The reign of Alexander II, the eldest son of Nicholas I, began a new era in Russian history that was a time of great reforms. The years of his reign witnessed the beginnings of a capitalist economy and of an industrial revolution in the backward agricultural society of Russia. It was a time when the nation was able to break out of the strait jacket of the militant personal autocracy that Nicholas I had imposed during the thirty years of his reign. The writer A. I. Koshelev commented that “it seemed as if out of a depressing dark dungeon we were emerging, if not into God’s light, at least into an antechamber where we could sense refreshing air.” But this access of reform and freedom released forces beyond the control of the tsar and the government. Alexander II began his reign as the tsar-liberator and ended it as the tsar-martyr.
By training, character, and ability, Alexander was poorly equipped for either role. Like his uncle, Alexander, he remains something of an enigma. He was thirty-six years old at the time of his accession and had more training for the throne than any of his predecessors. When he was only six, his father had appointed Captain Merder as his military tutor. He had then begun learning the rudiments of drill and parade ground maneuvers. He made his first visit to his grandparents in Berlin when he was eleven years old. Although he was proud of his Cossack dress, when the king made him colonel of the 3rd Uhlan Regiment, he changed into Prussian uniform and began to love it. The obsession with parades and military paraphernalia and love of Prussia appeared as strong in him at this early age as they had been in each of the previous five Emperors of Russia.
The civilian tutor appointed in 1828 - probably as a result of his mother’s influence - was the renowned poet, Vasily Zhukovsky, who tried to counteract the military education on which Nicholas insisted. “Passion for military occupation will narrow his soul,” Zhukovsky wrote to the empress. “He will be accustomed to see in the people only a regiment, in his fatherland only the barracks.” It was a bold comment to make during the reign of Nicholas I, but he permitted Zhukovsky to pursue his program, which aimed to make the tsarevich a man of virtue and a lawgiver.
However, both tutors soon discovered that Alexander was intelligent, but inattentive, vague, and hesitant whenever faced with problems. He disliked lessons and preferred to wander dreamily in the palace gardens. The boy’s lack of diligence disturbed his father who even prepared a detailed syllabus of military studies for him. But Alexander continued to procrastinate about doing his work. Unlike his father, however, he often displayed warmth and humanity. In the autumn of 1832, Merder suffered a heart attack. Because he felt that Merder’s concern for him might have contributed to the attack, Alexander at once mended his ways and became attentive. Merder went to Italy in an effort to improve his health. For over a year, Alexander wrote to him every Saturday. When Merder died in Rome in the spring of 1834, Alexander grieved for him.
At the age of nineteen, Alexander’s formal education was complete. In spite of his lack of diligence, he spoke Russian, English, German, Polish, and French. He had had a six-month course on the laws of the Russian Empire, conducted by Speransky, and the appropriate ministers had tutored him in diplomacy, finance, and military matters. In fact, he had learned a great deal. In 1837, he made a seven-month tour of Russia. He visited thirty provinces and traveled east as far as Tobolsk and was the first Romanov to set foot in Siberia. Although hurried and crowded with official engagements, the tour made a deep impression on him, awakening in him a fervent love of his country, “our mother Russia,” as he usually called it.
Traveling with him, Zhukovsky took every opportunity to show him how his people lived. He took him to peasant huts and made certain that he met some of the Decembrists, surviving after more than twenty years of banishment. Alexander was moved by their difficult situation. He sent a special courier to his father with a request to make some changes to make their lives easier, and he was delighted when Nicholas sanctioned improvements in their conditions. The surviving Decembrists had to wait, however, until Alexander’s coronation before they, and later political prisoners including Dostoevsky, could return to the cities.
In Vyatka, deep in the forests to the northeast of Moscow, Alexander met Herzen, who charmed him. Again he wrote to his father, asking him to allow Herzen to return to St. Petersburg. Nicholas knew that he could not single out one political exile for favorable treatment, but he gave permission for Herzen to move to Vladimir, which was much nearer to Moscow. In his memoirs, Herzen described Alexander as he appeared in Vyatka: “The Tsarevich’s expression had none of that narrow severity, that cold merciless cruelty which was characteristic of his father; his features were more suggestive of good nature and listlessness. He was about twenty, but was already beginning to grow stout.”
In the following year, Alexander set out on a tour of Western Europe that lasted sixteen months and included nearly every country except France and Spain. He made a good impression at the courts he visited. He had a gentle dignity, modesty, and charm that were attractive, but he was also reserved and timid at times. The highlight of his grand tour was his meeting in Darmstadt with Princess Mary of Hesse-Darmstadt, a beautiful girl of fifteen with whom he fell in love. “She is the woman of my dreams,” he told his entourage. “I will never marry anyone but her.” But he feared that his parents might not sanction the marriage. The Grand Duke Louis II of Hesse-Darmstadt was not actually Princess Mary’s father. He had separated from her mother after two years of marriage. The duchess had many lovers; about fourteen years after the separation from her husband, she gave birth to a son and then a daughter, Princess Mary. The Grand Duke had accepted paternity, but everyone knew that her father was a man of humble birth.
Alexander had written to his parents, asking permission to marry his princess. His parents told him to return to St. Petersburg at once to discuss the matter. He displayed determination when he faced them, declaring that he would renounce the throne rather than give her up. The scandal surrounding her birth did not affect his feelings. Faced by such resolution - surprising in a son who had always seemed weak in character - Nicholas yielded. Alexander and his princess announced their betrothal formally in 1840, and Mary received baptism in the Orthodox Church with the name of Maria Alexandrovna. Their marriage occurred in the following year. Nicholas and the empress grew to love their beautiful daughter-in-law who was pious and devoted to charitable works. In time, she gave birth to four sons and a daughter.
Nicholas had had misgivings about his eldest son. He was pleased now to find that Alexander sincerely revered him and held sacred the same autocratic principles. He entrusted him with far greater responsibilities. Alexander attended meetings of the Council of Ministers. In 1846 and 1848, he served as chairman of the secret committees appointed to study the problems of serfdom. Alexander began to act as regent during the frequent absences of his father from the capital. On his deathbed, Nicholas felt that he had done everything possible to prepare his son for the throne. “I hand over to you my command,” he said, adding, “but unfortunately not in such order as I should wish. I am leaving you many labors and anxieties.” The responsibilities of the throne awed Alexander. In the past, he had expressed reluctance to succeed his father. But now he was emperor and, although he believed that he was carrying on his father’s policies, he had the sense and courage to promote fundamental reforms.
On Alexander’s accession, there were widespread hopes that a new era was beginning. His people knew about his conservative outlook and support for the autocratic system. Nevertheless, many believed that he would recognize the inevitability of change, especially after the calamities of the Crimean War that had caused the bankruptcy of Nicholas I’s policies.
