ABSTRACT
During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, under the rule of the brilliant but unstable Alexander I, Russia had suffered from alternative doses of enlightenment and reaction. Nicholas I, who succeeded him, had applied to his vast dominions a rule of stern repression and carried out his system with gigantic energy. It was a system summed up in the three words orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality. During 1848-49 his methods seemed justified, for his peoples remained quiet and his army could leave his own dominions to repress revolution in Hungary. But they had alienated important classes. People educated in the Universities were acquainted with the philosophy (e.g. of Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher) and literature. the histories and natural science, the economics and technological progress of the west. They were able to study abroad and came back open-minded and critical. Nor were attempts of the bureaucracy to control the Universities, their entrants, curricula and appointments, successful. Such attempts were stimulants to criticism rather than effective restraints. Young men finishing at the Universities, unless they had estates to manage and were prepared to manage them, or could and would gain admission to the upper ranks of the civil service, or would go into the army, could make contact neither with the state machine nor with the peasants. Russian socialism was born among the gentry in Nicholas I's reign. It attracted, however, educated men from many groups: doctors, lawyers, writers, journalists and University teachers. An alienated intelligentsia had already formed in the thirties and forties before Herzen grew out of his twenties. Alexander Herzen (1812-70) and his circle were of the first generation. He was perhaps to the left of V. Belinski and to the right of Michael Bakunin, to mention only two other names. Herzen was arrested and exiled in 1834. In 1847 he emigrated to the west and like Bakunin became a major revolutionary figure. The radical intelligentsia were revolutionaries with dreams of realising human individuality by social revolution and less concerned with civil rights in practical terms. But there were other educated Russians alienated from the regime. The westernisers were inspired by the French Revolution with ideas of personal freedom, civil liberty and representative institutions for Russia. The slavophils wanted in Russia freedom, civil liberty and universal education, but had no wish to imitate the west. Russia should rely on her own traditions and cultivate her own strong sense of community. This last they believed was the most distinctive feature
of Russian life. They wanted, not western parliaments, but a revival of the popular consultative assemblies which had once existed in Russia. The Crimean War revealed the true weakness of Russia. Nicholas's loyalty to those who served him gave him in the end mediocre generals and inefficient administrators. The discredit of the Russian Government earned in the Crimean War drove Nicholas to his death (1855) and his system to an abrupt end.
