Since childhood, the boy enthusiastically played war games. At the age of six months he received the rank of colonel, and at three years old the baby was given the uniform of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment, since the child’s future was predetermined from birth. According to tradition, the Grand Duke, who was not a direct heir to the throne, was prepared for a military career.
Family of Nicholas I: parents, brothers and sisters
Until the age of four, the upbringing of Nicholas was entrusted to the court maid of honor Charlotte Karlovna von Lieven; after the death of his father, Paul I, the responsible responsibility was transferred to General Lamzdorf. The home education of Nikolai and his younger brother Mikhail consisted of studying economics, history, geography, law, engineering and fortifications. Much attention was paid to foreign languages: French, German and Latin.
If lectures and classes in the humanities were difficult for Nikolai, then everything related to military affairs and engineering attracted his attention. The future emperor mastered playing the flute in his youth and took drawing lessons. Acquaintance with art allowed Nikolai Pavlovich to subsequently become known as a connoisseur of opera and ballet.
Since 1817, the Grand Duke was in charge of the engineering unit of the Russian army. Under his leadership, educational institutions were created in companies and battalions. In 1819, Nikolai contributed to the opening of the Main Engineering School and the School of Guards Ensigns. In the army, the younger brother of Emperor Alexander I was disliked for such character traits as excessive pedantry, pickiness about details and dryness. The Grand Duke was a person determined to indisputably obey the laws, but at the same time he could flare up for no reason.
In 1820, a conversation between Alexander’s elder brother and Nicholas took place, during which the current emperor announced that the heir to the throne, Constantine, had abandoned his obligations, and the right to reign had passed to Nicholas. The news struck the young man on the spot: neither morally nor intellectually Nikolai was ready for the possible management of Russia.
Despite the protests, Alexander in the Manifesto indicated Nicholas as his successor and ordered that the papers be opened only after his death. After this, for six years, the life of the Grand Duke was outwardly no different from before: Nicholas was engaged in military service and supervised educational military institutions.
Reign and uprising of the Decembrists
On December 1 (November 19, O.S.), 1825, Alexander I suddenly died. The emperor was at that moment far from the capital of Russia, so the royal court received the sad news a week later. Because of his own doubts, Nicholas initiated the oath of allegiance to Constantine I among the courtiers and military men. But at the State Council the Tsar's Manifesto was published, designating Nikolai Pavlovich as the heir.
The Grand Duke remained adamant in his decision not to assume such a responsible position and persuaded the Council, Senate and Synod to swear allegiance to his elder brother. But Konstantin, who was in Poland, had no intention of coming to St. Petersburg. 29-year-old Nicholas had no choice but to agree with the will of Alexander I. The date of the re-oath before the troops on Senate Square was set for December 26 (December 14, O.S.).
The day before, inspired by free ideas about the abolition of tsarist power and the creation of a liberal system in Russia, participants in the Union of Salvation movement decided to take advantage of the uncertain political situation and change the course of history. At the proposed National Assembly, according to the organizers of the uprising S. Trubetskoy, N. Muravyov, K. Ryleev, P. Pestel, it was supposed to choose one of two forms of government: a constitutional monarchy or a republic.
Decembrist revolt But the revolutionaries' plan failed, since the army did not come over to their side, and the Decembrist uprising was quickly suppressed. After the trial, five organizers were hanged, and participants and sympathizers were sent into exile. The execution of the Decembrists K. F. Ryleev, P. I. Pestel, P. G. Kakhovsky, M. P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, S. I. Muravyov-Apostol turned out to be the only death penalty that was applied during all the years of the reign of Nicholas I.
The Grand Duke's crowning ceremony took place on August 22 (September 3, O.S.) in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin. In May 1829, Nicholas I assumed the rights of autocrat of the Polish Kingdom.
Domestic policy
Nicholas I turned out to be an ardent supporter of the monarchy. The emperor's views were based on the three pillars of Russian society - autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality. The monarch adopted laws in accordance with his own unshakable principles. Nicholas I did not strive to create a new one, but to preserve and improve the existing order. As a result, the monarch achieved his goals.
The domestic policy of the new emperor was distinguished by conservatism and adherence to the letter of the law, which gave rise to an even greater bureaucracy in Russia than it had before the reign of Nicholas I. The emperor began political activity in the country by introducing brutal censorship and putting in order the Code of Russian Laws. A division of the Secret Chancellery was created, headed by Benckendorff, which was engaged in political investigations.
Printing also underwent reforms. The State Censorship, created by a special decree, monitored the cleanliness of printed materials and seized suspicious publications opposing the ruling regime. The transformations also affected serfdom.
Peasants were offered uncultivated lands in Siberia and the Urals, where farmers moved regardless of their desire. Infrastructure was organized in new settlements, and new agricultural technology was allocated to them. Events created the preconditions for the abolition of serfdom.
Nicholas I showed great interest in innovations in engineering. In 1837, on the initiative of the Tsar, the construction of the first railway was completed, which connected Tsarskoye Selo and St. Petersburg. Possessing analytical thinking and foresight, Nicholas I used a wider gauge for railways than the European one. In this way, the tsar prevented the risk of enemy equipment penetrating deep into Russia.
Nicholas I played a major role in streamlining the state's financial system. In 1839, the emperor began a financial reform, the goal of which was a unified system for calculating silver coins and banknotes. The appearance of kopecks is changing, on one side of which the initials of the ruling emperor are now printed. The Ministry of Finance initiated the exchange of precious metals held by the population for credit notes. Over the course of 10 years, the state treasury increased its reserves of gold and silver.
Foreign policy
In foreign policy, the tsar sought to reduce the penetration of liberal ideas into Russia. Nicholas I sought to strengthen the position of the state in three directions: western, eastern and southern. The Emperor suppressed all possible uprisings and revolutionary riots on the European continent, after which he rightfully became known as the “gendarme of Europe.”
Following Alexander I, Nicholas I continued to improve relations with Prussia and Austria. The Tsar needed to strengthen power in the Caucasus. The Eastern Question included relations with the Ottoman Empire, the decline of which made it possible to change Russia's position in the Balkans and on the western coast of the Black Sea.
Wars and revolts
Throughout his reign, Nicholas I conducted military operations abroad. Having barely entered the kingdom, the emperor was forced to take up the baton of the Caucasian War, which was started by his elder brother. In 1826, the tsar launched the Russian-Persian campaign, which resulted in the annexation of Armenia to the Russian Empire.
In 1828, the Russian-Turkish War began. In 1830, Russian troops suppressed the Polish uprising, which arose after the crowning of Nicholas in 1829 to the Polish kingdom. In 1848, the uprising that broke out in Hungary was again extinguished by the Russian army.
In 1853, Nicholas I started the Crimean War, participation in which resulted in the collapse of his political career. Not expecting that the Turkish troops would receive assistance from England and France, Nicholas I lost the military campaign. Russia has lost influence in the Black Sea, losing the opportunity to build and use military fortresses on the coast.
Personal life
Nikolai Pavlovich was introduced to his future wife, Princess Charlotte of Prussia, daughter of Frederick William III, in 1815 by Alexander I. Two years later, the young people got married, which cemented the Russian-Prussian Union. Before the wedding, the German princess converted to Orthodoxy and received the name at baptism.
During 9 years of marriage, the first-born Alexander and three daughters were born in the family of the Grand Duke - Maria, Olga, Alexandra. After her accession to the throne, Maria Feodorovna gave Nicholas I three more sons - Konstantin, Nikolai, Mikhail - thereby securing the throne as heirs. The emperor lived in harmony with his wife until his death.
Death
Seriously ill with the flu at the beginning of 1855, Nicholas I bravely resisted the illness and, overcoming pain and loss of strength, in early February went to a military parade without outerwear. The Emperor wanted to support the soldiers and officers who were already losing in the Crimean War.
After construction, Nicholas I finally fell ill and died suddenly on March 2 (February 18, old style) from pneumonia. Before his death, the emperor managed to say goodbye to his family, and also give instructions to his son Alexander, the successor to the throne. The grave of Nicholas I is located in the Peter and Paul Cathedral of the northern capital.
Memory
The memory of Nicholas I is immortalized by the creation of more than 100 monuments, the most famous of which is the Horseman Monument on St. Isaac's Square in St. Petersburg. Also famous are the bas-relief dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of Russia, located in Veliky Novgorod, and the bronze bust on the Kazansky Station Square in Moscow.
Monument to Nicholas I on St. Isaac's Square, St. Petersburg In cinema, the memory of the era and the emperor is captured in more than 33 films. The image of Nicholas I hit the screens back in the days of silent cinema. In modern art, audiences remember his film incarnations performed by actors.
Currently in production is the historical drama “Union of Salvation,” directed by the director, which will tell about the events preceding the Decembrist uprising. It is not yet known who played the main roles.
- Appointment of heir
- Accession to the throne
- The theory of official nationality
- Third department
- Censorship and new school charters
- Laws, finance, industry and transport
- The peasant question and the position of the nobles
- Bureaucracy
- Foreign policy before the early 1850s
- Crimean War and the death of the emperor
1. Appointment of an heir
Aloysius Rokstuhl. Portrait of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. Miniature from the original from 1806. 1869 Wikimedia CommonsIn a nutshell: Nicholas was the third son of Paul I and should not have inherited the throne. But of all the sons of Paul, only he had a son, and during the reign of Alexander I, the family decided that Nicholas should be the heir.
Nikolai Pavlovich was the third son of Emperor Paul I, and, generally speaking, he should not have reigned.
He was never prepared for this. Like most grand dukes, Nicholas received primarily a military education. In addition, he was interested in natural sciences and engineering, he was a very good drawer, but he was not interested in the humanities. Philosophy and political economy passed him by altogether, and from history he knew only the biographies of great rulers and commanders, but had no idea about cause-and-effect relationships or historical processes. Therefore, from an educational point of view, he was poorly prepared for government activities.
The family did not take him too seriously from childhood: there was a huge age difference between Nikolai and his older brothers (he was 19 years older than him, Konstantin was 17 years older), and he was not involved in government affairs.
In the country, Nicholas was known practically only to the Guard (since in 1817 he became the chief inspector of the Corps of Engineers and the chief of the Life Guards Sapper Battalion, and in 1818 - the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, which included several Guards units ), and knew from the bad side. The fact is that the guard returned from the foreign campaigns of the Russian army, in the opinion of Nicholas himself, loose, unaccustomed to drill training and having heard a lot of freedom-loving conversations, and he began to discipline them. Since he was a stern and very hot-tempered man, this resulted in two big scandals: first, Nikolai insulted one of the guard captains before the formation, and then the general, the favorite of the guard, Karl Bistrom, in front of whom he eventually had to publicly apologize.
But none of Paul's sons, except Nicholas, had sons. Alexander and Mikhail (the youngest of the brothers) only gave birth to girls, and even they died early, and Konstantin had no children at all - and even if they had, they could not inherit the throne, since in 1820 Konstantin ascended into a morganatic marriage Morganatic marriage- an unequal marriage, the children of which did not receive the right of inheritance. with the Polish Countess Grudzinskaya. And Nikolai’s son Alexander was born in 1818, and this largely predetermined the further course of events.
Portrait of Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna with her children - Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna. Painting by George Dow. 1826 State Hermitage / Wikimedia Commons In 1819, Alexander I, in a conversation with Nicholas and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna, said that his successor would not be Constantine, but Nicholas. But since Alexander himself still hoped that he would have a son, there was no special decree on this matter, and the change of heir to the throne remained a family secret.
Even after this conversation, nothing changed in Nikolai’s life: he remained a brigadier general and chief engineer of the Russian army; Alexander did not allow him to participate in any state affairs.
