RUSSIA AS A GREAT POWER, 1801–55
During the first half of the nineteenth century, the status of the Russian Empire in the international arena changed dramatically. After 1812 it reached the pinnacle of prestige and influence, but in the mid 1850s Russia endured a military defeat that exposed the internal weaknesses of the country, throwing into doubt its viability as a great power. Tsars Alexander I (1801–25) and Nicholas I (1825–55) reveled in Russia’s enhanced status, but both seemed to sense that political and social changes would be necessary to retain that status. From time to time, they actually contemplated a wide range of reforms, and they even implemented a few, but none that fundamentally altered the structure of society. In the end, Russia in 1855 was, politically and socially, not appreciably different from the Russia of 1801.
It is tempting to attribute the tsars’ failures to introduce far-reaching reforms to a lack of wisdom and to weaknesses of character. Perhaps more far-sighted and stronger rulers could have achieved more than Alexander and Nicholas in transforming Russia into a modern state, but it must be kept in mind that the tsars faced intractable problems. As indicated in previous chapters, economically, socially, and politically, Russia retained institutions – the autocracy, serfdom, a rigid social structure – that made change exceedingly difficult. The tsars and many of their advisers trembled at the thought that any fundamental change in their country’s institutions would produce upheavals comparable to those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Fear that the whole structure of authority would then collapse paralyzed the tsars in their attempts to cope with some of the most critical problems facing the nation. The result was stagnation and a slow but steady growth in popular disaffection with the status quo.
Tsar Alexander I vacillated so frequently in pursuing his domestic and foreign goals that contemporaries often referred to him as the ‘enigmatic tsar’, the ‘sphinx’, and the ‘crowned Hamlet’. Educated at the court of Catherine the Great by the Swiss republican Frédéric-César de La Harpe, Alexander received a good grounding in the ideas of the Enlightenment, to which he remained emotionally attached for much of his life. As a young man, he spoke often of the need to liberalize Russia, and even as sovereign he frequently supported the cause of reform. He went so far as to suggest that he favored a monarchy based on law rather than on personal whim and that he wished to improve markedly the condition of the peasants. At the same time, Alexander was ardently attached to the values of the military, to discipline and regimentation. In 1812, at the age of thirty-five, he came increasingly under the influence of religious mysticism, which affected his political views. He now advocated a restructuring of the world according to the doctrines of Christian morality, a hazy notion that underlay his advocacy after 1815 of the Holy Alliance. By this time, Alexander’s liberalism was much less in evidence than his mysticism and his penchant for authoritarian rule. But Alexander was also a clever man, adept at dissimulation, and therefore succeeded in persuading many contemporaries that his liberalism was sincere even as he pursued policies that were conservative and at times reactionary.
In foreign affairs, he claimed to cherish peace and yet he waged aggressive wars against Persia, Turkey, and Sweden that enabled him to expand along the Black and Caspian Seas, to annex Bessarabia, and to incorporate Finland into the Russian Empire as a separate grand duchy. But his most notable success was his triumph over the outstanding military genius of the age, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had become Emperor of the French in 1804 and was determined to dominate Europe. No one would have predicted such a triumph. Indeed, initially, Alexander proclaimed Russia’s neutrality in the European wars of the time, but by 1805 the tsar was worried by Napoleon’s territorial ambitions and by his high-handed treatment of his opponents. Alexander now joined forces with Austria and Prussia to halt the French leader’s advances, but within a two-year period (1805–7) Russia suffered three crushing blows, in the battles of Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland. When Napoleon offered peace, the tsar readily agreed to negotiate. In July 1807, the two emperors met on a gaily decorated raft in the middle of the Nieman river, near the town of Tilsit, and reached an agreement that in effect permitted France to dominate Western Europe and Russia Eastern Europe. The arrangement suited Napoleon, at least temporarily, because it allowed him to concentrate on the struggle with Great Britain, the one major country he had been unable to subdue.
Over the next few years, Alexander fawned on Napoleon, but the Franco-Russian alliance was doomed to be short-lived. For one thing, the Russian nobles urged the tsar to break relations with France, fearing that ‘the child of the revolution’, as the French emperor was known, would export dangerous, liberal ideas that might ultimately infect Russia. More important, the interests of the two nations collided in one area after another. For one thing, Napoleon’s plan for an independent Poland would deprive Russia of lands she had acquired during the recent partitions of that country. Another important source of friction was Russia’s unwillingness to honor the Continental System, the economic blockade that Napoleon had mounted against Great Britain and that he expected other European states to honor. The system was so detrimental to Russian exporters and landlords that they persistently disregarded it, but Napoleon was not the kind of man to stand idly by and witness the subversion of his plans. There are also indications that the French emperor was affected by fits of megalomania during this period. He spoke confidently of conquering Moscow and then marching on to India. Flushed by his many military victories, in 1807 he told his brother, ‘I can do everything now.’
On 24 June 1812, without bothering to declare war, Napoleon led his Grand Army across the Nieman river into Russian territory, thus initiating the most momentous struggle of his career. In a desperate effort to avoid hostilities, Tsar Alexander pleaded with his adversary to withdraw, but the invader would not be deterred. The French emperor had mustered an enormous force of some 600,000 men for the campaign, and although he seems to have lacked a precise plan, he pressed forward. If Napoleon ascribed the tsar’s plea to personal weakness, he was soon to be disillusioned, for it turned out that in the face of severe provocation Alexander could summon up a tenacity and courage that startled his subjects as well as his foes. As one of his ministers aptly remarked, ‘Alexander is too weak to rule and too strong to be ruled.’
For more than a century and a half it was generally believed that the Russian generals followed a ‘Scythian strategy’ in response to the invasion, that is, they deliberately lured the enemy into a devastated country, knowing that its subjects would refuse to give the invaders much-needed provisions. This interpretation is based, among other things, on a statement by Tsar Alexander to Armand de Caulaincourt, French ambassador at St. Petersburg and one of Napoleon’s intimates: ‘Your Frenchman is brave; but long privations and a bad climate wear him down and discourage him. Our climate, our winter, will fight on our side. With you, marvels take place where the emperor is in personal attendance; and he cannot be everywhere, he cannot be absent from Paris year after year.’ These comments notwithstanding, no strategy of retreat was ever devised by the Russian high command.
In truth, the Russian army retreated because the generals correctly judged their forces to be too weak to stop the French. At most, the defenders could deploy 150,000 men, which meant that they were outnumbered four to one. An additional weakness of the Russian army, according to one authority on the subject, was the ‘ignorance and military incompetence of many officers, even generals’. Furthermore, demoralization had set in because of widespread corruption among the officers and the barbaric discipline imposed on common soldiers. ‘Much use was made of the bastinado [cudgel]. The principle was: beat two to death, train the third.’ Rank-and-file soldiers found their brutal treatment so unbearable that they often committed suicide to escape it.
