Czar Alexander I's Liberal Legislation

Alexander abolished many barbarous and cruel punishments then practiced and in 1802 introduced a more orderly administration of government by the creation of eight ministries. He improved the condition of the serfs and promoted education, doubling the number of Russian universities by establishing those at Saint Petersburg, Kharkiv, and Kazan. Nevertheless, despite the humanitarian ideas inculcated in him by his tutor La Harpe and despite his own wish to make his people happy, Alexander lacked the energy necessary to carry out the most urgent reform, the full abolition of serfdom. The institution of serfdom was, in the Czar's own words, 'a degradation' that kept Russia in a disastrously backward state. But to liberate the serfs, who composed three-quarters of the population, would arouse the hostility of their noble masters.