YEAR OF THE GOAT They say that those born this year were characterized by generosity, kindness, dexterity
NEW EDUCATIONAL REFORM. MINORITY AND MATHEMATICS WON
Five years after taking office, Minister of Education Tolstoy made a report to the emperor, pointing out the importance of classical education as a means of combating the nihilistic mood of the youth. Alexander formed a special commission, which included VALUEV, TROINITSKY, Tolstoy himself, several specialists from his ministry, and Count S. G. STROGANOV. Tolstoy on this occasion began to take Greek lessons from the director of the 3rd St. Petersburg gymnasium LEMONIUS.
The draft charter developed by the commission entered the specially formed presence of the State Council, chaired by Count Stroganov, consisting of 15 persons, including all ministers. Nine people are on the side of Tolstoy, and six are against - D. A. MILYUTIN, Count LITKE, an enlightened admiral, former educator of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, former Minister of Public Education A. V. GOLOVNIN, Academician Y. K. GROT and Count V. A PANIN.
In the general meeting of the State Council, Tolstoy's draft was rejected by a majority vote of 29 to 19, but Emperor Alexander joined the minority opinion and the draft was adopted.
On May 15, Tolstoy's project received the force of law. There are 24,000 schools in Russia with 875,000 students and 424 educational institutions with 27,830 students. In the classical gymnasiums of a new type, Latin and Greek were introduced in a huge volume (49 and 36 hours a week for all classes), natural science was excluded, and the program and teaching of the Russian language were significantly changed - the course in the history of literature was shortened. Church Slavonic was introduced in the senior classes. Reduced number of hours for history, geography and new languages. Teaching two new languages became optional. Entered eighth grade. The course of mathematics has been greatly increased. The governing rights from the pedagogical councils were transferred individually to the directors.
Real gymnasiums were destroyed and real schools were introduced in their place, which received a completely different meaning. Their rate has been reduced to six years. Their purpose was to give special, technical or industrial education to the children of merchants and wealthy philistines. Drawing became more than 40 hours a week. A significant course of mathematics was introduced and natural science was left in a very moderate dose.
WHAT WHERE IS OPEN
On the initiative of Professor GERRIER, women's courses were opened in Moscow, which have the character of a historical and geographical faculty. In the village of Edimenov, Tver province, the first school of dairy business, founded by N.V. VERESHCHAGIN with the assistance of the Ministry of State Property, was opened. The school will create the first cadres of Russian butter and cheese makers.
An astronomical observatory was opened at Novorossiysk University, and a biological station was opened in Sevastopol.
In St. Petersburg, the monthly pedagogical magazine "Family and School" began to appear. It will last until 1888.
From December 7 to 20, the Second Archaeological Congress was held in St. Petersburg, discussing mainly the archeology of classical antiquities.
MIKHNEVICH's proposal on the creation of an ornithopter was submitted to the scientific department of the Marine Technical Committee. The design is supposed to regulate the turns of the wing planes during the flight.
HARVEST AND HUNGER
1871-73 - crop failure in the southeastern provinces. Severe famine in the Samara province, despite the sparse population and the fertility of the land.
FREEDOM IN THE CAUCASUS
In the Caucasus, the emancipation of serfs, which began in 1864, was completed. The Georgian landowners were left seven times more land than was given to the peasants, and in addition they paid 7 million rubles in compensation for the personal release of the peasants.
PAINTING
On December 3, in St. Petersburg Vedomosti, critic STASOV welcomed the First Traveling Exhibition. Among the exhibited paintings: Ge "Peter I and Tsarevich Alexei", Perov "Hunters at Rest", Savrasov "The Rooks Have Arrived", portraits of Kramskoy.
MILITARY NEWS
By this year, 14 military districts have been formed. A system of long-term employees has been introduced. Those. non-commissioned officer after the end of the mandatory service life of 15 years may remain to serve beyond this period, for which he will receive a number of benefits, increased pay.
TAGANROG PROSPERIES
A joint-stock commercial Azov-Donskoy bank was founded in Taganrog. The idea was successful - since 1903 the board will already be in St. Petersburg. Founders: Ivan Scaramanga, Mark Villano, Yakov Polyakov, Mark Drashkovich, Samuil Polyakov, Fedor Rodokanaki, Samuil Guayer, Leon Rosenthal, Mark Varvatsi.
MILITARY ACTION
From April 1 to April 3, a Jewish pogrom took place in Odessa. When the troops appeared, the pogrom stopped and the massacre of the pogromists began.
MIST PICTURES FOR THE PEOPLE
On the initiative of the thirty-six-year-old lieutenant-general VSEVOLOD PORFIRYEVICH KOKHOVSKY, the first director of the Pedagogical Museum of Military Educational Institutions (“Salt Town” in Petrograd), readings with foggy pictures were established, first for the soldiers, then for the people.
HIGHEST JUSTICE
At the initiative of Palen and the chief of the gendarmes, Shuvalov, the procedure for investigating and passing all cases of state crimes was changed. At the initial stage, they are investigated by gendarmes with the participation of the prosecutor's authorities, and not by judicial investigators. These investigations, through the Prosecutor of the Judicial Chamber, go directly to the highest permission. Further, the case can be referred to judicial institutions and begin again with a preliminary investigation, but this will almost never happen; the sovereign will be able to command to stop the case; the third way is the administrative resolution of the case with the help of exile to places more or less remote. Cases must be considered by the Judicial Chambers, but then this occupation will be transferred to the special presence of the Senate. Scourges, cats, gauntlets have also been canceled for the exiles.
RAILWAYS
The construction of the Transcaucasian railway began. The Riga-Dinaburg-Orel railway was extended to Tsaritsyn.
WITH SPIRITUAL RANKING EVERYTHING IS CLEAR
According to the opinion of the State Council, approved by the tsar in 1869 and additions to it in 1871, those who do not have a priestly dignity and are not in clerical positions are excluded from the clergy: singers, church watchmen, ringers, supernumerary psalmists and children of the clergy. The children of the clergy were given the rights of personal nobles or hereditary honorary citizens, and the children of clergymen were granted the rights of only hereditary honorary citizens.
Big changes have taken place in Staraya Konyushennaya in Moscow. Wealthy landowners squandered redemption certificates, mortgaged and remortgaged their estates in land banks and disappeared - retired to their estates and provincial cities. Their houses went to wealthy merchants, railroad workers and similar "upstarts".
ON THE WORLD ARENA...
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS. In September, the London Conference of the First International.
WAR. Paris capitulated in January. Armistice signed with Prussia. In February, a preliminary peace treaty was signed. In May, the Frankfurt Peace Treaty was signed.
FRANCE. In February, the Central Committee of the Republican National Guard was established in Paris. Elections were held for the National Assembly. In March - an armed uprising of Parisian workers. Flight of the government of Thiers to Versailles. Parisian commune. She fell in May. EUGENE POTIER wrote the words of the "Internationale", the worker PIERRE DEGEUTER wrote the music.
ITALY. Completion of the merger.
GERMANY. An empire is proclaimed in January. The constitution was adopted in April. Otto von Schönhausen Bismarck became chancellor, he will remain in this post until 1890. The "Kulturkampf" began - the actions of the Bismarck government against the Catholic Church. It will last until 1880.
HUNGARY. Dr. Karl Cohn (Karol Akin) invented a letter card, in the middle of which a message is written, then it is folded in half and sealed like an ordinary envelope. The invention is also patented in Austria and the UK, but no one is in a hurry to implement the idea.
NEGOTIATION. From January to March, the London Conference of the Signatory Powers of the Treaty of Paris was held. March 13 - London Convention. An agreement was signed abolishing the principle of neutralizing the Black Sea and allowing Russia to have a navy there and build coastal fortifications.
RUSSIAN ABROAD. During the Franco-German war of 1871, the "Russian Society for the Care of the Wounded and Sick Soldiers" sent a detachment of 30 surgeons to assist both warring parties without distinction and sent 16 transports of material donations.
MIKLUKHO-MACLAY N. N. On September 20, he landed on the northeastern coast of New Guinea in the Astrolabe Bay. These places were mapped by the Frenchman Dumont d'Urville, but no one went ashore. The area is very unhealthy - many fell ill with yellow fever. A hut 4 meters long and 2 meters wide was built for Miklukho-Maclay. On September 27, the Vityaz corvette left, leaving Miklukho -Maclay among the Papuans who were known as cannibals.Soon he entered into friendly relations with the Papuans and mastered their language.
FOREIGNERS IN RUSSIA. The first oil well was drilled in the Baku region. Local industrialists began to feverishly establish oil refining and oil producing firms. However, the newcomers turned out to be the most resourceful - the St. Petersburg industrialists, the NOBEL brothers. By this time, the head of the family, Emmanuel Nobel, with his youngest son, returned to their homeland, and Ludwig and Robert continued their father's business in Russia. To find out if Caucasian walnut could be used for gun butts, Ludwig Nobel came here and became "infected" with the oil business.
MEANWHILE...
ALYMOVA. From September 30 to October 2, the sensational trial of ALYMOVA took place in Yekaterinoslavl. The landowner K. F. KORBE, who died on December 27, 1870, left a will, according to which he granted all his property for life without accountability to his mistress, captain E. M. Alymova, a spiritualist who served him as a medium in intercourse with the spirit of her grandfather’s deceased brother VLADIMIR SOKOLYANSKY. Since Korbet wrote everything down, the court found that he was the object of shameless exploitation by the adventurer.
Anuchin D. I. took the post of scientific secretary of the Society for the Acclimatization of Animals and Plants, which was in charge of the Moscow Zoo.
GILYAROVSKY VLADIMIR left his family and the gymnasium and went to the Volga among the people. He will take on any job: he will be a hooker, a barge hauler, a worker in a bleach factory, a circus performer, a fireman, a watchman in a gymnasium, a wandering actor, a scout scout, a horse rider in the Kalmyk steppe.
Dokuchaev V.V. graduated from the university and made his first scientific report at the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, devoted to the geological description of the Kachnia river valley. In March next year, he will be elected a full member of this society.
KOROLENKO VG came to St. Petersburg and entered the Institute of Technology. Before that, he studied at the Zhytomyr gymnasium, and after the transfer of his father to Rovno, at the Rovno real gymnasium. Soon he will leave the institute due to extreme poverty, and will become a proofreader in a publishing house that produces geographical maps.
PA KROPOTKIN visits circles and workers' organizations abroad. Two currents are fighting there - one of them is headed by KARL MARX, the other - BAKUNIN. These two people are completely opposite to each other and exclude each other in matters of tactics and program. Marx believes that for every country the path of capitalist development is inevitable, which will be an excellent school for the workers, disciplining and preparing for the social conduct of production. Bakunin believes that the state is always and immediately an enemy. Bakunin was expelled from the International, and a number of sections stood up for him, especially in the Romanesque countries of Western Europe. Kropotkin resolutely sided with Bakunin and carried these ideas to Russia.
KUROCHKIN. A collection of works by the satirical poet VASILY STEPANOVICH KUROCHKIN has been published.
MAKAROV S. O., born in 1848, from this year will serve on the Baltic Sea.
Maksimovich K. I. became an ordinary academician and director of the Botanical Museum.
NECHAYEV organized the "People's Punishment" society, consisting of a system of closed "fives", each of which knew only one person standing above her. In Moscow, such a five was formed from USPENSKY, the forty-year-old writer PRYZHOV, NIKOLAEV, KUZNETSOV, and the student IVANOV. Ivanov began to doubt, and Nechaev ordered to kill him as a spy. In 1869, a student was killed, but the case was soon solved. The trial of this five was a trial of "nechaevshina" in general, which brought 87 people to the dock, 33 people were sentenced to various punishments, and the rest, although acquitted, many fell into administrative exile.
