1878–1881
Unfortunately, the tender scene of affection between princess and peasant girl, the coming together of two diverse elements within the spectrum of Russian society, was not to be played out widely within the borders of the Holy Motherland. Instead, contrast and dissension, strife and hardship became its enduring hallmark. Russia was becoming a house divided.
In the 1870s, few Russians had ever heard of Karl Marx. But during this critical time of change, the passionate spirit of the words that would make the German philosopher and socialist immortal began to take root in that huge land:
Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win!
Immediately following the Russo-Turkish War, Russia became a powder keg of revolutionary activity. Russia’s war efforts had drained the country of both manpower and finances, and the nation was ripe for revolution.
The Decembrist Revolt of Russia’s military in 1825 came within a decade of the closing of the Napoleonic Wars. The Crimean War of the l850s saw only simmering unrest within Russia’s huge borders, but a major revolt was forestalled as Tsar Alexander II opened his reign in the final days of the war, giving his people hope for the future. In his first declaration he said: “It will be better for our nation if we work to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until the serfs themselves attempt liberation from below.”
And abolish serfdom he did, as well as attempt many other areas of reform. But the changes proved insufficient to satisfy the radicals of his society, for all of Europe was in the throes of massive modernization and change, and the free thinkers and students and revolutionaries of Russia expected their nation to keep pace.
The terrorism and rebellion following the Turkish War of 1877 and 1878 proved a preliminary testing ground for the major revolutions to come. In the half decade after 1877, young revolutionaries throughout Russia experimented and became proficient in the use of the seditious printed word, terrorism, even assassination. In that short five-year period, they succeeded in putting the nation of Tsar Alexander II on the run. They had no Lenin—who was but seven years old at the time—to guide their efforts and harness their passions. Trotsky, Kerensky, and Stalin had not even been born yet. But the roots of the movement they would one day lead were burrowing deep into the soil of discontent in Russia, and in a short time a world would be turned upside-down as a result.
Tsar Alexander II was not left unscathed by the upheaval. These years were the darkest of his reign. Having done his best to be a benevolent “Little Father” to his people, he felt personally hurt and betrayed by the rebellion against him. He had shown more compassion than any tsar in history. He had freed the serfs, reformed the army, revamped the legal system, and won a war. What were his crimes that he should be so maligned?
“Am I an animal,” he agonized, “that these rebels and assassins must hunt me down?”
Yet his inner distress only resulted in reactionism, further widening the rift between government and revolutionaries. At the prodding of his conservative advisors, Alexander clamped down harder on the already heavily burdened people.
Perhaps the results would have been different had the tsar followed the sensitive and humanitarian instincts that had guided him at the beginning of his reign. But the Romanov tradition of absolute autocracy was too deeply ingrained in Alexander to permit the far-reaching reforms that would please the rabid revolutionaries.
Two hundred and fifty years of Romanov tyranny would never be overthrown without the shedding of Russian blood.