Royal betrayals. The history of the marriage of Nicholas I and Alexandra Feodorovna. Nicholas the First. Years of government, domestic and foreign policy, reforms

Nicholas I Pavlovich
Coronation:
Predecessor:	Alexander I
Successor:	Alexander II
Coronation:
Predecessor:	Alexander I
Successor:	Alexander II
Predecessor:	Alexander I
Successor:	Alexander II
Religion:	Orthodoxy
Birth:
Buried:	Peter and Paul Cathedral
Dynasty:	Romanovs
	Maria Fedorovna
	Charlotte of Prussia (Alexandra Feodorovna)
Monogram:

Biography

Childhood and adolescence

The most important milestones of the reign

Domestic politics

Peasant question

Nicholas and the problem of corruption

Foreign policy

Emperor Engineer

Culture, censorship and writers

Nicknames

Family and personal life

monuments

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

Biography

Childhood and adolescence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The greatest concern of Empress Maria Feodorovna in the education of Nikolai Pavlovich was to try to divert him from the enthusiasm for military exercises, which was revealed in him from the very beginning. early childhood. Passion for the technical side of military affairs, instilled in Russia by Paul I, let 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 in this passion to the older ones. From early childhood, Nikolai began to show a special passion for military toys and stories about military operations. The best reward for him was permission to go to a parade or a divorce, where he watched everything that happened with special attention, dwelling on even the smallest details.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Youth

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

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

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

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

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

The question of succession. Interregnum

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

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

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

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

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

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 renunciation), Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich decided to accept the throne in accordance with the will of Alexander I.

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

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

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

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

My dear Konstantin! Your will is done: I am the emperor, but at what cost, my God! At the cost of the blood of my subjects! 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 I remember this day. Letter to the Ambassador of France, Count Le Ferrone No one feels a greater need than I do to be judged with leniency. But let those who judge me consider the extraordinary manner in which I have risen from the post of newly appointed chief of division to the post I currently hold, and under what circumstances. And then I will have to admit that if it were not for the obvious patronage of Divine Providence, it would not only be impossible for me to act properly, but even to cope with what the ordinary circle of my real duties requires of me ... Letter to the Tsarevich.

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

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

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

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

The most important milestones of the reign

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

Domestic politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On December 8, 1826, the first of the secret committees was created, 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 as King (Tsar) of Poland. Under Nicholas, the Polish uprising of 1830-1831 was suppressed, during which Nicholas was declared deprived of the throne by the rebels (Decree on the dethronement of Nicholas I). After the suppression of the uprising, the Kingdom of Poland lost its independence, the Sejm and the army and was divided into provinces.

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

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

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

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

Peasant question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Development of industry and transport

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

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

For the first time in the history of Russia, under Nicholas I, intensive construction of paved highways began: the Moscow-Petersburg, Moscow-Irkutsk, Moscow-Warsaw routes were built. Of the 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 begun and about 1,000 versts of railroad tracks were built, which gave impetus to the development of their own mechanical engineering.

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

Nicholas and the problem of corruption

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

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

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

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

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

Foreign policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emperor Engineer

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

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

The first railways appeared in Russia (since 1837).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death

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

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

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

His son Alexander II ascended the Russian throne.

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

Culture, censorship and writers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In 1850, by order of Nicholas I, the play by N. A. Ostrovsky "Let's Settle Our People" was banned from staging. The Committee of Higher Censorship was dissatisfied with the fact that among the characters drawn by the author there was not “one of those respectable merchants of ours, in whom piety, honesty and directness of mind constitute a typical and inalienable attribute.”

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

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

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

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

Nicknames

Home nickname is Nix. Official nickname - Unforgettable.

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

Family and personal life

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

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

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

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

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

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

husband - Friedrich-Karl-Alexander, King of Württemberg

• Alexandra (06/12/1825 - 07/29/1844)

husband - Friedrich Wilhelm, Prince of Hesse-Kassel

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

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

Nikolay was in connection with Varvara Nelidova for 17 years.

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

Personality, business and human qualities

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

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

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

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

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

The king's love for law, justice, and order was well known. I personally visited military formations, reviews, examined fortifications, educational institutions, office premises, and government agencies. Remarks and "spreading" was always accompanied by specific advice on correcting the situation.

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

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

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

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

Through the eyes of contemporaries and publicists

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

It can be seen that the emperor cannot for a moment forget who he is and what attention he attracts; he constantly poses and, consequently, is never natural, even when he speaks with all frankness; his face knows three different expressions, none of which can be called kind. Most often, severity is written on this face. Another expression, rarer, but much more suited to his beautiful features, is solemnity, and, finally, the third is courtesy; the first two expressions evoke cold surprise, slightly softened only by the charm of the emperor, of whom we get some idea, just as he honors us with a kind address. However, one circumstance spoils everything: the fact is that each of these expressions, suddenly leaving the face of the emperor, disappears completely, leaving no traces. Before our eyes, without any preparation, a change of scenery is taking place; it seems as if the autocrat puts on a mask that he can take off at any moment.(...) A hypocrite, or a comedian, are harsh words, especially inappropriate in the mouth of a person who claims respectful and impartial judgments. However, I believe that for intelligent readers - and only to them I am addressing - speeches do not mean anything in themselves, and their content depends on the meaning that is put into them. I do not want to say at all that the face of this monarch lacks honesty - no, I repeat, he lacks only naturalness: thus, one of the main disasters from which Russia suffers, the lack of freedom, is reflected even on the face of its sovereign: he has several masks, but no face. You are looking for a man - and you find only the Emperor. In my opinion, my remark for the emperor is flattering: he conscientiously corrects his craft. This autocrat, towering over other people due to his height, just as his throne rises above other chairs, considers it a weakness for a moment to become an ordinary person and show that he lives, thinks and feels like a mere mortal. He does not seem to know any of our attachments; he forever remains a commander, a judge, a general, an 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 a great height, for the crowd loves amazing accomplishments and is proud of the efforts made in order to conquer it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I. L. Solonevich wrote that Nicholas I 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 love of power, the enjoyment of personal power: "Paul I and Alexander I, more than Nicholas, loved power, as such, in itself."

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, and, oddly enough, quite sincerely.

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

Do not make me laugh. (...)

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

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

Tell!

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

And did it help? Loved?

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

What if they didn't worship?

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

So it was necessary to pretend?

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

monuments

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

Currently, there are the following monuments to the Emperor:

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

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

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

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

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

The statements of contemporaries and real historical facts also cause a lot of contradictions, 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 some character traits from her, such as strength of character, stamina, heroism, and openness. Then his craving for military affairs was already manifested. Nikolai loved to watch military parades, divorces, and play military toys. And already at the age of three he put on his first military uniform of the Life Guards Horse Regiment.

He suffered the 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.