Alexander’s first task was to put an end to the Crimean War. Russia desperately needed peace. But as an ardent patriot, he rejected the request of Prince Mikhail Gorchakov to be allowed to evacuate Sevastopol. The allied capture of the fortress in September 1855, after the loss of 100,000 Russian troops, was a terrible blow to him. He sought to rally his forces, even sending to his army the banner of St. Sergei that had accompanied Peter the Great at Poltava. He traveled to Nikolaev, Russia’s second naval stronghold on the Black Sea, to supervise the defense preparations. But allied pressure was mounting. The King of Prussia warned that he might have to join the allies. In December 1855 in St. Petersburg, representatives presented the terms as coordinated by Austria with Britain and France. Alexander learned that all members of his Council of Ministers favored peace. The nation was isolated, had exhausted its resources, and had difficulty raising more troops after total losses of about 600,000 men. It was with deep reluctance that he agreed to negotiate and then signed the Treaty of Paris on March 30, 1856. He had lost everything that Nicholas had gained and sought to make permanent - especially Russian occupation of Wallachia and Moldavia, and rights amounting to domination of the Black Sea. He hated the treaty, but the Russian people were relieved to receive the news.
Alexander gave the first promises of reforms in a manifesto proclaiming the peace to his people. He had already relaxed the severity of his father’s reign. He had eased censorship, raised restrictions on foreign travel, amended regulations that severely limited entrance to universities, and instituted other measures that promised a more enlightened reign. The emperor’s coronation was customarily an occasion of benevolent gestures, but Alexander’s coronation manifesto, proclaimed in September 1856, was notably generous. It suspended all recruiting for three years and abolished the evil institution of cantonists, whereby the sons of men enlisted for military service had to live in military orphanages and be raised as soldiers. He extended amnesties to political prisoners. He cancelled arrears of taxes owed by the poorest people and made tax concessions in many regions. All Russians could feel that they were experiencing the beginning of a new era in the life of their country.
At the heart of all such hopes lay the problem of the serfs. Rumors had begun circulating at the time of his accession that Alexander intended to abolish serfdom. This possibility alarmed landowners, but the majority of the people excitedly awaited this great reform. Like his father, Alexander recognized that serfdom was an evil and also that the landowning nobility was, in his own words, “the mainstay of the throne.” From his chairmanship of the two secret committees, he was aware of the obstacles to abolition. He decided first to invite proposals from and seek the cooperation of the landowning nobles.
In an address to an assembly of the nobility in Moscow on March 30, 1856, Alexander spoke of the rumors that he would emancipate the serfs. “I consider it necessary to inform you that I have no intention to do this now,” he declared. “But, of course, you yourselves understand that the existing order of serfdom cannot remain unchanged. It is better to abolish bondage from above than to wait for the time when it will begin to abolish itself spontaneously from below. I request, gentlemen, that you think over how this could be accomplished. Convey my words to the nobility for their consideration.”
But the landowning nobility, concerned only by selfish interests, did nothing to meet the emperor’s request. Alexander appointed a secret committee late in 1856, but its conclusion was merely that the reforming process needed to occur gradually and cautiously. Because landowners made up the committee, their conclusion was not a surprise. Except for S. S. Lanskoi, the Minister of the Interior, they were reluctant to consider any solution affecting their possession of the land. Initially, Alexander thought that the process of emancipation should occur over a lengthy period. Now he was beginning to think that the resolution of the problem must be swift.
In October 1857, V. I. Nazimov, Governor-General of Lithuania, arrived in St. Petersburg with a petition from the nobles of his region, requesting that the tsar should permit them to free their serfs without land. Most members of the secret committee recommended that he grant the petition because they hoped to establish a precedent for emancipating the serfs without losing their land. But Alexander then took a decisive stand. He firmly rejected the petition and directed that the committee should draft legislation implementing Lanskoi’s plan. This plan provided that serfs should gain their personal freedom and also their homesteads - paying for the latter over a period of ten to fifteen years - while they would pay for the land allocated for their use in money or labor on terms to be negotiated with their masters. Landowners would thus retain full title to their lands, and there would be no question of compensation. On November 20, 1857, Alexander signed his official order to Nazimov and the nobility of Lithuania, directing them to prepare a plan that enacted these principles. He circulated the official order and an instruction from Lanskoi to all governors and marshals of the nobility in European Russia, inviting them to take a similar initiative.
Alexander had now made up his mind. At a ball in St. Petersburg, he addressed the Governor-General and the nobility of the capital and ended with the words: “I hope that you will show a sincere interest in this matter and will turn your attention to a class of people who deserve that their situation should be justly assured. Further delay is impossible. The matter must be dealt with now . . . that is my unshakeable resolution.”
On January 8, 1858, the name of the secret committee became the Main Committee. By the end of the year, special committees were at work in every province, preparing their reports. In February 1859, he appointed two editorial commissions to formulate the emancipation statutes. The commissions met together under the chairmanship of General Yakov Rostovtsev, who as a young officer had refused to join the Decembrist conspiracy and had informed Emperor Nicholas of the plot. He would serve now as a leading champion of the abolition of serfdom.
Alexander had taken a stand against the massed landowning class, and there was no turning back. He had the support of the intelligentsia and of the small but influential merchant class as well as the support of the peasant mass. Lanskoi and his department were the moving forces behind the reform within the government. His wife, Empress Mary; his mistress, Princess Alexandrina Dolgorukaya; and others, including in particular his brother, Constantine, strongly supported emancipation. Alexander toured the northern provinces to appeal personally to the nobility for their support. He led the Main Committee. While they were studying reports from the provincial committees, the basic elements of the reform took shape as the liberation of the peasants with land, redemption payments assisted by the government, and the effective completion of liberation within a minimum time.
Opposition inside the Main Committee became increasingly bitter. Alexander stood firm. He would not allow the request of Count P. A. Shuvalov, Marshal of the Nobility of St. Petersburg, and Prince Paskievich to record a minority report. Ownership of the land was the crucial problem. Paskievich questioned whether it was really the government’s intention to make the serfs landowners and asked whether he would use force to ensure such a revolutionary change. Alexander replied that nothing would weaken his resolve that the peasants should own the land and he added that he would use force “if the nobility persist in their obstinacy.”
The conflict raged now between Rostovtsev’s editing commission and the Main Committee under the chairmanship of Prince Alexei Orlov, a stubborn conservative. The pressure and the slanders spread by his opponents began to take a toll on Rostovtsev’s health, although Alexander tried to reassure him. Finally, Rostovtsev succumbed to an illness that proved fatal. Before Rostovtsev’s death, Alexander visited him frequently and prayed by his bedside as he died. With other members of the imperial family, he carried the coffin in the funeral procession. The death of this dedicated servant of Russia deeply grieved him.
Alexander appointed Count V. N. Panin, the Minister of Justice, and an ardent opponent of emancipation, as chairman of the editing commission. It was an extraordinary appointment, strongly criticized as a betrayal of Rostovtsev and of the reform. But Alexander did not intend for it to be a betrayal. He kept a close watch on Panin and on the commission to ensure that they did not depart from his policy. He had given directions for the commission to finish its work by October 10, 1860, and on that day he disbanded it. The next task was to ensure that the Main Committee adopted the statutes that the commission had drafted. The illness of Orlov and the appointment of Grand Duke Constantine in his place facilitated this action. After strong opposition by the conservatives, the Main Committee adopted the statute. The final stage was approval by the Imperial Council, and again Alexander used his imperial authority to make this happen. On February 19, 1861, six years to the day since his accession, he signed the statute and a manifesto – to be read from the pulpits of all churches and carried to all provinces by special couriers – that proclaimed freedom for the serfs.
