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In 1864, Russia was at the dawn of the Zemstvo reform, focused on local self-government, which was created during the emancipation reform of 1861. After three years of Alexander II, gentry, peasants, and city dwellers sitting in joint assemblies discussing Russia's economic interests, the new laws officially went into effect this year. [1]
1864 was also the year that Tsar Alexander II of Russia pushed for the implementation of parish councils and church reform. Alexander II sought out parish councils to improve the overall productivity of the parish clergy but was met with discontent from parishioners since most of their funds went into the renovation of churches. Church councils were formed under the parish but did not directly belong to it. Councils were tasked with the upkeep of church buildings, founding church schools, watching over parish cemeteries, and general charity work of the communities. With a promising start, four years into Alexander II's legislation, around 5,000 councils existed. Interest in the church councils began to decline from 1871-1881 and quickly arose during the years of 1890-1909. It's directly unknown why the increase in councils happened and is a burning question of who revamped the church councils during this time period. [2]
1864 also marks the beginning of the Russian Empire's anti-semitic Circassian Genocide. The Circassian Genocide was the mass killing and deportation of the Circassian's, who were religiously Islamic, from the Russian Empire. For many years prior to 1864, the Circassians refused to succumb to the Christians in the Russian Empire. This caused the Russian Empire to retaliate using military force in order to either convert Circassian's to Christianity through Russification, or if they refused to convert the Russian Empire would either mass deport or murder them. Throughout the entirety of the Circassian Genocide it is estimated that between 800,000 and 1,500,000 Circassian's were murdered or deported. [3]
The 1864 Zemstvo legislation was rather unclear, requiring Zemstvos to keep the existing hospitals with a focus on spreading and circulating vaccines; however there was minimal, vague, and obvious information included in the legislation. An example of this is the legislation's mention that local organizations could finance medical institutions if they wanted to, but it was all to their own discretion. [4] A reason behind why the Zemstvo legislation was so vague was due to the fact that this marked the first time the Russian Empire attempted to put together some type of medical legislation. The Russian Empire had to start from scratch and did not use any models of guidance in trying to create a more unified and structured medical care system.
A major focus of the Zemstvo legislation in 1864 was to focus on building medical care for rural communities in Russia, which were responsible for 90% of the Russian population. Prior to the legislation that was formed in order to aid the rural communities in Russia, there was a very small amount of privatized or government run medical care and the public institutions that were already established were notoriously inadequate and unsuccessful. In the legislation in order to combat labor and supply shortages that caused their medical institutions to be ineffective, the Russian Empire implemented something they called a circuit system. A circuit system in this sense entailed hiring medical physicians who would travel across Russia to provide a single district or village medical care for a few days before leaving to go to another village. This circuit would usually take 30-40 days before returning to the same village. A major factor in why the Russian Empire chose to implement a circuit system compared to a stationary system, which is where a medical institution would be built and have physicians permanently working there, was because a circuit system cost substantially less due to not having to build multiple medical institutions and have to hire and train a massive medical staff for each institution. [4]
In 1864 Russia continued their pursuit of expansion in Central Asia, specifically focusing on expanding into modern-day Kazakhstan. During this time, Russia focused on expansion into Central Asia, due to the fear of British intervention if they attempted to expand into the already established British colonies in India. Using their military command, Russia annexed the Kazakhstan cities of Turkestan City, Aulie Ata (which is now the modern day city of Tarza), and Chimkent. Accompanying this annexation Russia formed a new Turkestan providence in association with their own already established Russian Orenbrug providence's Governorate-General. [5]
The 1860s was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1860, and ended on December 31, 1869.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction. It constitutes a crime against humanity and may also fall under the Genocide Convention, even as ethnic cleansing has no legal definition under international criminal law.
A reform movement or reformism is a type of social movement that aims to bring a social or also a political system closer to the community's ideal. A reform movement is distinguished from more radical social movements such as revolutionary movements which reject those old ideals, in that the ideas are often grounded in liberalism, although they may be rooted in socialist or religious concepts. Some rely on personal transformation; others rely on small collectives, such as Mahatma Gandhi's spinning wheel and the self-sustaining village economy, as a mode of social change. Reactionary movements, which can arise against any of these, attempt to put things back the way they were before any successes the new reform movement(s) enjoyed, or to prevent any such successes.
A zemstvo was an institution of local government set up during the great emancipation reform of 1861 carried out in Imperial Russia by Emperor Alexander II of Russia. Nikolay Milyutin elaborated the idea of the zemstva, and the first zemstvo laws went into effect in 1864. After the October Revolution the zemstvo system was shut down by the Bolsheviks and replaced with a multilevel system of workers' and peasants' councils ("soviets").
Circassia, also known as Zichia, was a country and a historical region in the North Caucasus along the northeast shore of the Black Sea. It was conquered and occupied by Russia during the Russian-Circassian War (1763–1864), after which 90% of the Circassian people were either exiled from the region or massacred in the Circassian genocide.
Circassians, also called Cherkess or Adyghe, are an indigenous Northwest Caucasian ethnic group and nation native to the historical country-region of Circassia in the North Caucasus. As a consequence of the Circassian genocide perpetrated by the Russian Empire in the 19th century during the Russo-Circassian War, most Circassians were exiled from their homeland in Circassia to modern-day Turkey and the rest of the Middle East, where most of them are today. In the early 1990s, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization estimated that there are as many as 3.7 million Circassians in diaspora in over 50 countries.
In 1855, Alexander II began his reign as Tsar of Russia and presided over a period of political and social reform, notably the emancipation of serfs in 1861 and the lifting of censorship. His successor Alexander III (r. 1881–1894) pursued a policy of repression and restricted public expenditure, but continued land and labour reforms. This was a period of population growth and significant industrialization, though Russia remained a largely rural country.
