Nicholas I Reign Flashcards
Give a high level overview of Nick’s take / reforms on serfdom
Take:
- IN RESPONSE TO DEC COMPLAINTS -> wants to abolish / better conditions to preserve autocracy against uprising (while maintaining delicate power balance w/ other nobles)
- DECS HAD COMPLAINED ABOUT SERF CONDITIONS (touring countryside) -> better these so stopping complaints
- ultimately held up by fear of noble backlash and erosion of power base and/or threat of peasant revolt
- Pushes against nobles but ultimately forced to rescind on some measures.
- Int see him as inactive because all of this done through direct admin/secret committees
- For STATE peasants -> more public/aggressive because he has direct control/doesn’t need to worry about nobles
- Reforms mostly to improve peasant life
Reforms:
- 9 secret committees devoted to “peasant question”
- 1820s made it harder for nobles to send peasants to Siberia / break up families
- 1830s reduced conscripted serf tenure from 25 years to 15 -> allowing them family life. Here pushes against noble fears of a mobilized peasantry, persists
- DIRECTLY CONTRASTS TO ALEX AND MILITARY COLONIES -> CITED BY DECS AS PRIME INFLUENCE
- 1840s serfs can buy themselves off if estate goes up for auction from bankruptcy. Repealed almost immediately because of noble backlash / fears peasants would stop working
Explain Nick’s experiments with STATE peasant reform and how this differed from serfdom approach pls
Overall more direct / hearty measures because state peasants (40% of pop) were owned by ministry of finance and therefore had no LL stakeholders to weigh down
Establishes ministry of state affairs and places within responsibility
- Finance had ignored/left them in poor conditions and unproductive (no state revenue)
- Establishes provincial offices fore more direct engagement w/ peasant issues
- More funding for medical/firefighting services
- Extensive land surveys too to analyze territory of empire -> who owns what
- Overall lacking in enough bureaucrats for significance
- 1848 kills initiative, funding and planning dry up because Nick is worried about appearing reformist
In what ways was Nick a progressive reformer? Why was he not seen as such? What was his overall reasoning here?
Nick consolidates administrative functioning and control in an effort NOT to need a constitution style reforms. Figures if the state functions effectively under absolutism, people won’t complain.
ALL IN RESPONSE TO DECEMBRIST COMPLAINTS:
- Serfdom - improve lives/gradualism
- Legal reform -> bare minimum, no calls for constitution
- State reform -> no involvement of nobles
(overall: tryna preserve autocracy by ceasing calls for constitution)
This included:
SERFDOM:
- Complaints by decs (countryside, Trubetskoi) (DOESNT WANT REVOLUTION BY MORE DECS = THREAT TO AUTOCRACY)
- Wants to improve their lives so no complaints, continue on VERY gradualist path to emancipation
- Runs up against noble resistence like Alex
Finishes Speranskii’s LEGAL reform -> actually compiles laws unlike Alex. (Digest makes searching laws thematically easy). Also creates imperial school of jurisprudence
- If people understand laws, won’t be call for constitution outlining rights
Contrast to Alex:
- experimented with legal reform but abandons Speranskii
- Punished guy who tried to set up legal school as private citizen
Creation of BUREAUCRACY:
- Nobles no longer required for state service, need to fill gaps in functioning
- Allows Bureaucrats to gain noble status for hard work / service -> incentivizes creation of new class of urban / educated “new nobles”
EDUCATION:
- Uvarov waives requirement for specific classes to attend Uni (social classes) in 1835
- School of Jurisprudence.
- Needs all this to create Bureaucracy -> 10,000s of non-noble ints by 1840s
- This has ripple effect like Civ rights generation in NI.
Third Department:
- secret police, widely unpopular because they report directly to emperor
- That said miss out on Int discussions
Explain the concept of official nationality under Nick, why was it so important?
-> GREATER STABILITY against foreign / WESTERN ideas of DECS
IN RESPONSE TO TRUBETSKOI, PESTEL, MURAVIEV CITING WESTERN INFLUENCE UNDER ALEX
- Banning of western lit 1826
Three components: - Orthodoxy -> Church and state. Nick had religious role publicly. Public connection of ruler and faith.. Quasi state religion. Results in school/uni reform curriculum -> start classes with prayers and such like Republicanism. - Autocracy -> Emphasizing bond between emperor and people -> can put everyone's interests above his own -> an impartial figure. Best political system for the country they live in -> need autocrat for huge population and . Overall greater public involvement with affairs of family -> celebrating births of children, opening up private art works as public exhibits. Cultural means to convince people he is a good ruler. NOT LIKE WEST - DONT NEED LIB CONSTITUTION YOU HAVE ME - Nationality -> more community in a spiritual sense (blood and soil, romanticism), bound to people you're born in same place as -> kind of like nationalism in LHOD. Unity around slavic nature, language, history, common faith. Community is a result -> creation of national identity that unifies people to e/o AND to the state.
