The personality of Emperor Nicholas I is very controversial. Thirty years of rule are a series of paradoxical phenomena:

• unprecedented cultural flourishing and manic censorship;
• total political control and prosperity of corruption;
• the rise of industrial production and economic backwardness from European countries;
• control over the army and its powerlessness.

Statements from contemporaries and real ones historical facts also cause a lot of controversy, so it is difficult to objectively assess

Childhood of Nicholas I

Nikolai Pavlovich was born on June 25, 1796 and became the third son of the imperial Romanov couple. Very little Nikolai was raised by Baroness Charlotte Karlovna von Lieven, to whom he became very attached and adopted from her some character traits, such as strength of character, perseverance, heroism, and openness. It was then that his passion for military affairs already manifested itself. Nikolai loved watching military parades, divorces, and playing with military toys. And already at the age of three he put on his first military uniform of the Life Guards Horse Regiment.

He suffered his very first shock at the age of four, when his father, Emperor Pavel Petrovich, died. Since then, the responsibility of raising the heirs fell on the shoulders of the widow Maria Feodorovna.

Mentor of Nikolai Pavlovich

Lieutenant General Matvey Ivanovich Lamzdorf, the former director of the gentry (first) cadet corps under Emperor Paul, was appointed Nikolai's mentor from 1801 and over the next seventeen years. Lamzdorf did not have the slightest idea about the methods of educating royalty - future rulers - and about any educational activities in general. His appointment was justified by the desire of Empress Maria Feodorovna to protect her sons from getting carried away with military affairs, and this was Lamzdorf’s main goal. But instead of interesting the princes in other activities, he went against all their wishes. For example, accompanying the young princes on their trip to France in 1814, where they were eager to participate in military operations against Napoleon, Lamzdorf deliberately drove them very slowly, and the princes arrived in Paris when the battle was already over. Due to incorrectly chosen tactics, Lamzdorf’s educational activities did not achieve their goal. When Nicholas I got married, Lamzdorf was relieved of his duties as a mentor.

Hobbies

The Grand Duke diligently and passionately studied all the intricacies of military science. In 1812, he was eager to go to war with Napoleon, but his mother did not let him. In addition, the future emperor was interested in engineering, fortification, and architecture. But Nikolai did not like the humanities and was careless about their study. Subsequently, he greatly regretted this and even tried to fill in the gaps in his training. But he never managed to do this.

Nikolai Pavlovich was fond of painting, played the flute, and loved opera and ballet. He had good artistic taste.

The future emperor had a beautiful appearance. Nicholas 1 is 205 cm tall, thin, broad-shouldered. The face is slightly elongated, the eyes are blue, and there is always a stern look. Nikolai had excellent physical fitness and good health.

Marriage

The elder brother Alexander I, having visited Silesia in 1813, chose a bride for Nicholas - the daughter of the King of Prussia, Charlotte. This marriage was supposed to strengthen Russian-Prussian relations in the fight against Napoleon, but unexpectedly for everyone, the young people sincerely fell in love with each other. On July 1, 1817 they got married. Charlotte of Prussia in Orthodoxy became Alexandra Feodorovna. The marriage turned out to be happy and had many children. The Empress bore Nicholas seven children.

After the wedding, Nicholas 1, whose biography and interesting facts are presented to your attention in the article, began to command a guards division, and also took up the duties of inspector general for engineering.

While doing what he loved, the Grand Duke took his responsibilities very seriously. He opened company and battalion schools under the engineering troops. In 1819, the Main Engineering School (now the Nikolaev Engineering Academy) was founded. Thanks to his excellent memory for faces, which allows him to remember even ordinary soldiers, Nikolai won respect in the army.

Death of Alexander 1

In 1820, Alexander announced to Nicholas and his wife that Konstantin Pavlovich, the next heir to the throne, intended to renounce his right due to childlessness, divorce and remarriage, and Nicholas should become the next emperor. In this regard, Alexander signed a manifesto approving the abdication of Konstantin Pavlovich and the appointment of Nikolai Pavlovich as heir to the throne. Alexander, as if sensing his imminent death, bequeathed the document to be read out immediately after his death. On November 19, 1825, Alexander I died. Nicholas, despite the manifesto, was the first to swear allegiance to Prince Constantine. It was a very noble and honest act. After some period of uncertainty, when Constantine did not officially abdicate the throne, but also refused to take the oath. The growth of Nicholas 1 was rapid. He decided to become the next emperor.

Bloody start to reign

On December 14, on the day of the oath of Nicholas I, an uprising (called the Decembrist uprising) was organized, aimed at overthrowing the autocracy. The uprising was suppressed, the surviving participants were sent into exile, and five were executed. The emperor's first impulse was to pardon everyone, but the fear of a palace coup forced him to organize a trial to the fullest extent of the law. And yet Nikolai acted generously with those who wanted to kill him and his entire family. There are even confirmed facts that the wives of the Decembrists received monetary compensation, and children born in Siberia could study in the best educational institutions at the expense of the state.

This event influenced the course of the further reign of Nicholas 1. All his activities were aimed at preserving autocracy.

Domestic policy

The reign of Nicholas 1 began when he was 29 years old. Accuracy and exactingness, responsibility, struggle for justice, combined with high efficiency were the striking qualities of the emperor. His character was influenced by his years in the army. He led a rather ascetic lifestyle: he slept on a hard bed, covered with an overcoat, observed moderation in food, did not drink alcohol and did not smoke. Nikolai worked 18 hours a day. He was very demanding, first of all, of himself. He considered the preservation of autocracy his duty, and all of it political activity served this purpose.

Russia under Nicholas 1 underwent the following changes:

1. Centralization of power and creation of a bureaucratic management apparatus. The emperor only wanted order, control and accountability, but in essence it turned out that the number of official posts increased significantly and along with them the number and size of bribes increased. Nikolai himself understood this and told his eldest son that in Russia only the two of them did not steal.
2. The solution to the issue of serfs. Thanks to a series of reforms, the number of serfs decreased significantly (from 58% to 35% over approximately 45 years), and they acquired rights, the protection of which was controlled by the state. The complete abolition of serfdom did not happen, but the reform served as a starting point in this matter. Also at this time, an education system for peasants began to take shape.
3. The emperor paid special attention to order in the army. Contemporaries criticized him for paying too close attention to the troops, while he was of little interest to the morale of the army. Frequent checks, inspections, and punishments for the slightest mistakes distracted soldiers from their main tasks and made them weak. But was it really so? During the reign of Emperor Nicholas 1, Russia fought with Persia and Turkey in 1826-1829, and in Crimea in 1853-1856. Russia won the wars with Persia and Turkey. The Crimean War led to Russia's loss of influence in the Balkans. But historians cite the reason for the defeat of the Russians as the economic backwardness of Russia compared to the enemy, including the existence of serfdom. But a comparison of human losses in the Crimean War with other similar wars shows that they are less. This proves that the army under the leadership of Nicholas I was powerful and highly organized.

Economic development

Emperor Nicholas 1 inherited a Russia deprived of industry. All production items were imported. By the end of the reign of Nicholas 1, economic growth was noticeable. Many types of production necessary for the country already existed in Russia. Under his leadership, the construction of paved roads and railways began. In connection with the development of railway transport, the machine-building industry, including car-building, began to develop. An interesting fact is that Nicholas I decided to build wider railways (1524 mm) than in European countries (1435 mm) in order to make it difficult for the enemy to move around the country in case of war. And it was very wise. It was this trick that prevented the Germans from supplying full ammunition during their attack on Moscow in 1941.

In connection with growing industrialization, intensive urban growth began. During the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, the urban population more than doubled. Thanks to the engineering education received in his youth, Nikolai 1 Romanov oversaw the construction of all major facilities in St. Petersburg. His idea was not to exceed the height of the Winter Palace cornice for all buildings in the city. As a result, St. Petersburg became one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Under Nicholas 1, growth in the educational sphere was also noticeable. Many educational institutions were opened. These include the famous Kiev University and St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, military and naval academies, a number of schools, etc.

The rise of culture

The 19th century was a real flowering of literary creativity. Pushkin and Lermontov, Tyutchev, Ostrovsky, Turgenev, Derzhavin and other writers and poets of this era were incredibly talented. At the same time, Nicholas 1 Romanov introduced the most severe censorship, reaching the point of absurdity. Therefore, literary geniuses periodically experienced persecution.

Foreign policy

Foreign policy during the reign of Nicholas I included two main directions:

1. Return to the principles of the Holy Alliance, suppression of revolutions and any revolutionary ideas in Europe.
2. Strengthening influence in the Balkans for free navigation in and Bosporus.

These factors became the cause of the Russian-Turkish, Russian-Persian and Crimean wars. The defeat in the Crimean War led to the loss of all previously won positions in the Black Sea and the Balkans and provoked an industrial crisis in Russia.

Death of the Emperor

Nicholas 1 died on March 2, 1855 (58 years old) from pneumonia. He was buried in the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

And finally...

The reign of Nicholas I undoubtedly left a tangible mark on both the economy and cultural life of Russia, however, it did not lead to any epochal changes in the country. The following factors forced the emperor to slow down progress and follow the conservative principles of autocracy:

• moral unpreparedness to govern the country;
• lack of education;
• fear of overthrow due to the events of December 14;
• a feeling of loneliness (conspiracies against father Paul, brother Alexander, abdication of the throne by brother Constantine).

Therefore, none of the subjects regretted the death of the emperor. Contemporaries more often condemned the personal characteristics of Nicholas 1, he was criticized as a politician and as a person, but historical facts speak of the emperor as a noble man who completely devoted himself to serving Russia.

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 Fedorovna)
Monogram:

Biography

Childhood and adolescence

The most important milestones of the reign

Domestic policy

Peasant question

Nikolai 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, Tsarskoe 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 Romanov, 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 Catherine II’s grandchildren born during her lifetime.

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

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 Nicholas from birth entered into the care of the royal grandmother, but the Empress’s death, which soon followed, stopped her influence on the course of the Grand Duke’s upbringing. His nanny was a Scottish woman, Lyon. For the first seven years she was Nikolai's only leader. 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, knightly 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 teacher of Nikolai and Mikhail. The choice of General Lamsdorf for the post of tutor of the Grand Duke was made by Emperor Paul. Paul I pointed out: “just don’t make my sons such rakes as German princes” (German. Solche Schlingel wie die deutschen Prinzen). The highest order of November 23, 1800 declared:

“Lieutenant General Lamzdorf has been appointed to serve under His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich.” The general stayed with his pupil for 17 years. It is obvious that Lamzdorf fully satisfied Maria Fedorovna’s pedagogical requirements. Thus, in her parting letter of 1814, Maria Feodorovna called General Lamzdorf the “second father” of the Grand Dukes Nicholas and Mikhail.

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

The events of this sad day are preserved in my memory as much as a vague dream; I was awakened and saw Countess Lieven in front of me. When I was dressed, we noticed through the window, on the drawbridge under the church, guards who had not been there the day before; the entire Semyonovsky regiment was here in an extremely careless appearance. None of us suspected that we had lost our father; we were taken down to my mother, and soon from there we went with her, my sisters, Mikhail and Countess Lieven 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 in front of my mother, and I can still hear his sobs. They brought him water, and they took us away. It was happiness for us to see our rooms again and, I must say in truth, our wooden horses, which we had forgotten there.

