Chapter 2 - Alexander II, the 'Tsar Reformer'

Question 1

Emancipation + reforms = failure

Answer 1

• Historians argue that the Emancipation, along with the other refoms, were put in place to maintain Tsarist authority
• “greatest single piece of state-directed social engineering” - Terence Emmons

Alex II refomes actually weakened faith in the Tsar as being capable of leading effective change, and ultimately created a desire for ‘popular participation in government’.

Question 2

Who influenced Alex II’s to reform?

Answer 2

• Influenced by his tutor, travels and court
• Especially influenced by ‘enlightened bureaucrats’ e.g. Grand Duke Konstantin (brother) Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (aunt) and the Milyutin Brothers, who were all committed to the abolition of serfdom

Question 3

Who were the Milyutin brothers?

Answer 3

Nikolai Milyutin:
- influential in the Ministry of Internal Affairs
- favoured Slavophilic reforms
- responsible for drafting the terms of the Emancipation Edict
- supported the establishment of the zemstva

Dmitry Milyutin:
- good military reputation
- analysed the reason behind the loss of the Crimean War
- Minister of War (1861-1881)

Their views were shared by other members of the Russian intelligentsia who believed that as well as holding Russia back economically and weakening her ‘Great Power’ status, serfdom was morally wrong.

Question 4

The role peasant uprisings played in the lead up to the reforms

Answer 4

• 1840-44 = less than 30 uprisings, this doubled over the next 15 years.
  This was due to:
• Landowners pushing peasants to produce more or pay higher rents in order to maintain their own incomes
• Protests against military conscription during the Crimean War. These didn’t subside once the war ended in 1856 .
• It was tradition for the Tsar to announce the freedom of conscripted serfs after the end of a war. But Alex II delayed this, increasing tensions from peasants.

Question 5

Economics motives for refrom

Answer 5

> Free peasants
greater incentive to work
grain surplus
export of grain providing money for landowners/state
investment in industry within Russia
mobile peasantry moving to towns to work in industry
greater prosperity

Question 6

Military motives for reform

Answer 6

Humiliation of Crimea.

Dmitry Milyutin (minister of war) wanted reform to “strengthen the State and restore dignity”
He believed that the army had to be modernised, and only a ‘free’ population would provide the labour needed for military improvement.

Question 7

What year was the Emancipation Edict?

Answer 7

1861 (privately owned serfs)
1866 (state serfs)

Question 8

What did the Emancipation Edict do?

Answer 8

• Granted serfs freedom and an allotment of land
• Had to pay redemption payments to the government for over 49 years
• Remain within the mir until the redemption payments had been made

Question 9

What did the mirs do?

Answer 9

Responsible for:
- distributing allotments
- controlling the farming
- collecting and paying the peasants’ taxes

Question 10

What were the volosts?

Answer 10

• peasant community
• composed of villages or hamlets
• run by an assembly of representatives from the mirs
• own courts from 1863, replacing the landlords’ jurisdiction over serfs

Question 11

What was ‘temporary obligation’ and how long did it last?

Answer 11

Lasted for 2 years.
It was the time period before freedom during which land allocations were being decided.

Question 12

When was redemption made compulsory?

Answer 12

1881.

Question 13

What percentage of serfs remained ‘temporarily obligated’ to their landlords?

Answer 13

15%

Question 14

Why did peasants feel cheated due to land allocations?

Answer 14

Unfair land allocation.

They were given small allotments which provided little opportunity to adopt new farming methods.

Extremely divided. Sons inherited and the land was shared between them (even smaller allotments).

Question 15

The mir system

Answer 15

• Highly traditional
• Subsistence farming continued
• Technical backwardness

In 1878, only 50% of the peasantry was capable of producing a surplus.

Question 16

In 1878, what percentage of the peasantry was able to produce a surplus?

Answer 16

50%

Question 17

How was rural life made more difficult after the Emancipation Edict?

Answer 17

• Restrictions on travel
• Burden of redemption payments
• Resentment of the Kulaks, which led to violent outbreaks in the countryside.

Question 18

How was life for landlords made worse after the Edict?

Answer 18

• Resented their loss of influence
• Newspapers ran articles about their disappointments
• Wave of student protests and riots occurred in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
• Noble bankruptcies
• Had to sell or remortgage their allocated land
• Some found an opportunity to air their resentments in the zemstva (local elected government)

Question 19

Examples of unrest in the countryside after the Edict

Answer 19

Disruptions over land-holdings and redemption payments.

647 incidents of riots in the 4 months after the decree.

Peasant riot in Bezdna was brutally crushed, with 70 peasant deaths.

Question 20

When were the military reforms implemented?

Answer 20

1874 - 75

Question 21

What were the military reforms?
Who aided them?

Answer 21

Dmitry Milyutin. He saw the armed forces had to be more professional and efficient as well as cheaper.

