Alexander II
Alexander II was the Emperor of Russia from 1855 to 1881. He is known for his significant reforms, including the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, which aimed to modernize Russia and improve the lives of its people. Despite these reforms, his reign was marked by political unrest and ultimately ended with his assassination by revolutionary terrorists.
7 Key excerpts on "Alexander II"
eBook - ePub- Stephen J. Lee(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...11 The Reforms of Alexander II There can be no doubt about the importance of the period 1855–81 in modern Russian history. The ‘Tsar Liberator’ presided over an ‘era of great reforms’ which finally dragged Russia into the nineteenth century and provided the background to further changes under Nicholas II (1894–1917). Indeed, the scope of Alexander II’s achievement has been compared by some historians with that of Peter the Great or Lenin. At the same time, his measures were not intended primarily to innovate, but rather to inject new life into a flagging system. Hence there must be at least some reservations about their real effectiveness. This chapter will, on the one hand, point out the extent of change while, on the other, show the continuity between Alexander’s ideas and methods and those of his predecessor, Nicholas I. It will also show the limited impact of some of the reforming edicts. The final section will deal with another, but related, duality: is it possible to divide the reign chronologically into two distinct periods, one dominated by reforming zeal, the other stagnating under dreary reaction? * * * Alexander was not by nature, or upbringing, a radical. He had a combination of progressive and traditional views, the result partly of the mixed education which he received from a liberal tutor, Zhukovsky, and a stern father. Although tolerant and always well-intentioned, he imbibed at an early age the autocrat’s inherent pessimism about humanity, once admitting to having ‘a very low opinion of the human race in general and in particular’. Inevitably, therefore, he had a limited view of the potential for progressive change. According to D.Field, ‘it is hard to find in Alexander the reformer’s breadth of vision and harder still to find the strength of will’...
eBook - ePubRussia
A Historical Introduction from Kievan Rus' to the Present
- Christopher J. Ward, John M. Thompson(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...He was also patriotic, deciding that if the Russian Empire were to be powerful again, its government and social system would have to be brought up to date. Moreover, Alexander, respecting the ability of the senior civil servants charged with implementing change, steadfastly supported them, even in the face of strong noble opposition. Like his predecessors, Alexander had no intention of destroying the autocracy, but unlike them, he became convinced of the need for basic reform if it were to be saved. This last point is well illustrated by Alexander’s famous remark to the Moscow nobility in 1856: “It is better to begin to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until it begins to abolish itself from below. I ask you, gentlemen, to think over how all this can be carried out.” Thus, starting with the elimination of serfdom, Alexander launched his series of Great Reforms, which transformed society, but by no means solved all its problems. Affecting some fifty-two million people, more than 85 percent of the entire population, ending serfdom in the Russian Empire was at the time the most extensive and influential government-directed social change undertaken in human history. Extremely difficult and complex, the reform was carried out remarkably smoothly and quite effectively. Figure 9.2 Alexander II (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–128131) Opposition certainly existed, particularly among the nobility and some bureaucrats. But the majority of educated society strongly favored emancipation, in our view, for three main reasons. First, the serf system was increasingly indefensible on moral grounds; hardly anyone could support the practice of one person owning another. As education spread in the 1800s, the imperial elite, including many nobles, found serfdom increasingly repugnant. Second, defeat in the Crimean War convinced the empire’s military and bureaucratic leadership that a thorough overhaul of the country’s antiquated economic and social system was needed...
eBook - ePubRussia And The Soviet Union
An Historical Introduction--second Edition
- John M Thompson(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Finland, Bessarabia, and the Caucasus had been added, but even within its old boundaries, the number of inhabitants of the Russian empire had increased dramatically, from about thirty-seven million to fifty-nine million people. This meant that the agricultural economy, with little or no increase in productivity, had more people to support and less land per person. The result was widespread peasant unrest. Second, the Russian economy as a whole was changing, and was falling further behind that of western Europe. The first signs of nascent industrialization appeared, the number of free workers grew, and trade and a money economy expanded, while the position of the nobility deteriorated. In these circumstances continuing the system of serfdom made less and less sense to a number of contemporary observers. Finally, after its defeat in the Crimean War, Russia was considerably weaker vis-à-vis its rivals in Europe than it had been in 1801. Alexander II, the eldest son of Nicholas I, ascended the throne at the age of thirty-seven, having been prepared for his responsibilities both through tutorial education and through occasional participation in state affairs. Conservative in outlook and upbringing, he seemed an unlikely candidate for the role of “tsar-liberator.” Yet several factors worked to turn Alexander into an effective reformer. Since he was realistic and hard-headed, he concluded early in his reign that serfdom would have to be eliminated and other changes made if more serious difficulties were to be avoided. He was also patriotic, deciding that if Russia were to be powerful again, its government and social system would have to be brought up to date. Moreover, Alexander, respecting the ability of the senior civil servants charged with implementing change, steadfastly supported them, even in the face of strong noble opposition...