The emancipation statute was an enactment of tremendous significance. It abolished a system, akin to slavery, which had provided the basis of the feudal social order in Russia. The serfs had become free men; they were free to marry, to own property, to take part in commerce, and to enjoy other rights of ordinary citizens. Alexander could claim that “an end had been put to centuries of injustice,” and the great reform was the result of his stubborn effort.
However, disillusionment soon followed the general elation that gripped the nation. Most people including the peasants themselves did not understand the emancipation statutes, which contained more than 1,000 sections with a volume of 360 pages. To them the great reform meant freedom and possession of the land that they had always considered their own because they worked it. But now they believed that the emperor had cheated them of both freedom and land. The allotments of land that they received were inadequate, and they now had the additional burden of redemption payments. Landowners used every means to retain as much of their land as possible, especially in the South where the black soil was exceptionally fertile. Seventeen years after emancipation, official figures revealed that thirteen percent of former private serfs had plenty of land; about forty percent had an adequate amount of land; the remaining forty-seven percent did not possess enough land to maintain themselves and their families. Household serfs received no land; when they gained their personal freedom, they had to find work or starve.
Freedom also eluded the peasants. They were no longer dependent upon their masters, but the commune dominated their lives. The commune was the assembly of the householders of a village or town, who held all property in common and elected as their spokesman an elder and sometimes an executive board. Every peasant had to belong to a commune and was actually in bondage to it. The emancipation statutes strengthened this bondage. The commune received land allotments rather than the peasants. It was responsible for paying taxes and enforcing the other obligations of its members. No peasant could leave the commune district without a passport, and withdrawal from the commune was virtually impossible. Rumors began to spread that the true liberation was yet to come. Many predicted that it would happen at the end of the first phase of the emancipation process, lasting two years. However, in many districts the peasants rebelled, and troops had to restore order. At Bezdna in the province of Pensa, the unarmed peasants attacked the troops; the troops fired on them, killing fifty and wounding over 300. The Bezdna incident sent shock waves throughout the country.
The nobility, who had lost about one-third of their land, felt that the emancipation decree had robbed them. Most of the nobles were free-spenders; they had soon spent the compensation received from the government and by 1870 were heavily in debt. The application of the emancipation deeply disappointed the liberals and radicals who had welcomed the emancipation enthusiastically. The general disillusionment, intensified by the spreading unrest, fed the fires of revolution.
Alexander had devoted all his energies to ensuring the enactment of emancipation. There had been the inevitable compromise, but he had not sacrificed the basic principle of freedom with land for the peasants. Now he found that all classes of his people were dissatisfied and that the spirit of rebellion was gathering strength. He wanted to act more severely, but he did not revert to his father’s policy of repression. He recognized that further major reforms were essential to the dismantling of the feudal system and the modernizing of the nation.
Alexander took the initiative and supervised the drafting and enactment of each of these reforms. He leaned heavily on his brother, Grand Duke Constantine, who had given enthusiastic support to the liberation of the serfs and worked with similar zeal for further reform. As Minister of Marine, he encouraged criticism of the navy and proposals for improvements. The Naval Almanack, the official publication of his ministry, was one of the most outspoken publications in Russia. He attracted into his circle some of the most capable radicals of the time, several of whom became ministers in 1861 and were able to promote important reforms.
In March 1859, Alexander had given instructions for the reform of local government. Nicholas Milyutin, then assistant minister of the interior, was chairman of the commission responsible for drafting appropriate legislation. He favored the participation of all classes in the Zemstvos, the new elective councils. In April 1861, however, Alexander dismissed both Lanskoi and Milyutin because he believed their outlook was too liberal. He was seeking to make some concession to the landowning nobility who were distressed because they had lost land to the peasants and had not received any increase in political power as compensation. It was because of such compromises between liberal reforms and the need to retain the support of the nobility that Alexander disappointed so many of his people. He appointed Count P. A. Valuev as the new minister of the interior. His policy was to ensure that members of the nobility were dominant in local government. The liberals made strenuous attempts to gain greater autonomy and powers for the Zemstvos, but their efforts had very limited success.
The Zemstvo statute, which Alexander signed on January 1, 1864, provided for local government at district and provincial levels. There were three categories of electors, according to property qualifications, and peasants elected their representatives indirectly. By carefully defining the membership of every Zemstvo, the law ensured that no single social class could dominate. Members of the district Zemstvos, elected for a three-year term, chose from among themselves the members of the provincial Zemstvos. The new system had many drawbacks. The provincial governor had to approve the election of the Zemstvo chairman, and the minister of the interior had to confirm in office the provincial Zemstvo chairman. The Zemstvos had no executive powers and had to rely on the cooperation of the police and other officials who were under the control of the governor or the ministry.
In spite of these problems, the Zemstvos were soon achieving remarkable results. They brought about improvements in hospitals and other institutions, such as orphanages and insane asylums, entrusted to their care. They organized medical and veterinary services in rural districts, and their most outstanding achievement was in the field of elementary education. There were about 8,000 elementary schools throughout Russia in 1856. The number increased to 23,000 in European Russia alone by 1880. Toward the end of Alexander’s reign, Zemstvo or Zemstvo-assisted schools were increasing at the rate of 1,000 annually.
A statute in 1870 established Dumas or elective town and city councils with powers similar to those of the Zemstvos. The Dumas provided public services that Western Europeans took for granted but were still lacking in Russia. Some of the new amenities included water supplies, the paving and lighting of streets, upkeep of bridges, and better organization of benevolent institutions. As with the Zemstvos, the most spectacular achievement of the Dumas was the provision of schools. In St. Petersburg alone between 1873 and 1880, the number of schools increased from sixteen to eighty-eight. In Moscow and other cities and towns, the achievement was on the same scale.
In cities, towns, and villages, Russians were beginning to appreciate the need for education. From the time of his accession when he had facilitated entrance to universities, Alexander had sought to expand educational facilities, and after 1861 the movement gathered momentum. In place of the obscurantist Admiral Putyatin, Alexander appointed as Minister of Education, A. V. Golovnin, a close associate of Grand Duke Constantine, who applied himself to liberalizing education. He had opposed the claim of the Church to exclusive responsibility for primary education and had thus made it possible for the Zemstvos and Dumas to attain their striking results. He encouraged secondary education. By a statute of 1864, anyone who passed the entrance examinations could attend such schools, a right that had in the past belonged exclusively to children of the nobility. He increased the number of secondary schools, revised teaching methods, and commissioned new textbooks.
However, Golovnin’s outstanding achievement was the university statute of June 1863. He had sent a team of professors to study Western universities and to make recommendations for Russian universities. The resulting statute restored to universities their autonomy, first granted in 1804. It provided them with an independent administrative system, including tribunals responsible for student discipline. There was full freedom in the academic field. He also provided for special training for future professors and strongly encouraged higher education by scholarships and other means. Universities entered into a brilliant and fruitful period during the second half of Alexander’s reign largely because of Golovnin’s work.
