Russia
Alexander II, the Liberator – Emperor: 2 March 1855 – 13 March 1881
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II Nikolaevich) Aleksandr
(Alexander (Russian:
Александр II Николаевич, Aleksandr II
Nikolaevich) (29 April [O.S.
17 April] 1818, Moscow – 13 March [O.S.
1 March] 1881,
Saint Petersburg
), also known as Alexander the Liberator (Russian:
Александр Освободитель, Aleksandr
Osvoboditel’) was the
Emperor
, or
Czar
, of the
Russian Empire
from 3 March 1855 until his
assassination
in 1881. He was also the
Grand Duke of Finland
and the
King of Poland
.
//
Born in 1818, he was the eldest son of
Nicholas I of Russia
and
Charlotte of Prussia
, daughter of
Frederick William III of Prussia
and
Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
. His early life gave little indication of his
ultimate potential; until the time of his accession in 1855, aged 37, few
imagined that he would be known to posterity as a leader able to implement the
most challenging reforms undertaken in Russia since the reign of
Peter the Great
.
In the period of his life as
heir
apparent
, the intellectual atmosphere of
St. Petersburg
was unfavourable to any kind of changes,
freedom of thought
and all private initiative being, as far as possible,
suppressed vigorously. Personal and official
censorship
was rife; criticism of the authorities was regarded as a serious offense. Some
26 years after he had the opportunity of implementing changes he would, however,
be assassinated in public by
Narodnaya Volya
terrorist organization.
His education as a future Tsar was carried out under the
supervision of the liberal romantic poet and gifted translator
Vasily Zhukovsky
,
grasping a smattering of a great many subjects, and feeling exposure to the
chief modern European
languages
. His alleged lack of interest in military affairs detected by
later historians could be only his reflection on the results on his own family
and on the whole spirit of the country by the unsavoury
Crimean
War
. Unusually for the time, the young Alexander was taken on a six-month
tour of Russia, visiting 20 provinces in the country. He also visited many
prominent Western European countries.
Reign
Alexander II succeeded to the throne upon the death of his
father in 1855. The first year of his reign was devoted to the prosecution of
the Crimean War
, and after the fall of
Sevastopol
to negotiations for peace, led by his trusted counselor,
Prince Gorchakov
. It was widely thought that the country had been exhausted
and humiliated by the war. Encouraged by public opinion he began a period of
radical reforms, including an attempt to not to depend on a landed aristocracy
controlling the poor, to develop Russia’s natural resources and to thoroughly
reform all branches of the administration.
Autocratic power was now in the hands of someone with some
sort of flexible thought, sufficient prudence and practicality.
However, the growth of a
revolutionary movement
to the “left” of the educated classes led to an
abrupt end to Alexander’s changes when he was assassinated in 1881. It is
notable that after Alexander became tsar in 1855, he maintained a generally
liberal course at the helm while being a target for numerous assassination
attempts (1866, 1873, 1880).
Emancipation of the serfs
limited liability companiess. Plans were formed for building a great network
of
railways
—partly for the purpose of developing the natural resources of the
country, and partly for the purpose of increasing its power for defense and
attack.
The existence of
serfdom
was
tackled boldly taking advantage of a petition presented by the Polish
landed proprietors
of the
Lithuanian
provinces, and hoping that their relations with the serfs might be regulated in
a more satisfactory way (meaning in a way more satisfactory for the
proprietors), he authorized the formation of committees “for ameliorating the
condition of the peasants,” and laid down the principles on which the
amelioration was to be effected.
This step was followed by one still more significant. Without
consulting his ordinary advisers, Alexander ordered the Minister of the Interior
to send a circular to the provincial governors of
European Russia
, containing a copy of the instructions forwarded to the
governor-general
of Lithuania, praising the supposed generous, patriotic
intentions of the Lithuanian landed proprietors, and suggesting that perhaps the
landed proprietors of other provinces might express a similar desire. The hint
was taken: in all provinces where serfdom existed, emancipation committees were
formed.
But the emancipation was not merely a humanitarian question
capable of being solved instantaneously by imperial
ukase
. It
contained very complicated problems, deeply affecting the economic, social and
political future of the nation.
Alexander had to choose between the different measures
recommended to him. Should the serfs become agricultural labourers dependent
economically and administratively on the landlords, or should they be
transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors?
The emperor gave his support to the latter project, and the
Russian peasantry became one of the last groups of peasants in Europe to shake
off serfdom.
