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ALEXANDER
II.
The first year of the new reign was devoted to the raised a host of important, thorny questions. The emanprosecution of the war, and, after the fall of Sebastopol, cipation was not merely a humanitarian question capable to negotiations for peace. Then began a period of radical of being solved instantaneously by imperial ukaz. It reforms, recommended by public opinion, and carried out contained very complicated problems affecting deeply by the autocratic power. The rule of Nicholas, which the economic, social, and political future of the nation. had sacrificed all other interests to that of making Russia Alexander II. had little of the special knowledge required an irresistibly strong military power, had been tried by for dealing successfully with such problems, and he had the Crimean war and found wanting. A new system to restrict* himself to choosing between the different must, therefore, be adopted. All who had any pretensions measures recommended to him. The main point at to enlightenment declared loudly that the country had issue was whether the serfs should become agricultural been exhausted and humiliated by the war, and that the labourers dependent economically and administratively on only way of restoring it to its proper position in Europe the landlords, or should be transformed into a class of was to develop its natural resources and to reform independent communal proprietors. The emperor gave thoroughly all branches of the administration. The his support to the latter project, and the Russian peasantry Government found, therefore, in the educated classes a accordingly acquired rights and privileges such as are new-born public spirit, anxious to assist it in any work of enjoyed by no other peasantry in Europe. In the numerous reform that it might think fit to undertake. Fortunately other questions submitted to him he began by consulting for Russia the autocratic power was now in the hands of carefully the conflicting authorities, and while leaning as a man who was impressionable enough to be deeply influ- a rule rather to the side of those who were known as enced by the spirit of the time, and who had sufficient “Liberals,” he never went so far as they desired, and prudence and practical common-sense to prevent his being always sought some middle course by which conflicting carried away by the prevailing excitement into the dangerous interests might be reconciled. On the 3rd of March 1861, region of Utopian dreaming. Unlike some of his prede- the sixth anniversary of his accession, the emancipation cessors, he had no grand, original schemes of his own to law was signed and published. Other reforms followed impose by force on unwilling subjects, and no pet crotchets in quick succession during the next five or six years: to lead his judgment astray; and he instinctively looked army and navy organization, a new judicial administration with a suspicious, critical eye on the panaceas which more on the French model, a new penal code and a greatly imaginative and less cautious people recommended. These simplified system of civil and criminal procedure, an traits of character, together with the peculiar circumstances elaborate scheme of local self-government for the rural in which he was placed, determined the part which he was districts and the large towns, with elective assemblies to play. He moderated, guided, and in great measure possessing a restricted right of taxation, and a new rural realized the reform aspirations of the educated classes. and municipal police under the direction of the minister Though he carefully guarded his autocratic rights and of the interior. These new institutions were incomparably privileges, and obstinately resisted all efforts to push him better than the old ones which they replaced, but they farther than he felt inclined to go, he acted for several did not work such miracles as inexperienced enthusiasts years somewhat like a constitutional sovereign of the Con- expected. Comparisons were made, not with the past, but tinental type. At first he moved so slowly that many of with an ideal state of things which never existed in Russia the impatient, would-be reformers began to murmur at the or elsewhere. Hence arose a general feeling of disappointunnecessary delay. In reality not much time was lost. ment, which acted on different natures in different ways. Soon after the conclusion of peace important changes were Some of the enthusiasts sank into a sceptical, reactionary made in the legislation concerning industry and commerce, frame of mind; while others, with deeper convictions or and the new freedom thus accorded produced a large capable of more lasting excitement, attributed the failure number of limited liability companies. At the same time to the fact that only half-measures and compromises had plans were formed for constructing a great network of been adopted by the Government. Thus appeared in the railways, partly for the purpose of developing the natural educated classes two extreme groups : on the one hand, resources of the country, and partly for the purpose of the discontented Conservatives, who recommended a return increasing its powers of defence and attack. Then it was to a more severe disciplinarian regime ; and on the other, found that further progress was blocked by a great obstacle, the discontented Radicals, who would have been satisfied Emancipaexistence of serfage; and Alexander II. with nothing less than the adoption of a thoroughgoing tion of the showed that, unlike his father, he meant to socialistic programme. Between the two extremes stood the serfs. grapple boldly with the difficult and dangerous discontented Moderates, who indulged freely in grumbling problem. Taking advantage of a petition presented by without knowing how the unsatisfactory state of things the Polish landed proprietors of the Lithuanian provinces, was to be remedied. For some years the emperor, with praying that their relations with the serfs might be his sound common-sense and dislike of exaggeration, held regulated in a more satisfactory way—meaning in a way the balance fairly between the two extremes; but long more satisfactory for the proprietors—he authorized the years of uninterrupted labour, anxiety, and disappointformation of committees “ for ameliorating the condition ment weakened his zeal for reform, and when radicalism of the peasants,” and laid down the principles on which assumed more and more the form of secret societies and the amelioration was to be effected. This was a decided revolutionary agitation, he felt constrained to adopt severe step, and it was followed by one still more significant. repressive measures. The revolutionary agitation was of a very peculiar kind. Without consulting his ordinary advisers, his Majesty ordered the minister of the interior to send a circular to It was confined to a section of the educated classes, and the provincial governors of European Russia, containing a emanated from the universities and higher technical schools. copy of the instructions forwarded to the governor-general At the beginning of the reform period there had been much of Lithuania, praising the supposed generous, patriotic in- enthusiasm for scientific as opposed to classical education. tentions of the Lithuanian landed proprietors, and suggest- Russia required, it was said, not classical scholars, but ing that perhaps the landed proprietors of other provinces practical, scientific men, capable of developing her natural might express a similar desire. The hint was taken, of resources. The Government, in accordance with NibiJism% course, and in all provinces where serfage existed emanci- this view, had encouraged scientific studies pation committees were formed. The deliberations at once until it discovered to its astonishment that there was some