PIZLER ALOISY, born in 1833 served as librarian at the Imperial Public Library from 1868 to 1870. For stealing books, he was sentenced to exile in Siberia, but pardoned and, as a foreign citizen, exiled abroad.
POGODIN. On December 29, the half-century anniversary of the literary and scientific activity of the historian MP POGODIN was celebrated with great pomp in Moscow. The subject of his numerous studies is the arrival of the Varangians in the Principality of Russia.
G. N. POTANIN was transferred into exile to Totma, and then to Nikolsk, Vologda province. There he would rewrite papers and draw up petitions for the land management of the peasants, write a work on the spread of Turkic and Finnish tribes in the Tomsk province, and marry A.V. LAVRSKAYA, the sister of another exile.
SALTYKOV (Shchedrin) became a member of the committee of the Society for the Aid to Needy Writers and Scientists.
P. P. SEMENOV, head of the Central Statistical Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, divided European Russia (together with Finland, the Kingdom of Poland and the Caucasus) into 14 "natural" regions. In 1886 he changed his mind.
SOLOVIEV SERGEY MIKHAILOVICH Professor became the rector of Moscow University. He would remain so until 1877.
Timiryazev K. A. started work on plant photosynthesis.
TOLSTOY. LEV NIKOLAEVICH and SOFIA ANDREEVNA TOLSTYKH had a fifth child - daughter Maria. The birth is very difficult and the mother, falling ill with puerperal fever, is dying. In the summer, L. N. Tolstoy left for koumiss with his wife's brother STEPOY BERS in the Samara province and stayed for 6 weeks near the Arkalyk River, 90 versts from Buzuluk.
FEDCHENKO A.P. and his wife studied the Syrdarya part of the Kyzylkum desert, passed through the Kuraminsky Range to the Ferghana Valley and climbed the Alai Range, visited the Alai Valley and visited the glaciers of the Turkestan Range.
CHICHERINA ALEXANDRA NIKOLAEVNA married EM. DM. NARYSHKIN.
SCHUMAKHER P.V. tried to publish the first book of his poems in St. Petersburg. Having moved to St. Petersburg, he separated from his wife and experienced financial difficulties. The book was immediately arrested at the publishing house, the author was brought to trial. He was charged under articles 1001 (cynicism) and 1045 (political attacks against the existing system). The case about the book passed to the Judicial Chamber, which determined: Schumacher should not be subjected to personal punishment, but his book should be completely destroyed.
Yuriev SA founded the magazine "Conversation", which will be published for about two years. In the sixties, he returned from abroad, wanted to get closer to the people, founded a folk school and a peasant theater in the village, on the stage of which he staged OSTROVSKII's plays. As a result, he became interested in the works of classical literature, which reflected the life of the people, and began translating the dramas of Lope de Vega. After the closing of the journal, he will lecture at the Higher Women's Courses in Moscow.
P. N. YABLOCHKOV transferred to the service of the Moscow-Kursk railway as the head of the telegraph. All the time he will theoretically and practically study the issue of electric lighting. Finding no sympathy for his ideas in Russia, he will go abroad.
THIS YEAR WILL APPEAR:
ADRIANOV SERGEY ALEKSANDROVICH, future literary critic, lawyer. He will die in 1941;
ANDREEV LEONID NIKOLAEVICH in Orel. Future writer. He will die in 1919 in exile;
ASKOLDOV SERGEY ALEKSEEVICH, son of the philosopher Kozlov, future philosopher, chemist. He will die in 1945 abroad;
BULGAKOV SERGEY NIKOLAEVICH, future religious philosopher, publicist, writer. He will die in Paris in 1944;
VLADIKINA OLGA GERMANOVNA, who will become the wife of Mikhail Pavlovich Chekhov;
VOROVSKY VATSLAV VATSLAVOVICH, future Soviet statesman and party leader. He will die in 1923;
LAZAREVSKY BORIS ALEKSANDROVICH, future novelist, military lawyer by education. He will serve in the naval court in Sevastopol, Novorossiysk, in the Far East. He will die in 1919;
RYABUSHINSKY PAVEL PAVLOVICH, the future co-owner (with brothers) of the Moscow Ryabushinsky Bank, the newspaper Morning of Russia, at the end of his life a white émigré. He will die in 1924;
SCRYABIN ALEXANDER NIKOLAEVICH, future composer and pianist. He will die in 1915;
CHLENOV MIKHAIL ALEKSANDROVICH future neuropathologist, professor at Moscow University.
DIE THIS YEAR:
BESTUZHEV MIKHAIL ALEKSANDROVICH, born in 1800, Decembrist;
BUKHAREV FYODOR (Bukharev Alexander Matveyevich), born in 1824, spiritual writer, archimandrite;
GRIGORIEV PETER IVANOVICH, born in 1806, actor of the St. Petersburg drama troupe since 1826, playwright-vaudevillian;
KORSAKOV MIKHAIL SEMENOVICH, born in 1826, statesman, Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, member of the State Council. With his assistance, a number of scientific expeditions were organized in Siberia;
POPOV MIKHAIL MAKSIMOVICH, born in 1801, former teacher of natural history and literature at the Penza gymnasium, since 1839 an official of the III department of the imperial office;
SOLOVIEV VENIAMIN NIKOLAEVICH, born in 1798, baron, Decembrist;
SOSNITSKY IVAN IVANOVICH, born in 1794, actor of the St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theatre;
TURGENEV NIKOLAI, born in 1789, one of the founders of the "Union of Welfare" and the Northern Society, who has been abroad since 1824 and sentenced in absentia to eternal hard labor, the author of the work "Russia and the Russians".
CHAPTER XI. RUSSIA
I. Alexander II (1870–1881)
position in 1871. The first part of the reign of Alexander II ended in March 1871 with the London Conference and the repeal of the most humiliating articles of the Treaty of Paris; on the other hand, by this time all the big reforms had already been carried out, with the exception of the law on universal military service published in 1874. The internal reorganization of Russia seemed complete. But in reality the diplomatic success of 1871 was only platonic: the near future was destined to show what great difficulties the Russians still had to face in the East, and as regards domestic policy, things went no further than hopes. The reforms carried out on paper could have an effect only under the condition of a radical change in morals, a sudden increase in Russian culture. And meanwhile, it was around 1870 that they began to doubt the renewal that the reformers of 1862-1863 had recklessly counted on.
The abolition of serfdom has not yet appreciably improved the position of the peasants. Burdened with ransom payments, they were as poor as before; freed from the yoke of the landlords, they were still under the yoke of the "peace" - the community, and their freedom increased to an insignificant extent. As for the nobility, after several years of rich life, which the hasty implementation of the redemption certificates brought to them, began to strongly feel the economic consequences of the abolition of serfdom. Working hands, formerly gratuitous, were now expensive, there was a shortage of them; the noble estates, reduced in size, gave less income; the number of mortgaged estates increased rapidly, and the agricultural crisis, which became more acute every year, prepared the way for a general crisis that reached its height in 1880.
In the same way, the administrative reform did not give all the results that were expected from it. First of all, it remained unfinished, and since 1866 - the year of Karakozov's assassination attempt - a multitude of exceptional, allegedly temporary events diminished the significance of the new institutions. Even where they functioned without hindrance, the position was already justified that any reform of government that was not accompanied by an improvement in morals was deceptive. The newly created zemstvos suffered from the vices of the administration that preceded them; there have already been cases of bribery and embezzlement of public funds.
Development of the revolutionary spirit. All these disappointments could not but arouse in the intelligentsia, i.e., in the educated classes, who once reacted with such enthusiasm to the reforms, deep distrust in the government and in the methods that it used and which led to such miserable results. This mistrust, after the first manifestations of reaction, was joined by the strongest irritation. By 1870, the opinion was established that there was nothing more to be expected from a government initiative, that the tsar and his officials could not and would not want to remake themselves, that the champions of progress should not be sought in the ruling circles, but, if necessary, they would have to oppose them.
Long before 1870, a significant part of Russian youth fell under the influence of the most advanced teachings of the West. Herzen and Bakunin, who left Russia as liberals, quickly became revolutionaries in exile - socialists or anarchists. In Russia itself, in the first years of the reign of Alexander II, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, despite all the caution with which they had to express their thoughts because of censorship, were representatives and propagandists of radicalism. Under their influence, that generation of young people was created, whom Turgenev dubbed the name "nihilists". Hundreds of young men and women, drastically breaking all Russian traditions, both religious and family, went abroad to receive a scientific education at foreign universities, and mainly to get acquainted with the teachings forbidden by the Russian government.
However, it is almost certain that until about 1870, for all these young people, it was more about personal emancipation than about political or social transformations. But after 1870 the picture changes. The Paris Commune gave the vague aspirations of the Russian emigrants a more definite form. “It was not in vain that we saw how her tragedy unfolded,” the revolutionary Lavrov later wrote. It seemed to them a prelude to an imminent social revolution that would engulf all of Europe. In universities, especially Swiss ones - in Zurich and Geneva, Russian students were in contact with the exiles of the Commune and zealously assimilated their teaching until the St. Petersburg government, worried about the accumulation of revolutionary elements in Switzerland, ordered all Russian subjects who studied in Swiss universities, return to Russia (1873).
There, at home, these young people from the very first days were under suspicion; police oppression continually strengthened their revolutionary convictions; these young men could not help wanting to act, but the question was how to get down to business. The peasants and workers, who made up 97 percent of the population, were indifferent to the reforms, which they could not understand. Therefore, in order to create the necessary prerequisites for the forward movement of Russia, it was necessary to “go to the people”, shake their traditional faith in God and the tsar, make them understand their plight and see the possibility of a way out. “Our task,” Sofya Bardina later said in Moscow at the trial, “is to bring into the consciousness of the people the ideals of a better, more just social order, or else to make clear to him those ideals that are already rooted in him unconsciously; point out to him the shortcomings of the present order, so that in the future there will not be the same mistakes ... "
The number of agitators who, on these impulses, "went among the people" from 1872 to 1878, amounted to two or three thousand persons of both sexes; they all belonged to the intelligentsia - to the nobility, some came from among the poorest students of gymnasiums and universities; among these agitators were also people from the nobility t like Sofya Perovskaya, a relative of the head of the first Khiva expedition, and the sons of peasants, who were given the opportunity to get an education and rise above the level of their class, like Zhelyabov, whose name will constantly appear in the annals of revolutionary events until the death of Alexander II. Equipped with diplomas of engineers, doctors, midwives, teachers and teachers, they penetrated the most deaf. villages, sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs, united by fictitious marriages; they used their technical knowledge to earn the confidence of the peasants, and having gained this confidence, they read and commented on revolutionary pamphlets. This is the first, most fruitless phase of propaganda: the peasants did not understand these people of a different class, with their language replete with foreign words; often the peasants were the first to report them to the authorities, who, however, already had a thousand opportunities to monitor the activities of these "intellectuals" alone among the peasants.
The revolutionaries realized that they had to act in other ways. Gradually, they recognized what exactly touched the Russian peasant for a living; in the north, they preached agrarian socialism, taking away from the landowners the lands left to them when serfdom was abolished; in the south, they tried to revive the memories of the Cossack liberties. At the same time, they abandon the guise of the intelligentsia, take on the appearance of people from the common people; some of them, dressed like peasants, accompany the peasants who annually leave the north for the southern provinces to harvest; others are hired by the factory as ordinary workers. When Sofya Bardina was caught on the spot while she was explaining a socialist pamphlet to a circle of workers, she had already been working for several months in a weaving factory in the vicinity of Moscow, working fifteen hours a day and sharing their poverty with the workers.
