Section 1 - Political Authority + The State of Russia (1855)

• Mid 19th-century Russia was large but economically underdeveloped.
• The ratio of villagers to town dwellers was 11:1.
• 85% of the population were illiterate peasants.
• Serfs belonged to village communes and mirs.
• Serfs could be owned privately or by the state.
• Serfs paid their master through rent and labour.
• Masters could buy, sell and beat their serfs.
• Russia was ruled as an empire in 1855.
• Russia was run by an autocratic Tsar.
• The Tsar was head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
• The Tsar was believed to have possessed semi-divine powers.
• Edicts was law passed by the Tsar and were passed by the Tsar.
• The Tsar could choose his own advisers.
• Alexander II became Tsar in March 1855 when Russia was involved in the Crimean War.
• Britain, France and Turkey had been fighting Russia in the Crimean War since 1853.
• In 1854, Russia lost the battles of Balaclava and Inkerman.
• Russia lost Sevastopol in August 1855 which was a major naval base.
• Russia's final defeat in 1856 highlighted its reliance on serf armies and conscripts and its economic backwardness.
• 45% of Russia's expenditure was spent on the army which suffered from incompetent officers, humiliation and increasing serf uprisings.
• Before serf emancipation, Alexander II had travelled the empire, served on his father's Council of State and led a Serfdom committee.
• Alexander II believed serf emancipation would curb tensions between the peasants and the government and stimulate the economy.
• Alexander II's family and leading bureaucrats believed in the idea of serf emancipation.
• Nicholas and Dmitri Milyutin were bureaucrats who believed in serf emancipation.
• Alexander II had political, economic, moral and intellectual motives behind his reforms.
• Nobility debt occurred after emancipation because nobles shunned business and relied on serfs.
• Declining incomes were a political motive for emancipation.
• A growing serf population and inadequate agriculture caused declining incomes.
• Masters were forced to mortgage and sell serfs as security for loans in order to help declining incomes.
• An inability to move to town factories and internal demands for goods being low prevented reform among peasants.
• Mirs prevented experimentation which prevented reform.
• Rural poverty after emancipation led to a state debt of 54 million roubles.
• Westernisers believed that Russia should abandon serfdom.
• Slavophiles believed that serfdom should only be reformed and that Russia should stay as a traditional peasant society.
• Intellectuals believed that the Russian serfs were treated like animals.
• Nihilists believed that all tradition should be swept away.
• John Gooding in the mid-19th century said Russia "was more backwards now than at the beginning of the century".