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130 years ago, on March 13 (N.S.) 1881, the new Emperor Alexander III, who went down in history as the Peacemaker Tsar, ascended the throne of the Russian Empire. He had just turned 26 then: he was born on March 10 (February 26, O.S.), 1845, in the family of the then heir to the Russian throne, Alexander Nikolayevich, the future Tsar Alexander II the Liberator.
Historians and publicists often give sharply opposite assessments of the reign of Alexander III, depending on their own political views. But with regard to the personality of Alexander Alexandrovich himself, most of them (with the exception of the very extreme radicals) adhere to generally positive assessments.
It should be noted that initially Alexander was not prepared for the reign: his elder brother Nikolai was to become the heir to the throne. Therefore, according to the tradition established in the Romanov family, Alexander, like his younger brothers, was destined for the military path, and received an appropriate education. “Alexander III was not at all prepared to be emperor,” Sergei Witte, one of the most gifted statesmen of Russia in the late 20th and early 20th centuries, later wrote in his memoirs. “We can say that he was somewhat in the pen: no special attention was paid to his education or his upbringing.”
In appearance, character, habits, and the very mindset, Alexander III bore little resemblance to his father, and indeed to any of his sovereign ancestors. The emperor was distinguished by his enormous growth, his gigantic figure exuded strength and power. In his youth, he possessed exceptional strength - he bent coins with his fingers and broke horseshoes, by old age he became obese and bulky, but even then, according to contemporaries, there was something graceful in his figure. He was completely devoid of the aristocracy inherent in his grandfather and partly his father. Even in his manner of dressing there was something deliberately unassuming. He, for example, could often be seen in soldier's boots with trousers tucked into them in a simple way. At home, he wore a Russian shirt with a colored pattern embroidered on the sleeves. Distinguished by frugality, he often appeared in worn trousers, a jacket, a coat or short fur coat, and boots. According to Witte, during the emperor's trip along the Southwestern Railway, one constantly had to see how Alexander III's valet Kotov darned the tsar's tattered trousers.
All the same Witte also noted: “Emperor Alexander III was of a completely ordinary mind, perhaps, one can say, below average intelligence, below average abilities and below average education ... Emperor Alexander III had a small mind of reason, but he had a huge, outstanding mind hearts." And at the same time, “with his appearance, which reflected his enormous character, beautiful heart, complacency, justice and at the same time firmness, he undoubtedly impressed, and, as I said above, if they didn’t know that he was an emperor, and he If he entered the room in any suit, no doubt everyone would pay attention to him.
Some memoirists reproached Alexander Alexandrovich for being rude. Others specified that although he really regularly called even the highest dignitaries in the face “cattle” and “scoundrels”, he did it good-naturedly and without malice, and he always conscientiously tried to satisfy the personal requests of the “cattle” and “cattle”.
Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich became the heir after the death of his elder brother Nikolai, who died in Nice on April 24 (April 12, O.S.), 1865. Alexander had to return to the sciences and pay special attention to history, economics, and law. Historians usually specify that the law course was taught to him by Konstantin Pobedonostsev (far from an unambiguous personality), who since then gained unlimited influence on Alexander Alexandrovich, and later, during the years of his reign, became his closest adviser. The course of history was taught to Alexander by the outstanding historian Sergei Solovyov, and the course of military history, tactics and strategy was taught by Mikhail Dragomirov, in the future - an outstanding military leader.
After Solovyov’s death, Alexander wrote to his widow that he “shares with all Russian people the grief of this irretrievable loss and honors in him not only a learned and talented writer, but also a man of goodness and honor, a faithful son of Russia, who warmly took to heart both in the past and her future destinies, everything that relates to her glory, who faithfully kept in her soul the holy faith and devotion to the Church as the most precious guarantee of the good of the people. These feelings of love for the historical past of Russia and devotion to the Church, according to the unanimous opinion of contemporaries, were filled with Alexander himself from a young age.
After the death of his brother Nicholas, he inherited not only the title of Tsarevich (heir to the throne), but also his bride, the Danish princess Dagmar. Despite the tragic circumstances that preceded this marriage, the marriage of Alexander Alexandrovich and Dagmara (in Orthodoxy - Maria Feodorovna) turned out to be strong and happy. Even the ill-wishers of Alexander III admit that, unlike his father, grandfather, brothers and nephews, he was an exemplary family man, exceptionally devoted to his wife. He subsequently tried to introduce a similar firmness of family morals into the Romanov family, and into Russian society as a whole, but, unfortunately, he did not succeed very much in this. It is also worth noting that Alexander Alexandrovich was also one of the most pious Russian sovereigns, thus reminiscent of his distant ancestor Alexei Mikhailovich. The simple and direct soul of Alexander knew neither religious doubts, nor religious pretense, nor the temptations of mysticism. He firmly adhered to the Orthodox canons, always stood up to the end of the service, prayed earnestly and enjoyed church singing. The sovereign willingly donated to monasteries, to the construction of new churches and the restoration of ancient ones. Under him, church life noticeably revived.
Being an ardent Russian patriot and pan-Slavist, Alexander was also an active supporter of Russia's entry into the war for the liberation of Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke. He himself took part in this war, commanding the Ruschuk detachment of two army corps, holding the eastern flank of the Russian troops. Relations with the commander-in-chief - his uncle Nikolai Nikolayevich - were not the warmest at that time. The Commander-in-Chief considered his nephew's sector of the front to be relatively calm and therefore was in no hurry to send reinforcements to him, although the Turks counterattacked the Ruschuk detachment several times and twice put him in a critical situation. The Tsarevich and his troops barely managed to repulse the onslaught of the enemy and defeat his superior forces on the Mechka River. However, the commander-in-chief still believed that nothing extraordinary was happening on the eastern sector of the front compared to the constant crises near Plevna and Shipka. And, what particularly resented Alexander Alexandrovich, his uncle regularly shelved the submissions sent to him for awards to officers and soldiers of the Ruschuk detachment. At the end of the war, Alexander Alexandrovich gave Nikolai Nikolaevich a major scandal, which had to be settled by Emperor Alexander II himself. The imperial intervention, however, led to another extreme: such a reward rain fell on the Ruschuk detachment that the military of all other Russian units came to a standstill; suffice it to say that more than a third of the units awarded as a result of the war turned out to belong to the relatively small Ruschuk detachment.
Many historians, by the way, argue that it was the personal participation of Alexander Alexandrovich in this campaign that gave him a persistent dislike for the war as such. And that is why during his reign he tried to resolve conflict situations peacefully, without bringing the matter to military action.
However, the internal state of the Russian Empire at the time of Alexander's accession to the throne did not contribute to the excessive manifestation of military activity in the foreign policy arena. It is worth recalling that Alexander became emperor after the assassination of his father, Alexander II, by the revolutionaries of the Narodnaya Volya party. It was this tragedy, which ended the reign of the reforming emperor, that largely led to that “triumph of reaction” in the reign of Alexander III, which liberal and socialist authors love to talk about.
The military historian and supporter of the autocratic monarchy Anton Kersnovsky wrote about this: “The reign of Emperor Alexander III is called the “epoch of reaction”. If the word "reaction" is understood in its philistine and simplified sense as a counterbalance to "liberal reforms", increased police strictness, oppression of the press, etc., then this term is, of course, appropriate here. But if by "reaction" we understand its original (and only correct) meaning, then it is not necessary to characterize the internal policy of the Russian Empire in the 80-90s with this clinical term. A reaction is an active opposition to the destructive pathogens of the human body (and transferring this term to the plane of politics - the body of the state). This resistance revolves in the development of antidotes by the body to these destructive principles (in state life, these antidotes are called national doctrine - a firm people's policy).
Although Alexander III himself at first, at least, did not at all adhere to “reactionary views” - well, except for his promise (by the way, fulfilled soon enough) to hang all the regicides caught in response to the appeals of the “progressive public” with requests for their pardon.
The first statements and orders of the emperor were completely in the spirit of the liberal course of his father. It is known that in January 1881, the Minister of the Interior, Count M.T. Loris-Melikov offered Alexander II his program. Its first part provided for the expansion of the rights of zemstvos, the press, the partial decentralization of administrative management, some financial and economic measures, including the completion of the peasant reform. The development of these measures was proposed to be carried out in temporary preparatory commissions with broad participation in them of representatives from zemstvos and city dumas. This project was called the Loris-Melikov constitution. On the morning of March 1, Alexander II signed these papers and ordered them to be published in the Government Bulletin, but after his death they could not be made public without the consent and signature of the new sovereign.
Loris-Melikov turned to Alexander III with a question whether the publication of this document should be suspended. The emperor, without hesitation, replied that the last will of the late king must be carried out. By the way, less than a year before these events, on April 12, 1880, the then Tsarevich Alexander, having learned that Alexander II approved the liberal program of Loris-Melikov, wrote to the latter: “Thank God! I cannot express how glad I am that the sovereign accepted your note so graciously and with such confidence, dear Mikhail Tarielovich... Now we can boldly move forward and calmly and persistently carry out your program for the happiness of our dear homeland and the misfortune of the ministers... Congratulations from the bottom of my heart…”
But the supporters of the reactionary course were not inactive either. Regicide inspired them. March 1, 1881, late in the evening, K.P. Pobedonostsev appeared at the Anichkov Palace and begged Alexander III to fire Loris-Melikov. And although the tsar did not consider this possible, nevertheless at two o'clock in the morning Loris-Melikov received an order from the Anichkov Palace to suspend the printing of the program and subject it to a new discussion.
On March 8, a meeting of the Council of Ministers was held, at which the fate of the “Loris-Melikov constitution” was to be decided. Anticipating the discussion, Alexander said: “Count Loris-Melikov reported to the late sovereign about the need to convene representatives from zemstvos and cities. This idea was generally approved by my late father. However, the issue should not be considered a foregone conclusion, because the late father wanted to convene the Council of Ministers for consideration before the final approval of the project.
