428

The Growth of Capitalism.
Crisis of the Feudal Economy Based on Serfdom

p At the beginning of the nineteenth century those forces which were eventually to lead to the final disintegration of feudal social patterns and serfdom in Russia began to crystallise. This gradual process, together with the development of early capitalism, had started some time before, but it was only now that the old order had come to appear blatantly obsolete and an obstacle to the country’s progress. Russian industry by this time was developing steadily, more and more new factories were springing up and wage labour was necessary to staff them. The peasants meanwhile were still bound to the land, they were considered the property of their landowners, and this state of affairs held back the growth of a working class, so vital for the emergent industry. Trade was developing apace and the internal market grew, while the vast majority of the working masses was in bondage and unable to engage freely in trade, which meant that yet another sphere of economic development was hindered by serfdom. A new class was taking shape, the bourgeoisie, but its growth was also held back by the social patterns and codes of feudal society: there even arose ridiculous situations in which wealthy serf merchants or factory owners were handling enormous capital and hiring hundreds of workers but were officially still registered as serfs belonging to some landowner who had the right to sell them or take away their wealth as well, since all their possessions were officially the property of the landowner. The emergence of capitalist relations in agriculture by this time called for free peasants in possession of their own holdings. Spontaneous serf uprisings took place more and more frequently. These outbreaks multiplied with particular intensity after the Patriotic War of 1812. After the victory over Napoleon, the peasants protested, "We freed our motherland from the tyrant, but are now being 429 tyrannised by our own masters.” "The struggle between peoples and emperors" which had gripped Western Europe now spread to Russia. A particularly widespread peasant revolt broke but in the Don area in 1818-1820. There was also unrest and discontent in the tsarist army.

The leading statesman of the Empire after the war of 1812 was the short-sighted and rough-mannered petty tyrant Arakcheyev, the intimate friend of Alexander I, who came to be known as the "oppressor of all Russia”. The practice of flogging was given rein in the army after Arakcheyev gave orders for the soldiers’ freedom-loving spirit to be beaten out of them. Martial law was introduced in many villages near Novgorod and Kharkov: peasants were forced to carry out their agricultural work and military duties at one and the same time; work on the fields had to be done in uniform and in the form of a strict drill, and the slightest insubordination was punished by flogging. Even peasants’ wives were subject to punishment if they did not stoke their stoves at the proper time or if they lit tapers late at night. Peasants were deprived of some of their land and not allowed to sell their produce. Villages subjected to such discipline were referred to as "military settlements”. Feudal reaction still ruled the day in Russia.

The First Secret Societies

p It was against such a background that the first secret revolutionary societies came into being in Russia. The first Russian revolutionaries are known as the Decembrists, since their first revolt took place in December (1825). The Decembrists were for the most part young officers from the gentry who had taken part in the war against Napoleon, which had awakened their political conscience. Although they themselves came from the landed gentry, their consciences and sense of honour forbade them to uphold serfdom which they regarded as the greatest evil in their country. They realised that Russia’s most important task was to abolish serfdom and do away with the autocracy. The Decembrists were ardent patriots and dreamt of a new order; with the support of sympathetic troops they planned to organise an armed uprising, overthrow the autocracy, abolish serfdom and together with all strata of the population adopt a revolutionary constitution which would usher in a new society. Drafts for this revolutionary constitution were drawn up in the Northern Society led by Nikita Muravyov and in the Southern Society led by Pavel Pestel.

p If adopted, these draft constitutions would have represented a tremendous advance: they would have dealt an overwhelming 430 blow at the nobility’s hold on the country, at serfdom and the autocracy and have made possible rapid capitalist development in Russia.

p Membership of the secret society was growing steadily, and came to include many famous, principled members of the Russian gentry. After joining the society, the poet Kondraty Ryleyev together with another poet member, Alexander Bestuzhev, wrote inspired revolutionary songs for the people. Ryleyev’s sympathies were markedly republican.

