolutionary movement. Still more important was the emergence of female professionals; though banned from the civil service, they appeared in increasing numbers in certain professions (especially teaching), sometimes acquired a Western medical degree, or turned to a popular female career equally popular in the West—monasticism and church service. But all this change had to overcome the opposition of society and regime, which still excluded women from the university and resisted proposals to improve their civil rights. Typical was the failure to reform the laws on divorce and separation, which were highly restrictive and left many women defenceless against abusive spouses and loveless marriages.

The empire’s numerous minorities had long been a subject of intense concern. Although the ‘Great Russians’ comprised a majority (and, together with Ukrainians and Belorussians, nearly three-quarters of the population in European Russia), the empire had a huge and highly differentiated bloc of minorities. Some, like the Ukrainians and Belorussians, were Orthodox by faith and, despite some stirrings in a tiny nationalist intelligentsia, as yet did not pose a serious threat to the territorial integrity of the realm or its internal political stability. And many of the ‘internal’ minorities, located within Russian-dominated areas, had already been Russified to a considerable degree. The government also sought to suppress neo-Slavophile chauvinism, especially demands for repressive measures against various minorities; typical was Alexander’s sharp rebuke in 1869 to Iurii Samarin for his inflammatory book, The Borderlands of Russia.

Indeed, in some regions the government launched far-reaching reforms to ameliorate the condition of selected minorities. Certainly the most remarkable beneficiaries were Jews, who, ever since the establishment of the Pale of Settlement in the late eighteenth century, had suffered from a crescendo of disabilities and discriminatory laws, especially in the reign of Nicholas I. In 1856, shortly after coming to the throne, Alexander II vowed ‘to review all the existing decrees on the Jews with the general goal of fusing this people with the indigenous population’, and in fact did approve a series of important reforms. That same year his government abolished the discriminatory rules on military conscription, which had drafted Jewish youths not only at a higher rate but also at a younger age, as part of a deliberate strategy to subject the ‘cantonists’ to forcible conversion.

From the mid-1850s the government even began to dismantle the restrictions of the Pale of Settlement—although only for selected, valuable members of the Jewish community: first-guild merchants (1859), certain categories of artisans (1865), and finally all Jews with a university degree (1879). Similar concessions were extended to certain other minorities. For example, in the grand duchy of Finland, where a Swedish élite held sway, Finnish was adopted for use in provincial government and courts (1856), later in customs and schools; in 1863 it was formally recognized, along with Swedish, as one of the two official languages.

But the era of Great Reforms included repression as well as concession, especially when the government encountered overt opposition and organized resistance. By far the most volatile area was Congress Poland: long a hotbed of open discontent and the site of a major rebellion in 1830–1, the Poles had jubilantly celebrated news of Russia’s defeats in the Crimean War and, despite state attempts at conciliation, became still more rebellious in the first years of the new regime. Tensions steadily mounted in the area and finally exploded in the Polish rebellion of 1863. Although this insurrection was more easily suppressed than that of 1830–1, it none the less precipitated a systematic campaign of repression: abolition of the Polish governmental councils (1867), reorganization of the area into ten Russian administrative provinces (1868), conversion of Warsaw University into a Russian institution (1869), and introduction of the Russian judicial system (1876). Blaming the Catholic Church for fanning anti-Russian and anti-Orthodox sentiments, the government took steps to neutralize this threat by confiscating Catholic property and imposing new controls on its administration (1864–5). The area continued to seethe with discontent and remained a constant source of instability and ferment. The state also resorted to force in the Caucasus, which had been annexed decades earlier, but remained a cauldron of unrest and armed resistance. Although a military campaign in 1857–62 achieved a modicum of control, Russian power remained tentative and vulnerable.

The 1860s and 1870s also marked the expansion of Russian rule into Central Asia, which had long been subject to Russian influence and pressure, but only now came firmly into its orbit of control. Although the motive may have been partly commercial (an interest in its capacity for cotton production), far more important was the need to establish a firm and reliable border in the area. Whatever the motive, between 1864 and 1873 Russia gradually reduced the three khanates (Khiva, Bukhara, and Kokand) to a protectorate status, with unmistakable Russian predominance.

