Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

  The reform of the peasantry in the Baltic provinces took effect from 1816 to 1819. It began in June 1816 with an imperial ukase that gave personal freedom to Estonian peasants, a decision requested by the local nobility, who had rallied to the example given by Prussia in 1807 and was convinced that serfdom was economic nonsense and that tax revenue would benefit from including free peasants. However, land ownership was not granted to the latter; and for many peasants, that individual freedom, while fundamental on a social and political level (it would be the source of deep changes that appeared over the decades and fostered the emergence of nationalist feelings within the peasantry),71 did not, economically speaking, make any concrete improvement in their living conditions. A year later Alexander tried to enlarge this reform to Ukraine and other Baltic provinces. It failed in Ukraine for in fertile regions requiring manpower landowners were opposed to any change. But the nobility of Latvia and Livonia did support the proposal, and in these regions serfdom was abolished in 1817 and 1819, to the great satisfaction of Alexander, who publicly declared, “I am glad that the nobility has justified my expectations. Your example is worthy of being emulated. You have acted in the spirit of the times and understand that only liberal principles can be the basis of the people’s happiness.”72 In parallel, as early as 1816 the emperor asked Kochubey to work on a general reform of serfdom; but the latter’s conclusions, handed over in 1817, strongly disappointed the tsar’s expectations.73 The peasant condition was described accurately, but no concrete procedure was envisaged to relieve it. Alexander did not give up his plan, however, and a few months later he ordered 12 senior civil servants (among them Count Guriev, minister of finance, Admiral Mordvinov from the state council, Balugiansky, rector of the University of St. Petersburg, and more surprisingly, Arakcheev) to each draft a plan to liberate the serfs of Russia. Most of the plans advocated the principle of gradual emancipation of the serfs, which would be achieved with a compensation for owners; for example, in February 1818 Arakcheev proposed creating a commission that would have an annual subsidy of five million rubles to buy, partially or totally, the goods and serfs of owners who were ready to sell. By means of this commission, the government would adopt the premise of a buyback founded on the free decision by owners; here we find again an idea to which Alexander was very attached, i.e., reform based on voluntary action. Finally, Balugiansky’s plan intended that peasants with state support should become owners of only a portion of the lands of the nobility.

  The years from 1816 to 1819 were thus effervescent ones, in which the issue of abolition of serfdom was examined in a resolute way at the summit of the state. But these various projects led to nothing concrete: Alexander still maintained that reform should not be imposed on owners but rather negotiated with them and implemented with their agreement. But the vast majority of the nobility, impoverished by the destruction caused by the war of 1812, was incapable of consenting; even more than in 1801, it remained viscerally attached to the current socioeconomic order—and made this known when the first rumors of reform started to spread. It was this bitter realization that led Alexander to give up experimenting with these various projects and gradually to give priority to the organization of military colonies.

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  After the war the Russian army was numerically very reduced, and the state budget was considerably more meager—it seemed barely able to support its regiments. At the same time the tsar (who had rendered homage to his troops in his August 1814 ukase) wanted to shorten the duration of service (25 years at the time) by giving soldiers the prospect of a return to normal life. But how could this goal be achieved with the diminished financial means?

  A plan for military colonies had appeared back in 1809–1810, but the war had interrupted any development, and by 1812 only one single colony had been established, located between Smolensk and Minsk. In the army’s context of penury, the idea was reactivated in 1816 and would become the object of the tsar’s attention, even obsession. Several influences were at work in this fascination. First, the more or less conscious model was the familiar example of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, who as peasant soldiers had been integrated into the empire in the seventeenth century. Then there was the tsar’s reading of writings by the French General Servan, in particular a small work called Citizen Soldier, or Patriotic Views on the Best Way of Providing Defense of the Realm74 that developed the idea of a “farmer-soldier.” To support the costly maintenance of armies in peacetime, Servan said, soldiers had to be turned into farmers by combining work on the land with military training. Working the land would allow them to become self-sufficient—and no longer a drain on the state budget; once their years of service were over, older soldiers would receive bits of land and thus become landowners who could transmit their skills to their successors. This utopia had everything to seduce the tsar: in the short term it offered a solution to the cost of maintaining an army, and in the long term it proclaimed the generous goal of enabling veterans to provide for themselves. In the Russian context, this latter point assumed particular resonance: by giving bits of land to farmer-soldiers, the state would gradually transform into free and landowning peasants those who as serfs had enrolled in the army against their will. This avenue interested Alexander because it would contribute to liberating the serfs over time.

