Alexander had decided that emancipation of the serfs was due in the interests of power as well as the moral prestige of the state and its nobility. Serfdom had begun to seem unethical and there was a fear that the serfs would revolt if they were not freed soon. Alexander himself said, “It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below”. There was obviously a need to modernise and reform the backward peasant society and so he made the decision to emancipate in the face of strong opposition from landowners.
The Emancipation Edict gave all serfs personal freedom and allotments of land. The state paid the landowners in treasury bonds; the peasants were to repay these bonds over a 49-year period. The land was given to the mir for distribution and so there was still no incentive for individual farmer whose land, or part of it, could be reallocated. The retention of the communal system continued to hold back agrarian progress. There were drawbacks for the freed peasants that meant the reform failed in its ultimate aim to create an economically viable class of landowning peasants, but this was a major step in the freeing of labour in Russia. Alexander succeeded in temporarily appeasing the peasants by granting their freedom, but it would be a long time before they would establish real benefits. There was a great psychological impact on the people of Russia; they had tasted freedom.
The peasants were unhappy with the terms of their emancipation. They felt that they were being made to pay for land that was already theirs. Many peasants were allocated land that was too small to sustain them. In 1878 fifty per cent of serfs could not grow enough to survive and domestic serfs were emancipated with no land, they had no way of supporting themselves. These factors would lead to some angry demonstrations; in the first four months there were 647 riots. The emancipation of serfdom, a reform that was introduced to preserve autocracy, had started to undermine the Tsarist regime.
The emancipation was followed by a series of measures to provide a new more liberal state system. In 1864 the Zemstvos were set up to provide local government services at provincial and county levels. A liberal system of justice was introduced with a jury system and the police were reformed. Attempts were made to boost trade by reducing export and import duties. The education policy was also liberalised, universities were made autonomous and censorship was relaxed. Alexander knew that education could be socially dangerous as it could undermine popular acceptance of the existing order of society, but there was a need to educate the people; many of them were unable to read. With this in mind he made secondary and elementary schooling more widely available.
Another area affected by reforms was the army. Improvements in the army were imperative after the embarrassing defeat in the Crimean War during 1854-56. Alexander initiated new measures to improve Russia's military capability. The Minister of War Dimitry Milyutin oversaw these. He cut the service period from twenty-five years to just six years. This improved the army's efficiency because there was a regular turnover of new recruits. Conscription was also introduced, so that all men aged twenty were eligible for service regardless of their status. The methods used by the army, particularly concerning discipline, were made much more humane. One of Milyutin's great achievements was that the army was now more concerned with equality. The privileges that noble officers had previously received were stopped and no one could gain promotion or exemption from conscription on the grounds of class or wealth. Alexander’s brother Constantine carried out similar reforms within the Navy.
In 1866 there was an attempt on Alexander’s life. The liberals were already beginning to loose credibility; there were different reasons for this. The Tsar and his regime could never be truly liberal because ultimately liberalism called for parliamentary assembly and autocracy could never allow it. ‘The revolution from above’ was basically unsuccessful, as it had failed to bolster the tsarist regime. Russian society was being modernised but people had reacted badly to most of the reforms; the resultant terrorism dimmed liberal prospects and gave more strength to those with more conservative views.
Russian agriculture saw some increased production due to improvements in the transport system, but generally agriculture remained backward. This was due to the communal system and the lack of any capitalist interest from the nobility. The growing peasant population continued to live in poverty and much of the nobility, nearing bankruptcy, gave up the land and became officials in the bureaucracy, which increased from 2,000 to 10,000 in the 1870s. The continuing economic and political problems meant that liberalism was almost a spent force even before Alexander II’s assassination.
Alexander III did not approve of many of his father’s reforms and quickly tried to claw back autocratic power. The early part of Alexander II’s reign was characterised by wide reaching liberal reforms, people like Pobedonostev who had similar ideas to his father later influenced him. There was always some conflict between the authoritarian influence of his father and his liberal education and he was unable act decisively and take his reforms through to their logical conclusion. Before his death Alexander II was again pursuing liberal ideas and there was even talk of a constitution. All hope of this was ended with his death. Alexander III and later Nicholas II would prove to be oppressive rulers following conservative social policies and state-led forced industrialisation.
Social unrest caused by the effects of the modernisation programme was expressed through the formation of three illegal political parties: The Social Revolutionaries (1901), with redistribution of the land as their priority; the Liberals (1903), whose aim was to create a democratic constitutional government and the Social Democrats (1903), who voiced frustrations through the language of Marxism. Therefore most of society was against the state. Only the noble bureaucrats, state dependant industrialists and the army really supported the regime. By the time The Russo-Japanese war broke out in January 1904 the tsarist regime was in a poor state. When the war ended in total defeat there was a massive upheaval in Russia.
There were four main uprisings in the 1905 revolution. The first was the rising of the national minorities against Russification, especially in Poland. The next was the seizing of land that the peasants had considered to be theirs all along. There was the rising of the proletariat through strikes and demonstrations and there was a campaign by the Union of liberation to force the regime to liberalise.
On the 9 January 1905 workers that were demonstrating about poor conditions were fired on outside the Winter Palace. This came to be known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ and was very damaging to Nicholas’s prestige. People no longer saw the tsar as a paternalistic ruler and uprisings spread. He issued decrees in an attempt to calm the people, and even offered ‘participation’ by the people in government. But this was too little too late, they could not trust the tsar and had no respect for the autocratic regime. They had already experienced the partial benefits of Alexander II’s reforms and then had them taken away. In October there was a general strike by the railwaymen and the regime was paralysed.
The effect of the 1905 revolution was to create a constitution in Russia and a parliamentary body in the Duma. It also brought about a rethinking of economic and social policy. Alexander II, through his reforms, had relieved the suffering of many of his people. He restored some equality to the judicial system and made the army more humane. He transformed the Agrarian economy and began a programme of industrialisation. Alexander had believed in autocracy and his divine right to rule the country and ultimately his reforms were intended to strengthen the tsarist regime, but through these reforms the people had been allowed a taste of what life could be like under a democratic government. This would eventually be the motivation behind the revolutionary movement.
Alexander II could not have saved Russia from revolution with his reforms. He had inherited a declining autocracy and tried to use the modern ideas of the West to maintain his power. Many of his actions were self-contradictory and confusing for his people, this caused discontent and violence. He may have been more successful if he had stuck to one policy. He teased the Russian people with reforms that he did not follow through, and some reforms did not have time to work as they were nullified after his death.
The Great Reforms did start the modernisation of Russia. For Alexander II liberalism was a means to an end, his industrial and economic policy was eventually successful as Russia became recognised as one of the most important powers in the world. He may not have been able to maintain autocracy or prevent revolution but he does remain one of the most influential figures in Russia’s history.