Nikolai Pavlovich's mentor

Since 1801 and over the next seventeen years, Nikolai's mentor was Lieutenant General Matvey Ivanovich Lamzdorf, the former director of the gentry (first) cadet corps under Emperor Paul. Lamzdorf did not have the slightest idea about the ways of educating royalty - future rulers - and about any educational activity in general. His appointment was justified by the desire of Empress Maria Feodorovna to protect her sons from being carried away by military affairs, and this was Lamzdorf's main goal. But instead of getting the princes interested in other pursuits, he went against all their wishes. For example, while accompanying the young princes on their trip to France in 1814, where they were eager to take part in hostilities against Napoleon, Lamzdorf deliberately drove them very slowly, and the princes arrived in Paris when the battle had already ended. Due to the incorrectly chosen tactics, Lamzdorf's educational activity did not achieve its goal. When Nicholas I 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 go. In addition, the future emperor was fond of engineering, fortification, and architecture. But Nikolai did not like the humanitarian disciplines and was negligent in their study. Subsequently, he greatly regretted this and even tried to fill in the gaps in training. But he never managed to do this.

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

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

Marriage

Elder brother Alexander I in 1813, having visited Silesia, chose Nicholas a bride - 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 were married. Charlotte of Prussia in Orthodoxy became Alexandra Feodorovna. The marriage turned out to be happy and large. 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 the guards division, and also took up the duties of inspector general for engineering.

Doing what he loved, the Grand Duke treated his duties very responsibly. 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 even ordinary soldiers to be remembered, Nikolai won respect in the army.

The death of Alexander 1

In 1820, Alexander told 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 that approved the abdication of Konstantin Pavlovich and the appointment of Nikolai Pavlovich as heir to the throne. Alexander, as if feeling his imminent death, bequeathed to read the document immediately after his death. November 19, 1825 Alexander I died. Nicholas, despite the manifesto, was the first to swear allegiance to Prince Konstantin. 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 beginning of 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 crushed, the surviving participants were sent into exile, five were executed. The emperor's first impulse was to pardon everyone, but fear palace coup forced to organize a court to the fullest extent of the law. Nevertheless, Nicholas 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 politics

The reign of Nicholas 1 began when he was 29 years old. Accuracy and exactingness, responsibility, the struggle for justice, combined with high efficiency were the outstanding qualities of the emperor. His character was influenced by the years of army life. He led a rather ascetic lifestyle: he slept on a hard bed, covering himself 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 in the first place to himself. He considered it his duty to preserve autocracy, and all his political activities served this purpose.

Russia under Nicholas 1 underwent the following changes:

1. Centralization of power and the creation of a bureaucratic apparatus of management. The emperor only wanted order, control and accountability, but in essence it turned out that the number of bureaucratic posts increased many times over and with them the number and size of bribes increased. Nikolai himself understood this and told his eldest son that only the two of them did not steal in Russia.
2. Solution of the issue of serfs. Thanks to a series of reforms, the number of serfs was significantly reduced (from 58% to 35% in about 45 years), they received rights, the protection of which was controlled by the state. The complete abolition of serfdom did not happen, but the reform served as the 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 much attention to the troops, while the morale of the army was of little interest to him. Frequent checks, reviews, punishments for the slightest errors distracted the soldiers from their main tasks, 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 the Crimea in 1853-1856. In the wars with Persia and Turkey, Russia won. The Crimean War led to Russia's loss of influence in the Balkans. But historians call the reason for the defeat of the Russians the economic backwardness of Russia in comparison with 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 Russia, devoid of industry. All items of production 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 began to develop, including the car-building industry. An interesting fact is that Nicholas I decided to build railways wider (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 in 1941 from supplying in full ammunition during the attack on Moscow.

In connection with the growing industrialization, an intensive growth of cities began. During the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, the urban population more than doubled. Thanks to an engineering education received in his youth, Nikolai 1 Romanov followed the construction of all major facilities in St. Petersburg. His idea was not to exceed the height of the eaves of the Winter Palace for all buildings in the city. As a result, St. Petersburg has become 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. Among them are the famous Kiev University and the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, military and naval academies, a number of schools, etc.

The heyday 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 areas:

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

These factors caused 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.

Emperor's death

Nicholas 1 died on March 2, 1855 (aged 58) 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, both in the economy and in the cultural life of Russia, however, it did not lead to any epoch-making 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;
• 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 fully devoted himself to serving Russia.

Once I was in a wax museum, where all the figures of famous personalities were made in natural growth.

I remember my surprise when some figures did not completely correspond to my idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthem, for example, the great commander Suvorov (in my understanding, the commander is a tall, strong man), the figure was a short, thin man one and a half heads shorter than me.

Of course, from the course school history, I knew that Suvorov was not an athlete, but when you see it with your own eyes, it surprises me, at least for sure

The tables are taken from the Internet, so I am not responsible for errors in growth)))

Tamerlane's height is 145 cm.
Genghis Khan's height is 145 cm.
Heinrich Yagoda's height is 146 cm.
The height of Alexander the Great is 150 cm.
Charlemagne's height is 150 cm.
Nestor Makhno's height is 151 cm.
The height of Queen Victoria is 152 cm.
Mikhail Kalinin's height is 155 cm.
Nikolai Bukharin's height is 155 cm.
The height of Louis XIV is 156 cm.
The growth of Catherine II is 157 cm.
Kliment Voroshilov's height is 157 cm.
Horatio Nelson's height is 160 cm.
Dmitry Medvedev's height is 162 cm.
The growth of Joseph Stalin is 163 cm.
The height of Vladimir Lenin is 164 cm.
The height of Joseph Goebbels is 165 cm.
The height of Nikita Khrushchev is 166 cm.
The height of Paul I is 166 cm.
The height of Alexander Pushkin is 166 cm.
Winston Churchill's height is 166 cm.
The growth of Nicholas II is 168 cm.
Bruce Lee's height is 168 cm.
The height of Napoleon I is 169 cm.
The height of Benito Mussolini is 169 cm.
The growth of Semyon Budyonny is 169 cm.
The height of Peter III is 170 cm.
Vladimir Putin's height is 170 cm.
The height of Silvio Berlusconi is 173 cm.
The height of Gerhard Schroeder is 174 cm.
The growth of Yaroslav the Wise is 175 cm.
Adolf Hitler's height is 175 cm.
Mikhail Gorbachev's height is 175 cm.
Albert Einstein's height is 176 cm.
The growth of Leonid Brezhnev is 176 cm.
The growth of Ivan the Terrible is 178 cm.
The height of Alexander I is 178 cm.
The height of Konstantin Chernenko is 178 cm.
The height of Alexander III is 179 cm.
The height of Elizabeth Petrovna is 180 cm.
Height of George Bush Jr. 182 cm
Yuri Andropov's height is 182 cm.
The height of Alexander II is 185 cm.
Ronald Reagan's height is 185 cm.
Boris Yeltsin's height is 187 cm.
Arnold Schwarzenegger's height is 187 cm.
Jacques Chirac's height is 189 cm.
Bill Clinton's height is 189 cm.
The height of Joachim Murat is 190 cm.
Abraham Lincoln's height is 193 cm.
The growth of Grigory Rasputin is 193 cm.
The height of Adolphe Mortier is 195 cm.
The height of Charles de Gaulle is 196 cm.
The growth of Peter the Great is 201 cm.
Vitali Klitschko's height is 201 cm.
The growth of Nicholas I is 205 cm.
The height of Ramses II is 210 cm.

