Reformatting Consciousness: On the Way to the Great Reform
"Reading the Manifesto February 19, 1861". Boris Kustodiev (1878–1927), 1909 Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum
“You are good, royal letter,
Yes, you are not written with us ... "
N. A. Nekrasov “Who is living well in Russia”
Yes, you are not written with us ... "
N. A. Nekrasov “Who is living well in Russia”
Difficult story humanity. Once upon a time there was a tsar - Emperor Nicholas I. He considered himself the arbiter of the destinies of Europe, the guardian of peace, the scourge of the revolution. And what did his power eventually turn into for him? Defeat in the Crimean War. And ... this war was rather strange (by the way, the story about it on the pages of VO has not yet been completed), and it was a strange defeat. Here is how the well-known Slavophile Yu. F. Samarin described it:
"We surrendered not to the external forces of the Western Union, but to our internal impotence."
That is, the result of the war was that all its participants ... looked at themselves from the outside. And they saw and were horrified: England - to its losses, and losses not in combat, but in sanitary ones, France continued the policy of unprincipled political maneuvering, Austria-Hungary experienced a purely bastard pleasure from shaming Russia, after which she herself was humiliated in 1918 and generally disappeared from the map world, and Russia ...
Russia saw that it lacked capitalism – railways, factories, modern rifles and revolvers, steam ships… A lot of things were missing. But in abundance she had dark, downtrodden and backward peasants.
The heavy legacy of the past reign
Thus, the accession to the throne on February 19, 1855 of Emperor Alexander II took place under very dramatic circumstances: military defeats and general dissatisfaction with the old government. But, fortunately, all power is limited by human nature. So, with the death of Nikolai, the society seemed to wake up, and all the expectations that were latently accumulating in it were resurrected in an instant. Slavophil V. S. Aksakov wrote:
“Everyone involuntarily felt that some kind of stone, some kind of press was removed from everyone, and it became easier to breathe.”
The tragedy of his father also became a drama for the young emperor, who was convinced of the futility of the labors of his crowned father.
"Sevastopol hit the stagnant minds",
- wrote V. O. Klyuchevsky, and this concerned the minds not only of ordinary Russian inhabitants, but also of the youngest sovereign. In the fall, he dismissed the stealing Count P. A. Kleinmichel, and after the fall of Sevastopol, he personally went to the Crimea and made sure that ... the situation in the country needed to be radically changed!
Moreover, a real wave of notes, proposals and entire notebooks filled with beautiful handwriting with plans and proposals for reforms began to come to St. Petersburg from all over the country, which would have been completely impossible under the reign of the past emperor. By the way, K. S. Aksakov, a well-known critic and writer, one of the earliest and most prominent Slavophiles in the country, also pleased the tsar with such a note, by the way, as they say, one of the best in content. That is, reforms were expected, they were dreamed of, they were offered. It was up to the Emperor Sovereign to answer.
To reform step by step: 1856
And he answered, although not immediately, but in March of the following year, 1856, immediately after the conclusion of the Paris Peace Treaty. In his Manifesto on the end of the war, the following lines were found:
"... and everyone, under the shadow of laws, for all equally fair, equally patronizing, may he enjoy in the world the fruit of the labors of the innocent."
It would seem that there is such a thing? But there is nothing surprising in this only for us. For the people of that Russia, the words about equally fair laws for all meant only one thing - the transformation of 25 million serfs, whom the laws of the Russian Empire practically did not concern, into full-fledged citizens of the country, that is, it was a direct hint at the upcoming breakdown of the entire existing system!
But the population of the country was even more excited by the speech of Alexander II on March 30, 1856 in front of the county and provincial marshals of the nobility in Moscow. It was then that he said that it was better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until it began to abolish itself from below. So the Great Reforms began in Russia by no means in 1861, as it is written in school textbooks, but much earlier, and they started precisely with the reformatting of consciousness. That is, to put it simply, the same landowners were told what to expect.
Further - more: an amnesty was announced for prisoners, including the Decembrists, free travel abroad was allowed, censorship of the press was weakened, military settlements were canceled, peasants were freed from recruitment sets for three years, and they were also forgiven for tax arrears.
"Acceleration of movement": 1857
In 1859, in a letter to Pope Pius IX, Alexander II wrote that:
"After the conclusion of peace, Emperor Napoleon convinced me to start this business ... earlier than I thought."