2. Accession to the throne
In a nutshell: In 1825, after the unexpected death of Alexander I, an interregnum began in the country. Almost no one knew that Alexander named Nikolai Pavlovich as heir, and immediately after Alexander’s death many, including Nikolai himself, took the oath to Konstantin. Meanwhile, Constantine did not intend to rule; The guards did not want to see Nicholas on the throne. As a result, the reign of Nicholas began on December 14 with the rebellion and shedding of blood of his subjects.
In 1825, Alexander I suddenly died in Taganrog. In St. Petersburg, only members of the imperial family knew that it was not Constantine, but Nicholas, who would inherit the throne. Both the leadership of the guard and the Governor-General of St. Petersburg, Mikhail Milo-radovich, did not like Nicholas and wanted to see Constantine on the throne: he was their comrade in arms, with whom they went through the Napoleonic Wars and Foreign Campaigns, and they considered him more prone to reforms (this did not correspond to reality: Constantine, both externally and internally, was similar to his father Paul, and therefore it was not worth expecting changes from him).
As a result, Nicholas swore allegiance to Constantine. The family did not understand this at all. The Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna reproached her son: “What have you done, Nicholas? Don’t you know that there is an act that declares you the heir?” Such an act actually existed August 16, 1823 Alexander I, which stated that, since the emperor does not have a direct male heir, and Konstantin Pavlovich expressed a desire to renounce his rights to the throne (Konstantin wrote about this to Alexander I in a letter at the beginning of 1822), the heir - Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich is declared to be no one. This manifesto was not made public: it existed in four copies, which were kept in sealed envelopes in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, the Holy Synod, the State Council and the Senate. On an envelope from the Assumption Cathedral, Alexander wrote that the envelope should be opened immediately after his death., but was kept secret, and Nikolai did not know its exact contents, since no one familiarized him with it in advance. In addition, this act had no legal force, because, according to the current Pauline law on succession to the throne, power could only be transferred from father to son or from brother to the brother next in seniority. In order to make Nicholas heir, Alexander had to return the law on succession to the throne adopted by Peter I (according to which the reigning monarch had the right to appoint any successor), but he did not do this.
Constantine himself was in Warsaw at that time (he was the commander-in-chief of the Polish armies and the actual governor of the emperor in the kingdom of Poland) and flatly refused to both take the throne (he was afraid that in this case he would be killed, like his father), and officially , according to the existing form, to renounce it.
Silver ruble with the image of Constantine I. 1825 State Hermitage Museum Negotiations between St. Petersburg and Warsaw lasted about two weeks, during which Russia had two emperors - and at the same time, none. Busts of Constantine had already begun to appear in institutions, and several copies of the ruble with his image were printed.
Nicholas found himself in a very difficult situation, given how he was treated in the guard, but in the end he decided to declare himself heir to the throne. But since they had already sworn allegiance to Constantine, now a re-oath had to take place, and this had never happened in the history of Russia. From the point of view of not so much the nobles as the guards soldiers, this was completely incomprehensible: one soldier said that gentlemen officers can re-oath if they have two honors, but I, he said, have one honor, and, having sworn the oath once, I'm not going to take the oath a second time. In addition, two weeks of interregnum provided the opportunity to gather their forces.
Having learned about the impending rebellion, Nicholas decided to declare himself emperor and take the oath of office on December 14. On the same day, the Decembrists withdrew the guards units from the barracks to Senate Square - in order to supposedly protect the rights of Constantine, from whom Nicholas was taking the throne.
Through envoys, Nikolai tried to persuade the rebels to disperse to the barracks, promising to pretend that nothing had happened, but they did not disperse. It was getting towards evening, in the dark the situation could develop unpredictably, and the performance had to be stopped. This decision was very difficult for Nicholas: firstly, when giving the order to open fire, he did not know whether his artillery soldiers would listen and how other regiments would react to this; secondly, in this way he ascended the throne, shedding the blood of his subjects - among other things, it was completely unclear how they would look at this in Europe. Nevertheless, in the end he gave the order to shoot the rebels with cannons. The square was swept away by several volleys. Nikolai himself did not look at this - he galloped off to the Winter Palace, to his family.
Nicholas I in front of the formation of the Life Guards Sapper Battalion in the courtyard of the Winter Palace on December 14, 1825. Painting by Vasily Maksutov. 1861 State Hermitage Museum For Nicholas, this was the most difficult test, which left a very strong imprint on his entire reign. He considered what happened to be God's providence - and decided that he was called by the Lord to fight the revolutionary infection not only in his country, but also in Europe in general: he considered the Decembrist conspiracy to be part of the pan-European one.
3. The theory of official nationality
In a nutshell: The basis of the Russian state ideology under Nicholas I was the theory of official nationality, formulated by the Minister of Public Education Uvarov. Uvarov believed that Russia, which only joined the family of European nations in the 18th century, is too young a country to cope with the problems and diseases that struck other European states in the 19th century century, so now it was necessary to temporarily delay her development until she matured. To educate society, he formed a triad, which, in his opinion, described the most important elements of the “national spirit” - “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.” Nicholas I perceived this triad as universal, not temporary.
If in the second half of the 18th century many European monarchs, including Catherine II, were guided by the ideas of the Enlightenment (and the enlightened absolutism that grew on its basis), then by the 1820s, both in Europe and in Russia, the philosophy of the Enlightenment disappointed many. The ideas formulated by Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, Georg Hegel and other authors, later called German classical philosophy, began to come to the fore. The French Enlightenment said that there is one road to progress, paved by laws, human reason and enlightenment, and all peoples who follow it will ultimately come to prosperity. German classics came to the conclusion that there is no single road: each country has its own road, which is guided by a higher spirit, or a higher mind. The knowledge of what kind of road this is (that is, what the “spirit of the people”, its “historical beginnings” lies in), is revealed not to an individual people, but to a family of peoples connected by a single root. Since all European peoples come from the same root of Greco-Roman antiquity, these truths are revealed to them; these are “historical peoples”.
By the beginning of Nicholas's reign, Russia found itself in a rather difficult situation. On the one hand, the ideas of the Enlightenment, on the basis of which government policy and reform projects were previously based, led to the failed reforms of Alexander I and the Decembrist uprising. On the other hand, within the framework of German classical philosophy, Russia turned out to be a “non-historical people”, since it did not have any Greco-Roman roots - and this meant that, despite its thousand-year history, it still destined to live on the side of the historical road.
Russian public figures managed to propose a solution, including the Minister of Public Education Sergei Uvarov, who, being a man of Alexander’s time and a Westerner, shared the main tenets of German classical philosophy. He believed that until the 18th century Russia was indeed a non-historical country, but, starting with Peter I, it joins the European family of peoples and thereby enters the general historical path. Thus, Russia turned out to be a “young” country that is rapidly catching up with the European states that have gone ahead.
Portrait of Count Sergei Uvarov. Painting by Wilhelm August Golicke. 1833 State Historical Museum / Wikimedia Commons In the early 1830s, looking at the next Belgian revolution Belgian Revolution(1830) - an uprising of the southern (mostly Catholic) provinces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands against the dominant northern (Protestant) provinces, which led to the emergence of the Kingdom of Belgium. and, Uvarov decided that if Russia follows the European path, then it will inevitably have to face European problems. And since she is not yet ready to overcome them due to her youth, now we need to make sure that Russia does not step onto this disastrous path until it is able to resist the disease. Therefore, Uvarov considered the first task of the Ministry of Education to be “to freeze Russia”: that is, not to completely stop its development, but to delay it for a while until the Russians learn some guidelines that will allow them to avoid “bloody alarms” in the future.
To this end, in 1832-1834, Uvarov formulated the so-called theory of official nationality. The theory was based on the triad “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” (a paraphrase of the military slogan “For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland” that took shape at the beginning of the 19th century), that is, three concepts in which, as he believed, lies the basis of the “national spirit "
According to Uvarov, the illnesses of Western society occurred because European Christianity was split into Catholicism and Protestantism: in Protestantism there is too much rational, individualistic, dividing people, and Catholicism, being overly doctrinaire, cannot resist revolutionary ideas. The only tradition that has managed to remain faithful to real Christianity and ensure the unity of the people is Russian Orthodoxy.
It is clear that autocracy is the only form of government that can slowly and carefully manage the development of Russia, keeping it from fatal mistakes, especially since the Russian people did not know any other government other than monarchy in any case. Therefore, autocracy is at the center of the formula: on the one hand, it is supported by the authority of the Orthodox Church, and on the other, by the traditions of the people.
But Uvarov deliberately did not explain what nationality is. He himself believed that if this concept is left ambiguous, a variety of social forces will be able to unite on its basis - the authorities and the enlightened elite will be able to find in folk traditions the best solution to modern problems It is interesting that if for Uvarov the concept of “nationality” in no way meant the participation of the people in the very government of the state, then the Slavophiles, who generally accepted the formula he proposed, placed emphasis differently: emphasizing the word “nationality”, they began to say that if Orthodoxy and autocracy do not meet the people’s aspirations, then they must change. Therefore, it was the Slavophiles, and not the Westerners, who very soon became the main enemies of the Winter Palace: the Westerners fought on a different field - no one understood them anyway. The same forces that accepted the “theory of official nationality”, but attempted to interpret it differently, were perceived as much more dangerous..
But if Uvarov himself considered this triad to be temporary, then Nicholas I perceived it as universal, since it was capacious, understandable and fully consistent with his ideas about how the empire that was in his hands should develop.
4. Third department
In a nutshell: The main instrument with which Nicholas I had to control everything that happened in different layers of society was the Third Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery.
So, Nicholas I found himself on the throne, being absolutely convinced that autocracy is the only form of government that can lead Russia to development and avoid shocks. The last years of his elder brother's reign seemed to him too flabby and incomprehensible; the management of the state, from his point of view, had become loose, and therefore he first of all needed to take all matters into his own hands.
To do this, the emperor needed a tool that would allow him to know exactly how the country was living and to control everything that happened in it. Such an instrument, a kind of eyes and hands of the monarch, became His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery - and first of all its Third Department, which was headed by a cavalry general, a participant in the War of 1812, Alexander Benckendorff.
Portrait of Alexander Benckendorf. Painting by George Dow. 1822 State Hermitage Museum Initially, only 16 people worked in the Third Department, and by the end of Nicholas’s reign their number did not increase much. This small number of people did many things. They controlled the work of government institutions, places of exile and imprisonment; conducted cases related to official and the most dangerous criminal offenses (which included forgery of government documents and counterfeiting); engaged in charity work (mainly among the families of killed or maimed officers); observed the mood in all levels of society; they censored literature and journalism and monitored everyone who could be suspected of unreliability, including Old Believers and foreigners. For this purpose, the Third Department was given a corps of gendarmes, who prepared reports to the emperor (and very truthful ones) about the mood of minds in different classes and about the state of affairs in the provinces. The third department was also a kind of secret police, whose main task was to combat “subversion” (which was understood quite broadly). We do not know the exact number of secret agents, since their lists never existed, but the public fear that the Third Section saw, heard and knew everything suggests that there were quite a lot of them.
5. Censorship and new school charters
In a nutshell: To instill trustworthiness and loyalty to the throne among his subjects, Nicholas I significantly strengthened censorship, made it difficult for children from unprivileged classes to enter universities and severely limited university freedoms.
Another important area of Nicholas’ activity was the education of trustworthiness and loyalty to the throne among his subjects.
For this, the emperor immediately took up the task. In 1826, a new censorship charter was adopted, which is called “cast iron”: it had 230 prohibitive articles, and it turned out to be very difficult to follow it, because it was not clear what, in principle, could now be written about. Therefore, two years later, a new censorship charter was adopted - this time quite liberal, but it soon began to acquire explanations and additions and, as a result, from a very decent one it turned into a document that again prohibited too many things for journalists and writers.
