The Decembrists, most of them nobles and young officers, imbued with the French liberal ideas of the revolutionary tradition of 1789, attempted in December 1825 to secure a constitutional government under the Duke of Constantine. Its failure resulted in an ever deepening process of social disintegration. Although the insurgents were but lightly punished. Nicholas I applied a series of repressive measures to prevent the spread of liberalism. A strict censorship was imposed upon the press in 1826. The darkest aspect of Nicholas reaction was cultural. Nicholas I was particularly opposed to education of the poor because, as he put it, they became accustomed to a way of thinking and ideas which were not compatible with their position. Uvarev, his minister of education, proposed in 1832 the triple formula of orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality. It meant all the subjects in Russia were to believe in one religion, to be faithful to the Czar and to be Russianized in their way of life.
The memory of the Decembrist incident weighed heavily on Nicholas’ reign like a nightmare. The reactionary nature of his regime was made more pronounce in that he took the lead in an international policy of counter-revolution and this policy was followed by the three eastern powers in 1825-55.
Nicholas I, a severe and conscientious ruler, had learnt lessons from the Decembrist revolt. In the grip of fear for peasant uprisings, he carried reforms from the above. From 1833 onwards, the state peasants received better retreatment in tenure, taxation and local government and their free status was affirmed. Between 1840-48 edicts were issued to encourage emancipation of serfs with land, to foster emancipation of domestic serfs and to endow the peasants the right to buy lands when their master sold their estates. However, these concessions did not create a class of free peasants. Moreover, coupled with other changes in law and administration, Nicholas I’s rule not only strengthened the conservative tradition of reforms from above, but tended to equip autocratic repression with modern efficiency.
The Essay on Ivan The Terrible Russian Russia Nicholas
... M. Dostoevsky born October 30 in Moscow 1825-1855 NICHOLAS I ROMANOV 1825 Decembrist Uprising Griboedov's comedy Woe from Wit 1830 Briullov's ... bring on any significant change in the condition of the peasants. As the country became more industrialized, its political system ... Hero of Our Time 1841 Ban against the sale of peasants individually 1842 Glinka's opera Ruslan and Ludmila Gogol's Dead ...
The Decembrist Revolt of 1825 discredit the nobility in the eyes of the Czar. The army continued to be the chief field of advance of individual nobles, but more recruitments of officers were made from other ranks. Large numbers of nobles were now relieved of their former obligations of services and retired to St. Petersburg and provincial capitals letting out their holdings. Absenteeism ruled among the landlords. As a result, they lacked that sense of home and particularism which had helped to bind class to class.
The Decembrist Revolt was a flashing outbreak of French liberalism in Russia. When this took place, the revolutionary spirit passed on from nobility and officers to a new generation of intellectuals. Two schools of though emerged, the Westernizers and the Slavophiles. The Westernizers included Herzen, the brilliant publicist, Belinsky, the founder of Russian literary criticism, Turgenev, the novelist, Granovsky, the historian and Bakunin, the future anarchist. Whatever their other differences, there was a fundamental belief in the urgent necessity for closer contact with the West with rationalism, individual liberty for the regeneration of Russia. The Slavophiles saw in unprevented Russian history a youthful force with its own innate strength and virtue, rooted in the people and the Orthodox Church, destined to supersede the West and to become the universal civilization of the future. The opposition between the Westerniser and Slavophiles, however, must not be over-estimated. Both shared detestation of the existing regime, and both believed in the Russian future, whether as part of the West or as an independent force. Thus, we can say that the Revolt marked the beginning of the revolutionary movement against the autocracy with which much of the Russian history of the nineteenth century will be concerned. It was to serve as an inspiration and a model for the future intelligentsia educated class. It survived as a myth to inspire all future rebels against the regime – the intelligentsia of the 40’s and the Nihilist of the 60’s, the Populists and Anarchists of the 70’s and the Marxists of the 80’s. The punishment meted out to the Decembrists and the following reactionary regime deprived Russia of practically a whole generation of its most intelligent and cultured citizens, the intellectual movement thus entered into a desperate and more revolutionary phase.
The Essay on Russia And Wwi Russians Classes Through The Black
The administrative system of the Russian government has deteriorated greatly. The present government has lost the will power and confidence to carry on with this war at a successful rate. All Russians long for a more confident and able power to rule Russia at this moment of war. At the moment Russia needs a very strong leader to have authority over it. An organised managerial structure over the ...
On the whole, the period of Russia following the Decembrist revolt could be regarded as a deviation from the course of liberal development. The Russian society was split into two: centralised government at one extreme and village collectivism at the other, with no educated middle class to hold together the two extremes. The intellectual fermentation was resulted from the schools of extremism and western concept of liberals. Such were the effects of the Decembrist Revolt which later germinated the Menshevik Revolution of 1917 and Bolshevik Revolution.
