ABSTRACT

Nicholas I (1825-55), known as the 'the policeman of Europe', personified the inability or unwillingness of the tsarist order to reform itself. In Nicholas's view, freedom for the Uniate Church, with its ties to Western culture and education, diminished Russia's claim to be the Third Rome and opened the door to independence as an alternative to subordination for the Russian Orthodox Church. After brutally putting down the rebellion, Nicholas gave Siemaszko broad powers over the Uniate Church to prepare it for merger with the Russian Orthodox Church. Nicholas was also forceful against the Latin Catholics. The official anti-Catholicism of the Russian government after the crushing of the Polish rebellion in 1830-31 actually led some Russian intellectuals to study Catholicism more closely to try to understand the difference between the Poles, the West and the Russians. Alexander II (1855-81), who took power in the wake of Russia's defeat in the Crimean War, was neither a decisive nor burning reformer.