How the discussion of this issue went, we learn from the notes of the participant in the meeting of the Minister of War D.A. Milyutin. “From ... Count Sergei Grigoryevich Stroganov, they heard that in the proposed program of peaceful legislative work, signs of revolution, constitution and all sorts of troubles are visible ... The sovereign listened with noticeable sympathy to the ultra-conservative speech of the old reactionary.” But everything said by Stroganov and other ministers was pale and insignificant in comparison “with the long Jesuit speech delivered by Pobedonostsev; it was no longer just a refutation of the measures now proposed, but a direct, sweeping censure of everything that had been committed in the past reign; he dared to call the great reforms of Emperor Alexander II a criminal mistake ... It was a denial of everything that formed the basis of European civilization. Let's forgive the most venerable Dmitry Alekseevich his excessive admiration for the "foundations of European civilization": after all, he was an honest patriot of Russia, who did a lot to strengthen its military power. And if he happened to get acquainted with today's "European civilization", and especially with its Russian adherents, it remains to be seen what he would say about them.
And then the emperor decided to reconsider Loris-Melikov's proposal again. The project was handed over to the commission, which never met again. The document was "buried". On the other hand, on April 29, 1881, the manifesto “On the Inviolability of Autocracy” was published, actually compiled by Pobedonostsev.
“A special and unexpected thing happened,” wrote Secretary of State E.A. Peretz. “A manifesto has been published declaring the sovereign’s firm intention to protect the autocracy ... The manifesto breathes partly with a challenge, a threat, but at the same time does not contain anything comforting either for the educated classes or for the common people.” Insulted, Loris-Melikov and Milyutin resigned, which was accepted. And the autocrat for many years became "a beast of burden, on which he put his heavy burden of the Victorious."
The problem, however, was that Konstantin Pobedonostsev, who triumphed over the victory, represented the other extreme. Without a doubt, also a sincere patriot, he had a very negative attitude towards both the European order and the ideas of representative democracy. The basis of his ideology was based on the famous formula of Count Uvarov "Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality."
Anton Kersnovsky, a no less devout monarchist, assessed the attempts of both Pobedonostsev and Alexander III, who was sent by him, to arrange Russia on the basis of these principles: “This root of evil consisted in the deterioration and fatigue of the state organism. The building of the Russian Empire was built on the European model of the late 17th - early 18th centuries. Built on stilts in the northern swamps, the brilliant "St. Petersburg" was the living embodiment of a great, but alien to the people of the empire. The state machine was worn out... A major overhaul was needed, and they limited themselves to replacing (in the 60s) several parts of it that were especially worn out.
Under such conditions, the three foundations of Russian state life, correctly formulated by Pobedonostsev, lost their force and generally turned out to be inapplicable. Orthodoxy was expressed in the Babylonian captivity of the Church under secular power, which inevitably atrophied the church's influence on the country and led to the spiritual impoverishment of society, and then (not to the same extent, true, but still significant) to the spiritual impoverishment of the people.
Autocracy was reduced to passively following the once-forever-trodden bureaucratic - "stallmaster-stolonochnoe" - path, in the use of the already worn out and dilapidated state machine and in the rejection of any constructive, creative initiative. The nationality gradually narrowed down, moving from an imperial setting to a narrow ethnic one, abandoning the broad outlook of the imperial tradition and trying to create one Great Russian kingdom from Oleaborg to Erivan and from Kalisz to Vladivostok. Alexander III said: “Russia is for the Russians”, not quite successfully expressing an essentially beautiful thought ...
The whole tragedy of the situation lay in the fact that the government saw only one dilemma: either to preserve the existing system in its complete integrity, or to embark on various democratic-liberal reforms, which would inevitably lead to the collapse of statehood and the death of the country. But it did not notice a third way out of the situation: the renewal of the state organism not in the "democratic-catastrophic" spirit "to the left" (as finally happened in 1905), but in its renewal "to the right" - in the spirit of preserving all the inviolability of the autocratic system by its application to the created conditions, the rejection of its Petrine-bureaucratic-foreign way of life, which led to the rupture of the once united Russian nation and the loss of the country's pulse by the government. This third way was spontaneously sensed by the Slavophils, but they were unable to formulate it without mastering state dialectics.
The government of the Tsar-Peacemaker did not notice this path. The vast and cold state mind of Pobedonostsev lacked dynamism and effectiveness. He correctly diagnosed the disease, even formulated a "trinitarian" medicine against it, but he failed to formulate these medicines correctly and correctly apply them. Perhaps because the patient already seemed incurable to him. This icy skeptic lacked fiery faith in his country, its genius, its great destiny. “Russia is an icy desert,” he said, “and a dashing man roams through it.” If he loved his Motherland with a passionate and active love, he, of course, would never have said these words.
Many of the activities carried out by the king, however, were supposed to make life easier for the common people. The reduction in redemption payments, the legalization of the obligation to buy out peasant plots, the establishment of the Peasants' Bank for issuing loans to peasants for the purchase of land (1881-1884) were aimed at smoothing out the unfavorable aspects of the 1861 reform for the peasants. The abolition of the poll tax (May 18, 1886), the tax on inheritances and interest-bearing papers, the increase in trade taxation (1882-1884) showed a desire to start a radical reorganization of the tax system, in the sense of alleviating the poorest classes; restriction of factory work of minors (1882) and night work of adolescents and women (1885) was aimed at protecting labor; the establishment of commissions for the preparation of criminal and civil codes (1881-1882) answered an undoubted urgent need; Established in 1881, the commission of State Secretary Kakhanov began a detailed study of the needs of local government in order to improve the regional administration in relation to the beginnings of the peasant and zemstvo reforms.
Undoubtedly, for the benefit of both the common people and the Russian state, the laws on resettlement (1889) were also directed, as a result of which over 400,000 peasants moved to Siberia, and about 50,000 more to Central Asia; on the inalienability of peasant allotments (1894), on the regulation of factory labor (1886, 1897).
But at the same time, a number of measures followed, expanding the advantages of the local nobility: the law on noble escheat property (1883), the organization of a long-term loan for noble landowners in the form of the establishment of a noble land bank (1885) in place of the all-estate land bank designed by the Minister of Finance. A sincere admirer of Alexander S.Yu. Witte was very angry about this event. He emphasized in his memoirs that if the Peasant Bank really helped the farmers, then the Noble Bank contributed to the “drinking away” of state funds by the ruined nobility, issued to them on the security of their lands and lands.
In the new regulation on the zemstvos of 1890, the representation of estates and nobility was strengthened. To this end, the qualification for the nobility was reduced and the number of noble vowels increased. The peasantry was deprived of elective representation. Vowels from the peasants were appointed by the governor himself. Not a single decision of the Zemstvo was taken without the approval of the governor or the Minister of the Interior.
One of the most reactionary reforms was the introduction in 1889 of the institution of zemstvo chiefs. Zemstvo chiefs were appointed by the Minister of the Interior from local hereditary nobles on the proposal of the governors. Having combined in their hands the functions of administrators and judges, they received unlimited power. The world court in the village was destroyed. All activities of peasant self-government were under their control. The peasants had no right to complain about the zemstvo chiefs. By this act, the autocracy essentially restored the power of the landowners over the peasants, which had been lost under the reform of 1861.
Witte believed that “Alexander III insisted on this idea ... precisely because he was tempted by the idea that all of Russia would be divided into zemstvo plots, that in each plot there would be a respectable nobleman who enjoys general respect in the given area, that this a respectable nobleman-landowner will take care of the peasants, judge them and dress them up. Justifying the tsar, Witte writes that if this was a mistake, it was in the highest degree sincere, because the emperor was "deeply cordial to all the needs of the Russian peasantry."
City self-government was also curtailed: clerks and small merchants, and other poor sections of the city, lost their electoral rights. The city regulation of 1892 replaced the previous system of three-class elections with elections by territorial electoral districts, but at the same time limited the number of vowels and increased the dependence of city government on governors.
Judicial reform has undergone a change. In the field of the court, the law of 1885 shook the principle of the irremovability of judges, the law of 1887 limited judicial publicity, the law of 1889 narrowed the range of actions of the jury.
In 1882-1884. many publications were closed, the autonomy of universities was abolished; elementary schools were transferred to the church department - the Holy Synod. In 1882-1884. new, extremely restrictive rules were issued on the press, libraries and reading rooms, called temporary, but valid until 1905.
In the field of public education, a new university reform took place (the charter of 1884), which destroyed university self-government; the transfer of literacy schools into the hands of the clergy was carried out, educational benefits for serving military service were reduced.
Well, and, of course, the famous report “On the reduction of gymnasium education” (known as the “circular about cook's children”), published on July 1, 1887 by the Minister of Education of the Russian Empire, Count I.D. Delyanov. The report introduced a monetary qualification for higher education; in this way, “gymnasiums and pro-gymnasiums will be freed from the entry into them of the children of coachmen, lackeys, cooks, laundresses, small shopkeepers and the like, whose children, with the exception of those gifted with brilliant abilities, should not at all strive for a secondary and higher education.”
However, by the end of the 1880s Alexander III was already less inclined to heed the advice of his teacher. The main reason for the loss of influence on the sovereign was the lack of a positive political program. This was also pointed out by the emperor himself in a conversation with S.Yu. Witte: “Pobedonostsev is an excellent critic, but he himself can never create anything... One cannot live by criticism, but one must go forward, one must create, but in this respect K.P. Pobedonostsev and other persons of his own direction can no longer be of any use.”
Therefore, the government policy in the field of industry and finance, in contrast to the political course, objectively contributed to the further movement of Russia along the capitalist path. The difference in approaches to the development of an economic and political course cannot be explained only by the feeling of “respect for the state ruble, the state penny, which Alexander III possessed”, or by his understanding that “Russia can become great only when it becomes a country ... industrial” . Neither Alexander III nor his finance ministers could ignore, firstly, the interests of the state treasury, and secondly, the strengthening of the state's defense power.
