The first time Alexander made it clear that he felt that something should be done about the serfs was in his speech to the nobles, a year after he came to power where he said, “It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below.” By setting up a committee to look into emancipation the same year, it was clear that Alexander serious about doing something about the problem. Over the next five years the emancipation was discussed in much greater detail and on the 19th February, 1861, eighty per cent of Russia’s population were freed. The serfs were given land and although this left the nobility with sometimes just more than half of their land, they were given state bonds and the serfs had to pay redemption fees over a period of forty nine years.
Alexander also made large changes in the Zemstva Decree of 1864. This led to local assemblies meeting once a year, made up from a cross-section of Russian society with nobles, peasants and farmers sitting together. These zemstva made decisions concerning primary education, health, roads, charities and so did not have a great deal of influence in Russia as a whole. Alexander felt that if he gave local people this limited power, he would become more popular, where in fact he was giving them a forum for discussion, maybe even giving revolutionary ideas a chance to flourish which was not good for the autocracy. People in the zemstva realised that they wanted power beyond that which they were given but Alexander was not willing to give them this, which lead to their discontent.
Other changes that were made during Alexander’s reign included the changes that were made to education and also to the military and judiciary service. These were mostly positive reforms, benefiting both individuals and Russia as a whole. However the increase in the number of students attending university and the ability to study foreign history and politics led to more people questioning the state and its running. The judicial reforms meant that Russia was in theory a fairer place. However you could still be imprisoned without trial which meant that there was still a lot of room for corruption. Once all of these reforms were in place, Alexander had managed to partly close the gap between the classes in Russia.
The main problem that Alexander faced with his reforms, was keeping everyone happy and avoiding the formation of opposition groups. This was obviously not going to happen as the reforms affected most sections of society. The nobility were not happy about emancipation and so to combat any problems that may have arisen here, redemption payments were given. The zemstva were also seen as a consolation for the nobility for their losses of 1861. The peasants themselves were reactionary and opposed to change; they did not want their way of life which had been the same for many years to be disrupted. Therefore, although emancipation was designed to increase the agricultural yield, the peasants did not want to change their farming methods or use any new machinery and they did not see any point in producing any extra, there was no increase and so the agricultural sector was not really improved by emancipation. The mir, in charge of dividing the land after emancipation were also conservative. Again this meant that agriculture was not really modernised. Some ministers such as Tolstoy who became the Minister of Education after Golovnin were also more reactionary and so Alexander’s reforms in certain areas became limited. Also opposition arose from the reforms; people who were not happy that the reforms were not being carried through to their obvious end turned to terrorism in some cases. This did not do anything for their hopes of further reform apart from perhaps making the Tsar more wary of making any more reforms. This in turn made the opposition more angry and so it went around in a circle with the Tsar becoming more conservative and the opposition becoming more angry until eventually they succeeded in the assassination of the Tsar.
This opposition started with more theoretical idealistic adversaries from the intelligentsia. However soon this opposition spread and young radicals went to the country to try to unite the peasants into revolution against the Tsar. Although the peasants were not happy, they still saw the Tsar as their ‘Little Father’ and so when the people came to the towns dressed as peasants, many of them were turned over to the authorities with as many as half of the original three thousand being arrested. Later on with terrorist groups such as ‘The People’s Will’ and ‘Black Partition’ there were more and more attempts on the Tsar’s life.
How did the Tsar become so unpopular when he was trying so hard to win the popularity of his people? There is of course his refusal to give up autocracy. If he had done this then some of the reforms that he made would have been taken through to their inevitable end. However, with him as a sole ruler there was no way that he could have given the zemstva the increased power that they wanted. The students that were now meeting regularly in the universities with less censorship led to new revolutionary ideas being formed. In effect his own reforms led to the Tsar’s downfall. He had increased the ability for radical elements to meet. He had irritated the more conservative elements of his government by carrying out the reforms in the first place. Most of all he had shown the people of Russia a little power which they had never seen before and of course after this they wanted to get as much as they could out of him.
When he was assassinated in 1881, it was not the first attempt on his life, in fact there had already been seven other assassination attempts. By the end of his life, Alexander had become isolated from both his people and his ministers and when the news of his death spread there was little sorrow. Despite changing Russia from what can only be described as a feudal system to the modern form that gave people relative equality before the law, a modern army and a reformed economy, better education, more personal freedom and limited censorship, Alexander was not popular and the people of Russia felt he had failed them. In the end it was his reforms that led to his death.
Bibliography
European History, 1848 - 1945 T.A.Morris
Russia, 1815 - 81 Russell Sherman
Survey of Russian History B.H.Sumner
Endurance and Endeavour, Russian History 1812 - 1986 J.N.Westwood
The Decline of Imperial Russia 1855 - 1914 Seton-Watson
