Russia is a mighty and happy power in itself; it must never be a threat either to other neighboring states or to Europe. But it must occupy an imposing defensive position capable of making any attack on it impossible.
Where once the Russian flag is raised, it should not be lowered there.
Emperor Nicholas I
220 years ago, on July 6, 1796, Russian Emperor Nicholas I Pavlovich was born. Nicholas I, along with his father, Emperor Paul I, is one of the most maligned Russian tsars. The Russian tsar, most hated by the liberals both of that time and of our day. What is the reason for such stubborn hatred and such fierce slander, which has not subsided until our time?
Firstly, Nicholas is hated for suppressing the conspiracy of the Decembrists, conspirators who were part of the system of Western Freemasonry. The uprising of the so-called "Decembrists" was supposed to destroy Russian empire, lead to the emergence of weak, semi-colonial state formations dependent on the West. And Nikolai Pavlovich crushed the rebellion and preserved Russia as a world power.
Secondly, Nicholas cannot be forgiven for the prohibition of Freemasonry in Russia. That is, the Russian emperor banned the then “fifth column”, which worked for the masters of the West.
Thirdly, the tsar is "guilty" of firm views, where there was no place for Masonic and semi-Masonic (liberal) views. Nicholas clearly stood on the positions of autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality, defended Russian national interests in the world.
Fourthly, Nicholas fought against the revolutionary movements organized by the Freemasons (Illuminati) in the monarchical states of Europe. For this, Nikolaev Russia was nicknamed "the gendarme of Europe." Nicholas understood that revolutions do not lead to the triumph of "freedom, equality and fraternity", but to the "liberalization" of man, his "liberation" from the "fetters" of morality and conscience. We see what this leads to on the example of modern tolerant Europe, where sodomists, bestialists, Satanists and other savage evil spirits are considered the "elite" of society. And the “lowering” of a person in the field of morality to the level of a primitive animal leads to its complete degradation and total slavery. That is, Freemasons and the Illuminati, provoking revolutions, simply brought closer the victory of the New World Order - the global slave-owning civilization led by the "chosen ones". Nicholas opposed this evil.
Fifthly, Nicholas wanted to put an end to the passions of the Russian nobility for Europe and the West. He planned to stop further Europeanization, Westernization of Russia. The tsar intended to be at the head, as A. S. Pushkin put it, "the organization of the counter-revolution of the revolution of Peter." Nicholas wanted to return to the political and social precepts of Muscovite Rus', which found its expression in the formula "Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality."
Thus, the myths about the extraordinary despotism and terrible cruelty of Nicholas I were created because he prevented the revolutionary liberal forces from seizing power in Russia and Europe. “He considered himself called upon to suppress the revolution, he pursued it always and in all forms. And, indeed, this is the historical vocation of the Orthodox Tsar, ”the maid of honor Tyutcheva noted in her diary.
Hence the pathological hatred of Nicholas, accusations of the "bad" personal qualities of the emperor. Liberal historiography of the 19th - early 20th centuries, Soviet, where "tsarism" was presented mainly from a negative point of view, then modern liberal journalism branded Nikolai a "despot and tyrant", "Nikolai Palkin", for the fact that from the first day of his reign , since the suppression of the then "fifth column" - "Decembrists", and until last day(Organized by the masters of the West, the Crimean War), he spent in a continuous struggle with the Russian and European Freemasons and the revolutionary societies they created. At the same time, in domestic and foreign policy, Nikolai tried to adhere to Russian national interests, without bending to the wishes of Western "partners".
It is clear that such a person was hated and even during his lifetime they created a number of persistent “black myths”: that “the Decembrists fought for the freedom of the people, and the bloody tyrant shot and executed them”; that "Nicholas I was a supporter of serfdom and lack of rights for the peasants"; that “Nicholas I was generally a stupid martinet, a narrow-minded, poorly educated person, alien to any progress”; that Russia under Nicholas was a "backward state", which led to the defeat in the Crimean War, etc.
The myth of the Decembrists - "knights without fear and reproach"
The accession to the throne of Nicholas I was overshadowed by an attempt by a secret Masonic society of the so-called "Decembrists" to seize power over Russia ( ). Later, through the efforts of Western liberals, social democrats, and then Soviet historiography, the myth of “knights without fear and reproach” was created, who decided to destroy “royal tyranny” and build a society on the principles of freedom, equality and brotherhood. In modern Russia, it is also customary to talk about the Decembrists from a positive point of view. Like, the best part of Russian society, the nobility, challenged the "tsarist tyranny", tried to destroy "Russian slavery" (serfdom), but was defeated.
However, in reality, the truth is that the so-called. "Decembrists", hiding behind completely humane and understandable to most slogans, objectively worked for the then "world community" (the West). In fact, these were the forerunners of the “Februaryists” of the 1917 model, who destroyed the autocracy and the Russian Empire. They planned the complete physical destruction of the Romanov dynasty of Russian monarchs, their families and even distant relatives. And their plans in the field of state and national construction were guaranteed to lead to great turmoil and the collapse of the state.
It is clear that part of the noble youth simply did not know what they were doing. Young people dreamed of destroying "various injustices and oppressions" and bringing the estates together for the growth of social prosperity in Russia. Examples of the dominance of foreigners in the highest administration (suffice it to recall the entourage of Tsar Alexander), extortion, violation of legal proceedings, inhuman treatment of soldiers and sailors in the army and navy, and serf trade excited noble minds, who were inspired by the patriotic upsurge of 1812-1814. The problem was that the “great truths” of freedom, equality and fraternity, allegedly necessary for the good of Russia, were associated in their minds only with European republican institutions and social forms, which they mechanically transferred to Russian soil in theory.
That is, the Decembrists sought to "transplant France into Russia." How later the Russian Westerners of the early 20th century would dream of remaking Russia into a republican France or a constitutional English monarchy, which would lead to the geopolitical catastrophe of 1917. The abstractness and frivolity of such a transfer consisted in the fact that it was carried out without understanding the historical past and national traditions, spiritual values that had been formed for centuries, the psychological and everyday way of Russian civilization. The youth of the nobility, brought up on the ideals of Western culture, was infinitely far from the people. As shows historical experience- in the Russian Empire, Soviet Russia and Russian Federation, all borrowings from the West in the field of socio-political structure, the spiritual and intellectual sphere, even the most useful ones, are eventually distorted on Russian soil, leading to degradation and destruction.
The Decembrists, like the later Westernizers, did not understand this. They thought that if they transplanted the advanced experience of the Western powers in Russia, give the people "freedom", then the country would rise and prosper. As a result, the sincere hopes of the Decembrists for an accelerated change in the existing system, for the legal order, as a panacea for all ills, led to confusion and the destruction of the Russian Empire. It turned out that the Decembrists objectively, by default, worked in the interests of the masters of the West.
In addition, in the program documents of the Decembrists one can find a variety of attitudes and wishes. There was no unity in their ranks, their secret societies were more like debating clubs of sophisticated intellectuals who vigorously discussed pressing political issues. In this respect, they are similar to Western liberals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. and the Februaryists of 1917, as well as modern Russian liberals, who cannot find a common point of view on almost any important issue. They are ready to endlessly “rebuild” and reform, in fact, destroy the heritage of their ancestors, and the people will have to bear the burden of their management decisions.
Some Decembrists proposed to create a republic, others - to establish a constitutional monarchy, with the possibility of introducing a republic. Russia, according to the plan of N. Muravyov, was proposed to be de facto divided into 13 powers and 2 regions, creating a federation out of them. At the same time, the powers received the right to secession (self-determination). The manifesto of Prince Sergei Trubetskoy (Prince Trubetskoy was chosen dictator before the uprising) proposed to liquidate " former board”and replaced it with a temporary one, until the elections of the Constituent Assembly. That is, the Decembrists planned to create a Provisional Government.
The head of the Southern Society of Decembrists, Colonel and Freemason Pavel Pestel wrote one of the program documents - "Russian Truth". Pestel planned to abolish serfdom by transferring half of the arable land fund to the peasants, the other half was supposed to be left in the ownership of the landowners, which was supposed to contribute to the bourgeois development of the country. The landlords had to lease the land to farmers - the "capitalists of the agricultural class", which should have led to the organization of large commodity farms in the country with the widespread involvement of hired labor. Russkaya Pravda abolished not only estates, but also national borders - they planned to unite all the tribes and nationalities living in Russia into a single Russian people. Thus, Pestel planned, following the example of America, to create a kind of "melting pot" in Russia. To speed up this process, it was proposed that de facto national segregation with the division of the Russian population into groups.
Muravyov was a supporter of the preservation of the landed estates of the landowners. The liberated peasants received only 2 acres of land, that is, only a personal plot. This plot, with the then low level of agricultural technology, could not feed a large peasant family. The peasants were forced to bow to the landowners, the landlords, who had all the land, meadows and forests, turned into dependent laborers, as in Latin America.
Thus, the Decembrists did not have a single, clear program, which, if they won, could lead to internal conflict. The victory of the Decembrists guaranteed to lead to the collapse of the state, the army, chaos, conflict of estates and different peoples. For example, the mechanism of the great land redistribution was not described in detail, which led to a conflict between the many millions of peasants and the then landowners. In the context of a radical breakdown of the state system, the transfer of the capital (it was planned to move it to Nizhny Novgorod), it is obvious that such a “perestroika” led to a civil war and a new turmoil. In the field of state building, the plans of the Decembrists are very clearly correlated with the plans of the separatists at the beginning of the 20th century or 1990-2000. As well as the plans of Western politicians and ideologists who dream of dismembering Great Russia on a number of weak and "independent" states. That is, the actions of the Decembrists led to confusion and civil war, to the collapse of the powerful Russian Empire. The Decembrists were the forerunners of the Februaryists, who were able to destroy Russian statehood in 1917.
Therefore, Nikolai is being poured with mud in every possible way. After all, he was able to stop the first major attempt to “perestroika” Russia, which led to confusion and civil confrontation to the delight of our Western “parterres”.
