The abrupt end of Paul, hated in all classes of the population, resulted in a resounding surge of enthusiasm throughout Russia. The country seemed freed from a nightmare. The first acts of the emperor Alexander consisted in the abrogation of the most hateful measures taken by his father: the numerous deportees were set free, personal and cultural relations with foreign countries resumed more freely. In various respects the “style” of the great Catherine was repeated and the desire to give a strictly legal organization to the whole life of the state was repeatedly emphasized, which would make abuses and arbitrations impossible, or, at least, be able to discover them and punish them. Eight ministries were established, the senate obtained more rights. Some legal guarantees were also granted to serfs: but on this ground they proceeded more than with caution. The ownership of the land was also granted to non-nobles and this fact marked an affirmation not without importance for the bourgeois class. Numerous middle schools were created, a fairly considerable freedom of teaching was able to assert itself in the universities, the whole culture developed a lot.
Among Alessandro’s collaborators, Michele Speranskij, the son of a modest pope, author of an attempt at constitutional reform, deserves to be mentioned at the forefront. His project was inspired by a marked division of legislative, executive and judicial powers; for the first time there is talk of the “will of the nation” as the basis of power. The bourgeois class had – like the nobles – to have political and civil rights; however, an “English” aristocracy would have maintained a practically dominant position. In two successive moments the serfs were to be “emancipated”. But Speransky’s project, like Caterina’s previous attempts, lacked abstractionism, was permeated by the illusion that with theoretical statements, leaving unchanged the relationship of social forces, the obstacles would be overcome. The emperor, and with him vast layers of nobles and intellectuals, were willingly willing to converse theoretically about “human rights”, not so to give up the very foundations of the autocratic state, on which their economic strength and their authority. Meanwhile, the more decisively and consequently conservative currents took advantage of the Napoleonic invasion to affirm not only (as they always had done) that the reforms facilitated on the one hand insurrections such as Pugachev and revolutions such as the French one, but to insist on the fact that Speransky wanted to introduce in Russia those same laws of which the “enemy” Napoleon was the promoter. A wave of patriotism had swept over Russia: the the idea of nationality proclaimed by the French Revolution was now affirming itself with a new meaning also in Russia; this result was owed – albeit indirectly – to the enemy against which it was fought. The war against Napoleon, however, accentuated the emperor’s religious and mystical tendencies that distanced him from the generic liberalism of the beginnings of his reign. Conservative forces exalted the “heroic people” facing Napoleon; but under vague promises for the future and under a more choreographic than concrete exaltation of emperor religious and mystical tendencies that distanced him from the generic liberalism of the beginnings of his reign. Conservative forces exalted the “heroic people” facing Napoleon; but under vague promises for the future and under a more choreographic than concrete exaltation of emperor religious and mystical tendencies that distanced him from the generic liberalism of the beginnings of his reign. Conservative forces exalted the “heroic people” facing Napoleon; but under vague promises for the future and under a more choreographic than concrete exaltation ofmu ž ik Russo, there was the will to oppose any substantial reform to any penetration of “French brand” ideas. Not only was Speransky’s project not realized, but its author was sent into exile.