  On top of this theoretical influence came the practical example provided by the Prussian General Scharnhorst. In order to overcome restrictions imposed on the Prussian army by the Treaty of Tilsit, he had established the Landwehr, a reserve army in disguise. Every soldier had to serve three years actively, and after that he became a farmer, while remaining subject to military obligations, which were heavy for five years and then lighter for seven more. Finally, a fourth source of inspiration was the military colonies set up in Austria that Alexander had visited in 1814 during his trip to Vienna. Fascinated by this mode of organization, in January 1815 he asked Arakcheev to develop a plan for military colonies. At first the latter was skeptical because he thought peasants were resistant to any change and would be hostile to the new system; he also stressed the need to offer guarantees to the military colonists, specifically the full ownership of their land and their homes, exemption from all taxes, and free education for their children guaranteed by the state.75 Moreover, Barclay de Tolly in a memorandum dated 1817 thought such a system was inefficient for the army since the peasants would not be free to organize their working time as they should be to obtain maximum efficiency; moreover, soldiers in contact with villagers would be incapable of offering them effective help and would soon be considered parasites.76 Alas, the tsar ignored the reservations of his war minister, and in August 1816 a thousand grenadiers taken from a regiment of Arakcheev were transferred to the Vysotsk district in the province of Novgorod to become the first military colony. In the requisitioned villages peasants were to divide their time between the farm work necessary to support their families and the military duties that they would practice alongside regimental soldiers settled there, at a rate of three days a week in winter and two in summer. Under the personal control of Arakcheev, who created a separate corps for military colonies, everything was codified to the smallest detail, from the dimensions and geometric arrangement of shops, depots, sawmills, flour mills, and the houses of colonists to the operation and furnishing of hospitals, nurseries, and schools, right down to everybody’s use of time, programmed almost hour by hour. Everything in this utopia was subject to precise regulation, governed by the state. Cleanliness and hygiene were at the fore, and peasants were summoned to rise at four in the morning to work on the land before going to military exercises; after 1817 they even had a uniform to wear while working in the fields. In the months following this first experiment, the system of military colonies was extended to other provinces, and gradually almost 400,000 men were involved, or a third of the ranks of the Russian army. Everywhere the same scenario was produced: the establishment of any regiment in the district transformed all the peasants of the district in
to soldiers divided into companies, battalions, and squadrons; they formed reserve units that were supposed to work concurrently in the fields and devote themselves to military exercises. On the accounting level the military colonies were a great success: well administered and managed, by 1824 they had amassed a capital of 26 million rubles and were able to grant loans at low rates of interest to their officers;77 this flourishing state contrasted with the army’s deficit in 1815. But on the human level things were quite otherwise. The pernickety regulations made the life of the peasants, who were deprived of any privacy, almost unbearable. Marriages were imposed: at the age of seven, sons were enrolled in the battalions of road builders, where they remained until the age of 12, before working on the land until 18. As adults, they were in turn integrated into the regiment of their district—for service lasting 25 years! The modern and progressive institution of which Alexander had dreamed in order to relieve peasant conditions thus evolved into a terrible coercive institution that was hated by the people. Starting in 1817 desertions and complaints multiplied. Charlotte, the young wife of Grand Duke Nicholas, would later write in her memoirs:

  They talked a lot about the military colonies set up a year before. The emperor had the idea, but the execution was entrusted to Arakcheev, who did not do it gently but on the contrary with hard and cruel measures that made the poor peasants discontented. Going about, we found here and there the residents of some villages on their knees, imploring us that their traditional way of life not be changed.78

