Reforms

Dmitry Milyutin, an enlightened minister of war from 1861 to 1881, carried out an extensive series of reforms affecting nearly every branch of the Russian military organisation. The educative role of military service was underlined by a marked improvement of military schools. The army statute of 1874 introduced conscription for the first time, making young men of all classes liable to military service. That is the face this page may open on: a brother of Nikolay Milyutin, like him a liberal in Britannica’s account, and a man whose work came after the village had been told it was free. The last article closed on redemption and a commune collecting tax. This page is the overhaul that followed the abolition of serfdom. Russia’s archaic administrative institutions could not be left as they were once the landlord’s police power had been broken.

A new system of elected assemblies at the provincial and county levels was introduced in 1864. These assemblies, known as zemstvos, were elected by all classes including the peasants, although the landowning nobility had a disproportionately large share of both the votes and the seats. The zemstvos were empowered to levy taxes and to spend their funds on schools, public health, roads, and other social services, but their scope was limited by the fact that they also had to spend money on some of the tasks of the central government. Generally dominated by the nobility, they nevertheless expanded the network of elementary schools, constructed roads, provided health care, and instructed the peasantry in agricultural techniques. Before long zemstvo village schools powerfully supported the spread of rural literacy. Alexander’s life puts the same assemblies in 1864 and calls their gradual introduction an extension of self-government that brought the first rays of enlightenment to the villages.

In 1864 a major judicial reform was completed. Russia received a system of law courts based on European models, with irremovable judges and a proper system of courts of appeal. Justices of the peace, elected by the county zemstvos, were instituted for minor offences. A properly organised, modern legal profession now arose, and it soon achieved very high standards. The old system of endless delays and judicial corruption rapidly disappeared. There were, however, two important gaps. The Ministry of the Interior had power, regardless of the courts, to banish persons whom it regarded as politically dangerous. The courts for settling disputes between peasants were maintained and operated on the basis of peasant custom. Their institution by Kiselev in the 1840s had been a well-intentioned reform; their continuation after emancipation meant that the peasants were still regarded as something less than full citizens. The most crying abuses of the old judicial system were remedied. Equality before a European-style bench was not yet a peasant’s everyday fact.

Nikolai Yaroshenko painted a kursistka, a woman student, in 1883. Later urban oil, not a zemstvo minute. Use it for the educated layer the reforms made room for, then return to 1864. A coat on a street is not a judicial statute.

In 1870 the main cities of Russia were given elected municipal government on a very narrow franchise. The keynote of these reforms — and there were many lesser ones affecting various aspects of Russian life — was the modernisation of Russia, its release from feudalism, and acceptance of Western culture and technology. Their aim and results were the reduction of class privilege, humanitarian progress, and economic development. The thaw of the accession had already released prisoners and opened foreign travel. The statutes of the 1860s and 1870s tried to give the empire offices that could stand beside those of the countries that had beaten it in Crimea. Offices are not a constitution. The distinction is the argument of this page.

During the first years of Alexander II’s reign there was some demand from a liberal section of the nobility for representative government at the national level — not for full parliamentary rule, still less for a democratic suffrage, but for some sort of consultative assembly in which public issues could be debated and which could put before the emperor the views of at least the educated section of the Russian people. The tsar and his bureaucrats refused. Constitutional reform looked like a slippery slope toward the disintegration of state and empire and toward class war between landowners and peasants. The principle of autocracy must remain sacred. That was the view not only of bureaucrats but of men such as Nikolay Milyutin and Yury Samarin, both of whom rested their hopes for progressive reforms on the unfettered power of the emperor. Their attitude was essentially that of Pavel Stroganov at the beginning of the century: the sovereign must not have his arms tied.

