Young Nicholas 1. Biography of Emperor Nicholas I Pavlovich

Nicholas I Pavlovich - born: June 25 (July 6), 1796. Date of death: February 18 (March 2), 1855 (aged 58).

The Nikolaev era in Russian history is amazing in itself: an unprecedented flourishing of culture and police arbitrariness, the strictest discipline and widespread bribery, economic growth and backwardness in everything. But before coming to power, the future autocrat hatched completely different plans, the implementation of which could make the state one of the richest and most democratic in Europe.

The reign of Emperor Nicholas 1 is usually called a period of gloomy reaction and hopeless stagnation, a period of despotism, barracks order and graveyard silence, and hence the assessment of the emperor himself as a strangler of revolutions, a jailer of the Decembrists, a gendarme of Europe, an incorrigible martinet, "a fiend of uniform enlightenment", "a boa constrictor , 30 years strangling Russia. Let's try to figure everything out.

The starting point of the reign of Nicholas 1 was December 14, 1825 - the day when the Decembrist uprising took place. He became not only a test of the character of the new emperor, but also had a significant impact on the subsequent formation of his thoughts and actions. After the death of Emperor Alexander 1 on November 19, 1825, a situation of the so-called interregnum arose. The emperor died childless, and his middle brother Constantine was to inherit the throne. However, back in 1823, Alexander signed a secret manifesto appointing his younger brother Nicholas as heir.

In addition to Alexander, Konstantin and their mother, only three people knew about this: Metropolitan Filaret, A. Arakcheev and A. Golitsyn. Nicholas himself, until the death of his brother, did not suspect this, therefore, after his death, he swore allegiance to Konstantin, who was in Warsaw. From this, according to V. Zhukovsky, a three-week “struggle not for power, but for the sacrifice of honor and duty by the throne” began. Only on December 14, when Constantine confirmed his renunciation of the throne, Nicholas issued a manifesto about his accession. But by this time, conspirators from secret societies began to spread rumors in the army, as if Nicholas intended to usurp the rights of Constantine.

December 14, morning - Nikolai familiarized the Guards generals and colonels with the will of Alexander 1 and documents on the abdication of Constantine and read out a manifesto on his accession to the throne. All unanimously recognized him as the legitimate monarch and pledged to swear in the troops. The Senate and the Synod have already sworn in, but in the Moscow regiment, the soldiers, incited by the conspirators, refused to take the oath.

There were even armed clashes, and the regiment went to the Senate Square, where it was joined by part of the soldiers from the Life Guards of the Grenadier Regiment and the guards crew. The rebellion flared up. “Tonight,” Nicholas 1 said to A. Benkendorf, “perhaps both of us will not be in the world, but at least we will die, having fulfilled our duty.”

Just in case, he gave the order to prepare crews to take his mother, wife and children to Tsarskoye Selo. “It is not known what awaits us,” Nikolai turned to his wife. “Promise me to show courage and, if I have to die, to die with honor.”

Intending to prevent bloodshed, Nicholas 1 with a small retinue went to the rebels. They fired at him. The exhortations of either Metropolitan Seraphim or Grand Duke Michael did not help. And the shot of the Decembrist P. Kakhovsky in the back of the St. Petersburg governor-general made it completely clear: the negotiating ways have exhausted themselves, one cannot do without buckshot. “I am an emperor,” Nikolai later wrote to his brother, “but at what cost. My God! At the cost of the blood of my subjects." But, based on what the Decembrists really wanted to do with the people and the state, Nicholas 1 was right in his determination to quickly suppress the rebellion.

Consequences of the uprising

“I saw,” he recalled, “that either I should take it upon myself to shed the blood of some and save almost certainly everything, or, sparing myself, decisively sacrifice the state.” At first, he had an idea - to forgive everyone. However, when during the investigation it turned out that the performance of the Decembrists was not an accidental outbreak, but the fruit of a long conspiracy, which set as its task, first of all, regicide and a change in the form of government, personal impulses faded into the background. There was a trial and punishment to the full extent of the law: 5 people were executed, 120 were sent to hard labor. But that's all!

Whatever they write or say for Nicholas 1, he, as a person, is much more attractive than his "friends on the 14th". After all, some of them (Ryleev and Trubetskoy), having incited people to speak, did not come to the square themselves; they were going to destroy the entire royal family, including women and children. After all, it was they who had the idea, in case of failure, to set fire to the capital and retreat to Moscow. After all, it was they (Pestel) who were going to establish a 10-year dictatorship, distract the people with wars of conquest, bring in 113,000 gendarmes, which was 130 times more than under Nicholas 1.

What was the emperor like?

By nature, the emperor was a rather generous person and knew how to forgive, not attaching importance to personal insults and believing that he should be above this. He could, for example, before the entire regiment ask for forgiveness from an officer unjustly offended by him, and now, given the awareness of the conspirators of their guilt and the complete repentance of most of them, he could demonstrate "mercy to the fallen." Could. But he did not do this, although the fate of the majority of the Decembrists and their families was mitigated as much as possible.

For example, Ryleev's wife received a financial assistance of 2,000 rubles, and Pavel Pestel's brother Alexander was given a lifetime pension of 3,000 rubles a year and he was assigned to the cavalry guard regiment. Even the children of the Decembrists, who were born in Siberia, with the consent of their parents, were determined in the best educational institutions at public expense.

It would be appropriate to cite the statement of Count D.A. Tolstoy: “What the great sovereign would have done for his people if he had not met December 14, 1825 at the first step of his reign, is unknown, but this sad event should have had on him a huge impact. Apparently, one should attribute to him that dislike for any liberalism, which was constantly noticed in the orders of Emperor Nicholas ... "And this is well illustrated by the words of the tsar himself:" The revolution is on the threshold of Russia, but, I swear, it will not penetrate into it until it remains in me breath of life, until by the grace of God I am emperor." From the time of December 14, 1825, Nicholas 1 celebrated this date every year, considering it the day of his true accession to the throne.

What many noted in the emperor is the desire for order and legality.

“My fate is strange,” Nicholas 1 wrote in one of his letters, “they tell me that I am one of the most powerful sovereigns in the world, and I should say that everything, that is, everything that is permissible, should be for me it is possible that I could, therefore, at my own discretion, do what I please. In fact, however, the opposite is true for me. And if I am asked about the reason for this anomaly, there is only one answer: duty!

Yes, this is not an empty word for someone who is accustomed to understand it from youth, like me. This word has a sacred meaning, before which every personal impulse recedes, everything must fall silent before this one feeling and yield to it until you disappear into the grave. That is my slogan. He is tough, I confess, it is more painful for me under him than I can express, but I am created to suffer.

Contemporaries about Nicholas 1

This sacrifice in the name of duty is worthy of respect, and the French politician A. Lamartine said well: “It is impossible not to respect a monarch who demanded nothing for himself and fought only for principles.”

The maid of honor A. Tyutcheva wrote about Nicholas 1: “He had an irresistible charm, could charm people ... Extremely unpretentious in everyday life, already being an emperor, he slept on a hard camp bed, hiding himself in a simple overcoat, observed moderation in food, preferred simple food, and almost did not drink alcohol. He stood up for discipline, but he himself was above all disciplined. Order, clarity, organization, the utmost clarity in actions - that's what he demanded of himself and others. I worked 18 hours a day."

Principles of Government

The emperor paid great attention to the Decembrists' criticism of the orders that existed before him, trying to clarify for himself a possible positive beginning in their plans. He then brought close to him two of the most prominent initiators and conductors of the liberal undertakings of Alexander 1 - M. Speransky and V. Kochubey, who had long since departed from their former constitutional views, who were to lead the work on creating a code of laws and reforming public administration.

“I have noted and will always celebrate,” the emperor said, “those who want fair demands and want them to come from legitimate authority ...” He also invited N. Mordvinov to work, whose views had previously attracted the attention of the Decembrists, and then often disagreed with government decisions. The emperor elevated Mordvinov to the dignity of a count and awarded the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called.

But in general, people who thought independently irritated Nicholas I. He often admitted that he preferred not smart, but obedient performers. Hence his constant difficulties in personnel policy and the selection of worthy employees. Nevertheless, Speransky's work on the codification of laws successfully ended with the publication of the Code of Laws. The situation was worse with regard to resolving the issue of alleviating the situation of the peasants. True, within the framework of government guardianship, it was forbidden to sell serfs at public auctions with the fragmentation of families, give them as gifts, give them to factories or exile them to Siberia at their discretion.

The landlords were given the right to release the householders by mutual consent to freedom, and they even had the right to acquire real estate. When the estates were sold, the peasants received the right to freedom. All this paved the way for the reforms of Alexander II, but led to new types of bribery and arbitrariness in relation to the peasants on the part of officials.

Law and autocracy

Much attention was paid to education and upbringing. Nicholas 1 raised his first-born son Alexander in a Spartan way and declared: “I want to educate a man in my son before I make him a sovereign.” The poet V. Zhukovsky was his teacher, the teachers were the best specialists of the country: K. Arsenyev, A. Pletnev and others. M. Speransky taught the law of Alexander 1, who convinced the heir: law that it is based on truth. Where truth ends and untruth begins, right ends and autocracy begins.

Nicholas 1 shared the same views. A. Pushkin also thought about the combination of intellectual and moral education, who, at the request of the tsar, compiled a note “On Public Education”. By this time, the poet had already completely departed from the views of the Decembrists. And the emperor himself set an example of service to duty. During the cholera epidemic in Moscow, the tsar went there. The Empress brought children to him, trying to keep him from traveling. “Take them away,” said Nicholas 1, “thousands of my children are suffering in Moscow now.” For ten days, the emperor visited cholera barracks, ordered the construction of new hospitals, shelters, and provided financial and food assistance to the poor.

Domestic politics

If in relation to revolutionary ideas, Nicholas 1 pursued an isolationist policy, then the material inventions of the West attracted his close attention, and he liked to repeat: "We are engineers." New factories began to appear, railroads and highways were laid, industrial output doubled, and finances stabilized. The number of the poor in European Russia was no more than 1%, while in European countries it ranged from 3 to 20%.

Much attention was also paid to the natural sciences. By order of the emperor, observatories were equipped in Kazan, Kyiv, near St. Petersburg; different scientific societies appeared. Nicholas 1 paid special attention to the archaeographic commission, which was engaged in the study of ancient monuments, analysis and publication of ancient acts. Under him, many educational institutions appeared, including Kyiv University, St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, Technical School, military and naval academies, 11 cadet corps, a higher school of law and a number of others.

It is curious that, at the request of the emperor, in the construction of temples, volost administrations, schools, etc., it was prescribed to use the canons of ancient Russian architecture. No less interesting is the fact that it was during the "gloomy" 30-year reign of Nicholas 1 that an unprecedented surge of Russian science and culture took place. What names! Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Zhukovsky, Tyutchev, Koltsov, Odoevsky, Pogodin, Granovsky, Bryullov, Kiprensky, Tropinin, Venetsianov, Beauvais, Montferan, Tone, Rossi, Glinka, Verstovsky, Dargomyzhsky, Lobachevsky, Jacobi, Struve, Shchepkin, Mochalov, Karatygin and other brilliant talents.

The emperor supported many of them financially. New journals appeared, university public readings were organized, literary circles and salons opened their activities, where any political, literary, philosophical issues were discussed. The emperor personally took A. Pushkin under his protection, forbidding F. Bulgarin to publish any criticism of him in the Northern Bee, and invited the poet to write new fairy tales, because he considered his old ones to be highly moral. But… Why is the Nicholas era usually described in such gloomy terms?

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Building, as it seemed to him, an ideal state, the tsar essentially turned the country into a huge barracks, introducing only one thing into the minds of people - obedience with the help of cane discipline. And now they have reduced the admission of students to universities, established control over censorship itself, and expanded the rights of gendarmes. The works of Plato, Aeschylus, Tacitus were banned; the works of Kantemir, Derzhavin, Krylov were censored; entire historical periods were excluded from consideration.

Foreign policy

During the period of intensification of the revolutionary movement in Europe, the emperor remained faithful to his allied duty. Based on the decisions of the Congress of Vienna, he helped to suppress the revolutionary movement in Hungary. As a sign of "gratitude", Austria allied itself with England and France, who sought to weaken Russia at the first opportunity. It was necessary to pay attention to the words of the member of the English Parliament T. Attwood in relation to Russia: "... It will take a little time ... and these barbarians will learn to use the sword, bayonet and musket with almost the same skill as civilized people." Hence the conclusion - as soon as possible to declare war on Russia.

Bureaucracy

But it was not the loss in the Crimean War that was the most terrible defeat of Nicholas 1. There were worse defeats. The emperor lost the main war to his officials. Under him, their number increased from 16 to 74,000. The bureaucracy became an independent force acting according to its own laws, capable of torpedoing any attempts at reform, which weakened the state. And there was no need to talk about bribery. So during the reign of Nicholas 1, there was an illusion of the country's prosperity. The king understood all this.

Last years. Death

“Unfortunately,” he admitted, “more than often you are forced to use the services of people you do not respect ...” Already by 1845, many noted the emperor’s depression. “I am working to stun myself,” he wrote to King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia. And what is such a recognition worth: “For almost 20 years now I have been sitting in this beautiful place. Often such days happen that, looking at the sky, I say: why am I not there? I'm so tired".

At the end of January 1855, the autocrat fell ill with acute bronchitis, but continued to work. As a result, pneumonia began, and on February 18, 1855, he died. Before his death, he told his son Alexander: “I wanted to take on all the difficult, all the hard, to leave you a kingdom of peace, order and happiness. Providence judged otherwise. Now I’m going to pray for Russia and for you…”

Nicholas I Pavlovich. Born June 25 (July 6), 1796 in Tsarskoye Selo - died February 18 (March 2), 1855 in St. Petersburg. Emperor of All Russia since December 14 (26), 1825, Tsar of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland.

The main dates of the reign of Nicholas I:

♦ 1826 - Establishment of the Third Branch of the Imperial Chancellery - the secret police to monitor the state of minds in the state;
♦ 1826-1832 - Codification of the laws of the Russian Empire by M. M. Speransky;
♦ 1826-1828 - War with Persia;
♦ 1828 - Foundation of the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg;
♦ 1828-1829 - War with Turkey;
♦ 1830-1831 - Uprising in Poland;
♦ 1832 - Cancellation of the constitution of the Kingdom of Poland, approval of the new status of the Kingdom of Poland within the Russian Empire;
♦ 1834 - The Imperial University of St. Vladimir in Kyiv was founded (the university was founded by decree of Nicholas I on November 8 (20), 1833 as the Kyiv Imperial University of St. Vladimir on the basis of the Vilna University and the Kremenets Lyceum closed after the Polish uprising of 1830-1831);
♦ 1837 - Opening of the first railway in Russia Petersburg - Tsarskoye Selo;
♦ 1837-1841 - Reform of the state peasants, carried out by Kiselyov;
♦ 1841 - Prohibited the sale of peasants one by one and without land;
♦ 1839-1843 - Kankrin's financial reform;
♦ 1843 - Prohibited the purchase of peasants by landless nobles;
♦ 1839-1841 - Eastern crisis, in which Russia acted together with England against the France-Egypt coalition;
♦ 1848 - Peasants received the right to redeem themselves with land when selling the landlord's estate for debts, as well as the right to acquire real estate;
♦ 1849 - Participation of Russian troops in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising;
♦ 1851 - Completion of the construction of the Nikolaev railway, which connected St. Petersburg with Moscow. Opening of the New Hermitage;
♦ 1853-1856 - Crimean War. Nikolai did not live to see its end - he died in 1855.

Father - Emperor Paul I.

Mother - Empress Maria Feodorovna.

Nicholas was the third son of Paul I and Maria Feodorovna. Born a few months before the accession of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich to the throne. He was the last of the grandchildren born during her lifetime. The birth of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich was announced in Tsarskoye Selo by cannon fire and bell ringing, and news was sent to St. Petersburg by courier.