In view of these handicaps, General Barclay de Tolly, who made most of the major decisions for the Russian army during the first part of the campaign, had little choice but to pull back. In so doing he prevented Napoleon from achieving his prime objective in every previous war, the early destruction of the opposing force. With each successive day the French emperor occupied more territory, but he could not claim victory. Nor could he relax for a single moment: the enemy might suddenly decide to fight.
About six weeks after the campaign was launched, several of Napoleon’s marshals warned him that he was falling into a trap. They pointed out that his military forces were already beginning to feel the strain of the long march: in the advance from Vilna to Vitebsk, for example, eight thousand of one army’s twenty-two thousand horses had died. In addition, the retreating Russians had devastated much of the countryside. As a result, Napoleon’s forces could not live off the conquered lands, as was their custom, and transporting supplies all the way from Poland presented tremendous logistical problems. But the most ominous sign for the French was that despite his territorial losses Alexander refused to sue for peace. Nonetheless, Napoleon continued the chase. ‘If necessary,’ he told one of his advisers, ‘I shall go as far as Moscow, the holy city of Moscow, in quest of battle.’ At that point Alexander would be forced to capitulate, ‘for a capital to be occupied by an enemy is equivalent to a girl losing her honor’.
In the meantime, the Russian public unleashed a barrage of criticism at the generals for their failure to fight. Late in August the tsar yielded to the pressure of his counselors and appointed the sixty-seven-year-old Prince Michael Kutuzov commander-in-chief even though the sovereign passionately disliked him. Kutuzov was a highly respected officer, and in hopes of restoring national unity and bolstering morale in the army, Alexander set aside his personal feelings. One of the few who looked upon retreat as the most viable strategy, Kutuzov promptly announced that he intended to give up the ancient citadel, the Kremlin, and former capital without a struggle. But according to General Karl von Clausewitz, the noted German strategist who accompanied the Russian army, ‘the court, the army, and the whole of Russia’ clamored for battle. Kutuzov therefore decided, for essentially political reasons, to make a stand in defense of Moscow.
On 7 September a Russian force of 112,000 met a French army of 130,000 near Borodino, about seventy-five miles south-west of Moscow. Although the fighting lasted only one day, the bloodletting was savage. The Russians lost fifty-eight thousand men and the French fifty thousand, including forty-seven generals. The outcome can only be described as uncertain, for though the Russians withdrew again, their morale was high and their retreat orderly. Although the claim of many Russians that they scored a decisive military victory is overblown, there is no doubt that the Battle of Borodino was a great moral triumph for Russia. The French scoff at this claim, but after Napoleon had been deposed, he himself acknowledged Borodino’s significance: ‘The most terrible of all my battles was the one before Moscow. The French showed themselves worthy of victory, and the Russians worthy of being invincible.’
Several generals urged Kutuzov to engage the French again before Moscow, but the commander insisted on withdrawal. ‘You fear a retreat through Moscow,’ he told a conference of his highest officers, ‘but I regard it as far-sighted, because it will save the army. Napoleon is like a stormy torrent which we are as yet unable to stop. Moscow will be the sponge that will suck him in.’ It was not a decision that Kutuzov took lightly. He understood that the fall of Moscow would be humiliating and depressing for his countrymen. When he entered his private quarters, he broke into uncontrollable weeping, but he would not change his mind.
Triumphantly, Napoleon marched towards Moscow, and on the morning of 14 September 1812 he reached the Sparrow Hills overlooking the city. He ordered Joachim Napoleon, King of Naples, to bring a deputation of city authorities to meet him at Moscow’s principal gate. They were supposed to surrender the keys, as had been the custom in every other major town Napolean had occupied. To the emperor’s astonishment, Joachim returned a short time later to report that he ‘had not discovered so much as a single prominent inhabitant’. It soon became apparent that out of a population of 250,000 only about 12,000 remained. ‘Moscow is empty!’ the emperor cried out in disbelief. ‘Incredible! We must enter. Go and bring some of the boyars.’ Stubbornly, he continued to wait for a few hours. ‘Finally, an officer, either anxious to please or convinced that everything desired by the emperor must take place, penetrated the city, caught five or six vagrants, and, pushing them forward with his horse, brought them into the presence of the emperor, imagining that he had brought a deputation.’1 This action only compounded the injury to the ruler’s pride, for ‘from the very answers of these unfortunates, Napoleon saw that he had before him but a few pitiful day-laborers.’
Towards evening Napoleon finally entered the city, not in the mood of exhilaration he had anticipated but in one of gloom. Early the next morning he rode to the Kremlin, and the sight of the fortress raised his spirits. ‘The city is as big as Paris,’ he wrote to his wife. ‘There are 1,600 church towers here, and over a thousand beautiful palaces; the city is provided with everything.’ He occupied the royal palace and settled in for a much-needed rest. But before he could obtain even one night’s sleep, the emperor was forced to flee for his life.
At eight o’clock in the evening of 15 September, a fire, presumably touched off by the careless French soldiers who were looting the city, erupted in one of the suburbs. Orders were given to extinguish it and the imperial party retired for the night. Two and a half hours later Caulaincourt was awakened by his valet, who told him that flames were spreading over a large part of the city. ‘I had only to open my eyes’, Caulaincourt recalled, ‘to realize that this was so, for the fire was giving off so much light it was bright enough to read in the middle of the night.’ A strong wind from the north drove the flames towards the center; the wooden houses burned like tinderboxes.
Additional fires broke out in other districts, and by four o’clock in the morning the conflagration had enveloped so much of the city that the emperor had to be roused from his sleep. Within a few hours the Kremlin itself was threatened. ‘The air was so hot, and the pine-wood sparks were so numerous that the beams supporting the iron plates which formed the roof of the Arsenal all caught fire,’ Caulaincourt remembered. It soon became too dangerous for Napoleon to remain in the Kremlin, and accompanied by his closest advisers and personal guards he managed to escape. He set up headquarters in a country mansion just outside Moscow. The metropolis continued to burn for another two days, and when the flames at last subsided about ninety percent of the city had been destroyed. Most of the structures in the Kremlin remained intact, however, and, fortunately for the French, the grain and fodder warehouses along the wharves also escaped, leaving the army with provisions for six months.
