Dr.

Katyayani Singh,
Assistant Professor.
Unit III: Europe from 1850-1871

Russia
The decade between 1850 & 1870 were formative years in
the two largest dynastic empires of eastern Europe: Russia
and the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Neither yet felt the full
throb of the industrial revolution, though to both railways
had come, and more trade with western countries did
something to stimulate new social and political process.
Neither, in these years, lost much of its former territory or
gained any new lands; for after the Crimean war, neither
played a prominent part in general European affairs
Katyayani Singh, Assistant Professor
• There took place a profound change in the social life
combined with little corresponding change in the
political or administrative set up.
• The social change was effected not by economic
process like in the western world rather by legislative
action

Katyayani Singh, Assistant Professor

 End of Serfdom in Russia
• Serfdom was abolished in Russia by Tsar Alexander II in
1861: This was symbolic of social and economic
revolution and had opened the door for material
westernization for Russia. Circumstances that led to the
abolition of Serfdom in Russia involve the defeat of
Russia by France and Britain in the Crimean war
• Alexander II: Alexander II had become the Tsar during
the war in 1855 and he decided to help the liberal
intelligentsia of Russia in reorganizing his regime.
Katyayani Singh, Assistant Professor
• This class consisted of university students, graduates and
literary men. But it was cut off from the majority of the ruling
bureaucracy of tsarist absolutism and from the mass of
ordinary people who lived in poverty and ignorance. They
were strange partners for Alexander to form an alliance but
he had no choice. The aristocracy and gentry were
indifferent, to reforms, Orthodox church was too
conservative to promote drastic change, the official class were
satisfied with their power while the mass and peasants were
too apathetic and depressed for their own help even.
• The imperial degree of emancipation gave the Russian
peasants the legal freedom without economic
freedom. They became subjects of the govt. and were
no longer under compulsion to pay any dues to their
former owners either in forced labour or in money. But
they had to pay redemption money for such services
and dues and for the land which now they received. In
all about half the cultivated land of Russia was
henceforth held by the peasants in their own right.
• They held the land as shares in the collective property
of the village or mir
• Mir became the new authority replacing the old
authority of gentry. It refers to self governing
community of peasants
• Emancipation meant the abolition of personal
servitude but the affirmation of communal
responsibilities.
 Economic Conditions
• No scientific methods to increase agriculture
• Each male child was to be given a land of the mir. But growing
population implied decline in the size or number of strips which
each peasant held.
• As lands were to be redistributed peasants didn’t make an effort
to improve the land for they knew it soon would be
redistributed
• Because productivity did not keep in pace with the population
famines and period of great distress became more & more
frequent.
• The liberal and far reaching emancipations did little to
improve either the economic lot of the mass of the
peasants or the economic prosperity of the country as
a whole. Nor did it make for a more stable and
acceptable political system.
• The Tsar won neither gratitude nor strength from his
reforms. He was nearly assassinated in 1866, in 1873,
and in 1880, before he was finally killed by a bomb in
1881.
• The forces of change fermenting in Russian life by 1871
were the consequence of these reforms rather than a
result of any marked industrial development.
• The Crimean war led to a rapid growth of rail roads. A
special body called the General Company of Russian
Railways promoted them.
• Until the middle of the century most of the country had
been economically self sufficing and the basis of nearly
all transaction was service or payment in kind
• Barter in purely local market was the basis of most internal
trade.
• Growth of foreign trade in wheat increased by new
railroads, demand for money to hire labourers or to pay
redemption payments and taxes, influx of foreign capital
from the West, all conspired to develop a money economy.
• But this deep transformation took some time to come about
because of short supply of money for a long time and
because of the protectionist commercial policy of the Tsar.
 Nationalists and Revolutionary Movements
• The well meant reforms accomplished by Alexander II
had little connection with any sentiment or movement
of nationalism. They were autocratic reforms carried out
by authoritarian methods. The real nationalist
movement of Russia was a revolutionary movement
rooted not in the people as a whole but in the
intelligentsia and in that great cultural movement of
mid 19th century which found inspiration in the West
and had its roots as much in exiles as inside Russia itself.
 Role of Music and Literature
• In Music and literature Russia quite suddenly enriched the
whole culture of Europe. The symphonies of Borodin and
Tchaikovsky, the suites and programme music of Rimsky-
Korsakov, songs of Musorgski belong to these years.
• The great novelists Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
were all connected with the social evils particularly
endemic in Russian life; conditions of the poor,
psychological dilemmas arising in conditions of deep
distress and violence, reform of the govt
• Nationalism in Russia was revolutionary because it was the
rebellion against fate and the elements, against history and
the harshness of life itself. Patriotic memories of triumph
against invasion in 1812 were awakened by Tolstoy’s War
and Peace.
• The theme that was predominant was the culture of struggle
of human heart and the problem of the soul, tortured and
profoundly moving, echoing the cry of a whole people in
distress: a culture of revolt even more than of nationality
• During the 1860’s there grew up a more specifically
radical revolutionary movement, expressing itself less
in literature than in journalism, voicing more crudely
and savagely the discontent of the masses of
peasants.
• In periodicals and illegal pamphlets writers directly
attacked the policies of the Tsar and stirred desperate
men to revolution.
• Revolutionary radicalism was propagated by men
who spent much of their life in prison, in Siberia
or in exile.
• It was at this level that Marxism and anarchism
soaked into the Russian revolutionary
movement, producing frequent acts of terrorism
and equally frequent reprisals and repressions.
 Separatist Nationalities
• Separatist nationalism was of more immediate concern
for the Tsar especially in Poland (part of the then
Russian empire). There were 3 revolutionary parties
operating in Poland:
– Liberal Nobles of Agricultural Society
– Roman Catholic Church
– Party of the impoverished country gentry and the
professional
• The government tried to crush the revolt by supporting
the peasants by giving them lands. The peasants were
more interested in getting land than in winning
independence as they had gained much less land than
was granted to the Russian peasants after 1861. Hence,
the nationalist revolt only received a lukewarm support
from the peasants.
• Though the revolt was crushed but it did arouse
interest in Europe towards the Tsar.
• The French, British and Austrian governments asked
the Tsar to grant autonomy to the polish states but it
was ineffective as Russia had formal Prussian backing
where Bismarck had signed a convention in 1863
providing form similar repression in the polish province
of Prussia should the revolt spread to them. This
helped to restore the Russian prestige which had been
internationally weakened after the loss in the Crimean
war.
• The Russian Empire was fringed in the west by other
active nationalist movements especially in Finland,
Lithuania and Ukraine.
• Finnish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian separatism was to
have importance later in the century. But by 1870 these
provinces like the Polish province seemed for a time
reconciled to continued Russian rule. Only in Poland
had economic progress begun to lay fresh foundations
for a stronger movement of nationalism