Under Alexander III, “customs policy turned sharply from free trade to protectionism,” protective measures were expanded in relation to industry, and a transition was made to new principles of taxation. There is a rapid change for the better in the state budget: after the grandiose deficits of 1881-1887. begins a chronic increase in the excess of government revenues over spending. Thanks to these surpluses, important measures were taken in the field of state credit and money circulation (conversion and early redemption of state loans, reform of money circulation) and in the field of railway construction. Financial stabilization was achieved largely due to the fact that the post of Minister of Finance was held under Alexander III, replacing each other, by the most talented officials: N.Kh. Bunge (1881-1886), I.A. Vyshnegradsky (1887-1892) and S.Yu. Witte (since 1892). The industrial and financial policy of Alexander III created the prerequisites for a powerful economic upsurge in the second half of the 1890s.
In 1891, at the initiative of Witte, Russia began the construction of the Great Siberian Railway - the railway line "Chelyabinsk - Omsk - Irkutsk - Khabarovsk - Vladivostok" (about 7000 km). Its completion was supposed to dramatically increase Russia's forces in the Far East.
In foreign policy, Alexander III and his Minister of Foreign Affairs N.K. Gears pursued a purely prudent policy, trying to protect the country from all sorts of adventures. He received his nickname "Peacemaker" according to the true popular opinion. It was Alexander III who said: “Every person with a heart cannot desire war, and every ruler to whom the people are entrusted by God must take all measures to avoid the horrors of war.”
At the same time, this did not mean at all that the emperor was ready to allow anyone to wipe their feet on Russia. Thus, Alexander III managed, without a war, repulsing the attempts of the aggressive intervention of Great Britain, to bloodlessly annex to Russia vast expanses in Central Asia (over 400,000 sq. Km). However, it was in Central Asia that the only battle for the entire reign of the Tsar-Peacemaker took place.
Urged on by the British, the Emir of Afghanistan decided to seize the Merv oasis, and in 1884 he voluntarily accepted Russian citizenship. However, on March 18, 1885, a detachment of General Komarov completely defeated the Afghan troops, led by British officers, near Kushka. Kushka became the extreme southern point of the advancement of the Russian Empire, as well as an object for the scoffing of many generations of army slobs (from tsarist lieutenants to Soviet lieutenants): “They won’t send Kushka further, they won’t give less than a platoon.”
The German Chancellor Bismarck in this situation provoked the Russian-English conflict in every possible way. But Alexander III showed restraint, and his thoughtful and balanced policy paid off: the British tried to send their squadron to the Black Sea, but the Turks, embittered by the fact that the British actually occupied Egypt, which was under the Ottoman Empire, refused to let their fleet through the straits. And Britain did not dare to advance from India to the Kushka region through troubled Afghanistan. In 1887, an Anglo-Russian commission, after two years of painstaking work, established the exact border between Russia and Afghanistan. This was done so carefully that this border line exists without the slightest change to this day - only now between "sovereign" Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
Alexander III did not share the pro-German sentiments of his father, Alexander II (Wilhelm I, after the unification of German lands into the German Empire in 1871, wrote to Alexander II: “After the Lord God, Germany owes everything to you”). True, on June 6 (18), 1881, at the initiative of the German Chancellor Bismarck, a secret Austro-Russian-German treaty was signed, which was being prepared under Alexander II, known as the "Union of the Three Emperors", which provided for the benevolent neutrality of each of the parties in the event that one of them was at war with the fourth side.
At the same time, Bismarck, secretly from Russia, in 1882 concluded the Tripartite Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) against Russia and France, which provided for the provision of military assistance by the participating countries to each other in case of hostilities with Russia or France. But the conclusion of the Triple Alliance did not remain a secret for Alexander III. The unfavorable position of Germany towards Russia in the Balkans and during the conflict with Britain around Kushka further cooled Russian-German relations.
As a result, Russia pursued a policy of rapprochement with France, which was the only way for France itself to avoid war with Germany; in 1887, the French government provided large loans to Russia. Alexander III had to reconcile the conservatism of domestic politics with the republican trend in foreign policy, which was welcomed by a significant part of society, but ran counter to the traditional line of the Russian Foreign Ministry (and the personal views of Giers and his closest influential assistant Lamsdorf).
On July 11 (23), 1891, the French squadron arrived in Kronstadt on a friendship visit; On July 13, the tsar visited the squadron. On July 4-28, 1891, negotiations were held on rapprochement between Russia and France. On July 28, Alexander III approved the final version of the treaty, and on August 15, 1891, through an exchange of letters between the foreign ministers, the Russian-French political agreement entered into force. In the event of an attack on France by Germany or Italy, supported by Germany, and in the event of an attack on Russia by Germany or Austria-Hungary, supported by Germany, Russia was supposed to send 700-800 thousand people to the German front out of a total of 1.6 million people mobilized , France - 1.3 million people. In the event of the start of mobilization in one of the countries of the Triple Alliance, France and Russia immediately began to mobilize. The Allies promised not to conclude a separate peace in case of war and to establish permanent cooperation between the General Staff of the Russian and the General Staff of the French armies.
The Russian-French alliance was concluded for as long as the Tripartite Alliance existed. The secrecy of the treaty was very high, Alexander III warned the French government that if the secret was disclosed, the union would be terminated. But although this treaty was kept secret, the very fact of the tsar's rapprochement with republican France came as an unpleasant surprise both for Bismarck, who retired in 1890, and for his successors.
However, the price of the allies, both past and present, Emperor Alexander III knew very well. No wonder he owns the statement: “In the whole world we have only two faithful allies - our army and navy. All the rest will take up arms against us at the first opportunity.”
Meanwhile, the potential for enemy ships to appear in the Black Sea had long worried the Russian government. Back in 1870, Russia announced its right to have a navy on the Black Sea, but for 10 years it has not created it. But on September 6, 1881, Alexander III convened a Special Meeting, at which it was decided to create a fleet superior to the Turkish and capable of delivering Russian troops to the Sultan's palace in Istanbul. The plan was correct, it was embodied after the death of Alexander III - during the First World War, a landing in Istanbul was already planned, but the February Revolution prevented it.
Meanwhile, Alexander III showed constant concern for the development and maintenance of the combat readiness of the domestic navy. On his behalf, the maritime department developed a shipbuilding program for 1882-1900: it was supposed to launch 16 squadron battleships, 13 cruisers, 19 seaworthy gunboats and more than 100 destroyers.
By 1896, 8 squadron battleships, 7 cruisers, 9 gunboats, 51 destroyers were commissioned. The construction of squadron battleships with a displacement of up to 10,000 tons, armed with 4 guns of 305 mm caliber and 12 guns of 152 mm caliber, began. The displacement of the Russian navy by the end of the reign reached 300,000 tons. At that time, this was the third indicator in the world after England and France.
During the 13 years of the reign of Alexander III, measures were constantly taken to modernize the army and strengthen the borders of the state. The troops were re-equipped with new rifles (the same Mosin three-ruler) and new guns. The officer training system has undergone significant changes. Military gymnasiums were transformed into cadet corps, which graduated 19,686 people in 13 years (1881-1895). The commanding staff of the army was trained by combined arms military and cadet schools, as well as special military schools that trained officers of artillery and engineering troops. The capacity of schools was increased: in 1881, 1,750 officers graduated, in 1895 - 2,370. In 1882, officer schools were opened - rifle, artillery (for the practical improvement of candidates for company and battery commanders) and electrical engineering.
However, in military construction, not all was well. General A.F. Rediger (Minister of War in 1905-1909; during the reign of Alexander III he served in the central apparatus of the ministry) wrote in his memoirs about the personnel policy in the military department of that time: time in the military department there was a terrible stagnation. Whose fault it was, whether the sovereign himself or Vannovsky, I do not know, but the consequences of this stagnation were terrible. Incapable and decrepit people were not fired, appointments were made according to seniority, capable people were not promoted, but moved along the line, they lost interest in service, initiative and energy, and when they got to the highest positions, they already differed little from the surrounding mass of mediocrities. This absurd system also explains the terrible composition of commanding officials, both towards the end of the reign of Alexander III, and later, during the Japanese war!
Kersnovsky, for his part, also confirmed: “Vannovsky was the exact opposite of the enlightened and “liberal” Milyutin. In comparison with Milyutin, he was an obscurantist - a kind of "military Pobedonostsev", and in character - a second Paskevich. A man of the utmost rudeness and captiousness, he treated his subordinates arbitrarily. It was very hard to serve with him, and it was rare for anyone to endure it for any length of time.”
Nevertheless, the Ministry of War as a whole successfully solved the task assigned to it by the emperor - to increase the trained reserve of the army by passing a large number of people through its ranks. The annual contingent of recruits under Alexander II was 150,000 people, in 1881, at the very beginning of the reign of Alexander III, 235,000 people were already called up.
The service life was at first left the same: 6 years in service, 9 in reserve. In 1888, the number of extra-enlisted men doubled (still about a third of the target number), and this year the terms of service were reduced to 4 years in foot and to 5 in cavalry and engineering troops. At the same time, the length of stay in the reserve was doubled - from 9 to 18 years, and the reserve began to be considered liable for military service until the age of 43, inclusive.
In 1891, the contingent of the trained reserve of the lower ranks was completed: 2.5 million trained people were considered in the reserve, and up to 4 million fighters were to be counted in the mobilized army (with Cossack troops). Since 1887, universal military service has been extended to the native population of the Caucasus, with the exception of the highlanders. At the end of the reign of Alexander III, 270,000 people were called up annually - about twice as many as under his father. This was enough to maintain the peace-loving course of the Russian emperor.
Despite a relatively healthy lifestyle, Alexander III died quite young, before reaching the age of 50, quite unexpectedly for both relatives and subjects. In October 1888, the royal train coming from the south crashed 50 km from Kharkov. 7 wagons were smashed to smithereens, there were many victims, but the royal family remained intact. At the time of the crash, she was in the dining car. During the crash, the roof of the car collapsed, but Alexander, with an incredible effort, held it on his shoulders and held it until his wife and children got out.