The burning of Moscow stunned and disheartened Napoleon, who now referred to the Russians as ‘Scythians’ and ‘barbarians’. He could not control his anger: ‘This exceeds all imagination. This is a war of extermination. Such terrible tactics have no precedent in the history of civilization . . . To burn one’s own cities! . . . A demon inspires these people! What a people! What a people!’ As soon as the fire had burned itself out, the French authorities conducted an investigation. They concluded that Count Fedor Rostopchin, governor-general of Moscow, had planned the burning and evacuation of the city. The investigators alleged that all the fire engines had either been removed or damaged and that fuses had been found in numerous buildings, including the imperial bedroom in the Kremlin. Finally, the French claimed to have discovered four hundred arsonists, whom they summarily tried and executed.
The evidence in support of this explanation is far from conclusive, and historians are still debating the question of responsibility. Rostopchin himself did not help to clarify the issue: initially, when he thought the burning of Moscow would be popular, he took credit for it; later, when he realized that the people deplored the action, he denied any connection with it. Of course, it served the interests of the French to place the blame on the Russians, if only to forestall being blamed for it themselves. For if the Russians came to believe that Napoleon had intentionally devastated their holy city, they would detest the invader with even greater intensity than before. Despite the emperor’s elaborate investigations, this is precisely what happened. In truth, it is quite likely that no one deliberately set the fires, and that, as Leo Tolstoy argued in War and Peace, they broke out accidentally. Because the city was empty, no one extinguished them, and then the winds took over.
After Moscow was razed, Napoleon’s occupation of the city could no longer pressure Alexander into suing for peace. Quite the contrary, the tsar held the French responsible for the disaster, and he became more adamant than ever in his refusal to deal with them. ‘It is Napoleon or I, either he or I – we can no longer reign at the same time! I have found him out and he will not deceive me again.’ Melodramatically, Alexander vowed that he would ‘eat potatoes with the lowliest of my peasants in the depths of Siberia’ rather than negotiate with the ‘monster who is the misfortune of the entire world’.
Never before had Napoleon’s plans misfired so completely. Never before had he so thoroughly misjudged the character of an adversary. Napoleon had captured the former capital, but he had not defeated Russia. Moreover, he soon saw that he could not stay in Moscow for long. Once winter set in he would find it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain contact with the rest of his empire and to secure adequate military supplies. His prolonged absence from Western Europe might well stimulate open resistance in conquered lands. Finally, discipline in the Grand Army, only one third of which was French, began to decline; numerous soldiers deserted and many others showed greater interest in looting than in maintaining French control over Russian territory.
For the first time in his career Napoleon was indecisive. He considered a four-hundred-mile march on St. Petersburg, but gave up that idea when his marshals convinced him that it was too risky, especially since inclement weather might soon hamper the movement of a large army. Out of sheer desperation he made three separate peace overtures to Alexander, but the tsar did not even bother to reply. On 18 October, Kutuzov inflicted substantial casualties on the French in a minor skirmish, and a day later – after five weeks in Moscow – Napoleon ordered his army to begin the march back to the West.
So great was Napoleon’s anger at Alexander that he spitefully decided to annihilate the Kremlin. For three days Russians were forced to lay mines in palaces, churches, and other structures. As soon as the army had left, the explosions erupted, causing extensive damage to the Arsenal and to portions of the Kremlin wall and several of its towers. A fortuitous rainfall prevented most of the fuses from igniting, but if nature had not intervened Napoleon’s barbaric action would probably have led to the destruction of most of the Kremlin.
Nature also contributed to the destruction of the retreating Grand Army. Short of supplies, military as well as food, ill-equipped to cope with the Russian winter, harassed by Kutuzov’s troops and roving guerrillas, the vast military machine rapidly disintegrated. The horses collapsed in droves, mainly because they were improperly shod and could not keep their footing on the ice. ‘For dozens of miles,’ we are told, ‘the roads were littered with corpses. Soldiers built shelters with the corpses of their comrades, piling them like logs.’2 It has been estimated that no more than thirty thousand men survived the Russian campaign, that is, one out of twenty. The crushing defeat marked the beginning of the end of Napoleon’s grand scheme to subjugate the entire European continent. For Alexander, it marked the beginning of the most glorious phase in his career; during the next few years he was not only one of the most influential but also one of the most popular monarchs in Europe.
In the meantime, however, Alexander’s plans for domestic reform had faltered and his reputation as a liberal had suffered some blemishes. To demonstrate his repudiation of Tsar Paul’s retrograde policies, Alexander in the first few years of his reign issued a series of progressive decrees. He removed restrictions on foreign travel, allowed the import of foreign publications, liberalized trade, outlawed some of the harsher features of the penal procedures, and abolished the secret police. The tsar also indicated his distaste for arbitrariness and promised to establish a governmental system that would be based on the foundation of law. To that end, he appointed a ‘non-official committee’ of liberal nobles to examine Russia’s domestic and foreign policies and to devise proposals for reform. The committee deliberated in a rather unsystematic fashion for two years (from 1801 till 1803) and in the end did not accomplish anything of significance. But the committee’s creation was a sign of the tsar’s attempt to reach out to elements in society that wished to modernize Russia.
An even more striking sign was Alexander’s appointment in 1808 of the gifted Michael Speransky to a high position in the Ministry of Justice. The son of a village priest, Speransky had been educated at a theological seminary, entered the civil service, and by dint of hard work and a sharp intelligence rose quickly through the ranks. Alexander was much taken with him and for several years relied heavily on his advice in political matters. In 1808 he asked Speransky to formulate a plan for constitutional reform, a project that the assistant minister of justice completed in October 1809. Scholars are still debating how radical Speransky’s political views were; some contend that he was essentially an open-minded conservative whereas others argue that he envisioned a fundamental reordering of Russia’s state institutions. The point is that Speransky’s proposals for change were far-reaching without calling for an immediate overturn of the political structure or of social institutions. Thus, although the monarchy was to remain, it was to govern in accordance with the law. Speransky recommended the separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. A legislature was to be elected on the basis of a franchise defined by property qualifications, but its powers were to be limited. It would not, for example, have the authority to initiate legislation; it would, however, have the right to veto measures introduced by the tsar, and this would have amounted to a serious limitation on the ruler’s prerogatives. On the question of serfdom, Speransky adopted a cautious approach. He favored abolition but because of the opposition of powerful social groups he urged that this be done gradually. In the meantime, the serfs would not be given any role in governing the country.
Tsar Alexander studied Speransky’s recommendations for a constitution with great care and seemed to approve of them, but for reasons that he never articulated he did not try to implement them. He did, however, accept two of Speransky’s other suggestions, both of which remained in effect until the revolution of 1917. The tsar reorganized the executive departments, spelled out in some detail the functions of each one, and prohibited them from a direct role in legislative and judicial matters. Secondly, Alexander redefined the functions of the State Council, a body appointed by him, by charging it with drafting legislative projects and with offering advice to the ruler on all matters. Although the tsar was not obliged to accept the Council’s advice, now at least there existed an institution other than the autocrat’s court or personal advisers that concerned itself with legislative proposals.