If initially censorship was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Education and the Supreme Censorship Committee added by Nicholas (which included the Ministers of Public Education, Internal and Foreign Affairs), then over time all ministries, the Holy Synod, and the Free Economic Society received censorship rights , as well as the Second and Third Departments of the Chancery. Each author had to take into account all the comments that censors from all these organizations wished to make. The third department, among other things, began to censor all plays intended for production on stage: a special one had been known since the 18th century.
School teacher. Painting by Andrey Popov. 1854 State Tretyakov Gallery In order to educate a new generation of Russians, regulations for lower and secondary schools were adopted in the late 1820s and early 1830s. The system created under Alexander I was preserved: one-class parish and three-class district schools continued to exist, in which children of unprivileged classes could study, as well as gymnasiums that prepared students for entering universities. But if earlier it was possible to enroll in a gymnasium from a district school, now the connection between them was severed and it was forbidden to admit children of serfs into the gymnasium. Thus, education became even more class-based: for non-noble children, admission to universities was difficult, and for serfs it was basically closed. Children of nobles were required to study in Russia until the age of eighteen; otherwise, they were prohibited from entering the public service.
Later, Nicholas also became involved in universities: their autonomy was limited and much stricter regulations were introduced; the number of students who could study at each university at a time was limited to three hundred. True, several branch institutes were opened at the same time (Technological, Mining, Agricultural, Forestry and Technological School in Moscow), where graduates of district schools could enroll. At that time, this was quite a lot, and yet by the end of the reign of Nicholas I, 2,900 students were studying at all Russian universities - about the same number at that time were enrolled in the University of Leipzig alone.
6. Laws, finance, industry and transport
In a nutshell: Under Nicholas I, the government did a lot of useful things: legislation was systematized, the financial system was reformed, and a transport revolution was carried out. In addition, industry developed in Russia with the support of the government.
Since Nikolai Pavlovich was not allowed to govern the state until 1825, he ascended the throne without his own political team and without sufficient preparation to develop his own program of action. Paradoxical as it may seem, he borrowed a lot - at least at first - from the Decembrists. The fact is that during the investigation they spoke a lot and openly about Russia’s troubles and proposed their own solutions to pressing problems. By order of Nikolai, Alexander Borovkov, secretary of the investigative commission, compiled a set of recommendations from their testimony. It was an interesting document, in which all the problems of the state were listed point by point: “Laws”, “Trade”, “Management system” and so on. Until 1830-1831, this document was constantly used by both Nicholas I himself and the Chairman of the State Council Viktor Kochubey.
Nicholas I rewards Speransky for drawing up a code of laws. Painting by Alexey Kivshenko. 1880 DIOMEDIA One of the tasks formulated by the Decembrists, which Nicholas I tried to solve at the very beginning of his reign, was the systematization of legislation. The fact is that by 1825 the only set of Russian laws remained the Council Code of 1649. All laws adopted later (including a huge corpus of laws from the times of Peter I and Catherine II) were published in scattered multi-volume publications of the Senate and were stored in the archives of various departments. Moreover, many laws disappeared altogether - about 70% remained, and the rest disappeared due to various circumstances, such as fires or careless storage. It was completely impossible to use all this in real legal proceedings; laws had to be collected and streamlined. This was entrusted to the Second Department of the Imperial Chancellery, which was formally headed by the jurist Mikhail Balugyansky, but in fact by Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky, assistant to Alexander I, ideologist and inspirer of his reforms. As a result, a huge amount of work was completed in just three years, and in 1830 Speransky reported to the monarch that 45 volumes of the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire were ready. Two years later, 15 volumes of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire were prepared: laws that were subsequently repealed were removed from the Complete Collection, and contradictions and repetitions were eliminated. This was also not enough: Speransky proposed creating new codes of laws, but the emperor said that he would leave this to his heir.
In 1839-1841, Minister of Finance Yegor Kankrin carried out a very important financial reform. The fact is that there were no firmly established relationships between the different money that circulated in Russia: silver rubles, paper banknotes, as well as gold and copper coins, plus coins minted in Europe called “efimki” were exchanged for each other... hectares at fairly arbitrary courses, the number of which reached six. In addition, by the 1830s, the value of assignats had dropped significantly. Kankrin recognized the silver ruble as the main monetary unit and strictly tied banknotes to it: now 1 silver ruble could be obtained for exactly 3 rubles 50 kopecks in banknotes. The population rushed to buy silver, and in the end, banknotes were completely replaced by new banknotes, partially backed by silver. Thus, a fairly stable monetary circulation has been established in Russia.
Under Nicholas, the number of industrial enterprises increased significantly. Of course, this was connected not so much with the actions of the government as with the beginning of the industrial revolution, but without the permission of the government in Russia, in any case, it was impossible to open a factory, plant, or workshop. Under Nicholas, 18% of enterprises were equipped with steam engines - and they produced almost half of all industrial products. In addition, during this period the first (albeit very vague) laws regulating relations between workers and entrepreneurs appeared. Russia also became the first country in the world to adopt a decree on the formation of joint stock companies.
Railway employees at Tver station. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864
Railroad bridge. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Bologoye station. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Cars on the tracks. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Khimka station. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Depot. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Finally, Nicholas I actually brought about a transport revolution in Russia. Since he tried to control everything that was happening, he was forced to constantly travel around the country, and thanks to this, highways (which began to be laid under Alexander I) began to form a road network. In addition, it was through the efforts of Nikolai that the first railways in Russia were built. To do this, the emperor had to overcome serious resistance: Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, Kankrin, and many others were against the new type of transport for Russia. They feared that all the forests would burn in the furnaces of steam locomotives, that in winter the rails would be covered with ice and the trains would not be able to take even small ascents, that the railway would lead to an increase in vagrancy - and, finally, would undermine the very social foundations of the empire, since the nobles , merchants and peasants will travel, although in different carriages, but in the same composition. And yet, in 1837, movement from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoe Selo was opened, and in 1851, Nicholas arrived by train from St. Petersburg to Moscow - for the celebrations in honor of the 25th anniversary of his coronation.
7. The peasant question and the position of the nobles
In a nutshell: The situation of the nobility and peasantry was extremely difficult: landowners went bankrupt, discontent was brewing among the peasantry, serfdom hampered the development of the economy. Nicholas I understood this and tried to take measures, but he never decided to abolish serfdom.
Like his predecessors, Nicholas I was seriously concerned about the state of the two main pillars of the throne and the main Russian social forces - the nobility and the peasantry. The situation for both was extremely difficult. The third department annually gave reports, starting with reports about landowners killed during the year, about refusals to go to corvee, about cutting down the landowners' forests, about complaints from peasants against the landowners - and, most importantly, about the spreading rumors about freedom, which made the situation explosive. Nikolai (like his predecessors) saw that the problem was becoming more and more acute, and understood that if a social explosion was possible in Russia at all, it would be a peasant one, not an urban one. At the same time, in the 1830s, two-thirds of the noble estates were mortgaged: the landowners went bankrupt, and this proved that Russian agricultural production could no longer be based on their farms. Finally, serfdom hampered the development of industry, trade and other sectors of the economy. On the other hand, Nicholas feared the discontent of the nobles, and in general was not sure that a one-time abolition of serfdom would be useful for Russia at this moment.
Peasant family before dinner. Painting by Fyodor Solntsev. 1824 State Tretyakov Gallery / DIOMEDIA From 1826 to 1849, nine secret committees worked on peasant affairs and more than 550 different decrees were adopted concerning the relations between landowners and nobles - for example, it was forbidden to sell peasants without land, and peasants from estates put up for auction were allowed to be released before the end of the auction. Nicholas was never able to abolish serfdom, but, firstly, by making such decisions, the Winter Palace pushed society to discuss an acute problem, and secondly, secret committees collected a lot of material that was useful later, in the second half 1850s, when the Winter Palace moved on to a specific discussion of the abolition of serfdom.
In order to slow down the ruin of the nobles, in 1845 Nicholas allowed the creation of primordiates - that is, indivisible estates that were transferred only to the eldest son, and not divided between the heirs. But by 1861, only 17 of them were introduced, and this did not save the situation: in Russia, the majority of landowners remained small-scale landowners, that is, they owned 16-18 serfs.
In addition, he tried to slow down the erosion of the old noble nobility by issuing a decree according to which hereditary nobility could be obtained by reaching the fifth class of the Table of Ranks, and not the eighth, as before. Obtaining hereditary nobility has become much more difficult.
8. Bureaucracy
In a nutshell: The desire of Nicholas I to keep all government of the country in his own hands led to the fact that management was formalized, the number of officials increased and society was forbidden to evaluate the work of the bureaucracy. As a result, the entire management system stalled, and the scale of treasury theft and bribery became enormous.
Portrait of Emperor Nicholas I. Painting by Horace Vernet. 1830s Wikimedia Commons So, Nicholas I tried to do everything necessary to gradually, without shocks, lead society to prosperity with his own hands. Since he perceived the state as a family, where the emperor is the father of the nation, senior officials and officers are senior relatives, and everyone else is foolish children who need constant supervision, he was not ready to accept any help at all from society . Management was to be exclusively under the authority of the emperor and his ministers, who acted through officials who impeccably carried out the royal will. This led to the formalization of the country's governance and a sharp increase in the number of officials; The basis for managing the empire was the movement of papers: orders went from top to bottom, reports from bottom to top. By the 1840s, the governor was signing about 270 documents a day and spending up to five hours doing so—even just skimming the papers briefly.
The most serious mistake of Nicholas I was that he forbade society to evaluate the work of officials. No one except the immediate superiors could not only criticize, but even praise the officials.
As a result, the bureaucracy itself became a powerful socio-political force, turned into a kind of third estate - and began to defend its own interests. Since the well-being of a bureaucrat depends on whether his superiors are happy with him, wonderful reports went up from the very bottom, starting from the chief executives: everything is fine, everything has been accomplished, the achievements are enormous. With each step these reports only became more radiant, and papers came to the top that had very little in common with reality. This led to the fact that the entire administration of the empire stalled: already in the early 1840s, the Minister of Justice reported to Nicholas I that 33 million cases, set out on at least 33 million sheets of paper, had not been resolved in Russia. And, of course, the situation developed this way not only in justice.
A terrible embezzlement has begun in the country. The most notorious was the case of the disabled people's fund, from which 1 million 200 thousand silver rubles were stolen over several years; they brought 150 thousand rubles to the chairman of one of the deanery boards so that he could put them in a safe, but he took the money for himself and put newspapers in the safe; one district treasurer stole 80 thousand rubles, leaving a note that in this way he decided to reward himself for twenty years of impeccable service. And such things happened on the ground all the time.
The emperor tried to personally monitor everything, adopted the strictest laws and made the most detailed orders, but officials at absolutely all levels found ways to circumvent them.
9. Foreign policy before the early 1850s
In a nutshell: Until the early 1850s, the foreign policy of Nicholas I was quite successful: the government managed to protect the borders from the Persians and Turks and prevent revolution from entering Russia.
