by Riazanovsky
The Arts
While contemporaries and later many scholars showed special interest in the Russian literature and thought of the first half of the nineteenth century, the fine arts, too, continued to develop in the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. Both emperors were enthusiastic builders in the tradition of Peter and Catherine. At the time of Alexander the neo-classical style, often skillfully adapted to native traditions, reached its height in Russia. It affected not only the appearance of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other towns, but also the architecture of countless manor houses all over the empire throughout the nineteenth century. The leading architects of Alexander's reign included Hadrian Zakharov, who created the remarkable Admiralty building in St. Petersburg, and Andrew Voronikhin, of serf origin, who constructed the Kazan Cathedral in the capital and certain imperial palaces outside it. Under Nicholas neo-classicism gave way to an eclectic mixture of styles.
Largely guided by the Academy of Arts, painting evolved gradually from neo-classicism to romanticism as exemplified by Karl Briullov's enormous canvas "The Last Day of Pompeii." A few more realistic genre painters also began to appear. Music grew in quantity, quality, and appeal. In particular, Russian opera developed, and it obtained a lasting position in Russia and elsewhere through the genius of Michael Glinka, 1804-57, and the talents of other able composers such as Alexander Dargomyzhsky, 1813-69. As elsewhere in Europe, Russian opera and the Russian musical school generally stressed folk songs, melodies, and motifs. The theater, the ballet, and the opera attracted increasing state support and public interest. The theater profited from the new Russian dramatic literature, which included such masterpieces as Woe from Wit and The Inspector General, and the emergence of brilliant actors and even traditions of acting. Public theaters existed in many towns, while some landlords continued to establish private theaters on their estates, with serfs as actors. In the ballet too, under the guidance of French and Italian masters, standards improved and a tradition of excellence developed.
On the whole, Chaadaev's claim that Russia had contributed nothing to culture, outrageous in 1836, would have found even less justification in 1855 or 1860. Yet, as the Slavophiles, Herzen, and other thinking Russians realized, not all was well: there remained an enormous gulf between the educated society and the people, between the fortunate few on top and the broad masses. Something had to be done. The future of Russia depended on the "great reforms."
XXIX
THE REIGN OF ALEXANDER II, 1855-81
However, sounds of music reached our ears, and we all hurried back to the hall. The band of the opera was already playing the hymn, which was drowned immediately in enthusiastic hurrahs coming from all parts of the hall. I saw Baveri, the conductor of the band, waving his stick, but not a sound could be heard from the powerful band. Then Baveri stopped, but the hurrahs continued. I saw the stick waved again in the air; I saw the fiddle-bows moving, and musicians blowing the brass instruments, but again the sound of voices overwhelmed the band… The same enthusiasm was in the streets. Crowds of peasants and educated men stood in front of the palace, shouting hurrahs, and the Tsar could not appear without being followed by demonstrative crowds running after his carriage… I was in Nikolskoe in August, 1861, and again in the summer of 1862, and I was struck with the quiet, intelligent way in which the peasants had accepted the new conditions. They knew perfectly well how difficult it would be to pay the redemption tax for the land, which was in reality an indemnity to the nobles in lieu of the obligations of serfdom. But they so much valued the abolition of their personal enslavement that they accepted the ruinous charges - not without murmuring, but as a hard necessity - the moment that personal freedom was obtained… When I saw our Nikolskoe peasants, fifteen months after the liberation, I could not but admire them. Their inborn good nature and softness remained with them, but all traces of servility had disappeared. They talked to their masters as equals talk to equals, as if they never had stood in different relations.
KROPOTKIN
The abolition of serfdom signified the establishment of capitalism as the dominant socio-economic formation in Russia.