He received an unusual name for the Romanov dynasty. The court historian M. Korf even specifically noted that the baby was called the name "unprecedented in our royal house." In the imperial house of the Romanov dynasty, children were not named after Nikolai. There is no explanation for the naming of Nicholas in the sources, although Nicholas the Wonderworker was highly revered in Russia. Perhaps Catherine II took into account the semantics of the name, which goes back to the Greek words “victory” and “people”.

Odes were written for the birth of the Grand Duke, the author of one of them was G. R. Derzhavin. Name day - December 6 according to the Julian calendar (Nicholas the Wonderworker).

According to the order established by Empress Catherine II, Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich from birth entered the care of the Empress, but the death of Catherine II, which soon followed, stopped her influence on the course of the upbringing of the Grand Duke. His nanny was Charlotte Karlovna Lieven from Livland. She was for the first seven years the only mentor of Nicholas. The boy sincerely became attached to his first teacher, and during early childhood, "the heroic, chivalrously noble, strong and open character of the nanny Charlotte Karlovna Lieven" left an imprint on his character.

Since November 1800, General M. I. Lamzdorf became the tutor of Nikolai and Mikhail. The choice of General Lamzdorf for the post of educator of the Grand Duke was made by Emperor Paul I. Paul I pointed out: “just don’t make such rake out of my sons as German princes.” In the highest order of November 23 (December 5), 1800, it was announced: "Lieutenant-General Lamzdorf was appointed to be under His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich." The general stayed with his pupil for 17 years. Obviously, Lamzdorf fully satisfied the pedagogical requirements of Maria Feodorovna. So in a parting letter in 1814, Maria Feodorovna called General Lamzdorf the “second father” of Grand Dukes Nikolai and Mikhail.

The death of his father, Paul I, in March 1801, could not but be imprinted in the memory of the four-year-old Nicholas. Subsequently, he described what happened in his memoirs: “The events of this sad day are also preserved in my memory, like a vague dream; I was awakened and saw Countess Lieven before me. When I was dressed, we noticed through the window, on the drawbridge under the church, the guards, which were not there the day before; there was the entire Semyonovsky regiment in an extremely careless form. None of us suspected that we had lost our father; we were taken downstairs to my mother, and soon from there we went with her, sisters, Mikhail and Countess Liven to the Winter Palace. The guard went out into the courtyard of the Mikhailovsky Palace and saluted. My mother immediately silenced him. My mother was lying in the back of the room when Emperor Alexander entered, accompanied by Konstantin and Prince Nikolai Ivanovich Saltykov; he threw himself on his knees before his mother, and I can still hear his sobs. They brought him water, and they took us away. We were happy to see our rooms again and, I must tell you the truth, our wooden horses, which we forgot there.

This was the first blow of fate inflicted on him during his most tender age. Since then, concern for his upbringing and education has been concentrated entirely and exclusively in the jurisdiction of the widowed Empress Maria Feodorovna, out of a sense of delicacy towards which Emperor Alexander I refrained from any influence on the upbringing of his younger brothers.

Empress Maria Feodorovna's greatest concern in the education of Nikolai Pavlovich was to try to turn him away from the passion for military exercises, which was found in him from early childhood. The passion for the technical side of military affairs, instilled in Russia by Paul I, took deep and strong roots in the royal family - Alexander I, despite his liberalism, was an ardent supporter of the watch parade and all its subtleties, like Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich. The younger brothers were not inferior in this passion to the older ones. From early childhood, Nikolai had a particular fondness for military toys and stories about military operations. The best reward for him was permission to go to a parade or a divorce, where he watched everything that happened with special attention, dwelling on even the smallest details.

Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich was educated at home - teachers were assigned to him and his brother Mikhail. But Nikolai did not show much zeal for study. He did not recognize the humanities, but he was well versed in the art of war, was fond of fortification, and was familiar with engineering.

Nikolai Pavlovich, having completed the course of his education, was himself horrified by his ignorance and after the wedding he tried to fill this gap, but the predominance of military occupations and family life distracted him from constant office work. “His mind is not processed, his upbringing was careless,” Queen Victoria wrote about Emperor Nicholas I in 1844.

Nikolai Pavlovich's passion for painting is known, which he studied in childhood under the guidance of the painter I. A. Akimov and the author of religious and historical compositions, Professor V. K. Shebuev.

During the Patriotic War of 1812 and the subsequent military campaigns of the Russian army in Europe, Nicholas was eager to go to war, but met with a decisive refusal from the Empress Mother. In 1813, the 17-year-old Grand Duke was taught strategy. At this time, from his sister Anna Pavlovna, with whom he was very friendly, Nicholas accidentally learned that Alexander I had been to Silesia, where he had seen the family of the Prussian king, that Alexander liked his eldest daughter, Princess Charlotte, and that it was his intention that Nicholas ever saw her.

Only at the beginning of 1814, Emperor Alexander I allowed his younger brothers to join the army abroad. On February 5 (17), 1814, Nikolai and Mikhail left Petersburg. On this trip, they were accompanied by General Lamzdorf, gentlemen: I. F. Savrasov, A. P. Aledinsky and P. I. Arsenyev, Colonel Gianotti and Dr. Rühl. After 17 days they reached Berlin, where 17-year-old Nicholas first saw the 16-year-old daughter of King Frederick William III of Prussia, Princess Charlotte.

Princess Charlotte - the future wife of Nicholas I in childhood

After spending one day in Berlin, the travelers proceeded through Leipzig, Weimar, where they saw their sister Maria Pavlovna. Then through Frankfurt am Main, Bruchsal, where the Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna was then, Rastatt, Freiburg and Basel. Near Basel, they first heard enemy shots, as the Austrians and Bavarians were besieging the nearby fortress of Güningen. Then, through Altkirch, they entered the borders of France and reached the rear of the army in Vesoul. However, Alexander I ordered the brothers to return to Basel. Only when the news came about the capture of Paris and the exile of Napoleon I to the island of Elba, the Grand Dukes received permission to arrive in Paris.

On November 4 (16), 1815 in Berlin, during an official dinner, the engagement of Princess Charlotte and Tsarevich and Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich was announced.

After the military campaigns of the Russian army in Europe, professors were invited to the Grand Duke, who were supposed to "read the military sciences as fully as possible." For this purpose, the well-known engineering general Karl Opperman and, to help him, Colonels Gianotti and Andrei Markevich were chosen.

Since 1815, military conversations between Nikolai Pavlovich and General Opperman began.

Upon returning from the second campaign, starting in December 1815, Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich continued his studies with some of his former professors. Mikhail Balugyansky read "the science of finance", Nikolai Akhverdov read Russian history (from the reign to the time of troubles). With Markevich, the Grand Duke was engaged in "military translations", and with Gianotti - reading the works of Giraud and Lloyd about various campaigns of the wars of 1814 and 1815, as well as analyzing the project "on the expulsion of the Turks from Europe under certain given conditions."

At the beginning of 1816, the University of Abo of the Grand Duchy of Finland, following the example of the universities of Sweden, most submissively interceded: “Will Alexander I honor with royal grace to grant him a chancellor in the person of His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich.” According to the historian M. M. Borodkin, this idea belongs entirely to Tengström, the bishop of the Abo diocese, a supporter of Russia. Alexander I granted the request, and Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich was appointed chancellor of the university. His task was to maintain the status of the university and the conformity of university life with the spirit and traditions. In memory of this event, the St. Petersburg Mint minted a bronze medal. Also in 1816 he was appointed chief of the cavalry chasseurs.

In the summer of 1816, Nikolai Pavlovich, to complete his education, was to undertake a trip around Russia to get acquainted with his fatherland in administrative, commercial and industrial terms. Upon his return, it was planned to make another trip to England. On this occasion, on behalf of Empress Maria Feodorovna, a special note was drawn up, which set out the main principles of the administrative system of provincial Russia, described the areas that the Grand Duke had to pass, in historical, domestic, industrial and geographical terms, indicated what exactly could to be the subject of conversations between the Grand Duke and representatives of the provincial authorities, which should be paid attention to.

Thanks to a trip to some provinces of Russia, Nikolai Pavlovich got a visual idea of the internal state and problems of his country, and in England he got acquainted with the experience of developing the socio-political system of the state. Nicholas's own political system of views was distinguished by a pronounced conservative, anti-liberal orientation.

Growth of Nicholas I: 205 centimeters.

Personal life of Nicholas I:

On July 1 (13), 1817, the marriage of Grand Duke Nicholas with Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna, who was called Princess Charlotte of Prussia before her conversion to Orthodoxy, took place. The wedding took place on the birthday of the young princess in the court church of the Winter Palace. A week before the wedding, June 24 (6) July 1817, Charlotte converted to Orthodoxy and was given a new name - Alexandra Feodorovna, and after betrothal to Grand Duke Nicholas on June 25 (7) July 1817 she became known as the Grand Duchess with the title of Her Imperial Highness. The couple were each other's fourth cousins and sisters (they had a common great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother). This marriage strengthened the political union of Russia and Prussia.

Nicholas I and Alexandra Feodorovna had 7 children:

♦ son (1818-1881). 1st wife - Maria Alexandrovna; 2nd wife - Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukova;
♦ daughter Maria Nikolaevna (1819-1876). 1st spouse - Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg; 2nd spouse - Count Grigory Alexandrovich Stroganov;
♦ daughter Olga Nikolaevna (1822-1892). Spouse - Friedrich-Karl-Alexander, King of Württemberg;
♦ daughter Alexandra Nikolaevna (1825-1844). Spouse - Friedrich Wilhelm, Prince of Hesse-Kassel;
♦ son Konstantin Nikolaevich (1827-1892). Wife - Alexandra Iosifovna;
♦ son Nikolai Nikolaevich (1831-1891). Wife - Alexandra Petrovna;
♦ son Mikhail Nikolaevich (1832-1909). Wife - Olga Fedorovna.

Alexandra Feodorovna - wife of Nicholas I

The maid of honor A.F. Tyutcheva, who lived at court for a long time, wrote in her memoirs: “Emperor Nicholas had for his wife, this fragile, irresponsible and graceful creature, a passionate and despotic adoration of a strong nature for a weak being, whose only ruler and legislator he feels. For him, it was a lovely bird, which he kept locked up in a gold and jeweled cage, which he fed with nectar and ambrosia, lulled with melodies and aromas, but whose wings he would cut off without regret if she wanted to escape from the gilded bars of her cage. . But in her magical dungeon, the bird did not even remember her wings.

Also had 3 to 9 alleged illegitimate children.

Nicholas I for 17 years was in connection with the maid of honor Varvara Nelidova. According to rumors, the relationship began when, after 7 births of the 34-year-old Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (1832), doctors forbade the emperor from marital relations with her out of fear for her health. The emperor's relationship with Nelidova was kept in deep secrecy.

Varvara Nelidova - mistress of Nicholas I

Decembrist revolt

Nikolai Pavlovich kept a personal diary irregularly; daily entries cover a short period from 1822 to 1825. The entries were made in French in very small handwriting with frequent word abbreviations. The last entry was made by him on the eve of the Decembrist uprising.

In 1820, Emperor Alexander I informed Nikolai Pavlovich and his wife that the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, intended to renounce his right to the throne, so Nikolai would become the heir as the next brother in seniority. Nikolai himself was by no means pleased with this prospect. In his memoirs, he wrote: “The sovereign left, but my wife and I remained in a position that I can only liken to that feeling that, I believe, will amaze a person walking calmly along a pleasant road dotted with flowers and with which the most pleasant views open everywhere, when suddenly an abyss opens under his feet, into which an irresistible force plunges him, not allowing him to retreat or return. Here is a perfect picture of our terrible situation."

In 1823, Konstantin Pavlovich formally renounced his rights to the throne, since he had no children, was divorced and married in a second morganatic marriage to the Polish Countess Grudzinskaya. On August 16 (28), 1823, Alexander I signed a secretly drawn up manifesto, which approved the abdication of the Tsarevich and Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich and approved Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich as the Heir to the Throne. On all packages with the text of the manifesto, Alexander I himself wrote: "Keep until my demand, and in the event of my death, open before any other action."

November 19 (December 1), 1825, while in Taganrog, Emperor Alexander I died suddenly. In St. Petersburg, the news of the death of Alexander I was received only on the morning of November 27 during a prayer service for the health of the emperor. Nicholas, the first of those present, swore allegiance to "Emperor Constantine I" and began to swear in the troops. Constantine himself was in Warsaw at that moment, being the de facto governor of the Kingdom of Poland. On the same day, the State Council met, at which the contents of the Manifesto of 1823 were heard. Finding themselves in a dual position, when the Manifesto pointed to one heir, and the oath was taken to another, the members of the Council turned to Nicholas. He refused to recognize the manifesto of Alexander I and refused to proclaim himself emperor until the final expression of the will of his elder brother. Despite the content of the Manifesto handed over to him, Nicholas called on the Council to take an oath to Constantine "for the peace of the State." Following this call, the State Council, the Senate and the Synod took an oath of allegiance to "Konstantin I".

The next day, a decree was issued on the universal oath to the new emperor. On November 30, the nobles of Moscow swore allegiance to Konstantin. In St. Petersburg, the oath was postponed until December 14.

Nevertheless, Konstantin refused to come to St. Petersburg and confirmed his renunciation in private letters to Nikolai Pavlovich, and then sent rescripts to the chairman of the State Council (December 3 (15), 1825) and the Minister of Justice (December 8 (20), 1825). Constantine did not accept the throne, and at the same time did not want to formally renounce him as emperor, to whom the oath had already been taken. An ambiguous and extremely tense situation of the interregnum was created.

Unable to convince his brother to take the throne and having received his final refusal (albeit without a formal act of renunciation), Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich decided to accept the throne in accordance with the will of Alexander I.

On the evening of December 12 (24), 1825, M. M. Speransky drew up a Manifesto on the accession to the throne of Emperor Nicholas I. Nicholas signed it on December 13 in the morning. Attached to the Manifesto was a letter from Constantine to Alexander I dated January 14 (26), 1822 on the refusal to inherit and the manifesto of Alexander I dated August 16 (28), 1823.

The manifesto on accession to the throne was announced by Nicholas at a meeting of the State Council at about 22:30 on December 13 (25). A separate clause in the Manifesto stipulated that November 19, the day of the death of Alexander I, would be considered the time of accession to the throne, which was an attempt to legally close the gap in the continuity of autocratic power.

A second oath was appointed, or, as they said in the troops, “re-oath”, this time to Nicholas I. The re-oath in St. Petersburg was scheduled for December 14th. On this day, a group of officers - members of a secret society appointed an uprising in order to prevent the troops and the Senate from taking the oath to the new tsar and prevent Nicholas I from taking the throne. The main goal of the rebels was the liberalization of the Russian socio-political system: the establishment of a provisional government, the abolition of serfdom, the equality of all before the law, democratic freedoms (press, confession, labor), the introduction of a jury, the introduction of compulsory military service for all classes, the election of officials, abolishing the poll tax and changing the form of government to a constitutional monarchy or republic.

The rebels decided to block the Senate, send a revolutionary delegation there consisting of Ryleev and Pushchin and present the Senate with a demand not to swear allegiance to Nicholas I, declare the tsarist government deposed and issue a revolutionary manifesto to the Russian people. However, the uprising was brutally suppressed on the same day. Despite the efforts of the Decembrists to stage a coup d'état, troops and government offices were sworn in to the new emperor. Later, the surviving participants in the uprising were exiled, and five leaders were executed.

“My dear Konstantin! Your will is done: I am the emperor, but at what cost, my God! At the cost of the blood of my subjects!”, he wrote to his brother, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, on December 14.

The highest manifesto, given on January 28 (February 9), 1826, with reference to the “Institution of the Imperial Family” on April 5 (16), 1797, decreed: “First, as the days of our life are in the hands of God: then in case of OUR death, until the legal age of majority of the Heir, Grand Duke ALEXANDER NIKOLAEVICH, we determine the Ruler of the State and the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Finland, inseparable from him, OUR BEST BROTHER, Grand Duke MIKHAIL PAVLOVICH ... ".