p It was in the name of the revolutionary transformation of their motherland that these revolutionaries rose to arms in December 1825 in the first revolutionary uprising against tsarist rule. The Decembrists were later to be known as the "first champions of freedom".

p In November 1825 Tsar Alexander I died suddenly and a tense atmosphere developed during the ensuing interregnum. The Tsar had had no children and was to be succeeded by his brother Constantine. Constantine however had secretly renounced his right to the throne, which meant that the next Tsar would be the insensitive despot, his brother Nicholas, who was highly unpopular in the army. Since Constantine’s decision had not been made public sufficiently long in advance, the troops and the population swore an oath of allegiance to Constantine and then almost immediately afterwards were required to swear another to Nicholas. Unrest among the people and in the army had been rife for some time and after the two different oaths of allegiance had been taken the situation became still more tense.

p On the day set aside for the oath of allegiance to Nicholas I—December 14th—the members of the secret society decided to organise a revolt in their regiments and lead the insurgent troops out onto Senate Square, so as to obstruct the Senate from taking the oath of allegiance to the new Tsar. They prepared a revolutionary manifesto to the Russian people, which proclaimed the abolition of serfdom and the dissolution of the existing government. The manifesto also called for the convening of a constituent assembly in order to decide whether Russia should become a republic or a limited constitutional monarchy and then to adopt a constitution and elect a new government. This document also declared to the Russian people that freedom of speech and of the press and religious liberty would be introduced and the terms of military service reduced. Another armed uprising in the south was planned to coincide with the revolt in St. Petersburg but never materialised.

p About three thousand insurgent troops came out onto Senate Square led by the Decembrist officers. An enormous crowd gathered that was sympathetic to this revolutionary protest. However 431 the Decembrists hesitated to rely on the support of the popular masses. They were unable to proclaim their manifesto and the revolt did not proceed according to plan. The evening before, the Decembrists had elected a dictator from among their ranks—a long-standing member of the society, Prince Troubetskoy. However, he did not appear on the square, thus leaving his comrades in the lurch and betraying the common cause. After waiting in vain for a long time the Decembrists at last chose another leader, Prince Obolensky.

p By this time it was already too late. Nicholas I had seized the initiative and by dusk the new Tsar had given orders for his loyal troops to open fire on the crowd, and the revolt was soon crushed.

This abortive uprising of the Decembrists marked a turning point in Russian history. With it the revolutionary struggle can be said to have begun. Subsequent generations of brave Russian revolutionaries were to receive the revolutionary baton and continue the struggle against serfdom and the autocracy.

The Crisis of Serfdom

By the middle of the nineteenth century the crisis within Russian feudal society was more apparent than ever. The contradictions between the developing capitalist social relations and the obsolete feudal society were growing sharper and sharper. From the 1830s onwards small-scale manufactories were giving way to factories, and machines were gradually ousting manual labour in industry. The introduction of machinery demanded an adequate supply of wage workers more qualified than the illiterate peasants. With the development of capitalism a new class came into being—the proletariat. In 1837 the country’s first railway was opened between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo and by 1851 the main line between St. Petersburg and Moscow was open. The country needed to increase agricultural output to supply the growing towns and in this respect once more primitive serf agriculture held back economic development. Mechanisation of agriculture made negligible headway at this period since it was to the landowners’ advantage to use cheap manual labour rather than introduce agricultural machinery.

Popular Revolt Against the Feudal Order.
A New Generation of Revolutionaries

p At the beginning of 1830 a wave of "cholera riots" swept Russia. A rumour spread that a serious outbreak of cholera had been caused by the tsarist officials and landowners deliberately putting 432 poison into the wells. The real motive behind these riots was the hatred of serfdom. Some of the insurgent peasants gave the following clear definition of the reason behind the popular discontent: "Fools pay heed to poison and cholera, what we need is to rid ourselves of the race of swine, the gentry.” Later, large-scale peasant uprisings were to spread through the Ukraine, particularly in the 1850s. The tsarist authorities caught the leader of the peasant movement Ustim Karmelyuk time and time again but he kept on outwitting his captors and escaping to lead the peasants forward in revolt once more. Often the authorities had to send in the army to quell these peasant uprisings and sometimes even use artillery. However, these outbreaks of rebellion were lacking in cohesion and clear objectives and therefore did not prove sufficiently powerful to put an end to serfdom.

