Nicholas i reign
Nicholas I
(&#x;), tsar and emperor of Russia from to
Nicholas Pavlovich Romanov came to power amid the Decembrist Revolt of and died during the Crimean War. Between these two events, Nicholas became known throughout his empire and the world as the quintessential autocrat, and his Nicholaevan system as the most oppressive in Europe.
When Nicholas I was on his deathbed, he spoke his last words to his son, soon to become Alexander II: "I wanted to take everything difficult, everything serious, upon my shoulders and to leave you a peaceful, well-ordered, and happy realm.
Providence decreed otherwise. Now I go to pray for Russia and for you all." Earlier in the day, Nicholas ordered all the Guards regiments to be brought to the Winter Palace to swear allegiance to the new tsar. These words and actions reveal a great deal about Nicholas's personality and his reign. Nicholas was a tsar obsessed with order and with the military, and his thirty years on the throne earned him a reputation as the Gendarme of Europe.
His fear of rebellion and disorder, particularly after the events of his ascension to the throne, would affect him for the remainder of his reign.
education, december , and rule
Nicholas I was not intended to be tsar, nor was he educated to be one. Born in , Nicholas was the third of Paul I's four sons. His two elder brothers, Alexander and Constantine, received upbringings worthy of future rulers.
In , by contrast, Paul appointed General Matthew I. Lamsdorf to take charge of the education of Nicholas and his younger brother, Mikhail. Lamsdorf believed that education consisted of discipline and military training, and he imposed a strict regimen on his two charges that included regular beatings. Nicholas thus learned to respect the military image his father cultivated and the necessity of order and discipline.
Although Nicholas received schooling in more traditional subjects, he responded only to military science and to military training.
In , during the war against Napoleon, he gave up wearing civilian dress and only appeared in his military uniform, a habit he kept. Nicholas also longed during the War of to see action in the defense of Russia. His brother, Alexander I, wanted him to remain in Russia until the hostilities ended. Nicholas only joined the Russian army for the victory celebrations held in and The young Nicholas debuted as a commander and was impressed with the spectacles and their demonstration of Russian political power.
For Nicholas, as Richard Wortman has noted, these parades provided a lifelong model for demonstrating political power.
After the war, Nicholas settled into the life of a Russian grand duke. He toured his country and Europe between and In Nicholas married Princess Charlotte of Prussia, who was baptized as Grand Duchess Alexandra Fyodorovna.
The following year, in April , Nicholas became the first of his brothers to father a son, Alexander, the future Alexander II. For the next seven years, the family lived a quiet life in St. Petersburg's Anichkov Palace; Nicholas later claimed this period was the happiest of his life. The idyll was only broken once, in , when Alexander I surprised his brother with the news that he, and not Constantine, might be the successor to the Russian throne.
Alexander and Constantine did not have sons, and the latter had decided to give up his rights to the throne. This agreement was not made public, and its ambiguities would later come back to haunt Nicholas.
Alexander I died in the south of Russia in November The news of the tsar's death took several days to reach the capital, where it caused confusion.
Equally stunning was the revelation that Nicholas would succeed Alexander. Because of the secret agreement, disorder reigned briefly in St. Petersburg, and Nicholas even swore allegiance to his older brother. Only after Constantine again renounced his throne did Nicholas announce that he would become the new emperor on December
This decision and the confusion surrounding it gave a group of conspirators the chance they had sought for several years.
A number of Russian officers who desired political change that would transform Russian from an autocracy rebelled at the idea of Nicholas becoming tsar. His love for the military and barracks mentality did not promise reform, and so three thousand officers refused to swear allegiance to Nicholas on December Instead, they marched to the Senate Square where they called for a constitution and for Constantine to become tsar.
Nicholas acted swiftly and ruth-lessly. He ordered an attack of the Horse Guards on the rebels and then cannon fire, killing around one hundred. The rest of the rebels were rounded up and arrested, while other conspirators throughout Russia were incarcerated in the next few months.
Although the Decembrist revolt proved ineffective, its specter continued to haunt Nicholas.
His first day in power had brought confusion, disorder, and rebellion. During the next year, Nicholas pursued policies and exhibited characteristics that would define his rule. He personally oversaw the interrogations and punishments of the Decembrists, and informed his advisors that they should be dealt with mercilessly because they had violated the law.
Five of the leaders were executed; dozens went into permanent Siberian exile. At the same time he pursued justice against the Decembrists, Nicholas established a new concept of imperial rule in Russia, one that relied upon the parade ground and the court as a means of demonstrating power and order. Within the first few months of his rule, he initiated ceremonies and reviews of military and dynastic might that became hallmarks of his reign.
Above all, the Decembrist revolt convinced Nicholas that Russia needed order and firmness and that only the autocrat could provide them.
The Nicholaevan system of government built upon these ideas and upon the tsar's mistrust for the Russian gentry in the wake of the Decembrist Revolt. Nicholas placed a circle of ministers in important positions and relied on them almost exclusively to govern.
