The czar of Russia held enormous power in Metternichian Europe. No monarch had contributed more to the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte: Napoleon's Grand Armee had perished in Russia in 1812, and Russian troops had occupied Paris in 1814. The czar's support had sustained the congress system, and his defection during the Greek revolution had destroyed it.

Russian internal affairs were less simple. The enigmatic Alexander I had come to the throne in 1801 at the age of twenty-four, after the assassination of his father, in which Alexander may have been involved. He was a tall and handsome youth who favored skin-tight uniforms; he had become overweight by 1815, but his vanity and his robust sexuality (which ranged from his sister to religious mystics) put him in corsets instead of loose-fitting clothes. This same Alexander was considered the most intelligent monarch of the age by both Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte (excepting himself). Alexander held more absolute power than anyone else in Europe and with it came the opportunity to propel Russia into the modern age by timely reforms (such as the abolition of serfdom) or to become the champion of the Old Regime. Alexander considered both.

Many historians describe Alexander I as the hope of Russian liberalism. He received a liberal education from his tutor, and he began his reign closely associated with a liberal adviser, Michael Speranski. Speranski was the son of a priest; his brilliance at school earned him a government job and caught the interest of the czar. He was a good administrator, well organized and able to write clear prose, who mixed liberal sentiments with bureaucratic caution. Speranski swayed Alexander to consider reforms. He founded four new universities (doubling the total in the empire), at Kazan, Kharkov, Warsaw, and St. Petersburg. He gave the Poles a constitution and allowed them to reopen their parliament (the Sejm). This led to a constitution for Finland and to discussions about a Russian constitution with Speranski. Alexander also restrained the persecution of minority religions and proclaimed religious toleration. Most important, he abolished serfdom in his Baltic provinces between 1816 and 1819 while hinting that this was a pilot project for the emancipation of all Russian serfs.

Alexander I remained, however, an autocrat unchecked by a constitution, an independent judiciary, or a parliament. He was a monarch closer to eighteenth-century enlightened despotism than to 19th-century liberalism, presiding over the most feudal economy in the world. He held conquered peoples against their will, no matter how generously he treated them. In his later years, Alexander preferred reactionary advisers. He yielded to their contempt for Speranski and banished his friend to Siberia (although he later made him governor-general of that province). In his place, Alexander entrusted Russian domestic policy to a leading reactionary, Alexis Arakcheyev. Arakcheyev was a cruel and arrogant man unlikely to abolish serfdom; he once ordered a young serf flogged to death because she did a poor job at her sweeping. Alexander also capitulated to religious conservatives and abandoned the policy of toleration, which they considered "a sin against the Holy Ghost." Religious repression resumed in 1821. . . .

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