Era of Great Reforms in Russia
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The decade of the 1860s is considered the Era of Great Reforms in Russia, its beginning marked by the emancipation of the serfs. As Freeze writes, the era was as important to the eighteenth century as the reforms of Peter the Great in the seventeenth and the revolution of the early twentieth (Freeze 101). The sources generally agree that forces leading to reform include Western influences and the "public disgust with an often arbitrary, inefficient, and corrupt bureaucracy," but the shocking defeat of Russia in the Crimean War was the major cause, for it "persuaded Alexander II . . . that without basic internal change the Russian Empire could not hope to maintain its hard-won position as a major world power" (Cracraft 313). The reforms which followed the liberation of the serfs in 1861 included the new liberal censorship regulations (1865), the establishment of a new organ of self-government called the zemstvo (1864), reorganization of urban government (1870), the radical reconstruction of the judiciary after Western models (1864), and a complex series of measures to improve the army, church, police, education, and many other public and private institutions in the empire (Freeze 101). As Freeze adds, the reforms were significant not only for their direct impact on the lives of Russians and the fundamental institutions of Russian society, but also because of the process of those reforms: "Society, not just the bureaucracy, was summoned to help draft and implement these
. . .
n our poorer comrades and . . . has raised an obstacle to education for all those young people who are poor. . . . We . . . ask Your Majesty for permission to select from our midst comrades who, serving as intermediaries between us and our superiors, could explain our needs in a legal manner (Freeze 150).
The daring yet respectful tone and content of the students' petition is representative of the entire era of reform in which the status quo was challenged at every point, but in a reformist context and not a revolutionary one. The Russian people certainly were unhappy with the bureaucracy, the government, the serf-based socioeconomic structure, but they did not want simply to tear the entire system down and begin anew. The very nature of reform includes a faith in the ability and willingness of the people of different classes and the government to work together to forge a revitalized society, not to ravage the old in favor of some untested new.
Women benefitted as well from the era of reform, although the single document in Freeze dealing with "women's condition" is rather vague and idealistic, calling for a "woman's journal" which would
seek the means to improve her condition in all areas by intelligent and useful activity,
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
University Students, Alexander II, Noble Assembly, Russian Empire, Westernization Russian, Europe America, Revolution Massie, Emancipation Freeze, Nicholas II, Northern Russia, emancipation serfs, era reform, social economic, serfs nobility, twentieth century, freeze 101, cracraft 313, nineteenth century, alexander ii, industrial policy, freeze gregory supplication, gregory supplication revolution, heath 1994 freeze, 1994 freeze gregory, dc heath 1994,
Approximate Word count = 3906
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)
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