The Defense of the Old Regime, 1815–48 471tunity to propel Russia into the modern age by timely
reforms (such as the abolition of serfdom) or to become
the champion of the Old Regime. Alexander consid-
ered both.
Many historians describe Alexander I as the hope
of Russian liberalism. He received a liberal education
from his tutor, and he began his reign closely associated
with a liberal adviser, Michael Speranski. Speranski was
the son of a priest; his brilliance at school earned him a
government job and caught the interest of the czar. He
was a good administrator, well organized and able to
write clear prose, who mixed liberal sentiments with
bureaucratic caution. Speranski swayed Alexander to
consider reforms. He founded four new universities
(doubling the total in the empire), at Kazan, Kharkov,
Warsaw, and St. Petersburg. He gave the Poles a consti-
tution and allowed them to reopen their parliament
(the Sejm). This led to a constitution for Finland and to
discussions about a Russian constitution with Speranski.
Alexander also restrained the persecution of minority
religions and proclaimed religious toleration. Most im-
portant, he abolished serfdom in his Baltic provinces
between 1816 and 1819 while hinting that this was a
pilot project for the emancipation of all Russian serfs.
Alexander I remained, however, an autocrat
unchecked by a constitution, an independent
judiciary, or a parliament. He was a monarch closer
to eighteenth-century enlighted despotism than to
nineteenth-century liberalism, presiding over the most
feudal economy in the world. He held conquered peo-
ples against their will, no matter how generously he
treated them. In his later years, Alexander preferred re-
actionary advisers. He yielded to their contempt for
Speranski and banished his friend to Siberia (although
he later made him governor-general of that province).
In his place, Alexander entrusted Russian domestic
policy to a leading reactionary, Alexis Arakcheyev.
Arakcheyev was a cruel and arrogant man unlikely to
abolish serfdom; he once ordered a young serf flogged
to death because she did a poor job at her sweeping.
Alexander also capitulated to religious conservatives
and abandoned the policy of toleration, which they
considered “a sin against the Holy Ghost.” Religious
repression resumed in 1821.
Alexander’s death in 1825 precipitated a crisis in
Russia. He had no children who could inherit the
throne, so it should have passed to his eldest brother,
Constantine, the governor-general of Poland; but Con-
stantine had renounced his right to the throne in 1822.
This brought to the throne Alexander’s youngest
brother, Nicholas, whose training (by a sadistic military
tutor) had been for military command, not for govern-
ment. The accession of Nicholas I in December 1825
precipitated a rebellion led by liberal army officers.
These Decembrists wanted to abolish the monarchy,
write a constitution, and free the serfs, but their poorly
organized revolt was quickly crushed. Nicholas found
that many of the Decembrists were nobles who had
been his friends (including two princes and a major
general), but he responded harshly nonetheless. Five
were hanged and 121 others were sentenced to hard la-
bor in Siberia. The episode left the czar bitter and even
less tolerant of liberalism.
Restrictive legislation was severely tightened under
Nicholas I. He created a new branch of the government,
the Third Section, to centralize the police. The head of
the Third Section, General Alexander Benckendorff,
vigorously enforced a Censorship Law forbidding all
publications not “useful or at least harmless.” The law
even banned works considered “full of grammatical er-
rors.” Nicholas I relied upon the Ministry of Education
to control minorities; the educational system became an
instrument for the “russification” of minorities and the
submission of everyone to the authority of the church
and the state. This policy was summarized in a famous
slogan: “Autocracy! Orthodoxy! Nationality!”
Historians sometimes contrast the repressive
regime of Nicholas I with the liberal flirtations of
Alexander I. More than seven hundred peasant upris-
ings occurred during his reign, and Nicholas repressed
them with the same anger that he had shown the De-
cembrists. His eagerness to use the Russian army earned
him the nickname “the gendarme of Europe.” But con-
trasts are never as simple as they seem. Just as Alexan-
der had shown an attachment to autocracy by
entrusting the government to Arakcheyev, Nicholas I
showed at least a mild interest in reform by recalling
Speranski from Siberia and allowing him to finish his
codification of Russian law.The Liberal-Monarchical
Compromise in France
The Bourbon Restoration of 1814–15 required a deli-
cate compromise between Metternichian conservatism
and deeply rooted French liberalism. Allied armies
could put Louis XVIII on the throne, but the Bourbons
could lose it again if Napoleon were correct when he
jibed that they “had learned nothing and forgotten
nothing” during the revolutionary era. The Bourbon