p Far from dying out after the Decembrist uprising, the Russian revolutionary movement soon gathered new strength and important new figures came to the fore—revolutionary democrats championing the interests of the people, the millions of oppressed and impoverished peasants. Ardent champions of the people of this period included Alexander Herzen (1812-1870), Nikolai Ogarev (1813-1877) and their friend Vissarion Belinsky (1811-1848). They were all bitterly opposed to serfdom and the autocracy and ready to fight to defend their ideals. Unlike previous revolutionaries, they sought their main source of support among the popular masses. A particularly important role in the propagation of these new ideas was played by Belinsky, fiery spokesman of the people, the hero of the progressive generation and the forerunner of the raznochintsi (revolutionaries from the radical middle class).

p Herzen, Ogarev and Belinsky not only campaigned for the abolition of serfdom and the overthrow of the autocracy, but as socialists they dreamed of the time when the exploitation of man by man would be no more and the society that bred such exploitation would be a thing of the past. As yet they were unaware of the scientific methods to be employed to accomplish these ends, and thus remained Utopian socialists.

Frequent arrest and exile made it impossible for Herzen to continue his propaganda work effectively in Russia, and he emigrated to Western Europe where he continued his struggle against tsarism; here he was soon joined by his friend Ogarev. Herzen founded the first free Russian press outside the Empire’s borders, which boldly attacked serfdom and the autocracy, exposed their inherent evils and rallied the people to the struggle against the decaying social order which fettered Russia in backwardness and illiteracy.

433

Cultural Achievements in the First Half
of the Nineteenth Century

p Despite the heavy yoke of serfdom and the exploitation to which the peasants were subjected by their masters, a remarkable progressive culture flourished against this background of struggle against social injustice. Campaigning against this injustice and oppression many Russian writers, musicians and artists were to produce works of outstanding merit, and popular art traditions also flourished.

p Vivid pictures of Russian life are immortalised in the superb works of universally acclaimed poets such as Pushkin and Lermontov, in the stories of Gogol and the novels of Turgenev. Subjects such as the obsolescence of serfdom, the outdated social order and the search for truth and social justice were to be found alongside rich psychological portraiture in Pushkin’s Yevgeny Onegin, Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time, Gogol’s Dead Souls and Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches. The literature of these years evoked a lively response among readers to whom it brought heightened social awareness and presented a rallying call to the fight for social justice.

p Russian music also came into its own in this period in the work of the great composer Mikhail Glinka. A bitter attack against serfdom was to be found in the talented paintings of Pavel Fedotov (“The Major’s Courtship”, "Fidelka’s Death”, etc.). In his enormous canvas "Christ Before the People”, Alexander Ivanov depicted common people in vivid realistic terms in the foreground.

p Important advances were also made in the sphere of science. Nikolai Lobachevsky founded a system of non-Euclidean geometry which was to become an important landmark in the history of mathematics. The outstanding chemist Nikolai Zinin was the first scientist to synthesise aniline dyes and this achievement laid the foundations for a whole new branch of industry. Nikolai Pirogov who carried out important experiments in antisepsis and anaesthesia was one of the founders of field surgery.

Russian culture of this period is permeated with humanism and love and respect for all members of the human race and contains a bold summons to the struggle against all that was obsolete and held back social progress, in the name of a new, just order.