At the same time, Nikolai is accused of inhuman treatment of the Decembrists. However, the ruler of the Russian Empire, Nikolai, who was recorded in history as "Palkin", showed amazing mercy and philanthropy towards the rebels. In any European country, for such a rebellion, many hundreds or thousands of people would be executed in the most cruel way, so that others would be repulsed. And the military for the rebellion were subject death penalty. Would have opened all the underground, many have lost their posts. In Russia, everything was different: out of 579 people arrested in the case of the Decembrists, almost 300 were acquitted. Only the leaders (and not all of them) were executed - Pestel, Muravyov-Apostol, Ryleev, Bestuzhev-Ryumin, and the murderer of the commander of the Life Guards Grenadier Regiment Stürler and Governor Miloradovich-Kakhovsky. 88 people were exiled to hard labor, 18 to a settlement, 15 were demoted to soldiers. The rebel soldiers were subjected to corporal punishment and sent to the Caucasus. The "dictator" of the rebels, Prince Trubetskoy, did not appear at Senate Square at all, he got cold feet, sat out with the Austrian ambassador, where he was tied up. At first he denied everything, then he confessed and asked for forgiveness from the sovereign. And Nicholas I forgave him!
Tsar Nicholas I was a supporter of serfdom and lack of rights for peasants
It is known that Nicholas I was a consistent supporter of the abolition of serfdom. It was under him that the reform of the state peasants was carried out with the introduction of self-government in the countryside and the “decree on obligated peasants” was signed, which became the foundation for the abolition of serfdom. The position of the state peasants improved significantly (by the second half of the 1850s, their number reached about 50% of the population), which was associated with the reforms of P. D. Kiselev. Under him, the state peasants were allocated their own allotments of land and forest plots, and auxiliary cash desks and bread shops were established everywhere, which provided assistance to the peasants with cash loans and grain in case of crop failure. As a result of these measures, not only the welfare of the peasants increased, but also the treasury income from them increased by 15-20%, tax arrears were halved, and by the mid-1850s there were practically no landless laborers who eked out a beggarly and dependent existence, all received land from the state.
In addition, under Nicholas I, the practice of distributing peasants with lands as a reward was completely stopped, as well as the rights of landlords in relation to peasants were seriously curtailed and the rights of serfs were increased. In particular, it was forbidden to sell peasants without land, it was also forbidden to send peasants to hard labor, since serious crimes were removed from the competence of the landowner; serfs received the right to own land, conduct business activities and received relative freedom of movement. For the first time, the state began to systematically monitor that the rights of the peasants were not violated by the landowners (this was one of the functions of the Third Section), and to punish the landowners for these violations. As a result of the application of punishments in relation to the landlords, by the end of the reign of Nicholas I, about 200 landowners' estates were under arrest, which greatly affected the position of the peasants and the landowner's psychology. As the historian V. Klyuchevsky noted, two completely new conclusions followed from the laws adopted under Nicholas I: first, that the peasants are not the property of the landowner, but, first of all, subjects of the state, which protects their rights; secondly, that the personality of the peasant is not the private property of the landowner, that they are bound together by their relationship to the landlords' land, from which the peasants cannot be driven away.
Developed, but, unfortunately, were not carried out at that time and reforms to completely abolish serfdom, however, the total proportion of serfs in Russian society during his reign has seriously decreased. Thus, their share in the population of Russia, according to various estimates, decreased from 57-58% in 1811-1817. up to 35-45% in 1857-1858. and they ceased to constitute the majority of the population of the empire.
Also under Nicholas, education developed rapidly. For the first time, a program of mass peasant education was launched. The number of peasant schools in the country increased from 60 schools with 1,500 students in 1838 to 2,551 schools with 111,000 students in 1856. In the same period, many technical schools and universities were opened - in essence, a system of professional primary and secondary education of the country was created.
The myth of Nicholas - "Tsar-martinet"
It is believed that the king was a "soldafone", that is, he was only interested in military affairs. Indeed, Nikolai from early childhood had a special passion for military affairs. This passion was instilled in the children by their father, Pavel. Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich received an education at home, but the prince did not show much zeal for studies. He did not recognize the humanities, but he was well versed in the art of war, was fond of fortification, and was well acquainted with engineering. It is known that Nikolai Pavlovich was fond of painting, which he studied in childhood under the guidance of the painter I. A. Akimov and Professor V. K. Shebuev.
Having received a good engineering education in his youth, Nicholas I showed considerable knowledge in the field of construction, including military construction. Himself, like Peter I, did not hesitate to personally participate in the design and construction, focusing his attention on the fortresses, which subsequently literally saved the country from much more sad consequences during Crimean War. At the same time, under Nicholas, a powerful line of fortresses was created, covering the western strategic direction.
In Russia, the introduction of new technologies was actively going on. As the historian P. A. Zaionchkovsky wrote, during the reign of Nicholas I, “contemporaries had the idea that an era of reforms had begun in Russia.” Nicholas I actively introduced innovations in the country - for example, the Tsarskoye Selo railway opened in 1837 became only the 6th public railway in the world, despite the fact that the first such road was opened shortly before that in 1830. Under Nicholas, a railway was built between St. Petersburg and Moscow - at that time the longest in the world, and it should be attributed to the personal merits of the tsar that it was built almost in a straight line, which was still an innovation in those days. In fact, Nicholas was a technocratic emperor.
The myth of the failed foreign policy of Nicholas
On the whole, Nicholas's foreign policy was successful and reflected Russia's national interests. Russia has strengthened its position in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia, in the Balkans and in the Far East. Russo-Persian War 1826-1828 ended with a brilliant victory for the Russian Empire. The policy of Britain, which set Persia against Russia, with the aim of ousting Russia from the Caucasus and preventing further advancement of Russians in Transcaucasia, Central Asia and the Near and Middle East, failed. According to the Turkmanchay peace treaty, the territories of the Erivan (on both sides of the Araks River) and Nakhichevan khanates ceded to Russia. The Persian government undertook not to interfere with the resettlement of Armenians in the Russian borders (Armenians supported the Russian army during the war). An indemnity of 20 million rubles was imposed on Iran. Iran confirmed the freedom of navigation in the Caspian Sea for Russian merchant ships and the exclusive right of Russia to have a navy here. That is, the Caspian moved into the sphere of influence of Russia. Russia was given a number of advantages in trade relations with Persia.
Russo-Turkish War 1828-1829 ended with a complete victory for Russia. According to the Adrianople peace treaty, the mouth of the Danube with the islands, the entire Caucasian coast of the Black Sea from the mouth of the Kuban River to the northern border of Adjara, as well as the fortresses of Akhalkalaki and Akhaltsikhe with adjacent areas, went to the Russian Empire. Turkey recognized the accession to Russia of Georgia, Imeretia, Megrelia and Guria, as well as the khanates of Erivan and Nakhichevan, which had passed from Iran under the Turkmenchay Treaty. The right of Russian subjects to conduct free trade throughout the territory of the Ottoman Empire was confirmed, which granted the right to Russian and foreign merchant ships to freely pass through the Bosphorus and the Dardenelles. Russian subjects on Turkish territory were beyond the jurisdiction of the Turkish authorities. Turkey pledged to pay Russia an indemnity in the amount of 1.5 million Dutch chervonets within 1.5 years. Peace ensured the autonomy of the Danubian principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia). Russia took upon itself the guarantee of the autonomy of the principalities, which were completely out of the power of the Porte, paying her only an annual tribute. The Turks also confirmed their obligations to respect the autonomy of Serbia. Thus, the Peace of Adrianople created favorable conditions for the development of the Black Sea trade and completed the annexation of the main territories of Transcaucasia to Russia. Russia increased its influence in the Balkans, which became a factor that accelerated the process of liberation of Moldavia, Wallachia, Greece, Serbia from the Ottoman yoke.
At the request of Russia, which declared itself the patroness of all Christian subjects of the Sultan, the Sultan was forced to recognize the freedom and independence of Greece and the broad autonomy of Serbia (1830). Amur expedition 1849-1855 Thanks to the decisive attitude of Nicholas I personally, it ended with the actual annexation of the entire left bank of the Amur to Russia, which was already documented under Alexander II. Successfully Russian troops advanced in the North Caucasus (Caucasian War). Russia included Balkaria, Karachay region, Shamil's uprising was not successful, the forces of the highlanders, thanks to the methodical pressure of the Russian forces, were undermined. victory in Caucasian war approached and became inevitable.
The strategic mistakes of the government of Nicholas include the participation of Russian troops in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising, which led to the preservation of the unity of the Austrian Empire, as well as the defeat in Eastern war. However, the defeat in the Crimean War should not be exaggerated. Russia was forced to confront a whole coalition of opponents, the leading powers of that time - England and France. Austria took an extremely hostile stance. Our enemies planned to dismember Russia, throw it away from the Baltic and the Black Sea, seize huge territories - Finland, the Baltic States, the Kingdom of Poland, Crimea, lands in the Caucasus. But all these plans failed due to the heroic resistance of Russian soldiers and sailors in Sevastopol. In general, the war ended with minimal losses for Russia. England, France and Turkey were unable to destroy the main achievements of Russia in the Caucasus, the Black Sea region and the Baltic. Russia survived. She still remained the main opponent of the West on the planet.
- Appointment of an heir
- Ascension to the throne
- The theory of official nationality
- Third branch
- Censorship and new school regulations
- Laws, finance, industry and transport
- The peasant question and the position of the nobility
- Bureaucracy
- Foreign policy until the early 1850s
- Crimean War and the death of the emperor
1. Appointment of an heir
Aloysius Rockstuhl. Portrait of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. Miniature from the original 1806. 1869 Wikimedia CommonsIn a nutshell: Nicholas was the third son of Paul I and was not supposed to inherit the throne. But of all the sons of Paul, only he had a son, and during the reign of Alexander I, the family decided that Nicholas should be the heir.
Nikolai Pavlovich was the third son of Emperor Paul I, and, generally speaking, he should not have reigned.
He was never prepared for this. Like most Grand Dukes, Nicholas received primarily a military education. In addition, he was interested natural sciences and engineering, he drew very well, but he was not interested in the humanities. Philosophy and political economy generally passed him by, and from history he knew only the biographies of great rulers and generals, but had no idea about causal relationships or historical processes. Therefore, from the point of view of education, he was poorly prepared for state activity.
In the family, from childhood, they did not take him too seriously: there was a huge difference in age between Nikolai and his older brothers (he was 19 years older than him, Konstantin - 17), and he was not attracted to state affairs.
