Nicholas I of Russia

Historically, and this is what, again, we were talking about in the last week, the difference between patriotism and nationalism.

We're going to be looking at, as Jose brought up, Tsar Nicholas I.

He is clearly a patriot.

But he's certainly not a nationalist.

And then you get to February with the first French Revolution.

This is a decisive event that transformed the regional unrest into a European revolutionary wave.

And this is where Tsar Nicholas I says, again, I'm paraphrasing.

I can't remember the exact quote.

By the mid-19th century, disputes over the Christian holy places had become part of a much larger geopolitical confrontation.

France under Napoleon III championed Catholic claims, while Tsar Nicholas I of Russia championed Orthodox claims.

France pressured the Ottoman Empire to restore Catholic rights to the church that it argued had been guaranteed by earlier treaties.

Russia insisted that the Orthodox rights that had been established since 1757 be preserved.

A Voyage on an Ice Block by David Carr The breaking up of the ice in Russia is always a fine sight to look at, even upon a small stream like the Neva at St. Petersburg, which is a mere brook compared with the great rivers of the South.

As soon as the spring thaw sets in, all the wooden bridges are removed, and nothing checks the descending ice but the stone piers of the Nikolaevsky Bridge, named after its founder, the Tsar Nicholas.

every morning while the show lasts the balustrades of this bridge are lined with a crowd of eager spectators looking as intently at the wonderful sight as if they had never seen it before and a wonderful sight it is indeed far as the eye can reach the smooth dark surface of the river is one great procession of floating masses of ice of all shapes and sizes moving slowly and steadily downward But the place to see this famous sight at its best is the Volga, which, with its two thousand miles of length, brings down ice enough to overwhelm a whole city.

At times the force of the current piles it up, sheet over sheet, into huge mounds, the crashing and grinding of which, as they dash against each other, make the very air shake.

He sharply criticized another high functionary, and I remarked in the latter's defense.

Still there is this to be said for him, that he never accepted service under Nicholas I.

And now he is in service under the reign of Shuvalov and Trepov, was the reply, which so correctly described the situation that I could say nothing more.

General Shuvalov, the chief of the state police, and General Trepov, the chief of the St. Petersburg police, were indeed the real rulers of Russia.

The very reforms which made the glory of the beginning of his reign were now wrecked wholesale by means of bylaws and ministerial circulars.

A return to manorial justice and serfdom in a disguised form was openly expected in the old camp, while no one could hope at that time that the main reform, the abolition of serfdom, could withstand the assaults directed against it from the Winter Palace itself.

All this must have brought Karakasov and his friends to the idea that a further continuance of Alexander II's reign would be a menace even to the little that had been won, that Russia would have to return to the horrors of Nicholas I if Alexander continued to rule.

Great hopes were felt at the same time.

Russia single-handedly destroyed revolutionaries.

I mean, you know, in 1848, it was Nicholas I that put the emperor who had been driven out of Vienna back on the throne.

He didn't get thanked for it.

In fact, he got a war out of it.

I never heard of a, any other political theorist say, "I'm not gonna tell you what's gonna happen afterwards," uh, just the purely negative, and they're kind of the same way here.

I don't think they could have said, I don't think they really knew 100%.

They knew that, um, Balthazar, as, as, uh, was written in the Apate of House after the murder of, uh, Nicholas II, um, had to go.

Orthodoxy needed to be destroyed, and the bulwark against revolution was the Russian Empire.