He also used His Majesty's Own Chancery, the private bureau for the tsar's personal needs, to rule. Nicholas divided the Chancery into sections to exert personal control over the functions of governing&#x;the First Section continued to be responsible for the personal needs of the tsar, the Second Section was established to enact legislation and codify Russian laws, and the Fourth was responsible for welfare and charity.
The Third Section, established in , gained the most notoriety. It had the task of enforcing laws and policing the country, but in practice the Third Section did much more. Headed by Count Alexander Beckendorff, the Third Section set up spies, investigators, and gendarmes throughout the country.
Nicholas i of russia biography definition wikipedia
Petersburg, 18 February 2 March Reigned: Theoretically, as the third son of the Emperor Paul, Nicholas did not have the slightest chance of ascending to the Russian throne and he therefore embarked on a military career, according to a strong Romanov tradition for younger sons. But his oldest brother, Alexander I and his wife, Elizabeth Alexeyevna, remained childless, and the second brother, Constantine, the future Viceroy of Poland, married a woman of non-royal blood and was forced to renounce all rights to the Russian crown. For the time being, it was decided to keep Constantine's renunciation a secret, which unexpectedly had serious consequences. In , Alexander I died suddenly in Taganrog in the south of Russia, and as soon as the news reached Petersburg, the governmental authorities and the Guard regiments took the oath to the new Emperor as it seemed to them : Constantine.In effect, Nicholas established a police state in Russia, even if it did not function efficiently.
It was through the Second Section that Nicholas achieved the most notable reform of his reign. Established in to rectify the disorder and confusion within Russia's legal system that had manifested itself in the Decembrist revolt, the Second Section compiled a new Code of Law, which was promulgated in Nicholas appointed Mikhail Speransky, Alexander I's former advisor, to head the committee.
The new code did not so much make new laws as collect all those that had been passed since the last codification in and categorize them. Published in forty-eight volumes with a digest, Russia had a uniform and ordered set of laws.
Nicholas came to epitomize autocracy in his own lifetime, largely through the creation of an official ideology that one of his advisers formulated in Traumatized by the events of and the calls for constitutional reform, Nicholas believed fervently in the necessity of Russian autocratic rule.
Peter iii of russia Tsar Nicholas I was the Emperor of Russia from to , known for his autocratic rule and the establishment of a repressive regime that sought to maintain order and suppress dissent. His reign is marked by significant events such as the Decembrist Revolt and the Crimean War, which highlighted the challenges of modernization and reform within the Russian Empire amid rising nationalist sentiments and revolutionary movements across Europe. Decembrists: A group of Russian army officers who led an unsuccessful revolt against Tsar Nicholas I in December , advocating for constitutional reform and an end to serfdom. Autocracy: A system of government in which one person possesses unlimited power; during Nicholas I's reign, Russia was characterized by an autocratic government that resisted liberal reforms. A conflict from to between Russia and an alliance of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia, which ultimately exposed the weaknesses of Tsar Nicholas I's military and administrative systems.Because he had triumphed over his
opponents, he searched for a concrete expression of the superiority of monarchy as the institution best suited for order and stability. He found a partner in this quest in Count Sergei Uvarov (&#x;), later the minister of education. Uvarov articulated the concept of Official Nationality, which in turn became the official ideology of Nicholas's Russia.
It had three components: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.
Uvarov's formula gave voice to trends within the Nicholaevan system that had developed since For Nicholas and his minister, an ordered system could function only with religious principles as a guide. By invoking Orthodoxy, Uvarov also stressed the Russian Church as a means to instill these principles.
The concept of Autocracy was the clearest of the principles&#x;only it could guarantee the political existence of Russia. The third concept was the most ambiguous. Although usually translated as "nationality," the Russian term used was narodnost, which stressed the spirit of the Russian people. Broadly speaking, Nicholas wanted to emphasize the national characteristics of his people, as well as their spirit, as a principle that made Russia superior to the West.
Nicholas attempted to rule Russia according to these principles.
He oversaw the construction of two major Orthodox cathedrals that symbolized Russia and its religion&#x;St. Isaac's in St. Petersburg (begun in and finished under Nicholas) and Christ the Savior in Moscow (Nicholas laid the cornerstone in but it was not finished until ). He dedicated the Alexander column on Palace Square to his brother in and a statue to his father, Paul I, in Nicholas also held countless parades and drills in the capital that included his sons, another demonstration of the might and timelessness of the Russian autocracy.
Finally, Nicholas cultivated national themes in performances and festivals held throughout his empire. Most prominently, Mikhail Glinka's A Life for the Tsar () became the national opera, while General Alexander Lvov and Vasily Zhukovsky's "God Save the Tsar" became Russia's first national anthem in
Nicholas also dealt with two other areas of Russian society.
The first involved local government and ruling over such a vast country, long a problem for Russian monarchs. Nicholas oversaw a reform in the local government in that granted more power to the governors. More importantly, Nicholas expanded the Russian bureaucracies and training for the civil service. The Nicholaevan system thus became synonymous with bureaucrats, as the writings of Nikolai Gogol brilliantly depict.
The second pressing concern was serfdom.