Angelina Jolie is only 1.69 cm tall. Tom Cruise has grown to 1.72. Mel Gibson mouth 1.77. Sylvester Stallone - 1.75. Schwarzenegger is really rather big - 1.83. A very small Madonna. Her height is 1.64. Jennifer Lopez did not much outgrow her, whose height is 1.65. Nicole Scherzinger - 1.66. The growth of Ani Lorak is 1.62, and Victoria Boni is 1.69. Victoria Beckham is 1.68 cm tall.

The height of the boxer Nikolai Valuev is 213 cm. Here he really is the real Gulliver among all the celebrities from this material.

The growth of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is only 162 cm. Few people know that Dmitry Anatolyevich is one of the lowest presidents of all countries in the world. He is 8 cm shorter than his political predecessor. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is also not tall - his height is 170 cm.

The growth of the famous TV presenter, the sex symbol of the domestic show business Anfisa Chekhova is 166 cm.

The shortest celebrities in this ranking are singers Maxim and Ani Lorak. Ani Lorak's height is 162 centimeters, although, you see, she looks much taller from the screens. Maxim's height is only 160 centimeters.

The growth of actress and model Mila Jovovich is 178 centimeters. With such parameters, it was not so difficult to break into the modeling business. Recently, Mila gave birth to a child and after giving birth she recovered by almost 30 kg. But in just two weeks of intensive training and specially designed diets, Mila managed to regain her former figure, which she happily showed to the public.

Modern divas of cinema and television also "do not shine" with giant growth. The height of TV presenter Lera Kudryavtseva is 167 cm, the growth of socialite and TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak is 170 cm. Masha Kozhevnikova, aka Allochka from the popular youth series Univer, did not break away from them much, Masha's height is 174cm.

From the TV screen, it is sometimes difficult to understand what this or that celebrity looks like in full size.

They all look tall and slender, but I hasten to disappoint you: this is just a good job by the videographer.

Let's look at the ranking of the lowest famous personalities. Among men, the height is 175 cm Timati And Valery Leontiev, golden voice of Russia Nikolay Baskov small and remote - 173 cm. Not far from them was a list of stars with a height of 172 cm - Andrey Arshavin, Boris Moiseev And Denis Torbinsky, football star. Our esteemed prime minister is even smaller Vladimir Putin- 170 cm, also includes Vladimir Vysotsky, Pavel Derevyanko. Handsome Timur Rodriguez has a height of 168 cm, although he does not hide it, he fits next to Timur Sasha Tsekal about - 167 cm. Andrey Gubin height 166 cm for Sergey Rost - 165 cm, On the next line - Dmitry Medvedev And MishaGalustyan- 163 cm, the smallest domestic star - Nikolai Rastorguev- 158 cm.

The female rating is as follows: the smallest singer - Julia Volkova with a height of 154 cm. next comes the actress Svetlana Svetikova and her height is 157 cm. Yulia Savicheva nature endowed with a height of 159 cm. 160 cm each Maksim And Zhanna Friske, at the dear prima donna Alla Pugacheva height 162 cm, but Alina Kabaeva And Natasha Koroleva- 163 cm. Glucose height 165, 1 cm taller than her Sati Casanova, and after them move Anna Semenovich- 169 cm and Mariya Kozhevnikova 168 cm. 170 cm each Kristina Orbakaite, Masha Malinovskaya, Ksenia Sobchak And Tatiana Arno. At Anastasia Volochkova And Anastasia Stotskaya by 171 cm. Vera Brezhneva And Irina Allegrova slightly higher - 172 cm. Evelina Bledans - 174 cm, Miss World Oksana Fedorova- 176 cm. The tallest girls in show business are Olya Buzova And Zhenya Malakhova- 178 cm.

Emperor of Russia Nicholas I

Emperor Nicholas I ruled Russia from 1825 to 1855. His work is controversial. On the one hand, he was an opponent of the liberal reforms that were the goal of the Decembrist movement, he implanted a conservative and bureaucratic mode of action in Russia, created new repressive government bodies, tightened censorship, abolished the freedoms of universities. On the other hand, under Nicholas under the leadership of M. Speransky, work was completed on the drafting of a new legislative code, the Ministry of State Property was created, whose activities were aimed at changing the situation of state peasants, secret commissions developed projects for the abolition of serfdom, there was an increase in industry, with the bureaucracy and the nobility, a new class of people began to take shape - the intelligentsia. At the time of Nicholas, Russian literature reached its peak: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Nekrasov, Tyutchev, Goncharov

The years of the reign of Nicholas I 1825 - 1855

Nicholas set himself the task of not changing anything, not introducing anything new in the foundations, but only maintaining the existing order, filling in the gaps, repairing the dilapidated signs that were discovered with the help of practical legislation, and doing all this without any participation of society, even with the suppression of social independence, by government means alone; but he did not remove from the queue those burning questions that were raised in the previous reign, and, it seems, understood their burning even more than his predecessor. Thus, a conservative and bureaucratic mode of action is the characteristic of the new reign; support existing help officials - this is another way to designate this character. (V. O. Klyuchevsky "Course of Russian History")

Brief biography of Nicholas I

• 1796, June 25 - the birthday of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, the future Emperor Nicholas I.
• 1802 - the beginning of systematic education

  Nikolai was brought up somehow, not at all according to the program of Rousseau, like the older brothers Alexander and Konstantin. Prepared himself for a very modest military career; he was not initiated into questions of higher politics, they did not give him participation in serious state affairs. Until the age of 18, he did not even have certain official occupations at all; only this year he was appointed director of the engineering corps and they gave him one guards brigade to command, therefore, two regiments

• 1814, February 22 - Acquaintance with the Prussian Princess Charlotte.
• 1816, May 9 - August 26 - an educational journey through Russia.
• 1816, September 13 - 1817, April 27 - educational trip to Europe.
• 1817, July 1 - marriage with Princess Charlotte (at baptism into Orthodoxy named Alexandra Feodorovna).
• 1818, April 17 - the birth of the first-born Alexander (future emperor)
• 1819, July 13 - Alexander I informed Nicholas that the throne would eventually pass to him due to Constantine's unwillingness to reign
• 1819, August 18 - the birth of daughter Mary
• 1822, September 11 - the birth of daughter Olga
• 1823, August 16 - secret manifesto of Alexander I, declaring Nicholas the heir to the throne
• 1825, June 24 - the birth of daughter Alexandra
• November 27, 1825 - Nicholas received news of the death of Alexander I in Taganrog on November 19
• December 12, 1825 - Nicholas signed the Manifesto on his accession to the throne
• 1825, December 14 - in St. Petersburg
• 1826, August 22 - coronation in Moscow
• 1827, September 21 - the birth of his son Konstantin
• 1829, May 12 - coronation in Warsaw as a Polish constitutional monarch
• 1830, August - the beginning of the cholera epidemic in Central Russia
• 1830, September 29 - Nicholas arrived in cholera Moscow
• 1831, June 23 - Nicholas calmed the cholera riot on Sennaya Square in St. Petersburg

  in the summer of 1831 in St. Petersburg, at the height of the cholera epidemic, rumors appeared among the townspeople that the disease was brought by foreign doctors who spread the infection in order to plague the Russian people. This madness reached its climax when a huge excited crowd turned up on Sennaya Square, where a temporary cholera hospital stood.