In the country, almost only the guards knew Nikolai (since in 1817 he became the chief inspector of the Corps of Engineers and the chief of the Life Guards of the Sapper Battalion, and in 1818 - the commander of the 2nd brigade of the 1st infantry division, which included several guards units ), and knew from a bad side. The fact is that the guard returned from the foreign campaigns of the Russian army, according to Nikolai himself, loose-mouthed, unaccustomed to drill training and having heard enough freedom-loving conversations, and he began to discipline her. Since he was a stern and very quick-tempered man, this resulted in two big scandals: first, before the formation, Nikolai insulted one of the guards captains, and then the general, the favorite of the guards, Karl Bistrom, before whom he eventually had to publicly apologize.
But none of the sons of Paul, except Nicholas, had sons. Alexander and Mikhail (the youngest of the brothers) had only girls, and even they died early, and Konstantin had no children at all - and even if they had, they could not inherit the throne, since in 1820 Konstantin entered into morganatic marriage Morganatic marriage- an unequal marriage, the children from which did not receive the right to inherit. with the Polish Countess Grudzinskaya. And in 1818, Nikolai had a son, Alexander, and this largely predetermined the further course of events.
Portrait of Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna with children - Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna. Painting by George Doe. 1826 State Hermitage / Wikimedia Commons In 1819, Alexander I, in a conversation with Nicholas and his wife Alexandra Fedorov, said that not Constantine, but Nicholas would be his successor. But in a way, Alexander himself still hoped that he would have a son, there was no special decree on this matter, and the change of heir to the throne remained a family secret.
Even after this conversation, nothing changed in Nikolai's life: he remained the same as he was a brigadier general and chief engineer of the Russian army; Alexander did not allow him to any state affairs.
2. Accession to the throne
In a nutshell: In 1825, after the unexpected death of Alexander I, an interregnum began in the country. Almost no one knew that Alexander called the heir to Nikolai Pavlovich, and immediately after the death of Alexander, many, including Nikolai himself, took the oath to Konstantin. Meanwhile, Constantine was not going to rule; Nicholas did not want to see the guards on the throne. As a result, the reign of Nicholas began on December 14 with a rebellion and the shedding of blood of subjects.
In 1825, Alexander I suddenly died in Taganrog. In St. Petersburg, only members of the imperial family knew that the throne would be inherited not by Constantine, but by Nicholas. Both the leadership of the guard and the governor-general of St. Petersburg, Mikhail Milo-radovich, did not like Nicholas and wanted to see Constantine on the throne: he was their comrade-in-arms, with whom they went through the Napoleonic wars and foreign campaigns, and they considered him more inclined to reforms (this did not correspond to reality: Constantine both externally and internally looked like his father Paul, and therefore it was not worth expecting changes from him).
As a result, Nicholas swore allegiance to Constantine. The family did not understand this at all. Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna reproached her son: “What did you do, Nikolai? Don't you know that there is an act that declares you heir?" Such an act actually existed. August 16, 1823 Alexander I, which said that, since the emperor does not have a direct male heir, and Konstantin Pavlovich expressed a desire to renounce his rights to the throne (Constantine wrote about this to Alexander I in a letter back in early 1822), the successor - No one announces Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. This manifesto was not made public: it existed in four copies, which were stored in sealed envelopes in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, the Holy Synod, the State Council and the Senate. On the envelope from the Assumption Cathedral, Alexander wrote that the envelope should be opened immediately after his death., but was kept secret, and Nikolai did not know its exact content, since no one had familiarized him with it in advance. In addition, this act did not have legal force, because, according to the current Pavlovian law on succession to the throne, power could only be transferred from father to son or from brother to brother next in seniority. In order to make Nicholas heir, Alexander had to return the law on succession to the throne adopted by Peter I (according to which the reigning monarch had the right to appoint any successor to himself), but he did not.
Constantine himself was at that time in Warsaw (he was the commander-in-chief of the Polish armies and the de facto viceroy of the emperor in the kingdom of Poland) and flatly refused both to take the throne (he was afraid that in this case he would be killed like his father), and officially , according to the existing form, renounce him.
Silver ruble with the image of Constantine I. 1825 State Hermitage Negotiations between St. Petersburg and Warsaw lasted about two weeks, during which there were two emperors in Russia - and at the same time not a single one. Busts of Konstantin have already begun to appear in institutions, and several copies of the ruble with his image have been printed.
Nicholas found himself in a very difficult situation, given how he was treated in the guard, but in the end he decided to declare himself heir to the throne. But since they had already sworn allegiance to Konstantin, now a re-swearing was to take place, and this has never happened in the history of Russia. From the point of view of even not so much the nobles as the guards soldiers, this was completely incomprehensible: one soldier said that gentlemen officers can re-swear if they have two honors, but I, he said, have one honor, and, having sworn in once, I'm not going to swear a second time. In addition, two weeks of interregnum gave the opportunity to gather their forces.
Upon learning of the impending rebellion, Nicholas decided to declare himself emperor and take the oath on December 14. On the same day, the Decembrists withdrew the Guards units from the barracks to the Senate Square - in order to allegedly protect the rights of Konstantin, from whom Nicholas takes the throne.
Through parliamentarians, Nikolai tried to persuade the rebels to disperse to the barracks, promising to pretend that nothing had happened, but they did not disperse. It was towards evening, in the dark the situation could develop unpredictably, and the performance had to be stopped. This decision was very difficult for Nikolai: firstly, when giving the order to open fire, he did not know whether his artillery soldiers would obey and how other regiments would react to it; secondly, in this way he ascended the throne, having shed the blood of his subjects - among other things, it was completely incomprehensible how they would look at this in Europe. Nevertheless, in the end, he gave the order to shoot the rebels with cannons. The square was swept away by several volleys. Nikolai himself did not look at this - he galloped off to the Winter Palace, to his family.
Nicholas I in front of the formation of the Life Guards of the Sapper Battalion in the courtyard of the Winter Palace on December 14, 1825. Painting by Vasily Maksutov. 1861 State Hermitage Museum For Nicholas, this was a difficult test, which left a very strong imprint on his entire reign. He considered the incident to be God's providence - and decided that he was called by the Lord to fight the revolutionary infection not only in his own country, but in Europe in general: he considered the Decembrist conspiracy to be part of a pan-European one.
3. The theory of official nationality
In a nutshell: The basis of the Russian state ideology under Nicholas I was the theory of official nationality, formulated by the Minister of National Education Uvarov. Uvarov believed that Russia, having joined the family of European peoples only in the 18th century, was too young a country to cope with the problems and diseases that struck other European states in the 19th century. ve-ke, so now it was necessary to delay her development for a while until she matured. To educate society, he formulated a triad, which, in his opinion, described the most important elements of the "folk spirit" - "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality." Nicholas I perceived this triad as universal, not temporary.
If in the second half of the 18th century many European monarchs, including Catherine II, were guided by the ideas of the Enlightenment (and the enlightened absolutism that grew on its basis), then by the 1820s, both in Europe and in Russia, the philosophy of the Enlightenment disappointed many. Ideas formulated by Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, Georg Hegel and other authors began to come to the fore, later called German classical philosophy. The French Enlightenment said that there is one road to progress, laid out by laws, human reason and enlightenment, and all the peoples who follow it will eventually come to prosperity. The German classics came to the conclusion that there is no single road: each country has its own road, which is led by a higher spirit, or higher mind. Knowledge about what kind of road this is (that is, what is the “spirit of the people”, its “historical beginnings”), is revealed not to an individual people, but to a family of peoples connected by a single root. Since all European peoples come from the same root of Greco-Roman antiquity, these truths are revealed to them; these are "historical peoples".
By the beginning of the reign of Nicholas, Russia found itself in a rather difficult situation. On the one hand, the ideas of the Enlightenment, on the basis of which government policy and reform projects had previously been built, led to the failed reforms of Alexander I and the Decembrist uprising. On the other hand, within the framework of German classical philosophy, Russia turned out to be a “non-historical people”, since it did not have any Greco-Roman roots - which meant that, despite its thousand-year history, it all the same, destined to live on the side of the historical road.
Russian public figures managed to propose a solution, including the Minister of Public Education Sergei Uvarov, who, being a man of Alexander's time and a Westerner, shared the main provisions of German classical philosophy. He believed that until the 18th century, Russia was indeed a non-historical country, but, starting with Peter I, it joins the European family of peoples and thereby enters the general historical road. Thus, Russia turned out to be a “young” country, which by leaps and bounds is catching up with the European states that have gone ahead.
Portrait of Count Sergei Uvarov. Painting by Wilhelm August Golicke. 1833 State Historical Museum / Wikimedia Commons In the early 1830s, looking at the next Belgian revolution Belgian revolution(1830) - an uprising of the southern (mainly Catholic) provinces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands against the dominant northern (Protestant), which led to the emergence of the Belgian kingdom. And, Uvarov decided that if Russia follows the European path, then it will inevitably have to face European problems. And since she is not yet ready to overcome them in her youth, now it is necessary to make sure that Russia does not step onto this disastrous path until it is able to resist the disease. Therefore, Uvarov considered the first task of the Ministry of Education to be “freezing Russia”: that is, not to completely stop its development, but to delay it for a while, until the Russians learned some guidelines that would allow them to avoid “bloody anxieties” in the future.
To this end, in 1832-1834, Uvarov formulated the so-called theory of official nationality. The theory was based on the triad “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” (a paraphrase of the military slogan “For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland” that took shape at the beginning of the 19th century), that is, three concepts in which, as he believed, lies the basis of the “folk spirit ".
According to Uvarov, the diseases of Western society arose from the fact that European Christianity split into Catholicism and Protestantism: there is too much rational, individualistic, divisive people in Protestantism, and Catholicism, being too doctrinaire, cannot resist revolutionary ideas. The only tradition that has managed to remain faithful to true Christianity and ensure the unity of the people is Russian Orthodoxy.
It is clear that autocracy is the only form of government that can slowly and carefully manage the development of Russia, keeping it from fatal mistakes, especially since the Russian people have in any case not known any other form of government except monarchy. Therefore, autocracy is at the center of the formula: on the one hand, it is supported by the authority of the Orthodox Church, and, on the other hand, by the traditions of the people.