In foreign policy, Nicholas I faced two main tasks. Firstly, he had to protect the borders of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, Crimea and Bessarabia from the most militant neighbors, that is, the Persians and Turks. For this purpose, two wars were carried out - the Russian-Persian war of 1826-1828 In 1829, after the end of the Russian-Persian War, an attack was carried out on the Russian mission in Tehran, during which all embassy employees, except the secretary, were killed - including Russian Ambassador Plenipotentiary Alexander Griboyedov, who played a major role in peace negotiations with the Shah, which ended in an agreement beneficial for Russia. and the Russian-Turkish War of 1828-1829, and both of them led to remarkable results: Russia not only strengthened its borders, but also significantly increased its influence in the Balkans. Moreover, for some time (albeit short - from 1833 to 1841) the Unkyar-Iskelesi Treaty between Russia and Turkey was in force, according to which the latter was, if necessary, to close the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits (that is, the passage from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea) for warships of Russia's opponents, which made the Black Sea, in fact, an inland sea of Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
Battle of Boelesti September 26, 1828. German engraving. 1828 Brown University Library The second goal that Nicholas I set for himself was not to let the revolution cross the European borders of the Russian Empire. In addition, since 1825, he considered it his sacred duty to fight revolution in Europe. In 1830, the Russian emperor was ready to send an expedition to suppress the revolution in Belgium, but neither the army nor the treasury were ready for this, and the European powers did not support the intentions of the Winter Palace. In 1831, the Russian army brutally suppressed; Poland became part of the Russian Empire, the Polish constitution was destroyed, and martial law was introduced on its territory, which remained until the end of the reign of Nicholas I. When the war began again in France in 1848, which soon spread to other countries, Nicholas I was not on he was jokingly alarmed: he proposed moving the army to the French borders and was thinking about suppressing the revolution in Prussia on his own. Finally, Franz Joseph, head of the Austrian imperial house, asked him for help against the rebels. Nicholas I understood that this measure was not very beneficial for Russia, but he saw in the Hungarian revolutionaries “not just the enemies of Austria, but the enemies of world order and tranquility... who must be exterminated for our own peace,” and in 1849 the Russian the army joined the Austrian troops and saved the Austrian monarchy from collapse. One way or another, the revolution never crossed the borders of the Russian Empire.
At the same time, since the time of Alexander I, Russia has been at war with the highlanders of the North Caucasus. This war went on with varying degrees of success and lasted for many years.
In general, the foreign policy actions of the government during the reign of Nicholas I can be called rational: it made decisions based on the goals that it set for itself and the real opportunities that the country had.
10. Crimean War and the death of the emperor
In a nutshell: In the early 1850s, Nicholas I made a number of catastrophic mistakes and entered the war with the Ottoman Empire. England and France sided with Turkey, Russia began to suffer defeat. This aggravated many internal problems. In 1855, when the situation was already very difficult, Nicholas I unexpectedly died, leaving his heir Alexander the country in an extremely difficult situation.
Since the beginning of the 1850s, sobriety in assessing one’s own strengths in the Russian leadership suddenly disappeared. The emperor considered that the time had come to finally deal with the Ottoman Empire (which he called the “sick man of Europe”), dividing its “non-indigenous” possessions (the Balkans, Egypt, the islands of the Mediterranean Sea) between Russia and other great powers -by you, first of all by Great Britain. And here Nikolai made several catastrophic mistakes.
First, he offered Great Britain a deal: Russia, as a result of the division of the Ottoman Empire, would receive the Orthodox territories of the Balkans that remained under Turkish rule (that is, Moldavia, Wallachia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Macedonia), and Egypt and Crete would go to Great Britain. But for England this proposal was completely unacceptable: the strengthening of Russia, which became possible with the capture of the Bosporus and Dardanelles, would be too dangerous for it, and the British agreed with the Sultan that Egypt and Crete would receive for helping Turkey against Russia .
His second miscalculation was France. In 1851, an incident occurred there, as a result of which President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon's nephew) became Emperor Napoleon III. Nicholas I decided that Napoleon was too busy with internal problems to intervene in the war, without thinking at all that the best way to strengthen power was to take part in a small, victorious and just war (and Russia’s reputation as the “gendarme of Europe” , was extremely unsightly at that moment). Among other things, an alliance between France and England, longtime enemies, seemed completely impossible to Nicholas - and in this he again miscalculated.
Finally, the Russian emperor believed that Austria, out of gratitude for its help with Hungary, would side with Russia or at least maintain neutrality. But the Habsburgs had their own interests in the Balkans, and a weak Turkey was more profitable for them than a strong Russia.
Siege of Sevastopol. Lithograph by Thomas Sinclair. 1855 DIOMEDIA In June 1853, Russia sent troops into the Danube principalities. In October, the Ottoman Empire officially declared war. At the beginning of 1854, France and Great Britain joined it (on the Turkish side). The allies began actions in several directions at once, but most importantly, they forced Russia to withdraw troops from the Danube principalities, after which the allied expeditionary force landed in Crimea: its goal was to take Sevastopol, the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The siege of Sevastopol began in the fall of 1854 and lasted almost a year.
The Crimean War revealed all the problems associated with the control system built by Nicholas I: neither the supply of the army nor the transport routes worked; the army lacked ammunition. In Sevastopol, the Russian army responded to ten allied shots with one artillery shot - because there was no gunpowder. By the end of the Crimean War, only a few dozen guns remained in Russian arsenals.
Military failures were followed by internal problems. Russia found itself in an absolute diplomatic void: all European countries broke off diplomatic relations with it, except the Vatican and the Kingdom of Naples, and this meant the end of international trade, without which the Russian Empire could not exist. Public opinion in Russia began to change dramatically: many, even conservative-minded people, believed that defeat in the war would be more useful for Russia than victory, believing that it would be not so much Russia that would be defeated as the Nicholas regime.
In July 1854, the new Russian ambassador in Vienna, Alexander Gorchakov, found out on what terms England and France were ready to conclude a truce with Russia and begin negotiations, and advised the emperor to accept them. Nikolai hesitated, but in the fall he was forced to agree. At the beginning of December, Austria also joined the alliance between England and France. And in January 1855, Nicholas I caught a cold and died unexpectedly on February 18.
Nicholas I on his deathbed. Drawing by Vladimir Gau. 1855 State Hermitage Museum Rumors of suicide began to spread in St. Petersburg: supposedly the emperor demanded that his doctor give him poison. It is impossible to refute this version, but the evidence confirming it seems doubtful, especially since for a sincerely believing person, as Nikolai Pavlovich undoubtedly was, suicide is a terrible sin. Rather, the point was that failures - both in the war and in the state as a whole - seriously undermined his health.
According to legend, talking to his son Alexander before his death, Nicholas I said: “I am handing over my command to you, unfortunately, not in the order I wanted, leaving a lot of troubles and worries.” These troubles included not only the difficult and humiliating end of the Crimean War, but also the liberation of the Balkan peoples from the Ottoman Empire, the solution of the peasant question and many other problems that Alexander II had to deal with.
Nicholas I Pavlovich - born: June 25 (July 6), 1796. Date of death: February 18 (March 2), 1855 (58 years old).
The Nicholas era in Russian history is amazing in itself: an unprecedented flowering of culture and police brutality, the strictest discipline and widespread bribery, economic growth and backwardness in everything. But before coming to power, the future autocrat had completely different plans, the implementation of which could make the state one of the richest and most democratic in Europe.
The reign of Emperor Nicholas 1 is usually called a period of gloomy reaction and hopeless stagnation, a period of despotism, barracks order and cemetery silence, and hence the assessment of the emperor himself as the strangler of revolutions, the jailer of the Decembrists, the gendarme of Europe, an incorrigible martinet, “the fiend of uniform enlightenment,” “a boa constrictor.” , who strangled Russia for 30 years.” Let's try to figure it all out.
The starting point of the reign of Nicholas 1 was December 14, 1825 - the day when the Decembrist uprising took place. It not only tested the character of the new emperor, but also had a significant influence on the subsequent formation of his thoughts and actions. After the death of Emperor Alexander 1 on November 19, 1825, a situation of the so-called interregnum arose. The emperor died childless, and his middle brother Constantine was to inherit the throne. However, back in 1823, Alexander signed a secret manifesto, appointing his younger brother Nicholas as heir.
Besides Alexander, Konstantin and their mother, only three people knew about this: Metropolitan Filaret, A. Arakcheev and A. Golitsyn. Nicholas himself did not even suspect this until his brother’s death, so after his death he swore allegiance to Konstantin, who was in Warsaw. From this, according to V. Zhukovsky, began a three-week “struggle not for power, but for the sacrifice of honor and duty to the throne.” Only on December 14, when Constantine confirmed his renunciation of the throne, Nicholas issued a manifesto on his accession. But by this time, conspirators from secret societies began to spread rumors in the army as if Nicholas intended to usurp the rights of Constantine.
December 14, morning - Nicholas familiarized the guard generals and colonels with the will of Alexander 1 and the documents on Constantine’s abdication and read out the manifesto on his accession to the throne. Everyone unanimously recognized him as the legitimate monarch and pledged to swear the troops in. The Senate and Synod had already sworn allegiance, but in the Moscow regiment the soldiers, incited by the conspirators, refused to take the oath.
There were even armed skirmishes, and the regiment went to Senate Square, where it was joined by some soldiers from the Life Guards Grenadier Regiment and the Guards crew. The rebellion flared up. “Tonight,” said Nicholas 1 to A. Benckendorf, “both of us may not be in the world, but at least we will die having fulfilled our duty.”
Just in case, he gave the order to prepare crews to take his mother, wife and children to Tsarskoe Selo. “We don’t know what awaits us,” Nikolai turned to his wife. “Promise me to show courage and, if I have to die, to die with honor.”
Intending to prevent bloodshed, Nicholas 1 with a small retinue went to the rioters. A volley was fired at him. The exhortations of neither Metropolitan Seraphim nor Grand Duke Michael helped. And the shot of the Decembrist P. Kakhovsky in the back of the St. Petersburg Governor-General made it completely clear: the negotiation paths have exhausted themselves, and one cannot do without grapeshot. “I am an emperor,” Nikolai later wrote to his brother, “but at what cost. My God! At the cost of the blood of my subjects." But, based on what the Decembrists really wanted to do with the people and the state, Nicholas 1 was right in his determination to quickly suppress the rebellion.
Consequences of the uprising
“I saw,” he recalled, “that either I should take upon myself to shed the blood of some and save almost certainly everything, or, sparing myself, decisively sacrifice the state.” At first he had the idea to forgive everyone. However, when the investigation revealed that the performance of the Decembrists was not an accidental outburst, but the fruit of a long conspiracy, whose goal was primarily regicide and a change in the form of government, personal impulses faded into the background. There was a trial and punishment to the fullest extent of the law: 5 people were executed, 120 were sent to hard labor. But that's all!
No matter what they write or say about Nicholas 1, he, as a person, is much more attractive than his “friends of the 14th.” After all, some of them (Ryleev and Trubetskoy), having encouraged people to speak, did not come to the square themselves; they were going to destroy the entire royal family, including women and children. After all, it was they who had the idea, in case of failure, to set fire to the capital and retreat to Moscow. After all, it was they who were going (Pestel) to establish a 10-year dictatorship, distract the people with wars of conquest, and create 113,000 gendarmes, which was 130 times more than under Nicholas 1.
What was the emperor like?
By nature, the emperor was a rather generous person and knew how to forgive, not attaching importance to personal insults and believing that he should be above this. He could, for example, in front of the entire regiment ask for forgiveness from the officer who had unjustly offended him, and now, taking into account the conspirators’ awareness of their guilt and the complete repentance of most of them, he could demonstrate “mercy for the fallen.” Could. But he did not do this, although the fate of the majority of the Decembrists and their families was softened as much as possible.
For example, Ryleev’s wife received financial assistance of 2,000 rubles, and Pavel Pestel’s brother Alexander was given a lifelong pension of 3,000 rubles per year and was assigned to a cavalry regiment. Even the children of the Decembrists, who were born in Siberia, with the consent of their parents, were assigned to the best educational institutions at public expense.
