It is said that in his last year Nicholas I observed that he would leave a terrible burden to his son. He left a very costly war which turned monthly against Russia. He left an empty treasury, and a privy purse that was a million rubles in debt. He left a city and country that bitterly murmured against the rule which he had intended to make so benevolent. He left forty millions of his people in the condition of serfdom which the whole of the remaining civilised world had outgrown. He left a nation outpaced industrially and commercially by every other Power because he could not admit into it the science which made the others superior. As he brooded over his Bible at night he saw no solution. He died in distress; and, as in the case of the death of nearly every Romanoff, few mourned.

His soil, Alexander II, who confidently took over the legacy, was much closer to Alexander I than to his father. He had the mediocre intellect of the dynasty (after Peter I), but the sunny temperament of Catherine, sobered. Unlike his father, who had listened only to the wrong teachers, Alexander II had been an exemplary pupil, and he had had good teachers. The new domestic atmosphere of the court is less interesting than the old, and we need not linger over it. The picture of Nicholas reading the Bible every night to his wife will suffice. The Tsarina was a model German Hausfrau on an imperial scale. Alexander breathed this atmosphere easily. He was an exemplary youth. On the night after the death of his father he took the Bible to his mother’s room and read to her. His chief tutor had learned teaching from Pestalozzi, and his lessons, which we have in part, were worthy of Marcus Aurelius. They were exalted in principle, if vague in application. Alexander was to make duty his star: his duty to his people and to civilisation. He had travelled all over the Empire, even in Siberia; and the sight of the exiles had so touched his warm heart that he had persuaded his stern father to modify the treatment even of some of the conspirators at his accession.

What would a young monarch—Alexander was thirty-seven years old—of this type make of the formidable problem which his father had created? We are quite prepared to hear that he is going to disarm rebellion and win his subjects by kindness. He will make the autocracy so beneficent that men will love it. A comparatively simple thing, the young man thought. But the tragedy of the life of Alexander II is that it was during his reign that Nihilism arose, dagger in hand, and he himself fell by the bomb of an assassin who represented “the people.”

Russian funds rose in the European market when Alexander II mounted the throne. He was well known: an amiable, kindly man, gently punctilious about etiquette, very sober in meat and drink, very cold to flatterers. Europe looked to him for peace; his people, who sank under their burdens, looked to him for relief; liberals looked, not too confidently, to him for justice. But Alexander felt that his first duty was to bring the war, not merely to an end, but a successful end. He would not be crowned until that was attained. A few weeks after the death of his father he sent a representative to Vienna to take part in a peace-conference. When France demanded that the Black Sea should be neutralised and the naval strength of Russia limited by agreement, he refused and he bade the war go on.

It went on, as is known, until Sevastopol fell, and Russia soothed her feelings a little by taking Kars. Then the diplomats gathered round a table to see what difference to the world the death of hundreds of thousands of men and the squandering of three nations’ resources must make. There was in Russia no chance of disguising the defeat. The Black Sea was neutralised. All the ships and forts on which so much had been spent must go. Kars must be surrendered. The mouth of the Danube must be yielded. The protectorate of the Christian subjects of the Sultan must be abandoned. One war had put Turkey at the feet of Russia; another war had put Turkey upon its own feet once more, and had set back Russia.

It was, however, peace, and the country looked eagerly for the domestic programme of the young Tsar. He was crowned in August, 1856, and he at once disclosed his policy. He would, of course, maintain the work of his revered father; but it soon fell to pieces. An amnesty was granted, and the rebels came back to the sunlight. The military colonies of Arakcheeff were finally abandoned. Arrears of taxes to the extent of twenty-four million rubles were remitted to the impoverished people. The censorship was suspended, and St. Petersburg poured into liberalism like a stream when the dam is broken. The manuscripts that had passed stealthily from hand to hand, and been read behind locked doors, were now sent to the press. Periodicals and pamphlets snowed upon the metropolis. unions and leagues for everything new and beneficent and western sprang up like mushrooms. All the talk of English radicalism filled the salons: self-government and emancipation of women, biblical criticism and Darwinism, banks and railways and manufactures, education and co-operation and political reform.

Presently the discussion would strike a deeper note. A certain Robert Owen of England had advocated a scheme which he called Socialism. Certain Germans were beginning to take the germ of Owen’s patriarchal theory and make a “scientific system” of it. Russia was now free to travel, and to import books. The mind which has been artificially repressed will, if the process be not continued too long, expand more rapidly than the mind which is suffered to grow normally.

