Russian History: A Very Short Introduction

Reform

Defeat in the Crimean War removed the veto on radical change: it had become unavoidable. Russia had succumbed to two industrializing nation-states, and most reformers assumed that Russia must become one too, even though that required unsettling changes to its social structure. Westerners and Slavophiles had different conceptions of what was needed, but both felt it essential to give ordinary Russians a greater stake in the affairs of their country.

Above all, they both agreed on the need to abolish serfdom. Yet serfdom was the keystone of the empire’s social and economic structure: removing it was extremely problematic. The dilemma was expressed by one landowner: ‘To free the peasants without land is impossible, but to expropriate the landowners would be extremely unjust.’ Not only unjust, but also unworkable, since one could scarcely deprive the ruling class of the principal source of its income. Yet peasants deprived of land would certainly not feel they had any stake in the system, and could easily become dangerously discontented.

The Emancipation Edict of 1861 was thus inevitably an unsatisfactory compromise. Landowners retained much of their land, especially in the south, where it was fertile and valuable. Peasants were awarded holdings which were usually smaller than those they had previously held; moreover, they were required to pay for land they thought they already owned in instalments over half a century. Nor were they set free as full citizens, but till they had paid off their debt were tied to a land commune, where as before joint responsibility was the norm. Since the landowner’s administrative and judicial powers were abolished, those communes, and the purely peasant institution above them, the volost (township), gained more powers than they had ever possessed before. The volost court was to apply not statute law, but local custom as interpreted by peasant elders. Peasants thus remained a segregated social estate.

It is remarkable that such a far-reaching measure could be carried out at all in opposition to the interests of the ruling class. It was a vindication of the power of the much-criticized autocratic state, which alone could rise above the interests of all social classes.

One of the main reasons for abolishing serfdom was to create a non-serf army, in which all adult males would have the duty to serve, and in which a reserve could be built up without endangering rural security. War Minister Dmitry Miliutin pushed through that reform in the Military Conscription Act (1874), and insisted that all new recruits should take literacy classes. He also stipulated that officers should be professionally trained: he abolished the Cadet Corps and introduced so-called Junker Schools where non-nobles could qualify. After Miliutin left the post, however, the Cadet Corps were revived and literacy training was dropped. The chance to reforge the army as a ‘school of nationhood’, which is what Miliutin intended, was lost. Only in the First World War was that aim suddenly revived, but far too late to effect the necessary changes of mentality and organization.

The abolition of serfdom necessitated further reforms, to redistribute the functions which had previously belonged to the nobility. Local government was now entrusted to zemstvos and municipalities, elected assemblies dominated by the nobility and property owners, but with some representation from other classes, including peasants.

Other reforms were intended to create civil society on a ‘Western’ model. Censorship was eased, to facilitate open discussion of social problems. Education at all levels was expanded, and was opened to all social estates. Most controversial of all, the judicial system was totally reformed. In criminal cases, trained lawyers were to represent the accused, while juries drawn from ordinary citizens and peasant officials would decide the verdict. Proceedings would be open to the public and the press, and judges were to be independent and irremovable. In a sense, this was the first serious limitation on autocracy, since it implied that law, as determined by courts, was the highest authority – that laws in fact were written for governments as well as for subjects. It was certainly difficult to combine it with autocracy, as a sensational case demonstrated in 1878. Vera Zasulich, a young revolutionary, shot and wounded General Trepov, Governor-General of St Petersburg. No one denied that she had attempted murder, but to applause in the courtroom, the jury acquitted her on the plea of her lawyer that she had ‘no personal interest in her crime’, but was ‘fighting for an idea’.