The Crimean War—1853-1856

p The inherent contradictions of Russian society became all the more acute when war which had long been brewing between 434 Russia on the one hand and Britain and France on the other finally broke out in 1853.

p The Tsar and his government, feeling themselves by this time to be in a far from strong position, decided to make use of the weakness of the Turkish Empire to consolidate their control over the Bosporus and the Dardanelles and ensure free passage for Russian vessels from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. This would have brought landowning interests increased revenues, promoted the agricultural development of the southern provinces and, it was hoped, postponed the ultimate collapse of serfdom. However, stronger and more progressive capitalist states such as Britain and France were not prepared to sit back and watch Russia strengthen its hold on the Middle East; they were also not averse to the prospect of capturing such rich prizes as the ’Crimea and the Caucasus. The course of the war was to show up Russia’s backwardness when it came to both land and naval engagements. Russia’s navy consisted of sailing vessels while the British and French navies had long since gone over to steam; their arms and artillery were also superior to those of the Russian army. Poor communications meant that the Russian forces were virtually cut off from their supply centres—supplies of both arms and food were seriously inadequate and subject to frequent delay.

Despite all these difficulties the enemy were astounded by the heroism of the Russian soldiers and the talent of the commanders. The Russian fleet scored a resounding victory at the battle of Sinop under Admiral Nakhimov at the very beginning of the war. After unsuccessful attempts on the part of the allies to seize the approaches to St. Petersburg, Kronstadt, the Baltic coast and Kamchatka they concentrated all their forces on the Crimean peninsula. The allies advanced towards Sevastopol but their attempt to take the port by storm ended in failure and they settled down to a siege which was to last 349 days. The Russian troops were commanded by Admirals Nakhimov, Kornilov and Istomin. After almost a year of siege during which the defenders suffered heavy casualties, the city fell. It was only in the Caucasus that Russian troops under the command of Nikolai Muravyov, a friend of the Decembrists, gained victories of any consequence, which enabled the Russians to secure their hold over the Crimea and the Caucasus. The war ended with the drafting of the Treaty of Paris in 1856, the terms of which were extremely burdensome for Russia, since she was deprived of the right to have warships in the Black Sea and was also obliged to raze to the ground all her coastal fortifications in that area.

435

The Emergence of a Revolutionary Situation.
The Abolition of Serfdom

p The Crimean War exposed to the world the weakness and atrophy of Russia’s feudal society. The brunt of the hardship resulting from the negative outcome of this war was borne by the common people, since it took a heavy toll of lives and brought widespread poverty in its wake. Driven to desperation by hardship and want the masses responded to all activity undertaken by the "powers that be" with violent resistance. The ruling classes were unable to preserve the old status quo any longer, now that the people openly refused to go on living under the former system. The masters found it impossible to maintain their control over their serfs relying on the methods they had employed in the past. By this time there existed that combination of objective portents of change, which Lenin was to term a revolutionary situation.

p Marx and Lenin both stressed in their writings that revolutions do not take place before revolutionary situations develop, although not every revolutionary situation breeds a revolution. The main reason why no revolution actually took place in the years 1859-1861 was the incapacity of the insurgent peasants to combine their efforts on a mass scale, which was the vital step required in order to overthrow or at least limit the Tsar’s powers. The government sensed this and agreed to timely concessions. The government bolstered its power by a number of reforms.

p The most important of these reforms wrested from the government by the mass uprisings and revolutionary opposition currents was the Abolition of Serfdom in 1861. The path to this important reform had been paved long since by the whole course of the country’s economic advance and the threatening collapse of feudal social patterns.

On February 19, 1861, Tsar Alexander II (1855-1881) signed a new law liberating the serfs and a manifesto addressed to the people which proclaimed that serfdom had been abolished. The reform was introduced in such a way as to conform as far as possible with the interests of the landowners, while the peasants were convinced that all the land would be handed over to them free of charge. In practice however their emancipation from feudal bondage proved purely formal and they were merely granted small holdings for large redemption payments, which exceeded the prices for which they would have been able to buy plots of a similar size through normal channels. The land the peasants received proved utterly inadequate for their needs and of such poor quality that they were often obliged almost immediately to reenter their former masters’ service, where their remuneration 436 was a miserable pittance. The money they earned in this way found its way back to their masters’ pockets either in the form of rent for the plots the landowners hired out to them or in the form of repayment for loans they had granted the peasants.