The architects of the emancipation manifesto were Alexander’s
brother
Konstantin
,
Yakov Rostovtsev
, and
Nikolay Milyutin
.
On 3 March 1861 , 6 years after his accession, the
emancipation law was signed and published.
Other reforms
Army
and navy
reorganisation and rearmament was initiated in response to the overwhelming
defeat suffered by Russia in the Crimean War, and an awareness of military
advances being implemented in other European countries. The changes included
universal military conscription, the creation of an army reserve and the
military district system (still in use a century later), the building of
strategic railways, and an emphasis on military education of the officer corps.
A new judicial administration based on the French model
(1864); a new
penal code
and
a greatly simplified system of civil and criminal procedure
.
An elaborate scheme of local self-government (Zemstvo)
for the rural districts (1864) and the large towns (1870), with elective
assemblies possessing a restricted right of
taxation
, and a new rural and municipal
police
under
the direction of the
Minister of the Interior
.
Alexander II would be the second monarch (after King
Louis I of Portugal
) to abolish
capital punishment
, a penalty which is still legal (although not practised)
in Russia.
However, the workers wanted better working conditions;
persecuted national minorities, “integrated” only in the last 50 or 60 years or
so, wanted freedom.
When radicals began to resort to the formation of
secret societies
and to revolutionary agitation, Alexander II felt
constrained to adopt severe repressive measures.
The idea that some moderate liberal reforms, in an attempt to
quell the revolutionary agitation, will do, and the creation of special
commissions as proven by an
ukase
he
delivered would not do either. The Marxist idea of countries being liberated
from capitalism and
soviets
of workers united for the World Revolution, but respecting their own
national characteristics, was clearly out of place within the Russian land
aggregation processes of the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries.
Marriages and children
During his bachelor days, Alexander made a state visit to
England in 1838. Just a year older than the young
Queen Victoria
, Alexander’s approaches to her were indeed short-lived.
Victoria married her German cousin, Prince
Albert of Saxe-Coburg
in February 1840. On 16 April 1841, aged 23,
Tsarevitch Alexander married
Princess Marie of Hesse
in St Petersburg, thereafter known in Russia as
Maria Alexandrovna
.
(Marie was the legal daughter of
Ludwig II, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
and
Princess Wilhelmina of Baden
, although some gossiping questioned whether the
Grand Duke Ludwig or Wilhelmina’s lover,
Baron August von Senarclens de Grancy
, was her biological father.
Alexander was aware of the question of her
paternity
).
The marriage produced six sons and two daughters:
-
Grand Duchess Alexandra Alexandrovna
(30 August 1842 – 10 July 1849),
nicknamed Lina, died of
infant
meningitis
in
St. Petersburg
at the age of six
-
Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich
(20 September 1843 – 24 April 1865),
engaged to
Dagmar of Denmark (Maria Feodorovna)
-
Tsar Alexander III
(10 March 1845 – 1 November 1894), married 1866,
Dagmar of Denmark (Maria Feodorovna)
, had issue
-
Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich
(22 April 1847 – 17 February 1909),
married 1874,
Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Maria Pavlovna)
, had issue
-
Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich
(14 January 1850 – 14 November 1908),
had (presumably illegitimate) issue
-
Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna
(17 October 1853 – 20 October 1920)
married 1874,
Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
, had issue
-
Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich
(29 April 1857 – 4 February 1905),
married 1884,
Elisabeth of Hesse (Elizabeth Feodorovna)
-
Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich
(3 October 1860 – 24 January 1919),
married 1889,
Alexandra of Greece and Denmark (Alexandra Georgievna)
, had issue;
second marriage 1902,
Olga Karnovich
, had issue
Alexander had many mistresses during his marriage and
fathered 7 known illegitimate children. These included:
-
Antoinette Bayer (20 June 1856 – 24 January 1948) with
his mistress Wilhelmine Bayer
-
Michael-Bogdan Oginski (10 October 1848 – 25 March 1909)
with mistress Countess Olga Kalinovskya (1818–1854)
-
Joseph Raboxicz
-
Charlotte Henriette Sophie Jansen( 15 November 1844 –
July 1915) with mistress Sophie Charlotte Dorothea Von Behse (1828–1886)
On 6 July 1880, less than a month after Tsarina Maria’s death
on 8 June, Alexander formed a
morganatic marriage
with his mistress Princess
Catherine Dolgorukov
, with whom he already had four children:
-
George Alexandrovich Romanov Yurievsky (12 May 1872 – 13
September 1913). Married Countess Alexandra Zarnekau and had issue. They
later divorced.
