19th century russia primary sources

EuroDocs Creator: Richard Hacken, European Studies Librarian,Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA.Feel free to get in touch: Hacken @ byu.edu Direct political criticism was prevented by the censorship of books and periodicals. His successor, Nicholas, disliked serfdom, but there were political hazards in eliminating it. These were but half-truths: the church was indeed subject to the government and upheld autocracy, and priests were often unpopular, but this did not mean that the peasants and a large part of the upper and middle classes were not devoted to the Orthodox faith. The Decembrist uprising, in which 3,000 men were involved, was eventually crushed by Nicholas I – but it p… Certainly in parts of southern Russia where the soil was fertile, labour was plentiful, and potential profits in the grain trade with Europe were high, a landowner would do better if he could replace his serfs with paid agricultural labour and be rid of obligations to those peasants whom he did not need to employ. By the end of the 19th century there were over 2 million industrial workers in Russia. These were a little less than half the rural population: in 1858 there were 19 million state peasants and 22.5 million private serfs. It seemed not only unjust but intolerable that in a great nation men and women could be owned. Whether serfdom was contrary to the interests of serf owners is a more complex question. After the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, his opposition to all change, his suspicion of even mildly liberal ideas, and his insistence on an obscurantist censorship reached their climax. EuroDocs > History of Russia: Primary Documents. During the first, from 1801 to 1803, the tsar took counsel with four intimate friends, who formed his so-called Unofficial Committee, with the intention of drafting ambitious reforms. Click on the images to read the documents in full. Inadequate funds and personnel and the dominant position of the serf-owning nobility in the countryside greatly limited the effective power of this ministry. Such sources include creative works, first hand accounts of events, and the publication of empirical observations or research. Less was done at the lower levels, for the usual reason of inadequate funds. 19th Century British Pamphlets contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in research libraries in the United Kingdom. With special thanks to Natalya Georgiyeva for her help with this webpage. Documents range from government reports, to periodicals, autobiographies, pamphlets, and letters. In the latter part of the 18th century, Russia had been, thanks to its Urals mines, one of the main producers of pig iron. Search for political cartoons in this source by going to the search feature and … To a certain extent it was a redeeming feature of the regime: if there had been less corruption the government would have been even slower, less efficient, and more oppressive. Such sources include creative works, first hand accounts of events, and the publication of empirical observations or research. Part of Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO). It is misleading to represent the Westernizers as wishing to slavishly copy all things Western or the Slavophiles as repudiating everything European and rejecting reform. Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, Russia's economy developed more slowly than did that of the major European nations to its west. The notion of the state as something distinct from and superior to both ruler and ruled was incomprehensible to most government servants. In cotton textiles and sugar refining, Russia was more successful. The manuscripts of historical importance were often scattered about in innumerable small collections, chiefly in the monasteries. Provides access to an extensive collection of primary source documents--including songs, letters, photographs, cartoons, government documents, and ephemera--that reflect the social and cultural politics of the late 19th century. The sections that follow cover the development under Alexander I and Nicholas I of the machinery of government, of social classes and economic forces, of education and political ideas, of the relations between Russians and other peoples within the empire, and of Russian foreign policy. Belinsky described the Orthodox church in his famous “Letter to Gogol” (1847) as “the bulwark of the whip and the handmaid of despotism.” He maintained that the Russian populace was “by its nature a profoundly atheistic people” and that it viewed the priesthood with contempt. Below is a list of reputable web sites that contain primary sources from Modern History (14th -18th century). Access courtesy of the Law Library. Back to Index NOTES: Dates of accession of material added since July 1998 can be seen in the New Additions page.. Russia - Russia - Russia from 1801 to 1917: When Alexander I came to the throne in March 1801, Russia was in a state of hostility with most of Europe, though its armies were not actually fighting; its only ally was its traditional enemy, Turkey. Bet… The ispravnik was elected by the local nobility. Belinsky was ill at ease with foreigners, and Herzen and Bakunin, despite many years’ residence in France, Germany, England, and Italy, remained not only hostile to the world of European bourgeois liberalism and democracy but also strangely ignorant of it. Only minor measures were taken to benefit the serfs on private estates. Nevertheless, in increasing numbers the children of minor officials, small tradesmen, and especially priests were acquiring education. They were reluctant to make decisions: responsibility was pushed higher and higher up the hierarchy, until thousands of minor matters ended on the emperor’s desk. Russia's population was substantially larger than those of the more developed Western countries, but the vast majority of the people lived in rural communities and engaged in relatively primitive agriculture. 19th Century Primary Source Collections, A-Z Eight Centuries (formerly 19th Century Masterfile) Contains over 6 million citation for books, periodicals and government publications from over 70 print indexes to material published in the 19th Century. Under Nicholas I there was some improvement. In an effort to combat what he believed to be dangerous irreligious doctrines emanating from western Europe, Golitsyn encouraged university students to spy on their professors and on each other; those who taught unacceptable ideas were frequently dismissed or threatened with prison. The urban population grew significantly. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. In order to prevent able persons, especially of humble origin, from rising too quickly, great emphasis was placed on seniority. At the heart of these huge increases was the mass production of goods by machines. 108-132. “ Отслужил солдат ” (“Soldiers Had Served the Czar”) A traditional Russian lament, and source of many different adaptation, this song portrays the story of an old soldier coming home after 25 years of … It was the difference between those who wished to pull the whole political structure down and replace it with a new building, according to their own admirable blueprints, and those who preferred to knock down some parts and repair and refurnish others, bit by bit. Back to Index NOTES: Dates of accession of material added since July 1998 can be seen in the New Additions page.. Russia’s exports of grain increased substantially, though its share of total world trade remained about the same in 1850 as in 1800. One may speak of a “service ethos” and trace this back to 16th-century Muscovy. In the 19th century, Russia was a vast country—it reached from the Baltic to the Pacific, and covered substantial portions of both Europe and Asia. In 1819 he asked Nikolay Novosiltsev, a former member of the Unofficial Committee who had made a brilliant career as a bureaucrat, to prepare another constitution, which turned out to be rather similar to the first, although somewhat more conservative and less centralist. Victory in war had strengthened those who upheld the established order, serfdom and all.