On the basis of an analysis of documentary material, the author elucidates the counter-revolutionary standpoints and activities of the Russian czarism and czar Nikolaj I himself in 1848. He mentions the viewpoints of Marx and Engels who expected czarist attack on the revolution, and discusses thereupon the Russian preparations for the outbreak of the revolution in Central Europe, the repression of the revolutionary movement in Russian Poland and the military intervention in the Danubian principalities.. He points to the strengthening of the anti-Russian feeling in European democrats and the introduction of their denomination of the czarist Russia as the »international gendarme« or the »refuge of the reaction«.