Recently, I was engaged in a historical nation-sim, set in 1898. In researching 19th century Russian policies, the constant struggle between the need for reform and industrialization, and the need to maintain the political status-quo often seemed to be utterly at odds.
Despite this, late 19th century and early 20th century Russia was still growing by leaps and bounds in various sectors of its economy, and even agriculture was seeing modernization (if painfully gradual).
As the Russian Empire within that simulation game, I undertook a general policy of authoritarian liberalism; attempting to open the economy to trade and commerce, reform the civil service meritocratically, redevelop legal and local representative institutions, and embark on an overarching land reform to settle Siberia, encourage private land title, and smooth the transition from communal farming through agricultural cooperatives. Unlike OTL Russian leaders, I had the benefit of hindsight to guide my planning, so it is indeed an unlikely thing that the mediocre Tsar Nicholas II would have had the will to enact such an ambitious agenda.
Be that as it may, I wondered at the possibility of the 19th century Russian Empire engaging in a sustained, deep, and continuous policy of liberal reform in legal, commercial, economic, and institutional matters as a grand "compromise" against the need for a constitutional government or democratic reform.
Is it possible for the Russian Empire to follow a contemporary Chinese model of economic and institutional liberalization while preserving the political authority of the existing state apparatus, including the monarchy? Can the Empire forge an informal domestic coalition of the military, the capitalists/industrialists, the petit-bourgeoisie, the smallholders and prosperous farmers, eastern settlers, and some liberals against the socialists, political liberals, nationalists, petty aristocracy, and reactionaries?
Understandably such an idea would be impossible (or extremely unlikely) to be swallowed whole in any event, and such a factional combination could only be recognized after it settled into existence. Such a coalition, by necessity, would either need the continual support of the Tsars, or the influence upon them to ensure their dominance within the Imperial government.
Beyond all of that, what would set up Russia to "pull a Meiji" or follow the modern China model in the early 1800s? Greater humiliation by Revolutionary France or Napoleon, or other military failures of that era? Perhaps against the Ottomans or Sweden? OTL seems to show a consistent Russian return to reform after military debacle or struggle, but avoidance of nagging calls for political reform and fear of nationalism and socialism always seemed to dominate in the end.
If we are able to handwave a series of Tsars committed to this sort of development project, what does 20th century Russia look like?
Presumably serfdom and its vestiges are abolished at least on time, and a kinder, gentler Stolypin land reform begun contemporaneously or quickly following. This irritates the local aristocracy, but that irritation could actually be helpful to the state in promoting freeholder peasant loyalties to the Tsar. Not only is the Tsar the "father of the state" but is also a protector against depredations of petty nobility or corrupt officials.
Settlement and development of the vast Siberian interior, Central Asia and the Russian Far East to a great extent will require development of the rail industry (as in the United States and Canada), and extension of the network. Russia being poorer than Canada or the United States, even in a century of reform, at least some of that capital will have to come from external sources. Fortunately, the two primary options, the UK and Second French Empire, are probably useful to any liberalization or modernization push. Difficult Anglo-Russian relations in the 19th century though might make London a far weaker source of capital than Paris... If the minor unpleasantness of the Crimean War does not occur, or at least does not involve France. Some concept of what I've very loosely been calling "liberal absolutism" might carry over in whole or in part from France, the idea germinating in the volatile ferment of France's first half of the 19th century.
So maybe something involving the two Emperor Napoleons will do the trick, leaving British and Americans by 1910 to complain of Russian exports taking all their jerbs... Perhaps.
What might there be to set this process in motion?
Despite this, late 19th century and early 20th century Russia was still growing by leaps and bounds in various sectors of its economy, and even agriculture was seeing modernization (if painfully gradual).
As the Russian Empire within that simulation game, I undertook a general policy of authoritarian liberalism; attempting to open the economy to trade and commerce, reform the civil service meritocratically, redevelop legal and local representative institutions, and embark on an overarching land reform to settle Siberia, encourage private land title, and smooth the transition from communal farming through agricultural cooperatives. Unlike OTL Russian leaders, I had the benefit of hindsight to guide my planning, so it is indeed an unlikely thing that the mediocre Tsar Nicholas II would have had the will to enact such an ambitious agenda.
Be that as it may, I wondered at the possibility of the 19th century Russian Empire engaging in a sustained, deep, and continuous policy of liberal reform in legal, commercial, economic, and institutional matters as a grand "compromise" against the need for a constitutional government or democratic reform.
Is it possible for the Russian Empire to follow a contemporary Chinese model of economic and institutional liberalization while preserving the political authority of the existing state apparatus, including the monarchy? Can the Empire forge an informal domestic coalition of the military, the capitalists/industrialists, the petit-bourgeoisie, the smallholders and prosperous farmers, eastern settlers, and some liberals against the socialists, political liberals, nationalists, petty aristocracy, and reactionaries?
Understandably such an idea would be impossible (or extremely unlikely) to be swallowed whole in any event, and such a factional combination could only be recognized after it settled into existence. Such a coalition, by necessity, would either need the continual support of the Tsars, or the influence upon them to ensure their dominance within the Imperial government.
Beyond all of that, what would set up Russia to "pull a Meiji" or follow the modern China model in the early 1800s? Greater humiliation by Revolutionary France or Napoleon, or other military failures of that era? Perhaps against the Ottomans or Sweden? OTL seems to show a consistent Russian return to reform after military debacle or struggle, but avoidance of nagging calls for political reform and fear of nationalism and socialism always seemed to dominate in the end.
If we are able to handwave a series of Tsars committed to this sort of development project, what does 20th century Russia look like?
Presumably serfdom and its vestiges are abolished at least on time, and a kinder, gentler Stolypin land reform begun contemporaneously or quickly following. This irritates the local aristocracy, but that irritation could actually be helpful to the state in promoting freeholder peasant loyalties to the Tsar. Not only is the Tsar the "father of the state" but is also a protector against depredations of petty nobility or corrupt officials.
Settlement and development of the vast Siberian interior, Central Asia and the Russian Far East to a great extent will require development of the rail industry (as in the United States and Canada), and extension of the network. Russia being poorer than Canada or the United States, even in a century of reform, at least some of that capital will have to come from external sources. Fortunately, the two primary options, the UK and Second French Empire, are probably useful to any liberalization or modernization push. Difficult Anglo-Russian relations in the 19th century though might make London a far weaker source of capital than Paris... If the minor unpleasantness of the Crimean War does not occur, or at least does not involve France. Some concept of what I've very loosely been calling "liberal absolutism" might carry over in whole or in part from France, the idea germinating in the volatile ferment of France's first half of the 19th century.
So maybe something involving the two Emperor Napoleons will do the trick, leaving British and Americans by 1910 to complain of Russian exports taking all their jerbs... Perhaps.
What might there be to set this process in motion?
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