ABSTRACT
The decade following the Crimean War saw the most dramatic social and institutional upheaval that the Empire had ever undergone. Central to the so-called 'Great Reforms' of the period was the abolition of serfdom. Peasant protest had reached a level which led Soviet historians to identify the period as Russia's first revolutionary situation. Soviet historians regarded the revolutionaries of Alexander's reign as the authentic, if Utopian, spokesmen of the peasantry, and their Bolshevik heirs as effectively fused with the proletariat. Euphoria over the government's commitment to emancipation had created a short-lived hope that the Tsar might carry through a major redistribution of wealth. The Tsar's support for emancipation must be understood within the broader context of the State's role in a serf-based society. Earlier attempts to defuse the Polish problem, including a more generous form of emancipation designed to detach the peasantry from the nationalist nobility, gave way to reliance on force majeure and an aggressive policy of Russification.
