In 1861, a year before Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Czar Alexander II of Russia freed the serfs. The serfs were peasants who were literally bound to the noblemen's estates and totally controlled by them, to the extent that the nobleman could decree when and with whom they would marry.
Alexander II viewed liberation as a moral as well as necessary measure, given Russia's defeat in the Crimean War in her own backyard 7 years earlier– a defeat that exposed her backwardness. To mark 150 years since the freeing , an academic conference was held in St. Petersburg attended by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who was also photographed symbolically laying a wreath on the grave of the "Czar Liberator", Alexander II's appellation following the decree. Reaction set in when a few years after the decree, Alexander II was assassinated by terrorists.
Dmitry Medvedev was the featured speaker at the event . To judge by his speech, the Russian president viewed the Czar as an example to be followed.The following quotations provide an inkling as to the thrust of the speech:
"A nation is a living organism rather than a machine, and it cannot be supported by reproducing hackneyed ideas or tightening the screws,"
"Freedom from fear, humiliation, poverty, and illnesses, freedom for everybody - this is what I deem the goal of our development today."
"But as a great reformer, Alexander II knew that Russia must stand on a par with other European states. He understood that Russia needed freedom, that it yearned for freedom. I would like to quote his words, which I think have already sounded earlier: 'I am too certain of our sacred cause for anyone to be able to stop me.'"
Dimitry Medvedev rejected the view that Alexander II's injection of freedom was inappropriate to Russia and therefore it inevitably led to Communism and the gulags:
"I hold a different view. Alexander II had inherited a country whose major political institutions were serfdom and the military and bureaucratic chain of command. He saw the weakness and futility of these institutions behind the apparent might of the empire and we always knew how to make an impression. Inefficient economy and a social structure that was incompatible with development goals threatened an imminent collapse of the country."
Optimistic Russian liberals, hearing this speech, believed that the president was lashing out at the system of power constructed by his partner Vladimir Putin. The stifling of freedom and the expectation that one could maintain control by tightening the screws have been shown equally futile today.
Others were cynical and viewed the speech as part of the run-up to the 2012 elections where Dmitry Medvedev will apparently be seeking reelection. One Russian newspaper even headlined the speech "Alexander II Goes to the Polls".
One of the most scathing commentaries came from Anton Orekh, a commentator on Moscow's Eko Moskvy radio station that is owned by Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, but is relatively iconoclastic in Russian terms.
Orekh claimed that anybody listening to the speech while blindfolded would have mistaken the speaker for Soviet human rights fighter Andrei Sakharov, Mother Theresa or Mahatma Gandhi. With such inspiring words, there would be a stampede to vote for the speaker. The problem, he noted, was that Medvedev could talk the talk but hadn't put one foot forward in the walk:
"The thing is that Medvedev has been our president for three years and that practically none of the great principles he has proclaimed over these three years has been put into practice, just as none of them has been put in practice in this new millennium. Likewise, no-one will ever follow these principles in the future."
In the debate between the optimists and pessimists concerning Russian political culture, Orekh sided with the pessimists. Alexander II may have abolished serfdom but "Russia remains a country of slaves." Slavery reached its peak under communism and freedom peeked out only in a brief hiatus at the end of the Gorbachev era and the start of the Yeltsin Presidency. "After that, citizens made a clear choice between freedom and sausage in favour of sausage".