-
Olga Alexandrovna Romanov Yurievsky (7 November 1874 – 10
August 1925). Married Count Georg Nikolaus of Nassau,
Count of Merenberg
.
-
Boris Alexandrovich Yurievsky (23 February 1876 – 11
April 1876).
-
Catherine Alexandrovna Romanov Yurievsky (9 September
1878 – 22 December 1959) Her first husband was the 23rd Prince
Alexander Alexandrovich Bariatinski
, (1870–1910) the son of the 22nd
Prince
Alexander Vladimirovich Bariatinski
, (1848–1909). Her second husband,
later divorced, was Prince
Serge Obolensky
, (1890–1978).
Suppression
of separatist movements
At the beginning of his reign, Alexander expressed the famous
statement “No dreams” addressed for Poles, populating
Congress Poland
, Western
Ukraine
,
Lithuania
,
Livonia
and
Belarus
. The
result was the
January Uprising
of 1863–1864 that was suppressed after eighteen months of
fighting.
Hundreds of Poles were executed, and thousands were deported
to Siberia
.
The price for suppression was Russian support for
Prussian-united Germany
. Twenty years later, Germany became the major enemy
of Russia on the continent.
All territories of the former
Poland-Lithuania
were excluded from liberal policies introduced by
Alexander. The
martial
law
in Lithuania, introduced in 1863, lasted for the next 40 years. Native
languages,
Lithuanian
,
Ukrainian
and
Belarusian
were completely banned from printed texts, see a , e.g.,
Ems Ukase
. The
Polish language
was banned in both oral and written form from all provinces
except
Congress Kingdom
, where it was allowed in private conversations only.
Rewarding loyalty and encouraging Finnish nationalism within Russia
In 1863 Alexander II re-established the
Diet of Finland
and initiated several reforms increasing Finland’s autonomy
from Russia including establishment of its own
currency
,
the
Markka
. Liberation of enterprise led to increased
foreign investment
and industrial development.
Finally, the elevation of
Finnish
from a language of the common people to a
national language
equal to
Swedish
opened opportunities for a larger proportion of the society.
Alexander II is still regarded as “The Good Tsar” in Finland.
These reforms could be seen as results of a genuine belief
that reforms were easier to test in an underpopulated, homogeneous country, than
the in whole of Russia. They may also be seen as a reward for the loyalty of its
relatively western-oriented population during the
Crimean war
and during the
Polish uprising
. Encouraging Finnish
nationalism
and language can also be seen as an attempt to dilute ties with
Sweden.
Assassination attempts
In 1866, there was an attempt on the tsar’s life in
St. Petersburg
by
Dmitry Karakozov
. To commemorate his narrow escape from death (which he
himself referred to only as “the event of 4 April 1866”), a number of churches
and chapels were built in many Russian cities.
Viktor Hartmann
, a Russian architect, even sketched a design of a monumental
gate (planned, never built) to commemorate the event.
Modest Mussorgsky
later wrote his
Pictures at an Exhibition
; the last movement of which, “The Great Gate of
Kiev”, is based on Hartmann’s sketches.
On the morning of 20 April 1879, Alexander II was briskly
walking towards the Square of the Guards Staff and faced
Alexander Soloviev
, a 33-year-old former student. Having seen a menacing
revolver in his hands, the Tsar fled. Soloviev fired five times but missed, and
was sentenced to death and hanged on 28 May.
The student acted on his own, but other revolutionaries were
keen to murder Alexander. In December 1879, the
Narodnaya Volya
(People’s Will), a radical revolutionary group which hoped
to ignite a
social revolution
, organized an explosion on the railway from
Livadia
to Moscow, but they missed the tsar’s train.
On the evening of 5 February 1880
Stephan Khalturin
, also from Narodnaya Volya, set off a charge under the
dining room of the
Winter Palace
, right in the resting room of the guards a story below. Being
late for dinner, the tsar was unharmed; although 11 other people were killed and
30 wounded. The dining room floor was also heavily damaged.
Assassination
Main articles:
Narodnaya Volya (organization)
and
Pervomartovtsi
After the last assassination attempt in February 1880,
Count Loris-Melikov
was appointed the head of the Supreme Executive
Commission and given extraordinary powers to fight the revolutionaries. Loris-Melikov’s
proposals called for some form of parliamentary body, and the Emperor seemed to
agree; these plans were never realized.