This propaganda was calculated to recruit followers - and indeed recruited them; but before these appeals could in turn produce tangible results, so many years would have elapsed that the zeal of the revolutionaries could not but weaken. The actions of the police greatly contributed to the fact that the movement continued and, over time, took on a more formidable character. Frightened by the process of the socialist Nechaev, the authorities from 1873 began to hunt for propagandists. Arrests were on the rise. In 1877, two grandiose trials took place in St. Petersburg and Moscow: the trial of one hundred and ninety-three and the trial of fifty. Although these trials resulted in convictions, the result was not quite what the government expected. Thanks to the publicity of the proceedings, which have not yet dared to be completely abolished, the public could learn the whole truth about the violent and brutal actions of the police and appreciate the almost evangelical self-sacrifice and zeal of the accused; Sofya Bardina's bold statements resonated everywhere. While the government emerged from these imprudent trials somewhat weakened, propagandists who were not allowed to carry on peaceful propaganda took the path of violence; they switched to propaganda by action.
Revolutionary movement from 1878 to 1882. Shortly after the announcement in St. Petersburg of the verdict in the case of one hundred, ninety-three, General Trepov, the St. Petersburg mayor, was seriously wounded (January 24, 1878) by a revolver shot by Vera Zasulich, a young girl who appeared to him under the guise of an applicant for a reception with the intention of killing him. Arrested on the spot, Vera Zasulich, in turn, appeared before a jury. At the trial, it was established that for several years she had been harassed by the police and had been in custody for a long time because, during the Nechaev trial, she had kept letters, the contents of which were unknown to her; that she did not know General Trepov and had nothing personally against him. She only knew that once, when visiting the prison, Trepov ordered that a political prisoner, a student Bogolyubov, who did not bow to him, be punished with rods. Meanwhile, corporal punishment was solemnly abolished by imperial decree; consequently, by shooting at Trepov, Vera Zasulich was simply an instrument of public retribution. The jury acquitted her with the applause of a myriad crowd. She was immediately released from custody, but as soon as she left the courtroom, the police tried to arrest her again; the crowd opposed this, and while a scuffle was going on around her, Vera Zasulich disappeared. A few months later, we learned that she was safe abroad. The completion of the process, corresponding to the desires of all cultural Russia and the nature of the reign, until that time transformative, should have been a severe punishment for those lawlessness that had just been branded by a jury. The government did not understand this; instead of taking the measures that public opinion, which was also excited by the failures in the Turkish war, eagerly expected from it, the government limited itself to the fact that, by a decree published in May 1878, all cases of attempts against officials were removed from the jurisdiction of the jury. Then, taking advantage of the circumstances of wartime, the government introduced a state of siege in several southern provinces in order to be able to apply military laws to the revolutionaries. In July, five young men and three young women were court-martialed in Odessa on charges of conspiracy and armed resistance to the authorities. The chief of the accused, Kovalsky, was sentenced to death and shot. Two days later, the head of the secret police (Third Department of His Majesty's own Chancellery), General Mezentsev, who received a warning that he would be paid off for Kovalsky, was stabbed to death on Mikhailovskaya Square in St. Petersburg by a young man who immediately disappeared and, despite all efforts, did not was sought out. Some time later, a gendarmerie officer Geiking was stabbed to death in Kyiv; in the same place, a few weeks earlier, the rector of the university had been attacked in the very building of the university.
Peaceful propaganda is a thing of the past. From that time on, a duel took place between the revolutionaries and the government, and both sides showed the same promiscuity in means. The decree of August 9, 1878 referred to the military courts all cases of conspiracies and crimes against the state system; this event meant not only a change in legal proceedings, but also an increase in punishment; arrests and deportations without trial became more frequent in all provinces. In February 1879, in Kharkov, a certain Fomin was arrested for trying to free political prisoners; he was brought to court-martial by the governor, Prince Kropotkin, a cousin of one of the leaders of the revolutionary movement. Immediately, in all significant cities of Russia, the "Executive Committee" announced the death sentence that it had passed on the Kharkov governor, and even before Fomin appeared before the court, Prince Kropotkin on the night of February 21-22, while leaving the ball, fell, mortally wounded by a shot from a revolver . Two weeks later, in Odessa, the turn of the gendarmerie colonel Knop came; next to his corpse, in his house, they found the verdict of the "Executive Committee". On March 23, Reinstein, an agent of the secret police, was killed in Moscow. On the same day, an attempt was made on the life of Mezentsev's successor, General Drenteln, in St. Petersburg. On April 5, in Kyiv, they shot at the governor, on the 10th in Arkhangelsk a police chief was killed with a dagger, and finally, on April 14 (2), 1879, Soloviev fired five times from a revolver at the emperor, who remained unharmed.
The government's response to this last attempt was to establish military governor-generals. Russia was divided into six vast governor-generalships, the chiefs of which were invested with unlimited power. From now on, by decision of the Governor-General, any accused could be removed from the jurisdiction to which he was subject in the usual manner, and brought before a military court. He could be brought to trial without a preliminary investigation, convicted without the oral testimony of witnesses, executed without considering his cassation complaint (decree of August 9, 1878). It was, as it were, the official establishment of the White Terror in response to the Red Terror. The revolutionaries were proud of having driven the government to blind bitterness. “... Three or four successful political assassinations,” their organ Zemlya i Volya said, “forced our government to introduce military laws, increase gendarmerie divisions, place Cossacks in the streets, appoint sergeants in the villages - in a word, throw out such salto mortale autocracy, to which neither the years of propaganda, nor the centuries of discontent throughout Russia, nor the unrest of the youth, nor the curse of the thousands of victims tortured to death by him in hard labor and in exile ... That is why we recognize political assassination as one of the main means of combating despotism, " from minor murders, the "Executive Committee" (which did not admit responsibility for the attempt on Solovyov) by a proclamation on August 26, 1879, sentenced Emperor Alexander II to death.
On December 1, 1879, an imperial train returning from the Crimea was blown up near Moscow; the explosion destroyed the railway track, but the emperor passed by the previous train. I had to get back to work. On January 26 (14), 1880, the proclamation of the "Executive Committee" notified the emperor of the conditions under which he could be pardoned: the declaration of freedom of conscience and the press, the establishment of popular representation. The government did not give any answer to the demands made to him. On February 17 (5), a terrible explosion shook the building of the Winter Palace at six o'clock in the evening - at the moment when the imperial family was supposed to enter the dining room; the guardroom, located under the imperial dining room, was blown up. Forty soldiers of the Finnish Regiment were killed and wounded in the guardhouse; the emperor escaped thanks to the delay of one of his guests, the prince of Bulgaria.
It seemed that the impotence of the system of extreme repression was fully proved. The more they exiled, the more they executed, the bolder the revolutionaries became, the more perfect their methods of action became. The people who by these actions kept the government at bay were, in fact, few in number. Many of the former propagandists were no longer alive; of those who managed to escape from the police, the smallest group, which had the Earth and will as its body, embarked on the path of terrorist acts. But the small number of revolutionaries was compensated by courage, cold determination, unbending will and, finally, discipline, thanks to which all of them - no matter whether they worked alone or in groups - from one end of Russia to the other obeyed the plan of action drawn up by the "Executive Committee". The infinite patience and energy with which they prepared their assassination attempts are truly amazing. When it came to blowing up the imperial train when Alexander II returned from the Crimea, three mines were laid on the way; the first was not ready on time; in the second electrical device, which was supposed to ignite the dynamite, turned out to be faulty; we have already talked about the action of the third. To lay it down, I had to work for two and a half months. The main organizer of the assassination attempt was Hartmann, whose arrest in Paris and then his release (1880) caused friction between the French and Russian governments. Under the guise of a craftsman from Saratov, he bought a house near the railroad tracks and settled there with Sophia Perovskaya, passing her off as his wife. They were secretly joined by three or four comrades; Sofya Perovskaya prepared food for them. They paved a gallery 45 meters long and 85 centimeters wide, working knee-deep in mud and ice-cold water with the most primitive tools, without having any special knowledge of minecraft. The police, whose attention was drawn by some trifles, made a search in their house. Sofya Perovskaya met the police with a calm face and dispelled their suspicions.
The main, if not the only, organizer of the assassination attempt in the Winter Palace was Khalturin, a carpenter who had just been given dynamite by the "Executive Committee". Khalturin managed to get hired for work carried out in the cellars of the Winter Palace under the very location of the imperial dining room. He lived there for several months, in constant tension, not only because of the searches of the police, who knew that the palace was in danger, but also because of the imprudence of his workmates; Khalturin slept on dynamite, stoically enduring the terrible headaches he caused. He managed to get out of the palace before the explosion, and when he was subsequently arrested in Odessa for participating in another assassination attempt, the authorities tried him and sentenced him to death, carried out in twenty-four hours, not even suspecting that he was the organizer of the explosion in Winter Palace.
However, it must be admitted that no matter how great the energy and courage of the conspirators were, the powerlessness of the government against them stemmed more from his mistakes than from their resourcefulness. The ferocious repressions to which the governors-general indulged, wrested victims from almost all intelligent families; everyone lived in fear of expulsion "in a wagon", exile without trial or investigation; therefore, revolutionaries everywhere, even in the most seemingly conservative circles, met with sympathy and assistance. Of course, attempts were not approved, but they were justified in the actions of the government; wide circles of society did not help the police, on occasion they sent them on a false trail, they took part in gatherings organized under the banner of charity, the purpose of which, however, did not raise any doubt - all this in the hope that if the "nihilists" finally managed to strike a decisive blow, then terror will come to an end and a constitution will be established. “Listen,” one staunch reactionary once said to his doctor, suspected of nihilism, “here are two hundred rubles for dynamite, and there will be an end!”
Such attitudes were especially dangerous for the government. The government realized this after the assassination attempt on 17 February. A few days later, under the chairmanship of the emperor, a conference of governors-general was held; Kharkov governor-general Loris-Melikov spoke out in favor of a form of government that, while continuing to fully fight the revolutionaries, would satisfy to some extent the desires of society. His eloquence convinced the emperor. On February 24, Loris-Melikov was appointed chairman of the Supreme Administrative Commission with almost unlimited powers; in fact, he became a dictator in Russia.
Administration of Loris-Melikov (1880–1881). This dictator was not even Russian by nationality. An Armenian by birth, Loris-Melikov made his career in the Caucasian army thanks to his undeniable military talents, and also, no doubt, thanks to his Eastern flexibility. He first came to the fore during the notorious plague in Vetlyanka - an epidemic that arose in unhealthy areas along the lower Volga and at one time made Russia and even Europe tremble. In order to stop and stop the epidemic, he was given unlimited powers, and indeed he managed to put an end to the danger in a few weeks. Being later appointed commander-in-chief of the army operating in Transcaucasia, he defeated Mukhtar Pasha, took Kare and Erzerum. Appointed in August 1879 as Governor-General of Kharkov, he managed, acting energetically, to still show moderation in the use of power and, the only one of all governor-generals, was not included in the number of dignitaries sentenced to death by the "Executive Committee".
Now Loris-Melikov had to do for the benefit of all Russia what he did in Kharkov: a difficult task in such a vast field, and even in the presence of envy caused by the extraordinary exaltation of the “Armenian”. His first steps were successful. At first he escaped an assassination attempt on him by Mlodetsky, a young Jew from Minsk, whom he himself detained and brought to court-martial, which sentenced him to death; the sentence was carried out in twenty-four hours. Having sufficiently shown his energy, Loris-Melikov could return many exiles from Siberia and opened the doors of universities to many students who were expelled for insignificant reasons or without any reason. Then he very defiantly "abolished" the notorious "Third Section", the hated secret police, which caused so many tears to be shed; in reality, he only changed the name of this institution. Finally, he brought his popularity to the limit by the fact that in August he himself renounced emergency powers and was content with the more modest title of Minister of the Interior, which, however, did not in the least diminish his power.