The Revolutionary Movement

Even as the government embarked on the Great Reforms, it encountered not only dissatisfaction among peasants and nobles, but also opposition from an important new force in society—radical youth who collectively came to be called the ‘intelligentsia’. Although Russia had had its share of radicals before, they had not constituted a self-conscious social group, with a distinctive identity and subculture. By the 1860s, however, they had gained sufficient critical mass and developed a new social identity, first as ‘the new people’ (from N. G. Chernyshevskii’s novel, What is to be Done? [1863]) and eventually as the ‘intelligentsia’. Set apart by a special subculture (with distinctive dress, speech, mores, and values), still drawn disproportionately from the upper reaches of society, the intelligentsia none the less conceived of itself as a supraclass force and charged with representing the interests of ‘society’, especially its lower orders. Sharing a common Weltanschauung (which provocatively abjured their fathers’ idealism and romanticism in the name of science and materialism), they believed that they could escape the elusive, ethereal forces of history and, with the aid of science and rational planning, construct society and state along entirely new lines. The model for young radicals was skilfully etched in Ivan S. Turgenev’s famous novel, Fathers and Sons (1862), with the sharp contrast between the older generation and the archetypical lower-class antithesis, Bazarov.

The radicals of the 1860s, still few in number but concentrated in the capitals, marked the first real effluence of an organized revolutionary movement. For the most part these early radicals waged the fight with proclamations, like that of Young Russia in 1862: ‘With full faith in ourselves and our strength, in the people’s sympathy for us, in the glorious future of Russia (to whose lot it has fallen to be the first country to achieve the glorious work of socialism), we will utter a single cry: “To the axe!!” and then strike the imperial party without restraint … in the city squares … in the narrow streets of the cities, in the broad avenues of the capital, in the villages and in the small towns’. These early revolutionaries, however, also established the first conspiratorial organizations to wage a battle against autocracy in the name of the people. Alarmed by the upsurge of student disorders, revolutionary proclamations, scattered acts of random violence (from the fires of St Petersburg in 1862 to the failed assassination of Alexander II in 1866), the government grew increasingly repressive in seeking to contain this new and growing wave of radicalism.

The 1860s were only a pallid harbinger of what would come in the 1870s. In contrast to the 1860s, this next stage was marked by an idealization of the peasantry and, especially, hopes that they were on the verge of a bloody Jacquerie against the nobility and autocracy. Later encapsulated in the term ‘populism’ (narodnichestvo), the movement of the 1870s emphasized both the significance of the peasant commune (as an embryonic unit of communism), but also the moral and spiritual strength of the people. The movement indeed affected a whole generation of intellectuals, from writers wont to celebrate the peasantry to zemstvo statisticians intent upon demonstrating the economic superiority of communal agriculture. But for the populist radicals eager to demolish autocracy and truly emancipate the people, it was axiomatic that the peasantry itself was a vital revolutionary force that at most required the co-ordination of the intelligentsia.

In the first phase the radicals were deeply influenced by the teaching of Peter Lavrov, whose Historical Letters (1869) emphasized the duty of the intelligentsia—who had acquired their culture and education at the expense of the common folk—to repay their enormous debt by bringing culture and education to the folk. Although Lavrov’s challenge to ‘repentant noblemen’ initially encouraged attempts to disseminate books and literacy, it eventually mushroomed into a more radical campaign of ‘going to the people’ in 1874–6. That new phase drew less from Lavrov than from the anarchist teachings of M. Bakunin and P. Kropotkin, who believed that the peasantry was innately revolutionary and needed only encouragement. As a result, several thousand members of the urban intelligentsia flooded into the countryside—as teachers, blacksmiths, and the like—for the purpose of fusing with the people. Despite some positive response by the peasantry, the police easily identified and arrested most of these urban misfits and effectively decimated the rank-and-file activists. Though nominally still espousing confidence that revolution could still come from below, the intelligentsia now turned to terrorism—violent attacks on high-ranking officials, the emperor included—in a vain, but desperate attempt to ignite popular revolt and obtain vengeance for the uncompromising violence and repression of the state. Organized in a conspiratorial organization called ‘Land and Freedom’ (Zemlia i volia), the terrorists waged war on the autocracy and bureaucracy even as some of their number continued attempts to ignite a popular Jacquerie from below.

By 1879, however, revolutionary populists turned increasingly to terrorism and, for all practical purposes, abandoned hope of popular insurrection. As the organization’s very name ‘the People’s Will’ (Narodnaia volia) suggested, the revolutionaries now envisioned themselves as the agents of revolution acting on behalf of the peasantry. This phase of the populist movement drew on the teachings of P. Tkachev, who emphasized that Russia’s very backwardness meant the lack of a strong bourgeoisie or nobility and hence the lack of a real social base for autocracy. ‘In reality’, he wrote, ‘the [state’s] power is only apparent and imagined; it has no roots in the economic life of the people, and it does not embody the interests of any class’. But this desperate paroxysm of violent terrorism also derived from fear: their encounter with the village (reinforced by the vignettes of populist writers and the numbers of the zemstvo statisticians) revealed that the commune was beginning to dissolve, that the collective was giving way to the kulak. Russia’s very development posed the danger that the commune, its special path to the future, was heading unmistakably towards disintegration. It was thus becoming increasingly urgent, the populists believed, that they strike down the very embodiment of the hateful state—the emperor himself.