It would be appropriate to quote the statement of Count D.A. Tolstoy: “What the great sovereign would have done for his people if, at the first step of his reign, he had not met on December 14, 1825, it is unknown, but this sad event should have had an impact on him a huge impact. Apparently, one should attribute to him that dislike for any liberalism, which was constantly noticed in the orders of Emperor Nicholas...” And this is well illustrated by the words of the tsar himself: “The revolution is on the threshold of Russia, but, I swear, it will not penetrate into it as long as it remains in me.” the breath of life, until by God’s grace I will be emperor.” Since December 14, 1825, Nicholas 1 celebrated this date every year, considering it the day of his true accession to the throne.
What many noted about the emperor was his desire for order and legality.
“My fate is strange,” Nicholas 1 wrote in one of his letters, “they tell me that I am one of the most powerful sovereigns in the world, and it should be said that everything, that is, everything that is permissible, should be for me.” it is possible that I could, therefore, at my discretion, do what I want. In reality, however, the opposite is true for me. And if I am asked about the reason for this anomaly, there is only one answer: debt!
Yes, this is not an empty word for someone who has been accustomed from youth to understand it, like me. This word has a sacred meaning, before which every personal impulse retreats; everything must fall silent before this one feeling and yield to it until you disappear into the grave. This is my slogan. It’s hard, I admit, it’s more painful for me under it than I can express, but I was created to suffer.”
Contemporaries about Nicholas 1
This sacrifice in the name of duty is worthy of respect, and the French politician A. Lamartine said well: “One cannot help but respect a monarch who did not demand anything for himself and fought only for principles.”
Maid of honor A. Tyutcheva wrote about Nicholas 1: “He had an irresistible charm, could charm people... He was extremely unpretentious in everyday life, already as an emperor, he slept on a hard camp bed, covered with a simple overcoat, observed moderation in food, gave preference to simple food, and almost didn't drink alcohol. He stood up for discipline, but he himself was first of all disciplined. Order, clarity, organization, utmost clarity in actions - this is what he demanded from himself and from others. I worked 18 hours a day.”
Principles of government
The emperor paid great attention to the Decembrists’ criticism of the order that existed before him, trying to understand for himself the possible positive beginning in their plans. He then brought closer to himself the two most prominent initiators and conductors of the liberal initiatives of Alexander 1 - M. Speransky and V. Kochubey, who had long since moved away from their former constitutional views, who were supposed to lead the work on creating a code of laws and carrying out public administration reform.
“I have noted and will always celebrate,” said the emperor, “those who want fair demands and want them to come from legitimate authorities...” He also invited N. Mordvinov to work, whose views had previously attracted the attention of the Decembrists, and then often disagreed with government decisions. The emperor elevated Mordvinov to the dignity of count and awarded him the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called.
But in general, independent-minded people irritated Nicholas I. He often admitted that he preferred obedient rather than smart performers. This resulted in his constant difficulties in personnel policy and the selection of worthy employees. Nevertheless, Speransky’s work on codifying laws successfully ended with the publication of the Code of Laws. The situation was worse with regard to resolving the issue of easing the situation of the peasants. True, within the framework of government tutelage it was forbidden to sell serfs at public auctions with the fragmentation of families, to give them as gifts, to send them to factories, or to exile them to Siberia at their own discretion.
Landowners were given the right to release courtyard servants by mutual consent, and they even had the right to purchase real estate. When the estates were sold, the peasants received the right to freedom. All this paved the way for the reforms of Alexander II, but led to new types of bribery and arbitrariness towards peasants on the part of officials.
Law and autocracy
Much attention was paid to issues of education and upbringing. Nicholas 1 raised his first-born son Alexander in a Spartan manner and declared: “I want to raise a man in my son before making him a sovereign.” His teacher was the poet V. Zhukovsky, his teachers were the best specialists of the country: K. Arsenyev, A. Pletnev and others. The law of Alexander 1 was taught by M. Speransky, who convinced the heir: “Every law, and therefore the right of autocracy, therefore exists law that it is based on truth. Where truth ends and untruth begins, right ends and autocracy begins.”
Nicholas 1 shared the same views. A. Pushkin also thought about the combination of intellectual and moral education, and at the request of the Tsar, he compiled a note “On Public Education.” By this time, the poet had already completely moved away from the views of the Decembrists. And the emperor himself set an example of service to duty. During the cholera epidemic in Moscow, the Tsar went there. The Empress brought her children to him, trying to keep him from going. “Take them away,” said Nicholas 1, “thousands of my children are now suffering in Moscow.” For ten days, the emperor visited cholera barracks, ordered the construction of new hospitals and shelters, and provided monetary and food assistance to the poor.
Domestic policy
If Nicholas 1 pursued an isolationist policy in relation to revolutionary ideas, the material inventions of the West attracted his close attention, and he liked to repeat: “We are engineers.” New factories began to appear, railroads and highways were built, industrial production doubled, and finances stabilized. The number of poor people in European Russia was no more than 1%, while in European countries it ranged from 3 to 20%.
Much attention was also paid to the natural sciences. By order of the emperor, observatories were equipped in Kazan, Kyiv, near St. Petersburg; Various scientific societies appeared. Nicholas 1 paid special attention to the archaeographic commission, which was engaged in the study of ancient monuments, analysis and publication of ancient acts. Under him, many educational institutions appeared, including Kiev University, St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, Technical School, military and naval academies, 11 cadet corps, higher school of law and a number of others.
It is curious that, at the request of the emperor, in the construction of temples, volost administrations, schools, etc., it was prescribed to use the canons of ancient Russian architecture. Of no less interest is the fact that it was during the “gloomy” 30-year reign of Nicholas 1 that an unprecedented surge in Russian science and culture occurred. What names! Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Zhukovsky, Tyutchev, Koltsov, Odoevsky, Pogodin, Granovsky, Bryullov, Kiprensky, Tropinin, Venetsianov, Beauvais, Monferand, Ton, Rossi, Glinka, Verstovsky, Dargomyzhsky, Lobachevsky, Jacobi, Struve, Shchepkin, Mochalov, Karatygin and other brilliant talents.
The emperor supported many of them financially. New magazines appeared, university public readings were organized, literary circles and salons expanded their activities, where any political, literary, and philosophical issues were discussed. The Emperor personally took A. Pushkin under his protection, forbidding F. Bulgarin to publish any criticism of him in the Northern Bee, and invited the poet to write new fairy tales, because he considered his old ones to be highly moral. But... Why is the Nicholas era usually described in such gloomy tones?
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. While building, as it seemed to him, an ideal state, the tsar essentially turned the country into a huge barracks, introducing only one thing into the consciousness of people - obedience with the help of cane discipline. And now they have reduced the enrollment of students at universities, established control over censorship itself, and expanded the rights of the gendarmes. The works of Plato, Aeschylus, and Tacitus were banned; the works of Kantemir, Derzhavin, Krylov were censored; entire historical periods were excluded from consideration.
Foreign policy
During the period of aggravation of the revolutionary movement in Europe, the emperor remained faithful to his allied duty. Based on the decisions of the Congress of Vienna, he helped suppress the revolutionary movement in Hungary. As a sign of “gratitude,” Austria united with England and France, who sought to weaken Russia at the first opportunity. One should pay attention to the words of a member of the English Parliament, T. Attwood, in relation to Russia: “... A little time will pass... and these barbarians will learn to use the sword, bayonet and musket with almost the same skill as civilized people.” Hence the conclusion - declare war on Russia as soon as possible.
Bureaucracy
But the loss in the Crimean War was not the most terrible defeat of Nicholas 1. There were worse defeats. The emperor lost the main war to his officials. Under him, their number increased from 16 to 74,000. The bureaucracy became an independent force operating according to its own laws, capable of torpedoing any attempts at change, which weakened the state. And there was no need to talk about bribery. So during the reign of Nicholas 1, there was an illusion of the country’s prosperity. The king understood all this.
Last years. Death
“Unfortunately,” he admitted, “more than often you are forced to use the services of people whom you do not respect...” Already by 1845, many noted the emperor’s depression. “I am working to stun myself,” he wrote to King Frederick William of Prussia. And what is such a recognition worth: “For almost 20 years now I have been sitting in this wonderful place. There are often days when, looking at the sky, I say: why am I not there? I'm so tired".
At the end of January 1855, the autocrat fell ill with acute bronchitis, but continued to work. As a result, pneumonia began and on February 18, 1855 he died. Before his death, he told his son Alexander: “I wanted, having taken upon myself everything difficult, everything heavy, to leave you a peaceful, well-ordered and happy kingdom. Providence judged otherwise. Now I’m going to pray for Russia and for you..."
Doctor of Historical Sciences M. RAKHMATULLIN
In February 1913, just a few years before the collapse of Tsarist Russia, the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov was solemnly celebrated. In countless churches of the vast empire, “many years” of the reigning family were proclaimed, in noble assemblies, champagne bottle corks flew to the ceiling amid joyful exclamations, and throughout Russia millions of people sang: “Strong, sovereign... reign over us... reign for fear of enemies." In the past three centuries, the Russian throne was occupied by different kings: Peter I and Catherine II, endowed with remarkable intelligence and statesmanship; Paul I and Alexander III, who were not very distinguished by these qualities; Catherine I, Anna Ioannovna and Nicholas II, completely devoid of statesmanship. Among them were both cruel ones, like Peter I, Anna Ioannovna and Nicholas I, and relatively soft ones, like Alexander I and his nephew Alexander II. But what they all had in common was that each of them was an unlimited autocrat, to whom ministers, police and all subjects obeyed unquestioningly... What were these all-powerful rulers, on whose one casually thrown word much, if not everything, depended? The magazine "Science and Life" begins publishing articles dedicated to the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, who went down in Russian history mainly because he began his reign with the hanging of five Decembrists and ended it with the blood of thousands and thousands of soldiers and sailors in the shamefully lost Crimean War, unleashed , in particular, and due to the exorbitant imperial ambitions of the king.
Palace Embankment near the Winter Palace from Vasilyevsky Island. Watercolor by Swedish artist Benjamin Petersen. Beginning of the 19th century.
Mikhailovsky Castle - view from the Fontanka embankment. Early 19th century watercolor by Benjamin Petersen.
Paul I. From an engraving of 1798.
The Dowager Empress and mother of the future Emperor Nicholas I, Maria Feodorovna, after the death of Paul I. From an engraving of the early 19th century.
Emperor Alexander I. Early 20s of the 19th century.
Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich in childhood.
Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich.
Petersburg. Uprising on Senate Square on December 14, 1825. Watercolor by artist K.I. Kolman.
Science and life // Illustrations
Emperor Nicholas I and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Portraits of the first third of the 19th century.
Count M. A. Miloradovich.
During the uprising on Senate Square, Pyotr Kakhovsky mortally wounded the military governor-general of St. Petersburg Miloradovich.
The personality and actions of the fifteenth Russian autocrat from the Romanov dynasty were assessed ambiguously by his contemporaries. Persons from his inner circle who communicated with him in an informal setting or in a narrow family circle, as a rule, spoke of the king with delight: “an eternal worker on the throne”, “a fearless knight”, “a knight of the spirit”... For a significant part of society, the name The tsar was associated with the nicknames “bloody”, “executioner”, “Nikolai Palkin”. Moreover, the latter definition seemed to re-establish itself in public opinion after 1917, when for the first time a small brochure by L. N. Tolstoy appeared in a Russian publication under the same name. The basis for its writing (in 1886) was the story of a 95-year-old former Nikolaev soldier about how lower ranks who were guilty of something were driven through the gauntlet, for which Nicholas I was popularly nicknamed Palkin. The very picture of “legal” punishment by spitzrutens, terrifying in its inhumanity, is depicted with stunning force by the writer in the famous story “After the Ball.”