The Caucasian War or Caucasus War was a 19th-century military conflict between the Russian Empire and various peoples of the North Caucasus who resisted subjugation during the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. It consisted of a series of military actions waged by the Russian Imperial Army and Cossack settlers against the native inhabitants such as the Adyghe, Abaza–Abkhaz, Ubykhs, Chechens, and Dagestanis as the Tsars sought to expand.
Count Dmitry Alekseyevich Milyutin was a military historian, Minister of War (1861–81) and the last Field Marshal of Imperial Russia (1898). He played a major role in the Circassian genocide. He was responsible for sweeping military reforms that changed the face of the Russian army in the 1860s and 1870s.
The judicial reform of Alexander II is generally considered one of the most successful and consistent of all his reforms. A completely new court system and order of legal proceedings were established. The main results were the introduction of a unified judicial system instead of a cumbersome set of estates of the realm courts, and fundamental changes in criminal trials. The latter included the establishment of the principle of equality of the parties involved, the introduction of public hearings, the jury trial, and a professional advocate that had never existed in Russia. However, there were also problems, as certain obsolete institutions were not covered by the reform. Also, the reform was hindered by extrajudicial punishment, introduced on a widespread scale during the reigns of his successors – Alexander III and Nicholas II.
The Circassian genocide, or Tsitsekun, was the Russian Empire's systematic mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and expulsion of 95–97% of the Circassian population, resulting in 1 to 1.5 million deaths during the final stages of Russo-Circassian War. The peoples planned for extermination were mainly the Muslim Circassians, but other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus were also affected. Killing methods used by Russian forces during the genocide included impaling and tearing the bellies of pregnant women as means of intimidation of the Circassian population. Russian generals such as Grigory Zass described the Circassians as "subhuman filth", and glorified the mass murder of Circassian civilians, justified their use in scientific experiments, and allowed their soldiers to rape women.
Pavel Ivanovich Jacobi was a Russian Empire revolutionary socialist, member of the Land and Liberty society, ethnographer and physician. He was a pioneer of the Pinel reforms of psychiatry in Russia, credited to be first who formulated all the principles for the new paradigm in the organizational psychiatry.
The Circassian Day of Mourning or the Day of Mouning for the Victims of the Circassian Genocide is mourned every year on 21 May in remembrance of the victims of the Russo-Circassian War and the subsequent Circassian genocide by members of the Circassian diaspora. The choice of the date is due to the fact that on 21 May 1864, General Pavel Grabbe held a military parade in the what is now Krasnaya Polyana in honor of the victory in the Battle of Qbaada.
The Russian Empire, also known as Imperial Russia, was the final period of the Russian monarchy from its proclamation in November 1721, until its dissolution in September 1917. It consisted of most of northern Eurasia. The Empire succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad. The rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing China. It also held colonies in Russian America between 1799 and 1867. Covering an area of approximately 22,800,000 square kilometres (8,800,000 sq mi), it remains the third-largest empire in history, surpassed only by the British Empire and the Mongol Empire; it ruled over a population of 125.6 million people per the 1897 Russian census, the only census carried out during the entire imperial period. It featured great ethnic, linguistic, religious, and economic diversity.
The magistrates' courts, an office held by a magistrate or justice of the peace, is a court within the judiciary of Russia.
The area of the Russian city of Sochi was populated more than 100,000 years by ancient people of Asia Minor migrating through Colchis. Ancient Greeks sailed to the region via the Black Sea in the 5th–6th centuries BC and encountered the Maeotae, Sindi, Cercetae, Zygii and other local tribes. They were the ancestors of the Abkhaz, Ubykh and Adyghe people who lived here until 1864; many toponyms in Sochi, including the city itself, originate from their languages. The first Russian outpost was set up in central Sochi in 1838 as a part of the Russian expansion along the Black Sea coast. The local resistance to this process became a part of the Russo-Circassian War which ended in a Russian victory and the genocide of the local population. The Russian settlement built in the area was named Sochi in 1896 and received the status of a city (town) in 1917. The first tea plantations were established there in 1901–1905 and resulted in the production of the most prominent brand of Russian tea. From the end of the 19th century, the city has been developed as a dedicated area for sanatoriums and hospitals. It served as a rehabilitation center during World War II and, despite a decline following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, remains the major resort town of Russia. An important recent event was selection of Sochi as the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2014 Winter Paralympics.
The Circassian Parliament or the Circassian Majlis was the legislature of Circassia officialized in 1861 after a meeting in Sochi attended by leaders of several Circassian provinces. A tribal confederation had existed before the parliament's establishment, but a centralized government was achieved only after it was built.
Alexander II was Emperor of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 2 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881. Alexander's most significant reform as emperor was the emancipation of Russia's serfs in 1861, for which he is known as Alexander the Liberator.
The Government reforms imposed by Tsar Alexander II of Russia, often called the Great Reforms by historians, were a series of major social, political, legal and governmental reforms in the Russian Empire carried out in the 1860s.
A Petition from Circassian leaders to Her Majesty Queen Victoria was a document sent by Circassian leaders to Queen Victoria on April 7, 1864 complaining about Russian genocidal actions that made up the Circassian genocide. The document requests British military aid, or in the worst case, humanitarian aid, to the Circassian people. Only the English version of the text exists today. Presumably, however, it was written in Ottoman Turkish, and then translated to English by Henry Bulwer, the British ambassador in Istanbul.
Media related to 1864 in Russia at Wikimedia Commons