However, shortly after this feat, the emperor began to complain of back pain. Professor Trube, who examined Alexander, came to the conclusion that a terrible concussion during the fall marked the onset of kidney disease. The disease progressed steadily. The sovereign increasingly felt unwell, his complexion became earthy, his appetite disappeared, his heart was not working well. In the winter of 1894, he caught a cold, and in September, while hunting in Belovezhye, he felt very bad. The Berlin professor Leiden, who urgently arrived on a call to Russia, found nephritis in the emperor - an acute inflammation of the kidneys. At his insistence, Alexander was sent to the Crimea, to Livadia, but it was too late. The disease progressed. Soon the situation became hopeless, and on October 20, 1894, Alexander III died. He was buried in St. Petersburg in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Pre-revolutionary historians G. P. Annenkov, K. N. Korolkov, V. V. Nazarovsky - representatives of the official historiography of the nobility - assessed the reign of Alexander III from a subjective-idealistic, apologetic positions.
A characteristic feature of the historiographical situation of the early XX century. was that for the counter-reforms of the 80s, in the words of Klyuchevsky, “historical prescription” had not yet come, due to which this plot turned out to be highly politicized. It attracted the attention of not only historians, but primarily publicists of all directions, and in assessing the essence of the reforms, their immediate and long-term results, the confrontation between liberal, conservative and left-wing forces in society stood out with particular relief. A serious factor in the subsequent development of the historiography of the reforms was the fact that the 1860-1870s were studied most deeply and professionally in pre-revolutionary science, while the politics of the 1880-1890s were the subject of mainly political and journalistic analysis.
The liberal tradition, represented primarily by A. A. Kornilov, A. A. Kizevetter, P. N. Milyukov, recognized the great importance of the great reforms, and especially the peasant one, which was a “turning point” in Russian history. Liberal historians unanimously stated that as a result of the reforms of the 1860s, the country stepped far forward, social relations in it became much more complicated, new layers and classes arose, and social inequality aggravated. Under these conditions, the "autocratic bureaucratic monarchy" turned out to be unsuitable for solving more and more new life tasks. When the question of political reform came to the fore, the government turned to a protracted course of reaction. According to the liberal concept, it was this that caused the growth of the opposition liberation and revolutionary movement and led the country to a deep political crisis at the beginning of the 20th century.
N. M. Korkunov, analyzing the “Regulations on provincial and district zemstvo institutions” of 1890, came to the conclusion that its compilers turned the question of transforming zemstvo self-government into a question of its destruction. The main conclusion made by the scientist was that in building a system of self-government, the interests of both the state and society should be taken into account.
A. A. Kornilov is also trying to shed light on this period in his course “History of Russia in the 19th century.” The author divides the reign of Alexander III into three stages:
transitional (until the end of May 1882);
reactionary (until the death of the emperor in October 1894).
With the transfer of power into the hands of D. A. Tolstoy in May 1882, A. A. Kornilov believes, the final turn to reaction begins.
Avoiding the term "counter-reforms", liberal historians spoke of subsequent "distortions" and "revisions" of the reforms of the 1960s in a reactionary spirit. They pointed out that the onset of reaction in 1866 did not interrupt the reform process, but gave it a "painful course and abnormal forms", and in the 1880s, despite the reactionary course in matters of internal administration and education, the government had to follow the path of progressive financial and economic policy.
S.F. Platonov saw the main goal of the policy of Alexander III in strengthening the authority of the supreme power and state order, strengthening the supervision and influence of the government, in connection with which the laws and institutions created during the era of the Great Reforms were “revised and improved”. The restrictions introduced in the sphere of court and public self-government gave the policy of Alexander III a “strictly protective and reactionary character”, however, this negative side of the government course is balanced by S. F. Platonov with serious measures to improve the situation of the estates - the nobility, peasantry and workers, as well as good results in the field of streamlining finances and developing the state economy.
Pre-revolutionary left-radical historiography - Marxist and populist, represented by the works of V. I. Lenin, M. N. Pokrovsky, V. I. Semevsky and others, extremely critically assessed the policy of the autocracy in the second half of the 19th century.
Recognizing the decisive role of the class struggle in history, M. N. Pokrovsky considered the government policy of reforms and reaction precisely from these positions, without, however, using the term "counter-reforms". In his opinion, the reform process in Russia in the second half of the XIX century. represented a "partial liquidation of the feudal order", carried out "in the direction and to the extent that it was beneficial to the nobility." Pokrovsky is not inclined to oppose the policy of the 60s and 80s of the 19th century, emphasizing the continuity of the “noble” political course, reactionary in nature.
An assessment of the era of Alexander III was also given by G.V. Plekhanov in the article "The Reign of Alexander III". This period was characterized by the author as a time of noble reaction. In addition, Plekhanov proved the existence of the direct influence of the bourgeoisie on the government policy of the autocracy, allegedly the bourgeoisie dictated its wishes to the Minister of Finance.
Of particular importance for the formation of Soviet historiography were the works of V. I. Lenin, for example, the work “Persecutors of Zemstvos and Annibals of Liberalism”. Lenin determined the reasons that made it possible to adopt a reactionary government course, and gave a description of the individual stages of the internal policy of the autocracy. An important role in shaping historical ideas about the era of the 1880s was played by Lenin's characterization of the government policy of Alexander III as "unbridled, incredibly senseless and frenzied reaction."
Soviet historical science adopted the term "counter-reforms", which at the beginning included an idea of the reactionary measures of the tsarist government at the turn of the 1880s-1890s, taken in the interests of an obsolete class - the local nobility. In this interpretation, the counter-reforms - the introduction of the institution of zemstvo chiefs (1889), zemstvo (1890), urban (1892) and partly judicial - eliminated the already modest achievements of the 1860s by restoring estate statehood and strengthening administrative control. In Soviet historical literature, by the early 1960s, the content of the term had expanded significantly. The concept of “counter-reform”, which meant the reactionary transformations in Russia carried out during the reign of Alexander III, also included the “Temporary Rules” on the press of 1882, the restoration of estate principles in primary and secondary schools, and the University Charter of 1884.
G. I. Chulkov, P. A. Zaionchkovsky, V. A. Tvardovskaya negatively characterized both the personality of Alexander III and his internal political course. The most detailed - with the involvement of many unpublished materials - the internal policy of Alexander III was studied in the book by P. A. Zaionchkovsky "Russian autocracy at the end of the 19th century." During these years, the works of L. G. Zakharova "Zemskaya counter-reform of 1890", E. M. Brusnikin "The policy of tsarism on the peasant question in the period of political reaction of the 80s - early 90s" were also published. 19th century. Yu. B. Solovyov in the work "Autocracy and the nobility at the end of the 19th century." thoroughly investigated the issue of the nobility in the domestic policy of tsarism under Alexander III, arguing that "behind the façade of external power was the growing weakness of the regime." V. A. Tvardovskaya writes that with the accession of Alexander III, “hope for transformation was gone, and with it, a brilliant galaxy of statesmen called to rebuild old Russia in a new way. People who were widely educated, talented, thinking in the state were replaced by firm supporters of autocratic power with significantly less abilities and talents, ready not so much to serve as to be served, more concerned about their own career than the fate of the country.
Generalizing character on the problem of reforms in the 1880s - early 1890s. carries the book of N. A. Troitsky "Russia in the 19th century", and the question of the judiciary in Russia at the end of the 19th century. dedicated to a separate book by this author - "Tsarism under the judgment of the progressive public (1866-1895)". In it, Troitsky came to the conclusion that “the unbridledness of the“ white terror ”of the 80s. testified not so much to the strength of the tsarist regime, but to its weakness, self-doubt. N. A. Troitsky believes that Alexander III considered the ideal ruler "not his father, Alexander II, but his grandfather, Nicholas I. Like Nicholas, Alexander III relied on the executioner's method of government and marked his accession exactly following the example of his grandfather - with five gallows" . According to the researcher, "from June 1882, a reaction reigned in Russia, which occupied the entire reign of Alexander III." Describing the essence of the counter-reforms, N. A. Troitsky notes: “Tsarism went towards the feudal lords in their desire to revise the legislative acts of the 60-70s.” According to him, “all the counter-reforms of 1889-1892. were clearly expressed, as far as it was possible in the conditions of the development of capitalism, of a noble-serf character and were accompanied by persecution of any dissent from the same noble-serf positions.
In the post-Soviet period, with the reorganization of old and the formation of new institutions of power, interest in the problem of reforms at the end of the 19th century increased. Rodina magazine in 1994 held a round table on the era of Alexander III. In 1996, the book “Power and Reforms. From Autocratic to Soviet Russia. Modern historians state a combination of conservative and positive trends in the activities of Alexander III. Academician B.V. Ananyich uses the term "counter-reforms" only once, and then in historiographical terms. B.V. Ananyich believes that in the environment of Alexander III, a struggle broke out between opponents and supporters of reforms: “On the one hand, there was a process of limiting and conservative adjustment of reforms, which contemporaries often called “backward movement”, and on the other hand, liberal reformers from the Ministry finance in the 1880s. carried out the abolition of the poll tax and prepared a series of economic reforms, implemented already in the 1890s. S. Witte. In this regard, the author raises the question: “... how acceptable is the concept of the “era of counter-reforms” widespread 102 in Russian historiography and whether it reflects the real state of affairs. When did this era begin and end? He speaks not of an "epoch of counter-reforms" but of a "period of conservative stabilization", focusing his attention on the fact that the adjustment of the great reforms was accompanied by a number of important socio-economic transformations.
This caused objections during the discussion of the monograph (a round table in the journal Otechestvennaya Istoriya in 2000) and revealed some hidden opposition of historians on the very existence of counter-reforms in Russia and on the content of this concept. Unfortunately, the current confrontation has an ideological connotation: in the liberal reading, the counter-reforms are interpreted as measures that prevented Russia from advancing towards becoming a rule-of-law state, while the conservative view focuses on an unlimited autocratic form of government and “originality”, emphasizing the wisdom of “stabilizing » government measures. An intermediate position, expressed at the discussion by A. Medushevsky, is a sober consideration of life's realities, including society's readiness to accept reforms. In the historical context of post-reform Russia, a conservative view of the transformation strategy turns out to be ultimately more logical, the scientist believes, although he tends to present the overall dynamics of reforms in Russia as a “rather dynamic spiral”, at each new turn of which the country advances towards civil society and the rule of law.