ZAIONCHKOVSKY
Alexander II succeeded his father, Nicholas I, on the Russian throne at the age of thirty-seven. He had received a rather good education as well as considerable practical training in the affairs of state. Alexander's teachers included the famous poet Zhukovsky, who has often been credited with developing humane sentiments in his pupil. To be sure, Grand Duke Alexander remained an obedient son of his strong-willed father and showed no liberal inclinations prior to becoming emperor. Indeed he retained an essentially conservative mentality and attitude throughout his life. Nor can Alexander II be considered a strong or a talented man. Yet, forced by the logic of the situation, the new monarch decided to undertake, and actually carried through, fundamental reforms unparalleled in scope in Russian
history since Peter the Great. These reforms, although extremely important, failed to cure all the ills of Russia and in fact led to new problems and perturbations, which resulted, among other things, in the assassination of the "Tsar-Liberator."
The Emancipation of the Serfs
The last words of Alexander II's manifesto announcing the end of the Crimean War promised reform, and this produced a strong impression on the public. The new emperor's first measures, enacted even before the termination of hostilities, included the repeal of some of the Draconian restrictions of Nicholas I's final years, such as those on travel abroad and on the number of students attending universities. All this represented a promising prologue; the key issue, as it was for Alexander I, the last ruler who wanted to transform Russia, remained serfdom. However, much had changed in regard to serfdom during the intervening fifty or fifty-five years. Human bondage, as indicated in an earlier chapter, satisfied less and less effectively the economic needs of the Russian Empire. With the growth of a money economy and competition for markets, the deficiencies of low-grade serf labor became ever more obvious. Many landlords, especially those with small holdings, could barely feed their serfs; and the gentry accumulated an enormous debt. As we know, free labor, whether really free or merely the contractual labor of someone else's serfs, became more common throughout the Russian economy during the first half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the serfs perhaps declined in absolute number in the course of that period, while their numerical weight in relation to other classes certainly declined: from 58 per cent of the total population of Russia in 1811 to 44.5 per cent on the eve of the "great reforms," to cite Blum's figures again. Recent interpretations of the Russian economic crisis in mid-nineteenth century range all the way from Kovalchenko's emphatic restatement, with the use of quantitative methods, of the thesis of the extreme and unbearable exploitation of the serfs to Ryndziunsky's stress on the general loosening of the social fabric. In any event, whether the landlords were willing to recognize it or not - and large vested interests seldom obey even economic reason - serfdom was becoming increasingly anachronistic.
Other powerful arguments for emancipation reinforced the economic. Oppressed and exasperated beyond endurance, the serfs kept rising against their masters. While no nineteenth-century peasant insurrection could at all rival the Pugachev rebellion, the uprisings became more frequent and on the whole more serious. Semevsky, using official records, had counted 550 peasant uprisings in the nineteenth century prior to the emancipation. A Soviet historian, Ignatovich, raised the number to 1,467 and gave the
following breakdown: 281 peasant rebellions, that is, 19 per cent of the total, in the period from 1801 to 1825; 712 rebellions, 49 per cent, from 1826 to 1854; and 474 uprisings, or 32 per cent, in the six years and two months of Alexander II's reign before the abolition of serfdom. Ignatovich emphasized that the uprisings also increased in length, in bitterness, in the human and material losses involved, and in the military effort necessary to restore order. Still more recently, Okun and other Soviet scholars have further expanded Ignatovich's list of uprisings. Moreo
ver, Soviet scholarship claims that peasant rebellions played the decisive role in the emancipation of the serfs, and that on the eve of the "great reforms" Russia experienced in effect a revolutionary situation. Although exaggerated, this view cannot be entirely dismissed. Interestingly, it was the Third Department, the gendarmery, that had stressed the danger of serfdom during the reign of Nicholas I. Besides rising in rebellion, serfs ran away from their masters, sometimes by the hundreds and even by the thousands. On occasion large military detachments had to be sent to intercept them. Pathetic mass flights of peasants, for example, would follow rumors that freedom could be obtained somewhere in the Caucasus, while crowds of serfs tried to join the army during the Crimean War, because they mistakenly believed that they could thereby gain their liberty.