Nicholas appointed a secret committee in that tackled the question of reform, and even abolition, of serfdom. Led by Paul Kiselev (&#x;), the committee recommended abolition, but its conclusions were not implemented. Instead, Nicholas declared serfdom an evil but emancipation even more problematic. He had Kiselev head a Fifth Section of the Chancery in and charged him with improving farming methods and local conditions.
Finally, Nicholas passed a law in that allowed serf owners to transform their serfs into "obligated peasants." Few did so, and while continued committees recommended abolition, Nicholas halted short of freeing Russia's serfs. By , therefore, Nicholas had established a system of government associated with Official Nationality, order, and might.
war, , and the crimean debacle
Nicholas defined himself and his system as a militaristic one, and the first few years of his rule also witnessed his consolidation of power through force.
He continued the wars in the Caucasus begun by Alexander I, and consolidated Russian power in Transcaucasia by defeating the Persians in Russia also fought the Ottoman Empire in &#x; over the rights of Christian subjects in Turkey and disagreements over territories between the two empires.
Nicholas i of russia biography definition Nicholas I [ pron 1 ] 6 July [ O. He was the third son of Paul I and younger brother of his predecessor, Alexander I. Nicholas's thirty-year reign began with the failed Decembrist revolt. He is mainly remembered as a reactionary whose controversial reign was marked by geographical expansion, centralisation of administrative policies, and repression of dissent both in Russia and among its neighbors. Nicholas had a happy marriage that produced a large family, with all of their seven children surviving childhood.Although the fighting produced mixed results, Russia considered itself a victor and gained concessions. One year later, in , a revolt broke out in Poland, an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. The revolt spread from Warsaw to the western provinces of Russia, and Nicholas sent in troops to crush it in With the rebellion over, Nicholas announced the Organic Statute of , which increased Russian control over Polish affairs.
The Polish revolt brought back memories of for Nicholas, who responded by pushing further Russification programs throughout his empire. Order reigned, but nationalist reactions in Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere would ensure problems for future Russian rulers.
Nicholas also presided over increasingly oppressive measures directed at any forms of perceived opposition to his rule.
Russian culture began to flourish in the decade between and , as writers from Mikhail Lermontov to Nikolai Gogol and critics such as Vissarion Belinsky and Alexander Herzen burst onto the Russian cultural scene. Eventually, as their writings increasingly criticized the Nicholaevan system, the tsar cracked down, and his Third Section arrested numerous intellectuals.
Nicholas's reputation as the quintessential autocrat developed from these policies, which reached an apex in When revolutions broke out across Europe, Nicholas was convinced that they were a threat to the existence of his system. He sent Russian troops to crush rebellions in Moldavia and Wallachia in and to support Austrian rights in Lombardy and Hungary in At home, Nicholas oversaw further censorship and repressions of universities.
By , he had earned his reputation as the Gendarme of Europe.
In , Nicholas's belief in the might of his army set off a disaster for his country. He provoked a war with the Ottoman Empire over continued disputes in the Holy Land that brought an unexpected response. Alarmed by Russia's aggressive policies, England and France joined the Ottoman Empire in declaring war.
The resulting Crimean War led to a humiliating defeat and the exposure of Russian military weakness.
The war also exposed the myths and ideas that guided Nicholaevan Russia. Nicholas did not live to see the final humiliation. He caught a cold in that grew serious, and he died on February His dream of creating an ordered state for his son to inherit died with him.
Alexander Nikitenko, a former serf who worked as a censor in Nicholas's Russia, concluded: "The main shortcoming of the reign of Nicholas consisted in the fact that it was all a mistake." Contemporaries and historians have judged Nicholas just as harshly.
From Alexander Herzen to the Marquis de Custine, the image of the tsar as tyrant circulated widely in Europe during Nicholas's rule. Russian and Western historians ever since have largely seen Nicholas as the most reactionary ruler of his era, and one Russian historian in the s argued "it would be difficult to find a more odious figure in Russian history than Nicholas I." W.
Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas's most recent American biographer (), argued that Nicholas in many ways helped to pave the way for more significant reforms by expanding the bureaucracies. Still, his conclusion serves as an ideal epitaph for Nicholas: He was the last absolute monarch to hold undivided power in Russia. His death brought the end of an era.
See also: alexander i; alexandra fedorovna; autocracy; crimean war; decembrist movement and rebellion; national policies, tsarist; uvarov, sergei semenovich
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Maria feodorovna: Nicholas I (born July 6 [June 25, Old Style], , Tsarskoye Selo [now Pushkin], near St. Petersburg, Russia—died February 18 [March 2, New Style], , St. Petersburg) was a Russian emperor (–55), often considered the personification of classic autocracy.
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Nicholas i of russia biography definition us history Nicholas came to the thrown after the debacle of the Decembrist Revolt , but nonetheless set about to prevent another uprising with a program designed to suppress political dissent at home, and role back constitutional gains in Poland. This resulted in the November Uprising, which Nicholas brutally suppressed. His reactionary policies served to spawn revolutionaries, including liberals, populists and radicals. While many were forced underground during his reign, they would eventually gain momentum after his death. Russia's failure to reform would ultimately lead to the assassination of Nicholas' successor, the reformer Tsar Alexander II of Russia as well as the later rise of the Bolshevik Party.Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
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