The Reform Not Taken

1811: An Essay That Shook the Tsar

in march 1811, Tsar Alexander I arrived in Tver, where his sister Yekaterina Pavlovna lived. The renowned writer Nikolai Karamzin was also there. By then Karamzin was already celebrated for his stories and verse, first and foremost Poor Liza (Бедная Лиза), the tale of a peasant girl’s tragic love for a nobleman by the name of Erast. The Liza of the title drowns herself, unable to endure the prospect of life without her lover, who had heartlessly abandoned her. Countless readers shed tears over Liza’s plight and echoed Karamzin’s famous words, “Even peasant girls are capable of love.”

Karamzin proved to be not only an outstanding writer, but also a talented publisher. His journal, European Herald (Вестник Европы), enjoyed great popularity. However, several years prior to 1811, Karamzin had given up belles lettres and publishing, left St. Petersburg, and settled down in his estate outside Moscow to devote himself to what would eventually turn into his twelve-volume History of the Russian State.

The tsar knew all about this. He had a great deal of fondness and respect for Karamzin, and the feeling was mutual. If monarchs can, in principle, have friends, then Alexander and Karamzin were friends. When the writer was living in St. Petersburg, he often spent his summers in Tsarskoe Selo, where he and the tsar spent many a morning walking together in the park, engaged in frank discussion. Naturally, they were glad to see one another in Tver. They spent a long time in conversation, and Karamzin read the tsar excerpts from his History. Everything seemed to be just fine.

But when Alexander was preparing to retire to his room, his sister handed him a notebook. It contained another piece of writing by Karamzin, one that he had taken time away from his History to compose. It was entitled, Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia and had been written at the request of Yekaterina Pavlovna. Instead of returning it to its author, upon reading it the Grand Princess had locked it in her desk. Now the notebook was handed to her most august brother. The next morning Alexander showed up at breakfast in the darkest of moods. Barely a word was spoken to Karamzin and the tsar departed without saying goodbye. The Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia had had a powerful effect, in fact it very well may have altered the course of Russian history.

These were years when an amazing star, Mikhail Speransky, shone brightly on the political horizon. Speransky had achieved a remarkable ascent. He was the son of a priest, and in Russian society, with its rigid soslovia (estate) system, someone in his position would generally limit his aspirations to a career in the clergy. However Speransky, endowed with a great mind and talent, managed to climb to the very highest echelons of the government. By the early years of Alexander’s reign he was so well-known for competence and diligence that ministers were almost fighting for the right to have such an official in their department.

Beginning in 1807, nobody was closer to Alexander than Speransky. High society was quite taken aback. As if it were not enough that this upstart had the right to personally report to the tsar on a whole range of matters, or that he held the most important posts and had been decorated with the highest orders (not only by the Russian tsar, but by Napoleon as well), he behaved with exceptional arrogance and pride. One can understand Speransky’s point of view. In every sidelong glance he undoubtedly suspected a hint at his lowly origins. As a defense, he made sure that everything about his person conveyed indifference and contempt toward those around him.

In 1811, Speransky was in the early stages of work on a project of historic proportions, and, although this work was being conducted in secret, St. Petersburg was abuzz with rumors. With the tsar’s blessing, Speransky was developing a plan to limit autocracy. Russia was to be given elective bodies – Dumas. Members would be elected at the lowest administrative level – the volost (волость), and then representatives of Volost Dumas would elect representatives to the District (уезд) Duma, and District Dumas would send representatives to the Provincial Duma, and the Provincial Dumas (horror of horrors) would form the State Duma – the Russian parliament. In order to allow the tsar influence over this body, Speransky had the idea of creating an upper chamber of parliament, something like the English House of Lords – a State Council to which the tsar would appoint trusted grandees. The Council would approve the Duma’s decisions.

Who would be sending representatives to the Duma? The nobility, townspeople, and even peasants would be eligible, assuming they owned property. Society, as Speransky saw it, should be organized around private property rather than ancestry. This meant that any peasant or lowly employee who managed to acquire property would automatically be elevated into a different estate and be given political rights.

How could this even be possible? The peasants in Russia owned no property, since they themselves were the property of their landowning masters. The implication was that Speransky’s plan would have to come hand-in-hand with another change – the emancipation of the serfs.

What was being said about Speransky’s plans horrified the nobility, and rumors spread throughout the country, for instance that he was a spy for Napoleon who wanted to ruin the tsar. Courtiers bombarded the tsar with denunciations, yet Alexander was firm in his intention to conduct the reform. He had already read Speransky’s documents and approved them. On January 1, 1810, the very first and most innocuous step was taken – the State Council was established, but the tsar was not quite ready to implement the other changes. He felt that society had a hostile attitude toward reforms and reformers. Alexander wavered. A year passed. And it was during that year that Karamzin’s Memoir appeared.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin – outstanding writer and poet, friend of the tsar, great historian and confirmed monarchist – channeled his eloquence into a brief overview of Russian history in which he argued that the Russian people have never wanted anything but autocracy, and tsars have always taken the interests of their subjects into account. Karamzin was not afraid to criticize those tsars who had gone against Russian tradition, including Peter the Great, who forced changes in Russian life, and even Pavel I, Alexander’s father. Karamzin dared to remind the tsar that his father’s life had been cut short as the result of a plot devised by discontented noblemen.

Was this a hint? A threat? Karamzin – the same Karamzin who had driven his readers to shed tears over the fate of poor Liza – then went on to introduce numerous arguments against the emancipation of the serfs. They “have the habits of slaves.” There would be nowhere for them to go. They would have no work. They would wind up even more dependent on the landowners, from whom they would be forced to accept employment, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, in offending the nobility, the tsar would be casting a blow against his main bulwark of support. Might not this mark the end of his rule?

It is hardly surprising that the tsar left Tver in a rage. He saw in Karamzin’s Memoir not only a conservative manifesto but a clear hint: Your Majesty, if you deprive the nobility of their privileges, then your government will fall and you might be killed like your father.

Another year passed. Speransky’s reforms were still not introduced, although the reformer himself remained close to the tsar. Alexander was mulling his options. War with France was looming and it was not the right time for radical change.

Then, one March evening in 1812, Alexander and Speransky had a long talk about political matters. The next morning Speransky was summoned to the palace. The tsar told him that he was being dismissed and exiled to Nizhny Novgorod.* It is said that both men cried. But only Speransky went into exile; Alexander remained in the palace. The reforms were never implemented.

But what if….?

The reforms had come within a hair’s breadth of being realized. The State Council had already been created. All that remained was to announce elections to the Dumas. The emancipation of the serfs might have been carried out gradually, so as to minimize social upheaval. As it turned out, the serfs were liberated in 1861, after Russia had suffered a humiliating defeat in the Crimean War. The State Duma was convened in 1906, in the aftermath of the revolution of 1905. Both of these concessions were essentially forced on the government, especially the introduction of the State Duma, which took place despite the opposition of Nicholas II.

But Alexander I might have been able to give Russia a parliament and free the peasants from a position of strength. It would have been his initiative, and not a decision made with clenched teeth. The attitude toward the government and the position of the tsar would have been entirely different. Conservatives like Karamzin would have been unhappy, but the vast majority of liberally inclined nobles (and there were far more than the tsar assumed) would have been ecstatic. Alexander could have counted on their support in advancing further reform. The government would have been stable and could have slowly but surely evolved toward democracy. By 1917, Russia would already have had a century-old tradition of democracy and nobody would have heeded the Bolshevik call for revolution.

If only….