Many negative assessments of the personality of Nicholas I and his activities come from A.I. Herzen, who did not forgive the monarch for his reprisal against the Decembrists and especially the execution of five of them, when everyone was hoping for a pardon. What happened was all the more terrible for society because after the public execution of Pugachev and his associates, the people had already forgotten about the death penalty. Nicholas I is so unloved by Herzen that he, usually an accurate and subtle observer, places emphasis with obvious prejudice even when describing his external appearance: “He was handsome, but his beauty was chilling; there is no face that would so mercilessly expose a person’s character as "his face. The forehead, quickly running back, the lower jaw, developed at the expense of the skull, expressed an unyielding will and weak thought, more cruelty than sensuality. But the main thing is the eyes, without any warmth, without any mercy, winter eyes."
This portrait contradicts the testimony of many other contemporaries. For example, the life physician of the Saxe-Coburg Prince Leopold, Baron Shtokman, described Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich as follows: unusually handsome, attractive, slender, like a young pine tree, regular facial features, beautiful open forehead, arched eyebrows, small mouth, gracefully outlined chin, character very lively, manners relaxed and graceful. One of the noble court ladies, Mrs. Kemble, who was distinguished by her particularly strict judgments about men, endlessly exclaims in delight with him: “What a charm! What a beauty! This will be the first handsome man in Europe!” The English Queen Victoria, the wife of the English envoy Bloomfield, other titled persons and “ordinary” contemporaries spoke equally flatteringly about Nicholas’s appearance.
THE FIRST YEARS OF LIFETen days later, the grandmother-empress told Grimm the details of the first days of her grandson’s life: “Knight Nicholas has been eating porridge for three days now, because he constantly asks for food. I believe that an eight-day-old child has never enjoyed such a treat, this is unheard of... He looks wide eyes at everyone, holds his head straight and turns no worse than I can.” Catherine II predicts the fate of the newborn: the third grandson, “due to his extraordinary strength, is destined, it seems to me, to also reign, although he has two older brothers.” At that time, Alexander was in his twenties; Konstantin was 17 years old.
The newborn, according to the established rule, after the baptism ceremony is transferred to the care of the grandmother. But her unexpected death on November 6, 1796 “unfavorably” affected the education of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. True, the grandmother managed to make a good choice of nanny for Nikolai. It was a Scot, Evgenia Vasilievna Lyon, the daughter of a stucco master, invited to Russia by Catherine II among other artists. She remained the only teacher for the first seven years of the boy's life and is believed to have had a strong influence on the formation of his personality. The owner of a brave, decisive, direct and noble character, Eugenia Lyon tried to instill in Nikolai the highest concepts of duty, honor, and loyalty to his word.
On January 28, 1798, another son, Mikhail, was born into the family of Emperor Paul I. Paul, deprived by the will of his mother, Empress Catherine II, of the opportunity to raise his two eldest sons himself, transferred all his fatherly love to the younger ones, giving clear preference to Nicholas. Their sister Anna Pavlovna, the future Queen of the Netherlands, writes that their father “caressed them very tenderly, which our mother never did.”
According to the established rules, Nikolai was enrolled in military service from the cradle: at the age of four months he was appointed chief of the Life Guards Horse Regiment. The boy's first toy was a wooden gun, then swords appeared, also wooden. In April 1799, he was put on his first military uniform - the “crimson garus”, and in the sixth year of his life Nikolai saddled a riding horse for the first time. From his earliest years, the future emperor absorbs the spirit of the military environment.
In 1802, studies began. From that time on, a special journal was kept in which the teachers (“gentlers”) recorded literally every step of the boy, describing in detail his behavior and actions.
The main supervision of education was entrusted to General Matvey Ivanovich Lamsdorf. It would be difficult to make a more awkward choice. According to contemporaries, Lamsdorff “not only did not possess any of the abilities necessary to educate a person of the royal house, destined to have an influence on the destinies of his compatriots and on the history of his people, but he was even alien to everything that is necessary for a person devoting himself to education of a private individual." He was an ardent supporter of the generally accepted system of education at that time, based on orders, reprimands and punishments that reached the point of cruelty. Nikolai did not avoid frequent “acquaintance” with a ruler, ramrods and rods. With the consent of his mother, Lamsdorff diligently tried to change the character of the pupil, going against all his inclinations and abilities.
As often happens in such cases, the result was the opposite. Subsequently, Nikolai Pavlovich wrote about himself and his brother Mikhail: “Count Lamsdorff knew how to instill in us one feeling - fear, and such fear and confidence in his omnipotence that mother’s face was for us the second most important concept. This order completely deprived us of filial happiness trust in the parent, to whom we were rarely allowed alone, and then never otherwise, as if on a sentence. The constant change of people around us instilled in us from infancy the habit of looking for weaknesses in them in order to take advantage of them in the sense of what we want it was necessary and, it must be admitted, not without success... Count Lamsdorff and others, imitating him, used severity with vehemence, which took away from us the feeling of guilt, leaving only the annoyance for rude treatment, and often undeserved. "Fear and the search for how to avoid punishment occupied my mind most of all. I saw only coercion in teaching, and I studied without desire."
Still would. As the biographer of Nicholas I, Baron M.A. Korf, writes, “the great princes were constantly, as it were, in a vice. They could not freely and easily stand up, sit down, walk, talk, or indulge in the usual childish playfulness and noisiness: they at every step they stopped, corrected, reprimanded, persecuted with morals or threats.” In this way, as time has shown, they tried in vain to correct Nikolai’s as independent as he was obstinate, hot-tempered character. Even Baron Korff, one of the biographers most sympathetic to him, is forced to note that the usually uncommunicative and withdrawn Nikolai seemed to be reborn during the games, and the willful principles contained in him, disapproved of by those around him, manifested themselves in their entirety. The journals of the "cavaliers" for the years 1802-1809 are replete with records of Nikolai's unbridled behavior during games with peers. “No matter what happened to him, whether he fell, or hurt himself, or considered his desires unfulfilled, and himself offended, he immediately uttered swear words... chopped the drum, toys with his hatchet, broke them, beat his comrades with a stick or whatever their games." In moments of temper he could spit at his sister Anna. Once he hit his playmate Adlerberg with such force with the butt of a child’s gun that he was left with a scar for life.
The rude manners of both grand dukes, especially during war games, were explained by the idea established in their boyish minds (not without the influence of Lamsdorff) that rudeness is a mandatory characteristic of all military men. However, teachers note that outside of war games, Nikolai Pavlovich’s manners “remained no less rude, arrogant and arrogant.” Hence the clearly expressed desire to excel in all games, to command, to be a boss or to represent the emperor. And this despite the fact that, according to the same educators, Nikolai “has very limited abilities,” although he had, in their words, “the most excellent, loving heart” and was distinguished by “excessive sensitivity.”
Another trait that also remained for the rest of his life was that Nikolai Pavlovich “could not bear any joke that seemed to him an insult, did not want to endure the slightest displeasure... he seemed to constantly consider himself both higher and more significant than everyone else.” Hence his persistent habit of admitting his mistakes only under strong duress.
So, the favorite pastime of the brothers Nikolai and Mikhail remained only war games. At their disposal was a large assortment of tin and porcelain soldiers, guns, halberds, wooden horses, drums, pipes and even charging boxes. All attempts by the late mother to turn them away from this attraction were unsuccessful. As Nikolai himself later wrote, “military sciences alone interested me passionately, in them alone I found consolation and a pleasant activity, similar to the disposition of my spirit.” In fact, it was a passion, first of all, for paradomania, for frunt, which since Peter III, according to the biographer of the royal family N.K. Schilder, “took deep and strong roots in the royal family.” “He invariably loved exercises, parades, parades and divorces to death and carried them out even in winter,” one of his contemporaries writes about Nicholas. Nikolai and Mikhail even came up with a “family” term to express the pleasure they felt when the review of the grenadier regiments went off without a hitch - “infantry pleasure.”
TEACHERS AND PUPILSFrom the age of six, Nikolai begins to be introduced to the Russian and French languages, the Law of God, Russian history, and geography. This is followed by arithmetic, German and English - as a result, Nikolai was fluent in four languages. Latin and Greek were not given to him. (Subsequently, he excluded them from his children’s education program, because “he can’t stand Latin ever since he was tormented by it in his youth.”) Since 1802, Nicholas has been taught drawing and music. Having learned to play the trumpet (cornet-piston) quite well, after two or three auditions he, naturally gifted with good hearing and musical memory, could perform quite complex works in home concerts without notes. Nikolai Pavlovich retained his love for church singing throughout his life, knew all the church services by heart and willingly sang along with the singers in the choir with his sonorous and pleasant voice. He drew well (in pencil and watercolor) and even learned the art of engraving, which required great patience, a faithful eye and a steady hand.
In 1809, it was decided to expand the training of Nicholas and Mikhail to university programs. But the idea of sending them to the University of Leipzig, as well as the idea of sending them to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, disappeared due to the outbreak of the Patriotic War of 1812. As a result, they continued their education at home. Well-known professors of that time were invited to study with the grand dukes: economist A.K. Storch, lawyer M.A. Balugyansky, historian F.P. Adelung and others. But the first two disciplines did not captivate Nikolai. He later expressed his attitude towards them in the instructions to M.A. Korfu, who was appointed by him to teach his son Konstantin law: “... There is no need to dwell too long on abstract subjects, which are then either forgotten or do not find any application in practice. I I remember how we were tormented over this by two people, very kind, perhaps very smart, but both of them the most intolerable pedants: the late Balugyansky and Kukolnik [father of the famous playwright. - M.R.]... During the lessons of these gentlemen, we either dozed off, or drew some nonsense, sometimes their own caricature portraits, and then for the exams we learned something by rote, without fruition or benefit for the future. In my opinion, the best theory of law is good morality, and it should be in the heart, regardless of these abstractions, and have its basis in religion."
Nikolai Pavlovich showed an interest in construction and especially engineering very early. “Mathematics, then artillery, and especially engineering science and tactics,” he writes in his notes, “attracted me exclusively; I had special success in this area, and then I got the desire to serve in engineering.” And this is not empty boasting. According to engineer-lieutenant general E. A. Egorov, a man of rare honesty and selflessness, Nikolai Pavlovich “always had a special attraction to the engineering and architectural arts... his love for the construction business did not leave him until the end of his life and, to tell the truth, he knew a lot about it... He always went into all the technical details of the work and amazed everyone with the accuracy of his comments and the fidelity of his eye.”
At the age of 17, Nikolai’s compulsory schooling is almost over. From now on, he regularly attends divorces, parades, exercises, that is, he completely indulges in what was previously not encouraged. At the beginning of 1814, the desire of the Grand Dukes to go to the Active Army finally came true. They stayed abroad for about a year. On this trip, Nicholas met his future wife, Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prussian king. The choice of the bride was not made by chance, but also answered the aspirations of Paul I to strengthen relations between Russia and Prussia through a dynastic marriage.
In 1815, the brothers were again in the Active Army, but, as in the first case, they did not take part in military operations. On the way back, the official engagement to Princess Charlotte took place in Berlin. A 19-year-old young man, enchanted by her, upon returning to St. Petersburg, writes a letter significant in content: “Farewell, my angel, my friend, my only consolation, my only true happiness, think about me as often as I think about you, and love if you can, the one who is and will be your faithful Nikolai for life." Charlotte's reciprocal feeling was just as strong, and on July 1 (13), 1817, on her birthday, a magnificent wedding took place. With the adoption of Orthodoxy, the princess was named Alexandra Feodorovna.