  Bursting inside, people smashed glass in windows, broke furniture, expelled hospital servants and beat local doctors to death. There is a legend that the crowd was calmed down by Nikolai, who reproached her with the words “shame on the Russian people, forgetting the faith of their fathers, to imitate the riot of the French and Poles”

• 1831, August 8 - the birth of the son of Nikolai
• 1832, October 25 - the birth of son Michael
• 1843, September 8 - the birth of the first grandson of Nikolai Alexandrovich, the future heir to the throne.
• 1844, July 29 - death of Alexandra's beloved daughter
• 1855, February 18 - death of Emperor Nicholas I in the Winter Palace

Domestic policy of Nicholas I. Briefly

In domestic politics Nikolai was guided by the idea of ​​"arranging private public relations so that they could later build a new public order"(Klyuchevsky). His main concern was the creation of a bureaucratic apparatus, which would become the basis of the throne, as opposed to the nobility, after December 14, 1825, lost confidence. As a result, the number of bureaucrats increased many times, as well as the number of clerical affairs.

At the beginning of his reign, the emperor was horrified when he learned that he had carried out 2,800,000 cases in all offices of justice alone. In 1842, the Minister of Justice submitted a report to the sovereign, which stated that 33 million more cases had not been cleared in all official places of the empire, which were set out on at least 33 million written sheets. (Klyuchevsky)

1826, January - July - the transformation of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery into the highest body of state administration

Directing the most important matters himself, entering into their consideration, the emperor created His Majesty's Own Chancellery, with five departments, reflecting the range of affairs that the Emperor directly wanted to manage.

The first department prepared papers for a report to the emperor and monitored the execution of the highest orders; the second department was engaged in the codification of laws and was under control until his death in 1839; the third department was entrusted with the affairs of the high police under the control of the chief of gendarmes; the fourth department managed charitable educational institutions, the fifth department was created to prepare a new order of management and state property

1826, December 6 - Formation of the Committee on December 6 to prepare "improved organization and management" in the state

Working for several years, this committee developed projects for the transformation of both central and provincial institutions, prepared a draft of a new law on the estates, which was supposed to improve the life of serfs. The Estates Act was submitted to the Council of State and approved by it, but was not promulgated due to the fact that revolutionary movements 1830 in the West inspired fear of any reform. In the course of time, only a few measures from the drafts of the "Committee of December 6th, 1826" were implemented in the form of separate laws. But on the whole, the committee's work remained without any success, and the reform projected by it did not

1827, August 26 - the introduction of military service for Jews in order to convert them to Christianity. Children from the age of 12 were recruited

1828, December 10 - St. Petersburg Institute of Technology founded

Under Nicholas I, cadet corps and military and naval academies, the Construction School in St. Petersburg, and the Land Survey Institute in Moscow were established; several women's institutes. the Main Pedagogical Institute for the preparation of teachers was resumed. Boarding houses with a gymnasium course for the sons of nobles were founded. The position of men's gymnasiums was improved

1833, April 2 - Count S. S. Uvarov assumed the post of Minister of Public Education, who developed the theory of official nationality - the state ideology -

— Orthodoxy - without love for the faith of the ancestors, the people will perish
— Autocracy - The main condition for the political existence of Russia
— Folkness - preservation of the inviolability of folk traditions

1833, November 23 - the first performance of the anthem "God Save the Tsar" (under the title "Prayer of the Russian people").

May 9, 1834 - Nicholas confessed to Count P.D. Kiselyov, that he is convinced of the need to free the serfs over time

1835, January 1 - the introduction of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire - the official collection of the current legislative acts of the Russian Empire arranged in thematic order

1835, March - the beginning of the work of the first of the "Secret Committees" on the peasant question

1835, June 26 - the adoption of the University charter.

According to him, the management of universities passed to the trustees of educational districts subordinate to the Ministry of Public Education. The Council of Professors lost its independence in educational and scientific affairs. Rectors and deans began to be elected not annually, but for a four-year term. Rectors continued to be approved by the emperor, and deans by the minister; professor - trustee

1837, October 30 - opening of the Tsarskoye Selo railway

1837, July - December - a long trip of the emperor to the south: Petersburg-Kyiv-Odessa-Sevastopol-Anapa-Tiflis-Stavropol-Voronezh-Moscow-Petersburg.

1837, December 27 - the formation of the Ministry of State Property with the Minister Count P. D. Kiselev, the beginning of the reform of state peasants

Under the influence of the Ministry, “chambers” of state property began to operate in the provinces. They were in charge of state lands, forests and other property; they also watched over the state peasants. These peasants were arranged in special rural societies (which turned out to be almost 6,000); a volost was composed of several such rural communities. Both rural societies and volosts enjoyed self-government, had their own “gatherings”, elected “heads” and “foremen” to manage volost and rural affairs, and special judges for court.

The self-government of state peasants subsequently served as a model for privately owned peasants when they were freed from serfdom. But Kiselev did not limit himself to concerns about the self-government of the peasants. The Ministry of State Property carried out a number of measures to improve the economic life of the peasantry subordinate to it: the peasants were taught better ways farms that provided grain in lean years; landless were given land; started schools; gave tax benefits, etc.

1839, July 1 - the beginning of the financial reform of E.F. Kankrin.
— introduced a fixed exchange rate of the silver ruble
— the circulation of endless banknotes that appeared in Russia from nowhere was destroyed
— created a gold reserve of the treasury, which did not exist before
— the exchange rate of the ruble has become stable, the ruble has become a hard currency throughout Europe,

1842, February 1 - Decree on the construction of the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway

1848, April 2 - the establishment of the "Buturlin" censorship committee - "Committee for the highest supervision of the spirit and direction of works printed in Russia." The Committee's supervision extended to all printed publications (including announcements, invitations and notices). Named after its first chairman, D.P. Buturlin

1850, August 1 - the foundation of the Nikolaev post (now Nikolaevsk-on-Amur) at the mouth of the Amur by Captain G.I. Nevelsky.

1853, September 20 - the foundation of the Muravyov post in the south of Sakhalin.

