In the 1830s, Russia was facing a crisis: The army was poorly organized, the administration was underdeveloped, inefficient, and corrupt, and the state was too poor to bear the strain.

Nicholas I was alerted to the crisis by his senior military and financial advisors. He then deliberately tried to conceal it.

This situation, which escaped observers at the time, as well as most historians since, was the principal driving force behind Russia's reforms of the 1830s. Within this context, Frederick Kagan's The Military Reforms of Nicholas I examines Nicholas' reorganization of the Russian military administration from 1832 to 1836.