Before his marriage, Nicholas took two study tours - to several provinces of Russia and to England. After marriage, he was appointed inspector general for engineering and chief of the Life Guards Sapper Battalion, which fully corresponded to his inclinations and desires. His tirelessness and service zeal amazed everyone: early in the morning he showed up for line and rifle training as a sapper, at 12 o'clock he left for Peterhof, and at 4 o'clock in the afternoon he mounted his horse and again rode 12 miles to the camp, where he remained until the evening dawn, personally supervising work on the construction of training field fortifications, digging trenches, installing mines, landmines... Nikolai had an extraordinary memory for faces and remembered the names of all the lower ranks of “his” battalion. According to his colleagues, Nikolai, who “knew his job to perfection,” fanatically demanded the same from others and strictly punished them for any mistakes. So much so that soldiers punished on his orders were often carried away on stretchers to the infirmary. Nikolai, of course, did not feel any remorse, for he only strictly followed the paragraphs of the military regulations, which provided for the merciless punishment of soldiers with sticks, rods, and spitzrutens for any offenses.
In July 1818, he was appointed brigade commander of the 1st Guards Division (while retaining the post of inspector general). He was in his 22nd year, and he sincerely rejoiced at this appointment, for he received a real opportunity to command the troops himself, to appoint exercises and reviews himself.
In this position, Nikolai Pavlovich was taught the first real lessons in behavior appropriate for an officer, which laid the foundation for the later legend of the “knight emperor.”
Once, during the next exercise, he gave a rude and unfair reprimand in front of the regiment's front to K.I. Bistrom, a military general, commander of the Jaeger Regiment, who had many awards and wounds. The enraged general came to the commander of the Separate Guards Corps, I.V. Vasilchikov, and asked him to convey to Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich his demand for a formal apology. Only the threat to bring the incident to the attention of the sovereign forced Nicholas to apologize to Bistrom, which he did in the presence of the regiment officers. But this lesson was of no use. After some time, for minor violations in the ranks, he gave an insulting scolding to the company commander V.S. Norov, concluding with the phrase: “I will bend you to the horn of a ram!” The regiment officers demanded that Nikolai Pavlovich “give satisfaction to Norov.” Since a duel with a member of the reigning family is by definition impossible, the officers resigned. It was difficult to resolve the conflict.
But nothing could drown out Nikolai Pavlovich’s official zeal. Following the rules of the military regulations “firmly ingrained” in his mind, he spent all his energy on drilling the units under his command. “I began to demand,” he recalled later, “but I demanded alone, because what I discredited out of duty of conscience was allowed everywhere, even by my superiors. The situation was the most difficult; to act otherwise was contrary to my conscience and duty; but by this I clearly set and bosses and subordinates against themselves. Moreover, they didn’t know me, and many either didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand.”
It must be admitted that his severity as a brigade commander was partly justified by the fact that in the officer corps at that time “the order, already shaken by the three-year campaign, was completely destroyed... Subordination disappeared and was preserved only at the front; respect for superiors disappeared completely... "There were no rules, no order, and everything was done completely arbitrarily." It got to the point that many officers came to training in tailcoats, throwing an overcoat over their shoulders and putting on a uniform hat. What was it like for serviceman Nikolai to put up with this to the core? He did not put up with it, which caused not always justified condemnation from his contemporaries. The memoirist F. F. Wigel, known for his poisonous pen, wrote that Grand Duke Nicholas “was uncommunicative and cold, completely devoted to the sense of his duty; in fulfilling it, he was too strict with himself and with others. In the regular features of his white, pale face one can see there was some kind of immobility, some kind of unaccountable severity. Let's tell the truth: he was not loved at all."
The testimonies of other contemporaries relating to the same time are in the same vein: “The ordinary expression of his face has something stern and even unfriendly in it. His smile is a smile of condescension, and not the result of a cheerful mood or passion. The habit of dominating these feelings is akin to his a being to the point that you will not notice in him any compulsion, nothing inappropriate, nothing learned, and yet all his words, like all his movements, are measured, as if musical notes were lying in front of him. There is something unusual about the Grand Duke: he speaks vividly, simply, by the way; everything he says is smart, not a single vulgar joke, not a single funny or obscene word. Neither in the tone of his voice, nor in the composition of his speech there is anything that would expose pride or secrecy. But you feel that his heart is closed, that the barrier is inaccessible, and that it would be crazy to hope to penetrate into the depths of his thoughts or have complete trust."
At the service, Nikolai Pavlovich was in constant tension, he buttoned up all the buttons of his uniform, and only at home, in the family, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna recalled about those days, “he felt quite happy, just like me.” In the notes of V.A. Zhukovsky we read that “nothing could be more touching to see the Grand Duke in his home life. As soon as he crossed the threshold, the gloominess suddenly disappeared, giving way not to smiles, but to loud, joyful laughter, frank speeches and the most affectionate treatment with those around him... A happy young man... with a kind, faithful and beautiful girlfriend, with whom he lived in perfect harmony, having occupations consistent with his inclinations, without worries, without responsibility, without ambitious thoughts, with a clear conscience, which is not did he have enough on earth?
THE PATH TO THE THRONESuddenly everything changed overnight. In the summer of 1819, Alexander I unexpectedly informed Nicholas and his wife of his intentions to renounce the throne in favor of his younger brother. “Nothing like this ever came to mind, even in a dream,” emphasizes Alexandra Fedorovna. “We were struck as if by thunder; the future seemed gloomy and inaccessible to happiness.” Nikolai himself compares his and his wife’s feelings with the feeling of a man calmly walking when “an abyss suddenly opens up under his feet, into which an irresistible force plunges him, not allowing him to retreat or turn back. This is a perfect image of our terrible situation.” And he was not lying, realizing how heavy the cross of fate looming on the horizon - the royal crown - would be for him.
But these are just words, for now Alexander I makes no attempts to involve his brother in state affairs, although a manifesto has already been drawn up (though secretly even from the inner circle of the court) on the renunciation of the throne of Constantine and its transfer to Nicholas. The latter is still busy, as he himself wrote, “with daily waiting in the hallway or secretary room, where... noble persons who had access to the sovereign gathered every day. We spent an hour, sometimes more, in this noisy meeting. .. This time was a waste of time, but also a precious practice for getting to know people and faces, and I took advantage of it.”
This is the whole school of Nikolai’s preparation for governing the state, for which, it should be noted, he did not strive at all and for which, as he himself admitted, “my inclinations and desires led me so little; a degree for which I had never prepared and, on the contrary, I always looked with fear, looking at the burden that lay on my benefactor" (Emperor Alexander I. - M.R.). In February 1825, Nikolai was appointed commander of the 1st Guards Division, but this did not essentially change anything. He could have become a member of the State Council, but did not. Why? The answer to the question is partly given by the Decembrist V. I. Steingeil in his “Notes on the Uprising.” Referring to rumors about the abdication of Constantine and the appointment of Nicholas as heir, he quotes the words of Moscow University professor A.F. Merzlyakov: “When this rumor spread throughout Moscow, I happened to see Zhukovsky; I asked him: “Tell me, perhaps, you are a close person - why should we expect from this change?" - “Judge for yourself,” answered Vasily Andreevich, “I have never seen a book in [his] hands; The only occupation is the frunt and the soldiers."
The unexpected news that Alexander I was dying came from Taganrog to St. Petersburg on November 25. (Alexander was touring the south of Russia and intended to travel all over Crimea.) Nikolai invited the Chairman of the State Council and the Committee of Ministers, Prince P.V. Lopukhin, Prosecutor General Prince A.B. Kurakin, commander of the Guards Corps A.L. Voinov and the military Governor General of St. Petersburg, Count M.A. Miloradovich, who was endowed with special powers in connection with the emperor’s departure from the capital, and announced to them his rights to the throne, apparently considering this a purely formal act. But, as the former adjutant of Tsarevich Konstantin F.P. Opochinin testifies, Count Miloradovich “answered flatly that Grand Duke Nicholas cannot and should not in any way hope to succeed his brother Alexander in the event of his death; that the laws of the empire do not allow the sovereign to dispose of will; that, moreover, Alexander’s will is known only to some people and is unknown among the people; that Constantine’s abdication is also implicit and remained unpublicized; that Alexander, if he wanted Nicholas to inherit the throne after him, had to make public his will and Constantine’s consent to it during his lifetime ; that neither the people nor the army will understand the abdication and will attribute everything to treason, especially since neither the sovereign himself nor the heir by birthright is in the capital, but both were absent; that, finally, the guard will resolutely refuse to take the oath to Nicholas in such circumstances , and then the inevitable consequence will be indignation... The Grand Duke proved his rights, but Count Miloradovich did not want to recognize them and refused his assistance. That's where we parted ways."
On the morning of November 27, the courier brought the news of the death of Alexander I, and Nicholas, swayed by Miloradovich’s arguments and not paying attention to the absence of a Manifesto obligatory in such cases on the accession of a new monarch to the throne, was the first to swear allegiance to the “legitimate Emperor Constantine.” The others did the same after him. From this day on, a political crisis provoked by the narrow family clan of the reigning family begins - a 17-day interregnum. Couriers scurry between St. Petersburg and Warsaw, where Constantine was, - the brothers persuade each other to take the remaining idle throne.
A situation unprecedented for Russia has arisen. If earlier in its history there was a fierce struggle for the throne, often leading to murder, now the brothers seem to be competing in renouncing their rights to supreme power. But there is a certain ambiguity and indecision in Konstantin’s behavior. Instead of immediately arriving in the capital, as the situation required, he limited himself to letters to his mother and brother. Members of the reigning house, writes the French ambassador Count Laferronais, “are playing with the crown of Russia, throwing it like a ball to one another.”
On December 12, a package was delivered from Taganrog addressed to “Emperor Constantine” from the Chief of the General Staff, I. I. Dibich. After some hesitation, Grand Duke Nicholas opened it. “Let them imagine what should have happened in me,” he later recalled, “when, glancing at what was included (in the package. - M.R.) letter from General Dibich, I saw that it was about an existing and just discovered extensive conspiracy, the branches of which spread throughout the entire Empire from St. Petersburg to Moscow and to the Second Army in Bessarabia. Only then did I fully feel the burden of my fate and remember with horror what situation I was in. It was necessary to act without wasting a minute, with full power, with experience, with determination."
Nikolai did not exaggerate: according to the adjutant of the infantry commander of the Guards Corps K.I. Bistrom, Ya.I. Rostovtsov, a friend of the Decembrist E.P. Obolensky, in general terms he knew about the impending “outrage at the new oath.” We had to hurry to act.
On the night of December 13, Nikolai Pavlovich appeared before the State Council. The first phrase he uttered: “I carry out the will of brother Konstantin Pavlovich” was supposed to convince the members of the Council that his actions were forced. Then Nicholas “in a loud voice” read out in its final form the Manifesto polished by M. M. Speransky about his accession to the throne. “Everyone listened in deep silence,” Nikolai notes in his notes. This was a natural reaction - the tsar is far from being desired by everyone (S.P. Trubetskoy expressed the opinion of many when he wrote that “the young great princes are tired of them”). However, the roots of slavish obedience to autocratic power are so strong that the unexpected change was accepted calmly by the members of the Council. At the end of the reading of the Manifesto, they “bowed deeply” to the new emperor.
Early in the morning, Nikolai Pavlovich addressed the specially assembled guards generals and colonels. He read to them the Manifesto of his accession to the throne, the will of Alexander I and documents on the abdication of Tsarevich Constantine. The answer was unanimous recognition of him as the rightful monarch. Then the commanders went to the General Headquarters to take the oath, and from there to their units to conduct the appropriate ritual.
On this critical day for him, Nikolai was outwardly calm. But his true state of mind is revealed by the words he then said to A.H. Benckendorf: “Tonight, perhaps, both of us will no longer be in the world, but at least we will die having fulfilled our duty.” He wrote about the same thing to P. M. Volkonsky: “On the fourteenth I will be sovereign or dead.”