- David Saunders(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...CHAPTER EIGHT The Politics of Emancipation THE ACCESSION OF Alexander II AND THE END OF HOSTILITIES Making decisions was not one of the new tsar’s greatest gifts. Indeed, an upbringing which gave Alexander II many qualifications for the tasks which confronted him failed to conceal the fact that he was not very gifted at all. Born in 1818, he had been educated under the supervision of the liberally inclined Romantic poet Vasilii Zhukovskii. Between 1835 and 1837 he heard lectures on Russian law from the reforming bureaucrat Mikhail Speranskii. After travelling extensively at home (and becoming the first Romanov to see Siberia), in 1838 and 1839 he toured Europe. Having married a princess of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1841 (by whom he rapidly had six children), he was gradually introduced to his future duties. Nicholas appointed him to the State Council and the Committee of Ministers and then made him chairman, in 1842, of the committee which supervised the construction of the railway between St Petersburg and Moscow. In 1846 he sat on one of the tsar’s many secret committees on peasant affairs, in 1848 he chaired another, and in 1849 he succeeded his uncle, the Grand Duke Mikhail, as head of the empire’s military schools. By 1855, as we have seen, he was sufficiently trusted to dismiss the Crimean commander on his father’s behalf. The historian and jurist Boris Chicherin, who was predisposed to like him, believed that Alexander had been denied ‘an upbringing capable of providing him with guidelines in the precarious circumstances in which he found himself’. 1 Another contemporary, Sergei Solov’ev, made the same point more acerbically when he said that ‘In the Roman Empire emperors ascended the throne from various callings’, whereas ‘in the Russian Empire Alexander II ascended the throne from the ranks of the heads of military-educational institutions’. 2 In some ways, however, Alexander was better prepared for the throne than either of his immediate predecessors...
eBook - ePub- Francis Johnson(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Jovian Press(Publisher)
...His first duty—and it was a painful and humiliating duty—was to terminate the Crimean War by accepting the unfavorable terms demanded by the western powers. In the exhausted condition of the Russian treasury, and after the disorganization of the Russian armies by a series of disastrous defeats, nothing was left to the young Czar but to submit to the inevitable. In doing so he also signed the sentence of death of the autocratic rule established by his father. A general clamor for reform, for greater freedom and more liberal laws arose, and Alexander the Second was only too willing to grant them. He was liberal-minded himself and kind-hearted, and he was anxious to let the Russian nation partake of the progress of European civilization. He opened the Russian universities to all who desired a higher education. He reduced to a reasonable rate the price for passports, which had been enormous under Nicholas, he rescinded the burdensome press laws, and modified the law subjecting all publications to a most rigorous government supervision; he issued an amnesty to Siberian exiles, including many who had been banished for political crimes; and he finally crowned this system of liberal measures by the emancipation of many million serfs, freeing them from their previous condition of territorial bondage and placing them directly under government authority. Important changes were also made in the personnel of the different departments of the public service; a thorough investigation of these departments proved that the grossest abuses existed throughout the empire. The army magazines were filled with chalk instead of flour, and officers who had been dead for twenty years still remained on the pension lists. Numerous other frauds and depredations were disclosed, which were eating up the public revenues, and which had been practised for years by high officials who had enjoyed the protection of the late Czar...
eBook - ePubBetween Two Revolutions
Stolypin and the Politics of Renewal in Russia
- Peter Waldron(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Overnight, this dramatically changed the political outlook of Russian government, for the tsar’s son and successor, Alexander III, was not a man who shared any of his father’s inclinations for reform. 10 The power wielded by a Russian autocratic monarch was immense and a change in ruler could therefore materially alter the policies pursued by the state. By temperament Alexander III was sympathetic to the traditional view of the autocracy and unwilling to see his powers limited in any way; he believed that the regime should reassert its authority not by making concessions to society, but by using the coercive forces at its disposal. Alexander III’s outlook certainly did not include allowing any form of consultative assembly to be set up and Loris-Melikov’s plans were quickly abandoned. The new tsar was also surrounded by a set of advisers whose sympathies were firmly set against reform. Prime among these was Konstantin Pobedonostsev, who had been the tsar’s tutor as a child. For the first part of Alexander’s reign he exerted a strong influence upon the ruler: Pobedonostsev was devoted to the principles of autocracy and had no intention of seeing his former pupil deflected from what he saw as the only reliable way to regenerate Russia - a strong and unlimited autocracy. Autocracy and reaction: the 1880s and 1890s During the 1880s and 1890s, therefore, the government strove to regain some of the authority that it had lost as a result of the reforms of the 1860s and 1870s. A two-pronged approach was adopted: first, the government tried as far as possible to limit the scope of the reforms through administrative measures and secondly, where this first approach was unsuccessful, it prepared new laws to claw back some of the concessions that had been made to public opinion and to society in general under Alexander II...
eBook - ePub- Maureen Perrie, Andrei Pavlov(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 4 Reformers and Reforms The reasons for reform The decade which followed Ivan’s coronation witnessed not only significant foreign-policy successes, with the Russian conquest of the Volga khanates of Kazan’ and Astrakhan’, but also an extensive programme of domestic reforms. What were the reasons for these reforms, and what implications did they have for the power of the tsar? Ivan’s adoption of the title of tsar had significantly enhanced the prestige of the Russian monarchy, both at home and abroad. Having become a ‘God-crowned’ tsar, the Muscovite ruler was raised to an inaccessible height above his subjects, including the ‘princelings’ (the descendants of the ruling princes of north-east and south-west Rus’). But this was only the first step towards the assertion of his autocratic power. It had to be reinforced by real moves towards the consolidation of Russian statehood and the creation of a new state apparatus. In the middle of the sixteenth century Russia stood at a crossroads. It was unclear which direction the political development of the country would take, and what principles would govern relations between the tsar and his subjects. To a considerable extent the outcome depended on the balance of power in the country and on the political will of its leaders. At the end of the 1540s the Russian government faced an acute need for political change and the introduction of reforms affecting the most diverse aspects of state and society. During the years of ‘boyar rule’ the authority of the central government had significantly declined. The bitter struggle for power among the various boyar groupings had destabilised the social and political situation in the country, and had led to the growth of abuses by officials. As a result, dissatisfaction with the authorities had increased in many sectors of the population...