The role of Alexander III in carrying out the transformations was reflected in the works of B. V. Ananyich, A. N. Bokhanov, A. Koskin, Yu. A. Polunov, V. G. Chernukha and others. the era of Alexander III must be approached differently. Speaking about the results of the transformations of Alexander III, all modern researchers emphasize their contradictory nature. A. Yu. Polunov identifies two stages in the activities of Alexander III. According to him, in “the first time (under the Minister of the Interior N.P. Ignatiev) the government continued the course of Loris-Melikov” and only “with the appointment of the Minister of the Interior D.A. Tolstoy (1882) the era of counter-reforms began, which the content of the domestic policy of Alexander III. At the same time, A. Yu. Polunov believes that the reforms carried out by Alexander III had a different focus. He adopted a series of legislative acts aimed at revising the main provisions of the liberal reforms of the 1860-1870s. But, the historian writes, “following a generally protective course in the socio-political sphere, the government at the same time adopted a number of acts that were actually a continuation of the “great reforms” of the 1860s and 70s.” According to A. Yu. Polunov, "certain measures stimulated the development of industry and railway construction, which entailed the intensive spread of capitalist relations in the economy." At the same time, the author concludes that it was precisely the controversial course of the policy pursued by Alexander III that became "one of the factors that determined the extreme severity of social, political and national conflicts in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century."
L. I. Semennikova tried to extend modern assessments to the era of Alexander III: “In modern terms, the reformation of Russia under Alexander III followed the “Chinese version”: the inviolability of the political autocratic system, but the active expansion of market relations in the economy. The measures taken during his reign prepared a powerful industrial upsurge in the 1990s. XIX century, they determined, after the completion of the industrial revolution, the transition to industrialization, which unfolded in the 90s.
A. V. Sedunov draws attention to the attempt to return to the Uvarov idea under Alexander III. Sedunov highlights the positive aspects of conservative methods: "the revolutionary and liberal movement has calmed down, Russian industry was experiencing a period of growth, there were no major social conflicts, excluding individual skirmishes."
In modern science, there are also works that apologetically evaluate the activities of Alexander III. So, A. N. Bokhanov believes that the emperor did not start “no course of counter-reforms”, this very concept was “invented” by the “detractors” of the tsar and it “simply lacks historical meaning”.
CHAPTER ONE
Manifesto on the accession of the sovereign to the throne. - Evaluation of the reign of Emperor Alexander III (V. O. Klyuchevsky, K. P. Pobedonostsev). - General situation in 1894 - Russian Empire. - Royal authority. - Bureaucracy. – Tendencies of the ruling circles: “demophilic” and “aristocratic”. - Foreign policy and the Franco-Russian alliance. - Army. - Fleet. - Local government. – Finland. – Press and censorship. - Mildness of laws and courts.
“God Almighty was pleased in his inscrutable ways to interrupt the precious life of our dearly beloved Parent, Sovereign Emperor Alexander Alexandrovich. A serious illness did not succumb to either treatment or the fertile climate of the Crimea, and on October 20, He died in Livadia, surrounded by His August Family, in the arms of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress and Ours.
Our grief cannot be expressed in words, but every Russian heart will understand it, and We believe that there will be no place in Our vast State where hot tears would not be shed for the Sovereign, who untimely departed into eternity and left his native land, which He loved with all His might. Russian soul and on whose well-being He placed all His thoughts, sparing neither His health nor life. And not only in Russia, but far beyond its borders, they will never cease to honor the memory of the Tsar, who personified unshakable truth and peace, never violated in all His reign.
With these words, the manifesto begins, announcing to Russia the accession of Emperor Nicholas II to the ancestral throne.
The reign of Emperor Alexander III, who received the title of Tsar-Peacemaker, did not abound with external events, but it left a deep imprint on Russian and world life. During these thirteen years, many knots were tied - both in foreign and domestic policy - to untie or cut which happened to his son and successor, Emperor Nicholas II Alexandrovich.
Both friends and enemies of imperial Russia equally recognize that Emperor Alexander III significantly increased the international weight of the Russian Empire, and within its borders he confirmed and exalted the importance of autocratic tsarist power. He led the Russian state ship in a different course than his father. He did not believe that the reforms of the 60s and 70s were an unconditional blessing, but tried to introduce into them those amendments that, in his opinion, were necessary for the internal balance of Russia.
After the epoch of great reforms, after the war of 1877-1878, after this enormous exertion of Russian forces in the interests of the Balkan Slavs, Russia, in any case, needed a respite. It was necessary to master, to “digest” the changes that had taken place.
In the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University, a well-known Russian historian, prof. V. O. Klyuchevsky, in his speech in memory of Emperor Alexander III, a week after his death, said:
“During the reign of Emperor Alexander III, before the eyes of one generation, we peacefully carried out a number of deep reforms in our state system in the spirit of Christian rules, therefore, in the spirit of European principles - such reforms that cost Western Europe centuries and often stormy efforts, - and this Europe continued to see in us representatives of Mongolian inertia, some kind of imposed adoptives of the cultural world ...
13 years of the reign of Emperor Alexander III have passed, and the more hastily the hand of death hurried to close His eyes, the wider and more amazed the eyes of Europe were opened to the world significance of this short reign. Finally, even the stones cried out, the organs of European public opinion spoke the truth about Russia, and spoke the more sincerely, the more unusual it was for them to say this. It turned out, according to these confessions, that European civilization had insufficiently and carelessly ensured its peaceful development, for its own safety it was placed on a powder magazine, that a burning wick approached this dangerous defensive warehouse more than once from different sides, and each time the caring and patient hand of the Russian Tsar quietly and cautiously took him away... Europe recognized that the Tsar of the Russian people was the sovereign of the international world, and by this recognition confirmed the historical vocation of Russia, for in Russia, according to its political organization, the will of the Tsar expresses the thought of His people, and the will of the people becomes the thought of its Tsar. Europe recognized that the country, which it considered a threat to its civilization, stood and stands on its guard, understands, appreciates and protects its foundations no worse than its creators; it recognized Russia as an organically indispensable part of its cultural composition, a vital, natural member of the family of its peoples...
Science will give Emperor Alexander III a proper place not only in the history of Russia and all of Europe, but also in Russian historiography, will say that He won in the area where these victories are most difficult to get, defeated the prejudice of peoples and thereby contributed to their rapprochement, conquered the public conscience in the name of peace and truth, increased the amount of goodness in the moral circulation of mankind, encouraged and uplifted Russian historical thought, Russian national self-consciousness, and did all this so quietly and silently that only now, when He no longer exists, Europe understood what He was for her."
If Professor Klyuchevsky, a Russian intellectual and rather a “Westernizer”, dwells more on the foreign policy of Emperor Alexander III and, apparently, hints at a rapprochement with France, the closest collaborator of the late monarch, K.P. Pobedonostsev:
“Everyone knew that he would not give in to the Russian, the history of the bequeathed interest either in the Polish or in other outskirts of the foreign element, that he deeply kept in his soul one faith and love for the Orthodox Church with the people; finally, that he, together with the people, believes in the unshakable significance of autocratic power in Russia and will not allow for it, in the specter of freedom, a disastrous confusion of languages and opinions.
At a meeting of the French Senate, its chairman, Challmel-Lacour, said in his speech (November 5, 1894) that the Russian people are experiencing “sorrow for the loss of a ruler, immensely devoted to his future, his greatness, his security; The Russian nation, under the just and peaceful rule of its emperor, enjoyed security, this highest good of society and an instrument of true greatness.
Most of the French press spoke about the deceased Russian tsar in the same tone: “He leaves Russia greater than he received it,” wrote the Journal des Debats; a “Revue des deux Mondes” echoed the words of V. O. Klyuchevsky: “This grief was also our grief; for us it has acquired a national character; but almost the same feelings were experienced by other nations ... Europe felt that it was losing an arbiter who had always been guided by the idea of justice.
1894 - like the 80s and 90s in general. - refers to that long period of "calm before the storm", the longest period without major wars in modern and medieval history. This time left its mark on all those who grew up in these quiet years. By the end of the 19th century, the growth of material well-being and foreign education proceeded with increasing acceleration. Technique went from invention to invention, science from discovery to discovery. Railroads, steamboats have already made it possible to "travel around the world in 80 days"; Following the telegraph wires, strands of telephone wires were already stretched all over the world. Electric lighting quickly replaced gas lighting. But in 1894, the clumsy first automobiles could not yet compete with elegant carriages and carriages; "live photography" was still in the stage of preliminary experiments; steerable balloons were only a dream; Heavier-than-air machines have never been heard of before. Radio had not been invented, and radium had not yet been discovered ...
In almost all states, the same political process was observed: the growth of the influence of parliament, the expansion of suffrage, the transfer of power to more left-wing circles. Against this trend, which at that time seemed to be a spontaneous course of "historical progress", no one in the West, in essence, waged a real struggle. The Conservatives, themselves gradually shedding and “lefting”, were content with the fact that at times they slowed down the pace of this development - 1894 in most countries just found such a slowdown.
In France, after the assassination of President Carnot and a number of senseless anarchist attempts, up to the bomb in the Chamber of Deputies and the notorious Panama scandal, which marked the beginning of the 90s. in this country, there has been just a slight shift to the right. The president was Casimir Perier, a right-wing republican inclined to expand presidential power; ruled by the Dupuy ministry, based on a moderate majority. But "moderates" already at that time were considered those who in the 70s were on the extreme left of the National Assembly; just shortly before that - around 1890 - under the influence of the advice of Pope Leo XIII, a significant part of the French Catholics went over to the ranks of the republicans.