He was crowned on August 22 (September 3), 1826 in Moscow - instead of June of the same year, as originally planned - due to mourning for the Dowager Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna, who died on May 4 in Belev. The coronation of Nicholas I and Empress Alexandra took place in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin.

On May 12 (24), 1829, the coronation of Nicholas I to the Kingdom of Poland took place in the Senator's Hall of the Royal Castle - a unique event in the history of Russia and Poland.

Full title of Nicholas I as emperor:

“By God’s hastening mercy, We are NICHOLAS the First, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Moscow, Kyiv, Vladimir, Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Chersonis-Tauride, Sovereign of Pskov and Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuanian, Volyn, Podolsky and Finland, Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalsky, Samogitsky, Belostok, Korelsky, Tver, Yugorsky, Perm, Vyatsky, Bulgarian and others; Sovereign and Grand Duke of Novgorod Nizovsky lands, Chernigov, Ryazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Belozersky, Udora, Obdorsky, Kondia, Vitebsk, Mstislav and all the Northern sides Sovereign and Sovereign of Iversky, Kartalinsky, Georgian and Kabardian lands, and Armenian Regions; Cherkasy and Mountain Princes and other Hereditary Sovereign and Possessor; Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn, Dietmar and Oldenburg and others, and others, and others.

Reign of Nicholas I

The first steps of Nicholas I after the coronation were very liberal. The poet was returned from exile, and V. A. Zhukovsky, whose liberal views could not but be known to the emperor, was appointed the main teacher (“mentor”) of the heir.

The emperor closely followed the process of the participants in the December speech and instructed to draw up a summary of their criticisms of the state administration. Despite the fact that attempts on the life of the king, according to existing laws, were punishable by quartering, he replaced this execution by hanging.

The Ministry of State Property was headed by the hero of 1812, Count P. D. Kiselev, a monarchist by conviction, but an opponent of serfdom. The future Decembrists Pestel, Basargin and Burtsov served under him. The name of Kiselev was presented to Nicholas I in the list of conspirators in connection with the case of the uprising. But, despite this, Kiselev, known for the impeccability of his moral rules and talent as an organizer, made a career under Nicholas I as the governor of Moldavia and Wallachia and took an active part in preparing the abolition of serfdom.

Some contemporaries wrote about his despotism. However, as historians point out, the execution of five Decembrists was the only execution in all 30 years of the reign of Nicholas I, while, for example, under Peter I and Catherine II, executions were in the thousands, and under Alexander II - in the hundreds. True, it should be noted that more than 40,000 people died during the suppression of the Polish uprising. They also note that under Nicholas I, torture was not used against political prisoners. Even historians critical of Nicholas I do not mention any violence during the investigation into the case of the Decembrists (in which 579 people were involved as suspects) and Petrashevists (232 people).

Nevertheless, in October 1827, on a report on the secret passage of two Jews across the river. Prut, in violation of the quarantine, which noted that only the death penalty for quarantine violations can stop them, Nikolai wrote: “The guilty should be driven through a thousand people 12 times. Thank God, we didn’t have the death penalty, and it’s not for me to introduce it.”

Centralization of power became the most important direction of domestic policy. To carry out the tasks of political investigation in July 1826, a permanent body was created - the Third Branch of the Personal Office - a secret service with significant powers, the head of which (since 1827) was also the chief of the gendarmes. The third department was headed by A. F. Orlov, who became one of the symbols of the era, and after his death (1844).

On December 6 (18), 1826, the first of the secret committees was created, the task of which was, firstly, to consider the papers sealed in the office of Alexander I after his death, and, secondly, to consider the issue of possible transformations of the state apparatus.

Under Nicholas I, the Polish uprising of 1830-1831 was suppressed, during which Nicholas I was declared deprived of the throne by the rebels (Decree on the dethronement of Nicholas I). After the suppression of the uprising, the Kingdom of Poland lost its independence, the Sejm and the army and was divided into provinces.

Some authors call Nicholas I the “knight of autocracy”: he firmly defended its foundations and stopped attempts to change the existing system, despite the revolutions in Europe. After the suppression of the Decembrist uprising, he launched large-scale measures in the country to eradicate the "revolutionary infection". During the reign of Nicholas I, the persecution of the Old Believers resumed, the Uniates of Belarus and Volhynia were reunited with Orthodoxy (1839).

In the Volga region, the forcible Russification of local peoples was carried out on a large scale. Russification was accompanied by administrative and economic coercion and spiritual oppression of the non-Russian population of the Volga region.

Emperor Nicholas I paid much attention to the army. The introduction of strict discipline in the army in the first years of the reign of Nicholas I, which was subsequently maintained, was associated with the extreme licentiousness that reigned in the Russian army in the last decade of the reign of Alexander I (after the end of the war with Napoleon). Officers often went not in military uniform, but in tailcoats, even during exercises, wearing an overcoat on top. In the Semyonovsky regiment, the soldiers were engaged in crafts and trade, and the proceeds were handed over to the company commander. There were "private" military formations. So, Mamonov, one of the richest people in Russia, formed his own cavalry regiment, which he himself commanded, while expressing extreme anti-monarchist views and calling the tsar (Alexander I) "cattle." Under Nicholas I, army "democracy", bordering on anarchy, was curtailed and strict discipline restored.

Drilling was considered the basis of military training. During the Eastern War, it often happened that for the construction of an insignificant field fortification, a sapper non-commissioned officer led the construction of it, since an infantry officer (or even a sapper who graduated from the cadet corps, and not the Mikhailovsky or Engineering School) had not the slightest idea about the basics of field fortification. In this situation, "the sapper non-commissioned officer conducted the work, the infantry soldiers were the labor force, and their officers were his overseers."

A similar attitude was to the shooting business.

At the height of the Crimean War, due to a significant loss of officers at the front, one of the orders of the emperor was the introduction of drill training in civilian gymnasiums and higher military sciences (fortification and artillery) at universities. Thus, Nicholas I can be considered the founder of initial military training in Russia.

One of the greatest merits of Nikolai Pavlovich can be considered the codification of law. Attracted by the tsar to this work, M. M. Speransky performed a titanic work, thanks to which the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire appeared.

In the reign of Nicholas I, the position of serfs was eased. So, a ban was introduced to exile peasants to hard labor, to sell them one by one and without land, the peasants received the right to redeem themselves from the estates being sold. A reform of the management of the state village was carried out and a “decree on obligated peasants” was signed, which became the foundation for the abolition of serfdom. However, the complete liberation of the peasants during the life of the emperor did not take place.

For the first time, there was a sharp decrease in the number of serfs - their share in the population of Russia, according to various estimates, decreased from 57-58% in 1811-1817 to 35-45% in 1857-1858, and they ceased to make up the majority of the population. Obviously, a significant role was played by the cessation of the practice of "distributing" the state peasants to the landowners along with the lands, which flourished under the former tsars, and the spontaneous liberation of the peasants that began.

The position of state peasants improved, and by the second half of the 1850s, their number reached about 50% of the population. This improvement was mainly due to the measures taken by Count P. D. Kiselyov, who was in charge of managing state property. Thus, all state peasants were allocated their own plots of land and forest plots, and auxiliary cash desks and bread shops were established everywhere, which provided assistance to the peasants with cash loans and grain in case of crop failure. As a result of these measures, not only did the well-being of the state peasants increase, but the treasury income from them increased by 15-20%, tax arrears were halved, and by the mid-1850s there were practically no landless laborers who eked out a beggarly and dependent existence, all received land from the state.

A number of laws were passed to improve the position of serfs. Thus, the landlords were strictly forbidden to sell peasants (without land) and exile them to hard labor (which had previously been a common practice); serfs received the right to own land, conduct business activities and received relative freedom of movement. Earlier, under Peter I, a rule was introduced according to which any peasant who found himself at a distance of more than 30 miles from his village without a vacation certificate from the landowner was considered a fugitive and was subject to punishment. These strict restrictions: the obligatory leave certificate (passport) for any departure from the village, the ban on business transactions and even, for example, the ban on giving a daughter in marriage to another village (it was necessary to pay a "ransom" to the landowner) - survived until the 19th century. and were canceled during the first 10-15 years of the reign of Nicholas I.

On the other hand, for the first time, the state began to systematically ensure that the rights of the peasants were not violated by the landowners (this was one of the functions of the Third Section), and to punish the landowners for these violations. As a result of the application of punishments in relation to the landlords, by the end of the reign of Nicholas I, about 200 landowners' estates were under arrest, which greatly affected the position of the peasants and the landowner's psychology.

Thus, serfdom under Nicholas changed its character - from the institution of slavery, it actually turned into an institution of rent in kind, which to some extent guaranteed the peasants a number of basic rights.

These changes in the position of the peasants caused discontent on the part of large landowners and nobles, who saw them as a threat to the established order.

Some reforms aimed at improving the situation of the peasants did not lead to the desired result due to the stubborn opposition of the landowners. So, on the initiative of D. G. Bibikov, who later became the Minister of Internal Affairs, in 1848 an inventory reform was launched in Right-Bank Ukraine, the experience of which was supposed to be extended to other provinces. The inventory rules introduced by Bibikov, which were obligatory for landlords, established a certain size of a peasant's land plot and certain duties for him. However, many landlords ignored their implementation, and the local administration, which was dependent on them, did not take any measures.

Was first started mass peasant education program. The number of peasant schools in the country increased from 60 with 1,500 students in 1838 to 2,551 with 111,000 students in 1856. In the same period, many technical schools and universities were opened - in essence, a system of professional primary and secondary education of the country was created.

The state of affairs in industry at the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I was the worst in the history of the Russian Empire. An industry capable of competing with the West, where the industrial revolution was already coming to an end at that time, did not actually exist. In Russia's exports there were only raw materials, almost all types of industrial products needed by the country were purchased abroad.

From 1825 to 1863, the annual output of Russian industry per worker tripled, while in the previous period it not only did not grow, but even decreased. From 1819 to 1859, the volume of cotton production in Russia increased almost 30 times; the volume of engineering products from 1830 to 1860 increased 33 times.

For the first time in the history of Russia, under Nicholas I, intensive construction of paved highways began: the Moscow-Petersburg, Moscow-Irkutsk, Moscow-Warsaw routes were built. Of the 7,700 miles of highways built in Russia by 1893, 5,300 miles (about 70%) were built between 1825-1860. The construction of railways was also begun and about 1,000 versts of railroad tracks were built, which gave impetus to the development of their own mechanical engineering.

The rapid development of industry led to a sharp increase in the urban population and the growth of cities. The share of the urban population during the reign of Nicholas I more than doubled - from 4.5% in 1825 to 9.2% in 1858.

Having ascended the throne, Nikolai Pavlovich abandoned the practice of favoritism that had prevailed over the previous century. He introduced a moderate system of incentives for officials (in the form of rent of estates / property and cash bonuses), which he controlled to a large extent. Unlike previous reigns, historians have not recorded large gifts in the form of palaces or thousands of serfs granted to any nobleman or royal relative. To combat corruption under Nicholas I, for the first time, regular audits were introduced at all levels. Trials of officials have become commonplace. So, in 1853, 2540 officials were on trial. Nicholas I himself was critical of the successes in this area, saying that only he and the heir did not steal in his entourage.

Nicholas I demanded that only Russian be spoken at court. The courtiers, who did not know their native language, learned a certain number of phrases and uttered them only when they received a sign that the emperor was approaching.

Nicholas I suppressed the slightest manifestations of freethinking. In 1826, a censorship charter was issued, nicknamed "cast iron" by his contemporaries. It was forbidden to print almost everything that had any political overtones. In 1828, another censorship charter was issued, somewhat softening the previous one. A new increase in censorship was associated with the European revolutions of 1848. It got to the point that in 1836 the censor P. I. Gaevsky, after serving 8 days in the guardhouse, doubted whether it was possible to let news like “such and such a king died” be allowed to go into print. When in 1837 an article about the attempt on the life of the French king Louis Philippe I was published in the Saint Petersburg Vedomosti, Count Benckendorff immediately notified the Minister of Education S. S. Uvarov that he considered it “indecent to place such news in the statements, especially those published by the government ".

In September 1826, Nicholas I received Alexander Pushkin, who had been released by him from Mikhailovsky exile, and listened to his confession that on December 14, 1825, Pushkin would have been with the conspirators, but he had treated him mercifully: he saved the poet from general censorship (he decided to censor his writings himself) , instructed him to prepare a note “On Public Education”, called him after the meeting “the smartest man in Russia” (however, later, after Pushkin’s death, he spoke of him and this meeting very coldly).

In 1828, Nicholas I dismissed the case against Pushkin about the authorship of the Gavriiliada after a handwritten letter from the poet, which, according to many researchers, was handed over to him personally, bypassing the commission of inquiry, contained, according to many researchers, recognition of the authorship of the seditious work after long denials. However, the emperor never fully trusted the poet, seeing him as a dangerous "leader of the liberals", Pushkin was under police surveillance, his letters were censored; Pushkin, having gone through the first euphoria, which was also expressed in poems in honor of the tsar (“Stans”, “To Friends”), by the mid-1830s, he also began to evaluate the sovereign ambiguously. “He has a lot of ensign and a little Peter the Great,” Pushkin wrote about Nikolai in his diary on May 21 (June 2), 1834; at the same time, the diary also notes “sensible” remarks on the “History of Pugachev” (the sovereign edited it and gave Pushkin 20 thousand rubles in debt), ease of handling and good language of the tsar.

In 1834, Pushkin was appointed chamber junker of the imperial court, which weighed heavily on the poet and was also reflected in his diary. Pushkin could sometimes afford not to come to the balls to which Nicholas I personally invited him. Pushkin, on the other hand, preferred communication with writers, and Nicholas I showed him his displeasure. The role played by the emperor in the conflict between Pushkin and Dantes is controversially assessed by historians. After the death of Pushkin, Nicholas I granted a pension to his widow and children, while limiting speeches in memory of the poet, showing, in particular, dissatisfaction with the violation of the ban on duels.

As a result of the policy of strict censorship, Alexander Polezhaev was arrested for free poetry, and was twice exiled to the Caucasus. By order of the emperor, the magazines European, Moscow Telegraph, Telescope were closed, its publisher Nadezhdin was persecuted, and F. Schiller was banned from staging in Russia.

In 1852, he was arrested and then administratively sent to the village for writing an obituary dedicated to memory (the obituary itself was not censored). The censor also suffered when he let Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter go to print, in which, in the opinion of the Moscow Governor-General Count A. A. Zakrevsky, "a decisive direction was expressed towards the destruction of the landowners."

In 1850, by order of Nicholas I, the play “Own people - let's settle” was banned from staging. The Committee of Higher Censorship was dissatisfied with the fact that among the characters drawn by the author there was not "none of those respectable merchants of ours, in whom piety, honesty and directness of mind constitute a typical and inalienable attribute."

Censorship did not allow publication of some jingoistic articles and works containing harsh and politically undesirable statements and views, which happened, for example, during the Crimean War with two poems. From one (“Prophecy”), Nicholas I with his own hand crossed out a paragraph that dealt with the erection of a cross over Sophia of Constantinople and the “all-Slavic king”; another (“Now you are not up to poetry”) was banned from publication by the minister, apparently due to the “somewhat harsh tone of presentation” noted by the censor.

Having received a good engineering education at a young age, Nicholas I showed considerable knowledge in the field of construction equipment. So, he made successful proposals regarding the dome of the Trinity Cathedral in St. Petersburg. In the future, already occupying the highest position in the state, he closely followed the order in urban planning, and not a single significant project was approved without his signature.

He issued a decree regulating the height of private buildings in the capital. The decree limited the height of any private building to the width of the street on which the building was being built. At the same time, the height of a residential private building could not exceed 11 sazhens (23.47 m, which corresponds to the height of the cornice of the Winter Palace). Thus, the well-known St. Petersburg city panorama that existed until recently was created. Knowing the requirements for choosing a suitable place for the construction of a new astronomical observatory, Nikolai personally indicated a place for it on the top of Pulkovo Mountain.