This was the first blow of fate dealt to him at a very tender age, a blow. From then on, the care of his upbringing and education was concentrated entirely and exclusively in the hands of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, out of a sense of delicacy for whom Emperor Alexander I refrained from any influence on the education of his younger brothers.

The greatest concerns of Empress Maria Feodorovna in the education of Nikolai Pavlovich consisted of trying to divert him from his passion for military exercises, which was revealed in him from the very beginning. early childhood. The passion for the technical side of military affairs, instilled in Russia by Paul I, allowed royal family deep and strong roots - 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 the parade ground, among the drilled teams. The younger brothers were not inferior to the elders in this passion. 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 divorce, where he watched with special attention everything that happened, dwelling even on the smallest details.

Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich received a home education - teachers were assigned to him and his brother Mikhail. But Nikolai did not show much diligence in his studies. 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.

According to V.A. Mukhanov, Nikolai Pavlovich, having completed his course of education, was horrified by his ignorance and after the wedding tried to fill this gap, but the conditions of an absent-minded life, the predominance of military activities and the bright joys of family life distracted him from constant desk work. “His mind was not cultivated, his upbringing was careless,” Queen Victoria wrote about Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich in 1844.

The future emperor’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 was 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 saw the family of the Prussian king, that eldest daughter Alexander liked his princess Charlotte, and it was his intention that Nikolai would somehow see 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 St. Petersburg. On this journey they were accompanied by General Lamzdorf, cavaliers: I. F. Savrasov, A. P. Aledinsky and P. I. Arsenyev, Colonel Gianotti and Dr. Ruehl. After 17 days, they reached Berlin, where 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 Elizabeth Alekseevna then lived, Rastatt, Freiburg and Basel. Near Basel, they first heard enemy shots, as the Austrians and Bavarians were besieging the nearby Güningen fortress. They then entered France through Altkirch and reached the tail of the army at Vesoul. However, Alexander I ordered the brothers to return to Basel. Only when news arrived that Paris had been taken and Napoleon had been banished to the island of Elba, did the grand dukes receive orders to arrive in 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.

After the military campaigns of the Russian army in Europe, professors were invited to the Grand Duke, who were supposed to “read military science in as complete a manner as possible.” For this purpose, the famous engineering general Karl Opperman and, to help him, colonels Gianotti and Markevich were chosen.

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

Upon returning from a second campaign, starting in December 1815, Grand Duke Nicholas again began studying 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, he was 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, Abo University, following the example of the universities of Sweden, most submissively petitioned whether Alexander I would deign 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 respect 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 horse-jaeger regiment.

In the summer of 1816, Nikolai Pavlovich had to complete his education by traveling around Russia to get acquainted with his fatherland in administrative, commercial and industrial relations. Upon returning from this trip, it was planned to also travel abroad to get acquainted with England. On this occasion, on behalf of Empress Maria Feodorovna, a special note was drawn up, which briefly outlined 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, indicated what exactly could be the subject of conversations between the Grand Duke and representatives of the provincial government, what should be paid attention to, and so on.

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

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

The question of succession to the throne. 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 Nicholas would become the heir as the next senior brother.

In 1823, Constantine 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, 1823, Alexander I signed a manifesto drawn up in secret, approving the abdication of the Tsarevich and Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich and approving Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich as the Heir to the Throne. On all the packages with the text of the manifesto, Alexander I himself wrote: “Keep until my demand, and in the event of my death, disclose before any other action.”

On November 19, 1825, while in Taganrog, Emperor Alexander I died suddenly. In St. Petersburg, news of Alexander's death 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 an ambiguous position, when the Manifesto indicated 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 contents of the Manifesto handed over to him, Nicholas called on the Council to take the oath to Constantine “for the peace of the State.” Following this call, the State Council, Senate and Synod took an oath of allegiance to “Constantine I”.

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

However, Konstantin refused to come to St. Petersburg and confirmed his abdication 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 it as an emperor, to whom the oath had already been taken. An ambiguous and extremely tense interregnum situation was created.

Accession to the throne. Decembrist revolt

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

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 the morning of December 13th. Attached to the Manifesto were a letter from Constantine to Alexander I dated January 14, 1822 about refusal of inheritance and a manifesto from Alexander I dated August 16, 1823.

The manifesto on the 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 point 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, a “re-oath” - this time to Nicholas I. The re-oath in St. Petersburg was scheduled for December 14. On this day, a group of officers - members of a secret society - scheduled an uprising in order to prevent the troops and the Senate from taking the oath to the new tsar and preventing Nicholas I from ascending 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, equality of all before the law, democratic freedoms (press, confession, labor), the introduction of jury trials, the introduction of compulsory military service for all classes, the election of officials, abolition of the poll tax and change in the form of government to a constitutional monarchy or republic.

The rebels decided to block the Senate, send there a revolutionary delegation consisting of Ryleev and Pushchin and present to the Senate a demand not to swear allegiance to Nicholas I, declare the tsarist government deposed and publish a revolutionary manifesto to the Russian people. However, the uprising was brutally suppressed on the same day. Despite the efforts of the Decembrists to carry out a coup d'etat, troops and government institutions 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 fulfilled: 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 experience and will experience all my life when remembering this day. Letter to the French Ambassador Count Le Ferronet No one feels a greater need than I to be judged with leniency. But let those who judge me take into account the extraordinary manner in which I ascended from the post of newly appointed divisional chief to the post I now occupy, and under what circumstances. And then I will have to admit that, if not for the obvious protection 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 on the Imperial Family” on April 5, 1797, decreed: “First, as the days of our life are in the hand of God: then in the event of OUR death, until the legal adulthood of the Heir, the Grand Duke ALEXANDER NIKOLAEVICH, we determine as the Ruler of the State and the indivisible Kingdoms of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Finland, OUR Most Dear Brother, Grand Duke MICHAIL PAVLOVICH. »

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.

Archbishop Filaret (Drozdov) of Moscow, who served with Metropolitan Seraphim (Glagolevsky) of Novgorod during the coronation, as is clear from his track record, was the person who presented Nicholas with “a description of the discovery 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 - Founding of the Third Department at 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 - Founding 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 was founded in Kyiv (the University was founded by decree of Nicholas I on November 8, 1833 as the Kiev Imperial University of St. Vladimir, on the basis of the Vilna University and the Kremenets Lyceum, which were closed after the Polish uprising of 1830-1831).
• 1837 - Opening of the first railway in Russia, St. Petersburg - Tsarskoe Selo.
• 1839-1841 - Eastern crisis, in which Russia acted together with England against the France-Egypt coalition.
• 1849 - Participation Russian troops in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising.
• 1851 - Completion of the construction of the Nikolaev railway, connecting St. Petersburg with Moscow. Opening of the New Hermitage.
• 1853-1856 - Crimean War. Nikolai does not live to see the end. In winter he catches a cold and dies in 1855.

Domestic policy

His very first steps after the coronation were very liberal. The poet A. S. Pushkin 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. (However, Zhukovsky wrote about the events of December 14, 1825: “Providence preserved Russia. By the will of Providence, this day was a day of purification. Providence was on the part of our fatherland and the throne.”)

The Emperor closely followed the trial of the participants in the December speech and gave instructions to compile a summary of their critical comments against the state administration. Despite the fact that attempts on the life of the tsar were punishable by quartering according to existing laws, he replaced this execution with 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 his command. Kiselyov's name was presented to Nicholas on the list of conspirators in connection with the coup case. But, despite this, Kiselev, known for the impeccability of his moral rules and his 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, we can say that Nicholas I was a quixote of autocracy, a terrible and malicious quixote, because he possessed omnipotence, which allowed him to subjugate all their fanatical and outdated theories and trample underfoot the most legitimate aspirations and rights of their age. That is why this man, who combined with a generous and knightly soul the character of rare nobility and honesty, a warm and tender heart and an exalted and enlightened mind, although lacking breadth, that is why this man could be a tyrant and despot for Russia during his 30-year reign , who systematically stifled every manifestation of initiative and life in the country he ruled. A. F. Tyutcheva.

At the same time, this opinion of the court maid of honor, which corresponded to the sentiments 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), such as never before had not happened before, Russian industry developed unusually rapidly, which for the first time began to take shape as technically advanced and competitive, serfdom changed its character, ceasing to be serfdom (see below). These changes were appreciated by the most prominent contemporaries. “No, I am not a flatterer when I freely praise the Tsar,” wrote A. S. Pushkin about Nicholas I. Pushkin also wrote: “In Russia there is no law, but a pillar - and on a pillar there is a crown.” N.V. Gogol, by the end of his reign, sharply changed his views on autocracy, which he began to praise, and even in serfdom he no longer saw any evil.

The following facts do not correspond to the ideas about Nicholas I as a “tyrant” that existed in the noble high society and in the liberal press. As historians point out, the execution of 5 Decembrists was the only execution during the entire 30 years of the reign of Nicholas I, while, for example, under Peter I and Catherine II, executions numbered 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 June uprising of 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 used against the Decembrists and Petrashevists), and under Alexander II, beatings of prisoners resumed again (the trial of the populists).

Its most important direction domestic policy became the centralization of power. To carry out the tasks of political investigation, a permanent body was created in July 1826 - the Third Department of the Personal Chancellery - 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, 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.

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 King (Tsar) of Poland. Under Nicholas, the Polish uprising of 1830-1831 was suppressed, during which Nicholas was declared dethroned 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 a “knight of autocracy”: he firmly defended its foundations and suppressed 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, persecution of the Old Believers resumed; The Uniates of Belarus and Volyn were reunited with Orthodoxy (1839).

As for the army, to which the emperor paid a lot of attention, D. A. Milyutin, the future minister of war during the reign of Alexander II, writes in his notes: “...Even in military affairs, which the emperor was engaged in with such passionate enthusiasm, the same concern for order, about discipline, they were not chasing the significant improvement of the army, not adapting it to combat purposes, but only external harmony, a brilliant appearance at parades, pedantic observance of countless petty formalities that dull human reason and kill the true military spirit.”

In 1834, Lieutenant General N. N. Muravyov compiled a note “On the reasons for 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 of spirit in the army, escapes, weakness of the 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 welfare of the people, they entrusted. I immediately expressed my opinion about the measures that I would consider necessary to correct this matter, which is destroying the troops year after year. I proposed not to hold reviews that do not form troops, not to change commanders often, not to transfer (as is now done) people hourly from one unit to another, and to give the troops some rest."

In many ways, these shortcomings were associated with the existence of a recruiting system for army formation, which was inherently inhumane, representing lifelong forced service in the army. At the same time, the facts indicate that, in general, the accusations of Nicholas I of the ineffective organization of the army are unfounded. Wars with Persia and Turkey in 1826-1829. ended with the rapid defeat of both opponents, although the very duration of these wars casts serious doubt on this thesis. It must also be taken into account that neither Turkey nor Persia were considered among the first-class military powers in those days. During the Crimean War, the Russian army, which was significantly inferior in the quality of its weapons and technical equipment to the armies of Great Britain and France, showed miracles of courage, high morale and military training. The Crimean War is one of the rare examples of Russian participation in a 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 Russia's development 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

During his reign, meetings of commissions were held to alleviate the situation of the serfs; Thus, a ban was introduced on exiling peasants to hard labor, selling them individually and without land, and peasants received the right to redeem themselves from the estates being sold. A reform of state village management 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 did not take place during the life of the emperor.

