In 1815, the defeats of Napoleon carry out the Russian armies to Paris, and the emperor Alexandre I er (1801-1825) becomes the referee of the Congress of Vienna (1815) and of European balance for thirty years.  

The Russian domination on the Caucasus increases (annexation of the kingdom of Georgia in 1801, of Arménie Eastern in 1828) and, in parallel, the Empire endeavors to develop its influence in Balkans by supporting the engagements for independence against the Othoman power (in the years 1820). However, confronted with a European coalition, it is obliged after the Crimean War (1854-1855) to give up by the treaty of Paris (March 30th, 1856) the control of the straits of the Black Sea. In the west, any inclination of independence of Poland - in 1815, the area of Warsaw was made up in “kingdom of the Congress, joined together forever with the empire of Russia” - is choked in blood after the revolt of 1831.

The reign of Nicolas I

The reign of Nicolas I er (1825-1855) is marked by musellement oppositions, after the failure of the revolt of the decabrists, or decembrists (December 14th, 1825), plot of officers and noble who, influenced by the ideas of the French revolution, wanted to liberalize the mode tsarist. The crushing of this movement - marked by many executions and deportations in Siberia -, which does not know any popular support in addition, puts an end to any opposition of the nobility until the reign of Alexandre II (1855-1881), and the country is not touched by the vague revolutionist of 1848.  

This period is that of a fast increase in the networks of universities and colleges, of a flowering of newspapers and scientific magazines (Annals of the fatherland, 1838), and especially of the blossoming of a generation of admirable writers (Pouchkine, Lermontov, Tourgueniev, Gogol, Dostoïevski) whose writings reflect the hardness of Russian social reality.  

Four factors can explain the delay of Russia compared to Western capitalism: passivity of the economic material State, whereas he had played a driving role in this field along the XVIII E century; a general lack of private initiative; an interior market which, although numerically important (60 million inhabitants in 1851), does not develop rather quickly (difficulties of transport, vastness of the territory); finally, fastener of the vast majority of the population to the work of the ground.  

The economic and social problem dominating is well that of the subsistence of the serfdom, which still touches half of the farming community in Russia d' Europe in the middle of the century. This antiquated system is unanimously condemned by the Slavophiles (Kireïevski, Aksakov, Khomiakov or Samarine), who defend the Russian medieval tradition, preserved in their eyes in the common autonomous country-woman (to mir it), and by the occidentalists (Herzen, Bielinski, Granovski, Kaveline, Annenkov), who judge that the history of the Occident must precede the history of Russia. But these members of intelligentsia, often noble themselves, remain isolated in the company and are in hillock with the land aristocracy, firmly attached to the system, and terrified with the idea that the freedom offered to the peasants does not lead to insurrections.

One era of reforms

It is necessary to await the defeat of the Crimea, in 1856, which reveals the institutional weaknesses, and the rise on the throne of a more liberal tsar so that one era of reforms opens in Russia. The fundamental Statute of the released peasants of serfdom, adoptee on on February 19th, 1861, involves a profound change of the economic and social power struggles in the Russian campaigns. This statute offers all to the former serfs, with the help of a repurchase whose State advances the sum, a variable size, small holding according to the areas but generally smaller than that which they exploited servilely.

On a side, this reform demobilizes part of the rural labor, which leaves to engage in industry; other, it impoverishes the vast majority of the peasants, involved in debt for decades by the repurchase of their piece. If the new statute reinforces the structures of the rural community, to which are entrusted the tax functions and judicaires formerly reserved for the lord, it does not make it possible to stop the process of parcelling out of the grounds, most former serfs being obliged to supplement the exploitation of their batch by that of leased grounds. In 1880, the peasants recovered 33 million hectares and 25 million with farm cultivates some.  

The reforms also touch the administration, justice and the army. In 1864 the zemstvos (local councils), formed are created representatives of the owners, townsmen and peasants elected according to a system poll-tax based, and responsible for the maintenance of the roads, fire control, of the medical structures and teaching. They cause the appearance of a new paid personnel, the “third element”, composed of country doctor, schoolmasters, midwife, agronomists, statisticians…, who try of to be made the spokesperson of the popular needs near the authorities for the power.

The same year, a reform institutes the separation of justice and the administration, ensuring the independence of the judges thanks to the irremovability of their station. In the military field, the reorganization of the quotas and setting-up, in 1874, obligatory service prepare the means of a strong imperialist policy. But the ditch is then enormous between the size of the intentions of the country and the weakness of its economic means.