Russia in the Nineteenth Century: Autocracy, Reform, and Social Change, 1814-1914Routledge, 2015 M02 12 - 304 pages This is a comprehensive interpretive history of Russia from the defeat of Napoleon to the eve of World War I. It is the first such work by a post-Soviet Russian scholar to appear in English. Drawing on the latest Russian and Western historical scholarship, Alexander Polunov examines the decay of the two central institutions of tsarist Russia: serfdom and autocracy. Polunov explains how the major social groups - the gentry, merchants, petty townspeople, peasants, and ethnic minorities - reacted to the Great Reforms, and why, despite the emergence of a civil society and capitalist institutions, a reformist, evolutionary path did not become an alternative to the Revolution of 1917. He provides detailed portraits of many tsarist bureaucrats and political reformers, complete with quotations from their writings, to explain how the principle of autocracy, although significantly weakened by the Great Reforms in mid-century, reasserted itself under the last two emperors. Polunov stresses the relevance, for Russians in the post-Soviet period, of issues that remained unresolved in the pre-Revolutionary period, such as the question of private property in land and the relationship between state regulation and private initiative in the economy. |
Contents
3 | |
1 On the Path to Reform | 27 |
2 A Time of External Slavery and Internal Freedom | 51 |
3 A Colossus with Feet of Clay | 69 |
4 The End of Serfdom | 87 |
Sources and Consequences | 110 |
6 Russias Economy and Finances after the Emancipation of the Serfs | 125 |
From Thaw to Regicide | 139 |
8 Russia and the World 18561900 | 156 |
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abolition of serfdom activities administration Aleksandr Alexander Alexander Herzen Alexander II Alexander's assemblies Austria-Hungary authorities autocracy Balkans became began Black Hundreds conservative counter-reform country's courts created Crimean Crimean War Decembrists declared Dmitry Duma economic emancipation emperor enlightened bureaucrats Europe European Finance forces foreign France gentry government's Herzen historians Imperial Russia industrial influence institutions intelligentsia Internal Affairs Istoriia Rossii Kievan Rus Konstantin Konstantin Kavelin labor land landowners liberal Loris-Melikov manifesto ment Mikhail Mikhail Pogodin military Miliutin minister of internal Ministry Moscow movement Nicholas Nicholas's Nikolai nobility nobles Octobrists officials peasant reform percent Petersburg Petr Pobedonostsev population principles provinces radical railroad reign representatives Reutern revolution revolutionary rubles Russia Russian Empire Russian history Russian society self-government serfdom serfs Sergei Slavic Slavophiles social and political social estates Soviet Stolypin tion tsar twentieth century uprising Western Witte workers wrote Zakharova zemstvo