In 1855, Alexander II began his reign as Tsar of the Russian Empire and presided over a period of political and social reform, notably the emancipation of serfs in 1861 and the lifting of censorship. His successor Alexander III (r. 1881–1894) pursued a policy of repression and restricted public expenditure, but continued land and labour reforms. This was a period of population growth and significant industrialization, though Russia remained a largely rural country.
Political movements of the time included the Populists (Narodniki), anarchists and Marxists. A revolutionary organization called People's Will (Narodnaya Volya) assassinated Alexander II. Another current of thought was embodied in the Slavophiles, who opposed modernization and Westernization.
Russia continued to expand its empire, occupying the Caucasus, Tashkent and Samarkand. In foreign affairs, the period began with the conclusion of the Crimean War. Russian policy brought it into conflict with other European powers, in particular Austria-Hungary, as it sought to extend influence over the European portions of the receding Ottoman Empire and regain naval access to the Black Sea. This culminated in a successful war with the Ottoman Empire in 1877–1878, followed by the Treaty of San Stefano and Congress of Berlin in 1878 by which an independent Bulgaria came into being and by acquisition of former Ottoman territories in the South Caucasus. Russia joined Germany and Austria-Hungary in the League of the Three Emperors, but friction continued with both partners over Bulgaria. The alliance with Germany came to an end in 1890.
Economic development
Russia's population growth rate from 1850 to 1910 was the fastest of all the major powers except for the United States. Between 1850 and 1900, Russia's population doubled, but it remained chiefly rural well into the twentieth century.
The proclamation law of 1861 freed the peasants from dependence on the landowners and granted them all the land, previously worked by the peasants for their own use. Agriculture remained in the hands of peasants, who together constituted about four-fifths of the rural population, and former landowners. By the end of 19th century, Russia was the largest producer and exporter of cereals in the world. Owing to the development of agriculture, Russia gradually assumed a more important position in the world trade.
Industrial growth was significant, although unsteady, and in absolute terms it was not extensive. Russia's industrial regions included Moscow, the central regions of European Russia, Saint Petersburg, the Baltic cities, Russian Poland, some areas along the lower Don and Dnepr rivers, and the southern Ural Mountains. By 1890 Russia had about 32,000 kilometers of railroads and 1.4 million factory workers, most of whom worked in the textile industry. Between 1860 and 1890, annual coal production had grown about 1,200 percent to over 6.8 million tons, and iron and steel production had more than doubled to 2 million tons per year. The state budget had more than doubled, however, and debt expenditures had quadrupled, constituting 28 percent of official expenditures in 1891.
Reforms and their limits
Tsar Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I in 1855, was a man of a liberal disposition, who saw no alternative but to implement change in the aftermath of the Disastrous performance of the Army, the economy and the government during Crimean War. Alexander initiated substantial reforms in education, the government, the judiciary, and the military.
In 1861 he proclaimed the emancipation of 20 million privately held serfs. Local commissions effected emancipation by giving land and freedom to the serfs. The land allotted to the peasants was bought from the owners with the State's assistance. The government issued bonds to the landowners for this purpose and collected redemption payments from the peasants at the rate of 5% of the total cost yearly. The government had envisioned that the 50,000 former landlords who possessed estates of more than 1.1 km would thrive without serfs and would continue to provide loyal political and administrative leadership in the countryside. The government also had expected that peasants would produce sufficient crops for their own consumption and for export sales, thereby helping to finance most of the government's expenses, imports, and foreign debt.
Reforms of local government closely followed emancipation. In 1864 most local government in the European part of Russia was organized into provincial and district elected self-government (zemstvos), which were made up of representatives of all classes and were responsible for local schools, public health, roads, prisons, food supply, and other concerns. In 1870 elected city councils, or duma, were formed. Dominated by property owners and constrained by provincial governors and the police, the zemstva and duma raised taxes and levied labor to support their activities.
In 1864 Alexander II implemented the great judicial reform. In major towns, it established courts with juries. In general, the judicial system functioned effectively, but the government lacked the finances and cultural influence to extend the court system to the villages, where traditional peasant justice continued to operate with minimal interference from provincial officials. The Russian judicial system was modelled after contemporary French and German law. Each case had to be decided on its merits and not on precedents. This approach remained in place ever since.
Other major reforms took place in the educational and cultural spheres. Censorship, which had stifled opinion under Nicholas, was greatly relaxed, and public opinion found a voice. This greatly facilitated the government's effort to eradicate corruption, red tape and inefficiency. Universities had gained autonomy. The Government encouraged education: it was during Alexander's reign that the education of the peasant masses started on a vast scale. The central government attempted to act through the zemstva to establish uniform curricula for elementary schools.
