To what extent do you agree with the assessment that Alexander II proved to be a disappointing liberal?
To what extent do you agree with the assessment that Alexander II proved to be a ‘disappointing liberal’?
Whether Alexander II is considered a disappointing liberal or a successful one is much debated. It is a very controversial topic because he can appear to be a disappointing liberal in the opinion of the people who expected more from him. However, he might be a successful liberal to the people who didn’t expect him to bring much change. People who expected Alexander II to be like the rest Tsars, narrow-minded. In the following commentary I will analyze Alexander IIs main reforms such as the judicial reforms, the emancipation of the serfs, the creation of the Zemstvos and the educational reforms.
The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 agrees with the statement that Alexander II was a disappointing liberal. The serfs were given pieces of land, however, the land that was given to them was often infertile, and therefore it was of no use to them. By making it communal landowning, the serfs couldn’t leave their land because they couldn’t afford it. The nobility had larger portions of land; they also had the fertile land therefore the serfs were in a much worse position. The serfs had less land than before and to make the situation worse, they had a large debt to pay. The communities greatly delayed production, and Russia did not have a labor force, which stopped her from entering a full scale industrial revolution. The emancipation seemed to have given the serfs more freedom, but with this freedom came huge amounts of responsibility, this freedom was not real. This proves Alexander to be an incredibly disappointing liberal because the emancipation didn’t give the serfs a real opportunity to succeed. They weren’t as independent as it seemed, they had large limitations and drastic debts that removed any hint of freedom they were ‘given’. The inequality was no different than before between the nobles and the serfs, the land distribution was unequal, they now had to pay for land that they already believed as their own. Serfs that received fertile land would receive less land than in the infertile areas. Over 150,000,0 serfs received no land at all. The emancipation was so illiberal that by the end of Alexander’s reign well over 60% of serfs had less than the minimum amount of land that the government thought would be necessary for living. Did the abolition of serfdom really change anything for the better? Perhaps the Serfs were no longer enslaved, beaten by the owner or mistreated, however they were now enslaved by a village because as I mentioned before, they could not afford to leave. Alexander sought this reform not only for Russia being behind politically, economically and militarily but also because this would reduce the amount of peasant and serf revolts. This means that the emancipation proves Alexander II to be a disappointing liberal.