Another reform of great and enduring importance was the reorganization of the judicial system. This reform was close to Alexander’s heart because he knew that the courts were corrupt, savage in their sentences, arbitrary, and slow to act. On his accession, he had expressed the wish to establish in Russia “expeditious, just, merciful, and impartial courts for all our subjects; to raise the judicial authority by giving it proper independence and in general to increase in the people that respect for the law which national well-being requires and which must be the constant guide of all and everyone from the highest to the lowest.” Nicholas I had been aware of the need for reform of the courts and had set up a commission to prepare draft laws. At the end of 1861, Alexander enlarged this commission by appointing several eminent jurists to serve on it.
The basic principles of the reform, submitted by the commission and approved by Alexander on September 29, 1862, included the complete separation of the judiciary from all other branches of the administration; the fullest publicity for court proceedings; trial by jury in criminal cases; the institution of summary courts, presided over by Justices of the Peace; and the simplification of legal procedures.
After Alexander widely publicized the proposals, the enactment took place on November 20, 1864. The new system of courts was simple. Justices of the peace tried minor civil and criminal cases; the district session of justices of the peace handled appeals. District courts and higher courts tried more important cases. The Crown appointed these judges from lists of experienced jurists, compiled by the judiciary. After reorganization, the Senate served as the supreme court. But more significant than the structure of the courts was the new spirit of justice, impartiality, and courtesy that began to permeate the administration of justice. The liberation of the peasants, formerly at the mercy of their landowners, and independence from the bureaucracy introduced a sense of pride and fairness that had never been part of the administration of Russian law in the past.
The armed forces were another field of spectacular reforms. Defeat in the Crimean War had demonstrated the inefficiency, corruption, and inadequacies of the Russian army. With few exceptions, the army lacked capable commanders; transport and supplies had failed; medical services had been so deplorable that more men had died from sickness than from enemy action.
Alexander was keenly aware of the need for reform in the army and he heeded his brother, Constantine, who as Minister of Marine introduced sweeping changes in the navy. Constantine was instrumental in securing the appointment of Dmitri Milyutin as Minister of War. Milyutin, a liberal possessed by great reforming zeal, received a wound when serving as an officer in the Guards Artillery in 1840. He had written extensively on military subjects and was a professor in the Military Academy for fifteen years. But he had varied interests. Bismarck described him in 1861 as “the most daring and radical spirit among the reformers . . . the bitterest enemy of the nobility.” He was Minister of War for twenty years; with the steady support of Alexander, he transformed the army in spite of frantic opposition.
Milyutin first eliminated the harshest forms of punishment and discipline. He had opponents even in this most humanitarian reform. The Minister of Justice, Panin, and the Orthodox Metropolitan, Philaret, strongly defended branding and flogging, which often ended in death, as necessary instruments of discipline. But on April 17, 1863, Alexander signed a decree that prohibited the more barbarous forms of punishment not only in the army and the navy but also for civil offenses.
Milyutin then began to introduce methods and efficiency into every branch of the armed forces. He greatly improved the conditions of the ordinary troops. He introduced the most modern weapons in place of the obsolescent equipment that had been one of the reasons for Russian defeats in the Crimean War. For the training of officers, he established army gymnasia in place of the aristocratic Cadet Corps. He even made provisions for teaching recruits to read and write, a development that would have astonished Nicholas I.
However, the institution of conscription was Milyutin’s greatest achievement. He maintained that all men, regardless of birth or wealth, should be liable for service. Although Milyutin set up a commission to draft the new statute on military service in 1863, more than a decade passed before it became official because the uproar against this egalitarian proposal was so loud and harsh.
In signing this statute on January 1, 1874, Alexander stated the principles underlying it. He said that under present legislation the duty of military service falls exclusively on the lower class of town dwellers and on the peasants. Many of the Russian people are exempt from a duty that all should share. Such an order of things, which came into being in different circumstances, no longer is appropriate for the changed conditions of national life nor does it satisfy Russia’s military needs. Recent events have shown that the strength of armies is based not only on the number of soldiers but also on their moral and intellectual qualities.
The statute provided that all men would be eligible for military service at twenty years of age. Ballots would choose the conscripts to be taken from each military district annually. Men needed to serve for six years and then would be on the reserve for nine years after which they were liable for service until the age of forty. Educational qualifications shortened the period of service, but men could obtain exemptions on only clearly defined compassionate grounds. The introduction of the principle of social equality was a striking innovation, as was the encouragement that education received.
Alexander also gave his support to policies of reform and expansion in the economic field. His Minister of Finance, Count Mikhail Reutern, brought all the accounts of the various departments under the control of his ministry. He established effective methods of audit, made the national budget public, and abolished the malevolent system of farming out the sale of spirits. Reutern proposed these and other reforms in financial administration to try to eliminate the corruption and inefficiency that crippled the nation, which was still recovering from the cost of the war and of maintaining as many as 2 million men under arms in the previous reign.
Reutern’s contribution to Russian economic expansion was even more striking. He was especially active in developing railways. Communications in Russia were primitive and not only hampered trade but also had contributed directly to the defeat in the Crimean War. Proposals to build a network of railways in 1835 had met with strong opposition. The then Minister of Finance, Count Igor Kankrin, had considered the project an extravagance and a threat to “public morals”; he maintained that railways would “encourage frequent purposeless travel, thus fostering the restless spirit of our age.” It was primarily because of Reutern that the railways, covering less than 660 miles in 1855, extended over about 14,000 miles by 1881. The development of the railways was part of the general economic expansion of Alexander II’s reign. He also encouraged the establishment of banks and other credit institutions. Trade flourished and exports trebled, thus giving the country a surplus on balance of payments. Socially and economically, Russia was in a state of revolution as it began transforming from a feudal into a capitalist nation.
The reign of Alexander II was also a time when the arts flourished. In music, there were five active brilliant composers - Balakirev, Cui, Musorgsky, Borodin, and Rimsky-Korsakov - and Tchaikovsky began producing some of his operas and other compositions. But it was in the field of literature that the remarkable eruption of works of genius took place. His father’s reign had been a golden age of poetry, and Alexander II’s reign was notable as the age of the Russian novel. Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy all wrote and published their greatest works during this period. They were all so outstanding as writers that they overshadowed others, like Aksakov, Goncharov, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Alexei Tolstoy, who also produced works of merit.
Alexander had begun his reign under the cloud of Russia’s humiliating defeat in the Crimean War. It had lowered the nation’s prestige as a military power and authority in international affairs. At the same time, most of Western Europe watched Russia suspiciously. In particular, England remained in the grip of strong anti-Russian feelings. The English attitude as expressed by one statesman was that Russia was a “great grim shadowy power which sits brooding over Europe and Asia, and of which no man knows whether it be strong or weak.”
The immediate purpose of Alexander’s foreign policy was to find allies, especially against Russia’s chief enemies, England and Austria, and to recover the losses confirmed by the Treaty of Paris. Prince Alexander Gorchakov, who succeeded Count Nesselrode as Minister of Foreign Affairs in April 1856 and held this office throughout Alexander’s reign, was responsible for the conduct of foreign policy. He was an impressively loquacious man whose command of diplomatic French obscured his lack of real ability. Alexander listened to his advice, but also the advice of others, before deciding on the policy to be followed.
