Talk:Government reforms of Alexander II of Russia

This is a new article, bringing together topics from a number of long-standing articles, with new information, and lots of new citations to the reliable sources. Comments are welcome. Rjensen (talk) 04:01, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, you have some nice established literature, but some of those works are kind of obsolete and maybe do not carry the greatest authority on this topic (I suspect people use Figes's Tragedy of a people, which has Bolshevik victory in mind by the way, because it is available via Google Books or something - the classic way of contributors here to do their research). In any case, some of the conclusion you draw from your literature are a bit 'traditional', so to speak. For example in the lead of this entry, you say that the peasants were helped to buy a farm, which is a bit optimistic and does not take into account the practicalities of the reform and regional/status variations of the peasantry and the consequences for the reforms' effects on their situations.
 * Or when you say that the reign of Nicholas I (and others) was very conservative and reactionary, which is too pessimistic (at least as early as Catherine II, rulers had thought about abolishing serfdom and Nicholas I had ordered a lot of preparatory work for the emancipation, which in that sense, then, did not come as a surprise). The annoying thing about the history of these reforms is that, not unlike certain other histories, it has been subject to political strife, leading liberals, socialists, conservatives etc. to portray the tsars as incompetent, ineffective, evil even, or as a beacon of stability in an increasingly chaotic world - so that any characterization of the reforms' success will evaluate the monarchy as such and vice versa. Political implications of historical research will, of course, not disappear, but the last two decades or so there has been some re-evaluation of imperial rule, which tries not to overstate the power of the tsars and pay more attention to the formative role of actors in the 'peripheries' (if you still want to call it that).
 * Maybe one tip, a work that does not necessarily approache Russia as an empire in the sense mentioned above, but provides a fresh and balanced perspective is Manfred Hildermeier, Geschichte Russlands (2013). 2001:1C02:1901:ED00:E409:A272:F16C:BCFD (talk) 10:50, 11 December 2020 (UTC)