In the financial sphere, Russia established the State Bank in 1866, which put the national currency on a firmer footing. The Ministry of Finance supported railroad development, which facilitated vital export activity, but it was cautious and moderate in its foreign ventures. The ministry also founded the Peasant Land Bank in 1882 to enable enterprising farmers to acquire more land. The Ministry of Internal Affairs countered this policy, however, by establishing the Nobles' Land Bank in 1885 to forestall foreclosures of mortgages.
The reform of the military service (1874) was the last of the principal reforms in Alexander's II reign. The Franco-Prussian War demonstrated the necessity of building a modern army. The old system of long term service (25 years) for a limited number of recruits was abandoned, as being too heavy a burden for the people and as providing practically no reserves. The new conscription system, which provided for a short term of active service followed by several years in the reserve, was introduced by Dmitry Milyutin in 1874. It was drawn on democratic lines, calling to the colours all young men of 21 without distinction of class. Exemption was only granted to young men who were the sole breadwinners of their families. It also gave the army a role in teaching many peasants to read and in pioneering medical education for women.
Alexander's far reaching policy, however, did not bring political peace to Russia. In 1881 revolutionaries assassinated Alexander II.
His son Alexander III (r. 1881–1894) initiated a period of political counterreform. He strengthened the security police, reorganizing it into an agency known as the Okhrana, gave it extraordinary powers, and placed it under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Dmitriy Tolstoy, Alexander's minister of internal affairs, instituted the use of land captains, who were noble overseers of districts, and he restricted the power of the zemstvos and the dumas. Alexander III assigned his former tutor, conservative Konstantin Pobedonostsev, to be the procurator of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church and Ivan Delyanov to be the minister of education. In their attempts to "save" Russia from "modernism," they revived religious censorship, persecuted non-Orthodox and non-Russian populations, fostered anti-Semitism, and suppressed the autonomy of the universities. Their attacks on liberal and non-Russian elements alienated large segments of the population. The nationalities, particularly Poles, Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, reacted to the regime's efforts to Russify them by intensifying their own nationalism. Many Jews emigrated or joined radical movements. Secret organizations and political movements continued to develop despite the regime's efforts to quell them.
Alexander III put strict economizing into practice; the civil list of the Imperial family was reduced, and estimates for the army, navy and civil service were cut down considerably. This allowed the introduction of a series of financial reforms which tended to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry: the poll tax was abolished in 1886, a law was passed to accelerate legal transfer of the land allotted to the peasants in 1861, the payments due from them for this land were greatly reduced, Crown lands were made available for leasing or purchase to the peasants on advantageous terms, and great stretches of Crown lands in Eastern Russia and Siberia were opened for peasant emigration and resettlement.
Labour legislation was first introduced in 1882 with the creation of the inspectorate of factories (in charge of health and life saving regulations), the regulation of working hours and the limitation of female and juvenile labor.
Alexander's financial reforms prepared the way for the introduction of gold standard, which was carried out in the first years of his successor's reign (1897). He also continued a policy of intensive railway building. Here the greatest event was the laying down of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1891.
During the second half of the 19th century, a faction of so-called "Slavophiles" emerged in intellectual circles. They were convinced that Peter the Great had made a mistake in trying to modernize and Westernize the country and that Russia's salvation lay in the rejection of Western ideas. Slavophiles believed that while the West polluted itself with science, atheism, materialism, and wealth, they should return to a simple peasant-based society centered on the Orthodox faith. The government rejected these ideas since it felt the need for rapid modernization.
It followed that Russia, despite being a polyglot empire with dozens of nationalities and languages, was anything but friendly to the nationalistic aspirations of minorities. Poles fared especially badly since they had been enemies for centuries and because they had revolted in 1830 and 1863. As Russian industrialization progressed, Poland fared quite well, but other areas like Ukraine remained backward, a problem worsened by the clumsy land reforms of Alexander II. Jews in Russia proper and Ukraine were subject to bad (and worsening) discrimination, especially since they were associated with either Poles or with revolutionary movements. Most of the latter were also highly nationalistic and oblivious to the minority problem. Even the Bolsheviks were clueless until after they had taken power in 1917.
Despite industrialization, Russia was still overwhelmingly rural and backward at the start of World War I. Moscow and Saint Petersburg were the only cities with any significant industry. Since most workers were fresh off the farm and totally uneducated, the main impetus of revolution came from middle-class college graduates frustrated at the inefficiency of Russian society.