Peasant Protest.
Activity of the Russian Revolutionaries

p Peasant protest had never before broken out on such a wide scale as in the year when serfdom was abolished. The peasants responded to their “emancipation” with revolts. In the course of a mere twelve months there were over a thousand such outbreaks; troops were called out to counter a large number of them and in¹ some cases even artillery was used. Among the most serious of these uprisings were the one that took place in the village of Bezdna led by the peasant Anton Petrov, and another in the village of Kandeyevka, where peasants bearing aloft a red banner marched out to face the tsarist troops.

p Long before the reform of 1861 revolutionary democrats had started to carry on wide-scale propaganda against the tsarist regime and serfdom. An important role in this campaign was played by the revolutionary newspaper Kolokol (The Bell) which Herzen and Ogarev published abroad and the journal Sovremennik (The Contemporary) edited by some of the leading revolutionary democrats of the period, Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828-1889), Nikolai Dobrolyubov (1836-1861) and the revolutionary poet Nikolai Nekrasov (1821-1877). This journal, despite the ruthless hand of the censor, carried on a fearless campaign in the name of the peasant revolution. The editorial offices of Sovremennik became the rallying centre of the Russian revolutionaries, while Kolokol became the headquarters of the Russian revolutionaries living in exile. Both centres were in close contact and collaborated with each other.

p The Russian revolutionaries went about setting up a new revolutionary organisation, a goal they had aspired to even before the reform. In 1861 a large secret organisation Zemlya i Volya (Land and Freedom) had grown up; it took its lead from Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov and also recognised Herzen and Ogarev as leaders of the political exiles.

p Zemlya i Volya was a federation of various revolutionary circles and numbered hundreds of members with branches scattered all over Russia. Its main aim was to organise a nation-wide peasant uprising, the outbreak of which the revolutionaries had expected as soon as the reform of 1861 had been introduced. However, this uprising did not take place as they had hoped, for the 437 peasant uprisings were too scattered while the revolutionaries were divided as both to means and ends. The members of Zemlya i Volya pinned their hopes on 1863, but this year also failed to bring forth the united peasants’ revolt they were waiting for, although wide-scale uprisings broke out in Poland, Lithuania and Byelorussia. Meanwhile the society was to suffer a severe setback when Dobrolyubov died and Chernyshevsky, Serno-Solovyevich and many other of its leaders were arrested. The series of savage reprisals served to weaken and undermine the peasant movement and in 1864 Zemlya i Volya—the largest revolutionary organisation since the Decembrist revolt—disbanded on its own accord, forestalling the tsarist authorities who were bent on bringing about its downfall and doing away with hundreds of active revolutionaries. However, economic progress and the pressure of the peasant movement and the revolutionary struggle were so great that a further series of reforms was wrested from the tsarist government. These reforms were introduced in the period 1863-1874. Principles of self-government were introduced into rural and urban administration, although its nature was determined to a large degree by the class interests of the landowners. Elective Zemstvo (local, district and provincial) and urban councils were set up which were made responsible for social services in the individual provinces or districts (such issues as local communications, food supplies, mutual assurance, social charities, supervision of local trade and industry, etc.). However, it was still the gentry who had the decisive say in the work of the Zemstvo establishments. Selfgovernment for cities was devised on similar principles when town dumas (councils) were introduced. The legal reform of 1864—the most consistent of the bourgeois reforms of this period—introduced trial by jury with counsels for the defence and the prosecution. However, side by side with these new courts there still existed the former ones, and the legal reforms did not anyway apply to all provinces of the Empire. Corporal punishment was also abolished and censorship and educational reforms were introduced.

Thus Russia’s outdated feudal social order and serfdom, one of this order’s main pillars, were at last replaced by capitalist structures which at that period were progressive and enabled the country to advance rapidly.