ABSTRACT
The autocratic, bureaucratic and serfdom-based monarchy created by Peter the Great and Catherine II aroused dissatisfaction among the peasants, among the intelligentsia who were born at the end of the eighteenth century, and sometimes even within the government itself. In 1815 when Russia annexed the Polish territory, forming the “Polish Tsardom” which included ten provinces, Alexander I granted Poland a liberal constitution and expressed his intention to spread this system of representative institutions to all lands under his power. In 1820 Alexander I commissioned his friend and collaborator Nikolai Novosiltsev to draft a constitution for Russia, which was called the “State Constitutional Document.” The distinctive feature of Novosiltsev’s document was its federal character. The events of 1820–1821 in Russia and abroad frightened Emperor Alexander I, and he abandoned his constitutional plans for Russia.