Prussia seemed to be Russia’s only reliable ally at this time, although the policy Prussia had followed during the Crimean War had not been helpful. Alexander counted on Prussia to look to him for support against Austria. Gorchakov also hoped for closer understanding with France. Napoleon III wanted to gain Russia’s friendship and was ready to support Russian efforts to have the more unpleasant terms of the Treaty of Paris moderated. But their three-day meeting in Stuttgart in September 1857 did not lessen Alexander’s mistrust of Napoleon. It was clear that Napoleon would do nothing to jeopardize the Anglo-French alliance. Although there was strong support for a pro-French policy in St. Petersburg, Napoleon destroyed all hopes of alliance when he supported the Polish cause at the time of the insurrection in 1863.
Alexander was counting on Prussia’s help to further his policies in the South. King William I and Bismarck conferred with Alexander and Gorchakov at Ems in June 1870. Alexander gave assurances that Russia would prevent Austrian intervention on the side of France in the Franco-Prussian War, and in return William undertook to support Russian demands for revision of the Treaty of Paris. The Franco-Prussian war ended with the defeat of France, the fall of the third empire, and the final unification of Germany, with King William of Prussia being proclaimed Emperor of Germany at Versailles on January 18, 1871.
Meanwhile on October 31, 1870, Gorchakov sent notes to all signatories of the Treaty of Paris, renouncing the Black Sea provisions of the treaty. This unilateral act provoked a major crisis. England protested furiously. But the Russian note was well timed. France was at war with Prussia, and Austria was isolated diplomatically. England was not prepared to go to war alone against Russia. When Bismarck proposed a conference of interested countries, all agreed. The seven-power conference met in London in January 1871, and Russia achieved a diplomatic victory thanks to German support.
Alexander was, however, uneasy about the emergence of the German Empire. Bismarck was eager to strengthen German friendship with Russia and also with Austria in order to isolate France. Alliance with France as a counterweight to German power would have been a logical policy for Russia at this time, but Alexander had no love for republican France and was afraid that French influence would promote revolutionary ideas inside Russia. He was therefore ready to accept Bismarck’s proposals, which resulted in the formation of the League of the Three Emperors in 1873. The Emperors of Russia, Germany, and Austria mutually guaranteed the frontiers of their respective countries; they agreed to consult on all problems arising from the Eastern Question; and they agreed also to concert action against threats of revolution. The League appealed strongly to Alexander as a revival of the Holy Alliance that his uncle, Alexander I, had conceived and his father, Nicholas I, had endorsed. But, like the Holy Alliance, the League would prove to be ineffective.
The Treaty of Paris had not resolved the Eastern Question as the signatories had hoped; in fact, the Eastern Question was entering a more complex phase. Ottoman power was declining rapidly, and the people were clamoring for independence. The Bulgars and the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina were demanding freedom; Serbia and Rumania, although already autonomous, wanted full independence. Many in Russia began to champion the cause of the Orthodox Slavs in the Balkans. They argued that Russia, as the greatest of the Slav nations, should free brother Slavs from the yoke of the Muslim Turks. Nicholas Danilevsky and General Rostislav Fadeev, whose book Opinion on the Eastern Question was especially influential, professed the doctrine of Panslavism. Alexander and Gorchakov did not support this emotional nationalistic concept and tolerated it only because of its strong appeal to many Russians. But the policies advocated by the adherents of Panslavism would prove to be an embarrassment to the government, and they alarmed Western powers that interpreted the doctrine as a form of aggressive pan-Russianism.
The Eastern Question erupted in 1875 with revolts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, followed by a Bulgarian insurrection. The sultan suppressed these uprisings savagely, and most Europeans were incensed. Under the Treaty of Paris, the great powers had planned to intervene jointly in such a situation, but now their policies divided them. The primary goal of the British government under Disraeli was to halt any extension of Russian power. Austria and Germany were anxious to avoid another European war. Russia alone was prepared to intervene, but Alexander was cautious and tried to resist strong panslavist pressure for action. However, he had to commit because the situation developed rapidly.
In July 1876, Serbia and Montenegro declared war on Turkey, and their small armies were soon in danger of annihilation. Russia proposed an armistice, which the Turks rejected. The new sultan, Abdul Hamid III, was warlike and did not want to give in to Russian demands because he believed that he could depend on English support. Russia began secret preparations for war with Turkey. But Alexander was uneasy, remembering the disastrous escalation that had led to the Crimean War. Neither the economy nor the army, then in the midst of reform, was ready for a war on a broad scale. But Alexander was emboldened by a secret treaty signed in January 1877 with the Austrians, who promised to take up a position of benevolent neutrality in the event of war; in return, Russia would not annex Serbia, Montenegro, or Constantinople and would allow Austria a free hand with Bosnia and Herzegovina.
After the declaration of war in April 1877, the Russians pressed forward on the Balkan and the Transcaucasian fronts until they were poised to advance on Constantinople early in 1878. Having declared that England would never permit Russian occupation of the city, Disraeli sent an English fleet to guard the straits. But the Turks had already agreed to an armistice; on March 3, 1878, they signed the Treaty of San Stefano, conceding extensive gains to Russia.
Alexander now faced the threat of the European war that he had been so anxious to avoid. He grasped at the alternative course - a result of frantic diplomatic exchanges in London, Berlin, and Vienna - to have a congress of representatives of the powers meet to reconsider the Treaty of San Stefano. This congress, held during June and July 1878 in Berlin, produced the Treaty of Berlin that drastically revised the earlier treaty. This treaty confirmed the independence of Serbia, Montenegro, and Rumania, as well as the cession to Russia of Ardahan, Kars, Batum, and southern Bessarabia. But the treaty placed Bosnia and Herzegovina under the supervision of Austria; it divided Bulgaria into two provinces and deprived the country of direct access to the Aegean Sea.
The Treaty of Berlin provided no permanent solution of the Eastern Question. In spite of considerable gains, it was still a humiliation for Russia. Twice in Alexander’s reign, Russia had to submit to the European powers and frustration, particularly by England. Alexander himself felt isolated and welcomed the opportunity to re-establish friendship with the German Emperor, William I. On Bismarck’s instigation, they included the Austrian Emperor so that they could revive the League of the Three Emperors in 1881 on the eve of Alexander’s death.
Russian expansion in Central Asia and the Far East also revived during the reign of Alexander II. It began as a more or less spontaneous movement. Governors and frontier garrisons, remote from the central government, were eager for conquest, booty, and fame. A contemporary remarked: “It was indeed impossible that such desires should be resisted when by gratifying them it was possible for a Lieutenant in four years to become a General.” Close on the heels of the conquering forces followed the Russian merchants, impatient to share in the enormous and quick profits. In spite of his caution, Alexander became involved. He tried to exert restraint, fearing conflicts with other powers, but he was also an ardent Russian patriot, who rejoiced over any extension of Russia’s territory or power. In effect, he encouraged the expansionist movement.