All in all, Speransky’s efforts yielded modest results, and by 1812 the opposition to him from the elite became so intense that Alexander turned against him and exiled him, first to Nizhni-Novgorod and then to Perm. Many nobles were envious of him for having risen from poverty to a position of paramount influence, but a more serious reason for their hostility to him was their fear that his reforms would undermine their social and political privileges. They also suspected Speransky of being an admirer of Napoleon and therefore of being a traitor to his country. With Speransky’s departure, Alexander’s interest in reform began to wane. True, in 1818, he commissioned Nikolai Novosiltsev, a senior official and close friend, to draw up a new plan for a constitution. Novosiltsev’s constitution was more conservative than Speransky’s, in part because it made no mention of ending serfdom, but it, too, remained a dead letter.
Alexander’s most notable and certainly most controversial innovation in the domestic sphere, the creation of military colonies, has been both denounced as reactionary and praised as progressive. First set up in 1810, the colonies appeared to many people to be a crude attempt to militarize Russian society. But the motive behind their creation seems to have been idealistic and in keeping with the tsar’s frequent expressions of support for liberal values. Alexander conceived of the colonies after a visit to the estate of General A. A. Arakcheev in the village of Gruzino, some seventy-five miles east of St. Petersburg. Arakcheev had turned his estate into a highly efficient enterprise, based on rational planning, a remarkable achievement in a country notorious for incompetence and slovenliness. The roads were well paved, the houses of the peasants, all identical in shape, were clean, and a bank set up by Arakcheev lent money without interest to peasants to enable them to buy agricultural tools and other items they might need to improve productivity. It occurred to Alexander that Russia’s countryside could benefit greatly from the creation of colonies of soldiers based on Arakcheev’s principles. During peacetime the men in uniform performed no useful function and the costs of their upkeep were a severe drain on the national treasury.
The idea was to transform the soldiers into peasant-soldiers who during peacetime would live with their families and would support themselves by devoting much of their time to agricultural work and to industry. Except during harvest time, most male colonists would spend two or three days a week on military drill and exercises. By 1825, some 750,000 men, women, and children lived in the colonies, which could field 126 battalions of infantry and 240 squadrons of cavalry. The ultimate goal was to place between one-quarter and one-third of Russia’s male population in the new settlements, and to eliminate the draft altogether; in wartime all the soldiers needed by the armed forces would come from the colonies.
The colonies were a highly unusual experiment in social engineering. In every militarized village, each peasant received an identical amount of land as well as the agricultural tools, cattle, and furniture that he needed. The authorities established primary schools that all children between the ages of seven and twelve as well as adult illiterates were required to attend. Each colony had its own hospital and medical staff. Old people no longer capable of working were placed in ‘invalid houses’ and were cared for at government expense.
Economically, the colonies were in many ways successful: peasants in them were generally better off than their counterparts elsewhere in the countryside and poverty was altogether eliminated. Yet in the end the colonies proved to be a failure. Arakcheev’s officers, who administered the settlements, were not very competent and often they were corrupt and tactless in their dealings with the colonists. Senior army officers despised Arakcheev, a crude and brutal man, and feared that he would exploit his powerful position to secure control over the army. The senior officers also believed that men who devoted much of their time to agricultural work would not be effective soldiers. And many nobles were concerned that once the draft was eliminated the government would no longer be as dependent on the landowners, thus weakening their position in society. At the same time, intellectuals turned against the colonies when they realized that the new institution would not lead, as they had initially hoped, to the elimination of serfdom.
But probably the most important reason for the colonies’ ultimate failure as a social experiment was that the peasants themselves came to resent the extreme regimentation to which they were subjected. They wanted to be left alone, to have the freedom to do as they wished. This became dramatically clear in 1831 (six years after Alexander’s reign had ended), when colonists reacted violently to a cholera epidemic. Blaming medical and hygienic measures for the epidemic, they randomly killed military officers and doctors and burned down hospitals and entire villages. They also went on drinking sprees and held wild parties in the fields. The authorities, realizing that the military colonies could become a dangerous threat to public order, began to dissolve them. A few survived until 1857, when the last of them were shut down.
The military colonies were only one cause of political ferment in Alexander’s Russia. The tsar’s professions of liberalism coupled with the grim conditions under which most Russians lived prompted people from the educated elite to question the status quo. But, ironically, Alexander’s military successes in 1812 also had the effect of stoking discontent. A large number of Russian soldiers were stationed in the West, many of them in France, and their experience of conditions there, albeit in the limited constitutional regimes in Europe, made them painfully aware of their own country’s backwardness and motivated them to take up the cause of reform. In 1816, a group of army officers, some of them attached to the general staff, founded the Union of Salvation in St. Petersburg. Its goals were never clearly articulated, but in general it subscribed to the replacement of the autocracy with a representative form of government and the adoption of a constitution. Although a small group, probably never more than twenty people, the Union included such dignitaries as Prince Sergei Trubetskoi, Sergei and Mathew Muraviev-Apostol, and Colonel Paul Pestel. In 1818 another society, the Union of Public Good, was founded to press for the advancement of education, social justice, economic welfare, and the abolition of serfdom. Its membership was larger, some two hundred people, but because of splits between radical and moderate elements, it was dissolved in 1821. However, Pestel, a republican and an advocate of regicide and thus one of the more radical activists, refused to give up and formed the so-called Southern Society in Tulchin in the Ukraine, where he was stationed. In the meantime, a more moderate Northern Society was formed in St. Petersburg and met regularly to discuss issues of public concern. Both societies favored a coup d’état, which they planned for the spring of 1826.
Before their plans could be implemented, Tsar Alexander died (on 19 November 1825), opening the way for what has sometimes been called Russia’s ‘first revolution’. It would be more accurate to say that the country experienced some political turbulence that could probably have been avoided had Alexander been less careless in making arrangements for the succession to the throne. Alexander was childless and consequently his brother Grand Duke Constantine was the heir apparent, but in 1820 Constantine had renounced title to the throne to enable him to divorce his wife and to marry morganatically a Polish Catholic woman. It was then agreed that Alexander’s other brother, Nicholas, would be next in line to assume the throne. In 1823, Alexander directed Archbishop Philaret of Moscow to compose a manifesto declaring Nicholas the successor, but for some unfathomable reason the manifesto was not made public. It thus came as a shock to Russians to learn that Nicholas, widely disliked as a ruthless disciplinarian, would be the next tsar. Constantine was no less of a martinet, but, since he had been away from the capital for more than ten years, people had persuaded themselves that he was a liberal who favored the abolition of serfdom. Fearful that the guards would refuse to accept him as tsar unless Constantine publicly renounced his claim to the throne, Nicholas took an oath of allegiance to Constantine, in effect making him tsar. But that did not end the crisis, which was rapidly taking on all the aspects of an opéra bouffe. Constantine really did not want to be tsar, but, piqued by what he considered to be Nicholas’s mishandling of the crisis, he refused to renounce the throne. Thus, Russia was without a ruler.