Counter-Revolution and Counter-Reform

Although the crescendo of revolutionary violence provided one major reason for the government’s retreat from the liberal reformism of the 1860s, it was not the only or even the primary reason. No less important was the simple fact that the liberal reforms had failed to work as anticipated or, indeed, had sometimes created new problems while aggravating old ones. Moralizing historians have long been wont to blame the revolutionary intelligentsia for Russia’s failure to tread the Western liberal path, but in fact the reforms—themselves deeply influenced by Western models—proved highly dysfunctional and destructive.

The zemstvo reform that established elected bodies of self-government is a case in point. In part, the government was dismayed to find that these organs promptly proceeded to raise political demands—above all, that the edifice be crowned by a national zemstvo. Although the government for the moment was able to stifle such pretensions, in moments of crisis—as in the late 1870s—the zemstvo liberals seized upon the government’s weakness and vulnerability to renew their demand for political, not mere administrative, reform. No less important, the zemstvo failed to exercise its authority and in fact proved highly lethargic, falling far short of expectations. While most nobles had little interest in levying local property-based taxes to build schools for peasants, the latter lacked the means to build schools that seemed to offer no immediate material benefit.

Judicial reform proved equally dismaying. In part, contemporaries were deeply alarmed by an apparent explosion in the crime rate, a perception magnified in turn by lurid reporting in the press. Apart from the dissolution of the squire’s police powers over the peasantry, some contemporaries were wont to blame the judicial system itself, especially the purported (but exaggerated) leniency of the jury system. More worrisome for the government was the apparent inability of the judicial system to combat political crime and revolutionary terrorism; as a result, the government transferred crimes against the state to a government body (1872) and erected military tribunals to deal with terrorists (1878). When the revolutionaries used public trials as a political stage, when a jury acquitted a female terrorist who had shot and wounded the governor of St Petersburg, the government became still more disenchanted with its system of Western justice. That disillusionment extended to virtually all the other reforms as well—the liberal censorship that tolerated attacks on the government, the universities that produced so many radical revolutionaries, the church reform that left priests in even worse straits than before, and the emancipation that appeared responsible for the plight of both nobles and peasants.

All this served to erode the reform ethos of the 1860s, even among those who had participated in designing the reforms. A former Minister of Interior, P. A. Valuev, was now more sensitive to the dilemmas of stimulating social initiative from below: ‘The Russian people, for centuries, have been accustomed to strong authority and its uniform application everywhere. Only government authority, balanced in its weight and with equal, forceful influence on all the far-flung parts of our state, will be able to guide society to its further development on a true and lawful path’. Even more radical was the shift in sentiment of K. P. Pobedonostsev, who had helped design the liberal judicial reform of 1864 but within a few years had become the chief spokesman for conservative retrenchment.

Although the government had begun to revise and repair the Great Reforms earlier, the watershed came in the acute political crisis of the late 1870s. The regime found itself now confronted not only by a relentless political terrorism but also by growing restiveness in educated society—at least partly because of yet another débâcle in foreign affairs, the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–8. The conflict had promised to protect Russia’s coreligionists from persecution in the Ottoman Empire, and restore Russia’s place as a great power; despite the high costs incurred, however, all these gains were undone at the congress of Berlin. By 1879 educated society (which included conservative, not just liberal elements in the nobility) were adamantly demanding political reforms like a constitution and a national assembly. Pobedonostsev, the arch-enemy of such demands, wrote to the emperor’s heir that ‘what I hear [in St Petersburg] from high-placed and learned men makes me sick, as if I were in the company of half-wits and perverted apes. I hear everywhere the trite, deceitful, and accursed word—constitution’. Indeed, some of the more liberal segments (headed by nobles from Tver) had even entered into clandestine contact with the revolutionary populists.

When repression alone failed to stifle the revolutionary movement, in February 1880 Alexander II appointed a new Minister of Interior, M. T. Loris-Melikov, to deal with the crisis. His tactic, known as the ‘dictatorship of the heart’, continued the war against revolutionaries but also made a calculated attempt to solicit the support of Russia’s more conservative, propertied elements in society. Although wrongly described as a parliamentary reform, his plan essentially foresaw a series of consultative commissions (not unlike those that preceded emancipation) to help advise the government on the proper course of action. Both the preparatory and general commissions would include regular state officials and members elected by the zemstvo and city councils; their task was to make a systematic review of the Great Reforms. This scheme was not, however, intended as a permanent institution; as Loris-Melikov himself explained, ‘it would be unthinkable for Russia to have any form of popular representation based on Western models’. Reassured, Alexander II approved the proposal on 1 March 1881.

