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Soviet Union [USSR] Reforms and Their Limits, 1855-92
Tsar Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I in 1855, was a
conservative who nonetheless saw no alternative to change and who
initiated substantial reforms in education, the government, the
judiciary, and the military, in addition to emancipating the serfs.
His reforms were accelerated after Russia's military weakness and
backwardness had become apparent during the Crimean War. Following
Alexander's assassination in 1881, his son Alexander III reasserted
government controls.
In 1861 Alexander II proclaimed the emancipation of about 20
million privately held serfs. Local commissions, which were
dominated by landlords, effected emancipation by giving land and
limited freedom to the serfs. The former serfs usually remained in
the village commune, or
mir (see Glossary), but were required to
make redemption payments, which were stretched out over a period of
almost fifty years, to the government. The government compensated
former owners of serfs by issuing them bonds.
The regime had envisioned that the 50,000 landlords who
possessed estates of over 110 hectares would thrive without serfs
and would continue to provide loyal political and administrative
leadership in the countryside. The government also had envisioned
that peasants would produce sufficient crops for their own
consumption and for export sales, thereby helping to finance most
of the government's expenses, imports, and foreign debt. Neither of
the government's visions was realistic, and both the former serfs
and the former owners of serfs were dissatisfied with the outcome
of emancipation. Because the lands given to serfs by local
commissions were often poor and because Russian agricultural
methods were inadequate, the new peasants soon fell behind in their
payments to the government. The former owners of serfs, most of
whom could neither farm nor manage estates without their former
serfs, often had to sell their lands to remain solvent. In
addition, the value of their government bonds fell as the peasants
failed to make their redemption payments.
Reforms of the local governmental system closely followed
emancipation. In 1864 most local government in the European part of
Russia was organized into provincial
zemstvos (see Glossary) and
district zemstvos, which included representatives of all classes.
In 1870 elected city councils, or dumas, were formed. Dominated by
nobles and other property owners and constrained by provincial
governors and the police, the zemstvos and city dumas were
empowered to raise taxes and levy labor to develop, maintain, and
operate local transportation, education, and public health care
systems.
In 1864 the regime implemented judicial reforms. In major
towns, it established Western-style courts with juries. In general,
the judicial system functioned effectively, but sometimes juries
sympathized with obvious criminals and refused to convict them. The
government was unable, financially and culturally, to extend the
court system to the villages, where traditional peasant justice
continued to operate with minimal interference from provincial
officials. In addition, judges were instructed to decide each case
on its merits and not to use precedents, which would have enabled
them to construct a body of law independent of state authority.
Under the reform, the Senate, one of the highest government bodies,
adopted more of the characteristics of a supreme court, with three
major branches: civil, criminal, and administrative.
Other major reforms took place in the educational and cultural
spheres. The accession of Alexander II brought a social
restructuring that required a public discussion of issues.
Accordingly, the regime lifted some manifestations of censorship,
yet in 1863 it prohibited publishing in the Ukrainian language. In
1866, when an attempt was made to assassinate the tsar, censorship
was reinstated, but pre-1855 levels of control were not restored.
Universities, which were granted autonomy in 1861, were also
restricted in 1866. The central government, attempting to act
through the zemstvos but lacking effective resources, sought to
establish uniform curricula for elementary schools and to control
the schools by imposing conservative policies. Because many liberal
teachers and school officials were only nominally subject to the
reactionary Ministry of Education, the regime's educational
achievements were mixed after 1866.
In the financial sphere, the State Bank was established in
1866, and Russia's currency was put on a firmer footing. The
Ministry of Finance supported railroad development, facilitating
vital exports, but it was cautious and moderate in its foreign
ventures. The ministry also founded the Peasant Land Bank in 1882
to enable enterprising farmers to acquire more land. The Ministry
of the Interior, however, countered this policy by establishing the
Nobles' Land Bank in 1885 to forestall foreclosures of mortgages.
The regime also sought to reform the military. One of the chief
reasons for the emancipation of the serfs was to facilitate the
transition from a large standing army to a reserve army by
instituting territorial levies and mobilization in times of need.
Before emancipation, serfs could not be given military training and
then returned to their owners. Bureaucratic inertia, however,
obstructed military reform until the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71)
demonstrated the necessity of building a modern army. The levy
system introduced in 1874 gave the army a role in teaching many
peasants to read and in pioneering medical education for women. But
despite these military reforms, the army remained backward.
Officers often preferred bayonets to bullets and feared that longrange sights on rifles would induce cowardice. In spite of some
notable achievements, Russia did not keep pace with Western
technological developments in the construction of rifles, machine
guns, artillery, ships, and naval ordnance. Russia also failed to
use naval modernization as a means of developing its industrial
base in the 1860s.
In 1881 revolutionaries assassinated Alexander II. His son
Alexander III (1881-94) initiated a period of political reaction,
which intensified a counterreform movement that had begun in 1866.
He strengthened the security police, reorganized as the
Okhrana (see Glossary), gave it extraordinary powers, and placed it under
the Ministry of the Interior. Dmitrii Tolstoi, Alexander's minister
of the interior, instituted the use of land captains, who were
noble overseers of districts, and he restricted the power of the
zemstvos and dumas. Alexander III assigned his former tutor, the
reactionary Konstantin Pobedonostsev, to be the
procurator (see Glossary) of the Holy Synod of the
Orthodox Church and Ivan
Delianov to be the minister of education. In their attempts to
"save" Russia from "modernism," they revived religious censorship,
persecuted the non-Orthodox and non-Russian population, fostered
anti-Semitism, and suppressed the autonomy of the universities.
Their attacks on liberal and non-Russian elements alienated large
segments of the population. The nationalities, particularly Poles,
Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, reacted to the
regime's efforts to Russify them by intensifying their own
nationalism. Many Jews emigrated or joined radical movements.
Secret organizations and political movements continued to develop
despite the regime's efforts to quell them.
Data as of May 1989
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