Economic Advancements Under Alexander II

Introduction

The emancipation of the serfs brought forward the necessities further changes. ● This brought to effect the growing influence which was associated with that of the reformers such as the Milyutin brothers. ● A series of military reforms were instituted by Dmitri Milyutin through the duration of 1874-75. ● Such reforms had been instituted for the purpose of removal of abuses and to formulate greater efficiency regarding making the standing army into a greater professional and less expensive government instrument. ●The extension of opportunities as well as reduction in the control of the Russian Orthodox Church over the education systems was achieved during the Educational Reforms (1863-1864). ● The Legal Reforms had taken place during the duration of (1863-1864). ● Such reforms had been oriented towards the establishment of a legal structure which could be less corrupt and could extensively be fair in approaches regarding the legal proceedings. ●The Jury system was instituted for the first time during such legal reforms. ● Apart from this, the opportunity for external observers including the Russian journalists to attend to the legal case proceedings was first provided during the legal reformations of 1864. ● The intensity of censorship was progressively reduced from 1865 onwards. ● The reformations in the local government occurred during the period of 1864-1870→ Within this period, the local governments had been reformed and the establishment of two different councils took place→ These could be identified as the provincial Zemstva and the Duma of the urban regions. ● Mikhail Von Reutern lead the promotion of the development within the Russian industrial sector→ In a consequential manner, the agriculture also experienced considerable progression. ● The advent of administrative reactionary policies could be observed from 1866 onwards after the Tsar Alexander II suffered the first assassination attempt on his life→ Such policies encompassed the educational as well as the legal systems. ● The initial organised opposition to the unfettered despotism of the rule of the Tsar was formulated primarily by the intellectuals→ The opposition which they incited generally encompassed the Russian peasantry and eventually led to the emergence of the more extremist opposition groups against the rule of the Tsar. ● The assassination of the Tsar Alexander II took place during the year 1881, in the month of March when the proceedings of formulation of the elected national assembly was underway.

How and with what success did the regime address the necessity of modernisation of the Tsarist Empire

Military Reformations (1874)

● The necessities regarding the fulfilment of the needs of the Russian Army was undertaken by the Minister of Defence of the Tsarist Government, Dmitri Milyutin, from 1862 onwards. ● The problems which afflicted the Tsarist Russian army could be identified as the prevalent diseases, dearth of warm clothing, obsolete equipment and finally the low morale. ● The model of improvement for the Russian Army could be comprehended as the highly organised Prussian Army which had been modernised under Albrecht Von Roon under the leadership of the chancellor of Prussia, Otto Von Bismarck. ● The initial reformations in the army could be considered to be the institution of new code of conduct for both the sailors and soldiers→ Mandatory conscription within the army at the verdict of the court for meeting out punishment to the indicted was also abolished. ● The military service duration was also reduced from 25 years to 16 years. ● In 1868, this was further reduced to 10 years under Dmitri Milyutin. ● The office of the chief of staff was also created→ Furthermore, the establishment of the 15 different military districts was performed. ● The establishment of the military cadet schools meant for training the infantry and cavalry was undertaken→ Furthermore, the establishment of the military colleges for training of both nobles and non-noble officers was also undertaken. ● The practice of retention of the military colonies was abandoned as well. ● Army medical services were as well modernised. ● Dmitri Milyutin also overcame the opposition from the class of bureaucrats and landowners of the Russian communities. ● The general Conscription Act was promulgated on the 1st January 1847. ● Furthermore, the conscription services were modified in multiplicity of terms. ● The eligibility of military services was considered to be the threshold of 20 years. ● The exempted ones from the mandatory military services could be identified as the ill and the incapacitated and the only sons who could be the singular breadwinners for their families. ●The complete military service duration was that of 15 years→ This was comprised of six years of active service and nine years of reserve services. ● The duration of active services were considerably shorter for personnel with formal education→ This could be comprehended to be only six months in case of University Graduates, in case of full secondary education holders, the duration was two years and in case of personnel with partial secondary education, the duration was that of three years→ Finally, personnel with only the primary education, had to serve for four years in the army.

Results of the military reformation

● The outcomes of the changes from the military reformation formulated a new sense of professional intent within the Russian Army which was now comparatively smaller yet trained much better. ● Nepotism was replaced with meritocracy. ● The Army expenditure was reduced by 45%. ● The Tsarist Russian Army achieved victory during the campaign against Turkey during 1877-78. ●These reforms resulted in the restoration of the international reputation of Tsarist Russia→ The reforms also ensured that a specifically trained group of soldiers within each of the Russian provinces. ● The reforms also contributed in the uptick of the general educational scenario since the army education campaigns enhanced the educated sections of the society through the reduction of the military service duration.

The Problems

● Substantial number of the peasant recruits had remained illiterate and individuals with political clout did manage to avoid their military services through appointing substitute personnel as their replacements. ● The officer class also remained replete with the aristocratic personnel who retained the values of the old times→ One instance could be outlined in the form of the officers preferring bayonet charges over utilisation of long range rifles under the falsified notion that utilisation of rifles and long range shooting tantamount to encouragement of cowardice amongst the soldiers. ● Production of firearms and ammunitions such as rifles and artillery, machine guns and naval weapons platforms was not achieved up to the expected mark by the Tsarist Government of Russia during the implementation of these reforms.

Legal Reforms

The preceding problems

● The implementation of the Edict of Emancipation was preceded by inefficient and socially discriminatory as well as corrupt legal system of Russia. ● The cases were tried and trials were conducted in secrecy and by personnel with legal ineptitude→ The evidences were mostly in written form and not trustworthy since these could be altered by the law enforcement officers. ●Arbitrary prison sentences could be accorded to incarcerated personnel without bringing them to trial→ The peasantry could be assumed to guilty until they could be proven innocents.

