19d: The Gendarme of Europe

Nicholas I, who ruled from 1825-1855, never expected to become Tsar. As the third son of Tsar Paul I, he was intended for a military career. He served in the war against Napoleon and would have happily spent the rest of his life in the army. But since Alexander I died without legitimate offspring, one of his brothers would have to succeed... but which brother? The oldest surviving brother, Prince Konstantin, was assumed to be the Tsarevich. But Konstantin had secretly relinquished claim to the throne so he could marry a Polish woman. Not even Nicholas himself knew about this arrangement, even though it made him heir to the Russian throne. When Alexander died, Nicholas had to be talked into claiming the throne before either the "Northern" or the "Southern" opposition groups tried to seize power. The "Northern Group" did attempt an uprising on 14 December 1825 in Senate Square, but it was poorly organized and led. Nicholas acted promptly to suppress it with the help of  loyal troops. The revolutionaries, called the "Decembrists," went down in history as the first Russians to fight Tsarism openly; their ringleaders were executed and the remainder sent into prison and exile. Nicholas was already conservative by nature, but putting down a revolution as his first official act made him downright reactionary. His solution for revolutionary dissent was the establishment of a police state. So firm was his grip on Russia, and so intimidating did Russia appear to the world, that Nicholas was known as the "Gendarme (or Cop) of Europe."

More than anything else, Nicholas wanted to maintain order at home. To this end, he established a secret police organization called, innocuously enough, the "Third Department." It ran a huge number of spies and informers, and took drastic action against anyone questioning Nicholas's vision of a perfect Russian society. In 1833, thr education minister Sergei Uvarov unleashed the official principle of Nicholas's reign, otherwise known as "Official Nationality:" autocracy, nationality, and Orthodoxy. Autocracy meant total subservience to the Tsar, as God's chosen instrument of rule over his chosen people. Nationality stood for embracing Russian culture as superior to all other traditions, and Orthodoxy represented unquestionable acceptance of the practices and teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church. "Official Nationality" was meant to stifle any sort of original thought: there would be no more Decembrist Revolutions on Nicholas's watch. Another of Uvarov's accomplishments was to strangle the liberal arts inside Russian universities. Eventually, lecture halls were filled with spies who reported back to the Third Department. Paradoxically, some of Russia's greatest creative minds flourished during Nicholas's time, including Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, and Alexander Pushkin - Russia's famous poet. Nicholas's reign also marked the beginning of the clash between Slavophiles, who yearned for Russia's traditions before Peter the Great, and the Westernizers, who wanted Russia to modernize even faster than it already was. With regard to the Russian peasants, Nicholas's chose the path of least resistance. Although Nicholas himself regarded serfdom as evil, the nobility was the only possible resource for governing Russia's vast spaces, and serf labor propped up the nobility.

Rightly suspecting that Poles had taken part in the opposition societies under Alexander I, Nicholas I refused to call himself king of Poland. He withdrew the rights Alexander had given the Poles until they revolted in 1830. Within a year, Poland had been reconquered and reabsorbed into the Russian Empire. For the rest of his reign, Nicholas tried to turn the Poles into Russians, or "Russify" them. He also continued Catherine's wars against the Ottoman Empire, trying to achieve her goal of returning Istanbul (or Constantinople) to Orthodoxy and gaining an outlet on the Mediterranean. His greatest successes were in the Caucasus, where he continued his brother's often brutal policies against nationalities such as the Chechens. Besides expanding the boundaries of the Russian Empire, Nicholas's main goal was maintaining order - and monarchy - all over Europe. This could be termed a "Pax Russica." His crushing of the Polish rebellion in 1830-1831 made clear to the world that he would intervene wherever monarchy was threatened. When a wave of revolution swept over Europe in 1848 - also the year that Marx's Communist Manifesto appeared - Nicholas offered financial and military support to the threatened kings. In 1849, he sent Russian troops to keep Hungary from leaving the Austrian Empire; he also pleaded with King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia to avoid changes which could lead to constitutional monarchy. Yet the Gendarme of Europe was not as mighty as everyone had assumed. Maintaining a Pax Russica throughout Europe was expensive, but the Russian economy was hopelessly backward. Nicholas's vision of "Official Nationality" precluded all dangerous initiatives, even the building of railroads. The first railroad of any length in Russia was the Moscow-Saint Petersburg line, completed in 1851. Neither Nicholas nor the nobility did anything to help the peasant serfs, who continued to make up most of the tax base and most of the army.

Great Britain, France, and the other European powers had no way of seeing Russia's inherent weakness, though. As they watched Nicholas chip away at the Caucasus and the Ottoman Empire, they became nervous. It was good policy for Christian monarchs to decry the infidel Turks, but the Ottoman Empire's continued existence was actually good for European peace. As long as an Ottoman Sultan held power in Istanbul (or Constantinople), that meant none of the other European monarchs was calling the shots. But by 1853, the Ottoman regime had basically become a Russian puppet which was something Great Britain, France, Austria, and Prussia could not tolerate. They encouraged the Turks to display a little more spine, and the Turks accordingly declared war on Russia. In return, Nicholas wiped out the entire Turkish fleet and captured even more Ottoman territory - frightening the other monarchs even more. Even though Nicholas promised the Austrians in 1854 he would give the captured territory back, France and Great Britain decided on a pre-emptive strike. They would teach Russia a lesson once and for all. Although France and Great Britain made raids on Saint Petersburg and the Baltic Sea area, the Crimean War was named after the main theater of operations. The Russian army fought bravely but poorly, with backward technology, outdated tactics, and scanty supplies. Clearly, the Gendarme of Europe had become a paper tiger. With the fall of Sevastopol in 1855 and the threatened amphibious attack on Saint Petersburg, Russia decided to throw in its cards. By this time Nicholas I was dead and his son Alexander II was left to make peace. The 1856 Treaty of Paris blocked all navies from the Black Sea, ending Russia's hopes of an outlet on the Mediterranean. The Pax Russica was over after less than a half century. Yet Russia's fond memories of playing the "Gendarme of Europe" remain to this day.