At the same time, historians - specialists in the Russian agrarian and peasant issue: N. Rozhkov, 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 reduction in the number of serfs - their share in the Russian population, according to various estimates, decreased from 57-58% in 1811-1817. to 35-45% in 1857-1858 and they ceased to constitute the majority of the population. Obviously, a significant role was played by the cessation of the practice of “distributing” state peasants to landowners along with lands, which flourished under the previous kings, and the spontaneous liberation of peasants that began.

2) The situation of state peasants improved greatly, the number of whom by the second half of the 1850s. reached about 50% of the population. This improvement occurred mainly due to the measures taken by Count P. D. Kiselev, who was responsible for the management of state property. Thus, all state peasants were allocated their own plots of land and forest plots, and auxiliary cash desks and grain stores 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 welfare of state peasants increase, but also treasury income from them increased by 15-20%, tax arrears were halved, and by the mid-1850s there were practically no landless farm laborers who eked out a miserable and dependent existence, all received land from the state.

3) The situation of serfs improved significantly. On the one hand, a number of laws were passed that improved their situation; on the other hand, for the first time, the state began to systematically ensure that the rights of peasants were not violated by landowners (this was one of the functions of the Third Department), and to punish landowners for these violations. As a result of the application of punishments against landowners, by the end of the reign of Nicholas I, about 200 landowner estates were under arrest, which greatly affected the position of the peasants and the psychology of the landowners. As V. Klyuchevsky wrote, two completely new conclusions followed from the laws adopted under Nicholas I: firstly, that 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 connected by their relationship to the landowner’s land, from which the peasants cannot be driven away. Thus, according to the conclusions of historians, serfdom under Nicholas changed its character - from an institution of slavery it turned into an institution that to some extent protected the rights of 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 P. D. Kiselev’s proposals regarding serfs, which boiled down to bringing their status closer to state peasants and strengthening control over landowners. As the prominent nobleman Count Nesselrode stated in 1843, Kiselev’s plans for the peasants would lead to the death of the nobility, while the peasants themselves would become increasingly impudent and rebellious.

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. During the same period, many technical schools and universities were opened - essentially a system of professional primary and secondary education in the country was created.

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 entire history of the Russian Empire. There was virtually no industry capable of competing with the West, where the Industrial Revolution was already coming to an end at that time (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 greatly. 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 textiles and sugar, the production of metal products, clothing, wood, glass, porcelain, leather and other products began to develop, its own machines, 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 followed at that time countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and along a different path - the path of industrial development.

For the first time in the history of Russia, under Nicholas I, intensive construction of paved roads began: the routes Moscow - St. Petersburg, Moscow - Irkutsk, Moscow - Warsaw were built. Of the 7,700 miles of highways built in Russia by 1893, 5,300 miles (about 70%) were built in the period 1825-1860. The construction of railways was also started and about 1000 miles of railway track was built, which gave impetus to the development of our own mechanical engineering.

The rapid development of industry led to a sharp increase in urban population and urban growth. 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.

Nikolai and the problem of corruption

The reign of Nicholas I in Russia ended the “era of favoritism” - a euphemism often used by historians, which essentially means large-scale corruption, that is, the usurpation of government positions, honors and awards by the favorites of the tsar and his entourage. Examples of “favoritism” and associated corruption and theft of state property on a large scale abound in almost all reigns from the beginning of the 17th century. and right up to Alexander I. But in relation to the reign of Nicholas I, these examples do not exist - in general, there is not a single example of large-scale theft of state property that would be mentioned by historians.

Nicholas I introduced an extremely moderate system of incentives for officials (in the form of lease 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. Even to V. Nelidova, with whom Nicholas I had a long-term relationship and who had children from him, he did not make 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 ranks of officials, for the first time under Nicholas I, regular audits were introduced at all levels. Such a practice practically did not exist before; its introduction was dictated by the need not only to fight corruption, but also to establish basic order in government affairs. (However, the following fact is also known: patriotic residents of Tula and the Tula province, by subscription, collected considerable money for those times - 380 thousand rubles for the installation of a monument on the Kulikovo field in honor of the victory over the Tatars, because almost five hundred years have passed, and it is not possible to erect a monument did not bother, and sent this money, collected with such difficulty, to St. Petersburg, Nicholas I. As a result, A.P. Bryullov in 1847 composed a design for the monument, cast 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 thousand rubles, and where another 320 thousand went remains unknown. Perhaps they went to restore basic order).

In general, we can note a sharp reduction in major corruption and the beginning of the fight against medium and petty corruption. For the first time, the problem of corruption was raised at the state level and widely discussed. Gogol's The Inspector General, which showcased examples of bribery and theft, was shown in theaters (while previously discussion of such topics was strictly prohibited). However, the tsar's critics regarded the fight against corruption he initiated as an increase in corruption itself. In addition, officials came up with new ways of stealing, bypassing the measures taken by Nicholas I, as evidenced by the following statement:

Nicholas I himself was critical of successes in this area, saying that the only people around him who did not steal were himself and his heir.

Foreign policy

An important aspect of foreign policy was the return to the principles of the Holy Alliance. Russia's role 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.” Thus, 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 feared excessive strengthening of Russia’s position in the Balkans, from soon taking a position unfriendly to Nicholas during the Crimean War and even threatening to enter 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.

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 actively assist the plans of the Polish emigration,” wrote the biographer of Field Marshal Paskevich, Prince. Shcherbatov.

The Eastern Question occupied a special place in the foreign policy of Nicholas I.

Russia under Nicholas I abandoned plans for the division of the Ottoman Empire, which were discussed under the previous tsars (Catherine II and Paul I), and began to pursue a completely different policy in the Balkans - a policy of protecting the Orthodox population and ensuring its religious and civil rights, up to political independence . This policy was first applied in the Treaty of Akkerman with Turkey in 1826. Under this treaty, Moldavia and Wallachia, while 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 Treaty of San Stefano in 1878. “In exactly the same order,” wrote V. Klyuchevsky, “the liberation of other tribes of the Balkan Peninsula took place: the tribe rebelled against Turkey; the Turks directed their forces at him; at a certain moment Russia shouted to Turkey: “Stop!”; then Turkey began to prepare for war with Russia, the war was lost, and by agreement the rebel tribe received internal independence, remaining under the supreme authority of Turkey. With a new clash between Russia and Turkey, vassal dependence was destroyed. This is how the Serbian Principality was formed according to the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829, the Greek Kingdom - according to the same treaty and according to 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 (Bosporus and Dardanelles).

During the Russian-Turkish wars of 1806-1812. and 1828-1829, Russia achieved great success 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 Treaty of Unkar-Iskelesiki (1833), which marked the peak of Russian influence in Constantinople, Russia received the right to block the passage of foreign ships into the Black Sea (which it lost in 1841)

The same reasons: support for Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire and disagreements over the Eastern Question, pushed Russia to aggravate relations with Turkey in 1853, which resulted in its declaration of 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 P. S. Nakhimov, which defeated the enemy in Sinop Bay. This 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. Nicholas I's miscalculation in assessing the internal political situation in England, France and Austria led to the country finding itself in political isolation. In 1854, England and France entered the war on the side of Turkey. Due to Russia's technical backwardness, it was difficult to resist these European powers. The main military operations took place in Crimea. In October 1854, the Allies besieged Sevastopol. The Russian army suffered a number 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 Paris Peace Treaty was signed. According to its terms, Russia was prohibited from having naval forces, arsenals and fortresses in the Black Sea. Russia became vulnerable from the sea and lost the opportunity to conduct 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 increase in imports led to the outflow of money from the country, a deterioration in the trade balance and a chronic shortage of money in the treasury.

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

Emperor Engineer

Having received a good engineering education in his youth, Nikolai showed considerable knowledge in the field construction equipment. Thus, he made sensible proposals regarding the dome of the Trinity Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Later, already occupying the highest position in the state, he closely monitored the order in urban planning and not a single significant project was approved without his signature. He established regulations on the height of buildings in the capital, prohibiting the construction of civil structures higher than the cornice of the Winter Palace. Thus, the famous St. Petersburg city panorama, which existed until recently, 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 location 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).

It is believed that Nikolai became 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 engineering and railway construction. There is a claim that the future emperor became the first Russian fireman - he could not resist asking engineer Stephenson to come to his railway, climb onto the platform of the locomotive, throw several shovels of coal into the firebox and ride on this miracle.

The far-sighted Nikolai, having studied in detail the technical data of the railways proposed for construction, demanded a widening 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 and maneuver of the German occupation forces 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 trains, when 70 were required to develop success. Moreover, 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 Nikolaevskaya railway when his train stopped at Verebyinsky railway bridge and could not go further, because out of loyal zeal the rails were painted white.

Under the Marquis de Travers, the Russian fleet, due to lack of funds, often operated in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland, which received the nickname Marquis's Puddle. At that time, the naval defense of St. Petersburg relied on a system of wood-earth fortifications near Kronstadt, armed with outdated short-range cannons, which allowed the enemy to easily destroy them from long distances. Already in December 1827, by order of the Emperor, work began to replace the wooden fortifications with stone ones. Nikolai personally reviewed the designs of fortifications proposed by the engineers and approved them. And in some cases (for example, during the construction of the Pavel I fort), he made specific proposals to reduce the cost and speed up construction.

The emperor carefully selected the performers of the work. Thus, 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 the disastrousness of any attempt to capture Kronstadt. As a result, the St. Petersburg public received a reason for entertainment by traveling to Oranienbaum and Krasnaya Gorka to observe the evolution of the enemy fleet. The mine and artillery position, created under Nicholas I for the first time in world practice, turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle on the way to the capital of the state.

Nikolai 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, like an engineer looks at a mechanism that is complex, but deterministic in its functioning, in which everything is interconnected and the reliability of one part ensures correct work others. Ideal social order there was army life completely regulated by regulations.

Death

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

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

As eyewitnesses recalled, the emperor passed away in a clear mind, without losing his presence of mind for a minute. He managed to say goodbye to each of his children and grandchildren and, having blessed them, turned to them with a reminder to remain friendly with each other.

His son, Alexander II, ascended the Russian throne.

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

Culture, censorship and writers

Nikolai suppressed the slightest manifestations of freethinking. In 1826, a censorship statute was issued, nicknamed “cast iron” by his contemporaries. It was forbidden to print almost anything that had any political overtones. In 1828, another censorship statute 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 news like “such and such a king had died” could be allowed into print. When in 1837 a note was published in the St. Petersburg Gazette about an attempt on the life of the French king Louis-Philippe, Benckendorff immediately notified the Minister of Education S.S. Uvarov that he considered “indecent the placement of such news in gazettes, especially those published by the government.”