The first railways of the all-Russian scale appeared in Russia, including the Nikolaev railway. It is likely that Nicholas I first became acquainted with the technologies of locomotive building and railway construction at the age of 19 during a trip to England in 1816, where the future emperor visited the railway engineer Stephenson.

Nicholas I, having studied in detail the technical data of the railways proposed for construction, demanded an expansion of the Russian gauge compared to the European one (1524 mm versus 1435 in Europe), thereby excluding the possibility of delivering the armed forces of a potential enemy deep into Russia. The gauge adopted by the Emperor was proposed by the road builder, American engineer Whistler, and corresponded to the 5-foot gauge adopted at that time in some "southern" US states.

The high relief of the monument to Nicholas I in St. Petersburg depicts an episode of his inspection trip along the Nikolaev railway, when his train stopped at the Verebinsky railway bridge.

The naval defense of St. Petersburg under Admiral Travers relied on a system of wood-and-earth fortifications near Kronstadt, armed with outdated short-range cannons, which allowed the enemy to destroy them from long distances without hindrance. Already in December 1827, at the direction of the Emperor, work began on replacing wooden fortifications with stone ones. Nicholas I personally reviewed the designs of the fortifications proposed by the engineers and approved them. And in some cases (for example, during the construction of the fort "Emperor Paul the First"), he made specific proposals to reduce the cost and speed up construction.

Nicholas I, aware of the need for reforms, considered their implementation a long and cautious affair. He looked at the state subordinate to him, as an engineer looks at a complex, but deterministic mechanism in its functioning, in which everything is interconnected and the reliability of one part ensures the correct operation of others. The ideal of a social structure was army life fully regulated by charters.

Foreign policy of Nicholas I was concentrated on three main directions of the foreign policy of the Russian Empire: the fight against the revolutionary movement in Europe; the eastern question, including Russia's struggle for control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles; as well as the expansion of the empire, advancement in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

An important aspect of foreign policy was the return to the principles of the Holy Alliance. The role of Russia in the fight against any manifestations of the "spirit of change" in European life has increased. It was during the reign of Nicholas I that Russia received the unflattering nickname of the "gendarme of Europe." So, at the request of the Austrian Empire, Russia took part in the suppression of the Hungarian revolution, sending a 140,000-strong corps to Hungary, which was trying to free itself from oppression by Austria; as a result, the throne of Franz Joseph was saved. The latter circumstance did not prevent the Austrian emperor, who was afraid of an excessive strengthening of Russia's positions in the Balkans, soon taking a position unfriendly to Nicholas during the Crimean War and even threatening her with entering the war on the side of a coalition hostile to Russia, which Nicholas I regarded as ungrateful treachery; Russian-Austrian relations were hopelessly damaged until the end of the existence of both monarchies.

A special place in the foreign policy of Nicholas I was occupied by the Eastern Question.

Along with this, Russia sought to ensure its influence in the Balkans and the possibility of unhindered navigation in the straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles).

During the Russian-Turkish wars of 1806-1812. and 1828-1829, Russia made great strides in implementing this policy. At the request of Russia, which declared itself the patroness of all Christian subjects of the Sultan, the Sultan was forced to recognize the freedom and independence of Greece and the broad autonomy of Serbia (1830); According to the Unkar-Iskelesi Treaty (1833), which marked the peak of Russian influence in Constantinople, Russia received the right to block the passage of foreign ships to the Black Sea (which was lost to it as a result of the Second London Convention in 1841).

The same reasons - support for the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire and disagreements over the Eastern Question - pushed Russia to aggravate relations with Turkey in 1853, which resulted in her declaring war on Russia. The beginning of the war with Turkey in 1853 was marked by the brilliant victory of the Russian fleet under the command of the admiral, who defeated the enemy in the Sinop Bay. It was the last major battle of the sailing fleets.

In 1854, England and France entered the war on the side of Turkey. Due to the technical backwardness of Russia, it was difficult to resist these European powers. The main hostilities unfolded in the Crimea.

In October 1854, the Allies laid siege to Sevastopol. The Russian army suffered a series of defeats and was unable to provide assistance to the besieged fortress city. Despite the heroic defense of the city, after an 11-month siege, in August 1855, the defenders of Sevastopol were forced to surrender the city.

At the beginning of 1856, following the results of the Crimean War, the Treaty of Paris was signed. According to its terms, Russia was forbidden to have naval forces, arsenals and fortresses on the Black Sea. Russia became vulnerable from the sea and was deprived of the opportunity to pursue an active foreign policy in this region.

Generally during the reign of Nicholas I, Russia participated in wars: Caucasian War of 1817-1864, Russian-Persian War of 1826-1828, Russian-Turkish War of 1828-1829, Crimean War of 1853-1856.

Death of Nicholas I

He died, according to historical sources, "at twelve minutes past one in the afternoon" on February 18 (March 2), 1855. According to the official version - due to pneumonia (he caught a cold while taking the parade in a light uniform, being already sick with the flu). The funeral service was performed by Metropolitan Nikanor (Klementievsky).

According to some historians of medicine, the death of the emperor could have occurred due to the consequences of a severe injury he received on August 26 (September 7), 1836 during a study tour of Russia. Then, as a result of a nighttime traffic accident that occurred near the city of Chembar, Penza province, Emperor Nicholas I received a fracture of the collarbone and shock concussion. The diagnosis was made by a random physician, who probably did not have the opportunity to diagnose the condition of the internal organs of the victim. The emperor was forced to stay for two weeks in Chembar for a cure. As soon as his health stabilized, he continued his journey. Due to such circumstances, Emperor Nicholas I, after a serious injury, was without qualified medical care for a long time.

The emperor, at the approach of death, maintained complete composure. He managed to say goodbye to each of the children and grandchildren and, having blessed them, turned to them with a reminder that they should remain friendly with each other. The last words of the emperor, addressed to his son Alexander, was the phrase "Hold tight ...".

Immediately after this, rumors spread widely in the capital that Nikolai had committed suicide. The disease began against the backdrop of disappointing news from the besieged Sevastopol and aggravated after receiving news of the defeat of General Khrulev near Evpatoria, which was perceived as a harbinger of an inevitable defeat in the war, which Nicholas, according to his temperament, could not survive. The tsar's exit to the parade in the cold without an overcoat was perceived as an intention to get a deadly cold, according to stories, the life doctor Mandt told the tsar: "Sir, this is worse than death, this is suicide!"

It can be said with certainty that the disease (mild flu) began on January 27, noticeably intensified on the night of February 4, and in the afternoon, already ill, Nikolai went to withdraw troops; after that, he fell ill for a short time, quickly went on the mend, on February 9, despite the objections of the doctors, in a 23-degree frost without an overcoat, he went to review the marching battalions. The same thing happened on February 10, with even more severe frost. After that, the disease worsened, Nikolai spent several days in bed, but his powerful organism took over, on February 15 he has been working all day.

No bulletins were issued on the king's health at this time, showing that the disease was not considered dangerous. On the evening of February 14, a courier arrived with a message about the defeat near Evpatoria. The news made the most overwhelming impression, especially since Nicholas himself was the initiator of the attack on Evpatoria.

On February 17, the emperor's condition suddenly and sharply worsened, and on the morning of February 18, an excruciating agony set in, lasting several hours (which does not happen with pneumonia). According to a rumor that immediately spread, the emperor, at his request, was given the poison by the medical doctor Mandt. Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna directly accused Mandt of poisoning her brother. The emperor forbade the autopsy and embalming of his body.

In honor of Nicholas I, the Nikolaevskaya Square in Kazan and the Nikolaevskaya Hospital in Peterhof were named.

In honor of Emperor Nicholas I in the Russian Empire, about a dozen monuments were erected, mainly various columns and obelisks, in memory of his visit to one place or another. Almost all sculptural monuments to the Emperor (with the exception of the equestrian monument in St. Petersburg) were destroyed during the years of Soviet power.

Currently, there are the following monuments to the Emperor:

St. Petersburg. Equestrian monument on St. Isaac's Square. Opened June 26 (July 8), 1859, sculptor P. K. Klodt. The monument has been preserved in its original form. The fence surrounding it was dismantled in the 1930s, recreated again in 1992.

St. Petersburg. Bronze bust of the Emperor on a high granite pedestal. It was opened on July 12, 2001 in front of the facade of the building of the former psychiatric department of the Nikolaev military hospital, founded in 1840 by decree of the Emperor (now the St. Petersburg District Military Clinical Hospital), 63 Suvorovsky pr. granite pedestal, was opened in front of the main facade of this hospital on August 15 (27), 1890. The monument was destroyed shortly after 1917.

St. Petersburg. Gypsum bust on a high granite pedestal. Opened on May 19, 2003 on the front staircase of the Vitebsk railway station (Zagorodny pr., 52), sculptors V. S. and S. V. Ivanov, architect T. L. Torich.

Velikiy Novgorod. Image of Nicholas I on the monument "Millennium of Russia". Opened in 1862, sculptor - M. O. Mikeshin.

Moscow. Monument to the "Creators of Russian Railways" near the Kazansky railway station - a bronze bust of the emperor, surrounded by famous figures in the railway industry of his reign. Opened August 1, 2013.

The bronze bust of Emperor Nicholas I was inaugurated on July 2, 2015 on the territory of the Nikolo-Berlyukovsky Monastery in the village of Avdotino, Moscow Region (sculptor A. A. Appolonov).

St. Nicholas Cathedral in the city of Starobelsk. In 1859, a place was determined for the construction of the temple - between Malaya Dvoryanskaya and Cathedral, Classical and Nikolaevskaya streets. The temple was built in the Baroque style and solemnly consecrated in 1862. The temple is considered an architectural monument of the 19th century and is protected by the state.

The following were named after Nicholas I: an armadillo that participated in the Battle of Tsushima and surrendered to the Japanese after it, a battleship laid down in 1914, but unfinished due to the Civil War, and a civilian steamer, on which Louis de Gekkeren and Georges Dantes arrived in Russia and sailed away to Europe Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol.

In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nicholas I, by decrees of Nicholas II, state awards were established, namely two commemorative medals. The medal "In memory of the reign of Emperor Nicholas I" was awarded to persons who were in the service during the reign of Nicholas I, the medal "In memory of the reign of Emperor Nicholas I" for pupils of educational institutions was awarded to pupils of military educational institutions who studied during the reign of Nicholas I, but the rights did not have to wear the first medal.

The image of Nicholas I in the cinema:

1910 - "The Life and Death of Pushkin";
1911 - "Defense of Sevastopol";
1918 - "Father Sergius" (actor Vladimir Gaidarov);
1926 - "Decembrists" (actor Yevgeny Boronikhin);
1927 - "The Poet and the Tsar" (actor Konstantin Karenin);
1928 - "Secrets of an ancient family", Poland (actor Pavel Overllo);
1930 - "White Devil" Germany (actor Fritz Alberti);
1932 - "Dead House" (actor Nikolai Vitovtov);
1936 - "Prometheus" (actor Vladimir Ershov);
1943 - "Lermontov" (actor A. Savostyanov);
1946 - "Glinka" (actor B. Livanov);
1951 - "Taras Shevchenko" (actor M. Nazvanov);
1951 - "Belinsky" (actor M. Nazvanov);
1952 - "Composer Glinka" (actor M. Nazvanov);
1959 - "Hadji Murat - the white devil" (actor Milivoye Zhivanovich);
1964 - "Dream" (actor);
1965 - "The Third Youth" (actor V. Strzhelchik);
1967 - "The Green Carriage" (actor V. Strzhelchik);
1967 - "Wake up Mukhin!" (actor V. Zakharchenko);
1968 - “Mistake of Honore de Balzac” (actor S. Polezhaev);
1975 - "Star of Captivating Happiness" (actor V. Livanov);
2010 - "Death of Vazir-Mukhtar" (actor A. Zibrov);
2013 - “The Romanovs. The seventh film "(actor S. Druzhko);
2014 - “Duel. Pushkin - Lermontov "(actor V. Maksimov);
2014 - "Fort Ross: In Search of Adventure" (actor Dmitry Naumov);
2016 - "The Monk and the Demon" (actor Nikita Tarasov);
2016 - "The Case of the Decembrists" (actor Artyom Efremov)

Nicholas I Pavlovich


Coronation:
Predecessor:	Alexander I
Successor:	Alexander II

Coronation:
Predecessor:	Alexander I
Successor:	Alexander II

Predecessor:	Alexander I
Successor:	Alexander II
Religion:	Orthodoxy
Birth:

Buried:	Peter and Paul Cathedral
Dynasty:	Romanovs

	Maria Fedorovna
	Charlotte of Prussia (Alexandra Feodorovna)
Monogram:

Biography

Childhood and adolescence

The most important milestones of the reign

Domestic politics

Peasant question

Nicholas and the problem of corruption

Foreign policy

Emperor Engineer

Culture, censorship and writers

Nicknames

Family and personal life

Monuments

Nicholas I Pavlovich Unforgettable (June 25 (July 6), 1796, Tsarskoye Selo - February 18 (March 2), 1855, St. Petersburg) - Emperor of All Russia from December 14 (December 26), 1825 to February 18 (March 2), 1855, Tsar of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland . From the imperial house of the Romanovs, Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov dynasty.

Biography

Childhood and adolescence

Nicholas was the third son of Emperor Paul I and Empress Maria Feodorovna. He was born on June 25, 1796 - a few months before the accession of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich to the throne. Thus, he was the last of the grandchildren of Catherine II, born during her lifetime.

The birth of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich was announced in Tsarskoye Selo by cannon fire and bell ringing, and news was sent to St. Petersburg by courier.

Odes were written for the birth of the Grand Duke, the author of one of them was G. R. Derzhavin. Before him, in the imperial house of the Romanovs, the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov dynasty, children were not named after Nikolai. Name day - December 6 according to the Julian calendar (Nicholas the Wonderworker).

According to the order established under Empress Catherine, Grand Duke Nikolai from birth entered the care of the royal grandmother, but the death of the Empress that soon followed cut off her influence on the course of the upbringing of the Grand Duke. His nanny was Scottish Lyon. She was for the first seven years the only leader of Nicholas. The boy, with all the strength of his soul, became attached to his first teacher, and one cannot but agree that during the period of tender childhood, “the heroic, chivalrous, noble, strong and open character of Nanny Lyon” left an imprint on the character of her pupil.

Since November 1800, General M. I. Lamzdorf became the tutor of Nikolai and Mikhail. The choice of General Lamzdorf for the post of educator of the Grand Duke was made by Emperor Paul. Paul I pointed out: “Just don’t make such rake of my sons as German princes” (German. Solche Schlingel wie die deutschen Prinzen). In the highest order of November 23, 1800, it was announced:

"Lieutenant-General Lamzdorf has been appointed to be under His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich." The general stayed with his pupil for 17 years. Obviously, Lamzdorf fully satisfied the pedagogical requirements of Maria Feodorovna. Thus, in a parting letter of 1814, Maria Fedorovna called General Lamzdorf the “second father” of Grand Dukes Nikolai and Mikhail.

The death of his father, Paul I, in March 1801, could not but be imprinted in the memory of the four-year-old Nicholas. He later described what happened in his memoirs:

The events of that sad day are preserved in my memory like a vague dream; I was awakened and saw Countess Lieven before me.

When I was dressed, we noticed through the window, on the drawbridge under the church, the guards, which were not there the day before; there was the entire Semyonovsky regiment in an extremely careless form. None of us suspected that we had lost our father; we were taken downstairs to my mother, and soon from there we went with her, sisters, Mikhail and Countess Liven to the Winter Palace. The guard went out into the courtyard of the Mikhailovsky Palace and saluted. My mother immediately silenced him. My mother was lying in the back of the room when Emperor Alexander entered, accompanied by Konstantin and Prince Nikolai Ivanovich Saltykov; he threw himself on his knees before his mother, and I can still hear his sobs. They brought him water, and they took us away. We were happy to see our rooms again and, I must tell you the truth, our wooden horses, which we had forgotten there.