The crisis reached a climax when Nicholas learned that officers of the southern army were about to stage a coup d’état. He then ordered his staff to prepare a manifesto announcing his accession to the throne. Most men in the St. Petersburg garrison took an oath of loyalty to Nicholas, but about two regiments refused and, instead, marched to the Senate Square in St. Petersburg and loudly clamored for a constitution. All in all, some 2,300 soldiers joined the insurgents. A small crowd of civilians also came to protest in Senate Square, and it is said that when they called for ‘Constantine and a constitution’ they believed that ‘constitution’ was the grand duke’s wife. The authorities sent four artillery pieces to the square and after a few volleys and the death of seventy rebels the Decembrist Uprising came to an ignominious end.
Alexander left behind a Russia much more powerful than it had been in 1801. The accretions to the empire were significant (Finland, the Grand Duchy of Poland, Bessarabia, regions in the Caucasus), and in the deliberations of European statesmen Alexander’s opinions were given more than due weight. At the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), convoked to produce a settlement after the Napoleonic Wars, European statesmen humored the tsar by accepting his plan for a Holy Alliance, even though the British Foreign Minister Castlereagh was convinced ‘that the Emperor’s mind is not completely sound’. From now on, relations between nations as well as domestic affairs were to be based not on traditional principles of politics but, as Alexander would have it, on the ‘sublime truths taught by the eternal religion of God our Saviour’. Political leaders would regard themselves as servants of providence and, ‘thinking of themselves in their relation to their subjects and armies as fathers of families, they will lead them, in the spirit with which they are animated, to protect Religion, Peace and Justice.’ Precisely what these words would mean when translated into policy was far from clear, but they did suggest a conservative thrust and were thus consistent with Alexander’s drift to the right during the last years of his reign.
In internal affairs, Alexander’s legacy was not impressive. After a flurry of reform during his first years on the throne, he either neglected domestic issues or adopted distinctly repressive policies. As early as 1804 the government reinstituted press censorship, and in 1807 it revived the security police as a permanent institution, which then played an increasing role in restricting the publication of books and journals. In 1818, the government declared that ‘all questions pertaining to government policies may be discussed only in accordance with the wishes of the authorities, who know better what information should be given to the public; private persons must not write on political topics, either for or against.’ Although this directive was meant to restrict the discussion of political subjects such as constitutional reform and the emancipation of the serfs, the government also placed severe restrictions on purely literary works.
Still, the government of Alexander I had made headway in promoting education. It established six universities, three lyceums, fifty-seven gymnasia (high schools), and 511 district schools. Nobles, who after 1809 were required to complete some formal educational training, could by the 1830s fulfill the requirement in Russia itself, whereas previously many had to attend universities abroad. But autocracy and serfdom, the two institutions that, more than any other, marked Russia off from the West, remained intact.
By temperament and conviction Nicholas was not likely to undertake bold initiatives. Although a well-educated man who spoke several foreign languages (French, German, and English), he was not especially gifted intellectually and had little understanding or sympathy for anyone with convictions different from his. He was a deeply religious man, convinced that the hand of God guided his every action as an autocrat. He was also passionately devoted to military values. At the age of seven, John Keep has noted, ‘he was learning how to make bombs out of wax and how to besiege a mock fortress.’ Also, as a young student, he categorically refused to write an essay on the subject ‘Military service is not the only kind for a nobleman.’ When he became tsar he insisted that obedience, discipline, order, and regimentation must be the guiding principles of the Russian state. He deplored any questioning of his views and insisted on personally formulating state policies and making the decisions to implement them. At times his arbitrariness bordered on the ludicrous. On confirming the annulment of a marriage he wrote in the margin, ‘The young person shall be considered a virgin.’ Nicholas’s thirty-year reign is justifiably considered the apotheosis of Russian absolutism.
The Decembrist Uprising left a profound imprint on his thinking and colored many of his actions as tsar. He himself supervised the investigation of 579 persons suspected of plotting the coup d’état and personally questioned many of them. Determined to crush the oppositional movement once and for all, he approved of severe punishments for many of the 289 found guilty. Five men were executed, thirty-one were given life sentences of exile in Siberia, and another eighty-five were sent there for shorter periods. Even many conservatives, noting that during the twenty-five years of Alexander’s rule not a single person had been executed for political opposition, were shocked by the severity of the punishments.
And yet, during the first six years of his reign Nicholas showed some interest in reform. His first and perhaps most dramatic action was to dismiss the despised Arakcheev as minister of war. Then, in 1826, he established a committee charged with formulating reform proposals, but, since it contained no real progressives, it accomplished very little. In this early period Nicholas also tolerated some expression of liberal views and acted as a constitutional monarch in the Kingdom of Poland, albeit reluctantly. And he formed a committee under the guidance of the rehabilitated Michael Speransky to codify the laws of the Russian Empire, which had not been systematically assembled since 1649. The committee completed its task in 1833, and although its work did not involve legislative reform, it did produce a code that was the one authoritative compilation of Russian law.
Nicholas took a sharp turn to the right after the Polish rebellion of 1830. The unrest in Poland, which deeply resented domination by the Russians, was triggered by the revolutions in 1830 in the West. Not only were the Poles stimulated by the example of revolutionaries taking matters into their own hands in France, where the king was forced to abdicate, they were also appalled at the tsar’s plan to use Russian and Polish troops to quell the disturbances there and in Belgium. An insurrection broke out in the Polish army in November and quickly spread to various parts of the country. The fighting was fierce and lasted about eight months, but in the end the Russian forces won, though the victory was not due solely to military superiority. To split the Polish opposition, Tsar Nicholas in May 1831 issued a ukase lightening the economic burden on Polish peasants, many of whom now became indifferent to the insurrection. This explains the peculiarity that peasants in the western borderlands of the empire enjoyed better conditions than those in the heartland.
