My sincere condolences. 😉
Thanks. Its a real shame. AII's reign occupied such a pivotal point in Russian history, yet its furstraitingly difficult to find ways to make it a net positive. And I can't kill him off when young, sense that would just pass the crown to Konsantin, who'd be just as bad. That means either working around AII, assassinating him in 1866, or getting NI to pull the trigger on the end of serfdom and a few other proposed modernizations.
But is this realistic to expect if we leave his personality intact? He was brought up by an extremely authoritative father who demonstrably failed at the end so a reasonably natural reaction was along the lines “the past is bad, let’s do all differently” and he looked for the people with similar views and none of them had the needed experience or knowledge, just the good intentions. But even in this area he was trying to run in all directions at the same time with no visible logic.
Yeah that's the issue I'm running into. Its one thing to change events (like listening to one minister over the other), but changing an existing historical figure's personality feels a bit ... handwavy. Looking at AII's upbringing, the only real thing I could think of would be a different tutor for him rather then the "liberal-romantic" Vasily Zhukovsky. But even then, IDK.
Take the emancipation. Kiselev had a great experience (his first emancipation project is dated by 1816 and he did conduct reform for the state peasants) but almost immediately after the CW (which he helped to finish with the minimal losses), he was removed from his office and sent as an ambassador to France. Muraviev advocated a gradual change in the agrarian system, the implementation of which would not have met such sharp resistance at all levels, for which he was rated as a "conservative and serf-owner" in liberal circles. AII practically accused him in opposing his policy and Muraviev had to retire. Who ended up as a head of the emancipation commission? Rostovtsev. A professional military who got his ideas traveling in Germany (what’s common except that in both cases the peasants were bipeds?) and was seemingly mostly concerned with the moral considerations and after his death position was given, out of all people, to Panin who was arch-conservative Minister of Justice who was against emancipation and who’s main contribution (judging by wiki) was a proposal to put Russia under the martial law during reform’s implementation. Besides this he was trying to protect interests of the landowners.
Between what you've mentioned, and my own (admittedly limited) reading, the best solution seems to be AII turning to Kiselyov and Muravyov (as well as possibly keeping Nikolai Milyutin) as leading ministers instead of tossing out every lead official from his father's reign. Not sure how to get AII to that solution though. Or to get him to just take a step back and let his ministers cook, rather then his back and forth views throughout the emancipation.
Yes. The problems were all over the place. Pretty much all Ural metallurgy had to be dramatically changed to be up to date and the capital was one of many issues because it had to switch from charcoal to coal and there was no good coal needed for the bessemer technology nearby, the horse and water power had to be replaced with the steam and, as I understand, this was just a tip of a very big iceberg.
So basically Russia's industrialization needed tons of work, and would coast tons of rubbles, yet outside the Rail network was never properly prioritized until AIII's reign. I did find a book that coudl help me figure out some places on where to push,
Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800 - 1860 by William Blackwell. Its a fairly old book (from the '60s or '70s), but its about the only thing I've been able to find that specifially deals with Russia's industrialization from outside AIII's reign.
Very true. Military result of the war of 2877-78 was quite ambiguous. On one hand, the top command level was mostly compromised and this applied to AII as well. OTOH, the war produced a number of the bona fide heroes some of whom, like Skobelev, introduced a novel tactics. But one of these heroes turned to be a time bomb producing the terrible negative results all the way to wwi. I’m talking shout general Dragomirov. He performed quite well in the war, became popular, served as commander of the Kiev military district and professor of the military academy. Was quite charismatic, had a lot of the good ideas regarding physical preparedness of the soldiers and their good treatment. But the good things end there. He was a vocal adherence of the spirit as the winning factor and a bayonet charge as the tactics. He was against pretty much any innovations: magazine rifles, machine guns, protective shields on the cannons and so on. But a huge number of the commanders of all levels came out of his “school” and during the RJW and WWI the soldiers paid dearly.
So basically, the Russians learned lessons toward some of their issues, but just the wrong ones. They doubled down on things that simply weren't going to work in modern warfare, and neglected the things they actually needed to focus on. That feels like something that could be fixed without a huge amount of butterflying.
There was a fundamental between him and his son. Under AII the Grand Dukes were almost uncontrollable (and this involved, among other things, peddling the influence in getting the RR contracts) while AIII seriously cut their number and was quite strict with them (well, there still were numerous issues). IMO, AII was a rather weak personality (which did not prevent him from being vengeful and quite cruel).
So again, major personality issues from AII. Which is something that's pretty darn hard to butterfly without getting into hand waving territory. I'm almost thinking the best bet would be a successful 1866 assassination attempt against him...
Weakling with a lot of power…
Sounds like quite a few monarchs.
There was a fundamental psychological problem. The peasants of Germany and Baltic governorships (where, IIRC, serfdom was abolished early without land) knew that the land belongs to the landowner while in Russia they firmly believed that the land on which they were working for themselves was their. So releasing them without a land would cause massive revolts.
I saw that mentioned in an essay I was reading the other day! I mean, they're definitely wrong, but that does make sense. And explain why the reform needed a land component for the peasants.
Then, with both sides sticking to the communal model, how the tenancy would work? A landlord could break contract with the individual tenant but how to do this with a whole community acting as a solid block? Then, how about the houses? They were not built by a landowner so could he throw the peasants out of them? Etc.
Yeah, can see the issues with tenancy. It would also need to fully abandon the communal model to work "properly", but neither side was yet to the point where the communal system could be reasonably abandoned.
Yes, the generally low competence of the Russian landowners had been well-known. Karamzin noted that on the sandy Baltic soil one serf was producing more income for his master than 3 Russian serfs on a black soil. Eventually, some estates survived and by 1913 most of the agricultural mechanisms were concentrated in these estates with a resulting higher productivity. But most landowners lost their land.
So basically, one would need the Russian nobility to wake up and realize they need to reform their land managament if they were to reach the economic power of the British or Prussian nobility. And, considering that the vast amounts of land they had morgaged by the 1850s wasn't a giant waving red flag to them, its likely that such a shift wouldn't be possible before their economic downturn in the later half of the 19th century helped significantly weaken the nobles' financial position.
IIRC, something along the similar lines was proposed by Kiselev: seize the mortgaged land, pay the balance between its cost and unpaid debt and give land to the peasants (for the ransom?).
Jez. I didn't think it was possible for my low estimations of AII to get any worse, but he keeps surpising me.
And if it was realistic at that time… It pretty much took the land crisis to push fraction of the peasants into individual farmership but during the time of AII the crisis was not there, yet. OTOH, there still was a noticeable number of the resettlers moving to the East.
So realistically, land reform in the model of Stolypin would have to wait until the late 19th century. Got it.
Land was sold to the peasants all the time but on a communal level.
I was more meaning that the communal model was part of the issues.
Actually, immediately after the CW AII and Little Nappy became quite cozy.
Did not know that, very interesting. So potentially, French loans could be available for Russia if properly tapped into. Say if Nappy III was persuaded to balance out his major focusing on a British alliance with positive relations to one of the eastern powers (Russia, despite the Crimean war, being the easiest sense French ambitions didn't really cut into Russia's sphere).