Czarist Russia
Gennady Shkliarevsky
Spring 2010
In the eighteenth century, Muscovy was transformed into a partially westernized and secularized Russian state as a result of the rapid and aggressively implemented reforms of Peter the Great (1694-1725). Yet Peter I’s aspirations to bring Europe into Russia became problematic at the end of his reign, when his efforts eventually culminated in an absolutist autocracy and an entrenchment of serfdom into Russian life. Paradoxically, it was precisely these two institutions that were beginning to be criticized and indeed threatened by developments in Europe towards the outset of the eighteenth century. As the eighteenth century progressed, however, we see that the institution of autocracy began to falter while the institution of serfdom among the peasantry was amplified. This can be attributed to the fact that both Peter I and Catherine II implemented changes that were narrowly focused on elite groups and therefore did not penetrate the full spectrum of social strata. In consequence, by the end of the eighteenth century, social structures were noticeably unbalanced: the state had less control on the gentry, who in turn secured a tighter yoke on the peasantry. In light of these long-term historical developments, then, this paper attempts to examine three questions. First, did the institution of autocracy become strengthened or compromised throughout eighteenth-century Russia? Similarly, in what direction was the institution of serfdom headed? Finally, what relationship did the two institutions have on each other?
The Petrine reforms set about reinventing and restructuring Russia in a European image. To achieve this, it was necessary for Peter the Great to be sole arbitrator. The go...
... middle of paper ...
... as to denounce the idea of serfdom, but in the result of her advisors’ criticisms, she omits the section in her final draft. Ultimately, Catherine was not able to carry out all of the promises in the Nakaz due to the growing circumscription of her power by Court and political elites.
The two paramount institutions of Russia’s eighteenth century, autocracy and serfdom, had profound influence each other despite the fact that more often than not, the impact that they had on one and the other was indirect. To complicate matters, the historical evolution of each of the two institutions proceeded on their own paths. The institution of serfdom was already entrenched in Russian life before Peter the Great’s accession and continued after Catherine the Great’s death. The absoluteness and strength of autocracy, however, vacillated through the course of the century.
Historically, Russia has always been a country of perplexing dualities. The reality of Dual Russia, the separation of the official culture from that of the common people, persisted after the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War. The Czarist Russia was at once modernized and backward: St. Petersburg and Moscow stood as the highly developed industrial centers of the country and two of the capitals of Europe, yet the overwhelming majority of the population were subsistent farms who lived on mir; French was the official language and the elites were highly literate, yet 82% of the populati...
Moss, W., 2014. A History of Russia Volume 2: Since 1855. 1st ed. London, England: Anthem Press London, pp.112-113.
While most of Europe had develop strong central governments and weakened the power of the nobles, Russia had lagged behind the times and still had serfs as late as 1861. The economic development that followed the emancipation of peasants in the rest of Europe created strong industrial and tax bases in those nations. Russian monarchs had attempted some level of reforms to address this inequality for almost a century before, and were indeed on their way to “economic maturity” (32) on par with the rest of Europe. But they overextended themselves and the crushing defeats of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and the First World War in 1917 lost them the necessary support from their subjects and created “high prices and scarcity” which were by far “the most obvious factors in the general tension”
The tsar’s changes were designed to cement his sovereign authority and expand his control of a more powerful Russia. Peter’s revolution did not affect the poor or impoverished in a positive way. By altering the relationship between the elites of Russian society and the serfs, Peter produced a larger divide among the classes. He believed that just as the landowners were obliged to service, so to the peasants were bound to the land. Peter’s tax laws expanded the number of taxable citizens; only exaggerating the existing unbalanced burden of the
The Late-Tsarist period in Russia is popular in the state’s history in that it was during this time that serfdom was abolished, that is around the early 1860s. Before this era, serfdom was legal and practiced in the traditional Russian systems. Serfdom was an ideology of the late 1640s which gave to landowners the power to override the lives of their peasant serfs (workers) as long as they lived on their land. Serfdom’s legal powers included denial of movement from the landlord’s place, and freedom in acquiring as much service as a landlord could demand. Thus defined, it can be concluded that it was a form of slavery. It is for these reasons that the following study text will evaluate the aftereffects of the 1861 emancipation, and what Russia became after it.