1854, February 4 - the decision to build the Trans-Ili fortification (later - the Verny fortress, the city of Alma-Ata)

So, in the reign of Nicholas were produced:
— arrangement of offices of "His Majesty's Own Chancellery";
— publication of the Code of Laws;
— financial reform
— measures to improve the life of the peasants
— public education measures

Foreign policy of Nicholas I

Two directions of diplomacy of Nicholas I: the decomposition of Turkey for the sake of Russia inheriting the straits and its possessions in the Balkans; fight against any manifestations of revolutionism in Europe

The foreign policy of Nicholas I, like any policy, was characterized by unscrupulousness. On the one hand, the emperor strictly adhered to the provisions of legitimism, in everything and always supporting the official authorities of states against dissidents: he severed relations with France after the revolution of 1830, severely suppressed the Polish liberation uprising, took the side of Austria in its affairs with rebellious Hungary

In 1833, an agreement was reached between Russia, Austria and Prussia, which entailed the incessant intervention of Russia in the affairs of Europe with the aim of "supporting power wherever it exists, reinforcing it where it weakens, and defending it where it is openly attacked »

On the other hand, when it seemed profitable, Nicholas unleashed a war against Turkey, protecting the Greek rebels, although he considered them rebels.

Russian wars during the reign of Nicholas I

— War with Persia (1826-1828)
It ended with the Turkmanchay peace treaty, which confirmed the terms of the Gulistan peace treaty of 1813 (the accession of Georgia, Dagestan to Russia) and fixed the transition to Russia of part of the Caspian coast and Eastern Armenia

— War with Turkey (1828-1829)
It ended with the Peace of Adrianople, according to which Russia passed most of the eastern coast of the Black Sea and the Danube Delta, the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, Imeretia, Mingrelia, Guria, the Erivan and Nakhichevan khanates, Moldavia and Wallachia, Serbia was granted autonomy with the presence of Russian troops there

— suppression Polish uprising (1830-1831)
As a result, the rights of the Kingdom of Poland were significantly curtailed, the Kingdom of Poland became an inseparable part of the Russian state. The previously existing elements of Polish statehood were abolished (the Sejm, a separate Polish army, etc.)

— Khiva campaign (1838-1840)
An attack by a detachment of the Separate Orenburg Corps of the Russian Army on the Khiva Khanate in order to stop the Khiva raids on Russian lands, the release of Russian prisoners in the Khiva Khanate, ensuring safe trade and exploration of the Aral Sea. The trip ended in failure

— 2nd Khiva campaign (1847-1848)
Russia continued to pursue a policy of advancing deep into Central Asia. In 1847-1848, a detachment of Colonel Erofeev occupied the Khiva fortifications of Dzhak-Khodzha and Khodzha-Niaz.

— War with Hungary (1849)
Military intervention in the Austro-Hungarian conflict. The suppression of the Hungarian liberation movement by the army of General Paskevich. Hungary remained part of the Austrian Empire

Doctor of Historical Sciences M. RAKHMATULLIN

In February 1913, just a few years before the collapse of tsarist Russia, the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty was solemnly celebrated. In countless churches of the boundless empire, "many years" of the reigning family were proclaimed, in meetings of the nobility, corks from champagne bottles flew up to the ceiling to joyful exclamations, and all over Russia millions of people sang: "Strong, sovereign ... reign over us ... reign to the fear of the enemy." In the past three centuries, the Russian throne was occupied by various tsars: Peter I and Catherine II, endowed with remarkable intelligence and statesmanship; not very distinguished by these qualities, Paul I, Alexander III; Catherine I, Anna Ioannovna and Nicholas II, who were completely devoid of a state mind. Among them were cruel, like Peter I, Anna Ioannovna and Nicholas I, and relatively mild, like Alexander I and his nephew Alexander II. But they all had in common the fact that each of them was an unlimited autocrat, to whom the ministers, the police and all subjects obeyed without question ... What were these all-powerful rulers, from one casually thrown word of which much, if not all, depended? the journal "Science and Life" begins publishing articles on the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, who entered the national history mainly because he began his reign by hanging 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, as a result of the exorbitant imperial ambitions of the tsar.

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

Mikhailovsky Castle - view from the Fontanka embankment. Early 19th century watercolor by Benjamin Petersen.

Pavel I. From an engraving of 1798.

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

Emperor Alexander I. Early 20s of the XIX century.

Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich in childhood.

Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich.

Petersburg. uprising on Senate Square 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 XIX 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 deeds of the fifteenth Russian autocrat from the Romanov dynasty were already ambiguously assessed by his contemporaries. Persons from his inner circle, who communicated with him in an informal setting or in a narrow family circle, as a rule, spoke of the king with enthusiasm: "eternal worker on the throne", "dauntless knight", "knight of the spirit" ... For a significant part of society, the name The king was associated with the nicknames "bloody", "executioner", "Nikolai Palkin". Moreover, the last definition, as it were, reasserted itself in public opinion after 1917, when for the first time in a Russian edition a small pamphlet by L. N. Tolstoy appeared under the same name. The basis for its writing (in 1886) was the story of a 95-year-old former Nikolaev soldier about how the lower ranks who were guilty of something were driven through the ranks, for which Nicholas I was nicknamed Palkin by the people. The very picture of the "legitimate" punishment with gauntlets, terrifying in its inhumanity, is depicted with amazing 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 disliked by Herzen that he, usually an accurate and subtle observer, places accents with obvious prejudice even when describing him. appearance: “He was handsome, but his beauty was cold; there is no face that would so mercilessly expose the character of a person as his face. than sensuality. But the main thing is the eyes, without any warmth, without any mercy, winter eyes.

This portrait contradicts the testimonies of many other contemporaries. For example, Baron Shtokman, the life physician of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, described Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich as follows: unusually handsome, attractive, well-built, like a young pine tree, regular features, a beautiful open forehead, arched eyebrows, a small mouth, an elegantly outlined chin, character very lively, manners easy and graceful. One of the noble ladies of the court, Mrs. Kemble, who was distinguished by a particularly strict judgment about men, exclaims endlessly in delight from 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 "simple" contemporaries spoke equally flatteringly about the appearance of Nicholas.

THE FIRST YEARS OF LIFE

Ten days later, the grandmother-empress tells Grimm the details of the first days of her grandson’s life: “Knight Nikolai has been eating porridge for three days, 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 at all in all eyes, holds his head straight and turns no worse than mine. Catherine II predicts the fate of the newborn: the third grandson "by his extraordinary strength, it seems to me, is also destined to reign, although he has two older brothers." Alexander was in his twentieth year at that time, Konstantin was 17 years old.

