Russia 1861

Synopsis

From the founding of the Russian nation in 1552 to the middle of the nineteenth century, Russia had been the ultimate imperial power. Russia developed out of the area immediately surrounding Moscow and extended from the Bering Strait to what is now Poland; the Russian czars understandably assumed the nation's invincibility. The Crimean War, however, shattered this assumption. The backward, semimedieval Russian industry could not support a modern war. Armaments produced for the war effort took months to reach the front line because of the lack of modern communications. Moreover the Russian army mainly consisted of relatively inexperienced serf volunteers, men who had joined the army solely to seek their freedom from the land. These severe limitations, combined with the threat of revolution that was the scourge of the European ancient regime after 1848, signaled that radical change was a necessity.

In 1856 Czar Alexander...