In September 1826, Nikolai received Pushkin, who had been released from Mikhailovsky exile, and listened to his confession that on December 14, Pushkin would have been with the conspirators, but acted mercifully with him: he freed the poet from general censorship (he decided to censor his works himself), and instructed him to prepare note “On Public Education”, called him after the meeting “the smartest man in Russia” (however, later, after Pushkin’s death, he spoke very coldly about him and this meeting). In 1828, Nikolai dropped the case against Pushkin regarding the authorship of the “Gabriiliad” after the poet’s handwritten letter was handed over to him personally, bypassing the investigative commission, which, in the opinion of many researchers, contained, in the opinion of many researchers, an admission of authorship of the seditious work after much denial. However, the emperor never completely trusted the poet, seeing him as a dangerous “leader of the liberals”; the poet was under police surveillance, his letters were illustrated; Pushkin, having gone through the first euphoria, which was expressed in poems in honor of the tsar (“Stanzas”, “To Friends”), by the mid-1830s also began to evaluate the sovereign ambiguously. “There is a lot of ensign in him and a little of Peter the Great,” Pushkin wrote about Nicholas in his diary on May 21, 1834; at the same time, the diary also notes “sensible” comments on “The History of Pugachev” (the sovereign edited it and lent Pushkin 20 thousand rubles), ease of use and the king’s good language. In 1834, Pushkin was appointed chamberlain of the imperial court, which greatly burdened the poet and was also reflected in his diary. Nikolai himself considered such an appointment as 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 balls to which Nikolai personally invited him. Balam Pushkin preferred to communicate with writers, but Nikolai showed his dissatisfaction with him. The role played by Nikolai in the conflict between Pushkin and Dantes is assessed by historians contradictory. After the death of Pushkin, Nikolai awarded a pension to his widow and children, but sought in every possible way to limit performances in memory of him, thereby showing, in particular, dissatisfaction with the violation of his ban on dueling.

Guided by the statute of 1826, the Nikolaev censors reached the point of absurdity in their prohibitive zeal. One of them banned the publication of an arithmetic textbook after he saw three dots between the numbers in the text of the problem and suspected the author’s malicious intent in this. Chairman of the Censorship Committee D.P. Buturlin even proposed to delete certain passages (for example: “Rejoice, invisible taming of the cruel and bestial rulers...”) from the akathist to the Protection of the Mother of God, since they looked “unreliable.”

Nikolai also doomed Polezhaev, who was arrested for free poetry, to years of soldiering, and 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, and F. Schiller was banned from publication in Russia.

I. S. Turgenev was arrested in 1852 and then administratively exiled to the village only for writing an obituary dedicated to the memory of Gogol (the obituary itself was not passed by censors). The censor also suffered because he allowed Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter” to go into print, in which, according to 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 in a number of issues was much stricter and more careful), support of 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 of them, was the first to note the talent of L. Tolstoy, and wrote a review about “Hero of Our Time” that would have done honor to any professional literary critic... Nicholas I had enough 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, N. A. Ostrovsky’s play “We Will Be Numbered Our Own People” was banned from production. The Committee of Higher Censorship was dissatisfied with the fact that among the characters brought out by the author there were not “one of those venerable merchants of ours in whom fear of God, uprightness and straightforwardness of mind constitute a typical and integral attribute.”

It was not only liberals who came under suspicion. Professor M.P. Pogodin, who published “The Moskvitian,” was placed under police supervision in 1852 for a critical article addressed to N.V. Puppeteer’s play “The Batman” (about Peter I), which received the praise of the emperor.

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

Censorship also did not allow publication of some jingoistic articles and works that contained 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 personally deleted the paragraph that spoke of the erection of the cross over Sophia of Constantinople and the “All-Slavic Tsar”; another (“Now you have no time for poetry”) was prohibited from publication by the minister, apparently due to the “somewhat harsh tone of the presentation” noted by the censor.

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

Nicknames

Home nickname: Knicks. The official nickname is 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, daughter of Frederick William III, who received the name Alexandra Feodorovna after converting to Orthodoxy. The spouses were each other's fourth cousins ​​(they had the same great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother).

In the spring of the following year, their first son Alexander (the 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).

Nikolai was in a relationship 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 Lopukhina, like Alexander all women except his wife; he “was favorable to them,” no 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, types encountered, sketches observed, sketches of camp life - the subjects 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 cartoon. “He had a talent for caricatures,” Paul Lacroix wrote about the emperor, “and most successfully captured the funny sides of faces that he wanted to place in some satirical drawing.”

“He was handsome, but his beauty was cold; there is no face that reveals a person’s character as 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.”

Led ascetic and healthy image life; never missed Sunday services. He did not smoke and did not like smokers, did not drink strong drinks, walked a lot, and did drill exercises with weapons. It was known that he strictly followed the daily routine: the working day began at 7 o’clock in the morning, and at exactly 9 o’clock the reception of reports began. He preferred to dress in a simple officer's overcoat and slept on a hard bed.

He was distinguished by good memory and great efficiency; The tsar's working day lasted 16 - 18 hours. According to Archbishop of Kherson Innokenty (Borisov), “he was such a crown bearer for whom the royal throne served not as a head to rest, but as an incentive to incessant work.”

Maid of honor A.F. Tyutcheva writes that he “spent 18 hours a day at work, worked until late at night, got up at dawn, sacrificed nothing for pleasure and everything for duty, and took on more labor and worries than the last day laborer from his subjects. He sincerely and sincerely believed that he was able to see everything with his own eyes, hear everything with his own ears, regulate everything according to his own understanding, and transform everything with his own will. But what was the result of such a passion for the supreme ruler in trifles? As a result, he only piled up a pile of colossal abuses around his uncontrolled power, all the more harmful because from the outside they were covered up by official legality and that neither public opinion nor private initiative had the right to point out them, nor the opportunity to fight them.”

The tsar's love for law, justice, and order was well known. Personally attended military formations, reviews, inspected fortifications, educational establishments, office premises, government institutions. Remarks and criticisms were always accompanied by specific advice on how to correct the situation.

A younger contemporary of Nicholas I, historian S. M. Solovyov, writes: “after Nicholas’s accession, a military man, like a stick, accustomed not to reason, but to execute and capable of teaching others to perform without reasoning, was considered the best, most capable commander everywhere; experience in affairs - no attention was paid to this. The Fruntoviks sat in all government places, and with them ignorance, arbitrariness, robbery, and all kinds of disorder reigned."

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. Kiselyov, the Minister of Public Education Count S.S. Uvarov and others. The talented architect Konstantin

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

He had absolutely no understanding of 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 Nicholas’s lifetime the two best corps commanders - generals Leaders and Roediger - were never appointed 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 on the appointment of the poet and publicist Prince P. A. Vyazemsky to a new post. - Laughter and nothing more! Our people use it well..."

Through the eyes of contemporaries and publicists

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

It is clear that the emperor cannot forget for a moment who he is and what attention he attracts; he constantly poses and, consequently, is never natural, even when he speaks out 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, more rare, but much more suitable expression for 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 when he deigns to address us kindly. However, one circumstance spoils everything: the fact is that each of these expressions, suddenly leaving the emperor’s face, disappears completely, leaving no traces. Before our eyes, without any preparation, a change of scenery takes place; it seems as if the autocrat is putting on a mask that he can take off at any moment.(…) Hypocrite, or comedian, are harsh words, especially inappropriate in the mouth of a person who claims to have respectful and impartial judgments. However, I believe that for smart readers - and only to them I am addressing - speeches mean nothing 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 ruler: he has several masks, but no face. You are looking for a man - and you find only the Emperor. In my opinion, my remark is flattering for the emperor: he conscientiously practices his craft. This autocrat, who, thanks to his height, rises above other people, just as his throne rises above other chairs, considers it weakness for a moment to become an ordinary person and show that he lives, thinks and feels like a mere mortal. He seems to be unfamiliar with none of our affections; he forever remains a commander, judge, general, admiral, and finally, a 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 great heights, for the crowd loves amazing achievements and is proud of the efforts made to conquer them.

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 king) distinguishes a woman on a walk, in the theater, in society, he says one word to the adjutant on duty. A person who attracts the attention of a deity comes under observation and supervision. They warn the spouse if she is married, the parents if she is a girl, about the honor that has befallen them. There are no examples of this difference being accepted except with an expression of respectful gratitude. Likewise, there are no examples yet of dishonored husbands or fathers not profiting from their dishonor.” Custine argued that all this was “put on stream”, that girls dishonored by the emperor were usually married off to one of the court suitors, and this was done by none other than the Tsar’s wife herself, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. However, historians do not confirm the accusations of debauchery and the existence of a “conveyor belt of victims” dishonored by Nicholas I, contained in Custine’s book, and, on the contrary, they write that he was a monogamous man and for many years maintained a long-term attachment to one woman.

Contemporaries noted the “basilisk gaze” characteristic of the emperor, unbearable for timid people.

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

My father told the story of this monument. The officer lay down on guard to rest and unfastened the hooks of his huge stand-up collar, which was cutting his neck. This was forbidden. Hearing some noise in my sleep, I opened my eyes and saw the Emperor above me! 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 uplift and encourage the fallen - “a trait that hardly any of the crown bearers showed,” which caused A.S. Pushkin “this wonderful poems" ("Conversation between a bookseller and a poet; Pushkin talks about Napoleon I with a hint of modern events):

In “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” Gogol writes enthusiastically about Nikolai and claims that Pushkin also allegedly addressed Nikolai, who read Homer during a ball, the apologetic poem “You talked alone with Homer 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 was painfully worried about the failure of the Decembrist uprising, attributed cruelty, rudeness, vindictiveness, intolerance to “free-thinking” to the tsar’s personality, and accused him of following a reactionary course of domestic policy.

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

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

A.I. 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 king himself went into the crowd of rioting people suffering from cholera, suppressed this rebellion with his authority and, upon leaving quarantine, he took off all his clothes and burned them 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 damage caused by the lack of will of Nicholas II, Nicholas I is again coming into fashion, and I will be reproached, perhaps, for remembering This Monarch, “adored by all his contemporaries,” was not treated with due respect. The passion for the deceased 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 Catherine, managed to acquire an innumerable number of admirers and praisers and create a halo around himself. Catherine succeeded in this by bribing encyclopedists and various French and German greedy brethren with flattery, gifts and money, and her Russian associates with ranks, orders, allotment of peasants and land. Nikolai succeeded, and even in a less unprofitable way - through fear. Through bribery and fear, everything is always and everywhere achieved, everything, even immortality. Nikolai Pavlovich’s contemporaries did not “idolize” him, as it was customary to say during his reign, but they were afraid of him. Non-worship, non-worship would probably be recognized as a state crime. And gradually this custom-made feeling, a necessary guarantee of personal safety, entered the flesh and blood of contemporaries and was then instilled in their children and grandchildren. The late Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich10 used to go to Dr. Dreherin in Dresden for treatment. To my surprise, I saw that this seventy-year-old man kept kneeling during the service.

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

Most likely, he is still afraid of his “unforgettable” father. He managed to instill such fear in them that they would 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 Navy, whether it was true that all his contemporaries idolized the Tsar.

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

Tell us!

I was only four years old when, as an orphan, I was placed in the juvenile orphanage department of the building. There were no teachers there, but there were lady teachers. Once my friend asked me if I loved the Emperor. This was the first time I heard about the Emperor and I replied that I didn’t know. Well, they whipped me. That's all.

And did it help? Did you fall in love?

That is, how! Straight up - I began to idolize him. I was satisfied with the first spanking.

What if they didn’t start idolizing?

Of course, they wouldn't pat him on the head. This was mandatory, for everyone both above and below.

So it was necessary to pretend?

They didn’t go into such psychological subtleties back then. We were ordered - we loved. Then they said that only geese think, not people."

