Princeton Review AP European History Premium Prep, 2022 by The Princeton Review

Author:The Princeton Review [The Princeton Review]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2021-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

Russia

The stresses of war can show a nation at its best or they can reveal significant problems. For Russia, the poor showing in the Crimean War, fought in its own backyard, revealed the backwardness of its society in comparison to the nations of western Europe. Although Nicholas I was far too reactionary to contemplate reform, his successor, Alexander II (r. 1855–1881), recognized that the greatest problem facing Russia was serfdom. In 1861, he issued a proclamation freeing the serfs, though the former serfs had to buy their freedom with payments that were to extend over 50 years (a practice that was stopped following the Russian Revolution of 1905). The peasants were also generally given the poorest lands by their former owners, which meant that life remained harsh for many agricultural laborers.

Administratively, to cope with a Russia that faced a burgeoning population throughout its far-flung empire, Alexander introduced zemstvos, or district assemblies, that had mandates to deal with local issues such as education and social services. The zemstvos were dominated by the local gentry and were hardly bastions of democracy, though some Russian reformers saw their existence as the potential for greater political freedoms. Alexander enacted further reforms, such as a revision of the legal system, although at heart he remained an autocrat and saw no need to implement fundamental changes like the introduction of a written constitution and parliamentary bodies. His intransigence on these points led to a rise in revolutionary organizations such as the People’s Will, which assassinated Alexander in 1881. The succession to the throne of his reactionary son Alexander III (r. 1881–1894) brought about a new round of repression and an attempt to weaken even the tentative reforms of Alexander II.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.