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The Great Reforms: Autocracy, Bureaucracy & the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia
The Great Reforms of the 1860s marked the broadest attempt at social and economic renovation to occur in Russia between the death of Peter the Great in 1725 and the Revolution of 1905. In just more than a decade, imperial reform acts freed Russia's serfs, restructured her courts, established institutions of local self-government in parts of the empire, altered the constraints that censorship imposed on the press, and transformed Russia's vast serf armed forces into a citizen army in which men from all classes bore equal responsibility for military service.
This invaluable study explains why the legislation assumed the shape that it did and estimates what the Great Reforms ultimately accomplished. The Great Reforms offered readers a vital starting point from which to evaluate the prospects for glasnost', perestroika, and reform in the Gorbachev era.
This invaluable study explains why the legislation assumed the shape that it did and estimates what the Great Reforms ultimately accomplished. The Great Reforms offered readers a vital starting point from which to evaluate the prospects for glasnost', perestroika, and reform in the Gorbachev era.
303 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1990
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November 11, 2013
I'm not any kind of authority on Russian historiography, but when I did dip my toe into studying Imperial Russia, Bruce Lincoln stood out to me as one of the better scholars out there. A lot of people wind up studying the Imperial (pre-Soviet) period because they'd really like to study the USSR, but for whatever reason they were denied access to archives from that period, so they bring all their axes with them and grind them on the Romanovs instead of Lenin and Stalin. This was especially true during the Cold War, but my impression is that (except for a brief period in the nineties) the archives are pretty locked up again under Putin. Anyway, the result is that a lot of people study 19th Century Russia solely to figure out what went "wrong" that resulted in the 1917 Revolution, ignoring the fact that the period has its own history, and might be worth understanding on its own terms.
Lincoln is, in that sense, a breath of fresh air, even if at times one wonders if he goes a bit far in defending the old regime. He sees the history of the nineteenth century in Russia in terms of a process of advancement and liberalization that happens to look different from what happened in the West because (surprise!) conditions were different in Russia. Much of his thesis is based on the rise of a class of "enlightened bureaucrats" made possible due to the changes in the system of Ranks developed by Alexander the Great under Catherine and her successors. He admits that the process was far from smooth, but sees it as one of primarily forward movement nevertheless. My impression is that he's developed this argument in different ways over the years, but that this book, on the reforms initiated by Alexander II in the middle of the 19th century, is a kind of synthetic magnum opus to round out the argument. It was written at the beginning of the period of relative openness of the archives, and thus is more complete than it might have been in an earlier or later period.
Lincoln’s argument is based on an implicit understanding of Max Weber’s theories of the development of society, and it is important to understand that in that context “bureaucracy” has none of its usual negative implications. A bureaucracy means the development of rule of law and the treatment of all people as equal in the eyes of the state, something that is impossible under an absolutist dictatorship, in which favoritism is bound to play a powerful role. Lincoln does speak somewhat about the problem of “red tape” in the empire, however, suggesting that the proliferation of unnecessary documentation that resulted from efforts by earlier czars at centralization of rule was part of what Alexander hoped to reform. This is bureaucracy in its more usual sense, and it was opposed first and foremost by his enlightened bureaucrats themselves (since they had to do all the work associated with it).
The reform for which Alexander II was most remembered, of course, was the freeing of the serfs, and specifically the extremely slow and incomplete form it eventually took. Lincoln examines in detail the various interests at play in the development of that event, and also gives the czar credit with manipulating it so that it could happen at all, in spite of the opposition of some of the most powerful stakeholders, suggesting a kind of parallel (in my mind, at least) with the Affordable Care Act in recent years. Unfortunately, this parallel doesn’t bode well for the future of healthcare in our country, although such predictions are notoriously inaccurate.
In all, I still recall Lincoln as one of the most level-headed writers on the period before the Revolution and can see why this book remains a “classic” in a field that often leaves a lot to be desired. I will admit that his writing style is quite dry, and also that at times he fills in a great deal of history without giving enough references to make it possible to follow up, particularly in the early chapters. This is probably because he had written on those subjects elsewhere, and was an adequately established scholar not to have to prove himself again, but it does reduce the value of the book as an introductory work. These are minor points, however, in a work of this overall quality.
Lincoln is, in that sense, a breath of fresh air, even if at times one wonders if he goes a bit far in defending the old regime. He sees the history of the nineteenth century in Russia in terms of a process of advancement and liberalization that happens to look different from what happened in the West because (surprise!) conditions were different in Russia. Much of his thesis is based on the rise of a class of "enlightened bureaucrats" made possible due to the changes in the system of Ranks developed by Alexander the Great under Catherine and her successors. He admits that the process was far from smooth, but sees it as one of primarily forward movement nevertheless. My impression is that he's developed this argument in different ways over the years, but that this book, on the reforms initiated by Alexander II in the middle of the 19th century, is a kind of synthetic magnum opus to round out the argument. It was written at the beginning of the period of relative openness of the archives, and thus is more complete than it might have been in an earlier or later period.
Lincoln’s argument is based on an implicit understanding of Max Weber’s theories of the development of society, and it is important to understand that in that context “bureaucracy” has none of its usual negative implications. A bureaucracy means the development of rule of law and the treatment of all people as equal in the eyes of the state, something that is impossible under an absolutist dictatorship, in which favoritism is bound to play a powerful role. Lincoln does speak somewhat about the problem of “red tape” in the empire, however, suggesting that the proliferation of unnecessary documentation that resulted from efforts by earlier czars at centralization of rule was part of what Alexander hoped to reform. This is bureaucracy in its more usual sense, and it was opposed first and foremost by his enlightened bureaucrats themselves (since they had to do all the work associated with it).
The reform for which Alexander II was most remembered, of course, was the freeing of the serfs, and specifically the extremely slow and incomplete form it eventually took. Lincoln examines in detail the various interests at play in the development of that event, and also gives the czar credit with manipulating it so that it could happen at all, in spite of the opposition of some of the most powerful stakeholders, suggesting a kind of parallel (in my mind, at least) with the Affordable Care Act in recent years. Unfortunately, this parallel doesn’t bode well for the future of healthcare in our country, although such predictions are notoriously inaccurate.
In all, I still recall Lincoln as one of the most level-headed writers on the period before the Revolution and can see why this book remains a “classic” in a field that often leaves a lot to be desired. I will admit that his writing style is quite dry, and also that at times he fills in a great deal of history without giving enough references to make it possible to follow up, particularly in the early chapters. This is probably because he had written on those subjects elsewhere, and was an adequately established scholar not to have to prove himself again, but it does reduce the value of the book as an introductory work. These are minor points, however, in a work of this overall quality.
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