The Romanov dynasty was an absolute monarchy in Russia starting from 1613 to 1917, and the Tsars continued to take political power away from the nobles.4 In order to centralize authority in Russia, the Tsars either simply took power away from the nobility or compensated their decrease of political power with increased power over their lands. Because of this, the Tsarist regime had an almost autocratic rule over the nobility which they had gained through serfdom.5 By the long nineteenth century, these relationships were under attack. In the 1825 Decembrist Revolution, military officers tried to push for constitutional monarchy but to no avail.4 Although Alexander II abolished serfdom, the condition of the peasantry remained almost the same.5
Through these decrees we see how Russian social class is very stratified and there are more high official roles but more people in poverty. Russia still had to serfs until 1861. Also the state of the Russian economy was probably very limited to do the fact that there was no manufacturing company to provide for the empire. The Russian economy was very isolated and they go to areas where they can trade. With Russia’s subsistence economy, they were not able to specialize in other areas.
“The social causes by the Russian revolution mainly became of centuries of domination over the lower classes by the Tsarist regime, and Nicholas’s failures in World War one.”5 As the rural agricultural peasants had been limitless from serfdom in the year 1861, the peasants still refused paying redemption payments to the state and demanded to be the private owner of the land that they worked. The only problem was further compounded by the never lasting failure of Sergei Witte’s land reforms during the early twentieth century. Peasant disturbances increased which sometimes ended up becoming revolts, with only the goal of securing the ownership of the land they worked. At that time Russia consisted mainly of poor farming peasants, which made up one and a half percent of the population owning twenty-five percent of the land.
Wood, A. (1986). The Russian Revolution. Seminar Studies in History. (2) Longman, p 1-98. ISBSN 0582355591, 9780582355590
Nicholas II’s abdication was a reaction to the events that had transpired in Petrograd during the February Revolution. Public demonstrations, the formation of the Petrograd Soviet and the defiance of the Provisional Committee to not dissolve at Nicholas’ orders had shown that the autocrat had lost control of the capital. The abdication itself reads as a feeble attempt to unify the disparate elements of the nation with Nicholas using collective nouns such as ‘our’ to reflect on a shared fraternity between all Russians. This in conjunction with his evoking of God and the sanctity of the throne harkened back to the conservative ideal of God, Tsar, and Fatherland. Yet this nostalgic sentiment shown by Nicholas II for autocracy is ironically symbolic of one of the main reasons why Tsarism ended on March 2nd, 1917. His obstinacy to reform due to an uncompromising belief in the Tsar being divinely appointed made him too stubborn to react to the rapidly changing dynamics of Russian society until it was too late.
Polunov, Aleksandr Ju. 2005. Russia in the nineteenth century: autocracy, reform, and social change, 1814-1914. Armonk, N.Y. [u.a.]: Sharpe.
Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., and Mark D. Steinberg. A History of Russia. 7th ed. Oxford: Oxford, 2005. Print.
In Russian history, the eighteenth century was characterized by significant changes to the political, economical, social and cultural fabric of Russian life that shifted Muscovite Russia’s isolated position and mindset of the Middle Ages into modernization and westernization. The driving force of reformation is accredited to Peter the Great whose reign (1694 – 1725) ushered in European ideas, models, manners, and philosophies. Willingly accepted or not, government intervention was evident in almost all aspects of life. The Petrine reforms, although extensive and multi-faceted, can be generally catalogued into the following areas: military; administrative; ecclesiastical; economical and fiscal; cultural; and social. A synthesis of the reforms, and their effect on and significance to Russia, are examined here. The Muscovy past was irreversibly changed, but the Petrine reforms were not particularly a break from Russian tradition, as evidenced by institutions such as serfdom and the faith of the Old Believers. Instead, Peter initiated a shift towards a new perspective of consciousness that must be balanced between what worked and what did not for Russia and it’s population. However, the character of the reforms was not uniform and proved to be difficult to support in future years.
Beginning before Tsar Nicholas II, Tsar Alexander II reformed many parts of Russia, in an attempt to bring the nation into a more modern society, including, improving the military and improvements to the governmental system. After the failure that was the Crimean war, Tsar Alexander II saw the drastic need for an improved military, firstly for trained soldiers instead of the serfs who served as cannon fodder throughout the war. To remedy this problem, Alexander issued his Emancipation Manifesto, which freed the serfs, in a combined attempt to alleviate the use of these cannon fodder-like people and the failing economy under the system of serfdom. By doing this, the tsar had hoped he had improved the state of the motherland, but instead, he made life for the average commoner increasingly much more complicated while continuing to serve life on a silver platter for the nobility. With the serfs free, Alexander also began to ena...
This book offers a collection of nine essays by historians giving their interpretation of the reign Nicholas II. There is a divide of negative and positive interpretations, offering views of the chances of liberal constitutionalism in Russia after 1906. There are essays on the rapid force of industrialisation, as well as essays that focus on constitutional developments and the Duma activities during the reign of Nicholas II. This book should be able to offer valuable information about the activities under Tsar Nicholas II and tsarism that lead to his