  Two years later, in 1820, in a report sent to the French minister of foreign affairs, the Count de la Ferronnays, ambassador in St. Petersburg, was very severe about the military colony system, attacking the person he (wrongly) considered as the instigator in this affair—for Arakcheev was merely the overly zealous executor of Alexander’s wishes:

  Full of haughtiness and pride toward everybody, treacherous and bilious, a despot by character, hard and false, with no regard for his subordinates, he is hated by all; the universal sentiment can only be held in check by the fear he inspires—such is the portrait of the author of the military colonizations. This plan itself bears the imprint of the despotic character of the person who conceived the idea.79

  Highly unpopular both among the peasantry and in the army, the military colonies soon aroused unrest and revolts in the Ukrainian province of Sloboba in 1818 and in Chuguyev in southern Russia a year later. But Alexander, like Arakcheev, remained deaf to this manifest disaster. Uprisings were punished with unprecedented cruelty. In August 1819, after the rebellion in Chuguyev in which almost 28,000 peasants rose to demand the abolition of the colonies, a military tribunal made 2,003 arrests and condemned 363 people, including 275 to the death penalty.80 These executions were commuted by the “magnanimity” of Arakcheev, but the 12,000 strokes in the gauntlet caused frightful suffering and killed 160 of those condemned. However, Alexander did not criticize this cruelty, so important was it to him that the enterprise be successful, whatever the human cost. In 1819 this terrible repression sounded the death knell of the aspirations and confidence of the people in their tsar. By this date his image was no longer that of a “blessed” emperor, but already like Paul I, that of a cruel and stubborn despot.

  CHAPTER 14

  Russian Diplomacy in the “European System”

  1815–1825

  In 1815 Alexander had been the indisputable vanquisher of Napoleon, and he aspired to a renovation of international relations. He thought if they were entrusted to divine Providence, they would bring forth fraternity and bestow upon the European continent a kind of development that would be harmonious and peaceful. As an idealist the tsar advocated a philosophy of history that made the various states and peoples of Europe the children of one single Christian family: he enjoined them to work for peace and solidarity in the name of divine commandment. Thus, beyond the strictly religious message he delivered, the tsar invited the European sovereigns in 1815 to radically new diplomatic practice, founded on law and morality. However, in barely a few years these aspirations collapsed and initial hopes evaporated. While the European theater was no longer the sole focus for Russian diplomacy and other horizons were appearing, the tsar’s initial goal of erecting a Christian fraternity as a principle of government was undermined by the skepticism of other members of the European system. Little by little, the Holy Alliance was instead transmuted into an instrument of repression.

  Toward an Enlargement of the Russian Diplomatic Sphere

  While Alexander’s personal participation in the Congress of Vienna illustrated the crucial importance of European issues in Russian diplomacy in 1814–1815, this predominance tended to give way in the following decade. Of course it was not challenged—Europe remained the main object of Russian diplomatic preoccupations—but other centers of interest appeared, leading to organizational changes in the diplomatic apparatus.

  The campaigns of 1813–1814, which had been disapproved of by Chancellor Rumyantsev (for reasons similar to those of Rostopchin and Kutuzov), put an end to the career of the minister of foreign affairs. For Rumyantsev, the interests of Russia did not mean pursuing any offensive beyond the imperial borders and the country should now return to its domestic concerns, should exploit the recently annexed territories, and should privilege its diplomatic relations with immediate neighbors: the Ottoman Empire, Persia, China. But in those years the tsar was focused on his dream of a European renovation and did not pay attention to this argument; he relieved Rumyantsev of his functions in August 1814 and replaced him with Count Nesselrode, already secretary of state at foreign affairs, who was promoted to full minister of foreign affairs in August 1816. He was assisted by Kapodistrias as secretary of state. The two men divided up the tasks: Nesselrode took the lead in Russian general diplomacy and European questions, while Kapodistrias was responsible for relations with the Ottoman Empire and the integration of Bessarabia into the empire. They each had a chancellery, and twice a week they made a joint report to the emperor. But in 1822 Kapodistrias would resign and Nesselrode would be sole master of foreign affairs.