Nicholas treated the defeated Poles with great severity. Many of the leaders of the insurrection were banished from their country, the land of about one-tenth of the nobility was confiscated and handed over to Russian generals and senior officials, and the Polish constitution was abolished. In 1832, the government in St. Petersburg issued the so-called Organic Statute that declared Poland to be an invisible part of the Russian Empire. The Statute also promised the Poles that they would retain their civil liberties and institutions of local government, and that they would be permitted to use the Polish language in their schools, courts, and civil administration, but under the newly appointed viceroy, Ivan Paskevich, who behaved as a virtual dictator, the promises were not kept. Paskevich treated Poland as a Russian province and pursued a firm policy of Russification. Thus, Russian and French, but not Polish, were to be accepted languages in higher administrative agencies. Russian became the language of instruction in secondary schools, and early in the 1840s the estates of the Catholic Church were secularized. Outraged by these repressive measures, the British press referred to Nicholas as ‘the master of noble slaves, the ravisher of women, the destroyer of domestic happiness, the assassin of children . . . [and] a monster in human form’.
In Russia itself, the minister of education, Sergei Uvarov, who insisted that Russia must be viewed as separate from Europe, formulated what might be called the ideology of Nicholaevan reaction. In 1832, when he was still assistant minister of education, he circulated a memorandum to senior officials in the educational administration proclaiming it to be the obligation of all teachers to indoctrinate students in the ‘spirit of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality’. He went on to express his conviction that ‘every professor and teacher, being permeated by one and the same feeling of devotion to throne and fatherland, will use all his resources to become a worthy tool of the government and to earn its complete confidence.’ For the next two decades, Uvarov’s formula was reprinted and elaborated upon endlessly in the Russian press as well as in journals, books, and textbooks.
The interpreters of Uvarov’s trinity declared Russian Orthodoxy to be the only authentic religion, and Nicholas, convinced of the close link between God and Russia, regularly referred to the ‘Russian God’. The autocrat, described as the kind, gracious, and benevolent father of the Russian people, was said to derive his power directly from God. The third term in the trinity, Nationality, was in many ways the most obscure. But from numerous writings on the subject certain critical features can be discerned. The proponents of the trinity believed that the Russian people were unique in their fervent devotion to autocracy and Orthodoxy and that their culture, especially their language, was superior to every other. Russian, it was claimed, was free flowing, noble, solemn, fresh, and melodious.
Uvarov urged schools to focus on the training of loyal, subservient subjects and believed that the lower classes should not receive any education that might lead them to cherish hopes of rising to a higher class. Thus, in 1827, the government decreed that peasants were to attend only primary schools, and after 1828 only the children of nobles and officials were to be admitted to gymnasia. The government also increased its control over institutions of higher learning. Insisting that he had the right to make professorial appointments and to dictate the curriculum, the minister of education made theology, church history, and church law compulsory for all students. The occupants of the new chairs in Russian and Slavic history were carefully chosen for their devotion to Russian nationalism, and their views echoed those of M. P. Pogodin, professor of history at Moscow University, who wrote, ‘How great is Russia! How large is her population! How many nationalities it comprises! How immense are her resources! Finally, is there anything the Russian state could not do? A word – and a whole empire ceases to exist, a word – and another disappears from the face of the earth!’ Increasingly, scholars or writers who wished to write in a more objective or nuanced tone were subjected to government censorship, which arbitrarily controlled the publication of books, journals, and newspapers.
In 1826, the government created the notorious Third Department (Department III of His Majesty’s Own Chancery) for the purpose of collecting information on counterfeiters, religious sects, dissenters, and ‘all happenings without exceptions’. Designed to prevent the organization of opposition movements such as the Decembrists, the Third Department quickly amassed enormous power, including the exercise of certain judicial functions. It consisted of two sets of agents: the gendarmerie, which was a uniformed military force that drew most of its officers from educated and well-established families and operated throughout the empire, and a large corps of secret informers who were instructed to keep an eye on every social group and to report on all signs of disaffection. The importance that Tsar Nicholas placed on the Third Department is evident from the fact that its director was considered a ‘kind of prime minister’.
However, despite Russia’s deserved reputation as a repressive police state, the police and the civil servants were not notably efficient, primarily because the government was niggardly in its appropriations for the security forces and the state bureaucracy in general. This generalization held true until the collapse of the empire in 1917. In 1796, the tsarist government employed one official for 2,250 subjects; in 1851, that had increased to one official for 929 subjects. But that was a much smaller ratio than in Great Britain and France, where in mid century the ratio was one to 244 and one to 208, respectively. In other words, in Western countries that were much less repressive than Russia, the state bureaucracy was about four and a half times larger per capita. Because the pay in Russia was extremely small, the authorities found it very difficult to attract able people. And among those it attracted, corruption was extraordinarily widespread. The endless stories of official venality and incompetence related by such writers as Nikolai Gogol reflected reality in all its sordidness and pettiness.
Still, the reign of Nicholas I was not all darkness. Despite his conservatism, Nicholas recognized that serfdom was an evil and he favored measures to improve the peasants’ lot. But he did not advocate emancipation of the peasants, for fear that it would lead to a great catastrophe, by weakening the landowning class, the pillar of the autocracy, and by provoking an uprising of peasants dissatisfied with the conditions of their freedom. However, the tsar did appoint a series of secret committees, nine in all, to make proposals for lightening the burden on the serfs without, however, infringing the prerogatives of the serf owners. The committees faced an impossible task; they were being asked to square the circle.
General P. D. Kiselev, the minister of state properties, who had been sympathetic to the Decembrists, became the guiding spirit of the committees. He believed that emancipation was unavoidable and he also believed that freed peasants must be given adequate amounts of land. He could not persuade Nicholas to take such bold steps, but in 1842 the authorities did enact a law that allowed noble landowners to reach voluntary agreements with their serfs under which land would be transferred to the serfs in return for financial compensation. However, Kiselev did not succeed in specifying the amount of land to be transferred or the amount of the compensation; these matters were to be settled by agreements between the parties. Consequently, only 24,700 serfs received their freedom under this the most ambitious reform undertaken during Nicholas’s reign. Other legislative measures touched on relatively minor issues: they forbade the sale of peasants without land by public auction in settlement of private debts and forbade nobles who did not own populated estates from buying serfs without land.