In Central Asia, there had been no conflicts between the nomad Kazakh, Kalmyk, and other tribes and the Russians for many years. Russians had reached down the Volga to the Caspian Sea and also eastward beyond the Urals in the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century. Peter the Great and other tsars had shown interest in conquering Central Asia, but other commitments had distracted them. Now in the nineteenth century, they finally completed the conquest of this large region. Count Vasily Perovsky, the dynamic governor-general of Orenburg, built a network of strongholds into the Kazakh lands as the first stage in his conquest of the rich valleys of the Syr-Darya and the Amu-Darya, belonging to the rulers of Khiva, Bokhara, and Kokand. By 1854, he had established positions along the Syr-Darya from which the Russian forces were able to subdue the nomads and capture Tashkent. Three years later they had taken Samarkand.
They incorporated the new territory into the province of Turkestan with Tashkent as its capital. General Constantine von Kaufmann, the efficient but brutal governor-general of Turkestan, firmly established Russian control over the region. The Emir of Bokhara and then the Khan of Khiva acknowledged Russian political control. Next came the conquest of the Amu-Darya Valley. Russia was soon on the frontiers of Afghanistan, Persia, and China, a development that was disturbing to several powers.
In Eastern Siberia, the Treaty of Nerchinsk, signed with China in 1689, and limiting Russia’s further expansion southward, had remained in force until 1858. The Russians had, however, moved northward along the Pacific coast of Siberia and into the Kamchatka Peninsula in search of furs and tribute from the native tribes. They had taken possession of many of the Kurile Islands, but only in 1855 under the Treaty of Shimoda were they able to establish trade relations with Japan.
Meanwhile Russian hunters and traders had moved into the Aleutian Islands and Alaska and down the Pacific coast of North America. They behaved with such greed and brutality, however, that the native people rebelled. The Russian government had to take action to establish order and set up the chartered Russian-American Company with a monopoly of the fur trade in Alaska, the Aleutians, the Kuriles, and other North Pacific islands.
Russian activities in the North Pacific alarmed the Spanish and also the Americans and the British. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams attacked Alexander I’s decree in 1821, claiming the Pacific coast of North America south to the 51st parallel and insisting on Russia’s monopoly of trade in the North Pacific. Then in December 1823, President James Monroe, in his message to Congress, declared the opposition of the United States to further colonization of the Americas by European powers. Alexander I had heeded the strong stand taken by the United States, which Britain supported. In 1824, he had agreed that the southern limit of Russian claims should be 54 degrees 40 minutes, and that the United States and Russia should both be free to trade and fish in the North Pacific.
Meanwhile the Russian-American Company had declined in importance, its finances being negatively affected by corruption and inefficiency. This was the primary reason that Alaska had become an economic liability. When a Franco-British naval squadron attacked the port of Petropavlovsk during the Crimean War, it became clear that Alaska was also a strategic liability. In 1854, informal discussions began between St. Petersburg and Washington on the sale of Alaska. The discussions dragged on until March 1867 when the Russian-American Company transferred all of its properties, including Alaska, to the United States at the price of $7.2 million.
Interest in Russo-Chinese relations had also reawakened at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The successful war waged by England against China from 1839 to 1842 had impressed Nicholas I. In 1847, to protect Russian interests, he had appointed Count Nicholas Muraviev, later known as Muraviev-Amursky, one of his most capable and energetic advisers, to be governor-general of Eastern Siberia.
Muraviev-Amursky had promptly extended Russian settlements of Cossacks and freed convicts through the large area north of the Amur River. He established the town of Nikolaevsk at the mouth of the river in 1851. After China had become involved in war with France and England, Alexander decreed the creation of a new province, including the north Amur region. This was a blatant annexation of Chinese territory, but China was in no position to resist. Indeed, Muraviev-Amursky on his own initiative proceeded to negotiate the Treaty of Aigun with the Chinese commander of the region. The treaty provided for joint Russo-Chinese occupation of the lands from the Amur and the Ussuri Rivers to the Pacific coast.
Meanwhile, Admiral Putyatin had opened negotiations with the Chinese government, resulting in the Treaty of Tientsin, signed in June 1858, which conceded to the Russians the right to trade in certain Chinese ports and to maintain an embassy in Peking. England and France had just snatched similar rights from China. But then the Chinese government repudiated these agreements and renewed hostilities against France and England. Alexander sent General Nicholas Ignatiev to take over from Putyatin and to obtain confirmation of the Treaties of Aigun and Tientsin. Weakened by the war against England and France, China signed the Treaty of Pelting in 1860, ceding to Russia the lands between the Amur and Ussuri and the Pacific. Russia divided the large region into two provinces: the Amur with its administrative center at Blagoveshchensk, and Maritime Province with its center at Vladivostok, founded in 1860.
Alexander deserved the gratitude and support of his people. It shocked him to be the object of their bitter criticism and hostility. He had eased the shackles of his father’s rule, but the people had interpreted this as weakness. The people demanded greater freedom, and he rejected their demands as encroaching on his autocratic power. The landowners for the most part opposed the changes that destroyed their traditional privileges and that they considered politically dangerous. People of other classes were critical because the reforms - the emancipation of the serfs in particular - had fallen so far short of their expectations. The reforms suffered, too, from many defects in operation, especially because the old bureaucracy administered them. Not only were the bureaucrats grossly inefficient and corrupt; they were also unsympathetic to the reforms.
The liberals seemed to have expected the reforms to result in an overnight transformation of their country, and this made their disillusionment all the greater. They were, however, moderate in their demands. The ferment was greatest among the intelligentsia, and advocates of revolutionary and socialist programs became more vehement. Unrest broke out in the universities. Students demonstrated against regulations in Kiev in 1857 and more violently in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Socialist policies gathered greater support among them, encouraged in particular by Herzen’s publication Kolokol (The Bell), published by the Free Russian Press in London, which had a wide clandestine circulation in Russia. In the autumn of 1861, new regulations introduced by Admiral Putyatin, a severe disciplinarian, led to a massive student demonstration in St. Petersburg. Alexander had recalled him from the Far East and appointed him to serve as Minister of Education. Police and troops suppressed the rioters; they closed the university and held about 300 students in the St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress.
Alexander had been away from the city at the time. Angered by the brutality of the police and the imprisonment of the students, he had hurried back and had intervened personally. He had the students released and replaced both the Governor-General of the city and the Minister of Education. But his moderation did not quiet the unrest, which erupted again in the following year. A leaflet called Young Russia aggravated the ferment. It demanded radical policies that included elective national and provincial assemblies, dissolution of monasteries, and abolition of marriage. Serious fires broke out in various parts of the country a few weeks later, and fires destroyed about 2,000 shops and warehouses in St. Petersburg. Although authorities strongly suspected arson and there were no charges filed, many people blamed the Poles and the socialists. The fires intensified the general uneasiness and insecurity throughout the country.