The decision against a national assembly in the early 1860s was a negative event of the greatest importance. It deprived Russia of the possibility of public political education such as existed, for example, in contemporary Prussia. It deprived the government of the services of hundreds of talented men. Peter’s chapter in this book built colleges and a table of ranks. This chapter built zemstvos and a bar. Neither built a parliament. Alexander’s life is explicit: he was convinced of Russia’s unreadiness for constitutional or representative government. Practical experience — Poland, leaflets, a shot in 1866 — would only strengthen the conviction. Those events are the next title’s weather. This title needs the refusal as the ceiling over every statute it names.

Keep 19 February’s redemption out of this page except as the broken landlord police that made new offices necessary. Keep People’s Will out of it. Keep Witte’s gold rouble out of it. Reforms here are 1864 twice — zemstvo and judiciary — 1870 in the towns, 1874 in the army, literacy in village schools, irremovable judges, a profession of lawyers, and a crown that would not be tied. Readers who want the youth who went to the people will find them under Revolutionaries. Readers who want furnaces and foreign capital will find them under Industrialization. This article’s last job is to hand them a modernising autocracy that had rebuilt local government and still had no national hall in which to argue.

The empire learned to elect a county assembly and to trust an irremovable judge. It would not elect a parliament.

Myasoyedov’s dining zemstvo already hung in Catherine’s last article as a later warning. Do not hang it here. This page’s zemstvo is 1864 as Britannica dates it: taxes, schools, health, a noble majority, a liberal influence that would later agitate for constitutional reform. That later agitation is 1904–05, not this decade. Stop short of it. The professional experts the assemblies hired — teachers, doctors, statisticians — would become a political fact in the 1890s. Name the hiring. Do not smuggle 1905 into 1864. Milyutin’s conscription made young men of all classes liable. That is a reduction of class privilege in a uniform. It is not a Duma.

Do not invent a zemstvo debate. Do not invent the text of the judicial statute beyond European models, irremovable judges, appeal courts, justices of the peace, and the two gaps. Do not invent a franchise number for 1870 beyond a very narrow one. Do not invent Milyutin’s table talk. The army statute’s date is 1874. The municipal date is 1870. The twin 1864s are local government and law. Those four dates, plus the refused national assembly, are the skeleton. Flesh them with the literacy and the bar, not with invented speeches.

The previous title’s commune collected. This title’s zemstvo spent, under limits, on schools and roads. The peasant remained, in custom courts, something less than a full citizen. The political police could still banish without a bench. Modernisation here is real and incomplete. Alexander had thawed punishments and travel. He would not thaw the principle of the crown. The next youth would read that incompleteness as a licence to conspire. This page should remain statutes and a refusal, with a student in a coat as a later emblem of the education the zemstvos had begun to pay for.

Nikolay Kasatkin painted a district-court corridor in 1897: waiting, not a facsimile of the 1864 statute. Later genre of a bench’s anteroom, painted a generation after irremovable judges were promised. Use it for the idea of a court the empire now claimed to possess, then put it aside. A corridor is not an irremovable judge. It is where law had an address and still left the Interior Ministry free to banish persons it called politically dangerous, and left peasants in custom courts Kiselev had invented in the 1840s.

Stop this page before 1866’s shot and before hundreds of students walked into villages. The next title is revolutionaries. Reforms here are zemstvo, bench, town, conscription, literacy, a legal profession, and no national assembly. Milyutin’s portrait is the army’s moderniser. Yaroshenko’s student is the educated afterlife. Kasatkin’s corridor is the court that still shared the empire with a police that could exile without a trial. Catherine had spoken of law and written no code. This emperor wrote statutes and kept the autocracy. That is the Great Reforms as this book can tell them without stealing the bombs.

Paul had recentralised local government and died for his trouble. Nicholas had preferred secret committees. This reign elected counties and still would not elect a nation. The village had been unbound as property and bound as a payer. The zemstvo was asked to civilise it. The army was asked to school it. The courts were asked to look like France. The municipal statute of 1870 asked towns to govern themselves on a very narrow franchise. The crown remained the crown. Stroganov’s old fear — that the sovereign must not have his arms tied — was still the ceiling. That is enough for this title. The youth who found the incompleteness intolerable have another name, and another page.