But what is nationality, Uvarov deliberately did not explain. He himself believed that if this concept was left ambiguous, a variety of social forces could unite on its basis - the authorities and the enlightened elite would be able to find the best solution to modern problems in folk traditions. It is interesting that if for Uvarov the concept of “nationality” in no way meant the participation of the people in the very administration of the state, then the Slavophiles, who generally accepted the formula he proposed, placed the accents differently: emphasizing the word "narodnost", they began to say that if Orthodoxy and autocracy do not meet the people's aspirations, then they must change. Therefore, it was the Slavophils, and not the Westerners, who very soon became the main enemies for the Winter Palace: the Westerners fought on another field - no one understood them anyway. The same forces that accepted the "theory of official nationality", but undertook to interpret it differently, were perceived as much more dangerous..
But if Uvarov himself considered this triad temporary, then Nicholas I perceived it as universal, since it was capacious, understandable and fully consistent with his ideas about how the empire that fell into his hands should develop.
4. Third branch
In a nutshell: The main instrument with which Nicholas I had to control everything that happened in different strata of society was the Third Branch of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery.
So, Nicholas I was on the throne, being absolutely convinced that autocracy is the only form of government that can lead Russia to development and avoid shocks. The last years of his elder brother's reign seemed to him too flabby and unintelligible; the administration of the state, from his point of view, was loose, and therefore he first of all had to take all matters into his own hands.
To do this, the emperor needed a tool that would allow him to know exactly how the country lives and control everything that happens in it. Such an instrument, a kind of eyes and hands of the monarch, was His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery - and first of all its Third Department, which was headed by the cavalry general, a participant in the war of 1812, Alexander Benckendorff.
Portrait of Alexander Benckendorff. Painting by George Doe. 1822 State Hermitage Initially, only 16 people worked in the Third Department, and by the end of the reign of Nicholas, their number did not increase much. This small number of people did many things. They controlled the work of state institutions, places of exile and imprisonment; conducted cases related to official and the most dangerous criminal offenses (which included forgery of state documents and counterfeiting); were engaged in charity work (mainly among the families of killed or maimed officers); observed the moods in all strata of society; they censored literature and journalism and followed everyone who could be suspected of unreliability, including Old Believers and foreigners. To do this, the Third Division was given a corps of gendarmes, who prepared reports (and very truthful) to the emperor about the mood of minds in different classes and about the state of affairs in the provinces. The third branch was also a kind of secret police, whose main task was to combat "subversive activities" (which was understood quite broadly). We do not know the exact number of secret agents, since their lists never existed, but the fear that existed in society that the Third Division sees, hears and knows everything, suggests that there were quite a lot of them.
5. Censorship and new school regulations
In a nutshell: In order to educate subjects of trustworthiness and loyalty to the throne, Nicholas I significantly increased censorship, made it difficult for children from unprivileged classes to enter universities and severely limited university freedoms.
Another important activity of Nicholas was the education of subjects of loyalty and loyalty to the throne.
For this, the emperor immediately took it. In 1826, a new censorship charter was adopted, which is called "cast iron": it contained 230 prohibitory articles, and it turned out to be very difficult to follow it, because it was not clear what, in principle, could now be written about. Therefore, two years later, a new censorship statute was adopted - this time quite liberal, but it soon began to acquire explanations and additions, and as a result, from a very decent one, it turned into a document that once again forbade too many things for journalists and writers.
If initially censorship was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Education and the Supreme Censorship Committee added by Nicholas (which included the ministers of public education, internal and foreign affairs), then over time, all ministries, the Holy Synod, the Free Economic Society received censorship rights , as well as the Second and Third offices of the Chancellery. Each author had to take into account all the comments that the censors from all these organizations wished to make. The third branch, in addition to other things, began to censor all the plays intended for staging on the stage: a special one had been known since the 18th century.
School teacher. Painting by Andrey Popov. 1854 State Tretyakov Gallery In order to educate a new generation of Russians in the late 1820s and early 1830s, the statutes of the lower and high school. The system created under Alexander I was preserved: one-class parish and three-class district schools continued to exist, in which children of unprivileged classes could study, as well as gymnasiums that prepared students for admission to universities. But if earlier it was possible to enter the gymnasium from the district school, now the connection between them was broken and it was forbidden to accept serf children in the gymnasium. Thus, education became even more class-based: admission to universities was difficult for non-noble children, and in principle closed for serfs. The children of the nobility were ordered to study in Russia until the age of eighteen - otherwise they were forbidden to enter the civil service.
Later, Nicholas also took up the universities: their autonomy was limited and much stricter procedures were introduced; the number of students who could study at one time at each university was limited to three hundred. True, several branch institutes were opened at the same time (Technological, Mining, Agricultural, Forestry and Technological School in Moscow), where graduates of district schools could enter. At that time, this was quite a lot, and yet by the end of the reign of Nicholas I, 2,900 students studied in all Russian universities - about the same number at that time were in Leipzig University alone.
6. Laws, finance, industry and transport
In a nutshell: Under Ni-ko-lai I, the government did a lot of useful things: the legislation was systematized, the financial system was reformed, and the transport revolution was carried out. In addition, industry was developing in Russia with the support of the government.
Since, until 1825, Nikolai Pavlovich was not allowed to govern the state, he ascended the throne without his own political team and without sufficient preparation to develop his own program of action. Paradoxical as it may seem, he borrowed a lot - at least at first - from the Decembrists. The fact is that during the investigation they talked a lot and frankly about Russian troubles and offered their own solutions to pressing problems. By order of Nikolai, Alexander Borovkov, secretary of the investigative commission, compiled a set of recommendations from their testimony. It was a most interesting document, in which all the problems of the state were sorted out by points: “Laws”, “Trade”, “Administration system” and so on. Until 1830-1831, both Nicholas I himself and the chairman of the State Council, Viktor Kochubey, constantly used this document.
Nicholas I awards Speransky for compiling a code of laws. Painting by Alexei Kivshenko. 1880 DIOMEDIA One of the tasks formulated by the Decembrists, which Nicholas I tried to solve at the very beginning of his reign, was the systematization of legislation. The fact is that by 1825 the only set of Russian laws remained the Cathedral Code of 1649. All laws adopted later (including a huge body of laws from the times of Peter I and Catherine II) were published in scattered multi-volume publications of the Senate and were stored in archives of various departments. Moreover, many laws have disappeared altogether - about 70% have survived, and the rest have disappeared due to various circumstances, such as fires or careless storage. It was absolutely impossible to use all this in real court proceedings; laws had to be collected and streamlined. This was entrusted to the Second Department of the Imperial Chancellery, which was formally headed by the jurist Mikhail Balugyansky, and in fact by Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky, assistant to Alexander I, ideologist and inspirer of his reforms. As a result, a huge amount of work was done in just three years, and in 1830 Speransky reported to the monarch that 45 volumes of the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire were ready. Two years later, 15 volumes of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire were prepared: laws that were later repealed were removed from the Complete Collection, and contradictions and repetitions were eliminated. This was also not enough: Speransky suggested creating new codes of laws, but the emperor said that he would leave this to his heir.
In 1839-1841, the Minister of Finance Yegor Kankrin carried out a very important financial reform. The fact is that there were no firmly established relations between different money that circulated in Russia: silver rubles, paper banknotes, as well as gold and copper coins, plus coins minted in Europe called “efimki” exchanged for each other. ha at rather arbitrary rates, the number of which reached six. In addition, by the 1830s, the value of banknotes had fallen sharply. Kankrin recognized the silver ruble as the main monetary unit and rigidly tied banknotes to it: now 1 silver ruble could be obtained for exactly 3 rubles 50 kopecks in banknotes. The population rushed to buy silver, and in the end, bank notes were completely replaced by new credit notes, partially backed by silver. Thus, a fairly stable monetary circulation was established in Russia.
Under Nicholas, the number of industrial enterprises increased significantly. Of course, this was connected not so much with the actions of the government, but with the industrial revolution that had begun, but without the permission of the government in Russia, in any case, it was impossible to open a factory, plant, or workshop. Under Nicholas, 18% of enterprises were equipped with steam engines - and it was they who produced almost half of all industrial output. In addition, during this period, the first (albeit very vague) laws appeared that regulated the relations between workers and entrepreneurs. Russia also became the first country in the world to adopt a decree on the formation of joint-stock companies.
Railway employees at Tver station. From the album "Views of the Nikolaev railway". Between 1855 and 1864
Railroad bridge. From the album "Views of the Nikolaev railway". Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Bologoe station. From the album "Views of the Nikolaev railway". Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Wagons on the tracks. From the album "Views of the Nikolaev railway". Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Station Khimka. From the album "Views of the Nikolaev railway". Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Depot. From the album "Views of the Nikolaev railway". Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Finally, Nicholas I actually made a transport revolution in Russia. Since he tried to control everything that was happening, he was forced to constantly travel around the country, and thanks to this, the highways (which began to be laid under Alexander I) began to take shape in the road network. In addition, it was through the efforts of Nicholas that the first railways in Russia were built. To do this, the emperor had to overcome serious resistance: Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, Kankrin, and many others were against the new mode of transport for Russia. They feared that all forests would burn in the furnaces of locomotives, that in winter the rails would be covered with ice and trains would not be able to take even small rises, that the railway would lead to an increase in vagrancy - and, finally, would undermine the very social foundations of the empire, since the nobles , merchants and peasants will travel, albeit in different wagons, but in the same train. Nevertheless, in 1837, a movement from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoe Selo was opened, and in 1851 Nikolai arrived by train from St. Petersburg to Moscow - for the celebrations in honor of the 25th anniversary of his coronation.
7. The peasant question and the position of the nobility
In a nutshell: The position of the nobility and peasantry was extremely difficult: the landlords were ruined, discontent was ripening among the peasantry, serfdom hindered the development of the economy. Nicholas I understood this and tried to take measures, but he did not dare to abolish serfdom.
