The death of Nicholas I in 1855 and the accession of his son Alexander, framed as they were against the background of defeat in the Crimean War, heralded the dawn of a very new era for Russia and at the same time marked one of the decisive turning-points in its modern history. The disastrous outcome of the war appeared to confirm beyond any question the damage which 30 years of Official Nationality had done, not only in regard to Russia's military capabilities vis-à-vis the West, but more fundamentally to its underlying economic, political, and social structure. Disillusionment with the ancien régime was indeed so strong that many thoroughly patriotic Russians actually cultivated a kind of resigned defeatism during the course of the war and viewed its unfortunate outcome as a perversely appropriate and necessary climax to the entire sad period. The historian Sergei Solov'ev, for example, recalled his deep ambivalence at hearing the news that Sevastapol had fallen to the enemy. While his patriotic feelings were “terribly injured by this humiliation of Russia,” he explained, at the same time he believed that “only disaster, and precisely military defeat, would be able to bring about the saving transformation and put an end to further decay. We were convinced that success on the battlefield would only draw our fetters yet tighter.” “I am glad, glad that we have been beaten,” the Decembrist N.R. Tsebrikov tearfully confessed on the same occasion: “Now we shall wake up.