A growing sentiment for emancipation, based on moral grounds, also contributed to the abolition of serfdom. The Decembrists, the Slavophiles, the Westernizers, the Petrashevtsy, some supporters of Official Nationality, together with other thinking Russians, all wanted the abolition of serfdom. As education developed in Russia, and especially as Russian literature came into its own, humane feelings and attitudes became more widespread. Such leading writers as Pushkin and particularly Turgenev, who in 1852 published in book form his magnificent collection of stories, Sportsman's Sketches, where serfs were depicted as full-blown, and indeed unforgettable, human beings, no doubt exercised an influence. In fact, on the eve of the abolition of serfdom in Russia - in contrast to the situation with slavery in the American South - virtually no one defended that institution; the arguments of its proponents were usually limited to pointing out the dangers implicit in such a radical change as emancipation.
Finally, the Crimean War provided additional evidence of the deficiencies and dangers of serfdom which found reflection both in the poor physical condition and listlessness of the recruits and in the general economic and technological backwardness of the country. Besides, as Rieber recently emphasized, Russia had essentially to rely on a standing army without a reserve, because the government was afraid to allow soldiers to return to villages.
At the time of the coronation, about a year after his assumption of power, Alexander II, addressing the gentry of Moscow, made the celebrated
Statement that it would be better to begin to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until it would begin to abolish itself from below, and asked the gentry to consider the matter. Although the government experienced great difficulty in eliciting any initiative from the landlords on the subject of emancipation, it finally managed to seize upon an offer by the gentry of the three Lithuanian provinces to discuss emancipation without land. The ensuing imperial rescript made it clear that emancipation was indeed official policy and, furthermore, that emancipation would have to be with land. At about the same time restrictions were lifted from the discussion of the abolition of serfdom in the press. In the wave of expectation and enthusiasm that swept the liberals and radicals after the publication of the rescript even Herzen exclaimed to Alexander II: "Thou hast conquered, ? Galilean!"
Eventually, in 1858, gentry committees were established in all provinces to consider emancipation, while a bureaucratic Main Committee of nine members was set up in St. Petersburg. Except for a few diehards, the landlords assumed a realistic position and accepted the abolition of serfdom once the government had made its will clear, but they wanted the reform to be carried out as advantageously for themselves as possible. The gentry of southern and south-central Russia, with its valuable, fertile soil, wanted to retain as much land as possible and preferred land to a monetary recompense; the gentry of northern and north-central Russia, by contrast, considered serf labor and the resulting obrok as their main asset and, therefore, while relatively willing to part with much of their land, insisted on a high monetary payment in return for the loss of serf labor. Gentry committees also differed on such important issues as the desirable legal position of the liberated serfs and the administration to be provided for them.
The opinions of provincial committees went to the Editing Commission - actually two commissions that sat together and formed a single body - created at the beginning of 1859 and composed of public figures interested in the peasant question, such as the Slavophiles George Samarin and Prince Vladimir Cherkassky, as well as of high officials. After twenty months of work the Editing Commission submitted its plan of reform to the Main Committee, whence it went eventually to the State Council. After its quick consideration by the State Council, Alexander II signed the emancipation manifesto on March 3, 1861 -February 19, Old Style. Public announcement followed twelve days later.
Throughout its protracted and cumbersome formulation and passage the emancipation reform faced the hostility of conservatives in government and society. That a far-reaching law was finally enacted can be largely credited to the determined efforts of so-called "liberals," including officials such as Nicholas Miliutin, the immediate assistant to the minister of the interior and the leading figure in the Editing Commission, and participants from
the public like George Samarin. Two members of the imperial family, the tsar's brother Grand Duke Constantine and the tsar's aunt Grand Duchess Helen, belonged to the "liberals." More important, Alexander II himself repeatedly sided with them, while his will became law for such devoted bureaucrats as Jacob Rostovtsev - a key figure in the emancipation - who cannot be easily classified as either "conservative" or "liberal." The emperor in effect forced the speedy passage of the measure through an antagonistic State Council, which managed to add only one noxious provision to the law, that permitting a "pauper's allotment," which will be mentioned later. Whereas the conservatives defended the interests and rights of the gentry, the "liberals" were motivated by their belief that the interests of the state demanded a thoroughgoing reform and by their views of what would constitute a just settlement.