This was the first blow of fate dealt to him during the period of his most tender age, a blow. Since then, concern for his upbringing and education has been concentrated entirely and exclusively in the jurisdiction of the widowed Empress Maria Feodorovna, out of a sense of delicacy towards which Emperor Alexander I refrained from any influence on the upbringing of his younger brothers.

Empress Maria Feodorovna's greatest concern in the education of Nikolai Pavlovich was to try to turn him away from the passion for military exercises, which was found in him from early childhood. The passion for the technical side of military affairs, instilled in Russia by Paul I, took deep and strong roots in the royal family - Alexander I, despite his liberalism, was an ardent supporter of the watch parade and all its subtleties, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich experienced complete happiness only on parade ground, among drilled teams. The younger brothers were not inferior in this passion to the older ones. From early childhood, Nikolai began to show a special passion for military toys and stories about military operations. The best reward for him was permission to go to a parade or a divorce, where he watched everything that happened with special attention, dwelling on even the smallest details.

According to V. A. Mukhanov, Nikolai Pavlovich, having completed his education, was himself horrified by his ignorance and after the wedding he tried to fill this gap, but the conditions of a scattered life, the predominance of military occupations and the bright joys of family life distracted him from constant office work. “His mind was not processed, his upbringing was careless,” Queen Victoria wrote about Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich in 1844.

It is known that the future emperor was fond of painting, which he studied in childhood under the guidance of the painter I. A. Akimov and the author of religious and historical compositions, Professor V. K. Shebuev

During the Patriotic War of 1812 and the subsequent military campaigns of the Russian army in Europe, Nicholas was eager to go to war, but met with a decisive refusal from the Empress Mother. In 1813, the 17-year-old Grand Duke was taught strategy. At this time, from his sister Anna Pavlovna, with whom he was very friendly, Nicholas accidentally learned that Alexander I had visited Silesia, where he had seen the family of the Prussian king, that Alexander liked his eldest daughter, Princess Charlotte, and that his intention was that Nicholas somehow met her.

Only at the beginning of 1814 did Emperor Alexander allow his younger brothers to join the army abroad. On February 5 (17), 1814, Nikolai and Mikhail left Petersburg. On this journey, they were accompanied by General Lamzdorf, gentlemen: I. F. Savrasov, A. P. Aledinsky and P. I. Arsenyev, Colonel Gianotti and Dr. Ruehl. After 17 days, they reached Berlin, where the 17-year-old Nicholas saw the 16-year-old daughter of King Frederick William III of Prussia, Charlotte.

After spending one day in Berlin, the travelers proceeded through Leipzig, Weimar, where they saw their sister Maria Pavlovna, Frankfurt am Main, Bruchsal, where Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna then lived, Rastatt, Freiburg and Basel. Near Basel, they first heard enemy shots, as the Austrians and Bavarians were besieging the nearby fortress of Güningen. Then through Altkirch they entered France and reached the tail of the army at Vesoul. However, Alexander I ordered the brothers to return to Basel. Only when the news came that Paris had been taken and Napoleon had been banished to the island of Elba, did the grand dukes receive orders to come to Paris.

On November 4, 1815, in Berlin, during an official dinner, the engagement of Princess Charlotte and Tsarevich and Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich was announced.

Since 1815, military conversations between Nikolai Pavlovich and General Opperman began.

On his return from his second campaign, beginning in December 1815, Grand Duke Nicholas again began to study with some of his former professors. Balugyansky read "the science of finance", Akhverdov read Russian history (from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to the Time of Troubles). With Markevich, the Grand Duke was engaged in "military translations", and with Gianotti - reading the works of Giraud and Lloyd about various campaigns of the wars of 1814 and 1815, as well as analyzing the project "on the expulsion of the Turks from Europe under certain given conditions."

Youth

In March 1816, three months before his twentieth birthday, fate brought Nicholas together with the Grand Duchy of Finland. At the beginning of 1816, the University of Åbo, following the example of the universities of Sweden, most humbly interceded whether Alexander I would honor him with royal grace to grant him a chancellor in the person of His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. According to the historian M. M. Borodkin, this “thought belongs entirely to Tengström, the bishop of the Abo diocese, a supporter of Russia. Alexander I granted the request and Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich was appointed chancellor of the university. His task was to maintain the status of the university and the conformity of university life with the spirit and traditions. In memory of this event, the St. Petersburg Mint minted a bronze medal.

Also in 1816 he was appointed chief of the cavalry chasseurs.

In the summer of 1816, Nikolai Pavlovich was to complete his education by taking a trip around Russia to get acquainted with his fatherland in administrative, commercial and industrial terms. Upon returning from this trip, it was also planned to make a trip abroad to get acquainted with England. On this occasion, on behalf of Empress Maria Feodorovna, a special note was drawn up, which summarized the main foundations of the administrative system of provincial Russia, described the areas that the Grand Duke had to pass through, in historical, everyday, industrial and geographical terms, it was indicated what exactly could be the subject of conversations between the Grand Duke and representatives of the provincial authorities, what should be paid attention to, and so on.

Thanks to a trip to some provinces of Russia, Nikolai got a visual idea of the internal state and problems of his country, and in England he got acquainted with the experience of developing one of the most advanced socio-political systems of his time. However, Nicholas's emerging political system of views was distinguished by a pronounced conservative, anti-liberal orientation.

On July 13, 1817, Grand Duke Nicholas married Princess Charlotte of Prussia. The wedding took place on the birthday of the young princess - July 13, 1817 in the church of the Winter Palace. Charlotte of Prussia converted to Orthodoxy and was given a new name - Alexandra Feodorovna. This marriage strengthened the political union of Russia and Prussia.

The question of succession. Interregnum

In 1820, Emperor Alexander I informed his brother Nikolai Pavlovich and his wife that the heir to the throne, their brother Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, intended to renounce his right, so Nikolai would become the heir as the next brother in seniority.

In 1823, Konstantin formally renounced his rights to the throne, as he had no children, was divorced and married in a second morganatic marriage to the Polish Countess Grudzinska. On August 16, 1823, Alexander I signed a secretly drawn up manifesto, which approved the abdication of the Tsesarevich and Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich and approved Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich as the Heir to the Throne. On all packages with the text of the manifesto, Alexander I himself wrote: "Keep until my demand, and in the event of my death, open before any other action."

On November 19, 1825, while in Taganrog, Emperor Alexander I died suddenly. In St. Petersburg, the news of Alexander's death was received only on the morning of November 27 during a prayer service for the emperor's health. Nicholas, the first of those present, swore allegiance to "Emperor Constantine I" and began to swear in the troops. Constantine himself was in Warsaw at that moment, being the de facto governor of the Kingdom of Poland. On the same day, the State Council met, at which the contents of the Manifesto of 1823 were heard. Finding themselves in a dual position, when the Manifesto pointed to one heir, and the oath was taken to another, the members of the Council turned to Nicholas. He refused to recognize the manifesto of Alexander I and refused to proclaim himself emperor until the final expression of the will of his elder brother. Despite the content of the Manifesto handed over to him, Nicholas called on the Council to take an oath to Constantine "for the peace of the State." Following this call, the State Council, the Senate and the Synod took an oath of allegiance to "Konstantin I".

Nevertheless, Konstantin refused to come to St. Petersburg and confirmed his renunciation in private letters to Nikolai Pavlovich, and then sent rescripts to the Chairman of the State Council (December 3 (15), 1825) and the Minister of Justice (December 8 (20), 1825). Constantine did not accept the throne, and at the same time did not want to formally renounce him as emperor, to whom the oath had already been taken. An ambiguous and extremely tense situation of the interregnum was created.

Accession to the throne. Decembrist revolt

On the evening of December 12 (24), M. M. Speransky compiled Manifesto on the accession to the throne of Emperor Nicholas I. Nikolai signed it on December 13 in the morning. Attached to the Manifesto was a letter from Constantine to Alexander I dated January 14, 1822 on the refusal to inherit and the manifesto of Alexander I dated August 16, 1823.

My dear Konstantin! Your will is done: I am the emperor, but at what cost, my God! At the cost of the blood of my subjects! From a letter to his brother Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, December 14.

No one is able to understand the burning pain that I feel and will experience all my life when I remember this day. Letter to the Ambassador of France, Count Le Ferrone

No one feels a greater need than I do to be judged with leniency. But let those who judge me consider the extraordinary manner in which I have risen from the post of newly appointed chief of division to the post I currently hold, and under what circumstances. And then I will have to admit that if it were not for the obvious patronage of Divine Providence, it would not only be impossible for me to act properly, but even to cope with what the ordinary circle of my real duties requires of me ... Letter to the Tsarevich.

The highest manifesto, given on January 28, 1826, with reference to the “Institution of the Imperial Family” on April 5, 1797, decreed: “First, as the days of our life are in the hands of God: then in case of OUR death, until the legal age of the Heir, the Grand Duke ALEXANDER NIKOLAEVICH, we determine the Ruler of the State and the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Finland, inseparable from him, OUR FAMILY BROTHER, Grand Duke MIKHAIL PAVLOVICH. »

Archbishop Filaret (Drozdov) of Moscow, who served during the coronation of Metropolitan Seraphim (Glagolevsky) of Novgorod, as is clear from his track record, was the person who presented Nicholas "a description of the opening of the act of Emperor Alexander Pavlovich stored in the Assumption Cathedral."

In 1827, the Coronation Album of Nicholas I was published in Paris.

The most important milestones of the reign

1826 - Establishment of the Third Branch of the Imperial Chancellery - a secret police to monitor the state of minds in the state.
1826-1828 - War with Persia.
1828-1829 - War with Turkey.
1828 - Foundation of the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg.
1830-1831 - Uprising in Poland.
1832 - Approval of the new status of the Kingdom of Poland within the Russian Empire.
1834 - The Imperial University of St. Vladimir in Kyiv was founded (the University was founded by decree of Nicholas I on November 8, 1833 as the Kyiv Imperial University of St. Vladimir, on the basis of the Vilna University and the Kremenets Lyceum closed after the Polish uprising of 1830-1831.).
1837 - Opening of the first Russian railway St. Petersburg - Tsarskoye Selo.
1839-1841 - Eastern crisis, in which Russia acted together with England against the France-Egypt coalition.
1849 - Participation of Russian troops in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising.
1851 - Completion of the construction of the Nikolaev railway, which connected St. Petersburg with Moscow. Opening of the New Hermitage.
1853-1856 - Crimean War. Nikolai does not live to see its end. In winter, he catches a cold and dies in 1855.

Domestic politics

His very first steps after his coronation were very liberal. The poet A. S. Pushkin was returned from exile, and V. A. Zhukovsky, whose liberal views could not be known to the emperor, was appointed the main teacher (“mentor”) of the heir. (However, Zhukovsky wrote about the events of December 14, 1825: “Providence saved Russia. By the will of Providence, this day was the day of purification. Providence was from the side of our fatherland and the throne.”)

The Ministry of State Property was headed by the hero of 1812, Count P. D. Kiselev, a monarchist by conviction, but an opponent of serfdom. The future Decembrists Pestel, Basargin and Burtsov served under him. The name of Kiselyov was presented to Nikolai in the list of conspirators in connection with the putsch case. But, despite this, Kiselev, known for the impeccability of his moral rules and talent as an organizer, made a successful career under Nicholas as the governor of Moldavia and Wallachia and took an active part in preparing the abolition of serfdom.

Deeply sincere in his convictions, often heroic and great in his devotion to the cause in which he saw the mission entrusted to him by providence, it can be said that Nicholas I was a donquixote of autocracy, a terrible and malicious donquixote, because he possessed omnipotence, which allowed him to subjugate all his fanatical and outdated theory and trample underfoot the most legitimate aspirations and rights of his age. That is why this man, who combined with the soul of a generous and chivalrous character of rare nobility and honesty, a warm and tender heart and an exalted and enlightened mind, although devoid of breadth, that is why this man could be a tyrant and despot for Russia during his 30-year reign who systematically stifled any manifestation of initiative and life in the country he ruled.

A. F. Tyutcheva.

At the same time, this opinion of the court lady-in-waiting, which corresponded to the mood of representatives of the highest noble society, contradicts a number of facts indicating that it was in the era of Nicholas I that Russian literature flourished (Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Gogol, Belinsky, Turgenev), which never happened before. was not there before, Russian industry developed extraordinarily rapidly, which for the first time began to take shape as a technically advanced and competitive one, serfdom changed its character, ceasing to be serf slavery (see below). These changes were appreciated by the most prominent contemporaries. “No, I’m not a flatterer when I compose free praise to the tsar,” A. S. Pushkin wrote about Nicholas I. Pushkin also wrote: “There is no law in Russia, but a pillar - and a crown on a pillar.” By the end of his reign, N.V. Gogol sharply changed his views on autocracy, which he began to praise, and even in serfdom he almost did not see any evil.

The following facts do not correspond to the ideas about Nicholas I as a "tyrant", which existed in the noble high society and in the liberal press. As historians point out, the execution of 5 Decembrists was the only execution in all 30 years of the reign of Nicholas I, while, for example, under Peter I and Catherine II, executions were in the thousands, and under Alexander II - in the hundreds. The situation was no better in Western Europe: for example, in Paris, 11,000 participants in the Parisian uprising in June 1848 were shot within 3 days.

Torture and beatings of prisoners in prisons, which were widely practiced in the 18th century, became a thing of the past under Nicholas I (in particular, they were not applied to the Decembrists and Petrashevists), and under Alexander II, beatings of prisoners resumed again (the trial of populists).

The most important direction of his domestic policy was the centralization of power. To carry out the tasks of political investigation in July 1826, a permanent body was created - the Third Branch of the Personal Office - a secret service with significant powers, the head of which (since 1827) was also the chief of the gendarmes. The third department was headed by A. Kh. Benkendorf, who became one of the symbols of the era, and after his death (1844) - A. F. Orlov.

On December 8, 1826, the first of the secret committees was created, whose task was, firstly, to consider the papers sealed in the office of Alexander I after his death, and, secondly, to consider the issue of possible transformations of the state apparatus.

On May 12 (24), 1829, in the Senate Hall in the Warsaw Palace, in the presence of senators, nuncios and deputies of the Kingdom, he was crowned as King (Tsar) of Poland. Under Nicholas, the Polish uprising of 1830-1831 was suppressed, during which Nicholas was declared deprived of the throne by the rebels (Decree on the dethronement of Nicholas I). After the suppression of the uprising, the Kingdom of Poland lost its independence, the Sejm and the army and was divided into provinces.

Some authors call Nicholas I the "knight of autocracy": he firmly defended its foundations and stopped attempts to change the existing system - despite the revolutions in Europe. After the suppression of the Decembrist uprising, he launched large-scale measures in the country to eradicate the "revolutionary infection". During the reign of Nicholas I, the persecution of the Old Believers resumed; The Uniates of Belarus and Volhynia were reunited with Orthodoxy (1839).

As for the army, to which the emperor paid much attention, D. A. Milyutin, the future Minister of War in the reign of Alexander II, writes in his notes: “... Even in military affairs, which the emperor was engaged in with such passion, the same concern for order, about discipline, they were chasing not for the essential improvement of the army, not for adapting it to a combat mission, but only for external harmony, for a brilliant view at parades, pedantic observance of countless petty formalities that dull the human mind and kill the true military spirit.

In 1834, Lieutenant General N. N. Muravyov compiled a note “On the causes of escapes and means to correct the shortcomings of the army.” “I drew up a note in which I outlined the sad state in which the troops are morally,” he wrote. - This note showed the reasons for the decline in morale in the army, flight, weakness of people, which consisted mostly in the exorbitant demands of the authorities in frequent reviews, the haste with which they tried to educate young soldiers, and, finally, in the indifference of the closest commanders to the well-being of people, they entrusted. I immediately expressed my opinion on the measures that I would consider necessary to correct this matter, which is ruining the troops year by year. I proposed not to make reviews, by which troops are not formed, not to change commanders often, not to transfer (as is now done) people hourly from one part to another, and to give the troops some peace.