Kiselev was somewhat more successful in his attempt to improve the lot of state peasants,3 because the reforms he proposed did not involve any limitations of the rights of noble landlords. Kiselev’s goal was far-reaching; he favored the creation of a class of rural freemen who would be granted a large say in local organs of self-government. The government also attempted to equalize the freemen’s land holdings and sponsored an elaborate ‘welfare program’. Fireproof buildings were to be built in peasant villages, medical facilities were to be established, and an effort was made to promote temperance and education. During the eighteen years that Kiselev headed the Ministry of State Properties, the number of schools for state peasants rose from a mere 60 to 2,551 and the number of students from 1,800 to 111,000. These were modest gains and most peasants remained unenthusiastic about the reforms, in part because Kiselev, for all his progressive views, administered his department in a thoroughly bureaucratic, even tyrannical, manner. What was probably most important about the various measures he undertook was that they officially placed the issue of serfdom and the condition of the state peasants on the public agenda, but this cannot be considered a breakthrough.
The peasants were certainly not satisfied with the government’s initiatives. Although no massive disturbances occurred, the period from 1826 to 1854 was far from peaceful. During those twenty-four years there were 712 incidents of unrest, during which peasants killed 173 landlords and bailiffs and tried to kill another seventy-five. During the eighteen years from 1836 to 1854 the government used troops on 132 different occasions to put down disturbances. It is worth noting that peasants tended to be most restless at times of political tension – for example, during the Decembrist Uprising in 1825 and the revolutions in the West in 1848 – which suggests that the rural population was aware of developments abroad and in distant places in the empire.
In the long run, the most significant development during Nicholas’s reign was the emergence of the Russian intelligentsia, a group that came to exercise enormous influence on the course of Russian history. ‘Intelligentsia’ is a term that is not easy to define. Put simply, the members of this group were individuals – writers, philosophers, political activists, artists – who devoted their lives to intellectual pursuits, but that alone does not adequately describe them. The Russian intelligentsia were also individuals who took a critical stance towards the prevailing order, although they did not agree among themselves on how Russia should be changed. Not surprisingly, most of the intelligentsia in the first half of the nineteenth century came from the nobility, the best-educated social class in the country, but as the educational system expanded commoners also became part of the intelligentsia. Despite the authorities’ belief that education bred disaffection, they realized that the expanding bureaucracy and professions could not be manned only by nobles, for the simple reason that there were not enough of them. This explains the rise in the number of students in Russian schools from 62,000 in 1800 to about 450,000 in the mid 1850s. Most of the pupils received only a rudimentary education, but nevertheless by the 1840s somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand non-nobles could be considered part of the intelligentsia. Even then, the intelligentsia as a whole comprised only a tiny portion of the total population, but numbers alone do not tell the whole story. Ideas matter in history, and Russian intellectuals were imaginative, energetic, and resourceful in formulating and disseminating their views. The authorities realized very quickly that this group’s ideas could influence the public and consequently watched their activities with the greatest anxiety. One of the central themes of Russian history from the 1830s to 1917 and beyond is the government’s attempts to curb the intelligentsia.
The government’s main weapon was tight censorship, but a few statistics will demonstrate that this weapon was not very effective. Between 1801 and 1826, enterprising citizens founded 129 magazines, a number that rose to 224 in the next thirty years. More to the point, Russian writers found ingenious ways of circumventing the censorship. Indeed, literature, one of the country’s great achievements in the nineteenth century, was filled with allusions to current affairs, allusions that readers easily understood. Moreover, censors were not the most discerning judges of the likely impact of the written word. In 1872, for example, the censors permitted the publication of a Russian translation of Marx’s Capital on the grounds that the work was so abstruse that it would attract little attention.
The concerns of the intelligentsia were wide ranging, but no theme received more attention than the destiny of Russia. Thus, Alexander Pushkin, a poet who did as much to shape the Russian language as Shakespeare did to shape English, warned that a political system that relied on repression could not count on a secure future. In one of his poems, ‘The Dagger’, he went so far as to advocate the assassination of tyrannical rulers. Vissarion G. Belinsky, a highly talented literary critic, insisted that it was the writer’s obligation to be politically engaged, to champion progressive causes. He was enraged when Nikolai Gogol disavowed the widely held interpretation of his two great works, The Inspector General and Dead Souls, as criticisms of serfdom and bureaucratic corruption. Gogol claimed that these evils were not the consequence of the political system but of the moral failings of individuals. On the contrary, Belinsky argued, ‘the most vital national questions in Russia today are the abolition of serfdom, the repeal of corporal punishment, and the introduction, as far as possible, of the strictest application of at least those laws which are already on the books.’
One of the more contentious debates among intellectuals developed with the rise of Slavophilism, to which I referred at the beginning of this book. First enunciated in the 1830s, Slavophilism was important because it posed in the starkest terms the different perspectives of the Westernizers such as Belinsky, who tended to look upon the West as a cultural and political model for Russia, and those who believed that Russian civilization was superior to every other and that as much of it as possible should be preserved. Slavophilism is also noteworthy because it influenced later political movements that stressed the merit of certain institutions unique to Russia. And it can be argued that in emphasizing the idea of Russia’s unique mission in world history the Slavophiles facilitated the adoption by many intellectuals of Marxism, which also contains a strong missionary message.
In one way or another, the conflict between Western values and Slavic ideals confronted Russian intellectuals with difficult choices, and it was not uncommon for individual thinkers to modify their positions and even to move from one side to the other. A case in point is Alexander Herzen, a magnificent writer and activist who early in his career supported the goals of the Decembrists and believed fervently in the necessity of revolution in Russia. Persecuted for his views, he left Russia for the West in 1847, but the failure of the revolutions of 1848 led him to have doubts about the possibility of fundamental change in the West. The attachment to private property was simply too deeply ingrained in the culture of Western nations. He now concluded that the chances for socialism were much better in his native country because the commune had accustomed the Russian people to ‘communal life’ and egalitarianism. ‘The Russian peasant’, he wrote, ‘has no morality save that which flows instinctively, naturally, from his communism; it is profoundly of the people; the little he knows of the Gospels nourishes it; the flagrant injustice of the government and of the landlords binds him all the more to his customs and to his commune.’ Herzen never became a Slavophile; he should be seen, rather, as the first proponent of a strand in Russian thought that came to be known as narodnichestvo, which literally means ‘populism’ but is perhaps better translated as ‘Russian socialism’. Eventually, his ideas were incorporated by the largest socialist movement in Russia, the Socialist Revolutionary party.
