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| 1826 |
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| In keeping with Nicholas's intolerance of opposition, a political police force (Third Section of Imperial Chancery) was organized. The first comprehensive censorship laws were also drawn up. | 1 |
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| 1826–28 |
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| War with Persia (See 1826–28) resulted from a Persian attack on Russian possessions in Transcaucasia. The war ended in a Russian victory and in the Treaty of Turkmanchai: Russia secured part of Armenia with Erivan; Persia recognized Russia's exclusive right to have a navy on the Caspian Sea and granted Russia important commercial concessions. | 2 |
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| 1828–29 |
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| War against the Ottoman Empire (See 1821–30) grew out of the Greek revolution and conflict between Russia and the Ottomans, over the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest. With the Treaty of Adrianople (1829) (See 1829, Sept. 14) Russia secured the mouth of the Danube and the eastern coast of the Black Sea. | 3 |
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| 1832 |
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| The government published a new code of law, edited by Speransky. This, with some modification, remained in force until the Revolution of 1917. Nicholas, while recognizing the need for reform, sternly opposed all independent public activity. Along with partial measures to alleviate the condition of the serfs and to limit the power of the landlords, this period witnessed the growth of bureaucracy and the tsar's personal government. All manifestations of liberalism were repressed through the secret police; strict censorship, control of the universities, and official championship of orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationalism were promulgated. Despite all the repressive measures, strong public opinion nevertheless developed. Two important schools of thought developed: the Westerners, who held that Russia must follow the lead of Western countries in political and social development, and the Slavophiles, who insisted on the peculiarities of Russian culture and historical evolution and on the need for independent development. But both groups opposed bureaucratic rule and demanded freedom of thought and abolution of serfdom. A third force for change arose in the beginnings of Russian socialism (under the influence of the utopian socialists in France) under the leadership of Alexander Herzen and Mikhail Bakunin. The revolutions of 1848–49 simply resulted in more thoroughgoing repression in Russia, but opposition broke through as soon as Russia began to meet with defeats in the Crimean War. | 4 |
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| 1833 |
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| The Near Eastern crisis resulted from Muhammad Ali's victory over the sultan. Russia interfered, and the Treaty of Hunkiar Iskelesi was signed (See 1831–40). | 5 |
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| 1835 |
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| University statutes were reformed. | 6 |
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| 1836 |
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| After the publication of his First Philosophical Letter, Paul A. Chaadayev was declared insane by Nicholas for his critique of Russian backwardness. | 7 |
| First performances of Nikolai Gogol's (1809–52) Government Inspector and Mikhail Glinka's (1803–57) A Life for the Tsar. | 8 |
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| 1837 |
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| The first public railroad linked St. Petersburg to Tsarskoe Selo. | 9 |
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| 1839 |
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| Russia possessed the largest telescope in the world and became an important training center for astronomers throughout the world after the construction of the Pulkovo Observatory near St. Petersburg. | 10 |
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| 1839–40 |
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| Second Muhammad Ali crisis. Russia cooperated with Britain. | 11 |
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| 1847 |
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| Ivan Turgenev (1818–83) became a leading writer of the realistic novel in Russia with the publication of A Sportsman's Sketches. Fathers and Sons followed in 1862. Other Russian proponents of the realistic novel included Ivan Goncharov (1812–91); Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) who wrote Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Brothers Karamazov (1879–80); Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) who wrote War and Peace (1869), Anna Karenina (1875–77), and Resurrection (1899–1900); Dmitri Merezhkovsky (1865–1941); Maxim Gorki (1868–1936) who also wrote plays and short stories; and Fyodor Sologub (1863–1927) who wrote The Little Demon. | 12 |
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| 1848–49 |
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| Russia intervened in Hungary to suppress the Hungarian revolutionary movement (See 1849, June 17). | 13 |
| Advance in Asia. The Russians were pressing on steadily. During the reign of Nicholas they conquered the Khirghiz Steppe and prepared for the advance into Turkestan. In the Far East, Nicholas Muraviev (1809–81) became governor-general of Siberia in 1847. | 14 |
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