Leaving aside these petty tricks, it must be admitted that the policy of Loris-Melikov was reasonable in its own way: it calmed the minds, thanks to it, the assassination attempts stopped for a while. But it was precisely this success that led Loris-Melikov to a dead end: from the ensuing calm, society concluded that the time had come for radical changes. Loris-Melikov was popular because he was seen as a liberal inclined to usher in a constitutional era in Russia. We had only to dispel the illusions, and it would turn out that the situation is exactly what it was after February 17th. Meanwhile, Loris-Meliksv was not a Russian Lafayette, and he hardly wanted to be one.
With regard to the constitution, as with regard to the police, the whole policy of Loris-Melikov was to maintain external propriety and to inspire the intelligentsia that he had given them something, when in fact he kept the prerogatives of the emperor intact. Put in a hopeless situation by the anxious expectation of society, he presented to the emperor at the beginning of 1881 a draft of a supreme commission formed from the highest dignitaries of the empire and a certain number of representatives of the zemstvos. “Why, you are suggesting that I convene a meeting of notables!”, as if Alexander II exclaimed, reading this draft. In fact, it was not even a matter of a meeting of notables; a new commission, where the small number of representatives of the people, moreover, indirectly elected, would inevitably dissolve among the officials, could have significance only insofar as it would be desirable for the government. Perhaps, confidence in this influenced the decision of Alexander II, or, exhausted, fallen into indifference, completely absorbed in the joys of a recent morganatic marriage, did the tsar give in to the only desire - the desire for peace and tranquility? Be that as it may, after strong hesitation, he accepted the project of Loris-Melikov.
A few days before the date set for its release, the police were on the trail of a new conspiracy. One of the members of the "Executive Committee", Zhelyabov, was arrested on February 27, 1881; There were other arrests to come. While waiting for them, Loris-Melikov begged the emperor not to leave the Winter Palace. However, on March 1, 1881, just after the decree granting Russia a constitution had been signed and sent to the printers in order to be published the next day, Alexander II set off to raise the guard. On the way back, at about three o'clock, on the Ekaterininsky Canal, a bomb was thrown under his carriage, killing and injuring the Cossacks of his convoy and several passers-by. The emperor, who remained unharmed, stopped to talk to the wounded, but at that very moment a second bomb was thrown at his feet. He fell, mortally wounded. Transferred to the palace, he died the same day without uttering a word.
II. Alexander III (1881–1894)
The first days of the reign. The new emperor was thirty-six years old. The second son of Alexander II, and therefore destined to become commander-in-chief or general-admiral, he became heir to the throne only in 1865, after the death of his older brother Nicholas. A few months later he married his late brother's fiancée, the Danish princess Dagmara, and from then on lived close to the throne, playing no prominent role until the Turkish War, during which he commanded an army operating on Yantra. He was known to society for honorably fulfilling his duties in the war, known for his personal and family virtues, directness, interest in works on the history of Russia, and most of all - the disgust that he showed to some persons close to Alexander II. It could be assumed that his reign would be more national, truly Russian, less indecisive than that of his father. Will it be more liberal? It was highly doubtful. The new sovereign, brought up by the theoretician of autocracy Pobedonostsev, was rightly considered to have little regard for Western ideas.
At first, however, it seemed that he intended to respect the decisions made by Alexander II on the eve of his death. "Do not change anything in my father's orders," he said to Loris-Melikov, "they will be his testament." But a few hours later, their publication was delayed; began to discuss them, to consult. Councils advising caution came from many places, and the most reactionary were those of the French Republicans. In St. Petersburg on March 19 (7), at a meeting of senior dignitaries chaired by Tsar Loris-Melikov himself, and after him by most other ministers, they spoke in favor of accepting the project, already approved by Alexander II; the former tsar's tutor Pobedonostsev, who became the chief procurator of the most holy synod, was almost alone in holding the opposite opinion; Loris-Melikov believed that the case was won. But a few days later, on April 29, 1881, an imperial decree, apparently drawn up by Pobedonostsev, announced to Russia the will of the emperor to preserve in its entirety the autocratic power inherited from his ancestors. Then - an unprecedented thing in Russia! - a ministerial crisis broke out: Loris-Melikov resigned, his example was soon followed by the Minister of Finance Abaza and the military - Milyutin.
Of course, one can regret the failure of the reform, which, while giving the intelligentsia some guarantees, would at the same time cost the government little; we saw how modest Loris-Melikov's project was. But, on the other hand, we must not forget that the moment for constitutional reform was not very favorable. Immediately after the assassination of Alexander II, any liberal concession would have taken the form of capitulation; Andrieu, the prefect of the Parisian police, approaching the question from his own point of view, answered those who asked him for his opinion that to yield or pretend to yield in anything would be to increase the strength and demands of the terrorist party. Then another consideration arose: was the Russian people “ripe” for a constitutional regime? In fact, only the intelligentsia, the nobility, and the bureaucracy could benefit from this regime; under a constitutional regime, the nation would be ruled by an oligarchy. And in Russia, experiments of oligarchic rule have been repeatedly made, and these experiments have always ended in failure. The same thing, the adherents of the autocracy said, would have happened with the reform of Loris-Melikov. It would have been better to rid Russia of useless worries, to immediately stand on the ground of autocracy - after all, one would have to return to it anyway - and limit one's efforts to "a more careful choice of people, simplification and improvement of government."
In the few months that followed the imperial manifesto, the entire composition of the highest government officials was updated. We have already said that three ministers have resigned - no one tried to keep them; other ministers were fired. Figures of the liberal period of the reign of Alexander II, for example, his former Minister of Internal Affairs, Count Valuev, were forced to give up all their posts. The purge touched even some of the grand dukes. The administration's new slogans were "honesty and thrift." The governorship in the Caucasus and many court positions were abolished. At the same time, new officials began to manage the affairs. General Ignatiev, former nosol in Constantinople, head of the Slavophile party, took over as Minister of the Interior; General Vannovsky, chief of staff of the Tsarevich in Bulgaria, was appointed Minister of War; Count D. A. Tolstoy returned to the Ministry of Public Education, which he had already managed under Alexander II; Bunge, a former professor of political economy, was put in charge of finance; Count Vorontsov-Dashkov became Minister of the Court, and so on. Pobedonostsev, still chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod, became the most influential person in the new government.
The composition of ministers remained almost unchanged until the end of the reign of Alexander III. In June 1882, General Ignatiev resigned after Alexander III refused him the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and gave it to Girs, since the aged Prince Gorchakov had not actually managed it for several years. Then Count Tolstoy took over as Minister of the Interior, leaving the Ministry of Public Education to Count Delyanov. Vyshnegradsky replaced Bunge a little later. But, despite this change of faces, the internal policy of Russia remained unchanged: in the foreground it was the struggle against revolutionary or simply liberal ideas, in the second - the Russification of "foreigners" subject to the Russian empire.
Reaction against liberal ideas. Since the new Tsarevich was still a child, Emperor Alexander III, five days after his accession to the throne, outlined a regent who, in the event of an assassination attempt, would take over the government of Russia before Nicholas II acceded to the throne. This regent was to be Grand Duke Vladimir, the tsar's brother. Taking these precautions, Alexander III proceeded to the trial of the murderers of his father. Five of them, among whom was Sofya Perovskaya, were sentenced to death and executed, despite the threatening proclamations of the "Executive Committee". This was followed by a trial and condemnation of the highest St. Petersburg officials, who were accused of negligence, which gave the terrorists the opportunity to mine most of the streets adjacent to the Winter Palace; thus, if Alexander II had escaped the bombs that awaited him near the Catherine Canal, he would inevitably have died from a mine explosion.
In subsequent years, there were no - or it seemed that there were no - attempts on the emperor, who locked himself with his family in the former residence of Emperor Paul I, in the Gatchina Palace, which was difficult to access. However, political killings and executions still continued. Of greatest importance was the execution of the naval officer Sukhanov; new repressive measures were taken. In 1882, the Regulation on Enhanced Security was issued, codifying the rules of the state of siege, while further strengthening them.
If conspiracies gradually became less frequent and finally stopped, then this should by no means be attributed to police measures. In fact, the relative calm that marked the reign of Alexander III is due to two reasons: first of all, the disappearance of most of the terrorists, exiled or executed - there were always only a handful of them - and then the discouragement that seized that part of the intelligentsia after so many fruitless assassination attempts. from which the terrorists were recruited. The new government benefited from the enforced lull that always comes after violent upheavals.
The last vestiges of freedom of the press have disappeared; from the very first months of the reign of Alexander III, time-based publications, by no means destructive, such as Order, Rumor, were forced to cease to exist. Somewhat later, it was the turn of the most influential organ of the Russian press, the Golos newspaper. As under Nicholas I, in parallel with the struggle against the press, there was also a struggle against professors and students. The teaching staff of the universities was cleared of undesirables; in universities and even gymnasiums, more severe admission conditions were established. After the riots that broke out in 1890 at the Moscow Agricultural Academy, as well as at St. Petersburg and Moscow Universities, a mass expulsion of students was carried out.
It was absolutely impossible to abandon the most important reform of Alexander II - the abolition of serfdom, and the government did not even think about it, especially since, having broken with the intelligentsia, it needed the support of the masses. Therefore, the policy of Alexander III was favorable for the peasants, although to a lesser extent than for the nobles; the government sought to restore the economic power and social influence of the nobility in rural areas. The "peasant tsar", as he was sometimes called, could rightly be called the "noble tsar".
The peasants were granted a reduction in taxes, the abolition of the poll tax, and significant delays in redemption payments, for which many were still heavily indebted. In order to save them from the oppression of usurers, they created the Peasants' Bank, but they allocated insignificant funds for it. More was done for the nobility. The noble bank several times received significant subsidies, which allowed it to reduce the interest on loans issued by it, to postpone the deadlines after which it was supposed to start selling the mortgaged estates. On the other hand, the law issued in 1889 radically changed local self-government in favor of the nobility.
We have already said that the administrative reform of 1864 was not entirely successful. Zemstvos did not abolish abuses, but sometimes gave rise to new ones. The law of 1890 established a more effective state control over the actions of zemstvos, equated their members with officials and transferred some of their functions to representatives of various state institutions. The number of representatives from the noble landlords in the zemstvos was increased. Finally, the institution of justices of the peace, which was connected with the Zemstvo under the reform of 1864, was limited. The management of rural affairs and the police in rural areas were entrusted to zemstvo chiefs, who were appointed by the governor for each district from the landowners-nobles of this district, in agreement with the marshal of the nobility.
A characteristic fact: it was only with great difficulty that the government managed to find among the class whose prestige it sought to raise a sufficient number of candidates for the positions of zemstvo chiefs; he had to lower the educational qualification established at the beginning, already very modest.
Generally speaking, in everything that concerns the government of Russia in the proper sense, the reign of Alexander III was a sharp reaction against the European and liberal influences of the reign of Alexander II. This reactionary character was even more pronounced in the policy pursued in relation to the non-Russian nationalities of the empire.