Monuments

In honor of Emperor Nicholas I, about one and a half dozen monuments were erected in the Russian Empire, 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, the following monuments to the Emperor exist:

• Saint Petersburg. Equestrian monument on St. Isaac's Square. Opened on 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 and rebuilt again in 1992.

• Saint Petersburg. Bronze bust of the Emperor on a high granite pedestal. 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), Suvorovsky Ave., 63. Initially, a monument to the Emperor, which is a bronze bust on a granite pedestal, was unveiled in front of the main facade of this hospital on August 15, 1890. The monument was destroyed shortly after 1917.

• Saint Petersburg. Plaster bust on a high granite pedestal. Opened on May 19, 2003 on the main staircase of the Vitebsky railway station (52 Zagorodny pr.), sculptors V. S. and S. V. Ivanov, architect T. L. Torich.

Publications in the Museums section

Nine faces of Emperor Nicholas I

During the reign of Emperor Nicholas I Russian empire was experiencing its golden age. Let's take a look at the works of art dedicated to this sovereign. Sofia Bagdasarova reports.

Grand Duke Nikolasha

In the “Portrait of Paul I with his Family,” the future emperor is depicted in the company of his parents and brothers and sisters. No one knew then what fate was in store for this boy in a white suit with a blue belt, huddled on his mother’s lap. After all, he was only the third son - and only a series of accidents and unsuccessful marriages of his older brothers secured the throne for him.

Gerhardt Franz von Kügelgen. Portrait of Paul I with his family. 1800

A.Rockstuhl. Nicholas I in childhood. 1806

Handsome officer

Nicholas became emperor at the age of 29, after the death of his older brother Alexander I and the abdication of the next in line, Constantine. Like all men of his kind, he was very passionate about military affairs. However, for a good sovereign of that era this was not a disadvantage. And his uniform suited him very well - like his older brother, he was considered a real handsome man.

V. Golike. Portrait of Nicholas I. 1843

P. Sokolov. Portrait of Nicholas I. 1820

“...Thirty-two years old, tall, lean, had a wide chest, somewhat long arms, an oblong, clean face, an open forehead, a Roman nose, a moderate mouth, a quick look, a sonorous voice, suitable for a tenor, but he spoke somewhat quickly. In general, he was very slender and agile. Neither arrogant importance nor windy haste was noticeable in his movements, but some kind of genuine severity was visible. The freshness of his face and everything about him showed iron health and served as proof that youth was not pampered and life was accompanied by sobriety and moderation. Physically, he was superior to all the men from the generals and officers that I have ever seen in the army, and I can truly say that in our enlightened era it is extremely rare to see such a person in the circle of the aristocracy.”

“Notes of Joseph Petrovich Dubetsky”

Emperor Cavalry

Of course, Nikolai also loved horses, and was affectionate with “retirees” too. From his predecessor, he inherited two veterans of the Napoleonic War - the gelding Tolstoy Orlovsky and the mare Atalanta, who received a personal royal pension. These horses took part in the funeral ceremony of Alexander I, and then the new emperor sent them to Tsarskoe Selo, where Pensioner stables were built and a cemetery for horses was created. Today there are 122 burials there, including Flora, Nicholas’s favorite horse, which he rode near Varna.

Franz Kruger. Emperor Nicholas I with his retinue. 1835

N. E. Sverchkov. Emperor Nicholas I on a winter trip. 1853

"Gendarme of Europe"

The painting by Grigory Chernetsov depicts a parade on the occasion of the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830–1831. The Emperor is depicted among approximately 300 characters in the picture (almost all are known by name - including Benckendorff, Kleinmichel, Speransky, Martos, Kukolnik, Dmitriev, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, etc.). The defeat of this rebellion was one of those military operations of the Russian state that created a gloomy reputation for it in Europe.

“Then it was in England that newspapers strongly attacked Nikolai Pavlovich, which seemed very funny to him. One evening, having met Gerlach, he told him and the Prussian diplomat Kanitz that in the English parliament they compared him to Nero, called him a Cannibal, and so on. and that the whole English vocabulary proved insufficient to express all the terrible qualities that distinguish the All-Russian Emperor. Lord Durham, an English diplomat who arrived in Russia, was in an awkward position, and Emperor Nicholas jokingly said: “Je me signerai toujours Nicolas canibal” (translated from the French: “I will now sign myself as Nicholas the cannibal”).

Alexander Brikner. "Russian court in 1826–1832"

Ladies' man

The emperor was suspected of a strong addiction to opposite sex, but, unlike his predecessor and heir - Alexander I and Alexander II, brother and son, he never flaunted his connections, did not honor anyone with recognition as an official favorite and was extremely delicate and respectful towards his wife. At the same time, according to the memoirs of Baron Modest Korf, “Emperor Nicholas was generally of a very cheerful and lively disposition, and in a close circle he was even playful.”

V. Sverchkov. Portrait of Nicholas I. 1856

A.I. Ladurner. Emperor Nicholas I at the ball. 1830

“When talking to women, he had that tone of refined politeness and courtesy, which was traditional in the good society of old France and which Russian society tried to imitate, a tone that has completely disappeared in our days, without being, however, replaced by anything more pleasant or more serious.
...The timbre of his voice was also extremely pleasant. I must therefore admit that my heart was captivated by him, although according to my convictions I remained decidedly hostile to him.

Anna Tyutcheva. “Secrets of the Royal Court (from the notes of the ladies-in-waiting)”

Good family man

Alas, unlike the priest, Nikolai did not order a classic family portrait. The emperor with his wife, six of his seven children (except for his daughter, who was married abroad) and son-in-law can be seen in a costume portrait with the mysterious title “Tsarskoye Selo Carousel”. Members of the Emperor's family dressed up as medieval knights and their beautiful ladies, are depicted here in a scene from a masquerade tournament that was indulged in at the residence.

Horace Vernet. Tsarskoye Selo carousel. 1842

George Dow. Portrait of Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna with children.1821–1824

Benefactor and Guardian

The Emperor, like other members of the dynasty, considered it his duty to personally patronize St. Petersburg educational institutions - primarily the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens and the Naval Cadet Corps. Besides the duty, it was also a pleasure. Among children growing up without parents, Nikolai could truly relax. So, bald (like Alexander I), he was smart all his life and wore a toupee - a small wig. But when his first grandson was born, as one former cadet recalled, Nikolai came to the corps, threw the overlay from his bald cap into the air and told his adoring children that since he was now a grandfather, he would not wear toupees anymore.

P. Fedotov. Nicholas I and schoolgirls

“The Emperor played with us; in an unbuttoned frock coat, he lay down on a hill, and we dragged him down or sat on him, tightly next to each other; and he shook us like flies. He knew how to instill self-love in children; he was attentive to the employees and knew all the cool ladies and men whom he called by their first and last names.”

Lev Zhemchuzhnikov. "My memories from the past"

Tired ruler

In the painting by Villevalde, the emperor is depicted in the company of the painter himself, the heir (the future Alexander II), as well as a marble bust of his elder brother. Nicholas often visited the workshop of this battle artist (as evidenced by another portrait, in which the king’s enormous stature is clearly visible). But Nikolai’s favorite portrait painter was Franz Kruger. There is a bitter historical anecdote about their communication, which characterizes the gloomy mood of the ruler in recent years.

Symbol of the era

The death of the emperor, whose strength was undermined by the unsuccessful Crimean War, shocked his contemporaries. The maid of honor Anna Tyutcheva, the poet’s daughter, recalled how she went to dinner with her parents and found them very impressed. “It was as if they had announced to us that God had died,” her father said then with his characteristic brightness of speech.

Vasily Timm. Emperor Nicholas I on his deathbed. 1855

“The university watchman Vasily was in awe of Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich and praised everything about him, even his home way of life. “The old man is not a fan of all these overseas wines and various trinkets; but just like that: before dinner he knocks over a glass for a simpleton, that’s all! He likes to eat buckwheat porridge straight from the pot...” he narrated with confidence, as if he had seen it himself. “God forbid, the old man will collapse,” he said, “what will happen then?” “The Emperor is dead,” I just had time to say, when Vasily seemed numb in front of me, muttered angrily: “Well! Now everything will go to dust!

“Memories, thoughts and confessions of a man living out his life as a Smolensk nobleman”

Doctor of Historical Sciences M. RAKHMATULLIN

In February 1913, just a few years before the collapse of Tsarist Russia, the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov was solemnly celebrated. In countless churches of the vast empire, “many years” of the reigning family were proclaimed, in noble assemblies, champagne bottle corks flew to the ceiling amid joyful exclamations, and throughout Russia millions of people sang: “Strong, sovereign... reign over us... reign to the fear of the enemies." In the past three centuries, the Russian throne was occupied by different kings: Peter I and Catherine II, endowed with remarkable intelligence and statesmanship; Paul I and Alexander III, who were not very distinguished by these qualities; Catherine I, Anna Ioannovna and Nicholas II, completely devoid of statesmanship. Among them were both cruel ones, like Peter I, Anna Ioannovna and Nicholas I, and relatively soft ones, like Alexander I and his nephew Alexander II. But what they all had in common was that each of them was an unlimited autocrat, to whom ministers, police and all subjects obeyed unquestioningly... What were these all-powerful rulers, on whose one casually thrown word much, if not everything, depended? The magazine "Science and Life" begins publishing articles dedicated to the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, who went down in Russian history mainly because he began his reign with the hanging of five Decembrists and ended it with the blood of thousands and thousands of soldiers and sailors in the shamefully lost Crimean War, unleashed , in particular, and due to the exorbitant imperial ambitions of the king.

Palace Embankment near the Winter Palace from Vasilyevsky Island. Watercolor by Swedish artist Benjamin Petersen. Beginning of the 19th century.

Mikhailovsky Castle - view from the Fontanka embankment. Watercolor early XIX century Benjamin Petersen.

Paul I. From an engraving of 1798.

The Dowager Empress and mother of the future Emperor Nicholas I, Maria Feodorovna, after the death of Paul I. From an engraving of the early 19th century.

Emperor Alexander I. Early 20s of the 19th century.

Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich in childhood.

Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich.

Petersburg. Uprising on Senate Square on December 14, 1825. Watercolor by artist K.I. Kolman.

Science and life // Illustrations

Emperor Nicholas I and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Portraits of the first third of the 19th century.

Count M. A. Miloradovich.

During the uprising on Senate Square, Pyotr Kakhovsky mortally wounded the military governor-general of St. Petersburg Miloradovich.

The personality and actions of the fifteenth Russian autocrat from the Romanov dynasty were assessed ambiguously by his contemporaries. Persons from his immediate circle who communicated with him in an informal setting or in a narrow family circle, as a rule, spoke of the tsar with delight: “an eternal worker on the throne”, “an intrepid knight”, “a knight of the spirit”... For a significant part of society, the name of the tsar was associated with the nicknames “bloody”, “executioner”, “Nikolai Palkin” . Moreover, the latter definition seemed to re-establish itself in public opinion after 1917, when for the first time a small brochure by L. N. Tolstoy appeared in a Russian publication under the same name. The basis for its writing (in 1886) was the story of a 95-year-old former Nikolaev soldier about how lower ranks who were guilty of something were driven through the gauntlet, for which Nicholas I was popularly nicknamed Palkin. The very picture of “legal” punishment by spitzrutens, terrifying in its inhumanity, is depicted with stunning force by the writer in the famous story “After the Ball.”