Alexander reacted angrily to these disorders, and the government turned its attention to the press, closing some publications and prosecuting writers believed to be fomenting the troubles. Officials arrested Mikhailov, a poet responsible for producing radical leaflets, in September 1861 and sentenced him to penal servitude in Siberia, where he died four years later. The police next arrested Nicholas Dobrolyubov and Nicholas Chernyshevsky, who had displaced Herzen as spokesmen of the young Russian radicals. Both were sons of priests, highly intelligent and well educated. They believed in the socialist transformation of society. In The Contemporary, then the leading journal of the intelligentsia, they attacked the slowness and the inadequacy of the reforms. While in prison, Chernyshevsky wrote about his vision of Russia’s future in a novel under the title of What Is to Be Done? (Chto delaf). Published despite the censorship regulations, the book became one of the basic documents of the intelligentsia.
Opinion throughout Russia had generally favored the struggle of the liberal intelligentsia against the emperor and the government. But the outbreak of the fires and the Polish insurrection in January 1863 had hardened feelings against all radicals. However, a strong body of opinion was pressing for a national assembly. The constitutionalists were gaining wide support. Thirteen nobles of Tver went so far as to submit an address to the emperor, having printed and circulated it, calling for the convening of a national assembly that would represent all classes of the Russian people. Alexander was furious. He ordered the thirteen nobles to be imprisoned in the St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress; then a special court sentenced them to be detained in an insane asylum and to lose all civil rights. They spent only four days in the asylum, but they never regained their civil rights.
Alexander was not opposed to the principles of constitutional government and was prepared to concede that participation in government by popular representatives might have advantages. But he did not accept that this could ever apply to Russia. Like his father, Nicholas I, he believed fervently that God had appointed him and that he held his power in trust to be administered for the good of the nation. He could never share his special relationship with his people. In 1865 and again in 1866, the Zemstvo of St. Petersburg demanded that they needed a central Zemstvo office, similar to a national assembly. Alexander firmly rejected the proposal.
The agitation in the Polish provinces of Russia also disturbed Alexander at this time. The Poles were restless under Russia’s tutelage and eager to regain their freedom. In 1861, when Alexander began extending a degree of autonomy to Poland, it encouraged the Polish landowners who represented moderate opinion. But this did not satisfy nationalist Poles who could think only of a free Poland, restored to the boundaries of 1772. Tempers mounted, and in January 1863 rebellion broke out against Russian garrisons in Poland, Lithuania, and White Russia. The Poles were disappointed in the help they had expected from France, and the Russians finally suppressed the insurgents in 1864.
Alexander had tried to extend greater freedom to the Poles while maintaining Poland as part of the Russian Empire. He had dealt leniently with the nationalists, but he needed to revert to repression. He renamed the ten provinces of the Kingdom of Poland the Vistula Provinces and placed them under a Russian governor-general. He used stern measures to stamp out all signs of Polish nationality. Russian was the compulsory language of administration and education; even in the University of Warsaw, which reopened in 1869, Russian was the sole language of instruction.
By contrast, the Finns - always more skilled in managing their relations with Russia - accepted Alexander’s concessions and quietly but stubbornly pressed for a Diet and for autonomy. They were able to hold elections in 1863 and, when opening the Diet in September, Alexander declared: “in the hands of a wise nation . . . liberal institutions not only are not dangerous but are a guarantee of order and well-being.” Alexander provided the foundations upon which the Finns built their independence, and to the Finns he remained the tsar-liberator.
The unrest in Russia, insurrection in Poland, struggles over the emancipation statutes and other reforms, and the hostility directed against him personally oppressed Alexander. The gains in Central Asia and the Far East and also against Turkey were no compensation. When he returned to St. Petersburg from Warsaw in 1860, he was so exhausted that certain ambassadors thought that he was seriously ill. He lived in a state of tension, and it was easy to provoke him to anger. He also had troubles in his private life. He had retained in their privileged positions the small clique of his father’s favorites and had made his friends among them. It disappointed their many opponents at court when Alexander did not displace them upon his accession. Allegations of corruption among members of the clique and counterattacks against certain of those close to Alexander poisoned the atmosphere at court.
Empress Mary tried to offset the influence of those persons if she felt their advice was harmful to her husband. She also began to interest herself in state affairs. On retiring for the evening, she would read state papers and discuss proposed measures with him. Alexander respected her advice and often acted on it. But the clique of favorites, fearing her influence upon him, spread rumors that she was seeking to Germanize Russia. Her position became more difficult in the spring of 1857 when she was pregnant and Alexander became involved in an affair with one of her maids of honor, Princess Alexandrina Dolgorukaya. Members of the clique were quick to refer to the position of the princess as that of an official mistress. The empress, distressed by her husband’s infidelity, found fault with him, and for a time they were estranged.
Avoiding his wife and the palace, Alexander now sought refuge in the company of members of the clique. He had always been a keen hunter and was often away from the capital hunting bears or wolves. His wife, feeling neglected in the palace, recognized that she would have to overlook his frequent affairs if her marriage was to endure and she was to have any influence on him. She cultivated her friendships with other members of the imperial family, especially the Dowager Empress. With their help, the couple was able to reconcile. The imperial couple lived again as husband and wife, and she was able to influence and encourage him in his reforms.
In 1865, however, Alexander, then aged forty-seven, fell desperately in love with Princess Catherine Dolgorukaya, an attractive girl of eighteen. She became his mistress in the following year. He vowed that “at the first opportunity I will marry you: from now onward and forever I regard you as my wife before God.” Several times a week, the young princess would drive to the Winter Palace, enter by a hidden door to which she had the key, and would meet secretly with her lover. Soon their affair was the talk of the court and of the city. Catherine’s family took her to Italy in the hope that the infatuation would lessen. But they wrote to each other daily; in May 1867, when Alexander visited Paris, they met again. Soon afterward, she returned to St. Petersburg where he installed her in a luxurious apartment.
Most of the tsars had had several mistresses. Catherine II had had a series of young men as official favorites. People had always accepted the private life of the tsar without causing scandal or harming the prestige of the throne. But Alexander lacked the imperious self-confidence of so many of his predecessors, and he so mishandled this affair that it offended the court, split the imperial family, and damaged his authority. They respected the empress and felt sympathy for her predicament. The difference in the ages of Alexander and his mistress was the subject of harsh comment. The imperial family and especially Alexander’s sons, Nicholas and Alexander, later to be Alexander III, were bitterly antagonistic toward Catherine Dolgorukaya.
The affair took a more serious turn in May 1872 when Catherine gave birth to a son, christened Yury. Later she gave birth to three more children. The health of the empress was failing. Many discussed the possibility that Alexander would marry his mistress when the empress died and nominate her son as heir to the throne. The imperial family and nearly all at court supported Alexander as heir. This increased the isolation of the emperor from his family and his people.
The double life that Alexander was forced to lead created special problems for those responsible for protecting him. It was clear now that he needed close protection. One morning in April 1866, he was the object of an intended assassination while walking in the Winter Garden in St. Petersburg. Only the timely intervention of a bystander saved him. They arrested the would-be assassin, a young revolutionary named Dmitri Karakozov, who had been a student at Kazan and Moscow universities. They rounded up his associates; all of them were connected with the universities. They banished thirty-five of his associates and hanged Karakozov.
