The true religion of the Russian peasantry was fatalism. The peasant rarely credited any event, especially a misfortune, to his own volition. It was 'God's will', even where responsibility could clearly be laid at his own doorstep, e.g. when carelessness caused a fire or the death of an animal. Russian proverbs are full of fatalistic sentiments. When, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the muzhik began to be acquainted with the Bible, he first learned the passages stressing humility and passive acceptance of one's fate.
Finally, as concerns politics. The Russian peasant was undoubtedly a 'monarchist' in the sense that he could conceive of no source of worldly authority other than that emanating from the tsar. He regarded the tsar as God's vicar on earth, a bolshak of all Russia, created by the Lord to give him orders and to take care of him. He gave the tsar credit for all that was good and blamed whatever went wrong either on God's will or on the landlords and officials. He believed the tsar knew him personally and that if he were to knock on the door of the Winter Palace he would be warmly received and his complaints not only heard but understood in their smallest detail. It is because of this patriarchal outlook that the muzhik felt a familiarity towards his sovereign which would have been completely out of place in western Europe. De Segur on his travels in Russia with Catherine the Great observed with surprise the unaffected
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manner which simple country people adopted when speaking to their empress.
A powerful factor in the peasant's monarchist sentiments was the firm belief that the tsar wished them to have all the land, that his desire was frustrated by the landlords, but that some day he would overcome this resistance. Serf emancipation of 1861 transformed this belief into firm conviction. The socialist-revolutionary propagandists of the 1870s were driven to desperation by the peasants' unshakeable faith that the 'tsar will give' (tsar' dast).*1
Hence the chaos which enveloped Russia after the sudden abdication of Nicholas 11; hence, too, Lenin's haste to have the tsar and his family murdered once communist authority seemed endangered and Nicholas could have served as a rallying-point for the opposition; hence the constant efforts of the communist regime to fill the vacuum which the demise of the imperial dynasty had created in the minds of the masses by mammoth state-sponsored cults of party leaders.
The imperial government attached great importance to the monarchist sentiments of the peasantry, and many of its policies, such as hesitation to industrialize or to build railroads and indifference to mass education, were inspired by the wish to keep the muzhik exactly as he was, simple and loyal. Belief in the monarchist loyalties of the peasant was one of the cornerstones of imperial policy in the nineteenth century. Correct up to a point, the government misconstrued the peasant's attitude. The peasant's loyalty was a personal loyalty to the idealized image of a distant ruler whom he saw as his terrestrial father and protector. It was not loyalty to the institution of the monarchy as such, and certainly not to its agents, whether dvoriane or chinovniki. The peasant had no reason whatever to feel attachment to the state, which took from him with both hands and gave nothing in return. To the peasant, authority was at best a fact of life which one had to bear like disease, old age, or death, but which could never be 'good' and whose clutches one had every right to escape whenever given a chance. Loyalty to the tsar entailed no acceptance of civic responsibility of any kind, and indeed concealed a profound revulsion against political institutions and processes. The personalization of all human relations, so characteristic of the Russian peasant, produced a superficial monarchism which appeared conservative but was in fact thoroughly anarchist. Beginning with the latter part of the eighteenth century it was becoming apparent to an increasing number of Russians that serfdom was not compatible with Russia's claim to being either a civilized country or a great power. Both Alexander 1 and Nicholas 1 had serious reservations about this institution, and so did their leading counsellors. Public
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opinion, nationalist-conservative and liberal-radical alike, turned hostile to serfdom. Indeed, serfdom had no genuine arguments in its favour: the best case that could be made for it held that after centuries of bondage the muzhik was as yet unprepared for the responsibilities of freedom and therefore that it would be best if it were given to him later rather than sooner. If, these growing abolitionist sentiments notwithstanding, serfdom was not done away with until 1861 the principal reason must be sought in the monarchy's fear of antagonizing the 100,000 serf-owning dvoriane on whom it relied to staff" the chief offices, command the armed forces and maintain order in the countryside. Within the narrow limits open to it, however, the government did what it would to reduce the number of serfs and to improve their condition. Alexander forswore to hand out any more state or crown peasants to private persons. He also introduced procedures by which Russian landlords could carry out private emancipations, and authorized the liberation (without land) of the serfs belonging to the German barons in Livonia. The cumulative effect of these measures was gradually to reduce the proportion of serfs in the empire's population from 45-50 per cent at the close of the eighteenth century, to 37-7 per cent in 1858. Serfdom was clearly on the wane.
The decision to proceed with emancipation, come what may, was taken very soon after the accession of Alexander 11. It was carried out in the teeth of strong resistance of the landowning class and in disregard of formidable administrative obstacles. Scholars had once believed that the step was taken largely on economic grounds, namely as a result of a crisis in the serf economy. This belief, however, does not appear well grounded. There is no evidence that economic considerations were uppermost in the government's mind when it took the decision to proceed with emancipation. But even had they been, it is questionable whether improvements in rural productivity required the liberation of serfs and the replacement of bonded with hired labour. The decades immediately preceding emancipation were a period of the most efficient utilization of serf labour because landlords, freed from compulsory state service, devoted more attention to rationalizing their rural economies to serve the expanding Russian and foreign markets. In his pioneering historical studies, Peter Struve has shown that serfdom attained the very peak of economic efficiency on the eve of its abolition."
It is much more plausible that the decisive factors behind the government's decision were political. Until Russia's humiliating defeat in the Crimean war it had been widely believed, even by persons unfriendly to the absolute monarchy, that at the very least it assured the empire of internal stability and external power. Internal stability remained as yet unchallenged, although the probability of another Pugachev uprising occurring if serfdom survived did not escape the new emperor. But the
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myth of autocratic Russia's military might was irreparably shattered once the empire proved itself unable to defend its territory from the armies of the 'corrupt' liberal states. In the crisis of self-confidence which followed the defeat, all institutions came under critical scrutiny, serfdom most of alclass="underline" 'At the head of current domestic problems which we must tackle stands - as a portent for the future and as an obstacle which precludes at the present time a substantial improvement of anything whatever - the question of serfdom'. Samarin wrote during the Crimean War, 'From whatever end our internal reconstruction should begin we will inevitably confront this issue'.as Human bondage now appeared as a ballast around Russia's neck, a weight which dragged it down into an abyss: on this there was wide agreement, which only those unable to see beyond their immediate personal interests did not share.