Background
Count Arakcheyev was born on his father's estate in the Novgorod Governorate on October 4, 1769.
Count Arakcheyev was born on his father's estate in the Novgorod Governorate on October 4, 1769.
His school formation consisted in studying arithmetic under a podyachiy (dyak), a knowledgeable and schooled man. Arakcheev's father moved with the family to Saint-Petersburg for his son to be educated in a military artillery school. Later Alexey had to continue his education at home since the military school was too expensive. Alexey's father brought Melissino as a teacher for Alexey. Later Melissino gave artillery and fortification lessons to Prince Nicholas Saltykov's sons and Alexey Arakcheyev earned some money assisting Melissino in teaching the sons arithmetic and geometry.
As he grew up, he was Peter Ivanovich Melissino's pupil and rapidly started teaching arithmetic and geometry.
When Pavel Petrovich, heir to the throne of Russia, was in search for an artillery officer, Saltykov recommended Arakcheyev as a man that had learned military discipline.
He was commissioned an artillery officer in the Russian army in the latter year. He became a close associate and adviser to the tsarevich Paul, who, when he became emperor in 1796, gave Arakcheyev the task of reorganizing the entire army.
When his harsh disciplinary measures alienated the officers’ corps, however, he was dismissed (1798) and was recalled to active duty only after Alexander I ascended the throne.
Made an inspector general of the artillery in 1803, Arakcheyev reorganized that branch of the army; he then became minister of war (1808), and in 1809, during the Russo-Swedish War of 1808–09, he personally compelled the reluctant Russian forces to cross the frozen Gulf of Finland and make the attack on the �
land Islands that ultimately resulted in Sweden’s cession of Finland to Russia (September 1809).
Arakcheyev resigned as minister of war.
He later accepted a post as head of the council’s military department; and, as one of Alexander’s most trusted military advisers, he handled all of the emperor’s military correspondence and dispatches during the invasion by Napoleonic France in 1812.
Afterward, when Alexander became almost exclusively involved in foreign affairs, Arakcheyev was made responsible for supervising the Council of Ministers’ management of domestic matters (1815).
For the next decade Arakcheyev dominated the administration of Russia’s internal affairs, carrying out his bureaucratic functions with brutal and ruthless efficiency.
Despite his basic conservatism, he took part in the emancipation of serfs in Russia’s Baltic provinces (1816–19) and also developed a plan for gradually emancipating all of Russia’s serfs (1818).
In addition, he supervised the creation of a system of military-agricultural colonies, which between 1816 and 1821 housed nearly one-third of Russia’s standing army. After Nicholas I succeeded Alexander (1825), Arakcheyev resigned all of his offices (April 1826) and went into retirement.
After the death of Tsar Alexander I on December 1, 1825, and the coronation of Nicholas I, Arakcheyev lost all his positions in the government, such as member of the State Council and inspector of the army artillery and infantry.
This led to his removal from the court and the exile to his estate of Gruzino near Novgorod.
There he lived until his death in 1834.
Furthermore, after Arakcheyev's death the tsar requisitioned his land and property due to the inability to find legal heirs.
Aleksey Andreyevich was a military officer and statesman whose domination of the internal affairs of Russia during the last decade of Alexander I’s reign (1801–25) caused that period to be known as Arakcheyevshchina. "Arakcheevshchina", roughly translated as "the Arakcheev régime", became a derogatory term for a military state, denoting "the atmosphere of reactionary repression closing over Russian society".
He served under Paul I and Alexander I as army leader and artillery inspector respectively. He had a violent temper, but was otherwise a competent artillerist, and is known for his reforms of tzarist artillery known as the "System of 1805".
Akrakcheev was a faithful and pious Orthodox Christian from an early age.
Arakcheyev generally opposed the liberal administrative and constitutional reforms considered by Alexander, and, when Alexander created the advisory Council of State (1810), Arakcheyev resigned as minister of war.
His principal reforms were the subdivision of the artillery divisions into separate independent units, the formation of artillery brigades, the establishment of a committee of instruction (1808), and the publishing of an Artillery Journal.
He was a member of the State Council but after the death of Tsar Alexander I and the coronation of Nicholas I, Arakcheyev lost his membership.
He had a violent temper. He was gifted with brilliant organizational skills and administrative talent and that, perhaps most importantly, he did not work for profit and fame, but for his moral duty.