That same day the terrorists finally got their quarry: a bomb mortally wounded the emperor, who died a few hours later. Although his successor, Alexander III (1881–94), at first hesitated, he was eventually persuaded by Pobedonostsev to reaffirm the fundamental principles of autocracy in a manifesto of 29 April 1881. The manifesto, implicitly a repudiation of Loris-Melikov’s plan and indeed of the Great Reforms, led immediately to the resignation of the liberal ministers and to the formation of a far more conservative government. The path was now open for a far-reaching revision of the earlier legislation.

Although contemporaries (especially liberals) characterized the new measures as a ‘reaction’, they did not constitute a ‘restoration’ of the old order. It was, of course, plain to all that neither serfdom nor the order it sustained could be reestablished. What the new government did seek to do, however, was to reassert the primacy of dynamic state leadership and autocracy. The ‘counter-reforms’ in censorship (1882) and education (1884), for example, specifically sought to emphasize the state’s power and dispensed with earlier hopes that society would show initiative and responsibility. Particularly important on the agenda was the re-establishment of firm police power; the ‘temporary regulations of 14 August 1881’ created ‘extraordinary’ security powers which, in fact, were renewed every three years and expanded to a growing list of areas until the regime finally fell in 1917. Indeed, the regime of Alexander III was wont to cultivate and reward proizvol—the gratuitous display of arbitrariness and power—among its officials. Reassertion of the autocratic principle had increasingly assumed the form of a counter-Rechtsstaat, a volte-face in policy that was all the more anathema and provocative for liberal, educated society.

The 1880s also signalled an important new era in state policy towards national minorities. Although Alexander II had dealt brutally with the rebellious Poles, he had not engaged in systematic, coercive Russification and even made significant concessions in some instances. His son’s government, by contrast, launched a far more aggressive campaign, one that crossed the divide from administrative to cultural Russification. Perhaps the most striking example of the change in policy concerned the Baltic Germans, an élite that had served the empire loyally and that had enjoyed the special confidence and protection of Alexander III’s predecessors. From the mid-1880s, however, St Petersburg took vigorous measures to ‘Russify’ the area, requiring that Russian be used in state offices (1885–9) and elementary and secondary schools (1887–90), that the imperial police and judicial system be adopted (1889), and that the German university of Dorpat be Russified as Iurev University (1889–93). Simultaneously, the government reversed its earlier concessions to Jews. The most important repressive measures included the 1887 quotas limiting the number of Jewish students in secondary schools and universities (10 per cent in the Pale, 5 per cent outside, and 3 per cent in the two capitals). Later measures included rules to exclude Jews from the bar (1889), zemstvo (1890), and city councils (1892). Similar encroachments were made on other groups, even those like the Finns, who had hitherto enjoyed special protection, but now were exposed to a gradual Russification that would reach a crescendo in the late 1890s.

But paternalistic autocracy also made concessions, at least for its putative base of ‘loyal subjects’. For the nobles it created a new Noble Bank (with special low-interest rates) and, in an imperial manifesto of 1885, made new promises of a greater role: ‘The Russian nobles [will] preserve their preponderance in the military command, local governments, courts, and in the dissemination (through example) of the precepts of faith and fidelity’. The government also made concessions to the lower social groups as well—such as the Peasant Bank (1883) to assist in land purchases and the abolition of the poll-tax (1885). Disturbed by unrest among factory workers and influenced by the social policy in Bismarckian Germany, the government also adopted a number of far-reaching laws to restrict child labour and other labour abuses in 1882–6. By 1890 repression, moderated by such social concessions, appeared to have restored stability to the realm: disorders in the factory and village were at a nadir, even the revolutionary movement appeared to constitute no real match for the regime’s police forces.

But the dominant element, especially in contemporary perception, was ‘reaction’—blind attempts to repress and refasten the shackles of the old order. This reversion was all the more intolerable because it seemed to reverse the gains of the 1860s and 1870s. It was, indeed, in many instances outright counterproductive. While seeking to reconstruct the multinational empire into a homogeneous state, with uniform Russian culture and administration from border to border, the government was merely succeeding in accelerating the development of national consciousness and revolutionary sentiments, even among the most loyal minorities in the empire. To a very considerable degree, the geographic periphery was becoming the political centre: the rebellious sentiments, combined with weakness of state control, was turning the borderlands into the staging-ground and bastion of revolution. The revolutionary movement would recruit heavily from these borderlands as the ancien régime gradually slid towards the abyss of 1917.