Causes Of Change In The Russian System

Of Government 1800-1917 Essay, Research Paper

“Nothing short of war could have any impact of the Russian system of government.” How accurate is this of the Tsarist system of government from 1800-1917. The Russian Tsarist system under the Romanovs was extremely resistant to change in all forms. Reforms were brought in only to preserve and little improvement resulted from these reforms. In this essay I will attempt to examine whether or not war had any impact upon the Tsarist system of government, and whether or not war brought about any changes to the system. First, the war with Napoleon that ended in 1815 with the Vienna settlement. Tsar Alexander I, Tsar at this time, had a genuine wish to reform, but because of the desire for order instilled in him by his Father Tsar Paul, his good intentions came to nothing. His military victories against Napoleon played a vital role in the eventual defeat of Napoleon’s forces. Consequently, these victories brought power and prestige to Russia and increased her standing as a great power. La Harpe, a French liberal, had tutored Alexander and this had resulted in him having some very liberal ideas. However, despite his positive attitude towards reform in other European countries, its implementation of these reforming tendencies in Russia was limited. This was due to his desire for order. Alexander was petrified of losing control and consequently, when reform and improvement was presented to him, he often turned his back on it, because of the chaos he feared might accompany it. In a sense the victory against Napoleon was probably not particularly beneficial for Russia. Even at this stage, Russia was behind other European powers in its industrial and economic development, and unlike Prussia, and even to some extent Austria-Hungary, Russia learnt no lessons from the war, and consequently implemented no reforms. Perhaps, had the war been lost, Alexander may have realised the need for change, and perhaps some governmental reform may have resulted from this, due to public pressure. However, it is clear that in this case victory in war had no effect upon the Russian system of government. Second, I would like to examine the Crimean war. This war was clearly the war that can be most associated with reform and change. It came during the reign of Alexander II who was clearly the most forward-looking Tsar between 1800 and 1917. However, it must also be remembered that when compared to previous Tsars, indeed, Alexander II accomplished much in the way of reform. On the other hand, when one compares Alexander II to the rest of Europe, the reforms he introduced were extremely limited in scope and vision and certainly did not remove Russia’s backward nature. The key realisation of Alexander II was that Russia was in fact a backward power that needed to be brought up to date. This fact was illustrated for him by the war in Crimea. Russia was defeated by powers fighting thousands of miles from home, and this illustrated the ineffectiveness and the incompetence of the Russian army, and transport system as a whole. Alexander realised that part of the reason for Russia’s backward nature was the serf system. The peasants in Russia were still the property of their landowner, this lead to the emancipation of the serfs. However, Alexander’s insight ended here. Like other Tsars before him, he believed strongly in the principles of conservatism and autocracy, he would not let the conservative landowners loose out in the emancipation edict. The result was disastrous, the serfs who were freed were disappointed and enraged as they had to pay compensation to the landowners for 49 years, whilst loosing on average around half of the land farmed by their families for centuries, as well as loosing traditional privileges such as grazing rights on the land of their landowner. Consequently, most serfs did extremely badly out of the edict. Instead of freeing the serfs unconditionally from slavery and allowing economic growth to take place, Alexander tied the slaves to their land by introducing the redemption payments, and making the peasants answerable to the Mirs, a body who organised strip farming, an antiquated system and told the peasants what crops to plant and when. In actual fact, the emancipation achieved little in the short term, and certainly did not spark an industrial revolution as such, although it did bring about some sort of movement towards the rapidly industrialising towns, and it certainly didn’t spark economic growth on the scale that perhaps it could and should have done. Although this reform, sparked by the Crimean war was far reaching, I would argue that it didn’t reach far enough. However, not only were the serfs disappointed with the reforms, the reforms also disappointed many of the landowning class. At this time up to 60% of the serfs were mortgaged, so many of the redemption payments went towards repaying these debts, consequently, many of the landowners did not do very well out of these lavish repayments. Also, the bonds issued by the government devalued and therefore, the landowners lost more money. This led to Alexander, not only becoming unpopular with the peasants, and achieving few of the aims he set out to achieve, but also isolating his traditional conservative support. However, the emancipation of the serfs did bring about a form of local government in the introduction of the zemstvas and the dumas, these to bodies were responsible to a certain extent f