Russification policy. The Russification policy was not new. It was already used in Poland after the uprisings of 1831 and 1863. But under Alexander III, it was not, as before, a kind of punishment imposed on a rebellious land; it became a system that the Russian government carried out in relation to all subject nationalities, even those most loyal to it. It has finally become methodical, theoretically substantiated; it accurately imitated the methods of oppression already developed and applied in the West, for example in Alsace-Lorraine; she fought not only with the institutions that were a characteristic feature of this or that region, but also with the memories preserved there and with all manifestations of its moral and intellectual life.
The influences that prompted Alexander III to pursue such a policy were of various kinds. In the first place should be called Pobedonostsev's clerical influence; in a country where religion and nationality are mixed, hostility towards "non-Orthodox" religions inevitably entails hostility towards the "non-Orthodox" population. Devotion to national memories should have made the emperor want to merge all his subjects into a single Russian nationality, which was considered so glorious. Finally, the Russification policy to some extent met the new requirements of the situation in Europe and Russia. On the one hand, the development of the policy of nationalities and its direct consequence, the formation of the mighty German Empire, should have instilled in the Russian government the fear that it might not be able to permanently preserve areas with German culture in Russia - the Baltic provinces, which the neighboring empire could over time swear; from here to the application to these provinces of the policy of the Germans themselves in the provinces they conquered was only one step. On the other hand, with the development of their own middle class, it became more difficult for Russians to endure foreign tutelage. For centuries bureaucratic Russia was, as it were, at the mercy of the Germans. The answer of the courtier to Nicholas I, who wanted to reward him, is known: “Sir, make me a German.” No less successful was the witticism of Alexander III, who was then only a crown prince. Once he was introduced to the headquarters of the army corps: it was a string of all sorts of "background", endings in "game", in "bang", etc.
The tenth or twelfth was Major General Kozlov. “Finally!” exclaimed the Tsarevich. This “finally” became widely known, as did Kozlov himself, who, however, did not have any data for this.
In addition, the government, which refused to make any liberal concessions, had to look for popularity in something. Turning against the German influence, it was sure that it would play on the sensitive strings of the Russian people. The policy of Russification was largely a policy of diversion.
We will trace it successively in all the "foreign" provinces, in all the outlying regions encircling Russia from the Baltic to the Caucasus.
Russification in the southwestern provinces. The provinces that were previously part of the Polish-Lithuanian state are called southwestern. Non-Russian elements there are numerous and varied. In Poland in the proper sense, that is, in the former constitutional kingdom of 1815, almost only Poles live; in the Lithuanian and Ukrainian provinces there are many Pole or Catholic landowners, which is essentially the same thing; in the basin of the middle Dnieper, the population consists of Ukrainians, Orthodox by religion, but whose language differs from the official Russian language. Finally, Jews live in all these regions - all five million Russian Jewish subjects are almost completely crowded here - and many foreigners come from limitrophe countries: nobles who are married to the Russian or Polish aristocracy, and raznochintsy who moved to Russia, and sometimes attracted by the government itself for the operation of agricultural or industrial enterprises.
The policy of the Russian government was different with respect to each of these elements. The measures taken against them had only one thing in common: the prohibition to acquire landed property. Between 1881 and 1894 decrees restricting the rights of foreigners, Poles and Jews to acquire land property followed one after the other; in some cases they even restricted the right to inherit. Thus, for example, Prince Hohenlohe, at that time the German ambassador in Paris, was forced to sell the huge Wittgenstein estates in Lithuania, of which he was the heir.
With regard to industrial settlers - entrepreneurs or workers who arrived from Prussia or Austria - the Russian government had to act somewhat more cautiously for fear of damaging the industry of the Vistula provinces, which was rapidly developing at that time. It furnishes with many formalities the purchase of plots of land necessary for factories, ordered entrepreneurs in some cases to hire Russians or learn the Russian language, sometimes dismissed foreign workers and employees, without, however, resorting to those violent actions that the Prussian government used at the same time in taking such measures.
The first years of the reign of Alexander III in most cities of southern and southwestern Russia were marked by Jewish pogroms and looting of Jewish property; under Count Ignatiev, the government suppressed pogroms very sluggishly, under Count Tolstoy - more vigorously. This "relative" patronage enjoyed by the Jews did not prevent the issuance of a number of decrees that significantly worsened their fate. All Jews who lived in a fifty-verst strip along the border were evicted everywhere. The regulations that restricted the right of residence of Jews in rural areas were revised and began to be applied with redoubled severity. Jews who managed to penetrate from their "ghetto" on the banks of the Vistula, Neman or Dnieper into the inner provinces were, with very few exceptions, evicted from there. At the same time, the new rules established a percentage norm for Jews in admission to gymnasiums and universities, namely, three percent for both capitals, five percent for cities in the interior provinces, and a maximum of ten percent for western cities, even if Jews made up a third or half of the urban population.
The measures taken against the Poles were even more severe. It was not only their right to hold public office or own land in the southwestern provinces that were not part of Poland proper that was subject to restrictions; they had to suffer much more than foreigners and Jews because of loyalty to their language and religion.
In 1869, the Polish language was removed from the secondary school curriculum. After 1870, at the initiative of the trustee of the Warsaw educational district, Apukhtin, the same measure was carried out in higher education (Warsaw University) and in elementary school. Then it was forbidden to use the Polish language in those institutions where it was still used. Street names, even shop signs, had to be in Russian. In the former Lithuania, the persecution of the Polish language took on the character of a real inquisition.
But religion divided Poles and Russians even more than language.
Beginning in 1832, the government persecuted religious societies and the Catholic clergy, especially in the former Lithuania, and we saw how the Uniates were converted to Orthodoxy. The same policy under Alexander III began to be carried out even more severely. Theological seminaries were subject to strict supervision, the number of students in them was limited. In Lithuania, they tried to replace the Polish priests with priests from Samogitia. Parish priests were strictly forbidden to leave their parishes, build new churches, or even repair old ones without the permission of the administration. These prohibitions, often exacerbated by the awkward zeal of the provincial authorities, caused unrest and bloody events.
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Members of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. Photo from the 70s 19th century
1871. November 29 (November 17 old style) in St. Petersburg, at the Imperial Academy of Arts opened the first exhibition of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions or Wanderers. The exhibition was attended by V.F. Ammon, S.N. Ammosov, A.P. Bogolyubov, N.N. Ge, K.F. Gun, L.L. Kamenev, F.F. Kamensky (sculptor), M .K.Klodt, M.P.Klodt, I.N.Kramskoy, V.M.Maximov, G.G.Myasoedov, V.G.Perov, I.M.Pryanishnikov, A.K.Savrasov, I.I. .Shishkin.
Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich in Peterhof. N.N.Ge. 1871. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
"The discussion of the charter began immediately, and a year later, on November 2, 1870, the charter signed by Perov, Myasoedov, Kamenev, Savrasov, Pryanishnikov, Kramskoy, barons M.K. and M.P. Klodt, Shishkin, K.E. and V .E. Makovsky, Yakobi, Korzukhin and Lemokh was approved by the government, and then, our concerns, says in his report on the fifteen years of the existence of exhibitions G. G. Myasoedov, took on a completely definite character. Paintings were needed, money was needed. The first was few, the second was not at all in the Partnership, born without a half. In 1871, in the halls of the Imperial Academy of Arts, Petersburg brought 2303 rubles, which immediately ensured the possibility of our movement to the provinces.
Portrait of the artist Grigory Grigorievich Myasoedov. I.E. Repin. 1886 State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
But in the complaint about the lack of paintings, one can see rather modesty, or is it really understandable in comparison with the number of them at subsequent exhibitions. In fact, there were exhibited 46 works of ten members of the Association and five exhibitors. In terms of content, the exhibition was downright brilliant. N.N.Ge exhibited his famous painting "Peter I interrogates Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich", V.G.Perov - "Hunters' Halt" and "Fisherman" and three portraits, I.N. .A.Vasiliev and Baron M.K.Klodt and "Scene from Gogol's May Night", K.F. Gun - "the head of a Huguenot", I.M. Pryanishnikov - "Burned" and "Empty", G.G. Myasoedov - "A scene in a tavern on the Lithuanian border", A.K. Savrasov - "Rooks have arrived", in addition, there were landscapes by Shishkin, M.K. Klodt, A.P. Bogolyubov and a sculptural group by F.F. "; in a word, I repeat, the exhibition was a success.
As I have already pointed out, the public reacted with full sympathy to this enterprise. This is also confirmed by the fact that the Association has not only not collapsed so far, but, on the contrary, is flourishing more and more every year, and followers have been found for their example.
Although there were Zoils in the press who did not stop shouting about the decline of art, but most of the press, and especially the provincial ones, reacted sympathetically.
Quoted from: Novitsky A. The Wanderers and Their Influence on Russian Art. Moscow: Grosman and Knebel bookstore edition, 1897. pp.51-52
History in faces
M.M. Saltykov-Shchedrin:
This year has been marked by a very remarkable phenomenon for Russian art - some Moscow and St. Petersburg artists have formed a partnership. From now on, works of Russian art, hitherto closed in one St. Petersburg, within the walls of the Academy of Arts, or buried in galleries and museums of private individuals, are made available to everyone. Art ceases to be a secret, ceases to distinguish the invited from the uninvited, it calls on everyone and recognizes the right of everyone to judge the feats he has accomplished.
Quoted from: Novitsky A. The Wanderers and Their Influence on Russian Art. Moscow: Grosman and Knebel bookstore edition, 1897. p.52
The world at this time
In 1871, the war between France and Prussia ends with the signing of the Frankfurt Peace Treaty. As a result of this war, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg and South Hesse-Darmstadt join the North German Confederation, thus embodying the idea of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to create a united Germany. In addition, Prussia annexed Alsace-Lorraine, which belonged to France. The Second French Empire collapses and the third French Republic is created.
Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles. A. von Werner. 1871
“The Frankfurt peace treaty confirmed the basic conditions that were established in the Versailles preliminaries of February 26. France ceded Alsace and part of Lorraine to Germany and was obliged to pay 5 billion indemnities. However, the help of the Prussians against the Commune was bought by Thiers at the price of worsening the conditions for paying indemnities and postponing the withdrawal German troops from French territory.
It was a predatory world. What reasons prompted Bismarck to seize French territory?
Strategic considerations were the main reason for the annexation. Both Bismarck and Moltke were convinced that the war of 1870-1871 does not eliminate the age-old antagonism between Germany and France. Confident in the inevitability of a new war with France, they sought to use their victory to secure the most advantageous strategic frontier for Germany. "I have no illusions," Bismarck frankly explained to a French diplomat three months after signing the Frankfurt Peace. “It would be absurd of us to take Metz from you, which is French. I did not want to leave it to Germany. But the General Staff asked me if I could guarantee that France would not take revenge. I replied that, on the contrary, I am fully convinced that this war is only the first of those that will break out between Germany and France, and that a whole series of others will follow. should have kept it. I will say the same about Alsace and Lorraine: it would be a mistake to take them from you if the world was destined to be strong, since these provinces are a burden to us. " "They will become, as it were, a new Poland," replied the Frenchman, "Poland, with France standing behind it." "Yes," agreed the German chancellor, "Poland, with France behind it."
The capture of Alsace and Lorraine, under the conditions of that time, really gave Germany serious strategic benefits. As long as the French held Alsace, they could relatively easily invade South Germany from there. The Catholic south was the most vulnerable point of the newly created unified German state. His loyalty to imperial unity seemed rather dubious at the time. After the transition of Alsace to Germany, the French were thrown back behind the Vosges. Now between France and Germany, in addition to the line of the Rhine, there was also a chain of the Vosges mountains, difficult to pass for a large army. Thus, Alsace had a serious defensive value.
