Leo Tolstory(1828-1910) is most famous for the novel he wrote, War and Peace(Published in 1869) chronicles the French invasion of Russia and its aftermath during the Napoleonic era. Set against the sweeping panoply of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, at its center are Pierre Bezukhov, searching for meaning in his life; cynical Prince Andrei, ennobled by wartime suffering; and Natasha Rostov, whose impulsiveness threatens to destroy her happiness. The Russia empire led by Tsar Alexander I of Russia ( reigned 1801-1825) declared that Napoleon as”the oppressor of Europe and the disturber of the world’s peace,” believed himself to be fulfilling a divine mission to fend off Napoleon’s invasion of Moscow in 1812.
Tsar Alexander I (1777-1825) was the grandson of Empress Catherine the Great (1762-96) and the son of Tsar Paul I (1796-1801). Catherine as an admirer of Peter the Great, continued to modernize Russia along Western European lines. However, her weakness led to her complicit with the old system in domestic policies which sowed the seed of later downfall . Russian military conscription and economy continued to depend on serfdom, and the increasing demands of the state and private landowners led to increased levels of reliance on serfs. Consequently, the unrest intensified and more than fifty peasant revolts occurred between 1762 and 1769. These culminated in Pugachev’s Rebellion, the largest peasant revolt in Russia’s history. Catherine did not advocate democratic reforms but addressed some modernization trends, including dividing the country into provinces and districts, further increasing the power of the landed oligarchs, and issuing the Charter of the Towns, which distributed all people into six groups as a way to limit the power of nobles and create a middle estate. Sassy stories about Catherine the Great: she really had more official and unofficial favorites – intimate companions, who often influenced politics – than any other Russian monarch. Her reign was the heyday of favoritism in Russia. The favorites used their position to control the money – for example, wine taxes.
Napoleon Bonaparte and Tsar Alexander I’s backgrounds could not be more different. Bonaparte was born to a minor noble family in Corsica in 1769, a year after the island was sold to France by Genoa. After receiving his military education in France, Napoleon rapidly rose up the ranks following the Revolution of 1789, announcing himself on the international stage in 1796 by leading a brilliant campaign against the Austrians in northern Italy. Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and fall were deeply intertwined with the ideas of the Enlightenment. This intellectual movement emphasized reason, individualism, and progress, which Napoleon both embraced and twisted to his advantage. Napoleon’s armies carried the revolutionary concepts of liberty, equality, and the rule of law into conquered territories. These ideas, rooted in Enlightenment thought, challenged traditional monarchies and aristocratic privilege. The Napoleonic Code of 1804 codified legal equality, property rights, and merit-based administration, reflecting Enlightenment beliefs in rational law and individual rights. The Old Resume and the Revolution ( L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution) (1856) is a work by the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville explained the constructive, although can still be have more to be desired of the significance of French Revolution.
Tsar Alexander I came from loyal family with psychological baggage for generations. His father was murdered(1801) in family power struggle, which had cast a long shadow in his psyche. With his mind deteriorated, Alexander I grew increasingly suspicious, withdrawn, religious, and less active. Some historians conclude that his profile “coincides precisely withthe schizophrenic prototype: a withdrawn, seclusive, rather shy, introvertive, unaggressive, and somewhat apathetic individual”.
Alexander I was succeeded by his brother Nicholas I (reigned 1825-1855), who is mainly remembered as a reactionary whose controversial reign was marked by geographical expansion, centralisation of administrative policies, and repression of dissent both in Russia and among its neighbors. Nicholas I disliked serfdom and toyed with the idea of abolishing it in Russia, but declined to do so for reasons of state. He feared the aristocracy and believed they might turn against him if he abolished serfdom. However, he did make some efforts to improve the lot of the Crown Serfs (serfs owned by the government) with the help of his minister Pavel Kiselyov. The culture of his reign official emphasis on Russian nationalism fueled a debate on Russia’s place in the world, the meaning of Russian history, and the future of Russia. One group, the westernizers, believed that Russia remained backward and primitive and could progress only through adopting European culture and institutions. Another group, the Slavophiles, enthusiastically favored Slavic culture and customs, and disdained the West.
Nicholas I was succeed by his son Alexander II (reigned 1855-1881) who also known as Alexander the Liberator because of his historic Edict of Emancipation, which officially abolished Russian serfdom in 1861. Alexander’s reign brought several other liberal reforms, such as improving the judicial system, relaxing media censorship, eliminating some legal restrictions on Jews, abolishing corporal punishment, promoting local self-government, modernizing and expanding schools and universities, and diversifying the Russian economy. However, many of these reforms were met with intense backlash and cut back or reversed entirely, and Alexander II eventually shifted towards a considerably more conservative political stance following an assassination attempt against him in 1866. In 1867, he sold Alaska to the United States, owing partly to his concern that it would be nearly impossible to prevent the Russian Empire’s North American colonies, which bordered British Columbia and the North-Western Territory, from falling into British hands in the event of another war. He survived attempts that took place in 1866, 1879, and 1880. And finally on 13 March [O.S. 1 March] 1881, Alexander II was assassinated in Saint Petersburg. His son Alexander III (reign 1881-1894) was highly reactionary in domestic affairs and reversed some of the liberal reforms of his father, Alexander II, a policy of “counter-reforms“.
Nicholas II was the last Russia emperor reigned from 1894-1918. He oversaw the Russian Empire’s role in the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. Driven away Napoleon, and thus devoid itself an opportunity of enlightenment of 19th century, Russian empire collapsed under the October Revolution of 1917. Before the whole Romanov family were killed– including the former Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, Empress Alexandra, and their children, there had sign of long-embedded psychological issues. Alexandra Feodorovna and Somatic Symptom Disorder: Unraveling the Health Struggles of Russia’s Last Empress. Mental Health (the case of Alix) issue plagued Romanov family. In pre-revolutionary Russia, there was no one more divisive than this megalomaniac mystic, a peasant who reached his way to the heights of Imperial Russia, only to oversee its destruction.
Old Russia tragedy seemed also reflected in Leo Tolstory’s confusion, and limited self understanding. ( My humble opinion)