A L E X A N D E R II and the Modernization of Russia is one of the volumes in the TEACH YOURSELF HISTORY LIBRARY Edited by A. L. ROWSE Teach Yourself History VOLUMES READY OR IN PREPARATION The Use of History, by A. L. Rowse Pericles and Athens, by A. R. Burn Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Empire, by A. R. Burn Agricola and Roman Britain, by A. R. Bum Constantine and the Conversion of Europe, by A. H. M. Jones Charlemagne and Western Europe, by H. St. L. B. Moss Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity, by K. B. McFarlane Henry V and the Invasion of France, by E. F. Jacob Joan of Arc and the Recovery of France, by Alice Buchan Lorenzo dei Medici and Renaissance Italy, by C. M. Ady Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy, by John Hale Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance, by Margaret Mann Phillips Thomas Cromwell and the English Reformation, by A. G. Dickens Cranmer and the English Reformation, by F. E. Hutchinson Elizabeth I and Tudor England, by J. Hurstfield Whitgift and the English Church, by V. J. K. Brook Raleigh and the British Empire, by D. B. Quinn Richelieu and the French Monarchy, by C. V. Wedgwood Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution, by Maurice Ashley Milton and the English Mind, by F. E. Hutchinson Louis XIV and the Greatness of France, by Maurice Ashley Peter the Great and the Emergence of Russia, by B. H. Sumner Chatham and the British Empire, by Sir Charles Grant Robertson Cook and the Opening of the Pacific, by James A. Williamson Catherine the Great and the Expansion of Russia, by Gladys Scott Thomson Benjamin Franklin and the American People, by Esmond Wright Warren Hastings and British India, by Penderel Moon Washington and the American Revolution, by Esmond Wright Robespierre and the French Revolution, by J. M. Thompson Napoleon and the Awakening of Europe, by Felix Markham Bolivar and the Independence of Spanish America, by J. B. Trend Jefferson and American Democracy, by Max Beloff Pushkin and Russian Literature, by Janko Lavrin Marx, Proudhon and European Socialism, by J. Hampden Jackson Abraham Lincoln and the United States, by K. C. Wheare Napoleon III and the Second Empire, by J. P. T. Bury Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia, by W. E. Mosse Gladstone and Liberalism, by J. L. Hammond and M. R. D. Foot Livingstone and Africa, by Jack Simmons Clemenceau and the Third Republic, by J. Hampden Jackson Woodrow Wilson and American Liberalism, by E. M. Hugh-Jones Lenin and the Russian Revolution, by Christopher Hill Botha, Smuts and South Africa, by Basil Williams Roosevelt and Modern America, by J. A. Woods A L E X A N D E R II and the Modernization of Russia by W. E. MOSSE THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES PRESS LTD 102, Newgate Street LONDON, E.C.I F irst P rinted 1958 © Copyright W. E. Mosse 1958 PRINTED AND BOUND IN ENGLAND FOR THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES PRESS LTD., BY HAZELL WATSON AND VINEY LTD., AYLESBURY General Introduction to the Series THIS series has been undertaken in the conviction that there can be no subject of study more im­ portant than history. Great as have been the conquests of natural science in our time—such that many think of ours as a scientific age par excellence—it is even more urgent and necessary that advances should be made in the social sciences, if we are to gain control of the forces of nature loosed upon us. The bed out of which all the social sciences spring is history; there they find, in greater or lesser degree, subject-matter and material, verification or contradiction. There is no end to what we can learn from history, if only we would, for it is coterminous with life. Its special field is the life of man in society, and at every point we can learn vicariously from the experience of others before us in history. To take one point only—the understanding of poli­ tics : how can we hope to understand the world of affairs around us if we do not know how it came to be what it is? How to understand Germany or Soviet Russia, or the United States—or ourselves, without knowing something of their history? There is no subject that is more useful, or indeed indispensable. Some evidence of thé growing awareness of this may be seen in the immense increase in the interest of the reading public in history, and the much larger place the subject has come to take in education in our time. This series has been planned to meet the needs and demands of a very wide public and of education—they are indeed the same. I am convinced that the most con­ genial, as well as the most concrete and practical, 5 A L E X A N D E R II approach to history is the biographical, through the lives of the great men whose actions have been so much part of history, and whose careers in turn have been so moulded and formed by events. The key idea of this series, and what distinguishes it from any other that has appeared, is the intention by way of a biography of a great man to open up a signifi­ cant historical theme ; for example, Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution, or Lenin and the Russian Revolu­ tion. My hope is, in the end, as the series fills out and com­ pletes itself, by a sufficient number of biographies to cover whole periods and subjects in that way. To give you the history of the United States, for example, or the British Empire or France, via a number of biographies of their leading historical figures. That should be something new, as well as convenient and practical, in education. I need hardly say that I am a strong believer in people with good academic standards writing once more for the general reading public, and of the public being given the best that the universities can provide. From this point of view this series is intended to bring the university into the homes of the people. A. L. Rowse All Souls College, Oxford. 