In all this babel of humanitarian tongues, each reformer stridently denouncing his brother as a charlatan, as is the way of reformers, there was one steady and persistent note. Serfdom must be abolished. Here the mass of the people agreed with the intellectuals. We are tempted to picture the great body of the Russian people as too stunted in mind, too dazed by labour and the stupefying conditions of their life, to understand anything of this reform-language. But there is plenty of evidence that they were quite alive to the idea of emancipation. They had looked to each new Tsar, as he eloquently unfolded his lofty aims on coronation-day, to abolish serfdom. They looked with particular eagerness to Alexander. “Constitution” was too large a word for them. But they knew what it meant to be free and to have their Mir and their bit of land.

Forty-two and a half million people in Russia were still serfs in the year 1856: nine centuries after the establishment of the Russian Church, two hundred years after the beginning of the rule of the Romanoffs. I have, incidentally, given sufficient evidence in earlier chapters that this serfdom differed little from slavery. The peasant was, in polite phraseology, attached to the glebe. When a rich man ruined himself in the dissipations of St. Petersburg and sold his estates, he sold the peasants with the land. When a man opened new estates, he bought peasants to work it. They had no liberty of movement, which is the fundamental condition of liberty. They owned no land (except a small number who secured the advantages offered by the last two Tsars) and were therefore hot masters of their own labour. Half their labour must be given gratuitously to their lord—this was the new, decent sort of serfdom—who would then allow them to wring a miserable living for themselves and family out of a fraction of his land with the other half of their time. Not much earlier, we saw, great land-owners, even women, could inflict on them such torture and death as few Romans are said to have inflicted on their slaves in the worst days of the Empire. They were still slaves, though humanely treated on the Crown Lands, much as a wise farmer gives good conditions to his cattle. The lot of the peasant of Russia to-day is hard enough. Imagine it sixty years ago with the added yoke of serfdom.

Assuredly serfdom was the first and most monstrous evil to be removed, and we saw that for fifty years or more the rulers of Russia had been ashamed of this great stigma on their civilisation. At the very beginning of the reign the rumour went out that Alexander would free the serfs, and their wealthy owners were anxious. Alexander reassured them to some extent. He would like to see an end of serfdom, but it was an evil to be remedied gradually. He would like to see individuals reduce it by freeing their Serfs. Soon after the close of the war the Tsar again addressed the nobles, and begged them to give serious attention to the emancipation of the serfs. It was plain that little would be done in this fashion, and a few months later he appointed Provincial Committees of land-owners to give practical consideration to the problem.

Historians seem to differ in discussing whether Alexander was moved by his own idealism or by the pressure of the growing liberalism of St. Petersburg and the clamours of the peasants. The point is of some interest in forming a general estimate of the Tsar-Emancipator. Professor Kornilov, while ascribing great reforms to Alexander II, maintains that he was impelled from without rather than within: that his moralising tutor had not been a liberal or a man of definite social views, and had implanted in his mind only such general regard for humanity and justice as a conservative may profess. Others would represent the Tsar as a practical reformer of a liberal type, a little soured in the end by the excesses and violence of “advanced” people. Perhaps we are nearest to the truth if we picture Alexander II as a man who united a real detestation of serfdom with a sincere regard for justice in the abstract, yet would never have overcome the conservatism of many of his advisers and the immense practical difficulties but for the very effective pressure put upon him by the rising impatience of educated Russians.
Cathedral Erected in Petrograd in Memory of Alexander II

The Provincial Committees wasted many months in futile discussion and wrangling. Around them there now waged a great battle of amateur sociologists, and half a dozen different theories of emancipation had their schools of defenders. There was, to begin with, a vital difference of views between the serfs and their owners. The peasant wanted land even more than liberty; the owner felt that it was emancipation to give liberty, and he was, as a rule, unwilling to part with land. There was the question of compensation, which inspired endless discussion. A serf was worth a hundred dollars. In short, the committees of local owners did not want the work to proceed, and Alexander formed, at the beginning of 1857, a Central Committee of twelve members under his own presidency. The work was to be done “from on high.” Emancipation was to be a voluntary gift from the Tsar.