On the contrary, the strategic importance of Lorraine was rather offensive. In Lorraine, the Germans acquired a bridgehead that brought them closer to Paris and greatly facilitated the repetition of the "experience" of 1870 - an attack on Paris through the so-called "Vosges hole", that is, the flat space between the Vosges in the south and the Ardennes in the north. The strategic key to it was the fortress of Metz, which was now in German hands.
Under the terms of the preliminary agreement of February 26, 1871, the ore-rich areas of Lorraine, located west of Thionville, remained with France. During the negotiations for the final peace treaty, Bismarck, in view of the importance of the ore wealth, proposed to the French the following exchange: Germany would agree to the correction of the frontier at Belfort, which, for strategic reasons, the French had been extremely eager for, and in return they would cede to Germany the ore basin west of Thionville. At first, Bismarck met with a refusal. It is interesting that Bismarck, mercilessly haggling about the timing of the payment of each billion, took this refusal calmly. "If necessary," he wrote, "I'd rather refuse to expand our border than break the whole agreement because of this." Soon, however, the French changed their minds, and the exchange took place. France received the correction of the border at Belfort and gave Germany the iron ore region. This whole episode shows that the ore wealth of Lorraine was taken into account when making peace. But he also testifies that it was not they who played the decisive role, but considerations of a strategic nature. This is not surprising: one only needs to remember that in 1871 the Lorraine ore did not yet have its present value. She received it only at the end of the 70s, after discovering a cost-effective way to process ores rich in phosphorus.
It was perfectly clear to Bismarck that the annexation of French territory would further complicate Franco-German relations. The created objective situation forced Bismarck to solve the following political problem: is it worth trying to defuse the tension in Franco-German relations? If this attempt was hopeless, would it not be more expedient to take care of creating the most profitable theater for a future war? Bismarck decided the question precisely in the latter sense.
Of course, it was not the annexation of the two provinces that gave rise to the Franco-German antagonism. And before this annexation, various French governments had struggled for centuries against German national unity. After this unity had been achieved in 1871, bourgeois France would dream of weakening Germany even if Alsace and Lorraine remained French. But the annexation gave the revenge movement a somewhat defensive veneer, and with it gave it a strength within France that it would never have acquired without it. This is how Marx saw things. “If French chauvinism,” he wrote, “while maintaining the old political order, found a certain material justification in the fact that since 1815 the capital of France was Paris, and thereby France itself, after a few lost battles, turned out to be defenseless, then what will this chauvinism receive rich nourishment as soon as the border passes in the east - at the Vosges, and in the north - at Metz? The Peace of Frankfurt was an act of great historical significance - the first germs of the war of 1914-1918 were laid in it.
At the very beginning of the war, Marx gave the deepest analysis of its consequences. In a letter to the Committee of the German Social Democracy, Marx wrote:
"The military camarilla, the professors, the burghers and the tavern politicians say that this [the seizure of Alsace and Lorraine by Prussia] is a means to forever protect Germany from war with France. On the contrary, this is the surest way to turn this war into a European institution. This is really the best way to perpetuate in a renewed Germany, military despotism as a necessary condition for domination over western Poland - Alsace and Lorraine. This is an unmistakable way to turn the future world into a simple truce until France is strong enough to demand back the territory taken from her .... The one who whoever is not completely stunned by the present hype or is not interested in stunning the German people must understand that the war of 1870 is just as inevitably fraught with a war between Russia and Germany, just as the war of 1866 was fraught with the war of 1870.
The Franco-Prussian War completed a series of profound changes in the political situation in Europe. The national unification of Germany was carried out, although without the German regions of Austria. The unification of Italy ended, however, without Trieste and Trient. Previously, France's eastern neighbors were powerless small states, and Russia's western neighbor was a relatively small Prussia, moreover, absorbed in continuous rivalry with Austria.
Now a powerful state arose near the borders of Russia and France - the German Empire.
For France, the situation has changed not only on the eastern, but also on its southeastern border. And here, after the wars of 1859-1871, instead of eight small Italian states, France found itself in the neighborhood of the united Italian kingdom. Austria-Hungary underwent similar changes. In a word, there used to be a loose layer of weak, small states between the great powers of the continent. It was a kind of buffer, somewhat softening the shocks at the contact of the great powers. Now the territories of these powers closely adjoined each other.
For this reason alone, the international situation has become more tense. Moreover, such tension was not a transient phenomenon: it became an integral feature of new international relations. "Quoted in: History of Diplomacy. Vol. 1 / Compiled by: Bakhrushin S.V., Efimov A.V., Kosminsky E.A., Narochnitsky A. .L., Sergeev V.S., Skazkin S.D.,
Tarle E.V., Khvostov V.M.; Ed.: Potemkin V.P. - M.: Sotsekgiz, 1941
The Paris Commune (La Commune de Paris) was the revolutionary government formed in Paris during the revolutionary events of 1871.
After the establishment of a truce between France and Prussia during the Franco-Prussian War, unrest broke out in Paris, which grew into a revolution. As a result of the revolution, self-government was established, which lasted from March 18 to May 28, 1871.
The Paris Commune was headed by representatives of the socialist and anarchist parties. The leaders of both currents proclaimed the Paris Commune the first model of the dictatorship of the world proletariat.
According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the historical significance of the Paris Commune lies in the fact that it broke the bourgeois police-bureaucratic state apparatus and created a state of a new type, which was the first form of the dictatorship of the proletariat in history.
The Paris Commune abolished the standing army, replacing it with an armed people (the National Guard) (decree of March 29); established a maximum salary for civil servants, equal to the salary of a skilled worker (decree April 1); separated the church from the state (decree April 2). Somewhat later, the police prefecture was liquidated; the duty to ensure order and security of citizens was assigned to the reserve battalions of the National Guard. The new apparatus of power was built on democratic principles: election, responsibility and turnover of all officials, collegial management.
The commune took a number of measures to improve the material situation of the general population: the abolition of rent arrears, the free return to depositors of things pledged in a pawnshop in the amount of up to 20 francs, an installment plan for 3 years (from July 15, 1871) to pay off commercial bills. In the interests of the working people, the Commune decided to lay the payment of 5 billion German military indemnity on the perpetrators of the war - former deputies of the Legislative Corps, senators and ministers of the Second Empire.
Significant reforms in the field of socio-economic policy were: the abolition of night work in bakeries, the prohibition of arbitrary fines and illegal deductions from the wages of workers and employees, the introduction of a mandatory minimum wage, the organization of workers' control over production at some large enterprises, the opening of public workshops for the unemployed, etc. .P.
A serious step towards socialist transformations was the decree on the transfer of enterprises abandoned by the owners who fled Paris to the hands of workers' cooperative associations, but the Commune did not have time to complete this matter.
In the field of school and cultural and educational policy, the Paris Commune showed great activity: it launched a struggle to free the school from the influence of the church, to introduce compulsory and free education, to combine the study of the basic sciences at school with practical training in the craft; carried out a number of measures to reorganize museums and libraries, adopted a decree on the transfer of theaters into the hands of groups of artists, trying to introduce culture to the broad masses of the people.
The first clashes between the Communards and the "Versailles" (troops of the government of Thiers) began at the end of March. The government was assisted by the command of the German occupation forces: 60,000 French soldiers were released from captivity to replenish the army of Versailles. On April 2, the Versaillese launched an attack on Paris. On April 3, detachments of the National Guard moved to Versailles. The campaign of the Communards was poorly organized; On April 4, the advancing columns were driven back with heavy losses. This failure did not discourage the defenders of revolutionary Paris. Despite all the difficulties (insufficient equipment with artillery, unsatisfactory work of the commissariat, lack of experienced and qualified commanders), the Communards offered staunch resistance to the enemy and often went on the offensive themselves. However, the military leadership of the Communards adhered to the erroneous tactics of passive defense, and on May 21, the troops of the Versailles (about 100 thousand people) entered Paris.
It took the troops of Thiers a whole week to completely capture the city. The defenders of the Commune fought to the last drop of blood, defending every quarter with a fight. The battle at the Pere Lachaise cemetery was especially stubborn.
The suppression of the proletarian revolution of 1871 was accompanied by an unprecedented rampant counter-revolutionary terror. The total number of those shot, exiled to hard labor, imprisoned reached 70 thousand people, and together with those who left France in connection with persecution - 100 thousand.
One of the main reasons for the defeat of the Paris Commune is the isolation of Paris from other regions of the country as a result of the blockade of the city by the German occupation troops and the army of Versailles. The commune as a whole did not pay enough attention to establishing strong ties with the working people of the province, and most importantly, it underestimated the importance of an alliance with the peasantry. As a result, the peasantry remained indifferent to the fate of the Commune; to a large extent this led to her defeat. The tactical mistakes of the leaders of the movement, their underestimation of offensive military tactics and merciless suppression of enemy resistance, also played a significant role.
The experience of the Paris Commune, subjected to a deep analysis in the works of K. Marx, F. Engels and V. I. Lenin, played a great role in the development of the theory of scientific communism, in the liberation struggle of the working class in the following decades, in the preparation and conduct of the Great October Socialist Revolution.
Could the Commune have won? Of course not. Being between two armies - French and German - the Commune would inevitably be crushed, which happened.
France did not come to the aid of the Communards. There was a lack of weapons, medicines, food. As the end approached, the ranks of the National Guard itself were melting away. In the end, a handful of fighters remained.
But what's left of the Commune is its experience. And it was widely used by the Bolsheviks in the struggle for power, and the liberalism of the Commune was rejected first of all: the "dictatorship of the proletariat" assumed the firm and indivisible power of the ruling party and, of course, unlimited "revolutionary terror".
On October 8, 1871, at half past nine, simultaneously, hundreds of miles apart, fires of unprecedented magnitude broke out in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois. 24 cities were affected, 16 cities were completely destroyed. The climatic factor is obvious: here is a map clearly showing a titanic cyclone over the territory of the United States - just at the time of the fire.
CITY PESHTIGO
The inhabitants of the village heard a terrible roar, and at the same moment the sky was filled with clouds of flame. Witnesses claim that the fire did not come down gradually - from a forest fire or something else. A whirlwind of flame fell from above. Many died instantly, barely breathing in hot air.
Witness statements:
“I can’t describe this tornado, it hit and devoured the village. It seemed like the fiery demons of hell had descended.”
"The sky seemed to be covered with a fire tarpaulin."
"The heavens opened up and it rained fire."
"A pitiless rain of fire and sand."
The atmosphere was on fire. They talked about big fireballs. The fire flew over the roofs and trees, and lit all the streets at once.
Some hid in wells and died there.
Many rushed to the river and managed to jump into the water. The surviving man said that raising his head to breathe was almost impossible. People were dying with barely a breath. Dozens of citizens - side by side with the fleeing animals - rushed across the bridge, but others ran towards them from the other side, seeking salvation on this shore. The bridge caught fire and collapsed.
The entire district burned out in an hour and a half.
The next day it rained in Peshtigo.
FIRE AREA SURVEY
According to various estimates, from 800 to 1200 people died in the city of Peshtigo. The remains of 350 people are in the mass grave. Between 1,200 and 2,400 people died in the county. The exact number is unknown, as Indians and lumberjacks were not included in the 1870 census. Of some, only bones remained, other bodies untouched by fire. The river is littered with corpses.
Many are found dead on roads and open spaces, in safe places, away from buildings, trees or other combustible materials, without any trace of fire, and their clothes have not been burned. On Sugar Bush, the corpses lay in compact masses, as if people were watching together and died together.
