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Alexander, II

Дата публикации: 04 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Imperial Russia →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1188912713


Alexander, II

Also known as: Alexander II, Czar of Russia, Aleksandr Nikolayevich, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Romanov, Aleksandr Nikolaevich

Born: 1818
Died: 1881
Occupation: tsar

_____________________________

"It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below." TSAR ALEXANDER II


Emperor of Russia known as the "tsar liberator," who emancipated the serfs in 1861 and instituted the first legal and political reforms in an effort to modernize Russia.


BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Born in the Chudov Monastery in the Moscow Kremlin (citadel) on April 29, 1818, Alexander Nikolayevich Romanov was the eldest son of Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich, later Tsar Nicholas I (1825-55), and Charlotte, daughter of King Frederick III of Prussia and sister of Wilhelm I, the future Kaiser of Germany. Alexander had six siblings: Konstantin, Maria, Olga, Alexandra, Nicholas, and Michael.

When Captain Karl Karlovich Merder, the founder of a Moscow military school, became his tutor, the six-year-old Alexander's formal education began. During his ten-year tenure, Merder stressed martial discipline and values. Eventually, Alexander's mother entrusted his intellectual and moral development to the humanitarian and liberal poet and translator, Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky, who introduced Alexander to the classics, history and letters. Merder, Zhukovsky and Tsar Nicholas I all stressed a military demeanor and the Russian tradition of autocracy. But Alexander, a rather indolent boy of ordinary intelligence, obtained from Zhukovsky a romantic sensibility that he retained throughout his life.

In 1837 and 1838, Alexander was sent on trips through the 30 provinces of the Russian Empire. As the first emperor to visit Siberia, he became aware of the penal camps and the abject poverty of his own people. But the trips were not all gloomy. While on a grand tour of Europe in 1838--a trip customarily used to provide the final polish to a future sovereign--he met and fell in love with the 14-year-old Princess Wilhelmina in the German principality of Hesse-Darmstadt. Although Nicholas, who hoped to gain a more prestigious dynastic marriage for Alexander, opposed their desire to marry, Alexander refused to bend and his father reluctantly accepted the union. Arriving in Russia in 1840, Wilhelmina was rebaptized into the orthodox Church as Maria Alexandrovna, and married her prince on April 16, 1841. Their alliance produced eight children: Alexandra, Nicholas, Alexander III, Vladimir, Alexis, Maria, Sergius and Paul. The couple remained in love until the latter half of the reign when Alexander took Princess Catherine Dolgruky as his mistress; he married her 40 days after the death of Empress Maria Alexandrovna in 1880.

Shortly after his first marriage, Alexander's dominating and authoritative father began a careful preparation of his son for his eventual succession. Nicholas appointed the young prince to the Council of Ministers, the Finance Committee, and other imperial councils. Alexander was also appointed Chancellor of Helsingfors University in Finland, a member of the Holy Synod, and chairman of a secret committee to study the problems of serfdom. In 1848, he succeeded his uncle as chief of all military schools and colleges and was placed in command of the Guard and Grenadier regiments. During his father's prolonged absences from the capitol, Alexander served as regent and presided over the state council. On several occasions, Nicholas utilized him as a member of diplomatic missions to Europe.


Alexander Succeeds Nicolas

When Nicholas I died of a severe cold on March 2, 1855, and Alexander Nikolayevich became Alexander II, Tsar of all the Russians, his country was still mired in the unfinished Crimean War. He had inherited an empty treasury, an exhausted nation, a formidable alliance against him, and a growing awareness of the immensity of Russia's coming defeat. Thus, when Sevastopol fell to the forces opposing Russia, Alexander quickly entered into negotiations, and the Treaty of Paris was signed on March 30, 1856. But Alexander was unhappy with the terms of the treaty, particularly the demilitarization of the Black Sea which was an embarrassing low point in Russia's international prestige.

Alexander's formal coronation took place on August 26, 1856, beneath the humiliating cloud generated by the Treaty of Paris. The defeat in the war indicated to the Emperor that fundamental social and political change could no longer be avoided. But his course as a reforming sovereign is difficult to explain. Alexander's policies were not due to training or instinct; although he was a gentler, more tolerant and flexible ruler than his father, Alexander's background did not suggest that he would become a reformer. There is, however, ample evidence that he shared Nicholas's political views, particularly his admiration for autocratic government. Because Alexander's policies and reforms were not uniformly progressive, it is difficult to assess his sympathy and involvement in the reforming movements and changes of his reign. The most obvious reasons for his change of mind were the technological and military deficiencies that became apparent during the Crimean War. He had also realized that the only way to prevent peasant uprisings and revolutionary radicalism was a massive reform of domestic affairs, industrial growth, and a coherent, successful foreign policy.