The work still dragged. In 1855 Alexander had appointed the liberal Lanskoi Minister of the Interior, and he zealously promoted the scheme and secured the liberal Milyutin as colleague. But other ministers were of the old school and unsympathetic. They pointed out that behind the demand for emancipation other and more disturbing demands were becoming articulate. Liberal nobles who were ready to emancipate their serfs already claimed that this ought to be followed by their own political emancipation. They demanded a Duma. However, even members of the imperial family, like the Grand Duke Constantine, pressed for the reform, and the Tsar at length formed an Imperial Commission, on which the conservative opposition was checked. A law was drafted, and on February 19th, 1861, Alexander announced to Russia and the world, with a very natural exaltation, that the serfs were to be freed.

The serfs fell into three classes. Those on the Crown Lands were, as we saw, already in an improved condition. The law of 1861 did not affect them, but they were later (1866) put in the same position as the emancipated serfs. Then there were a million and a half serfs who were not on the land, but in personal service. These were ordered to continue their service for two further years, and they would then be free. The main body were the twenty-one million serfs on the estates of private owners. Each was now to own his house, and the small strip of land encircling it, and the entire community of peasants in a village were to have, in common, a part of the arable land of the owner. The Slavophiles had secured this reversion to the primitive custom of owning in common, and one may justly suspect that they felt that the arrangement would make the peasants more or less impervious to the new ideas about property which were being imported from Germany. The Mir was re-established. But the land-owners were to sell, not give, their land; and they were to be compensated for the loss of serf-labour. The entire value was estimated, the State paid it, and the peasants were to refund the sum within a space of forty-nine years. The Mir was responsible for the payments.

Alexander looked out upon his Empire for the signs of jubilation, and at first he saw many. Even so drastic a rebel as Hertzen rejoiced. The journals and pamphlets of the metropolis turned from acidity to a temporary sweetness. Deputations of peasants, carefully chosen, were brought to thank the Tsar, and in the tearful accents of the aged serfs he thought that he heard the voice of twenty millions. But it was not long before the reaction began, and a chill affected the liberalism of the Tsar.

It was a very general belief of the peasants that the land belonged, by ancient right, to them, and it had been in some way stolen from them by the wealthy and noble. When, therefore, they heard of the scheme of compensation, the payments which must be made annually until the death of the youngest of them, they began to murmur. The officials, they said in many places, must have falsified the words of the Tsar. There were other grievances. The allowance of land to each had, in the heat of discussion, been cut down to very small proportions. The owners were not bound to sell even this, and in many places they refused; and, where they sold, they generally attempted to sell inferior land. Officials, charged with the administration of the law, took bribes, and there was a vast amount of foul play. In fine, the emancipated serfs now found that a free man had to shoulder a burden of taxes heavier than they had imagined.

In short, hopes had been improperly inflated, and the disillusion was exasperating; nor was there now any lack of men imbued with the new ideas who fostered the discontent. Lanskoi and Milyutin were dismissed from office, through the intrigue of the conservatives, and the new minister, Valuyeff, had not the same scrupulous regard for the success of the law. In various places there were risings of the peasants, and the troops had to use their muskets. In the government of Kazan ten thousand peasants revolted, under the lead of Anton Petroff, and the new era was stained heavily with blood. Petroff was executed; eighty of the emancipated serfs were shot with arms in their hands. At the university of Kazan the students boldly held a requiem service in honour of the dead, and Alexander had to punish even the monks who celebrated it. The “Tsar-Emancipator” did not long enjoy his popularity. The clouds closed slowly, after the short burst of sunshine, and would cover the skies of Russia henceforward until the last Romanoff quitted the throne.

An even graver cause of distrust now arose. Alexander had visited Poland soon after his accession and had paternally promised to make the Poles happy, if they were good. “No more dreams,” he said genially to them. His father’s work was to be maintained, he told them. Poland was to be a province of Russia. He appointed a moderate governor, Prince Gorchakoff, and declared an amnesty. Since the terrible repression of the rebellion by Nicholas I a large number of Poles had lived in the various capitals of Europe, and there they had been thoroughly educated in modern ideas. In London, particularly, they had been steeped in the sober radicalism that had followed the failure of the Chartist movement, the fervour for the deliverance of Hungarians and Italians, the popular indignation against Russia. Most of them would not return to a Poland which was not free, but some did, and they assisted in the education of the Poles. There arose a very general cry among the educated Poles for a constitution; and Alexander believed no more than his fathers, or than Pius IX, in giving a constitution that was asked as a right.