Here it is, it turns out that the victor Napoleon III already hurried Alexander with the abolition of serfdom, but he could have remained silent, even if, they say, Russia continues to remain in its ordinary, vile ordinariness. But no - developing France needed markets and sources of raw materials, and Russia, which followed the capitalist path, would in this case be an ideal partner for it, if only because both countries did not like ... England!
It was necessary to ensure a change in the minds, and those who just had serfs. That is to change the consciousness of the landowners. A Secret Committee was created, which began by preparing a rescript on the abolition of serfdom in the three Baltic provinces: Kovno, Vilna and Grodno, following the example of the Ostzee region (present-day Baltic), where soul dependence on landlords was abolished back in 1816–1819 ., but the release is carried out without land. Alexander II signed this rescript on November 20, 1857, and thus launched the "mechanism of change" in Russia.
On December 5 of the same year, provincial noble committees began to be created throughout Russia. In 1858, 46 of them were created in Central Russia. And although from the very beginning everyone quarreled among themselves there, the information went to the people, as they say. Someone “from the bar” said something, his servant “from the ordinary” heard, retold in the tavern, enjoying the feeling of his own importance, the sex in the tavern was a village one and retold all the same to fellow countrymen, and they carried it even further, like this and went and went information about the coming changes throughout the great Russia.
1858: four letters from Count Rostovtsev
And then unrest began in the same Estonia, where the peasants demanded not only personal freedom, but also land. And how, under such conditions, to free the peasants in Russia? And then the sovereign-emperor in September-October 1858 receives from Count Rostovtsev four consecutive letters from abroad. And they contain an urgent request to the tsar to give the peasants land and make sure that, firstly, the peasants immediately feel the benefits of their new position, secondly, the landowner would also feel that his interests are not infringed, and thirdly, so that the authorities carried out changes without hesitation, because all people respect only firm authority.
Such a sharp change in the views of the faithful courtier - and it was he who warned Nicholas I about the Decembrist conspiracy, could have seemed a miracle if it had not been based on his ... ardent love for his sons, in this case for one of them, who studied in Heidelberg and sick there. And now, being on his deathbed, the son recalled to his father this shameful fact, which tarnished the name of their family, and took his word from him to make amends with help in the liberation of the peasants. At these words, Rostovtsev shed tears and repented, and then took an oath at the coffin to fulfill the promise and ... did it!
And the young tsar, it must be said, listened to his words, and at a meeting on December 4, 1858, with the power given to him, he ordered the members of the Committee, without any discussion, to adopt the reform program as amended, providing for the allocation of land to the peasants. The new project was signed on February 1, 1859 ...
Summary of six years of reign
Now it only remained to decide how it would all look technically, without losing sight of a single detail. For example, the norm of land allocated to peasants could not be uniform throughout Russia, but had to take into account many local conditions. Even the religious factor was important. So, in Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, the peasants were mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians, but the landowners were Catholic Poles. Here it was important not to offend the peasants, while in the central provinces everything was exactly the opposite.
To solve all practical issues, on February 2, 1859, Editorial Commissions were established, headed by Count Rostovtsev. A significant part of the liberal-minded bureaucracy and nobility was involved in their work, as opposed to the old retrogrades from the past era. Rostovtsev said that "Russia is in limbo," so the commissions need to hurry. And there was a lot to be done. Each province developed its own, local regulations and norms of land allocation. The personal and property rights of peasants, the procedure for redemption payments, and much more were determined.
After the death of Rostovtsev in 1860, the conservatives seemed to be gaining the upper hand again, but they could not do anything about the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, who acted as an energetic champion of reforms. Under his leadership, meetings of the Main Committee (the commissions were now dissolved) took place almost daily, and the matter advanced so far that it became possible to begin preparing the manifesto itself.
On January 14, 1861, the emperor signed the last minutes of his meetings. And already on February 19, six years after his accession to the throne, he also signed a manifesto on the liberation of the Russian peasantry ...
And now we can say that the government, which was sufficiently preoccupied with observing the interests of the landowners, primarily in preparing them morally for the reform, did practically nothing to ensure that the peasants would also be waiting for the reform, if not as a holiday, then, at least, without aversion to innovation. This was not done, primarily because the authorities at that time simply were not used to reckoning with the opinion of the people, and precisely because the rulers simply did not have time to learn to reckon with the peasantry, and it would be a sin for that blame the top!
To be continued ...
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