By eight o'clock the oath ceremony in the Senate and Synod was completed, and the first news of the oath came from the guards regiments. It seemed that everything would go well. However, the members of secret societies who were in the capital, as the Decembrist M. S. Lunin wrote, “came with the idea that the decisive hour had come” and they had to “resort to the force of arms.” But this favorable situation for the speech came as a complete surprise to the conspirators. Even the experienced K.F. Ryleev “was struck by the randomness of the case” and was forced to admit: “This circumstance gives us a clear idea of our powerlessness. I was deceived myself, we do not have an established plan, no measures have been taken...”
In the camp of the conspirators, there are continuous arguments on the verge of hysteria, and yet in the end it was decided to speak out: “It is better to be taken in the square,” argued N. Bestuzhev, “than on the bed.” The conspirators are unanimous in defining the basic attitude of the speech - “loyalty to the oath to Constantine and reluctance to swear allegiance to Nicholas.” The Decembrists deliberately resorted to deception, convincing the soldiers that the rights of the legitimate heir to the throne, Tsarevich Constantine, should be protected from unauthorized encroachments by Nicholas.
And so, on a gloomy, windy day on December 14, 1825, about three thousand soldiers “standing for Constantine” gathered on Senate Square, with three dozen officers, their commanders. For various reasons, not all the regiments that the leaders of the conspirators were counting on showed up. Those gathered had neither artillery nor cavalry. Another dictator, S.P. Trubetskoy, got scared and didn’t show up on the square. The tedious, almost five-hour standing in their uniforms in the cold, without a specific goal or any combat mission, had a depressing effect on the soldiers who were patiently waiting, as V. I. Steingeil writes, for “the outcome from fate.” Fate appeared in the form of grapeshot, instantly scattering their ranks.
The command to fire live rounds was not given immediately. Nicholas I, despite the general confusion, decisively took the suppression of the rebellion into his own hands, still hoped to do it “without bloodshed,” even after, he recalls, how “they fired a volley at me, bullets whizzed through my head.” All this day Nikolai was in sight, in front of the 1st battalion of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, and his powerful figure on horseback represented an excellent target. “The most amazing thing,” he will say later, “is that I was not killed that day.” And Nikolai firmly believed that God’s hand was guiding his destiny.
Nikolai’s fearless behavior on December 14 is explained by his personal courage and bravery. He himself thought differently. One of the ladies of state of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna later testified that when one of those close to him, out of a desire to flatter, began to tell Nicholas I about his “heroic act” on December 14, about his extraordinary courage, the sovereign interrupted the interlocutor, saying: “You are mistaken; I was not as brave as you think. But a sense of duty forced me to overcome myself." An honest confession. And subsequently he always said that on that day he was “only doing his duty.”
December 14, 1825 determined the fate not only of Nikolai Pavlovich, but in many ways of the country. If, according to the author of the famous book “Russia in 1839”, Marquis Astolphe de Custine, on this day Nicholas “from the silent, melancholy, as he was in the days of his youth, turned into a hero,” then Russia for a long time lost the opportunity to carry out any there was liberal reform, which she so needed. This was already obvious to the most insightful contemporaries. December 14 gave the further course of the historical process “a completely different direction,” noted Count D.N. Tolstoy. Another contemporary clarifies it: “December 14, 1825... should be attributed to the dislike for any liberal movement that was constantly noticed in the orders of Emperor Nicholas.”
Meanwhile, there might not have been an uprising at all under only two conditions. The Decembrist A.E. Rosen clearly speaks about the first in his Notes. Noting that after receiving the news of the death of Alexander I, “all classes and ages were struck by unfeigned sadness” and that it was with “such a mood of spirit” that the troops swore allegiance to Constantine, Rosen adds: “... the feeling of grief took precedence over all other feelings - and the commanders and troops would have just as sadly and calmly sworn allegiance to Nicholas if the will of Alexander I had been communicated to them in a legal manner." Many spoke about the second condition, but it was most clearly stated on December 20, 1825 by Nicholas I himself in a conversation with the French ambassador: “I found, and still find, that if Brother Konstantin had heeded my persistent prayers and arrived in St. Petersburg, we would have avoided a terrifying scene... and the danger to which it plunged us over the course of several hours." As we see, a coincidence of circumstances largely determined the further course of events.
Arrests and interrogations of those involved in the outrage and members of secret societies began. And here the 29-year-old emperor behaved to such an extent cunningly, prudently and artistically that those under investigation, believing in his sincerity, made confessions that were unthinkable in terms of frankness even by the most lenient standards. “Without rest, without sleep, he interrogated... those arrested,” writes the famous historian P.E. Shchegolev, “he forced confessions... choosing masks, each time new for a new person. For some, he was a formidable monarch, whom he insulted a loyal subject, for others - the same citizen of the fatherland as the arrested man standing in front of him; for others - an old soldier suffering for the honor of his uniform; for others - a monarch ready to pronounce constitutional covenants; for others - Russians, crying over the misfortunes of their fatherland and passionately thirsty for the correction of all evils." Pretending to be almost like-minded, he “managed to instill in them confidence that he was the ruler who would make their dreams come true and benefit Russia.” It is the subtle acting of the tsar-investigator that explains the continuous series of confessions, repentances, and mutual slander of those under investigation.
The explanations of P. E. Shchegolev are complemented by the Decembrist A. S. Gangeblov: “One cannot help but be amazed at the tirelessness and patience of Nikolai Pavlovich. He did not neglect anything: without examining the ranks, he condescended to have a personal, one might say, conversation with the arrested, tried to catch the truth in the very expression eyes, in the very intonation of the defendant's words. The success of these attempts, of course, was greatly helped by the very appearance of the sovereign, his stately posture, antique facial features, especially his gaze: when Nikolai Pavlovich was in a calm, merciful mood, his eyes expressed charming kindness and affection ; but when he was angry, the same eyes flashed lightning."
Nicholas I, notes de Custine, “apparently knows how to subjugate the souls of people... some mysterious influence emanates from him.” As many other facts show, Nicholas I “always knew how to deceive observers who innocently believed in his sincerity, nobility, courage, but he was only playing. And Pushkin, the great Pushkin, was defeated by his game. He thought in the simplicity of his soul that the king honored the inspiration in him that the spirit of a sovereign is not cruel... But for Nikolai Pavlovich, Pushkin was just a rogue requiring supervision.” The manifestation of the monarch’s mercy towards the poet was dictated solely by the desire to derive the greatest possible benefit from this.
(To be continued.)
Since 1814, the poet V. A. Zhukovsky was brought closer to the court by the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna.
Nikolai Pavlovich Romanov, the future Emperor Nicholas I, was born on July 6 (June 25, O.S.) 1796 in Tsarskoye Selo. He became the third son of Emperor Paul I and Empress Maria Feodorovna. Nicholas was not the eldest son and therefore did not claim the throne. It was assumed that he would devote himself to a military career. At the age of six months, the boy received the rank of colonel, and at three years old he was already sporting the uniform of the Life Guards Horse Regiment.
Responsibility for raising Nikolai and his younger brother Mikhail was entrusted to General Lamzdorf. Home education consisted of studying economics, history, geography, law, engineering and fortification. Particular emphasis was placed on the study of foreign languages: French, German and Latin. The humanities did not give Nikolai much pleasure, but everything related to engineering and military affairs attracted his attention. As a child, Nikolai mastered playing the flute and took drawing lessons, and this acquaintance with art allowed him to be considered a connoisseur of opera and ballet in the future.
In July 1817, Nikolai Pavlovich’s wedding took place with Princess Friederike Louise Charlotte Wilhelmina of Prussia, who after baptism took the name Alexandra Feodorovna. And from that time on, the Grand Duke began to actively take part in the arrangement of the Russian army. He was in charge of engineering units, and under his leadership, educational institutions were created in companies and battalions. In 1819, with his assistance, the Main Engineering School and schools for guards ensigns were opened. Nevertheless, the army did not like him for being excessively pedantic and picky about little things.
In 1820, a turning point occurred in the biography of the future Emperor Nicholas I: his elder brother Alexander I announced that due to the refusal of the heir to the throne Constantine, the right to reign passed to Nicholas. For Nikolai Pavlovich, the news came as a shock; he was not ready for it. Despite the protests of his younger brother, Alexander I secured this right with a special manifesto.
However, on December 1 (November 19, O.S.), Emperor Alexander I suddenly died. Nicholas again tried to renounce his reign and shift the burden of power to Constantine. Only after the publication of the tsar's manifesto, naming Nikolai Pavlovich as heir, did he have to agree with the will of Alexander I.
The date of the oath before the troops on Senate Square was set for December 26 (December 14, O.S.). It was this date that became decisive in the speech of participants in various secret societies, which went down in history as the Decembrist uprising.
The revolutionaries' plan was not implemented, the army did not support the rebels, and the uprising was suppressed. After the trial, five leaders of the uprising were executed, and a large number of participants and sympathizers went into exile. The reign of Nicholas I began very dramatically, but there were no other executions during his reign.
The crowning took place on August 22, 1826 in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, and in May 1829 the new emperor assumed the rights of autocrat of the Polish kingdom.
The first steps of Nicholas I in politics were quite liberal: A. S. Pushkin returned from exile, V. A. Zhukovsky became the heir’s mentor; Nicholas’s liberal views are also indicated by the fact that the Ministry of State Property was headed by P. D. Kiselev, who was not a supporter of serfdom.
However, history has shown that the new emperor was an ardent supporter of the monarchy. His main slogan, which determined state policy, was expressed in three postulates: autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality. The main thing that Nicholas I sought and achieved with his policy was not to create something new and better, but to preserve and improve the existing order.
The emperor's desire for conservatism and blind adherence to the letter of the law led to the development of an even greater bureaucracy in the country. In fact, an entire bureaucratic state was created, the ideas of which continue to live to this day. The most severe censorship was introduced, a division of the Secret Chancellery was created, headed by Benckendorff, which conducted political investigation. Very close monitoring of the printing industry was established.
During the reign of Nicholas I, some changes affected the existing serfdom. Uncultivated lands in Siberia and the Urals began to be developed, and peasants were sent to raise them regardless of their desire. Infrastructure was created on new lands, and peasants were supplied with new agricultural equipment.
Under Nicholas I, the first railway was built. The track of Russian roads was wider than European ones, which contributed to the development of domestic technology.
A financial reform began, which was supposed to introduce a unified system for calculating silver coins and banknotes.
A special place in the tsar's policy was occupied by concern about the penetration of liberal ideas into Russia. Nicholas I sought to destroy all dissent not only in Russia, but throughout Europe. The suppression of all kinds of uprisings and revolutionary riots could not be done without the Russian Tsar. As a result, he received the well-deserved nickname “gendarme of Europe.”
All the years of the reign of Nicholas I were filled with military operations abroad. 1826-1828 - Russian-Persian War, 1828-1829 - Russian-Turkish War, 1830 - suppression of the Polish uprising by Russian troops. In 1833, the Treaty of Unkar-Iskelesi was signed, which became the highest point of Russian influence on Constantinople. Russia received the right to block the passage of foreign ships into the Black Sea. However, this right was soon lost as a result of the Second London Convention in 1841. 1849 - Russia is an active participant in the suppression of the uprising in Hungary.
The culmination of the reign of Nicholas I was the Crimean War. It was she who was the collapse of the emperor’s political career. He did not expect that Great Britain and France would come to Turkey's aid. The policy of Austria also caused concern, whose unfriendliness forced the Russian Empire to keep an entire army on its western borders.
As a result, Russia lost influence in the Black Sea and lost the opportunity to build and use military fortresses on the coast.
In 1855, Nicholas I fell ill with the flu, but, despite being unwell, in February he went to a military parade without outerwear... The emperor died on March 2, 1855.