The newborn, according to the established rule, after the rite of baptism was transferred to the care of the grandmother. But her unexpected death on November 6, 1796 "unfavorably" affected the upbringing of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. True, the grandmother managed to make a good choice of a nanny for Nikolai. It was a Scottish woman Evgenia Vasilievna Layon, the daughter of a stucco master, invited to Russia by Catherine II, among other artists. She remained the only caregiver for the first seven years of the boy's life and is considered to have had a strong influence on the formation of his personality. The very owner of a bold, decisive, direct and noble character, Evgenia Laion tried to inspire Nikolai higher concepts duty, honor, fidelity to this word.

On January 28, 1798, another son, Mikhail, was born in 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 a 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 recorded from the cradle in military service: 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 the first military uniform - "crimson garus", and in the sixth year of his life, Nikolai saddled a riding horse for the first time. From the very early 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 educators (“cavaliers”) record literally every step of the boy, describing in detail his behavior and actions.

The main supervision of education was entrusted to General Matvei Ivanovich Lamsdorf. It would be difficult to make a more awkward choice. According to contemporaries, Lamsdorf "not only did not possess any of the abilities necessary for educating a person of a royal house, called upon to have an influence on the fate of his compatriots and on the history of his people, but he was even a stranger to everything that is needed for a person who devotes himself education of the private individual. He was an ardent supporter of the system of education generally accepted at that time, based on orders, reprimands and punishments that reached cruelty. Nikolai did not avoid frequent "acquaintance" with the ruler, ramrods and rods. With the consent of his mother, Lamsdorf zealously 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 Lamsdorf was able to instill in us one feeling - fear, and such fear and assurance of his omnipotence that mother’s face was second to us in terms of the importance of concepts. This order completely deprived us of the happiness of filial trust in the parent, to whom we were rarely allowed alone, and then never otherwise, as if on a sentence. it was necessary and, it must be confessed, not without success... Count Lamsdorf and others, imitating him, used severity with vehemence, which robbed us of our sense of guilt, leaving only vexation for rough treatment, and often undeserved. "Fear and the search for how to avoid punishment occupied my mind most of all. In teaching, I saw one coercion, and I studied without a desire."

Still would. As the biographer of Nicholas I, Baron M. A. Korf, writes, “the grand dukes were constantly, as it were, in a vice. every step was stopped, corrected, made comments, persecuted by morality or threats. In this way, in vain, as time has shown, they tried to correct the as independent as the obstinate, quick-tempered character of Nicholas. Even Baron Korf, one of the biographers most disposed to him, is forced to note that the usually uncommunicative and self-contained Nikolai seemed to be reborn during the games, and the self-willed principles contained in him, disapproved of by those around him, manifested themselves in their entirety. The magazines of the "cavaliers" for the years 1802-1809 are full of entries about the unbridledness of Nikolai during games with peers. “Whatever happened to him, whether he fell, or hurt himself, or considered his desires unfulfilled, and himself offended, he immediately uttered swear words ... he chopped a drum, toys with his hatchet, broke them, beat his comrades with a stick or whatever their games." In moments of temper he could spit on his sister Anna. Once he hit a friend of his games, 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 military games, were explained by the idea (not without the influence of Lamsdorf) that was firmly established in their boyish minds, that rudeness is a mandatory feature of all military men. However, the educators notice, even outside the military 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 the boss or to represent the emperor. And this despite the fact that, according to the same educators, Nikolai "possesses very limited abilities," although he had, according to them, "the most excellent, loving heart" and was distinguished by "excessive sensitivity."

Another trait that also remained for the rest of his life - Nikolai Pavlovich "did not tolerate 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, only military games remained the favorite pastime of the brothers Nikolai and Mikhail. They had at their disposal a large set 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, "some military sciences occupied me passionately, in them alone I found consolation and a pleasant occupation, similar to the disposition of my spirit." In fact, it was a passion primarily for paradomania, for frunt, which from Peter III, according to the biographer of the royal family, N.K. Schilder, "took deep and strong roots in the royal family." “He loved exercises, reviews, parades and divorces invariably to death and made them even in winter,” one of his contemporaries writes about Nikolai. Nikolai and Mikhail even came up with a "family" term to express the pleasure that they experienced when the review of the grenadier regiments went off without a hitch - "infantry delight."

TEACHERS AND PUPILS

From the age of six, Nikolai began to be introduced to the Russian and French languages, the Law of God, Russian history, and 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 the program of teaching his children, because "he can not stand Latin since the time when he was tormented over it in his youth.") From 1802, Nikolai was taught drawing and music. Having learned to play the trumpet (cornet-piston) quite well, after two or three auditions, he, naturally gifted with a good ear and musical memory, could perform quite complex works at home concerts without notes. Nikolai Pavlovich retained his love for church singing for the rest of his life, he knew everything by heart. church services and willingly sang along with the choristers in the kliros with his sonorous and pleasant voice. He drew well (in pencil and watercolor) and even learned the art of engraving, which requires great patience, a true eye and a steady hand.

In 1809, it was decided to expand the education of Nikolai and Mikhail to university programs. But the idea to send them to the University of Leipzig, as well as the idea to send them to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, disappeared due to the outbreak of the Patriotic War of 1812. As a result, they continued home education. Well-known then professors were attracted to classes with the Grand Dukes: the economist A. K. Shtorkh, the jurist M. A. Balugyansky, the historian F. P. Adelung and others. But the first two disciplines did not captivate Nikolai. He later expressed his attitude towards them in the instruction of M.A. Korf, who was appointed by him to teach law to his son Konstantin: I remember how we were tormented over this by two people, very kind, maybe very smart, but both insufferable pedants: the late Balugyansky and Kukolnik [father of the famous playwright. - M. R.]... At the lessons of these gentlemen, we either dozed off or drew some kind of nonsense, sometimes our own caricature portraits of them, and then for the exams we learned something in slurring, without fruit and benefit for the future. In my opinion, the best theory of law is good morality, and it should be in the heart, regardless of these abstractions, and have religion as its foundation.

Nikolai Pavlovich very early showed interest in construction and especially engineering. “Mathematics, then artillery, and especially engineering and tactics,” he writes in his notes, “attracted me exclusively; I made special progress in this part, and then I got a desire to serve in the engineering department.” And this is no empty boast. According to Lieutenant General E. A. Yegorov, a man of rare honesty and disinterestedness, Nikolai Pavlovich "always had a special attraction to the engineering and architectural arts ... love for the construction business did not leave him until the end of his life and, I must say the truth, he understood a lot about it ... He always entered into all the technical details of the production of work and amazed everyone with the accuracy of his remarks and the fidelity of his eye.

