The Russian Nobility in the Age of Alexander I by Patrick O'Meara

Author:Patrick O'Meara [O'Meara, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Eastern, Former Soviet Republics
ISBN: 9781788315685
Google: Dxa4zQEACAAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2019-01-15T22:31:05+00:00

Chapter 7) that high on the new tsar’s agenda was the issue of serf emancipation and the ‘whole sphere of the legislature’, a prospect which Rozenkampf admitted finding both daunting and exciting. He attributes to Alexander the view that ‘the labour of a free man is twice as good as that of a serf’. The tsar told him that, in his view, the only way of initiating the process of emancipation would be to launch a pilot scheme ‘in the Baltic provinces, one after the other’, where it was apparently already under active consideration to judge by a detailed proposal he had received (in German) from Landrat Friedrich von Sievers, a leading member of the Livonian Landtag. However, Rozenkampf recalled being struck at the same time by Alexander’s evasive approach and his ‘somehow obstructive rather than supportive’ way of referring to the challenges ahead.33

For all his excited anticipation of the plans which Alexander told him he had for the Baltic nobility’s serfs, Rozenkampf must have understood that the total emancipation of the peasants was highly improbable, even unthinkable, at that time. After all, Alexander’s most vociferous counsellors, such as G. R. Derzhavin and F. V. Rostopchin, routinely held out against any such move, not only on the grounds of centuries-old custom and practice which regarded serfdom as a necessary evil, but also because they saw in it the best guarantee of discipline and order now and in the future. Moreover, the mechanism for effecting any reform, whether political, social or economic – necessarily at the tsar’s behest only – was in the hands of the bureaucracy. This in turn was led by members of the social elite who were themselves owners of very large land-holdings populated by significant numbers of peasants, and who clearly had no interest whatsoever in emancipating their serfs. Such officials would have enjoyed the support of virtually the entire noble estate in ensuring the obstruction of any potential move to do so.34

Most of the nobility shared G. R. Derzhavin’s view that the serfs were just too ignorant and unpredictable to be trusted with emancipation. Precisely the same sceptical views would be expressed in the late 1850s in the run-up to Alexander II’s emancipation act. Alexander I was generally sympathetic towards the serfs, and was known on occasion to take their side against their owners.

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