Reign of Nicholas I

Nicholas I’s rule reflected in a striking manner both his character and his principles. The new regime became preeminently one of militarism and bureaucracy. The emperor surrounded himself with military men, to the extent that late in his reign there were almost no civilians among his immediate assistants. Also, he relied heavily on special emissaries, most of them generals of his suite, who were sent all over Russia on particular assignments to execute immediately the will of the sovereign. Operating outside the regular administrative system, they represented an extension, so to speak, of the monarch’s own person. In fact, the entire machinery of government came to be permeated by the military spirit of direct orders, absolute obedience, and precision, at least as far as official reports and appearances were concerned. Corruption and confusion, however, lay immediately behind this facade of discipline and smooth functioning.

In his conduct of state affairs, Nicholas I often bypassed regular channels and generally resented formal deliberation, consultation, or other procedural delay. The importance of the Committee of Ministers, the State Council, and the Senate decreased in the course of his reign. Instead of making full use of them, the emperor depended more and more on special bureaucratic devices meant to carry out his intentions promptly while remaining under his immediate and complete control. As one favourite method, Nicholas I made extensive use of ad hoc committees that stood outside the usual state machinery. The committees were typically composed of a handful of the most trusted assistants of the emperor; because these were few in number, the same men in different combinations formed these committees throughout Nicholas’s reign. As a rule, the committees carried on their work in secret, adding further complication and confusion to the already cumbersome administration of the empire. The failure of one committee to perform its task merely led to the formation of another. For example, some nine committees tried to deal with the issue of serfdom during Nicholas’s reign.

The propensities of the autocrat found expression also in the development and the new role of His Majesty’s Own Chancery. Organized originally as a bureau to deal with matters that demanded the sovereign’s personal participation and to supervise the execution of the emperor’s orders, it acquired five new departments: in 1826 the Second and the Third, to deal with the codification of law and the newly created corps of gendarmes, respectively; in 1828 the Fourth, to manage the charitable and educational institutions under the jurisdiction of the empress dowager Maria; in 1836 the Fifth, to reform the condition of the state peasants (soon replaced by the new Ministry of State Domains); in 1843 the Sixth, to draw an administrative plan for Transcaucasia.

The departments of the Chancery served Nicholas I as a major means of conducting a personal policy that bypassed the regular state channels. Its Third Department, the political police, acted as the autocrat’s main weapon against subversion and revolution and as his principal agency for controlling the behaviour of his subjects and for distributing punishments and rewards among them. Its assigned fields of activity ranged from “all orders and all reports in every case belonging to the higher police” to “reports about all occurrences without exception!” The two successive heads of the Third Department—Count Aleksandr Benckendorff and Prince Aleksey Orlov—probably spent more time with Nicholas than did any of his other assistants; they accompanied him, for instance, on his repeated trips of inspection throughout Russia. During his entire reign the emperor strove to follow the principle of autocracy—to be a true father of his people concerned with their daily lives, hopes, and fears.

Yet Nicholas I could do little for them beyond the minutiae. Determined to preserve autocracy, afraid to abolish serfdom, and suspicious of all independent initiative and popular participation, the emperor and his government could not introduce in their country the much-needed basic reforms. In practice as well as in theory they looked backward. Important developments took place only in a few areas in which change would not threaten the fundamental structure of the Russian Empire. Thus, Count Mikhail Speransky codified law, and Count Pavel Kiselev changed and improved the lot of the state peasants, but even limited reforms became impossible after 1848.

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Final years

Frightened by European revolutions, Nicholas I became completely reactionary. During the last years of the reign the emperor’s once successful foreign policy collapsed, leading to isolation and to the tragedy of the Crimean War. A dauntless champion of legitimism and a virtual hegemony of eastern and central Europe following the revolutions of 1848–49, Nicholas—in part because of his own miscalculations, rigidity, and bluntness—found himself alone fighting the Crescent (the Ottoman Empire), supported by such countries of the Cross as France, Great Britain, and Sardinia.

Although it is unlikely that Nicholas committed suicide, as several historians have claimed, death did come as liberation to the weary and harassed Russian emperor. An ordinary cold picked up in late February 1855 turned into pneumonia, which the once mighty but now apparently exhausted organism refused to fight. To the end the autocrat retained lucidity and dignity. His last words to his heir and his family were: “Now I shall ascend to pray for Russia and for you. After Russia, I loved you above everything else in the world. Serve Russia.” Nicholas I was survived by his wife, Empress Alexandra, and their six children: Emperor Alexander II, the grand dukes Constantine, Nicholas, and Michael, and the grand duchesses Maria and Olga. Another daughter, Grand Duchess Alexandra, had died in 1844.