Question by Beth N: Did Alexander II deserve the title Tsar liberator?
Some vague notes would be very useful, my text books aren’t being very helpful!
Answers and Views:
Answer by Bob A
In spite of his obstination on playing Russian Autocrat, Alexander II acted for several years somewhat like a constitutional sovereign of the continental type. Soon after the conclusion of peace, important changes were made in legislation concerning industry and commerce, and the new freedom thus afforded produced a large number of limited liability companies. Plans were formed for building a great network of railways — partly for the purpose of developing the natural resources of the country, and partly for the purpose of increasing its power for defense and attack.
The existence of serfdom was tackled boldly taking advantage of a petition presented by the Polish landed proprietors of the Lithuanian provinces, and hoping that their relations with the serfs might be regulated in a more satisfactory way (meaning in a way more satisfactory for the proprietors), he authorized the formation of committees “for ameliorating the condition of the peasants,” and laid down the principles on which the amelioration was to be effected.
Tsar Alexander II and his wife, Empress Maria, with their son, the future Tsar Alexander IIIThis step was followed by one still more significant. Without consulting his ordinary advisers, Alexander ordered the Minister of the Interior to send a circular to the provincial governors of European Russia, containing a copy of the instructions forwarded to the governor-general of Lithuania, praising the supposed generous, patriotic intentions of the Lithuanian landed proprietors, and suggesting that perhaps the landed proprietors of other provinces might express a similar desire. The hint was taken: in all provinces where serfdom existed, emancipation committees were formed.
But the emancipation was not merely a humanitarian question capable of being solved instantaneously by imperial ukase. It contained very complicated problems, deeply affecting the economic, social and political future of the nation.
Alexander had to choose between the different measures recommended to him. Should the serfs become agricultural labourers dependent economically and administratively on the landlords, or could they should be transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors?.
The emperor gave his support to the latter project, and the Russian peasantry became one of the last groups of peasants in Europe to shake off serfdom.
The architects of the emancipation manifesto were Alexander’s brother Konstantin, Yakov Rostovtsev, and Nikolay Milyutin.
On 3 March 1861, 6 years after his accession, the emancipation law was signed and published.
[edit] Other reforms
Other reforms followed:
Army and navy re-organization (1874), probably inspired by the 1871 British law, pushed since 1851, in view of the British military incompetence at the Crimea War, by “Sheffield, the steel town of the North” Radical – Independent Member of the British Parliament John Arthur Roebuck.
A new judicial administration based on the French model (1864); a new penal code and a greatly simplified system of civil and criminal procedure.
An elaborate scheme of local self-government (Zemstvo) for the rural districts (1864) and the large towns (1870), with elective assemblies possessing a restricted right of taxation, and a new rural and municipal police under the direction of the Minister of the Interior.
Alexander II would be the second monarch (after King Louis I of Portugal) to abolish capital punishment, a penalty which is still legal (although not practised) in Russia.
However, the workers wanted better working conditions; prosecuted national minorities, “integrated” only on the last 50 or 60 years almost, wanted freedom.
When radicals began to resort to the formation of secret societies and to revolutionary agitation, Alexander II felt constrained to adopt severe repressive measures.
The idea that some moderate liberal reforms, in an attempt to quell the revolutionary agitation, will do, and the creation of special commissions as proven by an ukase he delivered would not do either. The marxist idea of countries liberated from capitalism and soviets of workers united for the World Revolution but respecting their own national characteristics was clearly out of place within the Russian lands aggregation processes of the XVII, XVIII and XIX Centuries as proved by the events of the 1990´s everywere in Europe and in Central Asia.
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