19e: Conclusions

1. Moving the Empire Forward
Catherine accomplished Russia's centuries-old dream of conquering the steppe lands of modern-day Ukraine and conquered Crimea into the bargain. In keeping with Russia's view of itself as the Third Rome, Catherine entertained great dreams of conquering the entire Ottoman Empire and bringing it back to its Byzantine glory. Also under Catherine's reign, Russia and the Aleutian islands were colonized, with only some success. As soon as the fur trade slackened, it would become clear that the colonies could not sustain themselves by farming. Moreover, the Spanish and British were none too willing to let the Russians move farther down the Pacific coast. Under Alexander I, Finland was added to the Russian Empire, giving St. Petersburg more security. To the south, Alexander annexed the country of Georgia, which was the beginning of Russia's adventures in the Caucasus. Where would the Russian juggernaut stop? The other European powers' fears of a Pax Russica resulted in the Crimean War, which tore away the facade of Russia's invincible miltary.

2. Serfs up!
Catherine's reign saw the last great peasant uprising - the Pugachev rebellion of 1773-1774. Her police and her army developed techniques of nipping these uprisings in the bud. Outbreaks of peasant violence would continue, and some would be very fierce. But after Catherine's reign, they were basically isolated and sporadic until the revolution of 1905. Although she conquered or annexed the region's finest farmland, peasants benefitted very little. The captured territory was either kept by the state itself or doled out to a few favored nobles. The same was true after Alexander I acquired Finland and Georgia, and after Nicholas I made further conquests in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The peasants were still trying to eke out a living on very poor land; they could be sold, sent into the army, or sent to Siberia as their masters willed. Even the rough and tumble Cossacks, descended from runaway Russian peasants, were finding their place in Tsarist society as the elite enforcers of Imperial Will.

3. Rule of Law
The Enlightenment fought Russia, and the Enlightenment lost. Catherine's Nakaz of 1767 was an honorable effort to bring the rule of law to Russia, but the war with Turkey which quickly followed helped her establish her true priorities. Alexander flirted with giving the Poles and Finns separate consitutions, but this did not make the subject peoples any  better behaved. It did, however, gravely offend the public spirited young noblemen who had fought on Russia's behalf during the Napoleonic Wars: why grant rights to the Poles and Finns, but not the Russians themselves? Catherine had refused to help Britain put down the American Revolution, but her successors were not pleased by the fact that educated Russians - the intelligentsia - wanted the rights enjoyed in the United States and Britain. Nicholas I took this approach a step further by finding militaristic solutions to Russia's problems. Indeed, he was willing to send money and even Russian troops wherever autocracy was threatened.

4. Official Nationality
Coming to the throne on the heels of the December 1825 revolution, Nicholas I might be forgiven for his militaristic fixation on maintaining order. Yet the policy of "Official Nationality" set forth by his education minister in 1833 only made Russia's problems worse. By focusing on autocracy, Nicholas effectively cut off the intelligentsia from any effective role in public life. By focusing on nationality, Nicholas began to privilege the Russians ahead of the Russian Empire's other nations in Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia; even the peoples who didn't mind living under the Russian Empire resented the idea of becoming Russians. Finally, by focusing on Orthodoxy, Nicholas tied the monarchy's fate to an anti-intellectual institution which had failed to keep up with the Russian people's needs. The concept of "Holy Russia" had made it possible to throw out the hated Swedish and Polish invaders two centuries earlier, but it had arisen naturally among the Russian people. Nicholas's imposition of a police state through "Official Nationality," on the other hand, only made Russia's problems worse.