Many negative assessments of the personality of Nicholas I and his activities come from A.I. Herzen, who did not forgive the monarch for his reprisal against the Decembrists and especially the execution of five of them, when everyone was hoping for a pardon. What happened was all the more terrible for society because after the public execution of Pugachev and his associates, the people had already forgotten about the death penalty. Nicholas I is so unloved by Herzen that he, usually an accurate and subtle observer, places emphasis with obvious prejudice even when describing his external appearance: “He was handsome, but his beauty was chilling; there is no face that would so mercilessly expose a person’s character 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."

This portrait contradicts the testimony of many other contemporaries. For example, the life physician of the Saxe-Coburg Prince Leopold, Baron Shtokman, described Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich as follows: unusually handsome, attractive, slender, like a young pine tree, regular facial features, beautiful open forehead, arched eyebrows, small mouth, gracefully outlined chin, character very lively, manners relaxed and graceful. One of the noble court ladies, Mrs. Kemble, who was distinguished by her particularly strict judgments about men, endlessly exclaims in delight with him: “What a charm! What a beauty! This will be the first handsome man in Europe!” The English Queen Victoria, the wife of the English envoy Bloomfield, other titled persons and “ordinary” contemporaries spoke equally flatteringly about Nicholas’s appearance.

THE FIRST YEARS OF LIFE

Ten days later, the grandmother-empress told Grimm the details of the first days of her grandson’s life: “Knight Nicholas has been eating porridge for three days now, because he constantly asks for food. I believe that an eight-day-old child has never enjoyed such a treat, this is unheard of... He looks wide eyes at everyone, holds his head straight and turns no worse than I can.” Catherine II predicts the fate of the newborn: the third grandson, “due to his extraordinary strength, is destined, it seems to me, to also reign, although he has two older brothers.” At that time, Alexander was in his twenties; Konstantin was 17 years old.

The newborn, according to the established rule, after the baptism ceremony is transferred to the care of the grandmother. But her unexpected death on November 6, 1796 “unfavorably” affected the education of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. True, grandma managed to do a good choice nannies for Nikolai. It was a Scot, Evgenia Vasilievna Lyon, the daughter of a stucco master, invited to Russia by Catherine II among other artists. She remained the sole teacher for the first seven years of the boy's life and is believed to have had a strong influence on the formation of his personality. The owner of a courageous, decisive, direct and noble character, Eugenia Lyon tried to instill in Nikolai the highest concepts of duty, honor, and loyalty to his word.

On January 28, 1798, another son, Mikhail, was born into the family of Emperor Paul I. Paul, deprived by the will of his mother, Empress Catherine II, of the opportunity to raise his two eldest sons himself, transferred all his fatherly love to the younger ones, giving clear preference to Nicholas. Their sister Anna Pavlovna, the future Queen of the Netherlands, writes that their father “caressed them very tenderly, which our mother never did.”

According to the established rules, Nikolai was enrolled in the cradle military service: at four months he was appointed chief of the Life Guards Horse Regiment. The boy's first toy was a wooden gun, then swords appeared, also wooden. In April 1799, he was put on his first military uniform - the “crimson garus”, and in the sixth year of his life Nikolai saddled a riding horse for the first time. From his earliest years, the future emperor absorbs the spirit of the military environment.

In 1802, studies began. From that time on, a special journal was kept in which the teachers (“gentlers”) recorded literally every step of the boy, describing in detail his behavior and actions.

The main supervision of education was entrusted to General Matvey Ivanovich Lamsdorf. It would be difficult to make a more awkward choice. According to contemporaries, Lamsdorff “not only did not possess any of the abilities necessary to educate a person of the royal house, destined to have an influence on the destinies of his compatriots and on the history of his people, but he was even alien to everything that is necessary for a person devoting himself to education of a private individual." He was an ardent supporter of the generally accepted system of education at that time, based on orders, reprimands and punishments that reached the point of cruelty. Nikolai did not avoid frequent “acquaintance” with a ruler, ramrods and rods. With the consent of his mother, Lamsdorff diligently tried to change the character of the pupil, going against all his inclinations and abilities.

As often happens in such cases, the result was the opposite. Subsequently, Nikolai Pavlovich wrote about himself and his brother Mikhail: “Count Lamsdorff knew how to instill in us one feeling - fear, and such fear and confidence in his omnipotence that mother’s face was for us the second most important concept. This order completely deprived us of filial happiness trust in a parent to whom we were rarely allowed alone, and then never otherwise, as if on a sentence. The constant change of people around us instilled in us, from infancy, the habit of looking for weak sides, in order to use them in the sense of what, according to our desires, we needed and, I must admit, not without success... Count Lamsdorff and others, imitating him, used severity with vehemence, which took away from us the feeling of guilt, leaving one annoyance for rude treatment, and often undeserved. In a word, fear and the search for how to avoid punishment occupied my mind most of all. I saw nothing but coercion in my studies, and I studied without desire.”

Still would. As the biographer of Nicholas I, Baron M.A. Korf, writes, “the great princes were constantly, as it were, in a vice. They could not freely and easily stand up, sit down, walk, talk, or indulge in the usual childish playfulness and noisiness: they at every step they stopped, corrected, reprimanded, persecuted with morals or threats.” In this way, as time has shown, they tried in vain to correct Nikolai’s as independent as he was obstinate, hot-tempered character. Even Baron Korff, one of the biographers most sympathetic to him, is forced to note that the usually uncommunicative and withdrawn Nikolai seemed to be reborn during the games, and the willful principles contained in him, disapproved of by those around him, manifested themselves in their entirety. The journals of the "cavaliers" for the years 1802-1809 are replete with records of Nikolai's unbridled behavior during games with peers. “No matter what happened to him, whether he fell, or hurt himself, or considered his desires unfulfilled, and himself offended, he immediately uttered swear words... chopped the drum, toys with his hatchet, broke them, beat his comrades with a stick or whatever their games." In moments of temper he could spit at his sister Anna. Once he hit his playmate Adlerberg with such force with the butt of a child’s gun that he was left with a scar for life.

The rude manners of both grand dukes, especially during war games, were explained by the idea established in their boyish minds (not without the influence of Lamsdorff) that rudeness is a mandatory characteristic of all military men. However, teachers note that outside of war games, Nikolai Pavlovich’s manners “remained no less rude, arrogant and arrogant.” Hence the clearly expressed desire to excel in all games, to command, to be a boss or to represent the emperor. And this despite the fact that, according to the same educators, Nikolai “has very limited abilities,” although he had, in their words, “the most excellent, loving heart" and was distinguished by "excessive sensitivity."

Another trait that also remained for the rest of his life was that Nikolai Pavlovich “could not bear any joke that seemed to him an insult, did not want to endure the slightest displeasure... he seemed to constantly consider himself both higher and more significant than everyone else.” Hence his persistent habit of admitting his mistakes only under strong duress.

So, the favorite pastime of the brothers Nikolai and Mikhail remained only war games. At their disposal was a large assortment of tin and porcelain soldiers, guns, halberds, wooden horses, drums, pipes and even charging boxes. All attempts by the late mother to turn them away from this attraction were unsuccessful. As Nikolai himself later wrote, “military sciences alone interested me passionately, in them alone I found consolation and a pleasant activity, similar to the disposition of my spirit.” In fact, it was a passion, first of all, for paradomania, for frunt, which since Peter III, according to the biographer of the royal family N.K. Schilder, “took deep and strong roots in the royal family.” “He invariably loved exercises, parades, parades and divorces to death and carried them out even in winter,” one of his contemporaries writes about Nicholas. Nikolai and Mikhail even came up with a “family” term to express the pleasure they felt when the review of the grenadier regiments went off without a hitch - “infantry pleasure.”

TEACHERS AND PUPILS

From the age of six, Nikolai begins to be introduced to Russian and French languages, the Law of God, Russian history, geography. This is followed by arithmetic, German and English - as a result, Nikolai was fluent in four languages. Latin and Greek were not given to him. (Subsequently, he excluded them from his children’s education program, because “he can’t stand Latin ever since he was tormented by it in his youth.”) Since 1802, Nicholas has been taught drawing and music. Having learned to play the trumpet (cornet-piston) quite well, after two or three auditions he, naturally gifted with good hearing and musical memory, could perform quite complex works in home concerts without notes. Nikolai Pavlovich retained his love for church singing throughout his life, knew all the church services by heart and willingly sang along with the singers in the choir with his sonorous and pleasant voice. He drew well (in pencil and watercolor) and even learned the art of engraving, which required great patience, a faithful eye and a steady hand.

In 1809, it was decided to expand the training of Nicholas and Mikhail to university programs. But the idea of ​​sending them to the University of Leipzig, as well as the idea of ​​sending them to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, disappeared due to the outbreak of the Patriotic War of 1812. As a result, they continued their education at home. Well-known professors of that time were invited to study with the grand dukes: economist A.K. Storch, lawyer M.A. Balugyansky, historian F.P. Adelung and others. But the first two disciplines did not captivate Nikolai. He later expressed his attitude towards them in the instructions to M.A. Korfu, who was appointed by him to teach his son Konstantin law: “... There is no need to dwell too long on abstract subjects, which are then either forgotten or do not find any application in practice. I I remember how we were tormented over this by two people, very kind, perhaps very smart, but both of them the most intolerable pedants: the late Balugyansky and Kukolnik [father of the famous playwright. - M.R.]... During the lessons of these gentlemen, we either dozed off, or drew some nonsense, sometimes their own caricature portraits, and then for the exams we learned something by rote, without fruition or benefit for the future. In my opinion, best theory rights - good morality, and it must be in the heart regardless of these abstractions and have its basis in religion."

Nikolai Pavlovich showed an interest in construction and especially engineering very early. “Mathematics, then artillery, and especially engineering science and tactics,” he writes in his notes, “attracted me exclusively; I had special success in this area, and then I got the desire to serve in engineering.” And this is not empty boasting. According to engineer-lieutenant general E. A. Egorov, a man of rare honesty and selflessness, Nikolai Pavlovich “always had a special attraction to the engineering and architectural arts... his love for the construction business did not leave him until the end of his life and, to tell the truth, he knew a lot about it... He always went into all the technical details of the work and amazed everyone with the accuracy of his comments and the fidelity of his eye.”

At the age of 17, Nikolai’s compulsory schooling is almost over. From now on, he regularly attends divorces, parades, exercises, that is, he completely indulges in what was previously not encouraged. At the beginning of 1814, the desire of the Grand Dukes to go to the Active Army finally came true. They stayed abroad for about a year. On this trip, Nicholas met his future wife, Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prussian king. The choice of the bride was not made by chance, but also answered the aspirations of Paul I to strengthen relations between Russia and Prussia through a dynastic marriage.

In 1815, the brothers were again in the Active Army, but, as in the first case, they did not take part in military operations. On the way back, the official engagement to Princess Charlotte took place in Berlin. A 19-year-old young man, enchanted by her, upon returning to St. Petersburg, writes a letter significant in content: “Farewell, my angel, my friend, my only consolation, my only true happiness, think about me as often as I think about you, and love if you can, the one who is and will be your faithful Nikolai for life." Charlotte's reciprocal feeling was just as strong, and on July 1 (13), 1817, on her birthday, a magnificent wedding took place. With the adoption of Orthodoxy, the princess was named Alexandra Feodorovna.

