The violence and bloodshed in Warsaw which started the stormy age of the moral revolution in the Russian zone of partitioned Poland coincided with the declaration of the emancipation ukases in Russia preceded by Tsar Alexander II's manifesto of 19st February 1861. As Aleksandr Kireev, adjutant to Grand Duke Konstantin and chronicler of the discussions in the imperial elites of the age, recorded, the emancipation of the peasants was regarded as merely “the first step to a constitution; the next would be the liberation of thought, by means of which the nation should be prepared for greater freedom.”

The fullest outline of the nobility's programme of liberal constitutionalism was formulated in December 1862, in the declaration of the nobility of the Guberniia of Tver. As of 1861 even former critics of parliamentary arrangements started to view them as the indispensable conclusion to the transformation. But the fear of a constitution associated with an oligarchic system made some liberals in the intellectual mainstay of the liberal bureaucrats, such as Konstantin Kavelin, come out in staunch opposition to such concepts.

The same kind of practical approach prompted by apprehension of an oligarchy established by the nobility lay behind the declaration the Slavophile authority Iurii Samarin made against the proposed constitution. His appeal was not published, but circulated in manuscript copies. Aleksandr Koshelev, another Slavophile, also spoke out against the idea of a National Duma of the nobility set up as a consultative body alongside the autocratic monarchy. Ivan Aksakov was a third sceptic, but it was for the sake of “Slavophile democratism” that he called for the abolition of the separate noble estate.

A characteristic phenomenon attending this political situation was the tactical alliance between the radical wing of the social movement with the liberal nobility in opposition to the government, which voiced its programme in the declarations issued at assemblies of the nobility. The pact was maintained despite the ongoing polemics in the press.