In Germany, after the resignation of Bismarck, the influence of the Reichstag increased significantly; Social Democracy, gradually conquering all the big cities, became the largest German party. The Conservatives, for their part, relying on the Prussian Landtag, waged a stubborn struggle against the economic policy of Wilhelm II. For lack of energy in the fight against the socialists, Chancellor Caprivi was replaced in October 1894 by the aged Prince Hohenlohe; but no appreciable change of course resulted from this.
In England, in 1894, the Liberals were defeated on the Irish question, and Lord Rosebery's "intermediate" ministry was in power, which soon gave way to Lord Salisbury's cabinet, which relied on conservatives and unionist liberals (opponents of Irish self-government). These Unionists, led by Chamberlain, played such a prominent role in the government majority that soon the name of the Unionists in general supplanted the name of the Conservatives for twenty years altogether. Unlike Germany, the British labor movement was not yet political in nature, and the powerful trade unions, already staging very impressive strikes, were still content with economic and professional achievements - meeting in this more support from the conservatives than from the liberals. These correlations explain the phrase of a prominent English figure of that time: “We are all now socialists” ...
In Austria and Hungary, parliamentary rule was more pronounced than in Germany: cabinets that did not have a majority had to resign. On the other hand, the parliament itself opposed the expansion of suffrage: the ruling parties were afraid of losing power. By the time of the death of Emperor Alexander III in Vienna, the short-lived ministry of Prince. Windischgrätz, which relied on very heterogeneous elements: German liberals, Poles and clerics.
In Italy, after a period of domination by the left headed by Giolitti, after a scandal over the appointment of the stealing director of the Tanlongo bank to the Senate, at the beginning of 1894 the old political figure Crispi, one of the authors of the Triple Alliance, came to power again, in the special Italian parliamentary conditions, playing a role conservative.
Although the Second International had already been founded in 1889 and socialist ideas were becoming more widespread in Europe, by 1894 the socialists were not yet a serious political force in any country except Germany (where in 1893 they had already held 44 deputies ). But the parliamentary system in many small states - Belgium, the Scandinavian, Balkan countries - has received an even more straightforward application than that of the great powers. In addition to Russia, only Turkey and Montenegro from European countries did not have parliaments at that time.
The era of calm was at the same time the era of armed peace. All the great powers, followed by the smaller ones, increased and improved their armaments. Europe, as V. O. Klyuchevsky put it, “fitted itself on a powder magazine for its own safety.” Universal conscription was carried out in all the major states of Europe, except for insular England. The technology of war did not lag behind the technology of peace in its development.
Mutual distrust between states was great. The triple alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy seemed to be the most powerful combination of powers. But even its participants did not fully rely on each other. Until 1890, Germany still considered it necessary to "play it safe" by means of a secret treaty with Russia - and Bismarck saw a fatal mistake in the fact that Emperor Wilhelm II did not renew this treaty - and France entered into negotiations with Italy more than once, trying to tear it away from the Triple union. England was in "splendid solitude". France hid the unhealed wound of its defeat in 1870-1871. and was ready to join any enemy of Germany. The thirst for revenge was clearly manifested in the late 80s. the success of boulangism.
The division of Africa was broadly completed by 1890, at least on the coast. Entrepreneurial colonialists rushed from everywhere to the interior of the mainland, where there were still unexplored areas, to be the first to raise the flag of their country and secure "no one's lands" for it. Only in the middle reaches of the Nile did the British still block the path of the Mahdists, Muslim fanatics, who in 1885 defeated and killed the English General Gordon during the capture of Khartoum. And mountainous Abyssinia, on which the Italians began their campaign, prepared an unexpectedly powerful rebuff for them.
All these were just islands - Africa, like Australia and America before, became the property of the white race. Until the end of the 19th century, the prevailing belief was that Asia would suffer the same fate. England and Russia were already watching each other through a thin barrier of still weak independent states, Persia, Afghanistan, semi-independent Tibet. The closest thing came to a war for the entire reign of Emperor Alexander III, when in 1885 General Komarov defeated the Afghans near Kushka: the British vigilantly watched the "gates to India"! However, the acute conflict was resolved by an agreement in 1887.
But in the Far East, where back in the 1850s. The Russians occupied the Ussuri Territory, which belonged to China, without a fight, and the slumbering peoples were just beginning to stir. When Emperor Alexander III was dying, cannons rattled on the shores of the Yellow Sea: small Japan, having mastered European technology, won its first victories over huge, but still motionless China.
Portrait of Alexander III. Artist A. Sokolov, 1883
In this world, the Russian Empire, with its area of twenty million square miles, with a population of 125 million people, occupied a prominent position. Since the Seven Years' War, and especially since 1812, Russia's military power has been highly valued in Western Europe. The Crimean War showed the limits of this power, but at the same time confirmed its strength. Since then, the era of reforms, including in the military sphere, has created new conditions for the development of Russian power.
Russia at that time began to be seriously studied. A. Leroy-Beaulieu in French, Sir D. Mackenzie-Wallace in English published large studies on Russia in the 1870s-1880s. The structure of the Russian Empire was very different from Western European conditions, but foreigners then already began to understand that we were talking about dissimilar, and not about "backward" state forms.
“The Russian Empire is governed on the exact basis of laws emanating from the Highest Authority. The emperor is an autocratic and unlimited monarch,” said the Russian fundamental laws. The tsar had full legislative and executive power. This did not mean arbitrariness: all essential questions had exact answers in the laws, which were subject to execution until there was a repeal. In the field of civil rights, the Russian tsarist government generally avoided a sharp break, reckoned with the legal skills of the population and acquired rights, and left in effect on the territory of the empire both the Napoleonic code (in the kingdom of Poland), and the Lithuanian Statute (in the Poltava and Chernigov provinces), and Magdeburg law (in the Baltic region), and customary law among the peasants, and all kinds of local laws and customs in the Caucasus, Siberia, and Central Asia.
But the right to legislate was indivisibly vested in the king. There was a State Council of high dignitaries appointed there by the sovereign; he discussed draft laws; but the king could agree, at his discretion, with the opinion of the majority and with the opinion of the minority - or reject both. Usually, special commissions and meetings were formed to hold important events; but they had, of course, only a preparatory value.
In the field of executive fullness of royal power was also unlimited. Louis XIV, after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, declared that he wanted to be his own first minister from now on. But all Russian monarchs were in the same position. Russia did not know the position of the first minister. The title of chancellor, sometimes assigned to the minister of foreign affairs (the last chancellor was His Serene Highness Prince A. M. Gorchakov, who died in 1883), gave him the rank of the 1st class according to the table of ranks, but did not mean any supremacy over other ministers. There was a Committee of Ministers, it had a permanent chairman (in 1894, the former Minister of Finance, N. Kh. Bunge, also consisted of it). But this Committee was, in essence, only a kind of interdepartmental meeting.
All ministers and heads of separate units had their own independent report with the sovereign. The sovereign was also directly subordinate to the governor-general, as well as the mayors of both capitals.
This did not mean that the sovereign was involved in all the details of managing individual departments (although, for example, Emperor Alexander III was “his own minister of foreign affairs”, to whom all “incoming” and “outgoing” reports were reported; N.K. Girs was, as it were, his "comrade minister"). Individual ministers sometimes had great power and the opportunity for broad initiative. But they had them because and so far the sovereign trusted them.
To carry out the plans coming from above, Russia also had a large staff of officials. Emperor Nicholas I once dropped the ironic phrase that Russia is ruled by 30,000 head clerks. Complaints about the "bureaucracy", about the "mediastinum" were very common in Russian society. It was customary to scold officials, to grumble at them. Abroad, there was an idea of almost total bribery of Russian officials. He was often judged by the satires of Gogol or Shchedrin; but a caricature, even a successful one, cannot be considered a portrait. In some departments, for example, in the police, low salaries did contribute to a fairly wide distribution of bribes. Others, such as, for example, the Ministry of Finance or the judicial department after the reform of 1864, enjoyed, on the contrary, a reputation for high honesty. It must be admitted, however, that one of the traits that made Russia related to the eastern countries was the condescending everyday attitude towards many acts of dubious honesty; the fight against this phenomenon was psychologically difficult. Some sections of the population, such as engineers, enjoyed an even worse reputation than officials - quite often, of course, undeserved.
But the top government was free from this disease. Cases where ministers or other representatives of the authorities were involved in abuses were the rarest sensational exceptions.
Be that as it may, the Russian administration, even in its most imperfect parts, carried out, despite the difficult conditions, the task assigned to it. The tsarist government had at its disposal an obedient and well-organized state apparatus adapted to the diverse needs of the Russian Empire. This apparatus was created over the centuries - from Moscow orders - and in many ways has reached a high level of perfection.
But the Russian tsar was not only the head of state: he was at the same time the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which occupied a leading position in the country. This, of course, did not mean that the tsar had the right to touch upon church dogmas; the conciliar structure of the Orthodox Church ruled out such an understanding of the rights of the tsar. But at the suggestion of the Holy Synod, the highest church college, the appointment of bishops was made by the king; and the replenishment of the composition of the Synod itself depended (in the same order) on him. The chief prosecutor of the Synod was the link between church and state. This position was occupied by K. P. Pobedonostsev, a man of outstanding mind and strong will, a teacher of two emperors, Alexander III and Nicholas II, for more than a quarter of a century.
During the reign of Emperor Alexander III, the following main tendencies of power appeared: not an indiscriminately negative, but in any case a critical attitude towards what was called "progress", and the desire to give Russia more internal unity by asserting the primacy of the Russian elements of the country. In addition, two currents were simultaneously manifested, far from being similar, but, as it were, complementing each other. One that aims at defending the weak from the strong, preferring the broad masses of the people to the upper classes that have separated from them, with some leveling inclinations, in terms of our time, could be called "demophile" or Christian-social. This is a trend whose representatives, along with others, were the Minister of Justice Manasein (who retired in 1894) and K.P. Pobedonostsev, who wrote that "nobles, like the people, are subject to curbing." Another trend, which found its expression in the Minister of the Interior, Count. D. A. Tolstoy, sought to strengthen the ruling classes, to establish a certain hierarchy in the state. The first trend, by the way, ardently defended the peasant community as a kind of Russian form of solving the social problem.