In November, 1860, a great demonstration was held in memory of the revolution of 1830, and the authorities were annoyed. Demonstrations increased for all kinds of undesirable objects, and the troops at Warsaw fired and killed five Poles. A vast crowd of one hundred thousand attended the funeral. The Tsar tried to conciliate them by small gifts. He appointed a Polish Director of Public Instruction and Cults. He created municipal councils for the large towns, and electoral councils for each government and district. But he would not grant a constitution, and the agitation increased. A great crowd went to the Viceroy’s palace to formulate their demands, and soon two hundred of them lay dead upon the pavement. The whole city went into mourning.

A new Viceroy, General Lambert, was appointed, and the Tsar instructed him to carry out conscientiously the reforms he had promised. But the officials who were to carry them out were Russians, and the greater reforms were withheld. There were further demonstrations, and further shootings. A reactionary soldier, Count Luders, was then made Viceroy. His life was attempted. The Poles now openly demanded independence and a restoration of Lithuania. Arrests and banishment were useless. The whole educated nation seemed to be aflame. So on January 15th the authorities decided to decimate the enthusiasts by an enforced recruiting for the army, and Poland entered upon another futile rebellion. Those who escaped the police fled to the country, secured arms, and formed guerilla bands.

It was one of the most pathetic of rebellions. The insurgents had no artillery, no transport or medical service. They moved about, often led by priests, as they were hunted, living on the sympathetic gentry and peasants, occasionally hanging or shooting a pro-Russian landowner. It was not war, and the Russian troops hanged or shot all they captured. The most curious feature of it was that a secret committee or council guided the insurrection, levied taxes, and issued decrees from the University of Warsaw itself without being detected by the police. Poles abroad fierily preached the wrongs of their countrymen, and the English, French, and Austrian governments formally requested the Tsar (1863) to put an end to the anarchy. Two months later they formulated for the Tsar what seemed to them the reasonable demands of the Poles; a general amnesty, parliamentary representation, reform of the law of recruiting, complete liberty of religion, admission of Poles to office, and so on. Alexander indignantly refused. He did not add—one wonders if he reflected—that it was precisely because the Sultan would not grant such rights to his Christian subjects that Russia had made war upon the Turk. Prussia supported, and promised assistance to, the Tsar.

The last sparks of the rebellion were stamped out in May (1864), and the punishment began. The few traces that Nicholas had left of a Polish nationality were now destroyed. The Polish language was banned from schools and universities, and the chief rebels were executed. It was the nobles, the educated class, that Alexander chiefly blamed; and it was on that account that he granted the peasants of Poland the right to share the land.

Alexander was less to blame in connection with another event, two years later, which moved Europe to express its indignation. The settlement of the Caucasic region was completed, and some hundreds of thousands of Mohammedan Circassians and Georgians migrated from the occupied territory and sought shelter in Turkey. The English Government again made a protest at St. Petersburg, which was neatly countered by a reminder that the state of Ireland hardly justified England in posing as a moralist. The Circassians were, in fact, handsome ruffians with whose ways the English were imperfectly acquainted. They freely sold their daughters, the famous Circassian maids, to the harems of Constantinople, and they were the most expert cattle-thieves and least industrious workers of Europe or Asia. They were largely settled by the Turks on the farms of the reluctant Bulgarians, and they willingly joined the bashi-bazouks in cutting off Christian ears.

The brutality that was used in the suppression of the Polish insurrection reacted upon the intellectuals of St. Petersburg, just as the insurrection itself reacted upon the more or less benevolent designs of the Tsar. But before we consider how the reign of Alexander II came to inaugurate the terror which would for the next sixty years brood over Russia, it is proper that we should briefly examine the remainder of his reforms.

The emancipation of the serfs, though a measure of elementary justice that had been too long denied, must nevertheless command our admiration when we consider the stubborn opposition which the Tsar had to overcome. It was not followed by the political emancipation of the nation at large, but the Tsar created a popular institution which would, at a later date, prove a valuable instrument of reform. The Mir was re-established by the communal ownership of the land. The district council, the Zemstvo, was now established (1864). Each government (or province) of Russia was already divided into districts, and there was to be in each of these a Zemstvo, or popular council, formed of deputies who were elected for a term of three years. They included representatives of th............