In many ways, these shortcomings were associated with the existence of a recruiting system for the formation of the army, which was inherently inhumane, representing a lifelong compulsory service in the army. At the same time, the facts show that, in general, the accusations of Nicholas I in the inefficient organization of the army are unfounded. Wars with Persia and Turkey in 1826-1829. ended in the rapid defeat of both opponents, although the very duration of these wars puts this thesis into serious doubt. It must also be taken into account that neither Turkey nor Persia were among the first-class military powers in those days. During the Crimean War, the Russian army, which was significantly inferior in terms of the quality of its weapons and technical equipment to the armies of Great Britain and France, showed miracles of courage, high morale and military skills. The Crimean War is one of the rare examples of Russia's participation in the war with a Western European enemy over the past 300-400 years, in which the losses in the Russian army were lower (or at least not higher) than the losses of the enemy. The defeat of Russia in the Crimean War was associated with the political miscalculation of Nicholas I and with the lag in the development of Russia from Western Europe, where the Industrial Revolution had already taken place, but was not associated with the fighting qualities and organization of the Russian army.

Peasant question

In his reign, meetings of commissions were held to alleviate the situation of the serfs; Thus, a ban was introduced to exile peasants to hard labor, to sell them one by one and without land, the peasants received the right to redeem themselves from the estates being sold. A reform of the management of the state village was carried out and a “decree on obligated peasants” was signed, which became the foundation for the abolition of serfdom. However, the complete liberation of the peasants during the life of the emperor did not take place.

At the same time, historians - specialists in the Russian agrarian and peasant issue: N. Rozhkov, the American historian D. Blum and V. O. Klyuchevsky pointed to three significant changes in this area that occurred during the reign of Nicholas I:

1) For the first time there was a sharp decrease in the number of serfs - their share in the population of Russia, according to various estimates, decreased from 57-58% in 1811-1817. up to 35-45% in 1857-1858 and they ceased to make up the majority of the population. Obviously, a significant role was played by the cessation of the practice of "distributing" the state peasants to the landowners along with the lands, which flourished under the former tsars, and the spontaneous liberation of the peasants that began.

2) The situation of the state peasants improved greatly, the number of which by the second half of the 1850s. reached about 50% of the population. This improvement was mainly due to the measures taken by Count P. D. Kiselev, who was in charge of managing state property. Thus, all state peasants were allocated their own plots of land and forest plots, and auxiliary cash desks and bread shops were established everywhere, which provided assistance to the peasants with cash loans and grain in case of crop failure. As a result of these measures, the well-being of the state peasants not only increased, but also the treasury income from them increased by 15-20%, tax arrears were halved, and by the mid-1850s there were practically no landless laborers who eked out a beggarly and dependent existence, all received land from the state.

3) The position of the serfs improved significantly. On the one hand, a number of laws were adopted to improve their situation; on the other hand, for the first time the state began to systematically ensure that the rights of the peasants were not violated by the landowners (this was one of the functions of the Third Section), and to punish the landowners for these violations. As a result of the application of punishments in relation to the landlords, by the end of the reign of Nicholas I, about 200 landowners' estates were under arrest, which greatly affected the position of the peasants and the landowner's psychology. As V. Klyuchevsky wrote, two completely new conclusions followed from the laws adopted under Nicholas I: firstly, that the peasants are not the property of the landowner, but, first of all, subjects of the state, which protects their rights; secondly, that the personality of the peasant is not the private property of the landowner, that they are bound together by their relationship to the landlords' land, from which the peasants cannot be driven away. Thus, according to the conclusions of historians, serfdom under Nicholas changed its character - from the institution of slavery, it turned into an institution that to some extent protected the rights of the peasants.

These changes in the position of the peasants caused discontent on the part of large landowners and nobles, who saw them as a threat to the established order. Particular indignation was caused by the proposals of P. D. Kiselev in relation to the serfs, which boiled down to bringing their status closer to state peasants and strengthening control over the landowners. As the great nobleman Count Nesselrode declared in 1843, Kiselev's plans for the peasants would lead to the death of the nobility, while the peasants themselves would become more impudent and rebel.

For the first time, a program of mass peasant education was launched. The number of peasant schools in the country increased from only 60 schools with 1,500 students in 1838 to 2,551 schools with 111,000 students in 1856. In the same period, many technical schools and universities were opened - in fact, A system of vocational primary and secondary education was created in the country.

Development of industry and transport

The state of affairs in industry at the beginning of the reign of Nicholas I was the worst in the history of the Russian Empire. An industry capable of competing with the West, where the Industrial Revolution was already coming to an end at that time, actually did not exist (for more details, see Industrialization in the Russian Empire). Russia's exports included only raw materials, almost all types of industrial products needed by the country were purchased abroad.

By the end of the reign of Nicholas I, the situation had changed dramatically. For the first time in the history of the Russian Empire, a technically advanced and competitive industry began to form in the country, in particular, textile and sugar, the production of metal products, clothing, wood, glass, porcelain, leather and other products developed, and their own machine tools, tools and even steam locomotives began to be produced. . According to economic historians, this was facilitated by the protectionist policy pursued throughout the reign of Nicholas I. As I. Wallerstein points out, it was precisely as a result of the protectionist industrial policy pursued by Nicholas I that the further development of Russia did not follow the path that the majority of countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and on a different path - the path of industrial development.

For the first time in the history of Russia, under Nicholas I, intensive construction of paved highways began: the Moscow-Petersburg, Moscow-Irkutsk, Moscow-Warsaw routes were built. Of the 7700 miles of highways built in Russia by 1893, 5300 miles (about 70%) were built in the period 1825-1860. The construction of railways was also begun and about 1,000 versts of railroad tracks were built, which gave impetus to the development of their own mechanical engineering.

Nicholas and the problem of corruption

In the reign of Nicholas I in Russia, the "era of favoritism" ended - a euphemism often used by historians, which essentially means large-scale corruption, that is, the usurpation of public positions, honors and awards by the favorites of the tsar and his entourage. Examples of "favoritism" and related corruption and plunder of state property on a large scale abound in almost all reigns from the beginning of the 17th century. and up to Alexander I. But in relation to the reign of Nicholas I, there are no such examples - in general, there is not a single example of a large-scale plunder of state property that would be mentioned by historians.

Nicholas I introduced an extremely moderate incentive system for officials (in the form of renting estates / property and cash bonuses), which he controlled to a large extent. Unlike previous reigns, historians have not recorded large gifts in the form of palaces or thousands of serfs granted to any nobleman or royal relative. Even V. Nelidova, with whom Nicholas I had a long relationship and who had children from him, he did not give a single truly large gift comparable to what the kings of the previous era gave to their favorites.

To combat corruption in the middle and lower levels of officials, for the first time under Nicholas I, regular audits were introduced at all levels. Previously, such a practice practically did not exist, its introduction was dictated by the need not only to fight corruption, but also to restore elementary order in public affairs. (However, this fact is also known: the patriotic residents of Tula and the Tula province, by subscription, collected a lot of money for those times - 380 thousand rubles to install a monument on the Kulikovo field in honor of the victory over the Tatars, for almost five hundred years have passed, and the monument And they sent this money, collected with such difficulty, to St. Petersburg, Nicholas I. As a result, A.P. Bryullov in 1847 composed a draft of the monument, iron castings were made in St. Petersburg, transported to the Tula province, and in 1849 This cast-iron pillar was erected on the Kulikovo field, its cost was 60,000 rubles, and it remains unknown where the other 320,000 went. Perhaps they went to restore elementary order).

In general, one can state a sharp reduction in large-scale corruption and the fight against medium and petty corruption has begun. For the first time the problem of corruption was raised to the state level and widely discussed. Gogol's "Inspector General", which flaunted examples of bribery and theft, was shown in theaters (while earlier the discussion of such topics was strictly prohibited). However, critics of the tsar regarded the fight against corruption initiated by him as an increase in corruption itself. In addition, officials came up with new methods of theft, bypassing the measures taken by Nicholas I, as evidenced by the following statement:

Nicholas I himself was critical of the successes in this area, saying that only he and the heir did not steal in his entourage.

Foreign policy

However, the emperor helped the Austrians not just out of charity. “It is very likely that Hungary, having defeated Austria, due to the prevailing circumstances, would have been forced to provide active assistance to the plans of the Polish emigration,” wrote the biographer of Field Marshal Paskevich, Prince. Shcherbatov.

A special place in the foreign policy of Nicholas I was occupied by the Eastern Question.

Russia under Nicholas I abandoned plans to divide the Ottoman Empire, which were discussed under previous tsars (Catherine II and Paul I), and began to pursue a completely different policy in the Balkans - the policy of protecting the Orthodox population and ensuring its religious and civil rights, up to political independence . For the first time this policy was applied in the Akkerman treaty with Turkey in 1826. According to this treaty, Moldavia and Wallachia, remaining part of the Ottoman Empire, received political autonomy with the right to elect their own government, which was formed under the control of Russia. After half a century of the existence of such autonomy, the state of Romania was formed on this territory - according to the San Stefano Treaty of 1878. “In exactly the same order,” wrote V. Klyuchevsky, “other tribes of the Balkan Peninsula were liberated: the tribe rebelled against Turkey; the Turks sent their forces to him; at a certain moment, Russia shouted to Turkey: “Stop!”; then Turkey began to prepare for a war with Russia, the war was lost, and by agreement the rebellious tribe received internal independence, remaining under the supreme power of Turkey. With a new clash between Russia and Turkey, vassalage was destroyed. This is how the Serbian Principality was formed under the Adrianople Treaty of 1829, the Greek Kingdom - under the same agreement and under the London Protocol of 1830 ... "

Along with this, Russia sought to ensure its influence in the Balkans and the possibility of unhindered navigation in the straits (Bosphorus and Dardanelles).

During the Russian-Turkish wars of 1806-1812. and 1828-1829, Russia made great strides in implementing this policy. At the request of Russia, which declared itself the patroness of all Christian subjects of the Sultan, the Sultan was forced to recognize the freedom and independence of Greece and the broad autonomy of Serbia (1830); According to the Unkyar-Iskelesik Treaty (1833), which marked the peak of Russian influence in Constantinople, Russia received the right to block the passage of foreign ships to the Black Sea (which it lost in 1841)

The same reasons: the support of the Orthodox Christians of the Ottoman Empire and disagreements on the Eastern Question, pushed Russia to aggravate relations with Turkey in 1853, which resulted in her declaring war on Russia. The beginning of the war with Turkey in 1853 was marked by the brilliant victory of the Russian fleet under the command of Admiral PS Nakhimov, who defeated the enemy in Sinop Bay. It was the last major battle of the sailing fleet.

Russia's military successes caused a negative reaction in the West. The leading world powers were not interested in strengthening Russia at the expense of the decrepit Ottoman Empire. This created the basis for a military alliance between England and France. The miscalculation of Nicholas I in assessing the internal political situation in England, France and Austria led to the fact that the country was in political isolation. In 1854, England and France entered the war on the side of Turkey. Due to the technical backwardness of Russia, it was difficult to resist these European powers. The main hostilities unfolded in the Crimea. In October 1854, the Allies laid siege to Sevastopol. The Russian army suffered a series of defeats and was unable to provide assistance to the besieged fortress city. Despite the heroic defense of the city, after an 11-month siege, in August 1855, the defenders of Sevastopol were forced to surrender the city. At the beginning of 1856, following the results of the Crimean War, the Treaty of Paris was signed. According to its terms, Russia was forbidden to have naval forces, arsenals and fortresses on the Black Sea. Russia became vulnerable from the sea and was deprived of the opportunity to pursue an active foreign policy in this region.

Even more serious were the consequences of the war in the economic field. Immediately after the end of the war, in 1857, a liberal customs tariff was introduced in Russia, which practically abolished duties on Western European industrial imports, which may have been one of the peace conditions imposed on Russia by Great Britain. The result was an industrial crisis: by 1862, iron smelting in the country fell by 1/4, and cotton processing - by 3.5 times. The growth of imports led to the outflow of money from the country, the deterioration of the trade balance and the chronic shortage of money in the treasury.

During the reign of Nicholas I, Russia participated in the wars: the Caucasian War of 1817-1864, the Russian-Persian War of 1826-1828, the Russian-Turkish War of 1828-29, the Crimean War of 1853-56.

Emperor Engineer

Having received a good engineering education in his youth, Nikolai showed considerable knowledge in the field of construction equipment. So, he made sensible proposals regarding the dome of the Trinity Cathedral in St. Petersburg. In the future, already occupying the highest position in the state, he closely followed the order in urban planning and not a single significant project was approved without his signature. He established a regulation on the height of buildings in the capital, forbidding the construction of civil structures higher than the eaves of the Winter Palace. Thus, the well-known, and until recently, St. Petersburg city panorama was created, thanks to which the city was considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world and was included in the list of cities considered the cultural heritage of mankind.

Knowing the requirements for choosing a suitable place for the construction of an astronomical observatory, Nikolai personally indicated a place for it on the top of Pulkovo Mountain

The first railways appeared in Russia (since 1837).

There is an opinion that Nikolai got acquainted with steam locomotives at the age of 19 during a trip to England in 1816. The locals proudly showed Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich their successes in the field of locomotive building and railway construction. There is a statement that the future emperor became the first Russian stoker - he could not resist asking engineer Stephenson for his railway, climbing onto the platform of a steam locomotive, throwing several shovels of coal into the furnace and riding this miracle.

The far-sighted Nikolai, having studied in detail the technical data of the railways proposed for construction, demanded a broadening of the Russian gauge compared to the European one (1524 mm versus 1435 in Europe), rightly fearing that the enemy would be able to come to Russia by steam locomotive. This, a hundred years later, significantly hampered the supply of the German occupation forces and their maneuver due to the lack of locomotives for the broad gauge. So in the November days of 1941, the troops of the Center group received only 30% of the military supplies necessary for a successful attack on Moscow. The daily supply was only 23 echelons, when 70 were required to develop success. In addition, when the crisis that arose on the African front near Tobruk required the rapid transfer to the south of part of the military contingents withdrawn from the Moscow direction, this transfer was extremely difficult for the same reason.

The high relief of the monument to Nicholas in St. Petersburg depicts an episode that occurred during his inspection trip along the Nikolaev railway, when his train stopped at the Verebinsky railway bridge and could not go further, because the rails were painted white out of loyal zeal.

Under the Marquis de Travers, due to lack of funds, the Russian fleet often operated in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland, which was nicknamed the Marquis Puddle. At that time, the naval defense of St. Petersburg relied on a system of wood-and-earth fortifications near Kronstadt, armed with outdated short-range cannons, which allowed the enemy to destroy them from long distances without hindrance. Already in December 1827, at the direction of the Emperor, work began on replacing wooden fortifications with stone ones. Nikolai personally reviewed the designs of the fortifications proposed by the engineers and approved them. And in some cases (for example, during the construction of the fort "Paul the First"), he made specific proposals to reduce the cost and speed up construction.

The emperor carefully selected the performers of the work. So, he patronized the previously little-known lieutenant colonel Zarzhetsky, who became the main builder of the Kronstadt Nikolaev docks. The work was carried out in a timely manner, and by the time the English squadron of Admiral Napier appeared in the Baltic, the defense of the capital, provided by strong fortifications and mine banks, had become so impregnable that the first Lord of the Admiralty, James Graham, pointed out to Napier that any attempt to capture Kronstadt was disastrous. As a result, the St. Petersburg public received a reason for entertainment by going to Oranienbaum and Krasnaya Gorka to observe the evolution of the enemy fleet. Created under Nicholas I for the first time in world practice, the mine and artillery position turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle on the way to the capital of the state.