The Russification policy met with more sympathy from the “demophile” trend. On the contrary, a prominent representative of the second trend, the famous writer K. N. Leontiev, published in 1888 the pamphlet “National Policy as an Instrument of World Revolution” (in subsequent editions the word “national” was replaced by “tribal”), arguing that “the movement of modern political nationalism is nothing else than the spread of cosmopolitan democratization, modified only in methods.
Of the prominent right-wing publicists of that time, M.N. V. P. Meshchersky.
Emperor Alexander III himself, with his deeply Russian mindset, did not sympathize with the Russification extremes and expressively wrote to K. P. Pobedonostsev (in 1886): “There are gentlemen who think that they are only Russians, and no one else. Do they already imagine that I am a German or a Chukhonian? It is easy for them with their farcical patriotism when they are not responsible for anything. I won’t let Russia be offended.”
In foreign policy, the reign of Emperor Alexander III brought great changes. That affinity with Germany, or rather with Prussia, which remained a common feature of Russian policy since Catherine the Great and runs like a red thread through the reigns of Alexander I, Nicholas I, and especially Alexander II, has been replaced by a noticeable cooling. It would hardly be correct, as is sometimes done, to attribute this development of events to the anti-German sentiments of Empress Maria Feodorovna, a Danish princess who married a Russian heir shortly after the Danish-Prussian war of 1864! It can only be said that the political complications this time were not mitigated, as in previous reigns, by personal good relations and family ties of the dynasties. The reasons were, of course, predominantly political.
Although Bismarck considered it possible to combine the Tripartite Alliance with friendly relations with Russia, the Austro-German-Italian alliance was, of course, at the heart of the chill between old friends. The Berlin Congress left bitterness in Russian public opinion. Anti-German notes began to sound at the top. The sharp speech of Gen. Skobeleva against the Germans; Katkov in Moskovskie Vedomosti waged a campaign against them. By the mid-1980s, the tension began to be felt more strongly; The German seven-year military budget (“septennat”) was caused by the deterioration of relations with Russia. The German government closed the Berlin market for Russian securities.
Emperor Alexander III, like Bismarck, was seriously worried about this aggravation, and in 1887 he was imprisoned - for a three-year term - the so-called. reinsurance agreement. It was a secret Russo-German agreement under which both countries promised each other benevolent neutrality in the event that a third country attacked one of them. This agreement was an essential reservation to the act of the Triple Alliance. It meant that Germany would not support any anti-Russian action by Austria. Legally, these treaties were compatible, since the Triple Alliance also provided only support in the event that one of its participants was attacked (which gave Italy the opportunity in 1914 to declare neutrality without violating the union treaty).
But this reinsurance treaty was not renewed in 1890. Negotiations about it coincided with the moment of Bismarck's resignation. His successor, Gen. Caprivi, with military straightforwardness, pointed out to Wilhelm II that this treaty seemed disloyal to Austria. For his part, Emperor Alexander III, who had sympathy for Bismarck, did not seek to get involved with the new rulers of Germany.
After that, in the 90s, it came to the Russian-German customs war, which ended with a trade agreement on March 20, 1894, concluded with the close participation of the Minister of Finance S. Yu. Witte. This treaty gave Russia - for a ten-year period - significant advantages.
Relations with Austria-Hungary had nothing to spoil: since the time when Austria, saved from the Hungarian revolution by Emperor Nicholas I, “surprised the world with ingratitude” during the Crimean War, Russia and Austria also clashed on the entire front of the Balkans, like Russia and England all over Asia.
England at that time still continued to see the Russian Empire as its main enemy and competitor, "a huge glacier hanging over India," as Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) put it in the English Parliament.
In the Balkans, Russia experienced in the 80s. the worst disappointments. The liberation war of 1877-1878, which cost Russia so much blood and such financial upheavals, did not bear immediate fruit. Austria actually took possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Russia was forced to admit this in order to avoid a new war. In Serbia, the Obrenović dynasty, represented by King Milan, was in power, clearly gravitating towards Austria. About Bulgaria, even Bismarck caustically responded in his memoirs: "The liberated peoples are not grateful, but pretentious." There it came to the persecution of Russophile elements. The replacement of Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who became the head of anti-Russian movements, by Ferdinand of Coburg did not improve Russian-Bulgarian relations. Only in 1894, Stambulov, the main inspirer of the Russophobic policy, had to resign. The only country with which Russia did not even have diplomatic relations for many years was Bulgaria, so recently resurrected by Russian weapons from a long state non-existence!
Romania was allied with Austria and Germany, offended by the fact that in 1878 Russia regained a small piece of Bessarabia taken from it in the Crimean War. Although Romania received in the form of compensation the entire Dobruja with the port of Constanta, she preferred to get closer to the opponents of Russian policy in the Balkans.
When Emperor Alexander III proclaimed his famous toast to "the only true friend of Russia, Prince Nicholas of Montenegro", this, in essence, corresponded to reality. The power of Russia was so great that she did not feel threatened in this loneliness. But after the termination of the reinsurance agreement, during a sharp deterioration in Russian-German economic relations, Emperor Alexander III took certain steps to rapprochement with France.
The republican system, state disbelief, and such recent phenomena at that time as the Panama scandal, could not dispose the Russian tsar, the keeper of conservative and religious principles, to France. Many considered therefore the Franco-Russian agreement excluded. The solemn reception of the sailors of the French squadron in Kronstadt, when the Russian tsar listened to the Marseillaise with his head uncovered, showed that sympathies or antipathies for the internal order of France were not decisive for Emperor Alexander III. Few, however, thought that since 1892 a secret defensive alliance had been concluded between Russia and France, supplemented by a military convention indicating how many troops both sides were obliged to put up in case of war with Germany. This treaty was at that time so secret that neither the ministers (of course, except for two or three senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the military department), nor even the heir to the throne himself knew about it.
French society has long been eager to formalize this union, but the tsar made it a condition for the strictest secrecy, fearing that confidence in Russian support could give rise to militant moods in France, revive the thirst for revenge, and the government, due to the peculiarities of the democratic system, would not be able to resist the pressure of public opinion. .
The Russian Empire at that time had the largest peacetime army in the world. Its 22 corps, not counting the Cossacks and irregular units, reached a strength of up to 900,000 people. With a four-year term of military service, the annual conscription of recruits gave in the early 90s. three times as many people as the army needed. This not only made it possible to make a strict selection for physical fitness, but also made it possible to provide wide benefits for marital status. The only sons, older brothers, who took care of the younger ones, teachers, doctors, etc., were exempted from active military service and directly enlisted in the second-class militia warriors, to whom mobilization could only come as a last resort. In Russia, only 31 percent of the draftees each year were enrolled in the army, while in France 76 percent.
For the armament of the army, mainly state-owned factories worked; Russia did not have those "cannon dealers" who enjoy such an unflattering reputation in the West.
For the training of officers, there were 37 secondary and 15 higher military educational institutions, in which 14,000-15,000 people studied.
All the lower ranks who served in the ranks of the army received, in addition, a well-known education. The illiterate were taught to read and write, and all were given some of the basic beginnings of a general education.
The Russian fleet, which had been in decline since the Crimean War, revived and rebuilt during the reign of Emperor Alexander III. 114 new warships were launched, including 17 battleships and 10 armored cruisers. The displacement of the fleet reached 300,000 tons - the Russian fleet ranked third (after England and France) in a number of world fleets. Its weak point, however, was that the Black Sea Fleet - about a third of the Russian naval forces - was locked up in the Black Sea under international treaties and did not have the opportunity to take part in the struggle that would have arisen in other seas.
Russia had no imperial representative institutions; Emperor Alexander III, in the words of K. P. Pobedonostsev, believed “in the unshakable significance of autocratic power in Russia” and did not allow for it “in the specter of freedom, a disastrous mixture of languages and opinions.” But from the previous reign, the bodies of local self-government, zemstvos and cities remained as a legacy; and since the time of Catherine II, there was a class self-government in the person of noble assemblies, provincial and district (petty-bourgeois councils and other self-government bodies of citizens gradually lost all real significance).
Zemstvo self-governments were introduced (in 1864) in 34 (out of 50) provinces of European Russia, that is, they spread to more than half of the population of the empire. They were elected by three groups of the population: peasants, private landowners and townspeople; the number of seats was distributed among the groups according to the amount of taxes they paid. In 1890, a law was passed that strengthened the role of the nobility in the zemstvos. In general, private owners, as a more educated element of the village, played a leading role in most provinces; but there were also predominantly peasant zemstvos (Vyatka, Perm, for example). The Russian zemstvos had a broader scope of activity than local self-government bodies in France now have. Medical and veterinary care, public education, road maintenance, statistics, insurance business, agronomy, cooperation, etc. - such was the scope of the zemstvos.
City governments (dumas) were elected by homeowners. Dumas elected city councils with the mayor at the head. The scope of their competence within the cities was in general the same as that of the zemstvos in relation to the countryside.
Reception of volost foremen by Alexander III. Painting by I. Repin, 1885-1886
Finally, the village also had its own peasant self-government, in which all adult peasants and the wives of absent husbands took part. "Peace" resolved local issues and elected representatives to the volost gathering. The elders (chairmen) and the clerks (secretaries) who were with them led these primary cells of peasant self-government.
In general, by the end of the reign of Emperor Alexander III, with a state budget of 1,200,000,000 rubles, local budgets administered by elective institutions amounted to about 200 million, of which about 60 million a year fell to zemstvos and cities. Of this amount, the zemstvos spent about a third on medical care and about one-sixth on public education.
