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ALEXANDER III: 1881-1894

Alexander II. was assassinated by a Nihilist terrorist in 1881, and succeeded by


his son Alexander III. (1881-1894). In disposition, he bore little resemblance to his soft-hearted, liberal father, and still less to his refined, philosophic, sentimental, chivalrous, yet cunning great-uncle Alexander I, who coveted the title of "the first gentleman of Europe." His straightforward, abrupt manner savoured sometimes of gruffness, while his direct, unadorned method of expressing himself harmonized well with his rough-hewn, immobile features and somewhat sluggish movements. His education was not such as to soften these peculiarities. He was also noted for his immense physical strength. In 1866 Alexander married Princess Marie Dagmar, the daughter of King Kristian IX of Denmark and sister of Queen Alexandra of Britain ALEXANDER III. pursued a policy that aimed at silencing critics. The press regulations were restricted to such extent, according to the university reform of 1884 professors were to be appointed by the minister of the interior; Russian was to be the sole language of education in schools throughout the empire; schools, many of which hitherto were run by religious organizations, came under the administration of the MOE. Even the sermons of Orthodox priests regarded unreliable were subject to censorship. The OKHRANA (secret police, est. 1881 in reaction to frequent assassination attempts) could make arbitrary arrests, and many dissidents were sent to internal exile (usually Siberia). The many non-Russian nationalities within the Russian Empire were exposed to a policy of RUSSIFICATION (Alexander's Pan-Slav stand did not protect Slavic ethnics such as the Poles and Ukrainians from exposure to such a policy); the non-Orthodox religious communities came under pressure, the state supported the Russian Orthodox Church. Military draft was imposed on all religious communities, inducing some (the DUKHOBORS) to emigrate. Alexander III. was an Anti-Semite; the large Jewish group experienced even stronger pressure than the other ethnic groups. Regulations restricted Jews from buying farmland, limited the political representation of Jews in local councils, barred them from government office etc. Worse, after Alexander II. had been assassinated, POGROMS - the mob ransacking Jewish communities, mostly in the Ukraine - took place, not only tolerated by state officials (police etc.), but often even instigated by them. The worst was the pogrom of KISHINOV 1881. Many Jews emigrated. Emigration figures from the Russian Empire rose from 58,000 in the 1870es over 288,000 in the 1880es to 481,000 in the 1890.

Foreign Relations

Alexander deprecated what he considered undue foreign influence in general, and German influence in particular, so the adoption of genuine national principles was off in all spheres of official activity, with a view to realizing his ideal of a homogeneous Russiahomogeneous in language, administration and religion. With such ideas and aspirations he could hardly remain permanently in cordial agreement with his father, who, though a good patriot according to his lights, had strong German sympathies, often used the German language in his private relations, occasionally ridiculed the exaggerations and eccentricities of the Slavophiles and based his foreign policy on the Prussian alliance. The antagonism first appeared publicly during the Franco-Prussian War, when the Tsar supported the cabinet of Berlin and the tsarevich did not conceal his sympathies with the French. It reappeared in an intermittent fashion during the years 18751879, when the Eastern question produced so much excitement in all ranks of Russian society. At first the tsarevich was more Slavophile than the government, but his phlegmatic nature preserved him from many of the exaggerations indulged in by others, and any of the prevalent popular illusions he may have imbibed were soon dispelled by personal observation in Bulgaria, where he commanded the left wing of the invading army. Never consulted on political questions, he confined himself to his military duties and fulfilled them in a conscientious and unobtrusive manner. After many mistakes and disappointments, the army reached Constantinople and the Treaty of San Stefano was signed, but much that had been obtained by that important document, had to be sacrificed at the Congress of Berlin. Prince Bismarck failed to do what was confidently expected of him by the Russian Tsar. In return for the Russian support, which had enabled him to create the German empire, it was thought that he would help Russia to solve the Eastern question in accordance with her own interests, but to the surprise and indignation of the cabinet of St Petersburg he confined himself to acting the part of "honest broker" at the congress, and shortly afterwards he ostentatiously contracted an alliance with Austria for the express purpose of counteracting Russian designs in Eastern Europe

