Defeat in the Crimean War gave the country the jolt it needed to shake off complacency and move the government to action. It was a reverse for Russian imperialism, of course, and delivered a heavy blow to Russia’s prestige, but otherwise it was hardly a disaster. Few assets of much value were lost; the financial cost of war, though serious, was not serious enough to cause political disruption; and the deep structural faults in the economy and society, which underlay the glittering outward show of power, had at least been revealed and were to be quickly and conscientiously addressed.
The defeat did not even halt the Empire’s expansion for long. The peace settlement blocked an advance to the south, but the Empire was making significant gains in Asia, edging its frontiers out towards India and Japan. It also contrived to enlarge its sphere of influence in the Balkans, and created a new one in Korea.
By the 1850s, senior figures in government had understood that serfdom was no longer compatible with Russia’s status as a great power, and that if the Empire did not industrialize it would soon be overtaken by other powers. Serfdom trapped a major part of the population in the relatively unprofitable agricultural sector, threatening to starve emergent industries of labour. It supported a noble class which had ceased to be liable for service to the state a century earlier and had therefore lost its
Reforming the system was not only politically dangerous; it required solutions to a tangle of problems, immense in scale and hair-raising in their administrative complexity. Millions of acres of land had to be surveyed, the quality of their soil assessed, woods and common lands assigned to village communes, and fields apportioned fairly between all the peasant households. The powers of the village commune, which operated collectively and was to be given responsibilities for the peasants that were formerly the lord’s, also had to be defined. Organs of local government had to be set up, their membership — representative of both lords and peasants — laid down, and their responsibilities and mode of operation, which was to be largely democratic, specified. Local magistrates’ courts with elected justices had to be set up too, their powers defined in relation to the existing regional judicial system, with separate provision made for native peoples, priests, the military and commercial cases. There were also the financial aspects. Money had to be found to compensate the erstwhile serf-owners, arrangements made eventually to recoup the cost from the peasant beneficiaries in the form of redemption payments, banks founded to lend money at reasonable rates to peasants… At every stage the process was plagued by political differences and bureaucratic infighting, yet, albeit imperfectly, the task was accomplished, the challenge answered. 2
While this revolution was taking place in the countryside, modernization in the form of the railway was beginning to break down rural isolation, to enliven commerce and, with its increasing demand for coal and steel, to stimulate industry. The creation of a rail network had been mooted for some time, but the St Petersburg—Moscow line was the only important link that had been completed before the Crimean War demonstrated the military cost of an obsolescent communications system. The opponents of the railway at last gave way, and in 1857 the Tsar felt able to order action as soon as hostilities should cease. The construction of a rail network in European Russia was opened up to tender from private enterprise, and the Tsar himself attended the ministerial meeting that decided to let the contract. It was granted to a consortium of Russian and foreign capitalists. The consortium undertook ‘to build at its own expense within ten years … [a] rail network extending some 2,500 miles, the government guaranteeing interest of five per cent on the construction costs’. The system would be run by the consortium for eighty-five years, after which it would become the property of the state.