Sig: All used to legitimize govt in peoples’ eyes
Nick funds government literary journals, direct interventions of funding like Pushkin, and overall helps writers with the 1828 copyright law in order to promote “Russianess” and Official Nationality -> leads to literary culture and avenues in which to criticize state covertly
Give a high level overview of who the Intelligentsia were and WHAT CONTRIBUTED TO CREATION
An intellectual movement of educated young nobles and some Bureaucrats. Gathered to discuss literature and philosophy and reforms of state
- CONSOLIDATED IDENTITY IN OPPOSITION TO THE STATE
- Nobles pushed out of affairs because of state bureaucracy/consolidation -> NO OUTLET FOR ALTRUISM DESPITE EDUCATION AND FREE LIFESTYLE
- 1826 censorship law bans public discussion /participation of reform (citation needed)
- In order to communicate ideas of reform and critique regime, INT evolve literary publications to communicate ideas through aseopian language (discussion of American slavery = serfdom)
- Promised positions of standing / no way to work WITH govt on reform because of background education, become superfluous because of lack of jobs
As a group:
- ideologically inconsistant
- Divided (friendly) along Slavophile / Westernizer lines in regards to how to reform Russia, this prevents it from materializing into a consolidated movement
- NOT actively seditious -> no direct action, small in number, no way to address and form a political polity / masses directly
THEREFORE:
- Public discussion / free thinking generated under Alex’s reign allowed to continue covertly under Nick
- BUT doesn’t materialize into anything direct because of prevention of reaching public and internal divisions
Explain what created the literary phenomenon and what its significance was
Development:
1826 public censorship law bans public discourse on reform/critiques of the state
Broad educational increase (60,000 in catherine’s reign to 250,000 throughout Nick’s -> Unis double in capacity) and not enough jobs leads to “superfluous” nobles and commoners newly educated.
1828 copyright law protects writers and allows them to earn income. Golden age of Russian Lit.
Results in…
- Magazines and books skyrocketing in number. 226 journals founded in Nick’s reign, many performing as well as English/French entries
- Key examples: Notes from the Fatherland and The Contemporary serialized Turgenev, Pushkin, Dostoevsky
- Literary circles (Kruzhki) around Herzen, Stankevich etc forming to discuss politics (NO ACTIVE PLANS/IDEOLOGY)
Book reviews!
- Aesopian language deployed to critique regime
- “The women question” and “American Slavery” discussed with clear allusions to serfdom.
- Allows critical discussion as long as its cloaked
Evidencex: Belinskii letter to Gogol: Gogol publishes more conservative works (Church, piety), B attacks him claiming that western rationality and enlightenment are way forward for Russia.
Explain the rise and importance of Hegelianism AND critical realism in Russian Thought
Ints responsible for this -> MASSIVE reprecussions for later movements (intellectually speaking
HEGELIANISM OPPOSED TO AUTOCRACY AS ONE TRUE SYSTEM OF GOVERNANCE -> Nick allows its propagation
- Individual action FOR change (outlet for altruism)
- AND -> that change NEEDS to happen for development
Rise:
- Nick allows German content because of Prussian reliability/links
- Belinskii is big proponent of both -> publishes widely in NotF
Hegelianism:
History goes through set stages -> moves in upward spiral so world is getting better/more developed
Exisiting stage “thesis” -> challenge this state (antithesis) ->conflict, they create a (SYNTHESIS) in new stage of development/thesis.
Ex: Nights Watch protects the wall from Wildlings (thesis). Antithesis emerges that wildlings should be let in because they’re human and will help defend against the wall -> directly conflicts with tradition and prejudice of thesis. Synthesis emerges after fighting/clashes -> unity on the wall (new thesis)
Sig of Hegel:
- Human action plays a massive role -> great man / Mule theory -> great men can spur this change (publication of great ideas, etc.)
People AWARE OF THIS FORMULA ARE BETTER SUITED TO EXPLOIT IT/CHANGE HISTORY
Critical Realism:
- moving away from romanticism
- evaluated works based on how they critique society
- Resulted i nAesopian book reviews en masse.
Explain the Slavophile / Westernizer debate and its significance
Both groups united over hatred of government and desire to move forwards into Russia’s future
- Slavs: idyllic past of communalism and collectivity (and Church)
- West: more reforms and model off of enlightenment
- Both contrast to Official Nationalism: changes in adminsitrative structure without actually progressing anything
- ALL GROUPS NOT DISSENTERS -> JUST ARMCHAIR GROUPS
Westernizers:
- Generally align themselves with western models of reform. Want constitution or republic of some kind.
- Liberals, socialists -> NO COMMON IDEOLOGY
Europe not just as “the west” but a very diverse set of cultures, Russia could be like this
Hegel -> all people progressing to different stages, but at different PACES -> Hegel promises they can CATCH UP and rise up to levels of British/French
Slavophiles:
- Looking to model Russ society off of idyllic common/peasant systems that have strong traditions -> Commune and Church
- Think RUSSIA IS FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FORM WEST -> progress can’t translate over perfectly
Triggered by:
1830s Chaadaev -> published Philosophical Letter -> declared madman “opening shot”
- Russia is nothing w/o west
- worships Peter the Great for bowing down before the west and trying to make Russia follow in its footsteps both politically and culturally. H (Apology of a Madman)
Significance:
- DIVIDES Intelligentsia
- Was friendly debate, many friends / moved in same circles
- Slavs didn’t have own journal -> in search for outlets, Slavs sometimes entered into uneasy dealings with apologists for the regime” -> Belinskii criticizes this, likens them to Off Nats -> rhetoric fuels tensions in 1840s
- Time wasted quarelling instead of uniting against state
Explain the significance of Herzen and his influence
Was wealthy (inherited money, established journals)
- Decides he’s against regime in 47 after exile. Relocates to London
- No censorship in London, also has RUSSIAN TYPE -> doesn’t need to go through official translators
- “The Bell” smuggled into Russia publishes info on actual conditions in Russia (extensive connections inform him about peasant revolts and such)
- PRO DECEMBRIST -> had vowed to avenge them as a child
Supports fellow emigres and revolutionaries. Curated contacts, warm welcomes. London becomes a bit of a base for first Russian Revolutionary Emigre Community
Slavophile sympathies -> Promotes idea Russians must seek reform from within after 1848.