  May 1816 saw the creation of an “Asiatic department” on the site of the “college” founded by Paul I. Now directed by Constantine Rodofinikin, a specialist who would occupy the post until 1837, the department had two sections: one to deal with Ottoman, Persian, and Georgian affairs and relations with the mountain peoples of the north Caucasus, and the other to deal with the khanates of Khiva, Kokand, and Bukhara. Of modest size—about ten people worked there at most—the Asiatic department attests to the imperial will to know the Orient better and to increase the Russian presence there. This same goal motivated the foundation in 1820 of the Asiatic Committee, which included people from various ministries (finance, interior), the military chief of staff, and (after 1821) the new governor-general of Siberia, Mikhail Speransky, now back in favor. This Asiatic Committee was supposed to consider means of developing the Russian Empire’s political and commercial relations with khanates of Khiva and Bukhara and the countries of the Far East, principally China. In June 1823 the Asiatic department created a section for teaching Oriental languages, designed to train future diplomats for the Ottoman Empire and Persia. To organize this school, the empire called on two well-known French Orientalists, Jean-François Demange and François Charmois, who began to teach six future diplomats the Turkish, Arabic, and Persian languages.

  These institutional changes reflected a growing interest in the Caucasus and Central Asia, whether as strategic zones recently integrated into the Russian Empire or as regions situated on its immediate periphery.

  Indeed, in the wake of the conquests between 1801 and 1804,1 then of the wars conducted against the Ottoman Empire and Persia, the Russian Empire had consolidated its military and diplomatic presence in the Caucasus. By the Treaty of Bucharest with the Ottoman Empire in May 1812, Russia had annexed Georgia and also acquired Bessarabia, a region of 50,000 square kilometers (today Moldavia), predominantly populated by Rumanian speakers of Or
thodox tradition, plus a minority of Christian Orthodox Turks. Finally, that same treaty confirmed previously acquired Russian rights over the Danube principalities of Moldavia and Walachia dating from 1774. This point is crucial: by giving Russia a specific right over Christian peoples of the Ottoman Empire, the treaty conferred on the Russian Empire a privilege that it shared with no other great power on the European continent. To better assure continuity of foreign policy toward the Ottoman Empire, the tsar counted on the stability of his personnel, and in fact, ambassadors there succeeded each other less often than in other capitals. In 24 years only two men directed the embassy in Istanbul: Andrey Italinsky (1801–1816), a doctor in medicine from the University of London, who entered a diplomatic career by chance and became a connoisseur of Ottoman domestic and foreign issues. He was succeeded by Gregory Stroganov, cousin of Paul Stroganov, who was a diplomat by training and had been a brilliant ambassador in Spain (1805–1810) and then in Sweden (1812–1816), where he played an important role as intermediary between Alexander and Bernadotte. In 1816 his talents and experience naturally raised him to succeed Italinsky.

  In parallel, the Treaty of Gulistan with Persia (1813) confirmed Russian advances in the Caucasus; Persia recognized the annexation of Georgia, as well as the Russian takeover of Dagestan and the north of Azerbaijan, including several key towns such as Baku and Derbent. So the treaty effectively ended Persian influence over the region to the benefit of Russia. Moreover, there was a clear military dimension in Russian expansion. Named commander in chief of the Russian armies of the Caucasus and Georgia in 1816, General Ermolov was placed at the head of 50,000 well-armed men and led punitive expeditions against the northern Caucasian peoples who refused subjection to the Russian Empire and thus formed a pocket of resistance inside Russia. He erected several fortified bases—the most important was Grozny in 1818—and annexed the region of Sirvan2 in 1820 and then Karabagh in 1822. Ermolov also held diplomatic roles: in 1817 he was promoted to ambassador extraordinaire to the court of the Shah, charged with obtaining the agreement of Fath Ali Shah for the establishment of Russian consulates in frontier towns and winning him over into an alliance against the Ottoman Empire. He failed in both these missions, however.