Nicholas was aware of the need for reforms, but taking into account the experience gained, he considered their implementation a lengthy and cautious matter. Nikolai looked at the state subordinate to him, as an engineer looks at a complex, but deterministic mechanism in its functioning, in which everything is interconnected and the reliability of one part ensures the correct operation of others. The ideal of a social structure was army life fully regulated by charters.

Death

He died "at twelve minutes after one in the afternoon" on February 18 (March 2), 1855 due to pneumonia (he caught a cold while taking the parade in a light uniform, being already sick with the flu).

There is a conspiracy theory, widespread in the society of that time, that Nicholas I accepted the defeat of General Khrulev S.A. near Yevpatoriya during the Crimean War as the final harbinger of defeat in the war, and therefore asked the life physician Mandt to give him poison that would allow him commit suicide without unnecessary suffering and quickly enough, but not suddenly, to prevent personal shame. The emperor forbade the autopsy and embalming of his body.

As eyewitnesses recalled, the emperor passed away in a clear mind, not for a minute losing his presence of mind. He managed to say goodbye to each of the children and grandchildren and, having blessed them, turned to them with a reminder that they should remain friendly with each other.

His son Alexander II ascended the Russian throne.

“I was surprised,” A.E. Zimmerman recalled, “that the death of Nikolai Pavlovich, apparently, did not make a special impression on the defenders of Sevastopol. I noticed in everyone almost indifference to my questions, when and why the Sovereign died, they answered: we don’t know ... ”.

Culture, censorship and writers

Nicholas suppressed the slightest manifestations of freethinking. In 1826, a censorship charter was issued, nicknamed "cast iron" by his contemporaries. It was forbidden to print almost everything that had any political overtones. In 1828, another censorship charter was issued, somewhat softening the previous one. A new increase in censorship was associated with the European revolutions of 1848. It got to the point that in 1836 the censor P. I. Gaevsky, after serving 8 days in the guardhouse, doubted whether it was possible to let news like “such and such a king died” be allowed to go into print. When, in 1837, an article about an attempt on the life of the French King Louis Philippe was published in the St.

In September 1826, Nikolai received Pushkin, who had been released by him from Mikhailov’s exile, and listened to his confession that on December 14 Pushkin would have been with the conspirators, but he treated him kindly: he saved the poet from general censorship (he decided to censor his writings himself), instructed him to prepare a note “On Public Education”, called him after the meeting “the smartest man in Russia” (however, later, after Pushkin’s death, he spoke of him and this meeting very coldly). In 1828, Nikolai dismissed the case against Pushkin about the authorship of the Gavriiliada after a handwritten letter from the poet, which, according to many researchers, was handed over to him personally, bypassing the commission of inquiry, contained, in the opinion of many researchers, recognition of the authorship of the seditious work after long denials. However, the emperor never fully trusted the poet, seeing him as a dangerous "leader of the liberals", the poet was under police surveillance, his letters were censored; Pushkin, having gone through the first euphoria, which was also expressed in poems in honor of the tsar (“Stans”, “To Friends”), by the mid-1830s, he also began to evaluate the sovereign ambiguously. “He has a lot of ensign and a little Peter the Great,” Pushkin wrote about Nikolai in his diary on May 21, 1834; at the same time, the diary also notes “sensible” remarks to the “History of Pugachev” (the sovereign edited it and gave Pushkin 20 thousand rubles in debt), ease of handling and good language of the tsar. In 1834, Pushkin was appointed chamber junker of the imperial court, which weighed heavily on the poet and was also reflected in his diary. Nikolai himself considered such an appointment a gesture of recognition of the poet and was internally upset that Pushkin was cool about the appointment. Pushkin could sometimes afford not to come to the balls to which Nikolai invited him personally. Balam Pushkin preferred communication with writers, while Nikolai showed him his displeasure. The role played by Nikolai in Pushkin's conflict with Dantes is controversially assessed by historians. After the death of Pushkin, Nikolai granted a pension to his widow and children, but he tried in every possible way to limit speeches in memory of him, showing, in particular, thereby dissatisfaction with the violation of his ban on duels.

Guided by the charter of 1826, the Nikolaev censors reached the point of absurdity in their prohibitive zeal. One of them forbade the printing of an arithmetic textbook after he saw three dots between the numbers in the text of the problem and suspected the author of this malice. Chairman of the censorship committee D.P. Buturlin even proposed to cross out certain passages (for example: "Rejoice, invisible taming of cruel and bestial lords...") from the akathist to the Protection of the Mother of God, because they looked "unreliable."

Nikolai also doomed Polezhaev, who was arrested for free poetry, to years of soldiery, twice ordered Lermontov to be exiled to the Caucasus. By his order, the magazines "European", "Moscow Telegraph", "Telescope" were closed, P. Chaadaev and his publisher were persecuted, F. Schiller was banned from staging in Russia.

I. S. Turgenev was arrested in 1852, and then administratively sent to the village only for writing an obituary dedicated to the memory of Gogol (the obituary itself was not passed by the censors). The censor also suffered when he let Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter go to print, in which, in the opinion of the Moscow Governor-General Count A. A. Zakrevsky, "a decisive direction was expressed towards the destruction of the landowners."

Liberal contemporary writers (primarily A. I. Herzen) were inclined to demonize Nicholas.

There were facts showing his personal participation in the development of the arts: personal censorship of Pushkin (the general censorship of that time was much tougher and more cautious in a number of issues), support for the Alexandrinsky Theater. As I. L. Solonevich wrote in this regard, “Pushkin read “Eugene Onegin” to Nicholas I, and N. Gogol read “Dead Souls”. Nicholas I financed both, was the first to note the talent of L. Tolstoy, and wrote a review about the Hero of Our Time, which would do honor to any professional literary critic ... Nicholas I had both literary taste and civic courage to defend The Inspector General and after the first performance, say: “Everyone got it - and most of all ME.”

In 1850, by order of Nicholas I, the play by N. A. Ostrovsky "Let's Settle Our People" was banned from staging. The Committee of Higher Censorship was dissatisfied with the fact that among the characters drawn by the author there was not "none of those respectable merchants of ours, in whom piety, honesty and directness of mind constitute a typical and inalienable attribute."

Liberals were not the only ones under suspicion. Professor M. P. Pogodin, who published The Moskvityanin, was placed under police supervision in 1852 for a critical article about N. V. Kukolnik's play The Batman (about Peter I), which received praise from the emperor.

A critical review of another play by the Dollmaker - "The Hand of the Most High Fatherland Saved" led to the closure in 1834 of the Moscow Telegraph magazine, published by N. A. Polev. The Minister of Public Education, Count S. S. Uvarov, who initiated the repressions, wrote about the journal: “It is a conductor of the revolution, it has been systematically spreading destructive rules for several years now. He doesn't like Russia."

Censorship did not allow publication of some jingoistic articles and works containing harsh and politically undesirable statements and views, which happened, for example, during the Crimean War with two poems by F.I. Tyutchev. From one (“Prophecy”), Nicholas I with his own hand crossed out a paragraph that dealt with the erection of a cross over Sophia of Constantinople and the “all-Slavic king”; another (“Now you are not up to poetry”) was banned from publication by the minister, apparently due to the “somewhat harsh tone of presentation” noted by the censor.

"He would like," S. M. Solovyov wrote about him, "to cut off all the heads that rose above the general level."

Nicknames

Home nickname is Nix. Official nickname - Unforgettable.

Leo Tolstoy in the story "Nikolai Palkin" gives another nickname for the emperor:

Family and personal life

In 1817, Nicholas married Princess Charlotte of Prussia, the daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm III, who received the name Alexandra Feodorovna after converting to Orthodoxy. The couple were each other's fourth cousins and sisters (they had a common great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother).

In the spring of the following year, their first son Alexander (future Emperor Alexander II) was born. Children:

Alexander II Nikolaevich (1818-1881)
Maria Nikolaevna (6.08.1819-9.02.1876)

1st marriage - Maximilian Duke of Leuchtenberg (1817-1852)

2nd marriage (unofficial marriage since 1854) - Stroganov Grigory Alexandrovich, Count

Olga Nikolaevna (08/30/1822 - 10/18/1892)

husband - Friedrich-Karl-Alexander, King of Württemberg

Alexandra (06/12/1825 - 07/29/1844)

husband - Friedrich Wilhelm, Prince of Hesse-Kassel

Konstantin Nikolaevich (1827-1892)
Nikolai Nikolaevich (1831-1891)
Mikhail Nikolaevich (1832-1909)

Had 4 or 7 alleged illegitimate children (see List of illegitimate children of Russian emperors # Nicholas I).

Nikolay was in connection with Varvara Nelidova for 17 years.

Assessing the attitude of Nicholas I towards women in general, Herzen wrote: “I do not believe that he ever passionately loved any woman, like Pavel Lopukhin, like Alexander of all women except his wife; he 'was kind to them', nothing more.

Personality, business and human qualities

“The sense of humor inherent in Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich is clearly visible in his drawings. Friends and relatives, met types, peeped scenes, sketches of camp life - the plots of his youthful drawings. All of them are executed easily, dynamically, quickly, with a simple pencil, on small sheets of paper, often in the manner of a caricature. “He had a talent for caricatures,” Paul Lacroix wrote about the emperor, “and in the most successful way he captured the funny sides of the faces that he wanted to put in some kind of satirical drawing.”

“He was handsome, but his beauty was cold; there is no face that reveals the character of a person so mercilessly as his face. The forehead, quickly running back, the lower jaw, developed at the expense of the skull, expressed an unyielding will and weak thought, more cruelty than sensuality. But the main thing is the eyes, without any warmth, without any mercy, winter eyes.

He led an ascetic and healthy lifestyle; never missed Sunday services. He did not smoke and did not like smokers, did not drink strong drinks, walked a lot, and did drills with weapons. His strict adherence to the daily routine was known: the working day began at 7 o'clock in the morning, at exactly 9 o'clock - the acceptance of reports. He preferred to dress in a simple officer's overcoat, and slept on a hard bed.

He had a good memory and great working capacity; The working day of the king lasted 16 - 18 hours. According to the words of Archbishop Innokenty (Borisov) of Kherson, “he was such a crowned bearer, for whom the royal throne served not as a head to rest, but as an incentive to unceasing work.”

Fraylina A.F. Tyutcheva, writes that he “spent 18 hours a day at work, worked until late at night, got up at dawn, did not sacrifice anything for pleasure and everything for the sake of duty, and took on more work and worries than the last day laborer from his subjects. He honestly and sincerely believed that he was able to see everything with his own eyes, hear everything with his ears, regulate everything according to his own understanding, transform everything with his will. But what was the result of such a hobby of the supreme ruler for trifles? As a result, he only piled up a heap of colossal abuses around his uncontrolled power, all the more pernicious because they were covered from the outside by official legality and that neither public opinion nor private initiative had the right to point them out, nor the opportunity to fight them.

The king's love for law, justice, and order was well known. I personally visited military formations, reviews, examined fortifications, educational institutions, office premises, and government agencies. He always accompanied remarks and “reprimands” with specific advice on how to rectify the situation.

A younger contemporary of Nicholas I, historian S. M. Solovyov, writes: "according to the accession of Nicholas, a military man, like a stick, accustomed not to reason, but to perform and capable of accustoming others to perform without reasoning, was considered the best, most capable boss everywhere; experience in affairs - no attention was paid to this. Soldiers sat down in all government places, and ignorance, arbitrariness, robbery, all kinds of unrest reigned with them.

He had a pronounced ability to attract talented, creatively gifted people to work, "to form a team." The employees of Nicholas I were the commander Field Marshal His Serene Highness Prince I.F. Paskevich, the Minister of Finance Count E.F. Kankrin, the Minister of State Property Count P.D. Kiselev, the Minister of Public Education Count S.S. Uvarov and others. Talented architect Konstantin

Ton served under him as a state architect. However, this did not stop Nikolai from severely fining him for his sins.

Absolutely not versed in people and their talents. Personnel appointments, with rare exceptions, turned out to be unsuccessful (the most striking example of this is the Crimean War, when, during the life of Nicholas, the two best corps commanders - Generals Leaders and Rediger - were never assigned to the army operating in the Crimea). Even very capable people were often appointed to completely inappropriate positions. “He is the vice director of the trade department,” Zhukovsky wrote to the appointment of the poet and publicist Prince P. A. Vyazemsky to a new post. - Laughter and more! We use people nicely…”

Through the eyes of contemporaries and publicists

In the book of the French writer Marquis de Custine "La Russie en 1839" ("Russia in 1839"), which is sharply critical of the autocracy of Nicholas and many features of Russian life, Nicholas is described as follows:

It can be seen that the emperor cannot for a moment forget who he is and what attention he attracts; he constantly poses and, consequently, is never natural, even when he speaks with all frankness; his face knows three different expressions, none of which can be called kind. Most often, severity is written on this face. Another expression, rarer, but much more suited to his beautiful features, is solemnity, and, finally, the third is courtesy; the first two expressions evoke cold surprise, slightly softened only by the charm of the emperor, of whom we get some idea, just as he honors us with a kind address. However, one circumstance spoils everything: the fact is that each of these expressions, suddenly leaving the face of the emperor, disappears completely, leaving no traces. Before our eyes, without any preparation, a change of scenery is taking place; it seems as if the autocrat puts on a mask that he can take off at any moment.(...)

A hypocrite, or a comedian, are harsh words, especially inappropriate in the mouth of a person who claims respectful and impartial judgments. However, I believe that for intelligent readers - and only to them I am addressing - speeches do not mean anything in themselves, and their content depends on the meaning that is put into them. I do not at all want to say that the face of this monarch lacks honesty - no, I repeat, he lacks only naturalness: thus, one of the main disasters from which Russia suffers, the lack of freedom, is reflected even on the face of its sovereign: he has several masks, but no face. You are looking for a man - and you find only the Emperor. In my opinion, my remark for the emperor is flattering: he conscientiously corrects his craft. This autocrat, towering over other people due to his height, just as his throne rises above other chairs, considers it a weakness for a moment to become an ordinary person and show that he lives, thinks and feels like a mere mortal. He does not seem to know any of our attachments; he forever remains commander, judge, general, admiral, finally, monarch - no more and no less. By the end of his life he will be very tired, but the Russian people - and perhaps the peoples of the whole world - will lift him to a great height, for the crowd loves amazing accomplishments and is proud of the efforts made in order to conquer it.

Along with this, Custine wrote in his book that Nicholas I was mired in debauchery and dishonored a huge number of decent girls and women: “If he (the tsar) distinguishes a woman on a walk, in the theater, in the world, he says one word to the adjutant on duty. A person who has attracted the attention of a deity falls under supervision, under supervision. They warn the spouse, if she is married, parents, if she is a girl, about the honor that has fallen to them. There are no examples of this distinction being accepted otherwise than with an expression of respectful gratitude. Similarly, there are no examples yet of dishonored husbands or fathers not profiting from their dishonor. Custine claimed that all this was “put on stream”, that girls dishonored by the emperor were usually given off as one of the court suitors, and none other than the tsar’s wife herself, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, did this. However, historians do not confirm the accusations of debauchery and the existence of a “conveyor of victims” dishonored by Nicholas I contained in Custine’s book, and vice versa, they write that he was monogamous and for many years maintained a long attachment to one woman.

Contemporaries noted the “basilisk look” peculiar to the emperor, unbearable for people of the timid ten.

General B. V. Gerua in his memoirs (Memories of my life. "Tanais", Paris, 1969) gives the following story about Nicholas: “Regarding the guard duty under Nicholas I, I recall the tombstone at the Lazarevsky cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg. His father showed me when we went with him to worship the graves of his parents and passed by this unusual monument. It was excellently executed in bronze - probably by a first-class craftsman - the figure of a young and handsome officer of the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment, lying as if in a sleeping position. His head rests on a bucket-shaped shako of the Nikolaev reign, its first half. The collar is open. The body is decoratively covered with a thrown-on cloak, which descended to the floor in picturesque, heavy folds.

