Liberal Ideas Spread to Russia

Liberal Ideas Spread to Russia

Thesis: As a result of Russia army reaching Paris, the Russian officers were able to bring home ideas of French Revolution and taste of free life, compared to the gloomy and repressive life of miserable serfs, corrupt official, tyrannical landlords.

• Therefore, these French ideas of constitutional government and individual liberty threatened the old customs of the Russian empire
• For Russia lacked unity as a whole
• Theses officers desired to create a Russia that could be compared to that of France and western Europe
• Tsar Alexander I raised hopes of officers by making “vague promises of reform and by granting a constitution of sorts to those parts of Poland that had been annexed by Russian Empire
• However by 1820, Alexander, following reactionary methods, strengthened his autocratic rule
• Kakhovsky, a member of the Decembrist revolutionary circle
• Govt will struggle to find out members of the secret societies
• Origin and root of society – seek in spirit of time and in our state of mind
• Membership is not very large
• Have discovered that they do not lived for the govts and that the govt are organized for them
• After experiencing enlightenment principles and better govts, people strive towards them
• Govts try to bring these people back into “darkness of ignorance”
• Liberty “will emerge from primitive ignorance”