The law of the nineteenth of February abolished serfdom. Thenceforth human bondage was to disappear from Russian life. It should be noted, however, that, even if we exclude from consideration certain temporary provisions that prolonged various serf obligations for different periods of time, the reform failed to give the peasants a status equal to that of other social classes: they had to pay a head tax, were tied to their communes, and were judged on the basis of customary law. In addition to landowners' serfs, the new freedom was extended to peasants on the lands of the imperial family and to the huge and complex category of state peasants.
Together with their liberty, serfs who had been engaged in farming received land: household serfs did not. While the detailed provisions of the land settlement were extremely complicated and different from area to area, the peasants were to obtain roughly half the land, that part which they had been tilling for themselves, the other half staying with the landlords. They had to repay the landlords for the land they acquired and, because few serfs could pay anything, the government compensated the gentry owners by means of treasury bonds. Former serfs in turn were to reimburse the state through redemption payments spread over a period of forty-nine years. As an alternative, serfs could take one-quarter of their normal parcel of land, the so-called "pauper's allotment," and pay nothing. Except in the Ukraine and a few other areas, land was given not to individual peasants, but to a peasant commune - called an obshchina or mir, the latter term emphasizing the communal gathering of peasants to settle their affairs - which divided the land among its members and was responsible for taxes, the provision of recruits, and other obligations to the state.
The emancipation of the serfs can be called a great reform, although an American historian probably exaggerated when he proclaimed it to be the greatest legislative act in history. It directly affected the status of some fifty-two million peasants, over twenty million of them serfs of private land
owners. That should be compared, for example, with the almost simultaneous liberation of four million black slaves in the United States, obtained as a result of a huge Civil War, not by means of a peaceful legal process. The mora
l value of the emancipation was no doubt tremendous, if incalculable. It might be added that the arguments of Pokrovsky and some other historians attempting to show that the reform was a clever conspiracy between the landlords and the government at the expense of the peasants lack substance: they are contradicted both by the actual preparation and passage of the emancipation legislation and by its results, for it contributed in a major manner to the decline of the gentry. By contrast, those specialists who emphasize the importance of the abolition of serfdom for the development of capitalism in Russia stand on much firmer ground. The specific provisions of the new settlement have also been defended and even praised, especially on the basis of the understanding that the arrangement had to be a compromise, not a confiscation of everything the gentry owned. Thus, the emancipation of serfs in Russia has been favorably compared to that in Prussia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and land allotments of Russian peasants, to allotments in several other countries.
And yet the emancipation reform also deserves thorough criticism. The land allotted to the former serfs turned out to be insufficient. While in theory they were to retain the acreage that they had been tilling for themselves prior to 1861, in fact they received 18 per cent less land. Moreover, in the fertile southern provinces their loss exceeded the national average, amounting in some cases to 40 per cent or more of the total. Also, in the course of the partitioning, former serfs often failed to obtain forested areas or access to a river with the result that they had to assume additional obligations toward their onetime landlords to satisfy their needs. Khodsky estimated that 13 per cent of the former serfs received liberal allotments of land; 45 per cent, allotments sufficient to maintain their families and economies; and 42 per cent, insufficient allotments. Liashchenko summarized the settlement as follows: "The owners, numbering 30,000 noblemen, retained ownership over some 95 million dessyatins of the better land immediately after the Reform, compared with 116 million dessyatins of suitable land left to the 20 million 'emancipated' peasants." Other scholars have stressed the overpopulation and underemployment among former serfs, who, at least after a period of transition, were no longer obliged to work for the landlord and at the same time had less land to cultivate for themselves. State peasants, although by no means prosperous, received, on the whole, better terms than did the serfs of private owners.