The founder of Slavophilism, Ivan Kireevsky, also began his career as an advocate of Russia’s Europeanization. At that time he was critical of Russian Christianity for its failure to permeate Russian society and to shape the economy and civilization of the country. He also believed that Russia was uncultured and that only Europeanization could raise the country’s culture to a desirable level. His views changed dramatically when he was in his thirties, as a result, it has been assumed, of his marriage to a deeply religious woman. Whatever the reason, Kireevsky now became a devout adherent of Orthodoxy and rejected the West in every respect. Western Christianity, especially Protestantism, had destroyed faith because it sought to prove that divine revelation was consistent with reason. He considered parliamentary rule unacceptable because it was based on materialism, rampant in the West. Westerners, he contended, sanctified private property and luxury and placed no value on the individual. By contrast, the Russian state had developed organically out of the commune, and as a consequence property was communal and the individual was highly prized. ‘The Russian’, he claimed, ‘is spiritually unified’ and needed no formal, legal guarantees for protection. Although Russians acknowledged that there were still imperfections in their society, they were basically at ease with themselves and satisfied with their lives. His overall conclusion, to which all the Slavophiles subscribed, was that Russia must become the spiritual leader of the world.
The intelligentsia, then, was a diverse group, but a group that had one thing in common: they wanted Russia to change. The authorities tried their utmost to rein in the critics – censored them, imprisoned them, exiled them – all to no avail. But, however influential and subversive, ideas alone would probably not have led to fundamental reform. In the end, it was the government’s bumbling foreign policy in the early 1850s that exposed the frailties of Russia’s economic, social, and political system and made reform the order of the day.
Until the 1850s, Nicholas had been quite successful in handling foreign affairs. After the shock of the Decembrist Uprising, he had decided to focus on domestic issues and to shun as far as possible aggressive moves abroad. Whenever he did pursue a forward policy he calculated his options carefully and moved cautiously. This was true of Russia’s involvement in Greek affairs at the time of the rebellion against Turkey (1821–9), of the various attempts to increase Russian influence in Turkey, and of the growing rivalry with Britain. This is not to say that Nicholas was oblivious to Russia’s long-standing goal of gaining control over Constantinople and the Straits, which would turn Russia into a major naval power in the eastern Mediterranean. But he understood that such expansion was bound to alarm European nations, particularly Great Britain, which feared Russian designs on India. He therefore shunned aggressive policies in the region.
At first glance, the international crisis that erupted in 1853 into the Crimean War appeared to have been sparked by differences over a relatively trivial matter, the protection of Christians and Christian churches in Turkey, and more specifically in Palestine. Since pilgrimages to the Holy Land were made more frequently by individuals of the Greek Orthodox faith than of any other, the Christian sanctuaries there were largely supervised by the Orthodox Church. But in 1842, the French renewed their interest in the Near East and also began to make claims as guardians of the Holy Places. Louis Napoleon, who came to power in 1848, sought to follow the example of his uncle, Napoleon I, by enhancing France’s influence abroad. In particular, the French government now demanded to be given the key to the great door of the Church of Bethlehem and the right to replace the Latin star marking the birthplace of Christ that Greeks had allegedly stolen in 1847. The Russians, on the other hand, warned the Turkish authorities that they would not tolerate concessions to the French. Unwilling to offend either the Russians or the French, the Turks at first prevaricated and then, in 1852, promised both sides that they would accede to their wishes, a duplicitous move that did not deceive anyone for very long. Enraged, in December 1852 Louis Napoleon put on a show of naval force in Turkish waters and forced the Turks to yield to his wishes.
At this point, Tsar Nicholas made his first major miscalculation. He mobilized two army corps in the expectation that Austria would come to his support. After all, in 1849, when Austria faced widespread domestic unrest, Nicholas had sent Russian troops to help the Austrian government put down the revolution. It was only natural, the tsar thought, that Austria would reciprocate now that Russia needed help. He also believed that a firm stance by him and his assumed ally would force Turkey to give in to his demands. He now called on Turkey to agree to a secret alliance with Russia that would guarantee not only the privileges of the Orthodox Church with regard to the churches but also grant Russia the right to act as protector of all Orthodox subjects (about two million) in Turkey. Not only Turkey but the European powers were appalled by Russia’s demand, which they rightly considered to be a violation of Turkey’s sovereignty. They feared that Russia’s real goal was to establish a protectorate over Turkey. Great Britain urged Turkey to reject Russia’s more extreme demands. When it did, the Russians invaded the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (in July 1853), though they were soon forced by international pressure to retreat from them. Both France and Great Britain came to Turkey’s aid; Prussia remained neutral and Austria adopted an anti-Russian stance, going so far as to occupy the very principalities that Russia had coveted. Naively, Nicholas was surprised and offended. ‘Was not Schwarzenberg himself [the Austrian minister who died in 1852]’, he told one of his subordinates, ‘alleged to have declared that Austria would one day astound the world by the greatness of her ingratitude?’
Early in 1854, the war began in earnest with Russia ranged against Turkey, Britain, and France. Even though the Russians scored some victories at various stages of the conflict, the war proved to be a fiasco for all the belligerents but most of all for the Russians, who were unable to defend their own territory. The most intense battles were fought in the Crimea, and despite many blunders the Western generals succeeded in capturing Sevastopol (in September 1855), a major naval station on the Black Sea. This was a devastating blow, but it was not until four months later, when Austria threatened to enter the war if Russia did not immediately agree to negotiate peace on previously stipulated conditions, that the authorities in St. Petersburg decided to end hostilities and to attend a peace conference. Bad judgment and incompetence had characterized the Russian war effort from the beginning: the Christians in the Ottoman Empire did not rise up in arms; the existing railway lines were incapable of transporting in a timely fashion the men and ammunition to the war zone; Russia’s weapons were much inferior to those of France and Britain; and the Russian commanders, some of whom were thoroughly corrupt, turned out to be even more prone than their opponents to make catastrophic blunders. Russian losses in men and equipment were horrendous; according to an estimate that includes deaths from disease, about 600,000 soldiers died during the three-year conflagration. There could be no doubt that Russia was in almost every respect a country that lagged far behind the rest of Europe.
Under the circumstances, Russia fared better than might have been expected at the Paris Peace Conference in 1856, although overall the final treaty did not please the government and certainly not Russian nationalists. The allies did withdraw from all the Russian territory they occupied, but Russia had to cede to Moldavia a strip of southern Bessarabia bordering on the Danube. Turkey retained suzerainty over Moldavia and Wallachia, and all the signatories promised to respect the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire and to refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Turkey, which, in turn, agreed to establish religious and legal equality for all its subjects (including specifically all Christians). Finally, the delegates at the peace conference agreed that the Black Sea would be neutralized; that is, it would be open to merchant ships of all nations, but closed to warships. Thus, neither Russia nor Turkey would be allowed to operate its navy there, a restriction that would become a major issue over the next half century.
Tsar Nicholas, who shared much of the responsibility for the calamity of the Crimean War, was spared the humiliation of having to sign the agreements reached at Paris. He died in February 1855, leaving the task of coping with the aftermath of the war to his son, Alexander II.