Nicholas I, the Decembrists, and Official Nationality Policy

•Elisabeth Alekseyevna, sick•Travelled to the south, Taganrog•Alexander died of typhus.•Successor – unclear:•Konstantin or Nicholas

Catherine raised him with Alexander to rule

Married German Princess, 1796 (she left 1799)

1818-19 Alexander appointed him de facto viceroy of Congress Kingdom

1820 married Polish Countess Joanna Grudzinska

1822: renounced right to throne (kept secret).

Northern Society (Prince Trubetskoy): constitutional monarchy, abolish serfdom

Southern Society (Pavel Pestel): republic, land redistribution

Lack of coordinationLoyalty of most of the

garrison

Raised during reaction to French Revolution

Not raised to ruleLoved military

paradeMost consistent tsarMost closely linked

with “Official Nationality.”

Count Sergey Semionovich Uvarov, 1786-1855

Minister of Education, 1833-1849

Official Nationality PolicyOrthodoxy (pravoslavie)Autocracy (samoderzhavie)Nationality (narodnost’)

PessimisticConservativePatriarchal

Grand Duke Constantine’s oppressive rule

Warsaw, Nov. 29, 1830: Kadets revolt led by Piotr Wysocki

Constantine fledRevolutionaries took

WarsawRussia sent large

army, 180,000 troopsPoles had about 70,000

Education: more educated, but more tightly controlled and differed by soslovie (estate).

Third Department: a sort of personal secret police

New law code (M. Speransky)State peasants’ situation somewhat improved.But serfdom not abolished.

SlavophilesWesternizersPetroshevtsyCyril-Methodius Brotherhood (Kiev/Kyiv)

Whence did all this opposition arise?Nicholas was consistent, but foreign policy

reactionaryEducated people had changedDifferent people, a proliferation of ideasSplit of educated and the government

France: social/politicalGermany:

social/nationalFrankfurt Parliament

Habsburg MonarchyHungary: Louis Kossuth“Gendarme of Europe”Nicholas sent troops to

help.Reinforced Nicholas’s

conservatism.Curbed his enthusiasm

for nationalism.