At the age of 17, Nikolai's compulsory studies are 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 Army in the field was finally realized. 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 by 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 hostilities. On the way back, the official engagement to Princess Charlotte took place in Berlin. Enchanted by her, a 19-year-old young man, upon his return to St. Petersburg, writes a letter of significant content: “Farewell, my angel, my friend, my only consolation, my only true happiness, think of me as often as I think of you, and love if you can, the one who is and will be your faithful Nikolai for the rest of your life." Charlotte's reciprocal feeling is 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 the marriage, two study trips of Nikolai took place - to several provinces of Russia and to England. After marriage, he was appointed inspector general for engineering and chief of the Life Guards of the Sapper Battalion, which fully corresponded to his inclinations and desires. His indefatigability and service zeal amazed everyone: early in the morning he appeared at the line and rifle exercises of a sapper, at 12 o’clock he left for Peterhof, and at 4 o’clock in the afternoon he mounted a horse and again galloped 12 versts to the camp, where he remained until the evening dawn, personally leading work on the construction of training field fortifications, digging trenches, laying mines, land mines ... Nikolai had an extraordinary memory for faces and remembered the names of all the lower ranks of "his" battalion. According to colleagues, "who knew his business to perfection," Nikolai fanatically demanded the same from others and severely punished for any mistakes. So much so that the soldiers punished by his order were often carried away on a stretcher to the infirmary. Nikolai, of course, did not feel remorse, because he only strictly followed the paragraphs of the military regulations, which provided for the merciless punishment of soldiers with sticks, rods, gauntlets for any offenses.

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

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

Somehow, during the next exercise, he made a rude and unfair reprimand in front of the front of the regiment 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 to the attention of the sovereign about what had happened made Nikolai apologize to Bistrom, which he did in the presence of the officers of the regiment. But this lesson did not go to the future. Some time later, for minor violations in the ranks, he gave an insulting dressing to the company commander V.S. Norov, concluding it with the phrase: "I will bend you into a ram's horn!" The officers of the regiment demanded that Nikolai Pavlovich "give satisfaction to Norov." Since a duel with a member of the royal family is, by definition, impossible, the officers resigned. The conflict was difficult to resolve.

But nothing could dampen the service zeal of Nikolai Pavlovich. Following the rules of the military regulations "firmly poured" into his mind, he spent all his energy on the drill of the units under his command. “I began to exact,” he later recalled, “but I exacted alone, because what I defamed as a 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; bosses and subordinates against themselves, especially since they didn’t know me, and many either didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand.”

It must be admitted that his strictness as a brigade commander was partly justified by the fact that in the officer corps at that time "the order, already shaken by a three-year campaign, completely collapsed ... Subordination disappeared and was preserved only in 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 the exercises in tailcoats, throwing an overcoat over their shoulders and putting on a uniform hat. What was it like to put up with this to the marrow of the bones to the serviceman Nikolai? He did not put up, which caused not always justified condemnation of his contemporaries. The memoirist F.F. Vigel, known for his poisonous pen, wrote that Grand Duke Nikolai "was uncommunicative and cold, all devoted to his sense of duty; in his performance, he was too strict with himself and others. In the correct features of his white, pale face, 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 sustained in the same vein: “The usual expression of his face has something strict and even unfriendly in it. His smile is a smile of condescension, and not the result of a cheerful mood or passion. creature to the point that you do not notice in him any compulsion, nothing out of place, nothing memorized, and yet all his words, like all his movements, are measured, as if musical notes lie in front of him.There is something unusual in the Grand Duke: he speaks vividly, simply, by the way, everything he says is clever, not a single vulgar joke, not a single funny or obscene word, there is nothing in the tone of his voice, nor in the composition of his speech, that would reveal pride or secrecy. you feel that his heart is closed, that the barrier is inaccessible and that it would be foolish to hope to penetrate into the depths of his thought or have complete confidence.

In the service, Nikolai Pavlovich was in constant tension, he was buttoned up with all the buttons of his uniform, and only at home, in the family, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna recalled those days, "he felt quite happy, however, 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 his threshold, gloominess suddenly disappeared, giving way not to smiles, but to loud, joyful laughter, frank speeches and the most affectionate manner with those around him ... A happy young man ... with a kind, faithful and beautiful girlfriend, with whom he lived soul to soul, having occupations consistent with his inclinations, without worries, without responsibility, without ambitious thoughts, with a clear conscience, which is not did he get enough on the ground?"

THE WAY TO THE THRONE

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

But these are just words, while Alexander I does not make any attempts to involve his brother in state affairs, although a manifesto has already been drawn up (albeit 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, "by daily waiting in the anterooms or the secretary's room, where ... gathered daily ... noble persons who had access to the sovereign. In this noisy meeting we spent an hour, sometimes more. .. This time was a waste of time, but also a precious practice for the knowledge of people and faces, and I took advantage of this."

This is the whole school of preparing Nicholas for governing the state, which, it should be noted, he did not aspire to at all and to which, as he himself admitted, "my inclination and desires led me so little; a degree for which I never prepared and, on the contrary, I always looked with fear, looking at the burden of 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 change anything in essence. 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. Shteingeil in his Notes on the Uprising. Regarding the rumors about the abdication of Konstantin and the appointment of Nikolai as heir, he cites the words of the professor of Moscow University A.F. Merzlyakov: “When this rumor spread around Moscow, I happened to be Zhukovsky; I asked him:“ Tell me, perhaps, you are a close person should we expect from this change?" - "Judge for yourself," replied Vasily Andreevich, "I have never seen a book in [his] hands; the only occupation is the front and the soldiers."

The unexpected news that Alexander I was dying came from Taganrog to St. Petersburg on November 25. (Alexander was on a trip to the south of Russia, he intended to travel through the entire Crimea.) Nikolai invited the chairman of the State Council and the Committee of Ministers, Prince P.V. Lopukhin, the Prosecutor General, Prince A.B. Kurakin, the commander of the Guards Corps, A.L. Governor-General of St. Petersburg, Count M. A. Miloradovich, endowed with special powers in connection with the departure of the emperor from the capital, and declared 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 Nikolai could not and should not hope to succeed his brother Alexander in the event of his death; that the laws of the empire did not allow the sovereign to dispose of testament; that, moreover, Alexander's will is known only to certain persons and unknown to the people; that Constantine's abdication is also implicit and remained unpublished; that Alexander, if he wanted Nicholas to succeed him to the throne, had to make public his will during his lifetime and Constantine's consent to it ; that neither the people nor the army will understand the renunciation 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. On that they parted."

On the morning of November 27, the courier brought the news of the death of Alexander I, and Nikolai, shaken by Miloradovich's arguments and not paying attention to the absence of the Manifesto on the accession to the throne of the new monarch, which is mandatory in such cases, was the first to swear allegiance to the "lawful Emperor Constantine". The others did the same after him. From that day on, a political crisis provoked by a narrow family clan of the reigning family begins - a 17-day interregnum. Between St. Petersburg and Warsaw, where Constantine was, couriers scurry about - the brothers persuade each other to take the remaining idle throne.

A situation unprecedented for Russia arose. If earlier in its history there was a fierce struggle for the throne, often reaching deaths, now the brothers seem to be competing in renouncing the rights to supreme power. But in the behavior of Konstantin there is a certain ambiguity, indecision. Instead of immediately arriving in the capital, as the situation required, he limited himself to letters to his mother and brother. Members of the royal house, writes the French ambassador Count Laferrone, "play with the crown of Russia, throwing it like a ball, one to another."

