The third son of the unhappy emperor Paul was not prepared for the reign, but it so happened that Alexander had no children, and Constantine abdicated the throne.
By that time, Russia was in the position of a brilliant catastrophe, which, on the one hand, was obvious to any knowledgeable person, on the other hand, it was absolutely not obvious to the population.
The emperor's grandmother, Catherine, was, of course, an enlightened empress, but it was under her that serfdom actually turned into slavery, and corruption acquired frightening proportions. And, visiting the palaces of her nobles, one must understand - for whose money and on whose bones they are built. The situation was saved by bread, more precisely - the fertile lands of Novorossiya and the Southern Territory as a whole, but this resource had exhausted itself by the end of her reign.
Pavel Petrovich tried to put things in order, but he could not, and he acted not that unambiguously, trying to play on chivalry: both in internal politics, in external politics. As a result, he was killed by supporters of “living like under Catherine the Great,” that is, dividing the peasants by tens of thousands of souls, stealing soldiers and money from the army and not being responsible for anything.
Alexander Pavlovich
Alexander Pavlovich …
Being a participant in the conspiracy, in fact a paricide, he understood how illusory his power was, and did not rush reforms. Yes, and it was not up to them, the Napoleonic Wars were thundering in Europe, and in 1812 the country received a terrible blow. We won the Patriotic War and reached Paris, that's a fact. But what was it worth?
Inflation, banknotes were no longer perceived for money, the ruin of entire regions, and as a result Arakcheev's idiotic reform with the creation of military settlements, after which the previously relatively prosperous state peasants began to envy the downtrodden landowners.
Passions were also seething among the nobility: someone wanted it as before under Catherine, someone wanted severity - as under Peter, someone - as in France and aimed at the Bonaparte, and someone, in general, dreamed of America with a republic and democracy … As a result - numerous circles and conspiracies, the Decembrists of which are only the most famous.
And now Alexander dies, not in the capital, and leaving a secret the abdication of Konstantin Pavlovich. So secret that even the 29-year-old heir, who was the first to swear allegiance to the abdicated Constantine, did not know about it.
Nikolay Pavlovich
Nicholas inherited a difficult legacy, and the very first difficulties happened on the day of his accession - the Decembrist uprising. In fact, despite all the programs and slogans, it was a typical uprising of the era of palace coups, when the guards officers themselves decided which way to go for the state, and the country was not ready for their flight of fancy. Fortunately, Nikolai passed his first exam and suppressed the uprising. Moreover, he suppressed it rather humanely: only five people went to the gallows, which for those times was nonsense.
And then the slow and painstaking work began to reform the state machine and the economy. It is best illustrated by reforms. This is the codification of laws (the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire removed the contradictions and put the law above the emperor), the silver ruble and its firm course in relation to banknotes (Kankrin reform), constant reforms of the state apparatus, including the creation of the School of Law (those same chizhik-pyzhiks) for training of senior officials and a number of technical educational institutions, the creation of the Third Branch of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery,which not only caught Herzen and spread rot liberals, but was engaged in counterintelligence, investigating the atrocities of landowners against the peasants (200 estates were arrested, the sale of peasants without land was prohibited), catching counterfeiters and other things that talk about Nikolai Palkin do not like to remember.
And then there was the peasant question - and Nicholas slowly led to the abolition of serfdom. But not as it happened in real life, when his young and inexperienced son was bent over to robbery with the peasants buying out their own land in a half-century mortgage, but with a search for options and solutions. Thirty years was not enough for this, but the question was not easy - an attempt to "offend" the nobles could lead to a repetition of Paul's fate, and an attempt not to decide - to economic stagnation. Power, in fact, walked along a thin blade, on both sides of which there is an abyss.
It was interesting with the economy - under Nicholas, 350 steamboats were built on the Volga alone (about a thousand in total), the first railways were built, the mechanization of production and the creation of new industries is under way, metal smelting has doubled, but this was not enough. The rearmament of the army and navy was delayed, and there were also problems with logistics.
But there is one detail in all this - we lagged behind (and strongly) from Britain and a little from France. The rest of Russia could smash: either one by one or in a crowd. Simply put, Russia was only third in the world. With the heirs, liberal and not so, we smoothly dive into sixth place, and the "shame" of the Crimean War with a local defeat from the whole of Europe will be replaced by "achievements" in the war with Japan and the First World War.
