Operations in the Crimean War were not confined to the Crimea and the Black Sea. British and French ships made a brief foray into the Baltic; they destroyed the Arctic settlement of Kola, and attacked Petropavlovsk in faraway Kamchatka, where a landing party was repulsed by Russian guns and a bayonet charge. The Russian army was defeated on the river Alma in the Crimea by a superior force, and also lost the battle of Inkerman. In a diversionary move, British naval units and Circassian insurgents together took the little Black Sea naval station of Novorossiisk. The key port of Sevastopol, doggedly defended by General Totleben, held out, and then the main Russian land force, under General Paskevich, advanced to take the strategic Turkish citadel of Kars. However, in September 1855 Sevastopol and the fleet which sheltered there capitulated after very heavy fighting. Negotiations, which had hardly ceased throughout the period of hostilities, were concluded soon afterwards. But the decisive factor which led the Russian government to come to terms was an ultimatum from Austria.
For the first time in a century Russia had failed at arms, and it paid the price in the ensuing settlement. Its frontier was moved away from the Danube, and it was barred from the Black Sea, as were Turkish warships. Russia’s advance in the west had been halted, its primacy as a European land power ended, and it sustained a grievous blow to its prestige. It paused to take stock.
In fact the war had been fought inefficiently by both sides. However, it was recognized in St Petersburg that the roots of the Empire’s problem lay in an inadequate transportation system, underdeveloped industry, and an antiquated social system based on serfdom. Yet the realization that these problems must be addressed was not quite new. In 1842 Tsar Nicholas had ‘decreed the construction of a railroad from St Petersburg to Moscow, to be built according to the example of other powers at the treasury’s expense, for the general good’. 44 The state would keep control of it, but it was expected to be of great importance to industry and, generally, to stimulate activity. Only the financial deficit had delayed implementation.
Nicholas had also made it clear in a speech to the State Council the same year that he was contemplating radical change to the social system. He did not want to alarm the nobility, who were descended from the service class that had built the state, and who depended on their serfs, so he did not talk of emancipation. Nevertheless, he explained in a cautious, convoluted way that ‘it is essential at least to prepare the way for a gradual transition to a different order … A way must be opened up to a transitional order combining emancipation with the inviolable preservation of hereditary land ownership.’ 45
In 1846 he had gone further. Serfs should not be emancipated, as they had been in the Baltic provinces at the beginning of the century, without land on which they could support themselves. The following year he told a delegation of nobles that serfs should not be considered as chattels. Fundamental changes were on the way. It remained to be seen whether they would come in time to save the Empire — or whether the disruption that reform would involve would undermine it.
11Descent to Destruction
A FAMOUS NINETEENTH-CENTURY novel, less well-known in the West than in Russia, pictures a lethargic hero who is reluctant to confront the world, or, indeed, to leave his bed. Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov is a good-natured, well-to-do young gentleman full of excellent intentions. Only he cannot stir himself to take any necessary action — whether to save his fortune or to keep the girl who loves him. His friend, a German who embodies the dynamism that Oblomov lacks, tells him what he needs to do, encourages him, cajoles him; but in vain — Oblomov cannot find the will to transform intention into action. He dissipates his fortune, sinks slowly into penury, marries a peasant woman, and ends his days on a country smallholding surrounded by clucking chickens.