On 13 March (1 March
Old Style Date
), 1881, Alexander fell victim to an
assassination
plot.
As he was known to do every Sunday for many years, the tsar
went to the Manezh to review the Life Guards. He traveled both to and from the
Manezh in a closed carriage accompanied by six
Cossacks
with a seventh sitting on the coachman’s left. The tsar’s carriage was followed
by two sleighs carrying, among others, the chief of police and the chief of the
tsar’s guards. The route, as always, was via the
Catherine Canal
and over the
Pevchesky Bridge
.
The street was flanked by narrow sidewalks for the public. A
young member of the
Narodnaya Volya
(People’s Will) movement,
Nikolai Rysakov
, was carrying a small white package wrapped in a
handkerchief.
“After a moment’s hesitation I threw the bomb. I sent it
under the horses’ hooves in the supposition that it would blow up under the
carriage…The explosion knocked me into the fence.”
The explosion, while killing one of the
Cossacks
and seriously wounding the driver and people on the sidewalk, had only damaged
the bulletproof carriage, a gift from Napoleon III of France. The tsar emerged
shaken but unhurt. Rysakov was captured almost immediately. Police Chief
Dvorzhitsky
heard Rysakov shout out to someone else in the gathering crowd.
The surrounding guards and the Cossacks urged the tsar to leave the area at once
rather than being shown the site of the explosion. A second young member of the
Narodnaya Volya
,
Ignacy Hryniewiecki
, standing by the canal
fence, raised both arms and threw something at the tsar’s feet. He was alleged
to have shouted, “It is too early to thank God”.
Dvorzhitsky was later to write:
“I was deafened by the new explosion, burned, wounded and
thrown to the ground. Suddenly, amid the smoke and snowy fog, I heard His
Majesty’s weak voice cry, ‘Help!’ Gathering what strength I had, I jumped up
and rushed to the tsar. His Majesty was half-lying, half-sitting, leaning on
his right arm. Thinking he was merely wounded heavily, I tried to lift him
but the tsar’s legs were shattered, and the blood poured out of them. Twenty
people, with wounds of varying degree, lay on the sidewalk and on the
street. Some managed to stand, others to crawl, still others tried to get
out from beneath bodies that had fallen on them. Through the snow, debris,
and blood you could see fragments of clothing, epaulets, sabers, and bloody
chunks of human flesh.”
Later it was learned there was a third bomber in the crowd.
Ivan Emelyanov
stood ready, clutching a briefcase containing a bomb that
would be used if the other two bombers failed.
Alexander was carried by sleigh to the
Winter Palace
to his study where ironically, twenty years before almost to
the date, he had signed the
Emancipation Edict
freeing the serfs. Alexander was bleeding to death, with
his legs torn away, his stomach ripped open, and his face mutilated.
Members of the
Romanov family
came rushing to the scene.
The dying tsar was given
Communion
and
Extreme Unction
. When the attending physician,
Dr. S. P. Botkin
, asked how long it would be, replied, “Up to fifteen
minutes”
At 3:30 that day the standard of Alexander II was lowered for the last time.
The assassination caused a great setback for the reform
movement. One of Alexander II’s last ideas was to draft plans for an elected
parliament, or Duma
,
which were completed the day before he died but not yet released to the Russian
people. The first action Alexander III took after his coronation was to tear up
those plans. A Duma
would not come into fruition until 1905, by Alexander II’s grandson,
Nicholas II
, who commissioned the Duma following heavy pressure on the
monarchy by the
Russian Revolution of 1905
.
A second consequence of the assassination was anti-Jewish
pogroms
and legislation
. Though only one Jew was involved in the assassination
conspiracy, over 200 Jews who had nothing to do with the murder of Alexander II
were beaten to death in these pogroms.
A third consequence of the assassination was that suppression
of civil liberties in Russia and
police brutality
burst back in full force after experiencing some restraint
under the reign of Alexander II. Alexander II’s murder and subsequent death was
witnessed firsthand by his son,
Alexander III
, and his grandson,
Nicholas II
, both future Tsars, who vowed not to have the same fate befall
them. Both used the Okhrana to arrest protestors and uproot suspected rebel
groups, creating further suppression of personal freedom for the Russian people.
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