Anti-reforms
During the campaign in Bulgaria he had found by painful experience that grave disorders and gross corruption existed in the military administration, and after his return to St Petersburg he had discovered that similar abuses existed in the naval department. For these abuses, several high-placed personagesamong others two of the grand-dukeswere believed to be responsible, and he called his father's attention to the subject. His representations were not favourably received. Alexander II had lost much of the reforming zeal which distinguished the first decade of his reign, and had no longer the energy required to undertake the task suggested to him. The consequence was that the relations between father and son became more strained. The latter must have felt that there would be no important reforms until he himself succeeded to the direction of affairs. That change was much nearer at

hand than was commonly supposed. On 13 March 1881 Alexander II was assassinated by a band of Nihilists, Narodnaya Volya (People's Will), and the autocratic power passed to the hands of his son. In the last years of his reign, Alexander II had been much exercised by the spread of Nihilist doctrines and the increasing number of anarchist conspiracies, and for some time he had hesitated between strengthening the hands of the executive and making concessions to the widespread political aspirations of the educated classes. Finally he decided in favour of the latter course, and on the very day of his death he signed an ukaz, creating a number of consultative commissions which might have been easily transformed into an assembly of notables. 1. Following advice of his political mentor Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Alexander III determined to adopt the opposite policy. He at once canceled the ukaz before it was published, and in the manifesto announcing his accession to the throne he let it be very clearly understood that he had no intention of limiting or weakening the autocratic power which he had inherited from his ancestors. Nor did he afterwards show any inclination to change his mind. All the internal reforms which he initiated were intended to correct what he considered as the too liberal tendencies of the previous reign, so that he left behind him the reputation of a sovereign of the retrograde type. In his opinion Russia was to be saved from anarchical disorders and revolutionary agitation, not by the parliamentary institutions and so-called liberalism of western Europe, but by the three principles which the elder generation of the Slavophils systematically recommendednationality, Eastern Orthodoxy and autocracy. His political ideal was a nation containing only one nationality, one language, one religion and one form of administration; and he did his utmost to prepare for the realization of this ideal by imposing the Russian language and Russian schools on his German, Polish and other non-Russian subjects (with the exception of the Finns), by fostering Eastern Orthodoxy at the expense of other confessions, by persecuting the Jews and by destroying the remnants of German, Polish and Swedish institutions in the outlying provinces. These policies were implemented by "May Laws" that banned Jews from rural areas and shtetls even within the Pale of Settlement. In the other provinces he sought to counteract what he considered the excessive liberalism of his father's reign. For this purpose he removed what little power had by zemstvo, an elective local administration resembling the county and parish councils in England, had and placed the autonomous administration of the peasant communes under the supervision of landed proprietors appointed by the government. These came to be known as land captains, who were much feared and resented amongst the peasant communities throughout Russia. At the same time he sought to strengthen and centralize the Imperial administration, and to bring it more under his personal control. In foreign affairs he was emphatically a man of peace, but not at all a partisan of the doctrine of peace at any price, and he followed the principle that the best means of averting war is to be well prepared for it.

Though indignant at the conduct of Prince Bismarck towards Russia, he avoided an open rupture with Germany, and even revived for a time the Three Emperors' Alliance. It was only in the last years of his reign, when Mikhail Katkov had acquired a certain influence over him, that he adopted towards the cabinet of Berlin a more hostile attitude, and even then he confined himself to keeping a large quantity of troops near the German frontier, and establishing cordial relations with France. With regard to Bulgaria he exercised similar self-control. The efforts of Prince Alexander and afterwards of Stamboloff to destroy Russian influence in the principality excited his indignation, but he persistently vetoed all proposals to intervene by force of arms. In 1887, once again the Peoples Will planned the murder of Tsar Alexander III. Among the conspirators captured were one Aleksandr Ulyanov. Ulyanov was sentenced to death and hanged on May 5, 1887. Alexander Ulyanov was the brother of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who would later take the pseudonym V.I. Lenin. In Central Asian affairs he followed the traditional policy of gradually extending Russian domination without provoking a conflict with the United Kingdom, and he never allowed the bellicose partisans of a forward policy to get out of hand. As a whole his reign cannot be regarded as one of the eventful periods of Russian history; but it must be admitted that under his hard, unsympathetic rule the country made considerable progress. He died of nephritis at the Livadia Palace on 1st of November 1894 and was buried at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. Alexander III was succeeded by his eldest son Nicholas II of Russia. Emperor Alexander and his Danish-born wife regularly spent their summers in their Langinkoski manor near Kotka on the Finnish coast, where their children were immersed in a Scandinavian lifestyle of relative modesty.

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