This attempt on his life frightened Alexander. It was easy for his advisers to persuade him that the universities - the breeding ground of revolutionary ideas – needed stricter control. He dismissed Golovnin, who had achieved so much as Minister of Education and appointed in his place Count D. A. Tolstoy, a strong reactionary and an enemy of academic freedom in any form. Tolstoy at once applied police methods to suppress all liberal and revolutionary ideas in the universities and to curtail the new programs in secondary education. He met with strong opposition from students and others, but authorities enforced his repressive policies.
The conservatives and nationalists were now firmly in power. In M. N. Katkov, moreover, they had an able journalist who had cast aside his early faith in liberal policies and constitutional government to promote conservative policies and militant Russian nationalism. The liberals became passive. The radicals went underground to work for political and social revolution.
At this time the intelligentsia began to produce a number of remarkable men, including Mikhail Bakunin, Sergei Nechaev, and Peter Lavrov. Bakunin, a nobleman of striking presence and personality, was the father of revolutionary anarchism. Among his disciples was Sergei Nechaev, a young fanatic who believed in complete dedication to the revolutionary ideal, and who first enunciated political terror as an essential tactic of revolution. Peter Lavrov was most influential at this stage. A professor of mathematics who had embraced the theories of Marx, Lavrov argued that the revolution must stem from the peasantry and the natural socialism of the commune because Russia had no proletariat. From the teaching of Lavrov and others, the Populists emerged as the foremost socialist group in the 1870s. Young radicals, their numbers swollen by the return on government orders of all Russian students in Switzerland, eagerly embraced their mission of “going to the people” to educate them politically. Starting in 1873, the movement developed into a crusade by the summer of 1874 when about 2,000 young radicals dressed as peasants flocked into the villages, expecting the peasants to embrace them as brothers. But they found only suspicion and hostility. Peasants even attacked them and handed them over to the police. Authorities arrested many and imprisoned them or banished them to Siberia.
Disillusioned by this experience, many Populists assembled in St. Petersburg in 1876 when they formed the first Russian revolutionary party or secret society, which later became known as Land and Liberty. They planned a more realistic movement to the people, but the significant development was the adoption of terrorism as a weapon against the regime. The spectacular trial of Vera Zasulich encouraged the use of terrorist methods. In January 1878, she fired at the military governor of St. Petersburg, General F. F. Trepov, and severely wounded him. Even though the evidence against her was conclusive, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The whole city wildly celebrated the verdict.
Terrorists became more active, concentrating on the high officials whom they saw as special enemies. In August 1878, terrorists assassinated General N. V. Mezentsov, head of the security police; the following February, they assassinated the governor-general of Kharkov. On April 2, 1879, Alexander Solovyev, a member of Land and Liberty, fired five shots at the emperor but missed him. At a secret conference in Lipetsk in June 1879, representatives endorsed the policy of terror with the assassination of the emperor as their immediate objective. Land and Liberty now divided into two independent groups with the Peoples’ Will advocating immediate violent action.
Led by fanatical revolutionaries, the party planned at least seven attempts on the life of Alexander. In November 1879, they blew up the imperial train near Moscow. In February 1880, terrorists who posed as workmen managed to place a charge of dynamite in the banquet hall of the Winter Palace. Because the guest of honor, Prince Alexander of Bulgaria, was late, the emperor and his family had not yet entered the hall when the dynamite exploded.
The police seemed powerless to stop the daring and the increasing activity of the terrorists. This worsened the uneasiness in the capital and elsewhere in the country. Alexander himself became more indecisive and unsure of himself, as though feeling that he was doomed. He became cynical and mistrustful. He remarked, when told that someone had spoken ill of him, “Strange, I don’t remember ever having done him a favor; why then should he hate me?” He turned to Catherine and her children for comfort because only among them could he find the love that he craved. His great concern was to give her and their children security. Two months after the death of the empress in May 1880, he married Catherine and gave her the title of Princess Yurevskaya.
Meanwhile, the bold ventures of the terrorists in gaining entry to the Winter Palace and blowing up the Banquet Hall called for urgent action. Alexander presided over a conference of high officials lasting three days. The heir-apparent urged that they coordinate all government activities to fight the terrorists under one person. This proposal led to the creation on February 12 of the Supreme Executive Commission. Count M. T. Loris-Melikov, a former governor-general of Kharkov, who was generally popular, was president of the commission with quasi-dictatorial powers. He considered that it was essential to revive support for the government, especially among the liberals. Many Russians had resented the fact that Alexander had granted a liberal constitution in Bulgaria but not in Russia. Several Zemstvo assemblies requested powers and privileges like those the Bulgarians enjoyed. The repressive policies of Dmitri Tolstoy had antagonized all Russians.
The new policy that Loris-Melikov and his commission proposed and that he called “a dictatorship of the heart” sought to relax tension. He dismissed Tolstoy and dissolved Section III of His Majesty’s Own Chancery; a new department of the police under the Ministry of the Interior took its place.
Loris-Melikov announced further, with the approval of the emperor, that the reforms enacted earlier in the reign would continue as originally enacted. Another proposal was that an assembly of elected representatives of the Zemstvos and the city Dumas should gather to advise and assist the government in preparing new legislation. The new proposals did not amount to constitutional reforms, but they were important in seeking to bridge the gulf that had been growing between the government and the people. In August 1880, satisfied that the Supreme Executive Commission had fulfilled its function, Loris-Melikov dissolved it.
Liberals welcomed these proposals, seeing in them a step toward the constitutional reform that they considered essential. The revolutionaries, who had halted many of their activities pending the announcement of the Commission’s proposals, decided to renew their opposition and their policy of terror. They were now convinced that the only way they could provoke a revolution was to assassinate the emperor.
On the morning of March 1, 1881, Alexander gave his formal approval to the statutes, embodying Loris-Melikov^s proposals. He then left the palace to attend the Sunday parade, which he had not attended for three weeks in response to the pleas of his wife, Princess Yurevskaya. Now she asked him to avoid two streets that they later discovered the terrorists had mined. On his return journey, he drove in his sled along Catherine Street, which they had not closed to the public because of a police error. As the imperial sled passed along this street, a student named Rysakov threw a bomb. It exploded near the escort, wounding several Cossacks, but Alexander was unharmed. He stepped down from the sled to help the injured men. At that moment a Polish student, Hriniewicki, threw a bomb at Alexander’s feet. It exploded, shattering both his legs and mutilating his face and body. When his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail, came to his aid, he could only whisper: “Home to the palace to die there.” Held in his brother’s arms, they drove him back to the Winter Palace where Princess Yurevskaya, not knowing what had happened, was awaiting him, and there he died.
Alexander’s reign had been a time of momentous reforms. He had emancipated some 40 million serfs; he established a new legal system and the principle of equality before the law; he had abolished barbarous punishments; and he had sought to eliminate the arbitrary bureaucratic rule to which the people were prey. Like Peter the Great in the previous century, he had launched Russia on the road to modernization. But throughout the country, people didn’t seem to care about the news of his death. He had never been popular. He was too reserved to make any personal impact on his people, and his love for Princess Yurevskaya had damaged his reputation irreparably. But, in the words of the French ambassador, “He was a great Tsar and deserved a kinder fate.”