The 19th century is considered by many a golden age for Russia, the Empire reaching its maximum extent from Warsaw to Vladivostok, from Baku to Arkangelsk. Between the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the defeat in the Crimean War, Russia was widely considered the new dominant force of Europe, leading the Holy Alliance with Prussia and Austria to maintain the Absolutist world order established in the Congress of Vienna. Russia was then ruled by Tsar Aleksandr I Romanov, an enlightened despot who led his country during the destructive Napoleonic wars, pushing the French tyrant from Moscow all the way to Paris in the 1812-1814 campaign. Yet after the peace in Vienna, Aleksandr would change himself, after being kidnapped by radicals he would grow paranoid and away from his previous Liberalism. In the early reign of Aleksandr, Russia had taken steps to improve the educational system with new universities and reforms, the military reforms turned the Russian Army from the humiliated force in Austerlitz to the victors of Leipzig.
But in 1825, Aleksandr would follow the destiny of mortals and Nicholas I would ascend as the new Tsar and Autocrat of All-Russias. And this new Tsar would show his nature during the power transfer, as thousands of army officers called “Decembrists” would launch a liberal revolt to prevent his ascension. The Tsar didn’t compromise, smashing the revolt mercilessly, Nicholas would be the greatest Autocrat in Russian history, establishing the concept of “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nacionality” as the fundament of Russian governance. His reign would be marked by the Greek War of independence, the use of force against internal dissents, industrialization and economic growth, expansion of the Russian borders, and the use of the Imperial Army to smash liberalism in Eastern Europe. From Poland in 1830 to Hungary in 1848, the Tsar became the greatest defender of the Reactionary Order in a time of change.
Yet the Russian power continued to grow, and after the 1848 revolutions spread chaos across Europe, Britain and France would fear the growth of the Eastern Empire, especially as Nicholas embraced Pan-Slavism. The Pan-Slavic theory grew in the context of European nationalism following the French Revolution, it would call for the unification of the Slavic peoples from Eastern Europe into a greater union state to rival the growing west. Instead of suppressing Pan-Slavism as other ideas like Ukrainian and Polish nationalism, Nicholas decided to instead use it, placing Russia as the protector of the Slavic peoples, especially in the Balkans where the declining Ottomans, a centuries-old rival of Russia, was an easy target.
Ever since the Ottomans had to be saved from the armies of Muhammad Ali in 1839, the decline of the Empire had shown itself obvious to the world. In Europe, after its 3rd revolution in 60 years, France became a republic and elected the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon, as its first President, but like his uncle, he wasn’t satisfied with that. After being denied a re-election, Louis-Napoleon launched a coup with military and popular support, crowning himself Emperor Napoleon III. With its rule being consolidated, Napoleon looked for a way to unite it’s people in a common cause, and he saw the opportunity in Jerusalem. Ever since the 18th century, the Russian Tsars held the title of protector of the Eastern Christians, with the Orthodox Church holding the Keys to the Church of Nativity, yet in 1853, the new Emperor of the French would push to assert the Roman Catholic Church as protector of the Eastern Christians and guardian of the Church of Nativity. After the Ottoman Empire confirmed Russia’s title, the French would send in the Battleship
Charlemagne, one of the most powerful of the time, to a show of force in Constantinople, breaking the Straits convention and forcing the Sultan Abdülmecid I to give the Title of protector to Napoleon. In response the Tsar who would declare war on the Ottoman Empire, with the British and French standing by the Ottomans to prevent the Russians from achieving the generations-long dream of reclaiming Constantinople and holding control over the Straits, the Crimean War had started.
The war lasted for 3 years, being the largest European conflict since the Napoleonic Wars, with the war ending in 1856 with about 500,000 casualties and the Russian advance stopped. Between 1815-1853, the Russian army grew stagnant, and while holding impressive numbers on paper, it was equipped with outdated weaponry and supported by a terrible logistical system. The war would end with the Russians forced to leave the Romanian Principalities, being humiliated internationally, and with Nicholas I dying of pneumonia shortly before the end of the war, with the young and Liberal Aleksandr II coming to the throne planning to use the defeat to bring Russia to the 19th century.
Aleksandr II was much different from his predecessor, who was considered the living embodiment of autocracy. Instead, he would push several reforms while also keeping his autocratic powers, similar to previous enlightened despots like Aleksandr I. In 1861 he would make his first major reform by ending the system of serfdom that still existed in Russia at the time, emancipating the serfs and giving them equal rights as free citizens. He would also push for legislative reforms with a new penal code ending corporal punishments and greatly simplifying criminal and civil process. Not just that but he also opposed Nicholas’ centralization policies that ended up creating a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy, instead instituting the
Zemstevos as local governments in small cities to administer local resources, also implementing universal conscription to all classes instead of just the peasants. Yet the Tsar has his more repressive side, especially after a failed assassination by radical liberals in 1866. Making show trials against enemies of the State and suppressing liberal curriculums in universities. And that was especially true for non-Russians, with a polish uprising being crushed in 1863 and the poles losing the little autonomy they had before it, with languages like Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian etc being prohibited from being spoken in public or printed. Russification policies would be intensified, as the western territories began to be assimilated with even greater intensity. Except for Finland, where the Tsar reopened the local diet and allowing a greater degree of autonomy in the Grand Duchy.
In foreign policy, Aleksandr II would be less aggressive than his predecessor, selling Alaska to the United States in 1867 for the cheap price of 7.3 million dollars. But differently from his predecessor, he would finally achieve success in the Oriental Question, as a Bulgarian uprising in 1876 and the subsequent Ottoman massacres in its repression would alienate the Turks from Europe, giving the Tsar the golden opportunity to intervene to safeguard the Bulgarian Slavs. The result was the Russo-Turkish war, which differently from the Crimean War, it saw a superior Russian force in every aspect destroying the Ottomans, with the army of Grand Duke Nicholas almost taking Constantinople in 1878 when the Treaty of San Stefano was signed. The Ottomans would lose almost the entirely of Rumelia (Balkans) with a Greater Bulgarian State taking most of it. Of course such a draconian peace was unacceptable to European powers, who met in Constantinople in order to draft a much less harsh peace treaty, with Austria-Hungary occupying Bosnia, Britain taking Cyprus, Romania taking Drobudja, with Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro expanding in territory and a much smaller Bulgarian tributary State being created, officially loyal to the Sultan. Although not what it desired, the Empire would be forced to accept in order to prevent another Crimean War.
The Tsar Aleksandr II would elaborate a plan to create a Russian parliament, the
Duma, yet before that he would end up assassinated on the 13th of March of 1881, after a bomb was thrown at his Carriage. This ended up with the rise of Aleksandr III, an autocrat of the same vein of Nicholas I, who would completely crack down on radical movements and liberalism, creating the Okhrana, a secret police subservient of the Tsar to dismantle terrorist organizations. During his reign between 1881-1894, Russia would not be involved into any major conflicts, but would get entangled in the European Alliance system by allying with France and forming the Entente cordial against the rising German Empire while wrestling for Balkan influence with Austria-Hungary. And after he suddenly died in 1894, he would leave the unprepared Tsar Nicholas II as the new Tsar and Autocrat of All-Russias, a firm believer in Autocracy in a world that no longer tolerated it as Russia would enter the 20th century stuck with 17th Century ideas.
