Nicholas I of Russia
Nicholas I was Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 1825 to 1855. He was the third son of Paul I and younger brother of his predecessor, Alexander I. Nicholas's thirty-year reign began with the failed Decembrist revolt. He is mainly remembered as a reactionary whose controversial reign was marked by geographical expansion, centralisation of administrative policies, and repression of dissent both in Russia and among its neighbors. Nicholas had a happy marriage that produced a large family, with all of their seven children surviving childhood.
Nicholas's biographer Nicholas V. Riasanovsky said that he displayed determination, singleness of purpose, and an iron will, along with a powerful sense of duty and a dedication to very hard work. He saw himself as a soldier—a junior officer consumed by spit and polish. A handsome man, he was highly nervous and aggressive. Trained as a military engineer, he was a stickler for minute detail. In his public persona, stated Riasanovsky, "Nicholas I came to represent autocracy personified: infinitely majestic, determined and powerful, hard as stone, and relentless as fate."
Nicholas I was instrumental in helping to create an independent Greek state and resumed the Russian conquest of the Caucasus by seizing Iğdır Province and the remainder of modern-day Armenia and Azerbaijan from Qajar Iran during the Russo-Persian War. He ended the Russo-Turkish War successfully as well. He crushed the November Uprising in Poland in 1831 and decisively aided Austria during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Later on, however, he led Russia into the Crimean War, with disastrous results. Historians emphasize that his micromanagement of the armies hindered his generals, as did his misguided strategy. Several historians have concluded that "the reign of Nicholas I was a catastrophic failure in both domestic and foreign policy." On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire spanned over 20 million square kilometers, but had a desperate need for reform.
Early life and road to power
Nicholas was born in 1796 at Gatchina Palace in Gatchina, the ninth child of Grand Duke Paul, heir to the Russian throne, and Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna of Russia.He had six older sisters and two older brothers, namely the future Emperor Alexander I of Russia and Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia.
Four months after Nicholas's birth, his grandmother, Catherine the Great, died and his parents became Emperor and Empress of Russia. In 1800, at the age of four years, Nicholas was named Grand Prior of Russia and entitled to wear the Maltese cross. Nicholas grew up to be a fine young man. Riasanovsky says of him that he is "the most handsome man in Europe, but also a charmer who enjoyed feminine company and was often at his best with the men."
File:Alte Nationalgalerie-Krüger-Regimentübergabe in Potsdam 1817 DSC8020.jpg|thumb|Parade in Potsdam in 1817 by Franz Krüger. A painting commemorating his visit to Berlin to marry Princess Charlotte of Prussia
On 13 July 1817, Nicholas married Princess Charlotte of Prussia, who took the name Alexandra Feodorovna when she converted to Orthodoxy. Charlotte's parents were Frederick William III of Prussia and Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Nicholas and Charlotte were third cousins, as they were both great-great-grandchildren of Frederick William I of Prussia.
With two older brothers, it initially seemed unlikely Nicholas would ever become Tsar. However, as Alexander and Constantine both failed to produce legitimate sons, Nicholas first came to attention as being likely to rule one day, or at least that his children may succeed. In 1825, when Tsar Alexander died suddenly of typhus, Nicholas was caught between swearing allegiance to Constantine and accepting the throne for himself. The interregnum lasted until Constantine, who was in Warsaw at that time, officially forfeited his right to succession. This had been required by Tsar Alexander as a condition of Constantine's marriage to his second wife Joanna Grudzinska. On 25 December, Nicholas issued the manifesto proclaiming his accession to the throne. That manifesto retroactively named 1 December, the date of Alexander I's death, as the beginning of his reign. During this confusion, a plot was hatched by some members of the military to overthrow Nicholas and seize power. This led to the Decembrist Revolt on 26 December 1825, an uprising Nicholas quickly suppressed.
Emperor and principles
Early reign
Nicholas completely lacked his brother's spiritual and intellectual breadth; he saw his role simply as that of a paternal autocrat ruling his people by whatever means necessary. Nicholas I began his reign on 14 December 1825, which fell on a Monday; Russian superstition held that Mondays were unlucky days. This particular Monday dawned very cold, with temperatures of −8 degrees Celsius. This was regarded by the Russian people as a bad omen for the coming reign.The accession of Nicholas I was marred by a demonstration of 3000 young army officers and other liberal-minded citizens. This demonstration was an attempt to force the government to accept a constitution and a representative form of government. Nicholas ordered the Imperial Russian Army to smash the demonstration. The "uprising" was quickly put down and became known as the Decembrist revolt. Having experienced the trauma of the Decembrist revolt on the first day of his reign, Nicholas I was determined to restrain Russian society. The Third Section of the Imperial Chancellery ran a huge network of spies and informers with the help of Gendarmes. The government exercised censorship and other forms of control over education, publishing, and all manifestations of public life.
Nicholas appointed Alexander Benckendorff to head this Chancellery. Benckendorff employed 300 gendarmes and 16 staff in his office. He began collecting informers and intercepting mail. Soon, the saying that "it was impossible to sneeze in one's house before it is reported to the emperor" became Benckendorff's creed.