Like his predecessors, Nicholas I was seriously concerned about the state of the two main pillars of the throne and the main Russian social forces - the nobility and the peasantry. The position of both was extremely difficult. The third department annually issued reports that began with reports of landlords killed during the year, refusals to go to corvée, felling of landowners' forests, complaints from peasants against landlords - and, most importantly, rumors spreading about the will, which made the situation explosive. Nikolay (like his predecessors, by the way) saw that the problem was becoming more and more acute, and he understood that if a social explosion is possible in Russia at all, it would be a peasant one, not an urban one. At the same time, in the 1830s, two-thirds of the estates of the nobility were mortgaged: the landowners went bankrupt, and this proved that Russian agricultural production could no longer be based on their farms. Finally, serfdom hindered the development of industry, trade and other sectors of the economy. On the other hand, Nicholas was afraid of the discontent of the nobles, and in general he was not sure that the one-time abolition of serfdom would be useful to Russia at that moment.
Peasant family before dinner. Painting by Fyodor Solntsev. 1824 State Tretyakov Gallery / DIOMEDIA From 1826 to 1849, nine secret committees worked on peasant affairs and more than 550 various decrees were adopted regarding the relationship of landlords and nobles - for example, it was forbidden to sell peasants without land, and peasants from estates put up for auction were allowed to before the end of the auction to be redeemed at will. Nikolay could not abolish serfdom, but, firstly, by making such decisions, the Winter Palace pushed society to discuss an acute problem, and secondly, the secret committees collected a lot of material that came in handy later, in the second half of the 1850s, when the Winter Palace moved to a specific discussion of the abolition of serfdom.
In order to slow down the ruin of the nobles, in 1845 Nikolai allowed the creation of majorates - that is, indivisible estates that were transferred only to the eldest son, and were not split up between heirs. But by 1861, only 17 of them were introduced, and this situation did not save: in Russia, the majority of landowners remained small landowners, that is, they owned 16-18 serfs.
In addition, he tried to slow the erosion of the old well-born nobility by issuing a decree according to which hereditary nobility could be obtained by rising to the fifth grade of the Table of Ranks, and not the eighth as before. Getting hereditary nobility has become much more difficult.
8. Bureaucracy
In a nutshell: The desire of Nicholas I to keep all control of the country in his own hands led to the fact that the administration was formalized, the number of officials increased and the society was forbidden to evaluate the work of officials. As a result, the entire management system stalled, and the scale of treasury theft and bribery became enormous.
Portrait of Emperor Nicholas I. Painting by Horace Vernet. 1830s Wikimedia Commons So, Nicholas I tried to do everything necessary to gradually, without shocks, lead society to prosperity with his own hands. Since he perceived the state as a family, where the emperor is the father of the nation, senior officials and officers are older relatives, and all the rest are foolish children who need constant supervision, he was not ready to accept any help from society at all. . The management was to be exclusively under the jurisdiction of the emperor and his ministers, who acted through officials who impeccably fulfill the monarch's will. This led to the formalization of the government of the country and a sharp increase in the number of officials; The movement of papers became the basis for managing the empire: orders went from top to bottom, reports from bottom to top. By the 1840s, the governor was signing about 270 documents a day and spending up to five hours doing it—even skimming through the papers.
The most serious mistake of Nicholas I was that he forbade society to evaluate the work of bureaucracy. No one, except for the immediate superiors, could not only criticize, but even praise the officials.
As a result, the bureaucracy itself became a powerful socio-political force, turned into a kind of third estate - and began to protect its own interests. Since the well-being of a bureaucrat depends on whether his superiors are pleased with him, wonderful reports went up from the very bottom, starting from the clerks: everything is fine, everything is done, the achievements are huge. With each step, these reports only became more radiant, and papers came up that had very little in common with reality. This led to the fact that the entire administration of the empire stalled: already in the early 1840s, the Minister of Justice reported to Nicholas I that 33 million cases had not been resolved in Russia, set out on at least 33 million sheets of paper. And, of course, the situation was developing in this way not only in justice.
Terrible embezzlement began in the country and. The loudest was the case of the Fund for the Disabled, from which 1,200,000 silver rubles were stolen in a few years; they brought 150,000 rubles to the chairman of one of the deanery councils to put them in a safe, but he took the money for himself and put newspapers in the safe; one county treasurer stole 80 thousand rubles, leaving a note that in this way he decided to reward himself for twenty years of impeccable service. And things like this happened all the time.
The emperor tried to personally monitor everything, adopted the most stringent laws and made the most detailed orders, but officials at absolutely all levels found ways to get around them.
9. Foreign policy until the early 1850s
In a nutshell: Until the beginning of the 1850s, the foreign policy of Nicholas I was quite successful: the government managed to protect the borders from Persians and Turks and prevent a revolution in Russia.
In foreign policy, Nicholas I had two main tasks. Firstly, he had to protect the borders of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, in the Crimea and in Bessarabia from the most warlike neighbors, that is, the Persians and Turks. For this purpose, two wars were carried out - the Russian-Persian 1826-1828 In 1829, after the end of the Russian-Persian war, an attack was made on the Russian representative office in Tehran, during which all the employees of the embassy, except for the secretary, were killed - including the plenipotentiary ambassador of Russia Alexander Griboyedov, who played a big role in the peace negotiations with the Shah, which ended in a favorable treaty for Russia. and Russian-Turkish 1828-1829, and both of them led to remarkable results: Russia not only strengthened the borders, but also significantly increased its influence in the Balkans. Moreover, for some time (albeit a short one - from 1833 to 1841), the Unkar-Iskelesi agreement was in force between Russia and Turkey, according to which the latter had to close the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits if necessary (that is, the passage from the Mediterranean Sea to Chernoye) for the warships of the opponents of Russia, which made the Black Sea, in fact, the inland sea of Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
Battle of Boelesti on September 26, 1828. German engraving. 1828 Brown University Library The second goal that Nicholas I set for himself was not to let the revolution pass through the European borders of the Russian Empire. In addition, since 1825, he considered it his sacred duty to fight the revolution in Europe. In 1830, the Russian emperor was ready to send an expedition to suppress the revolution in Belgium, but neither the army nor the treasury were ready for this, and the European powers did not support the intentions of the Winter Palace. In 1831 Russian army severely suppressed; Poland became part of the Russian Empire, the Polish constitution was destroyed, and martial law was introduced on its territory, which remained until the end of the reign of Nicholas I. When France began again in 1848, which soon spread to other countries, Nicholas I was not on jokingly alarmed: he proposed to push the army to the French borders and thought about how to suppress the revolution in Prussia on his own. Finally, Franz Joseph, head of the Austrian imperial house, asked him for help against the rebels. Nicholas I understood that this event was not very beneficial for Russia, but he saw in the Hungarian revolutionaries “not only enemies of Austria, but enemies of world order and tranquility ... who must be exterminated for our own peace of mind”, and in 1849 the Russian the army joined the Austrian troops and saved the Austrian monarchy from disintegration. One way or another, the revolution never crossed the borders of the Russian Empire.
In parallel, since the time of Alexander I, Russia has been at war with the highlanders of the North Caucasus. This war went on with varying success and dragged on for many years.
In general, the foreign policy actions of the government during the reign of Nicholas I can be called rational: it made decisions based on the goals that it set for itself and the real opportunities that the country possessed.
10. Crimean War and the death of the emperor
In a nutshell: In the early 1850s, Nicholas I made a series of catastrophic miscalculations and went to war with the Ottoman Empire. England and France sided with Turkey, Russia began to suffer defeat. This exacerbated many internal problems. In 1855, when the situation was already very difficult, Nicholas I died unexpectedly, leaving his heir Alexander the country in an extremely difficult situation.
From the beginning of the 1850s, sobriety in assessing one's own strength in the Russian leadership suddenly disappeared. The emperor considered that the time had come to finally deal with the Ottoman Empire (which he called the “sick man of Europe”), dividing its “non-indigenous” possessions (the Balkans, Egypt, the Mediterranean islands) between Russia and other great powers -you, first of all Great Britain. And here Nikolai made several catastrophic miscalculations.
First, he offered Great Britain a deal: Russia, as a result of the division of the Ottoman Empire, would receive the Orthodox territories of the Balkans that remained under Turkish rule (that is, Moldavia, Wallachia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Macedonia), and Egypt and Crete would go to Great Britain. But for England, this proposal was completely unacceptable: the strengthening of Russia, which became possible with the capture of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, would be too dangerous for her, and the British agreed with the Sultan that they would receive Egypt and Crete for helping Turkey against Russia .
France was his second miscalculation. In 1851, it happened there, as a result of which President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon's nephew) became Emperor Napoleon III. Nicholas I decided that Napoleon was too busy with internal problems to intervene in the war, without thinking at all that the best way to strengthen power was to take part in a small victorious and just war (and the reputation of Russia, the "gendarme of Europe" , was extremely unattractive at that moment). Apart from other things, an alliance between France and England, old enemies, seemed completely impossible to Nicholas, and in this he again miscalculated.
Finally, the Russian emperor believed that Austria, out of gratitude for her help with Hungary, would take the side of Russia, or at least remain neutral. But the Habsburgs had their own interests in the Balkans, and a weak Turkey was more profitable for them than a strong Russia.
Siege of Sevastopol. Lithograph by Thomas Sinclair. 1855 DIOMEDIA In June 1853, Russia sent troops to the Danube Principalities. In October, the Ottoman Empire officially declared war. At the beginning of 1854, France and Great Britain joined it (on the side of Turkey). The allies began actions in several directions at once, but most importantly, they forced Russia to withdraw its troops from the Danube principalities, after which the allied expeditionary force landed in the Crimea: its goal was to take Sevastopol, the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The siege of Sevastopol began in the autumn of 1854 and lasted almost a year.
The Crimean War showed all the problems associated with the control system built by Nicholas I: neither the supply of the army, nor the transport routes worked; The army was short of ammunition. In Sevastopol, the Russian army answered ten shots of the allies with one artillery shot - because there was no gunpowder. By the end of the Crimean War, only a few dozen guns remained in the Russian arsenals.
The military failures were followed by internal problems. Russia fell into an absolute diplomatic void: all the countries of Europe broke off diplomatic relations with it, except for the Vatican and the Kingdom of Naples, which meant the end of international trade, without which the Russian Empire could not exist. Public opinion in Russia began to change dramatically: many even conservative-minded people believed that defeat in the war would be more useful for Russia than victory, believing that it would not be Russia that would be defeated, but the Nikolaev regime.