6 Contents GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES 5 9 PREFACE I UNREFORMED RUSSIA II H THE NEW EMPEROR 29 47 m THE TSAR LIBERATOR IV THE REFORMING EMPEROR 83 1 V ALEXANDER, THE POLES, AND THE FINNS 07 VI THE TSAR DESPOT I 25 VH ALEXANDER H AND THE RUSSIAN EXPANSIONISTS I40 1 V m THE TSAR MARTYR 58 NOTES ON BOOKS 182 INDEX 185 Dates are given according to our present Gregorian Calendar. In Alexander’s day, Russians used the Julian Calendar which was then twelve days behind the Gregorian. Where it was desirable to give a date in both styles, they have been placed side by side. 7 ‘ Experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform itself.* —Alexis De T ocqueville ‘No despot can make happy a country which his predecessors have made unhappy. The traces left by centuries of oppression cannot be wiped out by imperial decree. That is the tragedy of Alexander II.’—K urd von Schlözer Preface WHILE the names of Peter the Great and Lenin have become household words, that of Alexander II, Emperor of all the Russias from 1855 until his assas­ sination in 1881, is familiar only to the specialist. Yet the ‘Tsar Liberator* is associated with a social trans­ formation hardly inferior in importance to the reforms of Peter or Lenin’s October Revolution. B. H. Sumner says : “The emancipation of the serfs (1861) and the other reforms oif the sixties marked the watershed be­ tween the old and the nineteenth-century Russia, much as the reign of Peter the Great marked that between the old Muscovy and the New Russia.**4 In spite of his less dynamic personality, Alexander II deserves to rank with the two great innovators among the makers of modern Russia. /Clf the effect of Alexander’s reign is to be summed up m a single phrase, it may be said to mark the transition in Russia from a semi-feudal to an early capitalist economy .Jrwo measures in particular helped to acceler­ ate the process^The liberation of the serfs increased the available force of mobile free labourjThe construction of railways stimulated the growth 01 Russian industry. Together with a great expansion of banking and credit facilities, these developments laid the foundations of an ‘Industrial Revolution* which has continued without intermission until the present day. The economic transformation of Alexander’s reign ^ B. H. Sumner, Survey of Russian History (second revised edn., London, 1947), p. 352. 9 A L E X A N D E R II found its reflection in the social «ph»™ jn™» lifoprafrînn of the serfs accelerated the decline ^f . tjie. land.owjaing, 'noBTlity. IF“assisted the more prosperous peasants but ^hastened the pauperization of the poorer, At the same iânie^ the expansion^^,igg,an in<^ f7 c^Ugd-tliA numbers of higlndustrial proletapat^The progress of thfe importance of capitalist entrepreneurs. In their cumulative effect these changes undermined the position of the gentry in Russian social life. This development in its turn had political repercus­ sions which received a measure of recognition in Alexander’s administrative reforms. The abolition of seigneurial jurisdiction reduced the authority of land- owners over their peasants. The creation of all-class zemstvos destroyed the administrative monopoly of officialdom and gentry. By the introduction of conscrip­ tion, the theoretical equality of all the Tsar’s subjects in the matter of military service was recognized. A radi­ cal reform of the law-courts and the adoption of the jury system reduced the power of the bureaucracy. Finally, a relaxation of the censorship regulations allowed the growing intelligentsia to engage in the public discussion of political questions. Russian political journalism, and with it the growing influence of ‘public opinion’, date essentially from the time of Alexander II. For these reasons, it seems hardly too much to say that Alexander II carried out a revolution from above as important in its effects as the movements which in 1848 had elsewhere called students and workers to the barricades. By his autocratic power he gave Russia what the United States of America won only after four years of bloody civil war. Moreover, if Russia, after her defeat in the Crimea, was able to maintain her position as a European power, she owed this in no small measure to the reforms carried out under his direction. The Great Reforms make Alexander II an important figure in the history of nineteenth-century Europe. 10