Local policies
Tsar Nicholas abolished several areas of local autonomy. Bessarabia's autonomy was removed in 1828, Poland's in 1830 and the Jewish Qahal was abolished in 1843. As an exception to this trend, Finland was able to keep its autonomy partly due to Finnish soldiers' loyal participation in crushing the November Uprising in Poland.Russia's first railway was opened in 1837, a line between St. Petersburg and the suburban residence of Tsarskoye Selo. The second was the Saint Petersburg–Moscow railway, built-in 1842–51. Nevertheless, by 1855 there were only of Russian railways.
File: Russia 1836 1½ Ruble.jpg|thumb|250px|Nicholas I "Family Ruble" depicting the Tsar on the obverse and his family on the reverse: Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna surrounded by Alexander II as Tsarevich, Maria, Olga, Nicholas, Michael, Konstantin, and Alexandra
In 1833, Sergey Uvarov, of the Ministry of National Education, devised a program of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality" as the guiding principle of the regime. It was a reactionary policy based on orthodoxy in religion, autocracy in government, and the state-founding role of the Russian nationality and equal citizen rights for all other peoples inhabiting Russia, with the exclusion of Jews. The people were to show loyalty to the unrestricted authority of the tsar, to the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian language. These romantic and conservative principles outlined by Uvarov were also espoused by Vasily Zhukovsky, one of the tutors of the Grand Duke Alexander. The results of these Slavophile principles led, broadly speaking, to increasing repression of all classes, excessive censorship, and surveillance of independent-minded intellectuals like Pushkin and Lermontov and to the persecution of non-Russian languages and non-Orthodox religions. Taras Shevchenko, later to become known as the national poet of Ukraine, was exiled to Siberia by a direct order of Tsar Nicholas after composing a poem that mocked the Tsar, his wife, and his domestic policies. By order of the Tsar, Shevchenko was kept under strict surveillance and prevented from writing or painting.
From 1839, Tsar Nicholas also used a former Byzantine Catholic Bishop named Joseph Semashko as his agent to re-unite Orthodoxy with the Eastern Rite Catholics of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania with the Synod of Polotsk. This caused Tsar Nicholas to be condemned by a succession of Roman Pontiffs, the Marquis de Custine, Charles Dickens, and many Western governments.
Nicholas disliked serfdom and toyed with the idea of abolishing it in Russia, but declined to do so for reasons of state. He feared the aristocracy and believed they might turn against him if he abolished serfdom. However, he did make some efforts to improve the lot of the Crown Serfs with the help of his minister Pavel Kiselyov. During most of his reign he tried to increase his control over the landowners and other influential groups in Russia. In 1831, Nicholas restricted the votes in the Noble Assembly to those with over 100 serfs, leaving 21,916 voters. In 1841, landless nobles were banned from selling serfs separate from the land. From 1845, attainment of the 5th highest rank in the Table of Ranks was required to be ennobled, previously it had been the 8th rank.
King of Poland
Nicholas was crowned King of Poland in Warsaw on 12 May 1829, per the Polish Constitution, a document he would not respect thereafter. He is the only Russian monarch ever crowned King of Polandalthough not the only one bestowed with the title.Culture
The official emphasis on Russian nationalism fueled a debate on Russia's place in the world, the meaning of Russian history, and the future of Russia. One group, the westernizers, believed that Russia remained backward and primitive and could progress only through adopting European culture and institutions. Another group, the Slavophiles, enthusiastically favored Slavic culture and customs, and disdained the West.File: Bogdan Villevalde, Nicholas I of Russia and Alexander Nikolayevich in 1854.jpg|thumb|Nicholas I with Alexander II in Bogdan Willewalde's studio in Saint Petersburg in 1854, oil on canvas, State Russian Museum
The Slavophiles viewed Slavic philosophy as a source of wholeness in Russia and were sceptical of Western rationalism and materialism. Some of them believed that the Russian peasant commune, or Mir, offered an attractive alternative to Western capitalism and could save Europe from social and moral revolution, thus representing a form of Russian messianism. However the ministry of education had a policy of closing philosophy faculties to curb destabilizing speculation.
In the wake of the Decembrist revolt, the tsar moved to protect the status quo by centralizing education. He wanted to neutralize the threat of foreign ideas and "pseudo-knowledge". However, his minister of education, Sergei Uvarov, quietly promoted academic freedom and autonomy, raised academic standards, improved facilities, and opened higher education to the middle classes. By 1848 the tsar, fearing that political upheavals in the West might spread to Russia, ended Uvarov's innovations. The universities were small and closely monitored, especially the potentially dangerous philosophy departments. Their main mission was to train a loyal, vigorous, manly senior bureaucracy unspoiled by effeminate office work.
The Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg became the main source of recognition and support for artists. Nicholas I decided to control it personally, reserving the final say on artistic honors. As the tsar reprimanded and humiliated artists whose works he found distasteful, the result was fear, insecurity, and artistic mediocrity.
Despite the repressions of this period, Russians outside official control produced a flowering of literature and the performing arts. Through the works of Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev and numerous others, Russian literature gained international stature and recognition. Ballet took root in Russia after its importation from France, and classical music became firmly established with the compositions of Mikhail Glinka.
Minister of Finance Georg von Cancrin persuaded the emperor of the benefits of inviting Prussian scientist Alexander von Humboldt to Russia to investigate regions that could produce mineral wealth. The Russian government financed Humboldt's eight-month expedition through Russia in 1829, which resulted in diamond finds in the Ural mountains. Humboldt published multiple volumes on his Russian expedition, which he dedicated to Nicholas despite his increasing disapproval of the tsar's policies.