History of Russia (1855–1894)

In 1855, Alexander II began his reign as Tsar of Russia and presided over a period of political and social reform, notably the emancipation of serfs in 1861 and the lifting of censorship.

Tsar Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I in 1855, was a man of a liberal disposition, who saw no alternative but to implement change in the aftermath of the Disastrous performance of the Army, the economy and the government during Crimean War.

The government had envisioned that the 50,000 former landlords who possessed estates of more than 1.1 km would thrive without serfs and would continue to provide loyal political and administrative leadership in the countryside.

The old system of long term service (25 years) for a limited number of recruits was abandoned, as being too heavy a burden for the people and as providing practically no reserves.

Dmitriy Tolstoy, Alexander's minister of internal affairs, instituted the use of land captains, who were noble overseers of districts, and he restricted the power of the zemstvos and the dumas.

Alexander III assigned his former tutor, conservative Konstantin Pobedonostsev, to be the procurator of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church and Ivan Delyanov to be the minister of education.

In their attempts to "save" Russia from "modernism," they revived religious censorship, persecuted non-Orthodox and non-Russian populations, fostered anti-Semitism, and suppressed the autonomy of the universities.

Slavophiles believed that while the West polluted itself with science, atheism, materialism, and wealth, they should return to a simple peasant-based society centered on the Orthodox faith.

As Russian industrialization progressed, Poland fared quite well, but other areas like Ukraine remained backward, a problem worsened by the clumsy land reforms of Alexander II.

Since most workers were fresh off the farm and totally uneducated, the main impetus of revolution came from middle-class college graduates frustrated at the inefficiency of Russian society.

But while Britain, the US, Germany, and others were eventually able to rid themselves of those problems, Russia found it much more difficult due to inadequate infrastructure and (especially) the lack of an honest, educated bureaucracy.

During the latter years of the 19th century, revolutionary groups of all flavors proliferated, some of which sought to reject modernity altogether and turn the clock back to the Middle Ages.

Russian statesmen viewed Britain and Austria (redesignated as Austria-Hungary in 1867) as opposed to that goal, so foreign policy concentrated on good relations with France, Prussia, and the United States.

Once the forces of Aleksandr Baryatinsky had captured the legendary Chechen rebel leader Shamil in 1859, the army resumed the expansion into Central Asia that had begun under Nicholas I.

To avoid alarming Britain, which had strong interests in protecting nearby India, Russia left the Bukhoran territories directly bordering Afghanistan and Persia nominally independent.

[5] In the 1870s, Russian nationalist opinion became a serious domestic factor in its support for liberating Balkan Christians from Ottoman rule and making Bulgaria and Serbia quasi-protectorates of Russia.

From 1875 to 1877, the Balkan crisis escalated with the rebellion in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and insurrection in Bulgaria, which the Ottoman Turks suppressed with such great cruelty that Serbia, but none of the West European powers, declared war.

Russia's nationalist diplomats and generals persuaded Alexander II to force the Ottomans to sign the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, creating an enlarged, independent Bulgaria that stretched into the southwestern Balkans.

Russian nationalists were furious with Austria-Hungary and Germany for failing to back Russia, but the Tsar accepted a revived and strengthened League of the Three Emperors as well as Austro-Hungarian hegemony in the western Balkans.

This article helped prevent a wider war: the British cabinet, informed of the Russian attitude by telegraph, voted down Russell's aggressive project.

He wrote to John Bigelow early in the war: "I have a belief that the European State, whichever one it may be, that commits itself to intervention anywhere in North America, will sooner or later fetch up in the arms of a native of an oriental country not especially distinguished for amiability of manners or temper.

It was on 5 September 1863 that US Ambassador Charles Francis Adams Sr. told British Foreign Secretary Lord Russell that if the Scorpion-class ironclads – powerful warships capable of breaking the Union blockade which were then under construction in England – were allowed to leave port, "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.

The Russians, judging that they were on the verge of war with Britain and France over the British-fomented Polish insurrection of 1863, had taken this measure to prevent their ships from being bottled up in their home ports by the superior British fleet.

These ships were also the tokens of the vast Russian land armies that could be thrown in the scales on a number of fronts, including the northwest frontier of India; the British had long been worried about such an eventuality.

In mid-July 1863, French Foreign Minister Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys was offering London the joint occupation of Poland by means of invasion.

It was this moment that inspired the later verses of Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most popular writers in America, for the 1871 friendship visit of the Russian Grand Duke Alexis: Bleak are our shores with the blasts of December, / Fettered and chill is the rivulet's flow; / Thrilling and warm are the hearts that remember / Who was our friend when the world was our foe.

Fires of the North in eternal communion, / Blend your broad flashes with evening's bright star; / God bless the Empire that loves the Great Union; / Strength to her people!

[13] The Russians, as Clay reported to Seward and Lincoln, were delighted in turn by the celebration of their fleets, which stayed in American waters for over six months as the Polish revolt was quelled.

[14] This exceedingly cordial Russo-American friendship set the tone of much nineteenth-century historiography Alexander II's reforms, particularly the lifting of state censorship, fostered the expression of political and social thought.

Disputing his views, the moralist and individualist Petr Lavrov (1823–1900) made a call "to the people", which hundreds of idealists heeded in 1873 and 1874 by leaving their schools for the countryside to try to generate a mass movement among the narod.