In July 1854, the new Russian ambassador in Vienna, Alexander Gorchakov, found out under what conditions England and France were ready to conclude a truce with Russia and start negotiations, and advised the emperor to accept them. Nikolai hesitated, but in the autumn he was forced to agree. In early December, Austria joined the alliance of England and France. And in January 1855, Nicholas I caught a cold - and on February 18 he died unexpectedly.
Nicholas I on his deathbed. Drawing by Vladimir Gau. 1855 State Hermitage Rumors of suicide began to spread in St. Petersburg: allegedly, the emperor demanded that his doctor give him poison. It is impossible to refute this version, but the evidence confirming it seems doubtful, especially since for a sincerely believing person, such as Nikolai Pavlovich undoubtedly was, suicide is a terrible sin. Rather, it was that the failures - both in the war and in the state as a whole - seriously undermined his health.
According to legend, talking before his death with his son Alexander, Nicholas I said: “I hand over my team to you, unfortunately, not in the order I wanted, leaving a lot of trouble and worries.” These troubles included not only the difficult and humiliating end of the Crimean War, but also the liberation of the Balkan peoples from the Ottoman Empire, the solution of the peasant question and many other problems that Alexander II had to deal with.
Nikolai Pavlovich Romanov, the future Emperor Nicholas I, was born on July 6 (June 25, O.S.) 1796 in Tsarskoye Selo. He became the third son of Emperor Paul I and Empress Maria Feodorovna. Nicholas was not the eldest son and therefore did not claim the throne. He was supposed to devote himself to a military career. At the age of six months, the boy received the rank of colonel, and at the age of three he already flaunted in the uniform of the Life Guards Horse Regiment.
Responsibility for the upbringing of Nikolai and his younger brother Mikhail was assigned to General Lamzdorf. home education consisted in the study of economics, history, geography, law, engineering and fortification. Particular emphasis was placed on the study foreign languages: French, German and Latin. The humanities did not give Nikolai much pleasure, but everything that was connected with engineering and military affairs attracted his attention. As a child, Nikolai mastered the flute and took drawing lessons, and this familiarity with art allowed him to be considered a connoisseur of opera and ballet in the future.
In July 1817, the wedding of Nikolai Pavlovich took place with Princess Friederike Louise Charlotte Wilhelmina of Prussia, who after baptism took the name Alexandra Feodorovna. And from that time on, the Grand Duke began to take an active part in the arrangement of the Russian army. He was in charge of the engineering units, under his leadership educational institutions were created in companies and battalions. In 1819, with his assistance, the Main Engineering School and schools for guards ensigns were opened. Nevertheless, he was disliked in the army for his excessive pedantry and pickiness to trifles.
In 1820, a turning point occurred in the biography of the future Emperor Nicholas I: his elder brother Alexander I announced that in connection with the refusal of the heir to the throne, Constantine, the right to reign was transferred to Nicholas. For Nikolai Pavlovich, the news came as a shock, he was not ready for this. Despite the protests of his younger brother, Alexander I secured this right with a special manifesto.
However, on December 1 (November 19, O.S.), 1825, Emperor Alexander I suddenly died. Nicholas again tried to give up his reign and shift the burden of power to Constantine. Only after the publication of the royal manifesto, indicating the heir of Nikolai Pavlovich, did he have to agree with the will of Alexander I.
The date of the oath before the troops on Senate Square was December 26 (December 14 according to the old style). It was this date that became decisive in the speech of the participants in various secret societies, which went down in history as the Decembrist uprising.
The plan of the revolutionaries was not implemented, the army did not support the rebels, and the uprising was suppressed. After the trial, five leaders of the uprising were executed, and a large number of participants and sympathizers went into exile. The reign of Nicholas I began very dramatically, but there were no other executions during his reign.
The crowning of the kingdom took place on August 22, 1826 in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, and in May 1829 the new emperor assumed the rights of autocrat of the Polish kingdom.
The first steps of Nicholas I in politics were quite liberal: A. S. Pushkin returned from exile, V. A. Zhukovsky became the mentor of the heir; Nicholas's liberal views are also indicated by the fact that the Ministry of State Property was headed by P. D. Kiselev, who was not a supporter of serfdom.
Nevertheless, history has shown that the new emperor was an ardent supporter of the monarchy. Its main slogan, which determined state policy, was expressed in three postulates: autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality. The main thing that Nicholas I strove for and achieved with his policy was not to create something new and better, but to preserve and improve the existing order.
The emperor's desire for conservatism and blind adherence to the letter of the law led to the development of an even greater bureaucracy in the country. In fact, a whole bureaucratic state was created, the ideas of which continue to live to this day. The most severe censorship was introduced, a division of the Secret Chancellery was created, headed by Benckendorff, which conducted a political investigation. A very close observation of the printing business was established.
During the reign of Nicholas I, some changes also affected the existing serfdom. Uncultivated lands in Siberia and the Urals began to be developed, peasants were sent to their rise, regardless of desire. Infrastructure was created on the new lands, the peasants were supplied with new agricultural equipment.
Under Nicholas I, the first railway was built. The gauge of Russian roads was wider than European, which contributed to the development of domestic technology.
A financial reform began, which was supposed to introduce a unified system for calculating silver coins and banknotes.
A special place in the policy of the tsar was occupied by concern about the penetration of liberal ideas into Russia. Nicholas I sought to destroy any dissent not only in Russia, but throughout Europe. Without the Russian tsar, the suppression of all kinds of uprisings and revolutionary riots was not complete. As a result, he received the well-deserved nickname "the gendarme of Europe."
All the years of the reign of Nicholas I are filled with military operations abroad. 1826-1828 - Russian-Persian war, 1828-1829 - Russian-Turkish war, 1830 - suppression of the Polish uprising by Russian troops. In 1833, the Unkar-Iskelesi Treaty was signed, which became the highest point of Russian influence on Constantinople. Russia received the right to block the passage of foreign ships to the Black Sea. True, this right was soon lost as a result of the conclusion of the Second London Convention in 1841. 1849 - Russia is an active participant in the suppression of the uprising in Hungary.
The culmination of the reign of Nicholas I was the Crimean War. It was she who was the collapse of the political career of the emperor. He did not expect that Great Britain and France would come to the aid of Turkey. The policy of Austria also aroused fear, the unfriendliness of which forced the Russian Empire to keep an entire army on the western borders.
As a result, Russia lost its influence in the Black Sea, lost the opportunity to build and use military fortresses on the coast.
In 1855, Nicholas I fell ill with the flu, but, despite being unwell, in February he went to a military parade without outerwear ... The emperor died on March 2, 1855.
The personality of Emperor Nicholas I is very controversial. Thirty years of reign is a series of paradoxical phenomena:
- an unprecedented flourishing of culture and manic censorship;
- total political control and prosperity of corruption;
- rise in industrial production and economic backwardness from European countries;
- control over the army and its impotence.
The statements of contemporaries and real historical facts also cause a lot of contradictions, so it is difficult to objectively assess
Childhood of Nicholas I
Nikolai Pavlovich was born on June 25, 1796 and became the third son of the imperial Romanov couple. Very little Nikolai was raised by Baroness Charlotte Karlovna von Lieven, to whom he became very attached and adopted some character traits from her, such as strength of character, stamina, heroism, and openness. Then his craving for military affairs was already manifested. Nikolai loved to watch military parades, divorces, and play military toys. And already at the age of three he put on his first military uniform of the Life Guards Horse Regiment.
He suffered the very first shock at the age of four, when his father Emperor Pavel Petrovich died. Since then, the responsibility of raising the heirs fell on the shoulders of the widow Maria Feodorovna.
Nikolai Pavlovich's mentor
Since 1801 and over the next seventeen years, Nikolai's mentor was appointed Lieutenant General Matvey Ivanovich Lamzdorf, the former director of the gentry (first) cadet corps under Emperor Paul. Lamzdorf did not have the slightest idea about the ways of educating royalty - future rulers - and about any educational activity in general. His appointment was justified by the desire of Empress Maria Feodorovna to protect her sons from being carried away by military affairs, and this was Lamzdorf's main goal. But instead of getting the princes interested in other pursuits, he went against all their wishes. For example, while accompanying the young princes on their trip to France in 1814, where they were eager to take part in hostilities against Napoleon, Lamzdorf deliberately drove them very slowly, and the princes arrived in Paris when the battle had already ended. Due to the incorrectly chosen tactics, Lamzdorf's educational activity did not achieve its goal. When Nicholas I married, Lamzdorf was relieved of his duties as a mentor.
Hobbies
The Grand Duke diligently and passionately studied all the intricacies of military science. In 1812, he was eager to go to war with Napoleon, but his mother did not let him go. In addition, the future emperor was fond of engineering, fortification, and architecture. But Nikolai did not like the humanitarian disciplines and was negligent in their study. Subsequently, he greatly regretted this and even tried to fill in the gaps in training. But he never managed to do this.
Nikolai Pavlovich was fond of painting, played the flute, loved opera and ballet. He had good artistic taste.
The future emperor had a beautiful appearance. The growth of Nicholas 1 - 205 cm, thin, broad-shouldered. The face is slightly elongated, the eyes are blue, always a stern look. Nicholas had excellent physical fitness and good health.
Marriage
Elder brother Alexander I in 1813, having visited Silesia, chose Nicholas a bride - the daughter of the King of Prussia Charlotte. This marriage was supposed to strengthen Russian-Prussian relations in the fight against Napoleon, but unexpectedly for everyone, the young people sincerely fell in love with each other. On July 1, 1817 they were married. Charlotte of Prussia in Orthodoxy became Alexandra Feodorovna. The marriage turned out to be happy and large. The Empress bore Nicholas seven children.
After the wedding, Nicholas 1, biography and Interesting Facts which is presented to your attention in the article, began to command the guards division, and also took up the duties of the inspector general for engineering.
Doing what he loved, the Grand Duke treated his duties very responsibly. He opened company and battalion schools under the engineering troops. In 1819, the Main Engineering School (now the Nikolaev Engineering Academy) was founded. Thanks to his excellent memory for faces, which allows even ordinary soldiers to be remembered, Nikolai won respect in the army.