On December 12, a package was delivered from Taganrog addressed to "Emperor Konstantin" from the Chief of the General Staff, I. I. Dibich. After some hesitation, Grand Duke Nikolai opened it. “Let them depict for themselves what was to happen in me,” he later recalled, “when, casting their eyes on the included (in the package. - M. R.) a letter from General Dibich, I saw that it was about an existing and just discovered extensive conspiracy, whose branches spread through the entire Empire from St. Petersburg to Moscow and to the Second Army in Bessarabia. It was only then that I fully felt the full burden of my fate and remembered with horror the position in which I was. It was necessary to act without wasting a minute, with full authority, with experience, with determination.

Nikolai did not exaggerate: according to 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 in general terms he knew about the upcoming "outrage at the new oath." We had to hurry to act.

On the night of December 13, Nikolai Pavlovich appeared before the State Council. The first phrase he uttered: "I am doing the will of brother Konstantin Pavlovich" - was supposed to convince the members of the Council of the compulsion of his actions. Then Nikolai in a "loud voice" read out in its final form the Manifesto polished by M. M. Speransky on his accession to the throne. “Everyone listened in deep silence,” Nikolai notes in his notes. This was a natural reaction - the tsar was by no means desired by everyone (S. P. Trubetskoy expressed the opinion of many when he wrote that "the young grand dukes are tired"). However, the roots of slavish obedience to autocratic power are so strong that the members of the Soviet accepted the unexpected change calmly. At the end of the reading of the Manifesto, they "bowed deeply" to the new emperor.

Early in the morning, Nikolai Pavlovich turned to specially assembled guards generals and colonels. He read them the Manifesto on his accession to the throne, the testament of Alexander I and documents on the abdication of Tsarevich Konstantin. The answer was the 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 corresponding 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. Kh. About the same he wrote to P. M. Volkonsky: "On the fourteenth I will be sovereign or dead."

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

In the camp of the conspirators, disputes are constantly on the verge of hysteria, and yet in the end it was decided to speak out: "It is better to be taken on the square," N. Bestuzhev argued, "than on the bed." The conspirators are unanimous in defining the basic setting of the speech - "fidelity to the oath to Konstantin and unwillingness to swear allegiance to Nicholas." The Decembrists deliberately deceived, convincing the soldiers that the rights of the legitimate heir to the throne, Tsarevich Konstantin, should be protected from the unauthorized encroachments of Nicholas.

And on a gloomy, windy day on December 14, 1825, about three thousand soldiers gathered on Senate Square, "standing for Konstantin", with three dozen officers, their commanders. For various reasons, far from all the regiments that the leaders of the conspirators counted on showed up. Those assembled had neither artillery nor cavalry. S. P. Trubetskoy, the other dictator, was scared and did not appear on the square. The languorous, almost five-hour standing in uniforms in the cold, without a specific goal, of any combat mission, had a depressing effect on the soldiers, who patiently waited, as V. I. Steingeil writes, "the denouement from fate." Fate appeared in the form of buckshot, instantly dispersing their ranks.

The command to fire live ammunition was not given immediately. Nicholas I, who, despite his general confusion, decisively took the suppression of the rebellion into his own hands, still hoped to do "without bloodshed," even after, he recalls, "they fired a volley at me, the bullets whistled through my head." All that day, Nikolai was in full view, ahead of the 1st Battalion of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, and his powerful figure on horseback was an excellent target. "The most amazing thing," he will say later, "is that I was not killed that day." And Nicholas firmly believed that God's hand was directing his fate.

The fearless behavior of Nicholas on December 14 is explained by his personal courage and bravery. He himself thought differently. One of the state ladies of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna later testified that when one of the close ones, out of a desire to flatter, began to tell Nicholas I about his “heroic deed” 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." The confession is honest. And afterwards he always said that on that day he "was only doing his duty."

December 14, 1825 determined the fate of not only Nikolai Pavlovich, but in many ways - the country. If, according to the author of the famous book "Russia in 1839" Marquis Astolphe de Custine, on that day Nikolai "from the silent, melancholic, as he was in the days of his youth, turned into a hero", then Russia for a long time lost the opportunity to hold any kind of there was a liberal reform, which she so badly needed. This was obvious even to the most insightful contemporaries. December 14 gave the further course of the historical process "a completely different direction," Count D. N. Tolstoy notes. Another contemporary clarifies it: "December 14, 1825 ... should be attributed to that dislike for any liberal movement, which was constantly noticed in the orders of Emperor Nicholas."

Meanwhile, the uprising could not have happened at all under only two conditions. The Decembrist A.E. Rosen clearly speaks of the first in his Notes. Noting that after receiving the news of the death of Alexander I, “all classes and ages were stricken with unfeigned sadness” and that it was with “such a mood of spirit” that the troops swore allegiance to Constantine, Rosen adds: “... a feeling of grief prevailed over all other feelings - and commanders and troops would have sworn allegiance to Nicholas just as sadly and calmly if the will of Alexander I had been communicated to them by law. Many people spoke about the second condition, but Nicholas I himself stated it most clearly on December 20, 1825 in a conversation with the French ambassador: terrifying scene... and the danger it plunged us into for several hours." As you can see, a coincidence of circumstances largely determined the further course of events.

Arrests began, interrogations of persons involved in the indignation and members of secret societies. 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 frankness even by the most condescending standards. “Without rest, without sleep, he interrogated ... those arrested,” writes the famous historian P.E. Shchegolev, “forced confessions ... picking up masks, each time new for a new face. loyal subject, for others - the same citizen of the fatherland as the arrested person who stood before him; for still others - an old soldier suffering for the honor of his uniform; for the fourth - a monarch ready to pronounce constitutional covenants; for the fifth - a Russian, weeping over the disasters of the fatherland and thirsting for the correction of all evils." Pretending to be almost like-minded, he "managed to inspire them with confidence that he is the ruler who will realize their dreams and benefit Russia." It is precisely the subtle hypocrisy of the tsar-investigator that explains the continuous series of confessions, repentance, and mutual slander of those under investigation.

The explanations of P. E. Shchegolev are supplemented by the Decembrist A. S. Gangeblov: “One cannot help but be amazed at the tirelessness and patience of Nikolai Pavlovich. The success of these attempts, of course, was greatly helped by the very appearance of the sovereign, his majestic posture, antique features, especially his look: when Nikolai Pavlovich was in a calm, gracious mood, his eyes expressed charming kindness and tenderness ; but when he was angry, those same eyes flashed lightning."

Nicholas I, notes de Custine, "apparently knows how to subjugate the souls of people ... some kind of mysterious influence comes 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 tsar honored inspiration in him, that the sovereign spirit is not cruel ... But for Nikolai Pavlovich Pushkin was just a varmint, requiring supervision. The manifestation of the mercy of the monarch to the poet was dictated solely by the desire to derive the greatest possible benefit from this.

(To be continued.)

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