HIST 245 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Paris Hilton, Sergey Uvarov, Montesquieu
Document Summary
Introduction: comes to power in wake of revolution, learns appropriate lessons and thinks only way forward for russia is to stop things where they are. Him no pretense of westernization, no debate, no moment of hope or disappointment along elite, decemberism confirmed everything he wanted or needed to know about enlightened westernization and democratization. Believed that this what resulted = revolution, chaos and instability. Russia gone too far, reformed too much and start to digging in trenches and stopping: follower of karamzin = role of tsar is to give orders, role of people is to obey. Irony of his reign is that frankly already too late, reform had already gone so far, many reforms (peters, catherine"s, alexander"s) had accumulated and transformed society. Interesting for nicholas to be a reactionary, had to look to the west. In trying not to implement westernization, was implement western style reactionary policies into russia. As much transformative or reforming reign than predecessors.