Noble assemblies, created by Catherine the Great, consisted of all hereditary nobles of each province (or county), and only those nobles who had landed property in a given area could participate in the meetings. Provincial noble assemblies were, in fact, the only public bodies in which questions of general policy were sometimes discussed on a legal basis. Noble assemblies in the form of addresses addressed to the Highest Name more than once came up with political resolutions. In addition, the scope of their competence was very limited, and they played a certain role only due to their connection with the zemstvos (the local marshal of the nobility was ex officio the chairman of the provincial or district zemstvo assembly).
The importance of the nobility in the country at that time was already noticeably on the wane. In the early 1890s, contrary to popular beliefs in the West, at 49 lips. In European Russia, out of 381 million acres of land area, only 55 million belonged to the nobles, while in Siberia, Central Asia and the Caucasus there was almost no noble land ownership at all (only in the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland, the nobility owned 44 percent of the land).
In local governments, as everywhere where the elective principle operates, there were, of course, their own groupings, their right and left. There were liberal zemstvos and conservative zemstvos. But real parties did not come from this. At that time, there were no significant illegal groups after the collapse of Narodnaya Volya, although some revolutionary publications were published abroad. Thus, the London Foundation for Illegal Press (S. Stepnyak, N. Tchaikovsky, L. Shishko and others) in a report for 1893 reported that they distributed 20,407 copies of illegal brochures and books in a year - 2,360 of them in Russia, which is not a large number per 125 million population ...
The Grand Duchy of Finland was in a special position. There was a constitution, bestowed by Alexander I. The Finnish Seim, consisting of representatives of the four estates (nobles, clergy, townspeople and peasants), convened every five years, and under Emperor Alexander III he even received (in 1885) the right to legislative initiative. The local government was the senate, appointed by the emperor, and communication with the general imperial administration was provided through the minister-secretary of state for Finnish affairs.
In the absence of representative institutions, there was no organized political activity in Russia, and attempts to create party groups were immediately thwarted by police measures. The press was under the watchful eye of the authorities. Some large newspapers, however, were published without prior censorship - in order to speed up the publication - and therefore bore the risk of subsequent reprisals. Usually two "warnings" were made to the newspaper, and on the third its publication was suspended. But at the same time, the newspapers remained independent: within certain limits, subject to some external restraint, they could, and often carried, views that were very hostile to the government. Most of the big newspapers and magazines were deliberately oppositional. The government only put up external barriers to the expression of views hostile to it, and did not try to influence the content of the press.
It can be said that the Russian government had neither the inclination nor the ability to self-promotion. Its achievements and successes often remained in the shadows, while failures and weaknesses were diligently painted with imaginary objectivity on the pages of the Russian temporary press, and spread abroad by Russian political emigrants, creating largely false ideas about Russia.
Church censorship was the most strict in relation to books. Less severe than the Vatican with its "index", it at the same time had the opportunity not only to put banned books on the lists, but also to actually stop their distribution. So, under the ban were anti-church writings gr. L. N. Tolstoy, "The Life of Jesus" by Renan; when translating from Heine, for example, passages containing mockery of religion were excluded. But in general - especially if we take into account that censorship in different periods acted with varying degrees of severity, and books, once admitted, were rarely withdrawn from circulation later - books forbidden to the Russian "legal" reader constituted an insignificant fraction of world literature. Of the major Russian writers, only Herzen was banned.
In a country that was considered abroad "the kingdom of the whip, chains and exile to Siberia", in fact, very soft and humane laws were in force. Russia was the only country where the death penalty was abolished altogether (since the time of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna) for all crimes tried by general courts. She remained only in the military courts and for the highest state crimes. For the 19th century the number of those executed (if we exclude both Polish uprisings and violations of military discipline) was not even a hundred people in a hundred years. During the reign of Emperor Alexander III, in addition to the participants in the regicide on March 1, only a few people who attempted to kill the emperor were executed (one of them, by the way, was just A. Ulyanov - Lenin's brother).
Administrative exile, on the basis of the law on the provision of enhanced security, was applied quite widely to all types of anti-government agitation. There were various degrees of exile: to Siberia, to the northern provinces (“places not so remote,” as it was usually called), sometimes simply to provincial cities. Those deported who did not have their own means were given a state allowance for life. In places of exile, special colonies of people united by a common destiny were formed; often these colonies of exiles became the cells of future revolutionary work, creating connections and acquaintances, contributing to "enslavement" in hostility to the existing order. Those who were considered the most dangerous were placed in the Shlisselburg fortress on an island in the upper reaches of the Neva.
The Russian court, based on the judicial statutes of 1864, has stood at a high level since that time; "Gogol types" in the judicial world have receded into the realm of legends. Careful attitude towards the defendants, the broadest provision of the rights of the defense, the selective composition of judges - all this was a matter of just pride for the Russian people and corresponded to the mood of society. The judicial statutes were one of the few laws that society not only respected, but was also ready to jealously defend against the government when it considered it necessary to make reservations and amendments to the liberal law for a more successful fight against crimes.
There were no zemstvos: in 12 western provinces, where non-Russian elements prevailed among the landowners; in the sparsely populated Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan provinces; in the Region of the Don Army, and in the Orenburg province. with their Cossack institutions.
The nobility in Russia did not constitute a closed caste; the rights of hereditary nobility were acquired by everyone who reached the rank of VIII class but the table of ranks (collegiate assessor, captain, captain).
Contemporaries about Alexander III
“Everyone describes Tsar Alexander III as a man of unusually simple manners and tastes… Lady Churchill writes that there are strange customs at the Russian court that hardly agree with the idea of an autocratic and despotic ruler. The sight of the king standing during dinner and talking to a young officer who remains seated at the table simply frightens us.” (Morning Post, 1880s)
“During the trip of Alexander III across Russia, once the tsar's train suddenly stopped at a small siding. One of the men gathered to stare saw Alexander, took off his hat and whispered: “That's it - the king!” And then he added the usual village swearing from deep excitement. The gendarme wanted to arrest him, but the tsar called the frightened peasant and gave him a 25-ruble note (where the image of the tsar was) with the words: “Here is my portrait for you as a keepsake.” (Walking anecdote-truth)
“Emperor Alexander III was of a completely ordinary mind, perhaps below average intelligence, below average abilities, below average education; in appearance he looked like a big Russian peasant from the central provinces. (S.Yu. Witte)
“Everyone knew about Emperor Alexander III that, not wanting any military laurels, the emperor would never compromise the honor and dignity of Russia entrusted to him by God 1 ”. (S.Yu. Witte)
“Alexander III was not a strong man, as many people think. This big, fat man was not, however, a “feeble-minded monarch” or a “crowned fool”, as V.P. calls him in his memoirs. Lamzdorf, but he was also not that insightful and intelligent sovereign, as they try to portray him 1 ”. (S.Yu. Witte)
“Alexander III led the Russian state ship in a different course than His father. He did not believe that the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s were an unconditional blessing, but tried to introduce into them those amendments that, in His opinion, were necessary for the internal balance of Russia. (S.S. Oldenburg)
Historians on the personality and reign of Alexander III
“This heavy-lifting tsar did not want the evil of his empire and did not want to play with it simply because he did not understand its position, and in general did not like the complex mental combinations that a political game requires no less than a card game. The government directly mocked the society, told it: “You demanded new reforms - the old ones will be taken away from you too.” (V.O. Klyuchevsky)
“Alexander III was not stupid. But he had that lazy and clumsy mind, which in itself is sterile. For a regimental commander such intelligence is sufficient, but for an emperor something else is needed.” (G.I. Chulkov)
“Speaking about the reign of Alexander III, it is appropriate to talk not about “counter-reforms”, but about adjusting the state course. The point is not that the emperor wanted to mechanically go back, but that the policy of the 60s was too “running ahead””. (A. Bokhanov)
“Limited, rude and ignorant, Alexander III was a man of extremely reactionary and chauvinistic views. However, in the field of economic policy, he had to reckon with the growth of capitalist elements in the country. (Great Soviet Encyclopedia)
“Alexander III did not have to be portrayed as narrow-minded and stupid, he was a bright personality. Before us is a man who organically fit into the circumstances of his time. He ruled the state surprisingly easily and naturally, while fully aware of the full responsibility of the monarch. The strongest side of his personality is honesty and decency.” (A. Bokhanov)
“Under Alexander III, Russia is experiencing a significant economic upsurge, which was closely related to the strengthening of the position of the private sector and the penetration of Western ideas about free enterprise into Russia. It was a remarkable period in the development of Russian society.” (D. Schimmelpenninck)
2. Assessment of the domestic policy of Alexander III
The new government of Alexander III, taking a fundamentally different course, aroused sharp opposition. The emperor led the fight against revolutionary, socialist, liberal fermentation. It began with universities, where a new charter was put into effect that practically nullified autonomy: rectors were now appointed by the government, they received the right to fire professors, etc. In fact, for any normal-minded student, this is not a fundamental moment, because in universities you have to study - everything else is of secondary importance. But in those days, the autonomy of students and academic councils was a hot topic.
Then new trends touched the press, where certain rearrangements took place and restrictions were introduced. The network of parochial schools began to expand, and at the same time, a system of classical education in the gymnasium was introduced, which did not seem complete to contemporaries, although it played its role, because it contributed to the widespread knowledge of languages among the educated public. Those who managed to comprehend the wisdom of the Greek language and Latin easily coped with living languages.
So, the internal policy of the new emperor can be characterized as conservative. We are very fond of calling this policy reactionary. She was undeniably protective. Alexander III was a very consistent and firm person, he believed that the autocracy is the only system thanks to which the country exists, that the autocracy has a natural ally within the country - the nobility. But other classes could also be allies, which is why he pursued the corresponding policy, which the liberal intelligentsia considered reactionary. The most interesting thing is that it was under this reactionary policy that science, industry, trade (both internal and external) flourished.
What was the reaction? If you look at the history of the socialist parties that are beginning to revive at this time, you will see that there were a lot of them - probably they were not very persecuted. Indeed, radical socialist organizations (like those organized by Lenin's brother Alexander Ulyanov) were crushed and terrorists executed. This again was a reason to blame the government, although the case was absolutely clear.
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