My father told the story of this monument. The officer lay down on guard duty to rest and unfastened the hooks of his huge stand-up collar, which cut his neck. It was forbidden. Hearing some noise through a dream, he opened his eyes and saw the Sovereign above him! The officer never got up. He died of a broken heart."

N.V. Gogol wrote that Nicholas I, with his arrival in Moscow during the horrors of the cholera epidemic, showed a desire to raise up and encourage the fallen - “a trait that hardly any of the crowned bearers showed”, which caused A. S. Pushkin “these wonderful poems ”(“ A conversation between a bookseller and a poet; Pushkin talks about Napoleon I with a hint of modern events):

In Selected Places from Correspondence with Friends, Gogol enthusiastically writes about Nikolai and claims that Pushkin also allegedly addressed Nikolai, who read out Homer during the ball, with the apologetic poem “You talked to Homer alone for a long time ...”, hiding this dedication for fear of being branded a liar . In Pushkin studies, this attribution is often questioned; it is indicated that the dedication to the translator of Homer N. I. Gnedich is more likely.

An extremely negative assessment of the personality and activities of Nicholas I is associated with the work of A. I. Herzen. Herzen, who from his youth painfully experienced the failure of the Decembrist uprising, attributed cruelty, rudeness, vindictiveness, intolerance to “free thinking” to the personality of the tsar, accused him of following a reactionary course of domestic policy.

I. L. Solonevich wrote that Nicholas I, like Alexander Nevsky and Ivan III, was a true “sovereign master”, with a “master’s eye and master’s calculation”

N. A. Rozhkov believed that Nicholas I was alien to the love of power, the enjoyment of personal power: "Paul I and Alexander I, more than Nicholas, loved power, as such, in itself."

AI Solzhenitsyn admired the courage of Nicholas I, shown by him during the cholera riot. Seeing the helplessness and fear of the officials around him, the tsar himself went into the crowd of rebellious people with cholera, suppressed this rebellion with his own authority, and, leaving the quarantine, he himself took off and burned all his clothes right in the field so as not to infect his retinue.

And here is what N.E. Wrangel writes in his "Memoirs (from serfdom to the Bolsheviks)": Now, after the harm caused by the lack of will of Nicholas II, Nicholas I is again in vogue, and I will be reproached, perhaps that I this, “adored by all his contemporaries,” the Monarch did not treat with due respect. The fascination with the late Sovereign Nikolai Pavlovich by his current admirers, in any case, is both more understandable and sincere than the adoration of his deceased contemporaries. Nikolai Pavlovich, like his grandmother Ekaterina, managed to acquire an innumerable number of admirers and praisers, to form a halo around him. Catherine succeeded in this by bribing encyclopedists and various French and German greedy brethren with flattery, gifts and money, and her Russian close associates with ranks, orders, endowing peasants and land. Nikolai also succeeded, and even in a less unprofitable way - by fear. By bribery and fear, everything is always and everywhere achieved, everything, even immortality. Nikolai Pavlovich's contemporaries did not "worship" him, as it was customary to say during his reign, but they were afraid. Ignorance, non-worship would probably be recognized as a state crime. And gradually this custom-made feeling, a necessary guarantee of personal security, entered the flesh and blood of contemporaries and then was instilled in their children and grandchildren. The late Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich10 used to go to Dr. Dreherin for treatment in Dresden. To my surprise, I saw that this seventy-year-old man kept kneeling down during the service.

How does he do it? - I asked his son Nikolai Mikhailovich, a well-known historian of the first quarter of the 19th century.

Most likely, he is still afraid of his "unforgettable" father. He managed to instill in them such fear that they will not forget him until their death.

But I heard that the Grand Duke, your father, adored his father.

Yes, and, oddly enough, quite sincerely.

Why is it strange? He was adored by many at the time.

Do not make me laugh. (...)

Once I asked Adjutant General Chikhachev, the former Minister of Marine, whether it was true that all his contemporaries idolized the Sovereign.

Still would! I was even flogged for this time and it was very painful.

Tell!

I was only four years old when, as an orphan, I was placed in the juvenile orphanage section of the building. There were no educators, but there were ladies-educators. Once mine asked me if I love the Sovereign. I heard about the Sovereign for the first time and answered that I did not know. Well, they beat me up. That's all.

And did it help? Loved?

That is how! Directly - began to idolize. Satisfied with the first spanking.

What if they didn't worship?

Of course, they wouldn't pat on the head. It was mandatory, for everyone, both upstairs and downstairs.

So it was necessary to pretend?

At that time, they did not go into such psychological subtleties. We were ordered - we loved. Then they said - only geese think, not people.

Monuments

Currently, there are the following monuments to the Emperor:

St. Petersburg. Equestrian monument on St. Isaac's Square. Opened June 26, 1859, sculptor P. K. Klodt. The monument has been preserved in its original form. The fence surrounding it was dismantled in the 1930s, recreated again in 1992.

St. Petersburg. Bronze bust of the Emperor on a high granite pedestal. It was opened on July 12, 2001 in front of the facade of the building of the former psychiatric department of the Nikolaev military hospital, founded in 1840 by decree of the Emperor (now the St. Petersburg District Military Clinical Hospital), 63 Suvorovsky pr. a bust on a granite pedestal, was opened in front of the main facade of this hospital on August 15, 1890. The monument was destroyed shortly after 1917.

St. Petersburg. Gypsum bust on a high granite pedestal. Opened on May 19, 2003 on the front staircase of the Vitebsk railway station (Zagorodny pr., 52), sculptors V. S. and S. V. Ivanov, architect T. L. Torich.

It became interesting - is there a relationship between the growth of the leader of Russia and his deeds, successes.

I decided to start with the tsars-emperors of Russia. He did not consider wives and other empresses.

The growth of Ivan the Terrible (1547-1584) is 178 cm. The first tsar of all Russia. This sovereign distinguished himself by his formidable disposition, the reason and the capture of Kazan. Astrakhan campaigns. Livonian war. Since 1578, Tsar Ivan the Terrible stopped executing, in the will of 1579 he repented of his deed.
The growth of Peter I (the Great (1682-1725) was 201 cm. He ruled for quite a long time by royal standards. He distinguished himself in many and positive ways, brought Russia development and integration into Europe, successfully beat the Swedes. All subsequent sovereigns from the Romanov family were of different heights.

Peter II (1727-1730) his height is unknown, he ruled for a short time, was invisible.

The growth of Peter III (1761-1762) 170 cm. Ruled for a short time.

Ivan VI (1740-1741) Height unknown, ruled for a short time.

Height of Paul I (1796-1801) 166 cm. Ruled for 5 years. Growth is not high, the character is quarrelsome, arrogant. He liked to play with soldiers. Strangled with a scarf.

Height of Alexander I (1801-1825) - 178 cm. Height above average. The enlightened liberal. During his reign, the war with Napoleon Bonaparte was won. In addition, there were successful wars with Turkey, Persia, and Sweden. During the reign of Alexander, the territory of the Russian Empire expanded significantly: Eastern and Western Georgia, Mingrelia, Imeretia, Guria, Finland, Bessarabia, most of Poland (which formed the Kingdom of Poland) passed into Russian citizenship. Died of inflammation of the brain.

The growth of Nicholas I (1825-1855) - 205 cm. Ruler of high stature. Ascetic, did not drink or smoke. Soldier. The defeat of the noble December rebellion. The politics of reactionary anti-liberalism. The first railroads Stabilization and strengthening of the ruble. The defeat of the Polish uprising. Participation in the defeat of the Hungarian uprising. Unsuccessful Crimean War and the loss of the Russian fleet on the Black Sea. Caucasian war. Persian War. Died of pneumonia.

Height of Alexander II (1855-1881) 185 cm. Abolition of serfdom. Strengthening the role of the army and police. During this period, Central Asia, the North Caucasus, the Far East, Bessarabia, Batumi were annexed to Russia. Victory in the Caucasian War. Growing public discontent. Several attempts. He died as a result of a terrorist act organized by the People's Will party.

Height of Alexander III (1881-1894) 179 cm. The laws of the empire about the Jews, which forbade them to live anywhere except for special "places of settlement". The era of stagnation. Virtually no wars. In Central Asia, after the annexation of Kazakhstan, the Kokand Khanate, the Emirate of Bukhara, the Khanate of Khiva, the annexation of the Turkmen tribes continued. During the reign of Alexander III, the territory of the Russian Empire increased by 430 thousand square meters. km. This was the end of the expansion of the borders of the Russian Empire. Died of kidney disease.

The growth of Nicholas II (1904-1917) 168 cm. He was indecisive and weak-willed, dependent on his German wife and Grigory Rasputin (193 cm). Under him, Russia miserably lost the war to island Japan, and Nikolai did not have time to finish the imperialist war with the Germans. He was shot by the Bolsheviks along with his family.

Then the autocracy ended and power passed into the hands of the Provisional Government. The growth of Alexander Kerensky (1917-1918) is unknown, he ruled for a very short time, he did not leave a noticeable trace. Unless he removed the crown from the royal eagles. Typical temporary. Fled from Russia.

In 1918, the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, and another, Soviet countdown began.
The growth of V.I. Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet state, was 164-165 cm. He ruled for a short time (1918-1924), but he was distinguished by great energy, he built the foundations of the USSR and the policy of the party. He died from a serious illness caused by a gunshot wound during the assassination of the Socialist-Revolutionary Kaplan.

The height of Joseph Stalin was 163-164 cm (according to some sources, 175 cm). Ruled by the USSR from 1924 and death itself (1953). He was distinguished by a severe character, vindictiveness, perseverance. He continued the work of Lenin, but with some amendments. Under him, the country began to massively increase industrialization, technical and industrial growth appeared. Quite quickly dealt with political opponents (Trotsky-Zinoviev bloc: Trotsky - 168 cm, Bukharin - 155 cm), (which Lenin could not afford) and just in case with their families and their sympathizers ( the growth of the people's commissar of the OGPU Gendrykh Yagoda is 146 cm). Numerous repressions weakened the Workers 'and Peasants' Army, which gave rise to an attack on the USSR by Hitler's Germany ( Hitler height 175 cm). An illustrative example of that time is that Stalin refused to exchange his son Yakov for Field Marshal Paulus. Cult of personality. Died after a long illness.

The height of Nikita Khrushchev was 166 cm. Ruled the country from 1953 to 1966. He debunked Stalin's personality cult. The Soviet army takes part in the suppression of the Hungarian events of 1956. He was very fond of sowing corn, inspired by the American example, and sowed it even where it could not grow for physiological reasons. The first launch of a satellite and a man into space. Execution of Novocherkassk workers. Execution "case of money changers". Under Khrushchev, the country began to massively build the first high-rise housing, inexpensive and very economical. He was removed from his post by a bunch of disgruntled colleagues.

Brezhnev's height (1966-1982) was 176 cm. The defeat of the Czechoslovak rebellion. The era of stability and stagnation. Persecution of dissidents. Under Brezhnev, the Soviet administrative and economic apparatus, together with the party apparatus, reached the limit of corruption. He had many awards, and was very fond of awarding them. Development of space programs. War in Afghanistan. The first pre-New Year television address to the Soviet people. Olympics-80. Soviet aid to developing countries. Under Brezhnev, the country's economic growth reached its peak and gradually faded away. He died after a long illness (from old age).

Yuri Andropov's height was 182 cm (1983-1984). Chekist. He took a course in the fight against corruption. Mass production of records and televisions. A fighter against nationalism, opposition and other activities related to undermining the foundations of the USSR. Strengthening party discipline. Ruled for a short time. He died of a kidney disease that developed after an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

The height of Konstantin Chernenko (1984-1985) was 178 cm. Ruled for a short time. Died of old age.

The height of Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) is 175 cm. The first and last President of the USSR. Anti-alcohol policy. Perestroika. Ending the arms race. Democratization and glasnost. Dissolution of the USSR.

The height of Boris Yeltsin (1991-2000) is 187 cm. First President of Russia. The first high-ranking official of the USSR, who voluntarily left the CPSU, leaving all leadership positions. Dispersal of the GKChP. Development of democracy and civil liberties. 1 and 2 war in Chechnya. Dispersal of the Russian parliament. Alcohol addiction. Dependence on the daughter and clan of oligarchs. Resigned as president due to old age, launching Operation Successor.

Height of Vladimir Putin (2000-2008) 168-170 cm. Second President of Russia. Chekist. The defeat of the clan of oligarchs. Closure of independent media. Second war in Chechnya. Managed Democracy. Enrichment of close friends and relatives. Kadyrovshchina. Resigned as President after 2 terms of office, launching Operation Tandem.

Dmitry Medvedev's height (2008 est.) 162 cm. Third President of Russia. The smallest leader of historical Russia. Lawyer. Victorious war in Georgia. Revolutionary and non-working amendments to the legislation of the Russian Federation. Softening of the legislation in relation to bribe-takers. Dependent on Prime Minister Putin. A supporter of nano-technologies, a lover of everything new, iPods and iPhones.

And everyone knows what size person will be the next ruler of Russia. Is not it?

The diagram of studying the growth of leaders in centimeters showed the following general civilizational trend - after a period of decline, a period of rise begins.

This means that after the dominance of political kids and dwarfs, some ruler of Russia will definitely be tall. And who will it be - HZ, i.e. history is silent so far

Nicholas I (short biography)

The future Russian Emperor Nicholas I was born on June 25, 1796. Nicholas was the third son of Maria Feodorovna and Paul the First. He was able to get a pretty good education, but denied the humanities. At the same time, he was well-versed in fortification and military art. Nikolai also owned and engineering. But despite all this, the ruler was not a favorite of soldiers and officers. His coldness and cruel corporal punishment led him to be nicknamed "Nikolai Palkin" in the army environment.

In 1817 Nicholas married the Prussian princess Frederica Louise Charlotte Wilhelmine.

Nicholas I comes to the throne after the death of his elder brother Alexander. The second pretender to the Russian throne, Konstantin renounces the rights to rule during the life of his brother. At the same time, Nicholas did not know this and at first gave the oath to Constantine. Historians call this time the Interregnum.

Although the manifesto on the accession to the throne of Nicholas I was issued on December 13, 1825, his actual administration of the country began on November 19. On the very first day of the reign, the Decembrist uprising took place, the leaders of which were executed a year later.

The domestic policy of this ruler was characterized by extreme conservatism. The smallest manifestations of free thought were immediately suppressed, and the autocracy of Nicholas was defended with all his might. The secret office, which was led by Benckendorff, carried out a political investigation. After the release of a special censorship charter in 1826, all printed publications that had at least some political overtones were banned.

At the same time, the reforms of Nicholas I were distinguished by their limitations. Legislation was streamlined and the publication of the Complete Collection of Laws began. In addition, Kiselev is reforming the management of state peasants, introducing new agricultural techniques, building first-aid posts, etc.

In 1839 - 1843, a financial reform was carried out, which established the ratio between the banknote and the silver ruble, but the issue of serfdom remained unresolved.

Nikolaev's foreign policy had the same goals as the domestic one. The constant struggle against the revolutionary moods of the people did not stop.

As a result of the Russian-Iranian war, Armenia joins the state territory, the ruler condemns the revolution in Europe and even sends an army in 1849 to suppress it in Hungary. In 1853 Russia enters the Crimean War.

Nicholas died on March 2, 1855.

Portal for the student. Self-training

Consequences of the uprising

What was the emperor like?

Contemporaries about Nicholas 1

Principles of Government

Law and autocracy

Domestic politics

Foreign policy

Bureaucracy

Last years. Death

Decembrist revolt

Reign of Nicholas I

Death of Nicholas I

Biography

Childhood and adolescence

Youth

The question of succession. Interregnum

Accession to the throne. Decembrist revolt

The most important milestones of the reign

Domestic politics

Peasant question

Development of industry and transport

Nicholas and the problem of corruption

Foreign policy

Emperor Engineer

Death

Culture, censorship and writers

Nicknames

Family and personal life

Personality, business and human qualities

Through the eyes of contemporaries and publicists

Monuments

Nicholas I (short biography)

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