• Conscription compulsory for all classes (even nobles) from 21
• Length of service reduced from 25 to 15 years of active service
• Punishments made less severe
• Better provisioning and medical care were established
• Modern weaponry was introduced and a new command structure was established
• Military colleges set up to provide better training for the non-noble officer corps
• Literacy within the army was improved, with mass army-education campaigns in the 1870s-90s

But:
- The officer class remained largely aristocratic
- Problems of supply and leadership continued
- Army struggled to win the war in Turkey (1877-78)
- In the long term, was defeated by the Japanese (1904-05) and later by Germany (1914-17)

Question 22

When was the war against Turkey?

Answer 22

1877-78

Question 23

When were the local government reforms?

Answer 23

1864 - 70

Question 24

What were the local government reform?

Answer 24

• Introduction of zemstva
• Chosen through ‘electoral colleges’ with separate colleges for nobles, townspeople, Church and peasants
• This voting procedure allowed the nobility to dominate

Question 25

What did the zemstva do? What power did they have? How was their power limited?

Answer 25

Power to:
- improve public services
- develop industrial projects
- administer poor relief in times of hardship

Power was limited because:
- no control over state and local taxes
- Provincial governors continued to appoint officials, took responsibility for law and order, and could even overturn zemstvo decisions if they chose to

Overall, though, the zemstva provided a valuable addition to local government. This is because they were composed of men who understood the locality and its needs. However, despite some peasant representation, they were never truly ‘people’s assemblies’. They attracted doctors, lawyers, teachers and scientists, who used these meetings as an opportunity to debate political issues and criticise central government.

Question 26

What was the percentage breakdown of provincial assemblies in the years 1865-67?

Answer 26

74% nobility
11% merchants
10.5% peasants
4% church families
0.5% others

Question 27

What was the percentage breakdown of district assemblies in the years 1865-67?

Answer 27

42% nobility
38% peasants
10.5% merchants
6.5% church families
3% others

Question 28

When were the judiciary reforms?

Answer 28

1864

Question 29

What has the justice system been like before the reforms?

Answer 29

• judge examined written evidence prepared by the landowner and police
• no jury system
• no lawyers
• no examination of witnesses
• the accused was considered guilty

Question 30

What was the new jury system like?

Answer 30

Modelled on the West.
- equality before the law was established with a system of local, provincial and national courts (although volost courts dealt with exclusively with peasant cases)
- accused was innocent until proven guilty
- the accused could hire a lawyer to defend himself
- criminal cases heard before barristers and a jury, selected from lists of property owners
- judges were appointed by the Tsar and given improved training and pay
- Local Justices of Peace were elected every three years by the zemstva and were to be independent of political control
- courts were opened to the public and proceedings could be freely reported
- national trials were recorded in a government newspaper, the Russian Courier

Question 31

What were the pros and cons of the jury system?

Answer 31

Pros:
- fairer and less corrupt

Cons:
- new opportunity rose for articulate lawyers of the intelligentsia to criticise the regime
- juries sometimes acquitted the guilty because they sympathised with their plight
- to counter this behaviour, a new decree had to be issued to permit political crimes to be tried by special procedures
- trial by jury was never established in Poland, the western provinces and the Caucasus
- ecclesiastical and military courts were excluded from the reforms
- the peasantry in the volost courts were still treated differently from those of higher status

Question 32

When were the education reforms?

Answer 32

1863 - 64

Question 33

Why were the education reforms required?

Answer 33

The abolition of serfdom increased the need for basic literacy and numeracy among the peasants trying to run their private smallholdings.

While the establishment of the zemstva provided an opportunity for a change in the control and funding of education.

Question 34

What were the education reforms?

Answer 34

Under Alexander Golovnin (Minister for Education 1862-67)
- universities given the oppourtunity to govern themselves and appoint their own staff
- responsibility for schooling was transferred from the Church to the zemstva
- primary and secondary education was extended
- ‘modern schools’ established at secondary level for those who did not want the traditional classical education offered in a gimnaziya
- schools were declared ‘open to all’ regardless of calss and sex (alloing women to attend secondary school for non-vocational eduacation from 1870)

Question 35

The cons of the education reforms?

Answer 35

Increasing number of radical and militant thinkers.

So successful, that after 1866 it was deemed necessary to reassert government control.

Also, the primary curriculm was restricted and was focused on strengthening religion.

Question 36

Statistics for the education reforms

Number of primary schools,children in primary schools, students in uni

Answer 36

Number of primary schools rose from 8,000 in 1856 to 23,000 in 1880.

Number of children in primary education rose from 400,000 to over a million.

Number of students in the universities grew from 3,6000 to 10,000 by the 1870s

Question 37

When were the censorship reforms?

Answer 37

1858 - 70

Question 38

What were the censorship reforms?

Answer 38

• relaxation of press censorship
• restrictions on publishers were reduced
• foreign publications were permitted with governmental approval
• press were allowed to print editorials with comment on government policy

Question 39

What was the impact of the censorship reforms?

Answer 39

• short-lived growth in the number of books, journals and newspapers on sale in Russia
• the number of books published grew from 1,020 in 1855 to 1,836 in 1864, and 10,691 by 1894

However, growth in critical writing brought a re-tightening of government vontrol in the 1870s.