The death of Alexander 1
In 1820, Alexander told Nicholas and his wife that Konstantin Pavlovich, the next heir to the throne, intended to renounce his right due to childlessness, divorce and remarriage, and Nicholas should become the next emperor. In this regard, Alexander signed a manifesto that approved the abdication of Konstantin Pavlovich and the appointment of Nikolai Pavlovich as heir to the throne. Alexander, as if feeling his imminent death, bequeathed to read the document immediately after his death. November 19, 1825 Alexander I died. Nicholas, despite the manifesto, was the first to swear allegiance to Prince Konstantin. It was a very noble and honest act. After some period of uncertainty, when Constantine did not officially abdicate the throne, but also refused to take the oath. The growth of Nicholas 1 was rapid. He decided to become the next emperor.
Bloody beginning of reign
On December 14, on the day of the oath of Nicholas I, an uprising (called the Decembrist uprising) was organized, aimed at overthrowing the autocracy. The uprising was crushed, the surviving participants were sent into exile, five were executed. The emperor's first impulse was to pardon everyone, but fear palace coup forced to organize a court to the fullest extent of the law. Nevertheless, Nicholas acted generously with those who wanted to kill him and his entire family. There are even confirmed facts that the wives of the Decembrists received monetary compensation, and children born in Siberia could study in the best educational institutions at the expense of the state.
This event influenced the course of the further reign of Nicholas 1. All his activities were aimed at preserving autocracy.
Domestic politics
The reign of Nicholas 1 began when he was 29 years old. Accuracy and exactingness, responsibility, the struggle for justice, combined with high efficiency were the outstanding qualities of the emperor. His character was influenced by the years of army life. He led a rather ascetic lifestyle: he slept on a hard bed, covering himself with an overcoat, observed moderation in food, did not drink alcohol and did not smoke. Nikolai worked 18 hours a day. He was very demanding in the first place to himself. He considered it his duty to preserve autocracy, and all his political activities served this purpose.
Russia under Nicholas 1 underwent the following changes:
- Centralization of power and the creation of a bureaucratic apparatus of management. The emperor only wanted order, control and accountability, but in essence it turned out that the number of bureaucratic posts increased many times over and with them the number and size of bribes increased. Nikolai himself understood this and told his eldest son that only the two of them did not steal in Russia.
- Solution of the issue of serfs. Thanks to a series of reforms, the number of serfs was significantly reduced (from 58% to 35% in about 45 years), they received rights, the protection of which was controlled by the state. The complete abolition of serfdom did not happen, but the reform served as the starting point in this matter. Also at this time, an education system for peasants began to take shape.
- The emperor paid special attention to order in the army. Contemporaries criticized him for paying too much attention to the troops, while the morale of the army was of little interest to him. Frequent checks, reviews, punishments for the slightest errors distracted the soldiers from their main tasks, made them weak. But was it really so? During the reign of Emperor Nicholas 1, Russia fought with Persia and Turkey in 1826-1829, and in the Crimea in 1853-1856. In the wars with Persia and Turkey, Russia won. The Crimean War led to Russia's loss of influence in the Balkans. But historians call the reason for the defeat of the Russians the economic backwardness of Russia in comparison with the enemy, including the existence of serfdom. But a comparison of human losses in the Crimean War with other similar wars shows that they are less. This proves that the army under the leadership of Nicholas I was powerful and highly organized.
Economic development
Emperor Nicholas 1 inherited Russia, devoid of industry. All items of production were imported. By the end of the reign of Nicholas 1, economic growth was noticeable. Many types of production necessary for the country already existed in Russia. Under his leadership, the construction of paved roads began, railways. In connection with the development of railway transport, the machine-building industry began to develop, including the car-building industry. An interesting fact is that Nicholas I decided to build railways wider (1524 mm) than in European countries (1435 mm) in order to make it difficult for the enemy to move around the country in case of war. And it was very wise. It was this trick that did not allow the Germans in 1941 to supply ammunition in full during the attack on Moscow.
In connection with the growing industrialization, an intensive growth of cities began. During the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, the urban population more than doubled. Thanks to an engineering education received in his youth, Nikolai 1 Romanov followed the construction of all major facilities in St. Petersburg. His idea was not to exceed the height of the eaves of the Winter Palace for all buildings in the city. As a result, St. Petersburg has become one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Under Nicholas 1, growth in the educational sphere was also noticeable. Many educational institutions were opened. Among them are the famous Kiev University and the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, military and naval academies, a number of schools, etc.
The heyday of culture
The 19th century was a real flowering of literary creativity. Pushkin and Lermontov, Tyutchev, Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Derzhavin and other writers and poets of this era were incredibly talented. At the same time, Nicholas 1 Romanov introduced the most severe censorship, reaching the point of absurdity. Therefore, literary geniuses periodically experienced persecution.
Foreign policy
Foreign policy during the reign of Nicholas I included two main areas:
- Return to the principles of the Holy Alliance, the suppression of revolutions and any revolutionary ideas in Europe.
- Strengthening influence in the Balkans for free navigation in the Bosporus.
These factors caused the Russian-Turkish, Russian-Persian and Crimean wars. The defeat in the Crimean War led to the loss of all previously won positions in the Black Sea and the Balkans and provoked an industrial crisis in Russia.
Emperor's death
Nicholas 1 died on March 2, 1855 (aged 58) from pneumonia. He was buried in the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress.
And finally...
The reign of Nicholas I, undoubtedly, left a tangible mark, both in the economy and in the cultural life of Russia, however, it did not lead to any epoch-making changes in the country. The following factors forced the emperor to slow down progress and follow the conservative principles of autocracy:
- moral unpreparedness to govern the country;
- lack of education;
- fear of overthrow due to the events of December 14;
- feeling of loneliness (conspiracies against father Paul, brother Alexander, abdication of the throne by brother Constantine).
Therefore, none of the subjects regretted the death of the emperor. Contemporaries often condemned personality traits Nicholas 1, he was criticized as a politician and as a person, but historical facts speak of the emperor as a noble man who fully devoted himself to serving Russia.
E. Vernet "Portrait of Nicholas I"
According to the description of contemporaries, Nicholas I was "a soldier by vocation,
a soldier by education, in appearance and inwardness.
Personality
Nicholas, the third son of Emperor Paul I and Empress Maria Feodorovna, was born on June 25, 1796 - a few months before Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich came to the throne.
Since the eldest son Alexander was considered the crown prince, and his successor Konstantin, the younger brothers - Nicholas and Mikhail - were not prepared for the throne, they were brought up as grand dukes destined for military service.
A. Rokshtul "Nicholas I in childhood"
From birth, he was in the care of his grandmother, Catherine II, and after her death, he was raised by a nanny, a Scottish woman, Lyon, to whom he was very attached.
Since November 1800, General M. I. Lamzdorf became the tutor of Nikolai and Mikhail. It was the choice of the father, Emperor Paul I, who said: “Just don’t make such rake out of my sons as German princes.” Lamzdorf was the tutor of the future emperor for 17 years. In his studies, the future emperor did not show any success, with the exception of drawing. He studied painting in childhood under the guidance of painters I.A. Akimov and V.K. Shebuev.
Nicholas realized his calling early. In his memoirs, he wrote: “Some military sciences occupied me passionately, in them alone I found consolation and a pleasant occupation, similar to the disposition of my spirit.”
“His mind is not processed, his upbringing was careless,” Queen Victoria wrote about Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich in 1844.
During Patriotic War In 1812, he passionately desired to participate in military events, but received a decisive refusal from the Empress Mother.
In 1816-1817. Nikolai made two trips to complete his education: one - throughout Russia (he visited more than 10 provinces), the other - to England. There he got acquainted with the state structure of the country: he attended a meeting of the English Parliament, but remained indifferent to what he saw, because. believed that such a political structure was unacceptable for Russia.
In 1817, Nicholas married the Prussian princess Charlotte (in Orthodoxy, Alexandra Feodorovna).
Prior to his accession to the throne, his social activities were limited to the command of a guards brigade, then a division, since 1817 he held the honorary position of inspector general for the military engineering department. Already during this period of military service, Nikolai began to take care of military educational institutions. On his initiative, company and battalion schools began to function in the engineering troops, and in 1818. the Main Engineering School (the future Nikolaev Engineering Academy) and the School of Guards ensigns (then the Nikolaev Cavalry School) were established.
Beginning of the reign
Nicholas had to take the throne in exceptional circumstances. After the death of the childless Alexander I in 1825, according to the Decree of Succession to the Throne, Constantine was to become the next king. But back in 1822, Constantine signed a written abdication from the throne.
D. Dow "Portrait of Nicholas I"
On November 27, 1825, having received news of the death of Alexander I, Nicholas swore allegiance to the new emperor Constantine, who was at that time in Warsaw; sworn in the generals, army regiments, government agencies. Meanwhile, Constantine, having received news of the death of his brother, confirmed his unwillingness to take the throne and swore allegiance to Nicholas as Russian Emperor and sworn in Poland. And only when Constantine confirmed his abdication twice, Nicholas agreed to reign. While there was a correspondence between Nicholas and Constantine, there was an actual interregnum. In order not to drag out the situation that had arisen for a long time, Nicholas decided to take the oath on December 14, 1825.
This short interval of interregnum was used by members of the Northern Society - supporters of the constitutional monarchy, who, with the requirements laid down in their program, brought military units to the Senate Square, refusing to swear allegiance to Nicholas.
K. Kolman "The Revolt of the Decembrists"
The new emperor dispersed the troops from Senate Square with grapeshot, and then personally supervised the investigation, as a result of which five leaders of the uprising were hanged, 120 people were sent to hard labor and exile; the regiments participating in the uprising were disbanded, the privates were punished with gauntlets and sent to distant garrisons.
Domestic politics
The reign of Nicholas took place during the period of the aggravated crisis of the feudal-serf system in Russia, the growing peasant movement in Poland and the Caucasus, bourgeois revolutions in Western Europe and, as a result of these revolutions, the formation of bourgeois-revolutionary currents in the ranks of the Russian nobility and the raznochintsy intelligentsia. Therefore, the case of the Decembrists was of great importance and was reflected in the public mood of that time. In the heat of revelations, the tsar called the Decembrists "his friends on December 14" and understood well that their demands take place in Russian reality and the order in Russia requires reforms.