“…we have copper cents taken from the pocket of a dead man in Peshtigo Sugar Bush…one cent is partially melted, but retained its round shape, and the inscription is legible. The other coins, in the same pocket, were partially melted, but neither the clothes nor the body were charred."
Judging by the descriptions, the fire tornado was accompanied by electrical phenomena, and the incredible heat left behind a somewhat strange picture. The brass fire bell melted. Spoons in the store merged into a solid mass. Partially melted iron remains of the railroad cars. The masonry of the factory turned into ruins. Brick pipes crumbled.
Simultaneously with the city of Peshtigo and 22 other cities, Chicago was also on fire.
THE GREAT CHICKY FIRE OF 1871
The fire was spontaneous. The story of Mrs. Katherine O'Leary's cow setting Chicago on fire with a blow to a kerosene lantern turned out to be a hastily concocted fake by the frightened administration.
The fire marshal testified, "We got the fire under control and it wouldn't go any further, but I soon learned that St. Paul's Church, two blocks north, was also on fire."
Firefighters rushed to the church, but - "The next thing I knew that the fire was already at Bateham's mill."
The fire very quickly became ubiquitous, uncontrolled by anyone and took on absolutely surreal features.
“The huge stone and brick structures melted and melted like a snowflake in water and almost as fast. The six-story building, once occupied, disappeared in five minutes according to the clock. Strange, fantastic lights of blue, red and green played on the cornices of the buildings.
Athenian marble burned like coal!
People ran out of the city.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE CHICAGO FIRE
The flames that destroyed most of Chicago had an unusual character. The fire consumed 17450 buildings. A third of the millionth population of the city was left homeless.
The fire melted the building stone, which was previously considered refractory. Iron, glass, granite, sintered into a grotesque conglomerate, as if they had passed through blast furnaces.
Several hundred tons of cast iron were stacked in the yard of one of the large agricultural factories. The distance from metal to any building is two hundred meters. To the south is the river, 150 feet wide. But the heat was such that this pile of cast iron melted and turned into a single mass.
However, only 250 people died in the fire that destroyed a third of the city.
OTHER FIRES
Allison Weaver, near Port Huron, Michigan, managed to build a shelter in the pit. The roar was terrible. They saw how the animals, sensing danger, tried to hide, and then rushed away. The roar increased, the air became heavy, the clouds of dust and ash suddenly settled, and he could see the flames through the trees. It didn't walk on the ground or jump from tree to tree, it came like a tornado. When he got out in the morning, there were no trees, no house, no mill, everything seemed to be shaved off and swept away.
Uniontown, Wisconsin. People saw a black mass approaching them from the side of the wall of flame. It was a stampede of cows and horses. The last to come was a lone horse with a boy in the saddle. He gave his name - Patrick Burns - and said: “I'm dying. Is there a worse hell than this?
In the state of Wisconsin, at Williamson's enterprises, 32 people, cut off by fire, tried to escape in the water, but everyone died.
In northwest Michigan, fires surrounded the town of Manistee. A thousand citizens were left homeless, about 200 people died.
In eastern Michigan, fires destroyed the cities of Grindston, Huron City, Port Hope, and White Rock. About 50 people died.
In southwest Michigan, fires raged around the city of Holland. Most of the city has been destroyed. 210 houses, 90 businesses, 5 churches, 3 hotels and boats burned down. One person died - an elderly widow.
Witnesses reported seeing fire craters in the sky full of debris, remnants of buildings, and even railroad cars.
On the same day, October 8, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Chicago burned. The states of Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois were devastated by fires. At the same time, terrible fires raged in the Rocky and Allegheny Mountains, in the Sierra on the Pacific coast and in the north of the Red River.
ANALYSIS OF THE HAPPENING
According to Laura Knight-Jadczyk, all these cities were burned by gases from the separated part of the tail of the comet Biela. Well, comets are often blamed for cataclysms, and this drawing, dated 1870 (just a year before the fires), comes in very handy.
But I do not share this version, and not because no cosmic events were recorded in 1871. The true nature of these fires is clearly indicated by eyewitness accounts and the chronology of related events. Let's look at them all, along with the physical characteristics of fires.
FIRE SPEED
The speed of movement of a ground fire downwind is 0.3-1 km/h. Sometimes 5 km/h.
The speed of the coniferous crown fire is 2-3 km/h in calm weather and 20-25 km/h in windy conditions. It reaches up to 70 km / h.
The fact that horses and even cows had time to escape indicates a speed in the range of 15-55 km / h. This is not an ordinary ground fire (5 km / h) and - most definitely - not a comet. For example, the stream of Halley's comet rushes at a speed of 41.6 km / s, the Earth - 29.8 km / s. If the gas from the comet's tail could penetrate the dense layers of the atmosphere, it would - at such an oncoming speed - kill before being seen.
A suitable speed could be developed by a crown fire, especially since a “fire tornado” was seen in Peshtigo, known just for logging. But the fires in all 24 cities had clearly defined common signs, and the same Illinois is 60% of the prairie.
CONCLUSION: The unusually high rate of fires is due to other factors.
FIRE TEMPERATURE
Now let's compare the limiting temperatures with the combustion temperatures during fires.
melted: copper, glass, brass, iron, cast iron, granite.
crumbled: stone, brick, refractory brick.
burned: marble.
LIMIT TEMPERATURES
800-1400 ° С - glass melting point
880-950 ° С - brass melting point
900-1200 ° C - limestone firing temperature
950 ° C - melting point of granite
1200 °C is the melting point of cast iron.
1300° С - refractory fireclay brick
1400 ° С - iron melting point
1500-1580° C refractory periclase brick
1690-1720 ° С - refractory dinas brick for electric steel-smelting furnaces
COMBUSTION TEMPERATURES
400-900°С - combustion temperature during ground fire.
800-900 °C - inside residential buildings and public buildings temperature
900-1200 °C - combustion temperature during coniferous crown fire.
1000-1250 °C - outdoor fires for combustible solids
1100-1300 °C - for outdoor fires for flammable liquids
1200-1350 °C - for outdoor fires for combustible gases
It is clear that NOT ONE case is suitable. Brass, glass, granite, and even cast iron can be melted by prolonged exposure to the temperature of a crown fire, but coniferous crowns were not burned in Chicago. The temperatures of urban fires are significantly lower than necessary. And in 24 affected cities, iron melted, and brick crumbled. Well, it is simply impossible to create a limiting temperature at a distance of 200 meters in order to melt several hundred tons of cast iron under standard conditions. The atmosphere is not a blast furnace, it does not hold the temperature.
MAIN ELEMENT
Eyewitnesses claim that Athenian marble burned like coal. But marble is limestone - Ca(CO)3, and how can one not remember that in the white-stone, that is, limestone Moscow of 1571, “stones were burning”? And I have the right formula to explain why marble, aka limestone, burned so well.
First option: Ca(CO)3 + 2HF = CaF2 + CO2 + H2O
Second option (in case of involuntary firing): CaO + 2HF = CaF2 + H2O
In both cases, the result is CaF2 - calcium fluoride (fluorite), and it is COMBUSTIBLE.
Moreover, when heated, fluorite also glows - exactly like a flaming coal. It is from its name that the term "fluorescence" originated. Here it is - glowing fluorite.
For any of these reactions to proceed successfully, only one link is needed - HF (hydrogen fluoride), one of the volcanic gases.
Of course, there are quite a lot of volcanic gases, including quite aggressive ones, capable of forming sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and nitric acid. Below is their list. However, combustible calcium fluoride from marble is formed only with the help of HF compounds.
VOLCANIC GASES
Water vapor (H2O),
carbon dioxide (CO2),
Carbon monoxide (CO),
Nitrogen (N2),
Sulfur dioxide (SO2),
Sulfur oxide (SO),
Gaseous sulfur (S2),
Hydrogen (H2),
Ammonia (NH3),
Hydrogen chloride (HCl),
Hydrogen fluoride (HF),
Hydrogen sulfide (H2S),
Methane (CH4),
Boric acid (H3BO3),
Chlorine (Cl),
Argon (Ar),
Converted H2O and CO2.
Alkali metal and iron chlorides are also present.
DIRECT INSTRUCTIONS TO HF
FIRST: Unprecedented heat and drought just before the fire. It was precisely such heat and droughts that arose before the spontaneous combustion of cities in the Middle Ages - immediately after the eruptions. Reason: hydrogen fluoride readily absorbs atmospheric moisture, forming hydrofluoric acid, with a fair amount of heat (59.1 kJ / mol). Result: already at the approach of the cloud, an acute moisture deficit is formed, and the air temperature is steadily rising.
SECOND: ubiquitous "spontaneous combustion". The resulting hydrofluoric acid is an excellent arsonist for everything in the world. Paper in her presence is charred instantly, and in forests and cities there is a mass of suitable material for conducting a school experiment “spontaneous combustion of a fire” - from dry foliage to house dust. I'm not talking about first-aid kits, a real storehouse of chemical elements, at least in the XIII century, at least in the XIX century.
THIRD: a lot of indications of the chemical nature of fires, for example, “fantastic blue, red and green lights on the eaves of buildings”, the appearance of a flame right in the air - not in the crowns of trees, but ABOVE them, where a decent amount has already accumulated due to the heat pine fumes.
Definitely the chemical nature of the melting of wagon metal and hundreds of tons of cast iron in Chicago. It is clear that it is impossible to heat it entirely with a city fire, but the acid does not need to heat the entire mass as a whole, it freely comes into contact with the surface and - coupled with the temperature - easily melts.
"Melting Buildings" in Chicago also points to hydrofluoric acid; it is she who is known for her ability to act extremely easily on silica with the formation of volatile SiF4 gas, which is why she is not stored in glass containers. In fact, only water and volatile gas remain from the silicates. Remember, six-story buildings melted like snowflakes in water - and just as fast.
Plus, if an ordinary fire needs continuous temperature and oxygen “feeding”, then a cloud of acid vapors can fly as much as necessary in a “cold” state and set fire again - as soon as oxygen appears.
The same chemical nature of the fire is indicated by the instantaneous death of those who inhaled the air of an atmospheric fire: hydrofluoric acid is one of the most dangerous for humans.
FOURTH: relatively low number of human casualties. Atmospheric currents are whimsical. Clouds of hydrofluoric and hydrogen fluoride vapors, having passed at a height of 5-15 meters, are capable of setting fire to the entire city, without touching pedestrians. It is also important to remember the start time of this fire - just when the evening dew falls. And if drop formation is very active on roofs and window sills, and even with a low concentration of hydrofluoric acid it is quite enough to start a fire, then this does not happen on warm human skin, and burns can be dispensed with.
FIFTH: the temperature objectively reached in a series of fires. A chemical fire freely exceeds the limits of the given scales and easily burns everything that even a crown fire could not cope with.
SIXTH: ascending currents, literally, tornadoes of fire give a temperature of the order of 2000 ° C, and this requires powerful metabolic processes. Hydrogen fluoride and hydrofluoric acid for this purpose are exactly what you need.
SEVENTH: It looks like the "fire tornado" may have another reason besides high temperature. When observing the eruption of the volcano Pinatubo (Philippines, 1991), scientists found ( magazine "Nature") something that no one expected from volcanoes. The resulting ash pillar SPIN– just like a cyclone does. Moreover, scientists are confident that such a rotating column really acts as a cyclone, leading, for example, to the formation of dense clouds and the movement of electric charges in the atmosphere.
Judge for yourself, this is a tornado column.
And this is the pillar of the volcano.
There is no fundamental difference between them: the same electrical effects, the same temperature and pressure difference inside about outside, and the same rotation caused by this difference. There is only one difference: the cyclone moves - at a speed of 60 to 360 km / h plus, the cyclone is an extremely stable structure that can transfer its contents (be it stones, frogs, ash or gases) anywhere, even to another continent.
