352 Towards a Modern Army, 1825-1874
This explains why the 'Great Reforms' (as they rather grandiloquently came
to be called) were not planned or executed systematically. Rather they came
about piecemeal, like those of Peter I, and their scope was often subsequently
curtailed by administrative action. On occasion the tsar intervened with decisive
effect to move matters forw~rcf (or else, especially in his later years,
backward), but he did not issue any coherent statement as to what his goals
were. The resulting confusion has encouraged historians to step in and supply
logical, but necessarily speculative, interpretations of their own.
Controversy has arisen in particular over the relationship between serf
emancipation, the key measure, and changes in the military domain. In 1966
A. J. Rieber suggested that 'the military reform provided the decisive impetus
for freeing the serfs', although he admitted that the evidence in favour of this
view was only circumstantial.^2 The diplomatic historian Winfried Baumgart
has gone further: 'the abolition of serfdom was ... not an end in itself but was
subordinate to the military reform, [for] the army was still the most important
pillar of the autocracy as embodied under Alexander' 11•.^3 The last part of this
statement may well be correct; nevertheless this interpretation takes liberties
with chronology and distorts the actual relationship between the two measures.
Military concerns were certainly import~nt to the framers of the peasant
reform, but it was carried through for a variety of motives, the most important
of which were the need to increase Russia's productive forces and to maintain
political stability in the countryside.^4
The military benefits that could be expected were strongly urged by Major-
General D. A. Milyutin (1816-1912) in a memorandum submitted as early as
March 1856,s but this document has to be placed in its contemporary political
context. Milyutin, who as Alexander's W;ar Minister from 1861 to 1881
became the architect of the military reforms (to be discussed presently), was
one of the most dynamic of the 'enlightened bureaucrats' in the circle patron-
ized by the Grand Duchess Helen (Yelena Pavlovna). A convinced abolitionist,
he seized the opportunity to advance this idea formally; in view of its sensitivity
he could do this best in his capacity as a member of a commission on army
reform. It does not follow that he considered this a self-sufficient reason for
abolition, or that his arguments played a significant part in the decision to pro-
ceed with emancipation.
Nor was the government forced to free the serfs because of the threat of pea-
sant revolt, notably the outbreaks in the south of Russia in 1854-5 among men
2 Rieber, Politics of Autocracy, p. 29; id., 'Alexander II: a Revisionist View', Journal of
Modern History 43 ( 1971), pp. 42-58.
J Baumgart, Peace of Paris, p. 200 (Ger. edn., p. 249).
4 See T. Emmons, The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation Of 1861,
Cambridge, 1968, pp. 48-50; id., 'The Peasant and the Emancipation', in W. S. Vucinich (ed.),
TM Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Russia, Stanford, 1968, p. 44; A. A. Skerpan, 'The Russian
National Economy and Emancipation', in A. D. Ferguson and A. Levin (eds.), Essays in Russian
History: a Collection Dedicated to G. Vernadsky, Hamden, Conn., 1964, p. 164.
' 'Mysli o nevygodakh ... ',cited by Zayonchkovsky, 'Milyutin: biograf. ocherk', p. 17; Miller,
Miliutin, p. 22; Beyrau, 'Leibeigenschaft und MiliUl.rverfassung', p. 210; not yet published.
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