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Y318: Russia and Its Rulers 1855–1964

Depth study: Alexander II’s domestic reforms — the Crimean War, the great reforms and their limits

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on the Crimean War and Alexander II’s aims, emancipation and its limits, the zemstva, judicial, military, education, press and urban reform, surviving restrictions, opposition, Loris-Melikov and interpretations of the reign.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Describe the judicial reform of 1864.

Numbers

Summarise the military reforms.

Numbers

What form did opposition to Alexander II take?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How did the Crimean War shape Alexander II's programme?

    Model answer

    Defeat showed that a serf-based conscript army and an economy without railways could not sustain great-power status, and he warned the Moscow nobility that it was better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for it to abolish itself from below.

  2. 2

    What were Alexander II's aims in reforming?

    Model answer

    To restore Russia's military and economic strength and to modernise its institutions sufficiently to preserve the autocracy, not to share power.

  3. 3

    Describe the nature of Alexander II's government.

    Model answer

    Personal autocracy: he selected reforming ministers such as Milyutin and Reutern and could equally set them aside, and after the attempt on his life in 1866 he turned increasingly to conservatives such as Dmitry Tolstoy.

  4. 4

    What changes were made to central administration?

    Model answer

    A Council of Ministers was created in 1861 to co-ordinate policy and reforms were prepared by editing commissions of officials and experts, but there was still no cabinet and no minister answerable to anyone but the tsar.

  5. 5

    State the main terms of the Emancipation Edict.

    Model answer

    In 1861 some twenty-three million privately owned serfs became legally free and able to marry, own property and go to law, and received allotments for which the state compensated the nobles and they repaid the state over forty-nine years.

  6. 6

    What limited the benefit of emancipation to peasants?

    Model answer

    The nobles kept the better land and cut off strips known as otrezki, redemption payments fell on households that were often left with less land, and collective liability through the commune restricted movement and enterprise.

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