began to appear. Music grew in quantity, quality, and appeal. In particular, Russian opera developed, and it obtained a lasting position in Russia and elsewhere through the genius of Michael Glinka, 1804-57, and the talents of other able composers such as Alexander Dargomyzhsky, 1813-69. As elsewhere in Europe, Russian opera and the Russian musical school generally stressed folk songs, melodies, and motifs. The theater, the ballet, and the opera attracted increasing state support and public interest. The theater profited from the new Russian dramatic literature, which included such masterpieces as
On the whole, Chaadaev's claim that Russia had contributed nothing to culture, outrageous in 1836, would have found even less justification in 1855 or 1860. Yet, as the Slavophiles, Herzen, and other thinking Russians realized, not all was well: there remained an enormous gulf between the educated society and the people, between the fortunate few on top and the broad masses. Something had to be done. The future of Russia depended on the 'great reforms.'
XXIX
However, sounds of music reached our ears, and we all hurried back to the hall. The band of the opera was already playing the hymn, which was drowned immediately in enthusiastic hurrahs coming from all parts of the hall. I saw Baveri, the conductor of the band, waving his stick, but not a sound could be heard from the powerful band. Then Baveri stopped, but the hurrahs continued. I saw the stick waved again in the air; I saw the fiddle-bows moving, and musicians blowing the brass instruments, but again the sound of voices overwhelmed the band… The same enthusiasm was in the streets. Crowds of peasants and educated men stood in front of the palace, shouting hurrahs, and the Tsar could not appear without being followed by demonstrative crowds running after his carriage… I was in Nikolskoe in August, 1861, and again in the summer of 1862, and I was struck with the quiet, intelligent way in which the peasants had accepted the new conditions. They knew perfectly well how difficult it would be to pay the redemption tax for the land, which was in reality an indemnity to the nobles in lieu of the obligations of serfdom. But they so much valued the abolition of their personal enslavement that they accepted the ruinous charges - not without murmuring, but as a hard necessity - the moment that personal freedom was obtained… When I saw our Nikolskoe peasants, fifteen months after the liberation, I could not but admire them. Their inborn good nature and softness remained with them, but all traces of servility had disappeared. They talked to their masters as equals talk to equals, as if they never had stood in different relations.
The abolition of serfdom signified the establishment of capitalism as the dominant socio-economic formation in Russia.
Alexander II succeeded his father, Nicholas I, on the Russian throne at the age of thirty-seven. He had received a rather good education as well as considerable practical training in the affairs of state. Alexander's teachers included the famous poet Zhukovsky, who has often been credited with developing humane sentiments in his pupil. To be sure, Grand Duke Alexander remained an obedient son of his strong-willed father and showed no liberal inclinations prior to becoming emperor. Indeed he retained an essentially conservative mentality and attitude throughout his life. Nor can Alexander II be considered a strong or a talented man. Yet, forced by the logic of the situation, the new monarch decided to undertake, and actually carried through, fundamental reforms unparalleled in scope in Russian
history since Peter the Great. These reforms, although extremely important, failed to cure all the ills of Russia and in fact led to new problems and perturbations, which resulted, among other things, in the assassination of the 'Tsar-Liberator.'
The last words of Alexander II's manifesto announcing the end of the Crimean War promised reform, and this produced a strong impression on the public. The new emperor's first measures, enacted even before the termination of hostilities, included the repeal of some of the Draconian restrictions of Nicholas I's final years, such as those on travel abroad and on the number of students attending universities. All this represented a promising prologue; the key issue, as it was for Alexander I, the last ruler who wanted to transform Russia, remained serfdom. However, much had changed in regard to serfdom during the intervening fifty or fifty-five years. Human bondage, as indicated in an earlier chapter, satisfied less and less effectively the economic needs of the Russian Empire. With the growth of a money economy and competition for markets, the deficiencies of low-grade serf labor became ever more obvious. Many landlords, especially those with small holdings, could barely feed their serfs; and the gentry accumulated an enormous debt. As we know, free labor, whether really free or merely the contractual labor of someone else's serfs, became more common throughout the Russian economy during the first half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the serfs perhaps declined in absolute number in the course of that period, while their numerical weight in relation to other classes certainly declined: from 58 per cent of the total population of Russia in 1811 to 44.5 per cent on the eve of the 'great reforms,' to cite Blum's figures again. Recent interpretations of the Russian economic crisis in mid-nineteenth century range all the way from Kovalchenko's emphatic restatement, with the use of quantitative methods, of the thesis of the extreme and unbearable exploitation of the serfs to Ryndziunsky's stress on the general loosening of the social fabric. In any event, whether the landlords were willing to recognize it or not - and large vested interests seldom obey even economic reason - serfdom was becoming increasingly anachronistic.
Other powerful arguments for emancipation reinforced the economic. Oppressed and exasperated beyond endurance, the serfs kept rising against their masters. While no nineteenth-century peasant insurrection could at all rival the Pugachev rebellion, the uprisings became more frequent and on the whole more serious. Semevsky, using official records, had counted 550 peasant uprisings in the nineteenth century prior to the emancipation. A Soviet historian, Ignatovich, raised the number to 1,467 and gave the
following breakdown: 281 peasant rebellions, that is, 19 per cent of the total, in the period from 1801 to 1825; 712 rebellions, 49 per cent, from 1826 to 1854; and 474 uprisings, or 32 per cent, in the six years and two months of Alexander II's reign before the abolition of serfdom. Ignatovich emphasized that the uprisings also increased in length, in bitterness, in the human and material losses involved, and in the military effort necessary to restore order. Still more recently, Okun and other Soviet scholars have further expanded Ignatovich's list of uprisings. Moreover, Soviet scholarship claims that peasant rebellions played the decisive role in the emancipation of the serfs, and that on the eve of the 'great reforms' Russia experienced in effect a revolutionary situation. Although exaggerated, this view cannot be entirely dismissed. Interestingly, it was the Third Department, the gendarmery, that had stressed the danger of serfdom during the reign of Nicholas I. Besides rising in rebellion, serfs ran away from their masters, sometimes by the hundreds and even by the thousands. On occasion large military detachments had to be sent to intercept them. Pathetic mass flights of peasants, for example, would follow rumors that freedom could be obtained somewhere in the Caucasus, while crowds of serfs tried to join the army during the Crimean War, because they mistakenly believed that they could thereby gain their liberty.
A growing sentiment for emancipation, based on moral grounds, also contributed to the abolition of serfdom. The Decembrists, the Slavophiles, the Westernizers, the Petrashevtsy, some supporters of Official Nationality, together with other thinking Russians, all wanted the abolition of serfdom. As education developed in Russia, and