Assuming the throne, Nicholas, being unprepared, did not have a definite idea of how he would like to see the Russian Empire. He was sure only that the welfare of the country could be ensured only through strict order, strict fulfillment by each of his duties, control and regulation of social activities. Despite the reputation of a limited martinet, he brought some revival to the life of the country after the gloomy last years of the reign of Alexander I. He sought to eliminate abuses, restore law and order, and carry out reforms. The emperor personally audited state institutions, condemning red tape and corruption.
Wanting to strengthen the existing political system and not trusting the apparatus of officials, Nicholas I significantly expanded the functions of His Majesty's Own Chancellery, which practically replaced the highest state bodies. For this, six departments were formed: the first dealt with personnel issues and monitored the execution of the highest orders; The second dealt with the codification of laws; The third monitored law and order in government and public life, later turned into a body of political investigation; The fourth was in charge of charitable and women's educational institutions; The fifth worked out the reform of the state peasants and supervised its implementation; The sixth was preparing a reform of governance in the Caucasus.
V. Golike "Nicholas I"
The emperor liked to create numerous secret committees and commissions. One of the first such committees was the "Committee of December 6, 1826". Before him, Nicholas set the task of reviewing all the papers of Alexander I and determining "what is good now, what cannot be left and what can be replaced." After working for four years, the committee proposed a number of projects for the transformation of central and provincial institutions. These proposals, with the approval of the emperor, were submitted to the State Council for consideration, but the events in Poland, Belgium and France forced the tsar to close the committee and completely abandon fundamental reforms of the state system. So the first attempt to implement at least some reforms in Russia ended in failure, the country continued to strengthen the bureaucratic and administrative methods of management.
In the first years of his reign, Nicholas I surrounded himself with major statesmen, thanks to whom he managed to solve a number of capital tasks that his predecessors had not completed. So, M.M. He instructed Speransky to codify Russian law, for which all laws adopted after 1649 were identified in the archives and arranged in chronological order, which were published in 1830 in volume 51 of the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire.
Then the preparation of the current laws, drawn up in 15 volumes, began. In January 1833, the Code of Laws was approved by the State Council, and Nicholas I, present at the meeting, having removed the Order of A. the First-Called, awarded them to M.M. Speransky. The main advantage of this "Code" was the reduction of chaos in management and the arbitrariness of officials. However, this over-centralization of power did not lead to positive results. Not trusting the public, the emperor expanded the number of ministries and departments that created their local bodies in order to control all areas of life, which led to the swelling of the bureaucracy and red tape, and the cost of maintaining them and the army absorbed almost all public funds. V.Yu Klyuchevsky wrote that under Nicholas I in Russia "the building of the Russian bureaucracy was completed."
Peasant question
The most important question domestic policy Nicholas I was a peasant question. Nicholas I understood the need to abolish serfdom, but could not carry it out because of the opposition of the nobility and fear of a "general shock". Because of this, he limited himself to such insignificant measures as the issuance of a law on indebted peasants, the partial reform of state peasants. The complete liberation of the peasants during the life of the emperor did not take place.
But some historians, in particular, V. Klyuchevsky, pointed to three significant changes in this area that occurred during the reign of Nicholas I:
- there was a sharp reduction in the number of serfs, they ceased to constitute the majority of the population. Obviously, a significant role was played by the cessation of the practice of "distributing" the state peasants to the landowners along with the lands, which flourished under the former tsars, and the spontaneous liberation of the peasants that began;
- the situation of state peasants greatly improved, all state peasants were allocated their own plots of land and forest plots, and auxiliary cash desks and bread shops were established everywhere, which provided assistance to the peasants with cash loans and grain in case of crop failure. As a result of these measures, the well-being of the state peasants not only increased, but also the treasury income from them increased by 15-20%, tax arrears were halved, and by the mid-1850s there were practically no landless laborers who eked out a beggarly and dependent existence, all received land from the state;
- the situation of serfs improved significantly: a number of laws were adopted that improved their situation: landowners were strictly forbidden to sell peasants (without land) and exile them to hard labor, which was previously a common practice; serfs received the right to own land, conduct business activities and received relative freedom of movement.
Restoration of Moscow after the Patriotic War of 1812
During the reign of Nicholas I, the restoration of Moscow after the fire of 1812 was completed; on his instructions, in memory of Emperor Alexander I, who "rebuilt Moscow from the ashes and ruins", the Triumphal Gates were built in 1826. and work began on the implementation of a new program for the planning and development of Moscow (architects M.D. Bykovsky, K.A. Ton).
The boundaries of the city center and the streets adjacent to it were expanded, the monuments of the Kremlin were restored, including the Arsenal, along the walls of which the trophies of 1812 were placed - cannons (875 in total), recaptured from the "Great Army"; the building of the Armory Chamber was built (1844-51). In 1839, a solemn ceremony of laying the foundation stone for the Cathedral of Christ the Savior took place. The main building in Moscow under Emperor Nicholas I was the Grand Kremlin Palace, which was consecrated on April 3, 1849 in the presence of the sovereign and the entire imperial family.
The construction of the Alekseevsky water supply building, founded in 1828, contributed to the improvement of the city's water supply. Great importance for Moscow had the construction of the Nikolaev railway (Petersburg - Moscow; train traffic began in 1851) and Petersburg - Warsaw. 100 ships were launched.
Foreign policy
An important aspect of foreign policy was the return to the principles of the Holy Alliance. The role of Russia in the fight against any manifestations of the "spirit of change" in European life has increased. It was during the reign of Nicholas I that Russia received the unflattering nickname of the "gendarme of Europe."
In the autumn of 1831, the uprising in Poland was brutally suppressed by Russian troops, as a result of which Poland lost its autonomy. The Russian army crushed the revolution in Hungary.
A special place in the foreign policy of Nicholas I was occupied by the Eastern Question.
Under Nicholas I, Russia abandoned plans to divide the Ottoman Empire, which were discussed under previous tsars (Catherine II and Paul I), and began to pursue a completely different policy in the Balkans - the policy of protecting the Orthodox population and ensuring its religious and civil rights, up to political independence .
Along with this, Russia sought to ensure its influence in the Balkans and the possibility of unhindered navigation in the straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles).
During the Russian-Turkish wars of 1806-1812. and 1828-1829, Russia made great strides in implementing this policy. At the request of Russia, which declared itself the patroness of all Christian subjects of the Sultan, the Sultan was forced to recognize the freedom and independence of Greece and the broad autonomy of Serbia (1830); According to the Unkyar-Iskelesik Treaty (1833), which marked the peak of Russian influence in Constantinople, Russia received the right to block the passage of foreign ships to the Black Sea (which it lost in 1841). The same reasons: the support of the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire and disagreements on the Eastern Question - pushed Russia to aggravate relations with Turkey in 1853, which resulted in her declaring war on Russia. The beginning of the war with Turkey in 1853 was marked by the brilliant victory of the Russian fleet under the command of Admiral PS Nakhimov, who defeated the enemy in Sinop Bay. It was the last major battle of the sailing fleet.
Russia's military successes caused a negative reaction in the West. The leading world powers were not interested in strengthening Russia at the expense of decrepit Ottoman Empire. This created the basis for a military alliance between England and France. The miscalculation of Nicholas I in assessing the internal political situation in England, France and Austria led to the fact that the country was in political isolation. In 1854, England and France entered the war on the side of Turkey. Due to the technical backwardness of Russia, it was difficult to resist these European powers. The main hostilities unfolded in the Crimea. In October 1854, the Allies laid siege to Sevastopol. The Russian army suffered a series of defeats and was unable to provide assistance to the besieged fortress city. Despite heroic defense city, after an 11-month siege, in August 1855, the defenders of Sevastopol were forced to surrender the city. At the beginning of 1856, following the results of the Crimean War, the Treaty of Paris was signed. According to its terms, Russia was forbidden to have naval forces, arsenals and fortresses on the Black Sea. Russia became vulnerable from the sea and was deprived of the opportunity to pursue an active foreign policy in this region.
Carried away by reviews and parades, Nicholas I was late with the technical re-equipment of the army. Military failures occurred to a large extent also due to the lack of highways and railways. It was during the war years that he finally became convinced that the state apparatus he had created himself was worthless.
culture
Nicholas I suppressed the slightest manifestations of freethinking. He introduced censorship. It was forbidden to print almost everything that had any political overtones. Although he freed Pushkin from general censorship, he himself subjected his works to personal censorship. “He has a lot of ensign and a little Peter the Great,” Pushkin wrote about Nikolai in his diary on May 21, 1834; at the same time, the diary also notes “sensible” remarks on the “History of Pugachev” (the sovereign edited it and gave Pushkin 20 thousand rubles in debt), ease of handling and good language of the tsar. Nikolai arrested and sent Polezhaev to the soldiery for free poetry, twice ordered Lermontov to be exiled to the Caucasus. By his order, the magazines "European", "Moscow Telegraph", "Telescope" were closed, P. Chaadaev and his publisher were persecuted, F. Schiller was banned from staging in Russia. But at the same time, he supported the Alexandrinsky Theater, both Pushkin and Gogol read their works to him, he was the first to support the talent of L. Tolstoy, he had both literary taste and civic courage to defend The Inspector General and after the first performance say: "Everyone got it - and most of all ME."
But the attitude of contemporaries to him was rather contradictory.
CM. Solovyov wrote: "He would like to cut off all the heads that rose above the general level."
N.V. Gogol recalled that Nicholas I, with his arrival in Moscow during the horrors of the cholera epidemic, showed a desire to raise up and encourage the fallen - "a trait that hardly any of the crowned bearers showed."
Herzen, who from his youth painfully experienced the failure of the Decembrist uprising, attributed cruelty, rudeness, vindictiveness, intolerance to “free thinking” to the personality of the tsar, accused him of following a reactionary course of domestic policy.
I. L. Solonevich wrote that Nicholas I, like Alexander Nevsky and Ivan III, was a true "sovereign master", with a "master's eye and master's calculation."
“Nikolai Pavlovich’s contemporaries did not “idolize” him, as it was customary to say during his reign, but they were afraid. Ignorance, non-worship would probably be recognized as a state crime. And gradually this custom-made feeling, a necessary guarantee of personal security, entered the flesh and blood of contemporaries and then was instilled in their children and grandchildren (N.E. Wrangel).