Effects

● The formulation of the new legal code was initiated during 1862→ The Tsarist Statue to establish the Courts of Justice in Russia was issued by Alexander during 1864→ The subsequent legal practice was inspired from the English and French legal traditions and practices. ●Then adversarial systems of legal arguments was established during this reformation period at the Russian Courts→ Granting of the services of legal councils in the form of defence lawyers and the instituting of jury systems were also undertaken during these legal reforms. ● Under these court reforms, the rights of the legal defendant for holding legal arguments with the case prosecutor → The juries had to be selected on the basis of proper qualification and from the wealthy classes with the range of criteria formulated by the local government councils known as the Zemstva. ● The introduction of the open trial and the unfettered access to the press were some other features of this legal reformation process. ● Increment of the payments of judges for preventing them becoming affected by corruption was also undertaken→ The judges were appointed for life. ● The court reforms remained constricted within the urban centres of Russia→ Treason related cases were out of bounds of the jurisdiction of the judges. ●Volost courts did continue within the rural sectors of Russia.

Results

●The legal reforms brought forward by Alexander introduced the theory of equality before the law→ This theory of equality was diluted by the continuation of Volost courts. ● One of the notable cases which could be mentioned in this regard was the trial of Vera Zasulich who was convicted of attempting to murder the governor of St. Petersburgh during the 1878→ The following press reportage and exposure to the public of the case had set a precedent regarding the voicing of criticism of the Russian Government as well. ● The dearth of trained lawyers remained the most intractable problem for the expansion of the new justice system throughout the expanse of Tsarist Russia→ The first courts were established during the 1866 at Moscow. ● In case of the operational jurisdiction of the secret police such as the Third Section, the arbitrary powers accorded by the state continued unabated→ It seemed a trend that most important cases were consistently getting withdrawn from the crown courts and were getting presented to the special tribunals and this indicated that there was an incompatibility between the powers of the autocratic state and the new judicial systems. Continue your journey with our comprehensive guide to Nursing Research and Clinical Practice.

Cultural and Educational Reformations

Previously existing problems

● Previous to 1855, all of the published books, journals and manuscripts as well as newspapers were subjected to the government regulations and censors→ Writers of the publications which were critical of the Government and the Tsar were often incarcerated or deported to Siberia such as Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Effects

● The responsibility of the censorship was undertaken by the Ministry of Interior during 1863 and a new rule and regulation set was established in 1865 for the publishers and writers→ The liberalisation of publication rules and censorship was amendable at the behest of the Ministry of Interior which retained the right of prosecution of writers and editors of subversive and anti-governmental literature. ● The liberalisation of the newspapers invigorated independent literature and greater permeation of information was available throughout the Russian intellectual and literary circuits. ●Discussion on domestic and international topics flourished. ●Radical articles which were critical of the government appeared in publications such as the popular journal edited by Nikolai Nekrasov. ● The writings of prominent writers such as Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy achieved prominence during this time. ● In terms of the educational reforms, the campaign organised by the surgeon Nikolai Pirogov, the Education Ministry Official Konstantin Ushinsky and the Minister of Education from 1861 to 1866 Alexander Golovnin had been noteworthy regarding effort of bringing less class dominated and more widespread and effective education within Russia. ● The emphasis was upon Science and Humanities. ● The University Statute was introduced in 1863→ This accorded the Universities greater operational autonomy concerning the training and selection of the faculty and staff and to establish independent research programmes with inclusivity of women. ● The educational reformations had been instrumental in assisting the modernisation of Russia through improvement of the state of availability of economists and administrators→ It also contributed to the rise of the critical and politically conscious thinking within Russia. ● In general, the number of students with non-noble background was increased by many folds within the Russian Universities by the educational reformations. ● The primary education reformation was addressed by the Elementary Education Statute of 1865 and the secondary educational reformation was addressed by the Secondary Education Statute 1864. ● Children of all classes and backgrounds were able to be admitted to the schools which were now growing in number due to the provisions of the two preceding statutes→ Village schools were also liberated from the clutches of the Church and the ruling Holy Synod body. ● In 1856 the Russian primary schools had only 400000 children as pupils whereas after the reformation in 1878 upto a million new students were studying in an ever growing number of schools. ● The funding provided by the local governing bodies or Zemtsvas ensured that by the year 1914 these governing councils could control over half of the numbers of Russian primary schools.

Local administrative and government reforms

● Tsar Alexander II appointed a commission to investigate the feasibility of reforming the local government and administrative structure as well→ the commission was first directed by Nikolai Milyutin who was the liberal reformer and later the Pyotr Valuev become the chairman who was the Minister of the Internal Affairs. ●The resolutions developed by the commission were submitted during 1864. ● The majority of the local administrative structure of the European Russian were organised into Guberniya(Provincial) and Uezd(District) level governing and administrative councils. ●These councils were known as the Zemstvas. ●The members of the Zemstvas were divided into three separate electoral colleges→ These were comprised of the landowners, the urban dwellers and by the peasantry. ● The reformation permitted the establishment of the employment of trained civil servants by the Zemstvas, who could be on the permanent payroll of the governing councils and the specialised and qualified professionals. ●The responsibilities of the Zemstvas involved the following:

• Staff arrangements in the local schools and the educational institutions. • Arrangement of provisioning of proper medical care. •Construction of infrastructures such as road and dams and bridges • Arrangement and retention of the fire fighting services at the regional levels. • Maintaining prison systems. • Maintaining of mental asylums and orphanages.