Russian Resentment Flourishes
By 1875 the Zemstvos had been forbidden to discuss general political issues, and restrictions on what could be taught or printed had been tightened. As a consequence, the movements of radical opposition flourished. The famous division of generations, expressed in Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, showed in the rejection of leaders like Alexander Herzen, who from exile in London had once inspired reform but whose views belonged to the era of Mazzini and the utopian socialists. New spokesmen, called nihilists by their enemies, rejected compromise within the system and accepted the utility of violence advocated in the anarchism of leftists such as Mikhail Bakunin. Populists talked of going to the people and educating the peasants to a more revolutionary view. Socialism, too, was spreading in the 1870s in Russia. All these doctrines were affected by pan-Slavist views, which stressed Russia's peculiar destiny and disdained liberal parliamentarianism of the West.
The intelligentsia of Russian society remained isolated and, increasingly disenchanted with the tsar liberator, moved further left. In an atmosphere of conspiracy, terrorists attempted assassination as a way to shake an oppressive regime. Usually they missed their target, but in 1881 a bomb killed Alexander II. His son, Alexander III, certain that the liberal reforms of his father "whetted the appetite" of the leftists, now determined to take strong measure to quell such disturbances and threats—and his reign was of a far less benevolent character. As for that other bastion of conservatism, Austria—it was perched even further on the precipice of major change. Following the revolutions of 1848, the Hapsburg monarchy had sought to meet its political and economic problems by creating a modern, unitary state. Under the young Franz Joseph I, the emphasis on administrative efficiency was renewed, and for the first time in its history, the entire empire was subjected to uniform laws and taxes applied by a single administration. The emperor and the aristocracy, however, were never comfortable with the earnest bureaucrats, and the innovation of centralization was not accompanied by the zeal for reform the policy required. Mounting debts and defeat in Italy in 1859 were accepted as proof that it had not worked, and in 1860 Franz Joseph decreed a new federal constitution, called The October Diploma, giving considerable authority to regional diets.
Intended to reduce resentment against high-handed government, the constitution was a failure from the start. It prompted dangerous arguments among the various nationalities over what their "historic" provinces really were and won the determined opposition of liberals and bureaucrats alike. The emperor therefore reversed himself the next year by establishing an imperial bicameral parliament. Having stirred his people to visions of local self-government and autonomous nationalities, he was now again asking for their subordination to rule from Vienna. Furthermore, representatives to the lower house were to be elected by a system that assured the dominance of the German-speaking middle class.
In Hungary, liberal nationalists led a campaign to reject these arrangements and reestablish instead the constitution of 1848, a far more liberal instrument. The imperial government tried the traditional tactic of recruiting support from the empire's other nationalities against the dominant Magyars, but the response was unenthusiastic. Although not strong enough to force its will, Hungary was able to prevent the new constitution from having its intended effect. The leader of the Hungarian liberals, Déak then worked for a compromise, and in the wake of defeat by Prussia in 1866, Austria was forced to accede. The compromise allowed Hungary to remain an autonomous state under the kingship of Franz Joseph—Hungary was now joined to Austria only in the person of the emperor and by common policies of defense and diplomacy. An awkward compromise, the Dual Monarchy was bound to create unrest—and it did. It rested on the dominance of Magyars over Rumanians, Croatians and Serbs, and of Germans and Poles, over Slovenes, Slovaks, and Ruthenians. It lasted for 50 years as one of Europe's greatest powers, an empire of diversified peoples and cultures, threatened by nationalism, and sustained by the power of Vienna.