Following defeat in the Crimean War the ruling classes of Russia realised the need for far-reaching reform in the Empire. The disaster was mortifying not only in the military sense, but even more so due to the loss of Russia's prestige as a Great Power, which it had enjoyed hitherto solely on the basis of its impressive military strength. Now the country's leaders saw Nicholas I's ossified, anachronistic system as the source of their humiliation. Modelled on 18st-century absolutism, it had a limited potential to compete with Western Europe.

A common denominator in the political thinking of all the segments of the Russian elite in the first phase of the reign of Alexander II, the new Tsar, was the awareness of being on the losing side in the rivalry with the Western Powers. Hence they recognised the need to modernise Russia's state and social system by adopting more efficient Western European models. The emancipation of the peasants, who had to be liberated from serfdom and granted freehold of the land, would have to constitute the main challenge in the postulates for the country's reform.

The threat of a new peasant and Cossack uprising like the Emelian Pugachev rebellion in the 18st century made the need for emancipation all the more acute. One of the individuals who had warned the Tsar of such trouble ahead was the historian and co-creator of the official, conservative ideology of “official nationalism,” Mikhail Pogodin. The spectre of social unrest was an argument of paramount importance in the political and social reflection urging the Russian educated classes to adopt a plan for the all-embracing reform of the state.

To achieve all this it was necessary to turn to the young “enlightened bureaucrats,” most of whom had been trained for the job by Nicholas I's distinguished ministers, Pavel Kiselev and Lev Perovskii, in the Ministries of Internal Affairs, Justice, and State Domains. The group's patron and leader was Alexander II's younger brother, Grand Duke Konstantin, dubbed the Russian Philippe d'Orleans for his similarity to “Philippe Egalite,” the Bourbon who symbolised liberal government and a concessionary attitude to demands of constitutional reform during the French Revolution.