Actually, volcanic clouds easily move up to one and a half thousand km, but if it turns out that the “peduncle” of the pillar is able to break away from its “stump” and move on an independent flight, this will undoubtedly expand our understanding of world harmony. Perhaps it is worth recalling the statements of eyewitnesses that they saw funnels of fire in the sky. Well, the mentioned electrical phenomena are more than appropriate here.
Exactly the same thing happened during ancient cataclysms. Here is the historical eruption of Vesuvius - one of many, strangely coinciding in time with the Great and inexplicable fires hundreds and thousands of kilometers away.
And here are parts of a graph showing the chronological relationship between historical fires and volcanic eruptions. Not all of them coincide in time - a certain number of eruptions did not cause fires, but in general, large series of events clearly echo each other.
EIGHTH: the location of fire spots is extremely symptomatic: the coast of the ocean, the Great Lakes, the Allegheny Mountains, the Rockies and the Sierra. It is in such places, on the border between water and land and in the foothills, that atmospheric flows tend to precipitate. If volcanic hydrogen fluoride was brought in from afar, it would sink into the lower atmosphere exactly where it usually does. The time of the simultaneous start of fires is also symptomatic - 9-10 pm; just at this time the fog descends.
AND THE NINTH DIRECTION: a series of large eruptions around the world recorded in the coming years, and the climatic consequences accompanying the eruptions.
ERUPTIONS:
1867 Mauna Loa (Hawaii)
1870 Pochutla volcano in Mexico
1872 Vesuvius(on the picture)
1872 MERAPI Java (Indonesia)
1872 SINARKA, Kuril Islands
1873 GRIMSVOTN, northern Iceland
EARTHQUAKE:
1868 Chile, Peru, Ecuador, California
1872 California
hurricanes:
1869 devastating hurricane in the Bay of Fundy, Canada
1871 Labrador hurricane, 300 killed
1872 Oct 25: Storm from Gulf of Mexico advances all the way to Appalachia
And, of course, the same colossal and also inexplicable fires:
FIRES:
1868 Russia. Drought. Peat fires
1869 deadly Pennsylvania fire
1870 Constantinople fire (pictured)
1871 numerous fires in Paris
1872 Boston fire
Here is a fragment of the Boston panorama after the fire. The city looks like after the bombing.
1872 London fire
1872 Japan
If we keep in mind the six large eruptions that accompanied these simultaneous fires, then the version of their volcanic origin looks acceptable. Moreover, you begin to understand the oddities of other fires.
Here is a very characteristic drawing of the Newcastle fire in 1843. Note that the buildings are on fire on both sides of a rather wide river, although the wind is not very strong. It is also important that the city took up just from the river, from the licked center, and not from the outskirts littered with garbage. It's simple: volcanic gases are heavier than air, and therefore tend to accumulate in lowlands and river valleys.
And here is the fire in Hamburg in 1842. It happened a year before the Newcastle fire and is also unusual.
Pay attention to the burning piles sticking out of the river. If they caught fire from the thermal radiation of the fire, then the side surfaces would take up. But the upper end burns - the worst place for heating from a neighboring flame and the best for the settling acid fog.
Large-scale spontaneous combustion of fleets, for example, in Lisbon after the earthquake and tsunami of 1755, is also becoming explainable.
Moreover, these are not volcanic bombs and not a cometary "hail of fire", otherwise we would have met meteorite fragments or volcanic bombs on every square meter. Still, this is a rather rare event. But hydrogen fluoride (HF) leaves no traces. It is clear that if the fleet was caught in a cloud of volcanic hydrogen fluoride, the sails would go on fire first. And it is very tempting to attribute victory over the fleet to yourself, who owns the secret "Greek fire" - so that they respect it.
Here is the place to doubt the history of the burning of the great Library of Alexandria. Soviet historians have already established the forgery of the letter of Caliph Omar ibn Khattab, who allegedly arrogantly taught Amr: “If these books say what is in the Koran, then they are useless. If they say anything else, they are harmful. Therefore, in both cases, they must be burned. A lot of stretches and in other versions, attributing this terrible act of vandalism to either Caesar, then Aurelian, then Theophilus - depending on the current political situation. And the truth seems to be that no one burned it; just a cloud of hydrogen fluoride from Santorini, Vesuvius, Etna, Vulcano or Stromboli (to choose from) reached the coast of Egypt - along with the ash repeatedly mentioned in the Alexandrian chronicles.
HAZARD ASSESSMENT
In 1783, the Icelandic volcano Laki emitted 122 megatons of sulfur dioxide, 11.6 tons for every square kilometer of Europe. If we imagine that this is hydrogen fluoride and disperse it in the atmosphere over Europe up to 1 km altitude, the MPC will be exceeded by 2 million times. Fortunately, hydrogen fluoride is released during eruptions many times less. But you know, you don't need a fuel truck for a fire; enough matches...
IMPORTANT ADDITION:
During the eruption of the Pelee volcano on Martinique (May 8, 1902), two survived in the city of Saint-Pierre, one of them is a young shoemaker, Léon Compere-Léandre. Here are his testimonies:
"I felt a terrible wind blowing, the earth began to tremble, and the sky suddenly became dark. I turned to go into the house, with great difficulty climbed the three or four steps that separated me from my room, and felt my arms and legs burning, also my body. I dropped upon a table. At this moment four others sought refuge in my room, crying and writhing with pain, although their garmets showed no sign of having been touched by flame. At the end of 10 minutes one of these, the young Delavaud girl, aged about 10 years, fell dead; the others left. I got up and went to another room, where I found the father Delavaud, still clothed and lying on the bed, dead. He was purple and inflated, but the clothing was intact. Crazed and almost overcome, I threw myself on a bed, inert and awaiting death. My senses returned to me in perhaps an hour, when I beheld the roof burning. With sufficient strength left, my legs bleeding and covered with burns, I ran to Fonds-Sait-Denis, six kilometers from St . Pierre."
AND HERE IS THE MACHINE TRANSLATION:
(note: Delavaud's father was burned, but his clothes remained intact - the same picture as in the description of the aftermath of the fire in Peshtigo)
"I felt terrible wind, the earth trembled, and the sky suddenly turned dark. I turned to go into the house, with great difficulty walked the three or four steps that separated me from my room, and felt that my arms and legs were on fire, as was my body. I threw it on the table. At this point, four others sought refuge in their room, crying and writhing in pain, although their garmets (probably garments - clothes) showed no signs of touching the flame. After 10 minutes a young Delavaud girl, about 10 years old, fell down dead; others are gone. I got up and went into another room, where I found Father Delavaud, still dressed, and lying on the bed, dead. He was purple and swollen, but his clothes were intact.. Distraught and almost defeated, I threw myself on the bed, inert and expecting death. My feelings came back to me, maybe an hour later, when I saw that the roof was on fire. Gathering the last of my strength, on bleeding, burnt legs, I ran to Fonds-Sait-Denis, six kilometers from Saint-Pierre.
CONCLUSION: the fire in Peshtigo is volcanic, but, in fact, chemical in nature.
IMPORTANT ADDITION 2:
The source of data is the book of D. V. Nalivkin, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, "Hurricanes, Storms and Tornadoes", 1969.
1854 Huge fires create whirlwinds approaching tornadoes in strength. F. A. Batalia (1854) describes how a whirlwind, which arose in Stockbridge (England) during a very strong fire, broke large trees and lifted them into the air.
Fire whirlwinds and sometimes tornadoes accompanied large forest fires (Graham, 1952), city fires during the bombing (Landsberg, 1947) and even large fireworks (Glaser, 1959), explosions of large vents of combustible gas in the Sahara (Deesens, 1963).
Vertical vortices were obtained during special experiments with oil combustion (Dessens, 1962). In all these cases, vertical whirlwinds and, more rarely, clouds with tornadoes hanging from them formed.
Even such relatively small phenomena as the burning of stacks of straw in the fields cause the formation of cumulus clouds up to 500 m high (Fig. 220). In England, such burning occurs frequently and is always accompanied by the formation of cumulus clouds. Fire whirlwinds and sometimes whirlwinds are often formed (Bide, 1965).
1840 USA Redfield (Redfield) described fiery vertical whirlwinds that arose during the burning of large masses of dry brushwood. The flames pulled together from all sides, forming a huge column, 45-60 m. Even higher, it turned into a smoke whirlwind. The whirlwind revolved with startling speed and a loud noise like thunder. The whirlwind lifted quite large trees into the air. The day was cloudless and calm.
1952 in the state of Oregon, a fiery column up to 30 m formed over a forest fire. Rotating at an enormous speed, it sucked in more and more new fires. At the top, it gave way to an even more enormous and tall smoke column about 9 m in diameter. The whirlwind stood almost motionless. The whirlwind easily broke trees and lifted them into the air. Graham (1952), who observed the phenomenon, called it "a fiery whirlwind of tornado intensity."
Landsberg (1947) described how, during the bombing of Hamburg in the last war, fire broke out at three points. The fiery columns that rose to the sky at first stood separately, but then merged into one huge, furiously rotating, vertical fire-smoke whirlwind. Its height was about 4000 m, and the width at the base was about 2000 m. The rotation near the ground was so strong that large trees were uprooted.
1945.08.06. On August 6, 1945, during the fire that arose after the atomic explosion in Hiroshima, a huge fire-smoke whirlwind also formed, raising the trunks of large trees into the air and sucking water from ponds.
Graham (1955) cites the case of how, during a large forest fire, the fiery columns of several points merged with each other, forming one wildly rotating fiery whirlwind. At the same time, the strength of the fire increased so much that the people who put out the fire were forced to flee. The diameter of the whirlwind reached several hundred meters, and the height was 1200 m. The whirlwind freely broke and lifted large trees into the air.
Fire whirlwinds are so strong, numerous, and peculiar that Lawrence (1963) proposed a special name for them - fumulus, and for the clouds they create - cumulofumulus.
Artificial huge fiery whirlwinds and whirlwinds were obtained by Dessens the father and described by the son (Dessens, 1962). They invented special oil nozzles that produced huge flames and called them "weather guns". Simultaneous burning of 15 and sometimes 40 meteotrons gave amazing results. Not only fiery whirlwinds were obtained, but fiery tornadoes descended from artificial clouds.
Experiments were carried out on the outskirts of the desert, in the south of Algeria, where the spurs of the mountains passed into the Sahara. The experiments were carried out under various meteorological conditions. A group of 15 meteotrons, located steeply, gave a fiery rotating column, a real fiery whirlwind with a diameter of 40 m. At the top, the fiery column turned into a smoke column crowned with a newly formed cloud.
Then the number of meteotrons was increased to forty. The resulting giant fire column was accompanied by a black cloud, the size of which was not inferior to that of the oil fire in California. An artificial oil fire was not inferior to a natural one in terms of the size of the flame and cloud. The results were immediate: the smoke cloud, under the influence of a small wind, leaned in the same way as it happened in California and during eruptions. At first, short and small funnels hung from the leeward side of the cloud, but soon they reached the ground, forming a real tornado.
SUMMARY: The experiments of the father and son of the Dessens showed that the main fire whirlwind can be generated by a volcano, and the daughter fire whirlwind can descend from the cloud at some distance. With 40 nozzles we are talking about tens or hundreds of meters, but with 40 volcanoes?
AND LAST QUOTE: Vertical ash plumes often occur during volcanic eruptions, especially over hot lava flows. Wegener (1917, S. 8) gives a number of examples observed during the eruptions of Vesuvius, Santorini and in Iceland.