Before his marriage, Nicholas took two study tours - to several provinces of Russia and to England. After marriage, he was appointed inspector general for engineering and chief of the Life Guards Sapper Battalion, which fully corresponded to his inclinations and desires. His tirelessness and service zeal amazed everyone: early in the morning he showed up for line and rifle training as a sapper, at 12 o'clock he left for Peterhof, and at 4 o'clock in the afternoon he mounted his horse and again rode 12 miles to the camp, where he remained until the evening dawn, personally supervising work on the construction of training field fortifications, digging trenches, installing mines, landmines... Nikolai had an extraordinary memory for faces and remembered the names of all the lower ranks of “his” battalion. According to his colleagues, Nikolai, who “knew his job to perfection,” fanatically demanded the same from others and strictly punished them for any mistakes. So much so that soldiers punished on his orders were often carried away on stretchers to the infirmary. Nikolai, of course, did not feel any remorse, for he only strictly followed the paragraphs of the military regulations, which provided for the merciless punishment of soldiers with sticks, rods, and spitzrutens for any offenses.

In July 1818 he was appointed brigade commander 1st Guards divisions (while retaining the position of inspector general). He was in his 22nd year, and he sincerely rejoiced at this appointment, for he received real opportunity command the troops himself, appoint exercises and reviews himself.

In this position, Nikolai Pavlovich was taught the first real lessons in behavior appropriate for an officer, which laid the foundation for the later legend of the “knight emperor.”

Once, during the next exercise, he gave a rude and unfair reprimand in front of the regiment's front to K.I. Bistrom, a military general, commander of the Jaeger Regiment, who had many awards and wounds. The enraged general came to the commander of the Separate Guards Corps, I.V. Vasilchikov, and asked him to convey to Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich his demand for a formal apology. Only the threat to bring the incident to the attention of the sovereign forced Nicholas to apologize to Bistrom, which he did in the presence of the regiment officers. But this lesson was of no use. After some time, for minor violations in the ranks, he gave an insulting scolding to the company commander V.S. Norov, concluding with the phrase: “I will bend you to the horn of a ram!” The regiment officers demanded that Nikolai Pavlovich “give satisfaction to Norov.” Since a duel with a member of the reigning family is by definition impossible, the officers resigned. It was difficult to resolve the conflict.

But nothing could drown out Nikolai Pavlovich’s official zeal. Following the rules of the military regulations “firmly ingrained” in his mind, he spent all his energy on drilling the units under his command. “I began to demand,” he recalled later, “but I demanded alone, because what I discredited out of duty of conscience was allowed everywhere, even by my superiors. The situation was the most difficult; to act otherwise was contrary to my conscience and duty; but by this I clearly set and bosses and subordinates against themselves. Moreover, they didn’t know me, and many either didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand.”

It must be admitted that his severity as a brigade commander was partly justified by the fact that in officer corps at that time, “the order, already shaken by the three-year campaign, completely collapsed... Subordination disappeared and was preserved only at the front; respect for superiors disappeared completely... there were no rules, no order, and everything was done completely arbitrarily.” It got to the point that many officers came to training in tailcoats, throwing an overcoat over their shoulders and putting on a uniform hat. What was it like for serviceman Nikolai to put up with this to the core? He did not put up with it, which caused not always justified condemnation from his contemporaries. The memoirist F. F. Wigel, known for his poisonous pen, wrote that Grand Duke Nicholas “was uncommunicative and cold, completely devoted to the sense of his duty; in fulfilling it, he was too strict with himself and with others. In the regular features of his white, pale face one can see there was some kind of immobility, some kind of unaccountable severity. Let's tell the truth: he was not loved at all."

The testimonies of other contemporaries relating to the same time are in the same vein: “The ordinary expression of his face has something stern and even unfriendly in it. His smile is a smile of condescension, and not the result of a cheerful mood or passion. The habit of dominating these feelings is akin to his a being to the point that you will not notice in him any compulsion, nothing inappropriate, nothing learned, and yet all his words, like all his movements, are measured, as if musical notes were lying in front of him. There is something unusual about the Grand Duke: he speaks vividly, simply, by the way; everything he says is smart, not a single vulgar joke, not a single funny or obscene word. Neither in the tone of his voice, nor in the composition of his speech there is anything that would expose pride or secrecy. But you feel that his heart is closed, that the barrier is inaccessible, and that it would be crazy to hope to penetrate into the depths of his thoughts or have complete trust."

At the service, Nikolai Pavlovich was in constant tension, he buttoned up all the buttons of his uniform, and only at home, in the family, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna recalled about those days, “he felt quite happy, just like me.” In the notes of V.A. Zhukovsky we read that “nothing could be more touching to see the Grand Duke in his home life. As soon as he crossed the threshold, the gloominess suddenly disappeared, giving way not to smiles, but to loud, joyful laughter, frank speeches and the most affectionate treatment with those around him... A happy young man... with a kind, faithful and beautiful girlfriend, with whom he lived in perfect harmony, having activities that suited his inclinations, without worries, without responsibility, without ambitious thoughts, with clear conscience"What did he lack on earth?"

THE PATH TO THE THRONE

Suddenly everything changed overnight. In the summer of 1819, Alexander I unexpectedly informed Nicholas and his wife of his intentions to renounce the throne in favor of his younger brother. “Nothing like this ever came to mind, even in a dream,” emphasizes Alexandra Fedorovna. “We were struck as if by thunder; the future seemed gloomy and inaccessible to happiness.” Nikolai himself compares his and his wife’s feelings with the feeling of a man calmly walking when “an abyss suddenly opens up under his feet, into which an irresistible force plunges him, not allowing him to retreat or turn back. This is a perfect image of our terrible situation.” And he was not lying, realizing how heavy the cross of fate looming on the horizon - the royal crown - would be for him.

But these are just words, for now Alexander I makes no attempts to involve his brother in state affairs, although a manifesto has already been drawn up (though secretly even from the inner circle of the court) on the renunciation of the throne of Constantine and its transfer to Nicholas. The latter is still busy, as he himself wrote, “with daily waiting in the hallway or secretary room, where... noble persons who had access to the sovereign gathered every day. We spent an hour, sometimes more, in this noisy meeting. .. This time was a waste of time, but also a precious practice for getting to know people and faces, and I took advantage of it.”

This is the whole school of Nikolai’s preparation for governing the state, for which, it should be noted, he did not strive at all and for which, as he himself admitted, “my inclinations and desires led me so little; a degree for which I had never prepared and, on the contrary, I always looked with fear, looking at the burden that lay on my benefactor" (Emperor Alexander I. - M.R.). In February 1825, Nikolai was appointed commander of the 1st Guards Division, but this did not essentially change anything. He could have become a member of the State Council, but did not. Why? The answer to the question is partly given by the Decembrist V. I. Steingeil in his “Notes on the Uprising.” Referring to rumors about the abdication of Constantine and the appointment of Nicholas as heir, he quotes the words of Moscow University professor A.F. Merzlyakov: “When this rumor spread throughout Moscow, I happened to see Zhukovsky; I asked him: “Tell me, perhaps, you are a close person - why should we expect from this change?" - “Judge for yourself,” answered Vasily Andreevich, “I have never seen a book in [his] hands; The only occupation is the frunt and the soldiers."

The unexpected news that Alexander I was dying came from Taganrog to St. Petersburg on November 25. (Alexander was touring the south of Russia and intended to travel all over Crimea.) Nikolai invited the Chairman of the State Council and the Committee of Ministers, Prince P.V. Lopukhin, Prosecutor General Prince A.B. Kurakin, commander of the Guards Corps A.L. Voinov and the military Governor General of St. Petersburg, Count M.A. Miloradovich, who was endowed with special powers in connection with the emperor’s departure from the capital, and announced to them his rights to the throne, apparently considering this a purely formal act. But, as the former adjutant of Tsarevich Konstantin F.P. Opochinin testifies, Count Miloradovich “answered flatly that Grand Duke Nicholas cannot and should not in any way hope to succeed his brother Alexander in the event of his death; that the laws of the empire do not allow the sovereign to dispose of will; that, moreover, Alexander’s will is known only to some people and is unknown among the people; that Constantine’s abdication is also implicit and remained unpublicized; that Alexander, if he wanted Nicholas to inherit the throne after him, had to make public his will and Constantine’s consent to it during his lifetime ; that neither the people nor the army will understand the abdication and will attribute everything to treason, especially since neither the sovereign himself nor the heir by birthright is in the capital, but both were absent; that, finally, the guard will resolutely refuse to take the oath to Nicholas in such circumstances , and then the inevitable consequence will be indignation... The Grand Duke proved his rights, but Count Miloradovich did not want to recognize them and refused his assistance. That's where we parted ways."

On the morning of November 27, the courier brought the news of the death of Alexander I, and Nicholas, swayed by Miloradovich’s arguments and not paying attention to the absence of a Manifesto obligatory in such cases on the accession of a new monarch to the throne, was the first to swear allegiance to the “legitimate Emperor Constantine.” The others did the same after him. From this day on, a political crisis provoked by the narrow family clan of the reigning family begins - a 17-day interregnum. Couriers scurry between St. Petersburg and Warsaw, where Constantine was, - the brothers persuade each other to take the remaining idle throne.

A situation unprecedented for Russia has arisen. If earlier in its history there was a fierce struggle for the throne, often leading to murder, now the brothers seem to be competing in renouncing their rights to supreme power. But there is a certain ambiguity and indecision in Konstantin’s behavior. Instead of immediately arriving in the capital, as the situation required, he limited himself to letters to his mother and brother. Members of the reigning house, writes the French ambassador Count Laferronais, “are playing with the crown of Russia, throwing it like a ball to one another.”

On December 12, a package was delivered from Taganrog addressed to “Emperor Constantine” from the Chief of the General Staff, I. I. Dibich. After some hesitation, Grand Duke Nicholas opened it. “Let them imagine what should have happened in me,” he later recalled, “when, glancing at what was included (in the package. - M.R.) letter from General Dibich, I saw that it was about an existing and just discovered extensive conspiracy, the branches of which spread throughout the entire Empire from St. Petersburg to Moscow and to the Second Army in Bessarabia. Only then did I fully feel the burden of my fate and remember with horror what situation I was in. It was necessary to act without wasting a minute, with full power, with experience, with determination."

Nikolai did not exaggerate: from the words of the adjutant of the infantry commander of the Guards Corps K. I. Bistrom, Ya. I. Rostovtsov, a friend of the Decembrist E. P. Obolensky, in general outline he knew about the impending “outrage at the new oath.” We had to hurry to act.

On the night of December 13, Nikolai Pavlovich appeared before State Council. The first phrase he uttered: “I carry out the will of brother Konstantin Pavlovich” was supposed to convince the members of the Council that his actions were forced. Then Nicholas “in a loud voice” read out in its final form the Manifesto polished by M. M. Speransky about his accession to the throne. “Everyone listened in deep silence,” Nikolai notes in his notes. This was a natural reaction - the tsar is far from being desired by everyone (S.P. Trubetskoy expressed the opinion of many when he wrote that “the young great princes are tired of them”). However, the roots of slavish obedience to autocratic power are so strong that the unexpected change was accepted calmly by the members of the Council. At the end of the reading of the Manifesto, they “bowed deeply” to the new emperor.