Foreign policy
In general, Nikolai Pavlovich's foreign policy is a succession of successes without overstressing the state.
1. 1826-1828. The Persian War as part of the Great Game with Great Britain. The Persians were defeated, Yerevan became Russian, the Armenian region was created, Persia was imposed with indemnity. The same Persia who started the war and who, after going for wool, returned shorn.
2. 1828-1829 years. Russian-Turkish war. And again, it was not we who started the war - the Ottomans blocked the straits after the Battle of Navarino. And again - the Turks are beaten both on land and at sea, the Black Sea coast of Russia has lengthened, the Danube delta has passed to us. Istanbul recognized the autonomy of Greece, Serbia, Moldavia and Wallachia.
3.1832 - suppression of the Polish uprising. The Kingdom of Poland, which has its own army, constitution, governor (in fact, the monarch Konstantin Petrovich, oh, Alexander would have been nicknamed insane in another country for encouraging separatism in the outskirts). Suppressed within a year, and the Poles did not have any gangs, but quite a European army (about 80 thousand people) with a bunch of veterans who fought for Napoleon. As a result, a quick victory and an organic statute that made Poland a part of the Empire not only de jure, but also de facto.
4. Hungarian War. The suppression of the Hungarian uprising is seen as a kind of gendarme operation of a strangler of freedoms and a tyrant against the poor Hungarians, but it was precisely that war against a 200,000-strong army. And the reasons were serious - these were the obligations under the Holy Union, and the unwillingness to have a revolutionary state on the border (the memory of Napoleon was alive, and Jacobinism sounded synonymous with Nazism in our times), and the active flirtation of the Hungarians with the Poles (there were Polish units in the Hungarian army - rioters). And we lost only 700 people in this war.
5. Caucasian War. More precisely, a series of operations against the Caucasian peoples (mainly Chechens), who, with the support of England and the Ottoman Empire, tried to create in the Caucasus a kind of analogue of an Islamic state of extreme persuasion. It moved slowly, in parallel with the settlement of the territories and quite successfully, without straining forces and without laying the soldiers in batches.
Separately, the unhappy Crimean War, which became the tragedy of Nikolai Pavlovich and his only major mistake during his entire reign. It was the defeat in this war that brought the emperor to his grave, although the disaster somehow did not happen.
There were four theaters of combat, in the North - the British did not manage to take the Solovetsky Monastery, in the Baltic - to break through to Petrograd, and Victoria, like the robbery of fishermen by British paratroopers and a dozen and a half raped chukhonki did not count. The capture of the Aland Islands and the unfinished Russian fortress on their territory showed the British one thing - it’s not worth it, the losses would multiply exceed the result. In the Far East, in Petropavlovsk, it also turned out inconveniently, and the assault by the troops of the four powers of Sevastopol, with complete domination at sea with wild losses, does not pull the result.
As a result, the Russian troops did not leave either Crimea or even Sevastopol and were ready to continue the hostilities. All the same, the plans to seize the Crimea and Novorossiya went to the trash, even the French battleships did not help.
Why
And yet why?
Why did you make a mistake and did not calculate?
Why was the result perceived as a disaster?
It's simple - for thirty years Russia has got used to being a superpower, having a decisive voice in a European concert and winning. And the very idea that Europe would take up arms against Petersburg because of the Turks, whom it dreamed of taking away, seemed wild. And the perception proceeds from the same reasons - the Russian society was not ready for defeat, even from England and France with Sardinia (in fact, Italy) and with the tacit support of Austria-Hungary. We are accustomed to being a superpower, but it turned out that we are weak, Europe can en masse seize half of the Russian fortress and the naval base.
And if it were not for the mistake in foreign policy that caused this unhappy war, then much could have gone differently, primarily in the peasant issue, and therefore in the economy and society as a whole. But history does not know the subjunctive mood. And this is the tragedy of the most calm and stable rule in the history of the Russian Empire, when victories were not achieved by overstretching of forces, and the expansion of the Empire did not lead to internal decline and corruption.
