David Saunders - Russia in the Age of Reaction and Reform 1801-1881

DAVID SAUNDERS

First published 1992 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge

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Copyright 1992, Taylor & Francis.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-48978-3 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Saunders, David, 1951

Russia in the age of reaction and reform 1801 1881 / David Saunders

p. cm. (Longman history of Russia)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-582-48977-6 (csd).ISBN 0-582-48978-4 (ppr)

1. Soviet UnionHistoryAlexander I, 18011825. 2. Soviet UnionHistoryNicholas I, 18251855. 3. Soviet UnionHistoryAlexander II, 18551881. I. Title. II. Series.

DK 191.S27 1993 927477

947.07dc20 CIP

Set 7A in Garamond 10/13

The Russian Empire in the nineteenth century was a land of extremes extreme poverty and extreme wealth, extreme ignorance and extreme sophistication, extreme size and extreme parochialism, extreme arrogance and extreme deference, extreme administrative uniformity and extreme cultural diversity, extreme might and extreme frailty. The extremes were too great to be reconciled. The last sentence of this book accuses populist revolutionaries of making compromise impossible, but the book as a whole spends most of its time trying to explain why compromise was difficult. The reasons included the personal failings of tsars; the regimes unjustifiable emphasis on maintaining its international standing; the reluctance of nobles to accept the loss of control over the countryside or the transformation of their sources of income; the consolidation of a bureaucracy which thought it knew better than the people for whom it was responsible; the desire to educate people without permitting the educated to express their views; the obsession of the educated with the values and material achievements of western Europe; the multiplicity of non-Russian cultures; and above all, the lack of resources to support innovation. Faced with these sources of combustion, tsars often gave the impression that strong-arm tactics were the only way forward. The terrorists of the late 1870s appeared to agree. Subsequent developments revealed that violence solved nothing, but it is still unclear whether Russians can accept the notion that politics is the art of the possible. In a part of the world where absolutes have attracted so many for so long, the temptation to run before walking remains powerful.