Early in the morning, Nikolai Pavlovich addressed the specially assembled guards generals and colonels. He read to them the Manifesto of his accession to the throne, the will of Alexander I and documents on the abdication of Tsarevich Constantine. The answer was unanimous recognition of him as the rightful monarch. Then the commanders went to the General Headquarters to take the oath, and from there to their units to conduct the appropriate ritual.

On this critical day for him, Nikolai was outwardly calm. But his true state of mind is revealed by the words he then said to A.H. Benckendorf: “Tonight, perhaps, both of us will no longer be in the world, but at least we will die having fulfilled our duty.” He wrote about the same thing to P. M. Volkonsky: “On the fourteenth I will be sovereign or dead.”

By eight o'clock the oath ceremony in the Senate and Synod was completed, and the first news of the oath came from the guards regiments. It seemed that everything would go well. However, the members of secret societies who were in the capital, as the Decembrist M. S. Lunin wrote, “came with the idea that the decisive hour had come” and they had to “resort to the force of arms.” But this favorable situation for the speech came as a complete surprise to the conspirators. Even the experienced K.F. Ryleev “was struck by the randomness of the case” and was forced to admit: “This circumstance gives us a clear idea of ​​​​our powerlessness. I was deceived myself, we do not have an established plan, no measures have been taken...”

In the camp of the conspirators, there are continuous arguments on the verge of hysteria, and yet in the end it was decided to speak out: “It is better to be taken in the square,” argued N. Bestuzhev, “than on the bed.” The conspirators are unanimous in defining the basic attitude of the speech - “loyalty to the oath to Constantine and reluctance to swear allegiance to Nicholas.” The Decembrists deliberately resorted to deception, convincing the soldiers that the rights of the legitimate heir to the throne, Tsarevich Constantine, should be protected from unauthorized encroachments by Nicholas.

And so, on a gloomy, windy day on December 14, 1825, about three thousand soldiers “standing for Constantine” gathered on Senate Square, with three dozen officers, their commanders. For various reasons, not all the regiments that the leaders of the conspirators were counting on showed up. Those gathered had neither artillery nor cavalry. Another dictator, S.P. Trubetskoy, got scared and didn’t show up on the square. The tedious, almost five-hour standing in their uniforms in the cold, without a specific goal or any combat mission, had a depressing effect on the soldiers who were patiently waiting, as V. I. Steingeil writes, for “the outcome from fate.” Fate appeared in the form of grapeshot, instantly scattering their ranks.

The command to fire live rounds was not given immediately. Nicholas I, despite the general confusion, decisively took the suppression of the rebellion into his own hands, still hoped to do it “without bloodshed,” even after, he recalls, how “they fired a volley at me, bullets whizzed through my head.” All this day Nikolai was in sight, in front of the 1st battalion of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, and his powerful figure on horseback represented an excellent target. “The most amazing thing,” he will say later, “is that I was not killed that day.” And Nikolai firmly believed that God’s hand was guiding his destiny.

Nikolai’s fearless behavior on December 14 is explained by his personal courage and bravery. He himself thought differently. One of the ladies of state of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna later testified that when one of those close to him, out of a desire to flatter, began to tell Nicholas I about his “heroic act” on December 14, about his extraordinary courage, the sovereign interrupted the interlocutor, saying: “You are mistaken; I was not as brave as you think. But a sense of duty forced me to overcome myself." An honest confession. And subsequently he always said that on that day he was “only doing his duty.”

December 14, 1825 determined the fate not only of Nikolai Pavlovich, but in many ways of the country. If, according to the author of the famous book “Russia in 1839”, Marquis Astolphe de Custine, on this day Nicholas “from the silent, melancholy, as he was in the days of his youth, turned into a hero,” then Russia for a long time lost the opportunity to carry out any there was liberal reform, which she so needed. This was already obvious to the most insightful contemporaries. December 14th set things in motion historical process“A completely different direction,” noted Count D.N. Tolstoy. Another contemporary clarifies it: “December 14, 1825... should be attributed to the dislike for any liberal movement that was constantly noticed in the orders of Emperor Nicholas.”

Meanwhile, there might not have been an uprising at all under only two conditions. The Decembrist A.E. Rosen clearly speaks about the first in his Notes. Noting that after receiving the news of the death of Alexander I, “all classes and ages were struck by unfeigned sadness” and that it was with “such a mood of spirit” that the troops swore allegiance to Constantine, Rosen adds: “... the feeling of grief took precedence over all other feelings - and the commanders and troops would have just as sadly and calmly sworn allegiance to Nicholas if the will of Alexander I had been communicated to them in a legal manner." Many spoke about the second condition, but it was most clearly stated on December 20, 1825 by Nicholas I himself in a conversation with the French ambassador: “I found, and still find, that if Brother Konstantin had heeded my persistent prayers and arrived in St. Petersburg, we would have avoided a terrifying scene... and the danger to which it plunged us over the course of several hours." As we see, a coincidence of circumstances largely determined the further course of events.

Arrests and interrogations of those involved in the outrage and members of secret societies began. And here the 29-year-old emperor behaved to such an extent cunningly, prudently and artistically that those under investigation, believing in his sincerity, made confessions that were unthinkable in terms of frankness even by the most lenient standards. “Without rest, without sleep, he interrogated... those arrested,” writes the famous historian P.E. Shchegolev, “he forced confessions... choosing masks, each time new for a new person. For some, he was a formidable monarch, whom he insulted a loyal subject, for others - the same citizen of the fatherland as the arrested man standing in front of him; for others - an old soldier suffering for the honor of his uniform; for others - a monarch ready to pronounce constitutional covenants; for others - Russians, crying over the misfortunes of their fatherland and passionately thirsty for the correction of all evils." Pretending to be almost like-minded, he “managed to instill in them confidence that he was the ruler who would make their dreams come true and benefit Russia.” It is the subtle acting of the tsar-investigator that explains the continuous series of confessions, repentances, and mutual slander of those under investigation.

The explanations of P. E. Shchegolev are complemented by the Decembrist A. S. Gangeblov: “One cannot help but be amazed at the tirelessness and patience of Nikolai Pavlovich. He did not neglect anything: without examining the ranks, he condescended to have a personal, one might say, conversation with the arrested, tried to catch the truth in the very expression eyes, in the very intonation of the defendant's words. The success of these attempts, of course, was greatly helped by the very appearance of the sovereign, his stately posture, antique facial features, especially his gaze: when Nikolai Pavlovich was in a calm, merciful mood, his eyes expressed charming kindness and affection ; but when he was angry, the same eyes flashed lightning."

Nicholas I, notes de Custine, “apparently knows how to subjugate the souls of people... some mysterious influence emanates from him.” As many other facts show, Nicholas I “always knew how to deceive observers who innocently believed in his sincerity, nobility, courage, but he was only playing. And Pushkin, the great Pushkin, was defeated by his game. He thought in the simplicity of his soul that the king honored the inspiration in him that the spirit of a sovereign is not cruel... But for Nikolai Pavlovich, Pushkin was just a rogue requiring supervision.” The manifestation of the monarch’s mercy towards the poet was dictated solely by the desire to derive the greatest possible benefit from this.

(To be continued.)

Since 1814, the poet V. A. Zhukovsky was brought closer to the court by the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna.

Therefore, he could not count on the throne, which determined the direction of his upbringing and education. From an early age he was interested in military affairs, especially its external side, and was preparing for a military career.

In 1817, Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich married the daughter of the Prussian king, who in Orthodoxy received the name Alexandra Fedorovna. They had 7 children, the eldest of whom was the future Emperor Alexander II.

In 1819, Emperor Alexander I informed Nicholas of the intention of their brother Konstantin Pavlovich to renounce his right of succession to the throne, and accordingly, power would have to pass to Nicholas. In 1823, Alexander I issued a Manifesto proclaiming Nikolai Pavlovich heir to the throne. The manifesto was a family secret and was not published. Therefore after sudden death Alexander I in 1825, confusion arose with the accession to the throne of a new monarch.

The oath to the new Emperor Nicholas I Pavlovich was scheduled for December 14, 1825. On the same day, the “Decembrists” planned an uprising with the goal of overthrowing autocracy and demanding the signing of the “Manifesto to the Russian People,” which proclaimed civil liberties. Informed, Nicholas postponed the oath to December 13, and the uprising was suppressed.

Domestic policy of Nicholas I

From the very beginning of his reign, Nicholas I declared the need for reforms and created a “committee on December 6, 1826” to prepare changes. “His Majesty’s Own Office” began to play a major role in the state, which was constantly expanded by creating many branches.

Nicholas I instructed a special commission led by M.M. Speransky to develop a new Code of Laws of the Russian Empire. By 1833, two editions had been printed: “The Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire,” starting from the Council Code of 1649 and until the last decree of Alexander I, and “The Code of Current Laws of the Russian Empire.” The codification of laws carried out under Nicholas I streamlined Russian legislation, facilitated legal practice, but did not bring changes to the political and social structure of Russia.

Emperor Nicholas I was an autocrat in spirit and an ardent opponent of the introduction of a constitution and liberal reforms in the country. In his opinion, society should live and act like a good army, regulated and by laws. The militarization of the state apparatus under the auspices of the monarch - this is characteristic political regime of Nicholas I.

He was extremely suspicious of public opinion; literature, art, and education came under censorship, and measures were taken to limit the periodical press. Official propaganda began to extol unanimity in Russia as a national virtue. The idea “The people and the Tsar are one” was dominant in the education system in Russia under Nicholas I.

According to the “theory of official nationality” developed by S.S. Uvarov, Russia has its own path of development, does not need the influence of the West and should be isolated from the world community. The Russian Empire under Nicholas I received the name “gendarme of Europe” for protecting peace in European countries from revolutionary uprisings.

In social policy, Nicholas I focused on strengthening the class system. In order to protect the nobility from “clogging,” the “December 6 Committee” proposed establishing a procedure according to which nobility was acquired only by right of inheritance. And for service people to create new classes - “officials”, “eminent”, “honorary” citizens. In 1845, the emperor issued a “Decree on Majorates” (indivisibility of noble estates during inheritance).

Serfdom under Nicholas I enjoyed the support of the state, and the tsar signed a manifesto in which he stated that there would be no changes in the situation of serfs. But Nicholas I was not a supporter of serfdom and secretly prepared materials on the peasant issue in order to make matters easier for his followers.

Foreign policy of Nicholas I

The most important aspects of foreign policy during the reign of Nicholas I were the return to the principles of the Holy Alliance (Russia's struggle against revolutionary movements in Europe) and the Eastern Question. Russia under Nicholas I took part in the Caucasian War (1817-1864), the Russian-Persian War (1826-1828), Russian-Turkish war(1828-1829), as a result of which Russia annexed the eastern part of Armenia, the entire Caucasus, and received the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

During the reign of Nicholas I, the most memorable was the Crimean War of 1853-1856. Russia was forced to fight against Turkey, England, and France. During the siege of Sevastopol, Nicholas I was defeated in the war and lost the right to have a naval base on the Black Sea.

The unsuccessful war showed Russia's backwardness from advanced European countries and how unviable the conservative modernization of the empire turned out to be.

Nicholas I died on February 18, 1855. Summing up the reign of Nicholas I, historians call his era the most unfavorable in the history of Russia, starting with the Time of Troubles.