In foreign affairs, Alexander and his chief advisor, General Alexander Gorchakov, tried to achieve a diplomatic improvement with France in 1857 through a personal meeting with Napoleon III. The effort proved to be a failure when France took a favorable position toward an 1863 anti-Russian rebellion in Poland. Following the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870, Alexander drew closer to Germany and Austria, and in 1872, they (Kaiser Wilhelm, Francis Joseph I of Austria, and Alexander) formed the League of the Three Emperors. This alliance eventually collapsed at the end of the decade when Alexander, influenced by Pan-Slavic pressures, accepted a Turkish challenge in 1877 which developed into the Russo-Turkish War. After some initial defeats, Russia eventually triumphed but saw her gains scaled back by the Western powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Although Alexander and the Russian public were dissatisfied with the settlement, Alexander continued his alliance with Germany and Austria. But, by the end of his reign, Russia was once again diplomatically isolated from European affairs.

Alexander's reign, notwithstanding his foreign policy shortcomings, was remarkable for its imperial expansion. Following the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867, Russian commanders, on their own initiative and despite Gorchakov's protests, began to expand along the East and Central-Asian frontiers. Because communications were so poor over the great distances, Alexander and Gorchakov could do little more than accept the acquisitions after the fact. Between 1860 and 1876, Russian officers annexed the central Asian Khanates of Khiva, Bokhara, and Kokand. They acquired land in the Amur-Ussuri region from China by 1860 and founded Vladivostok as the far-eastern capital in the same year. In 1881, the remainder of the land east of the Caspian Sea was added to the Empire. Russia also received Sakhalin Island from the Japanese in 1875 in exchange for the remaining Kurile Islands. The acquisition of these possessions during Alexander's reign helped provide an economic base for Russia's industrial expansion, growth of capitalism, and the necessity of improved communications.


Emancipation Act Frees Serfs

But Alexander realized that domestic affairs needed the lion's share of attention and reform. The most critical internal problem concerned the serfs. Declaring in a reception at Moscow on April 12, 1856, that "it is better to abolish serfdom from above than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below," Alexander had opened discussions for reforming their conditions shortly after the Crimean War had been concluded; in 1856, he appointed a secret committee to prepare recommendations for emancipation while battling the delaying tactics of the nobles and conservative elements opposing the reform. An editorial commission appointed in 1859 and composed of Grand Duke Constantine, Prince Sergei Lanskoi, Nicholas Milyutin, Vladimir Cherkasky, and Yuri Samarin presented a plan to Alexander's State Council a year later. There were difficult debates over issues of whether serfs should be emancipated with land, the size of land parcels, and compensation for the nobles. Alexander, as he would do in other reform proposals, fought resolutely for his emancipation plan and ultimately used his authority to overrule his opponents. On March 3, 1861, he signed the Emancipation Act which freed about 25 million serfs with immediate legal rights and modest allotments of land that they had worked before 1861. A long and complicated redemption plan to compensate the nobles confused the serfs who believed the nobles were misleading them on the actual terms of the decree. The newly emancipated serfs were often unable to complete the redemption payments, and they were additionally restricted by the new rigid system of village governance. Although emancipation was a progressive step by Alexander, it did not end the desperate poverty of the serfs, and it helped undermine the already weak economic base of the Russian state.

The emancipation of the serfs ended the landlords' rights to dispense justice and created new problems for local administration in all areas of life. Alexander supported a massive overhaul of many archaic Russian administrative institutions. On January 13, 1864, the second great reform, the Zemstvo Law, was issued to establish district and provincial councils (Zemstvos) elected under an elaborate system dividing voters into classes which insured peasant representation in the councils. This extended role in local self-government throughout the country improved health care, local industries, roads, communications, agricultural methods, schools, and literacy. On December 2, 1864, Alexander issued a decree to reform the legal and judicial process. Completely overhauling the courts, the reforms introduced a jury system, public debate of cases, and equality of all classes before the law.

These major reforms were rapidly followed by others: more academic freedom for universities, the abolition of corporal punishment, municipal self-government, restructuring of the secondary school system, and elective justices of the peace. Alexander's minister of war introduced universal military service on a democratic basis and abolished the privileges previously held by the nobility.


An Attempted Assassination

But Alexander's reforms failed to produce the rapid social and economic growth that he had hoped they would achieve. After 1866, he gradually abandoned his liberal and reform program, prtly as a result of the Polish rebellion of 1863-64. In addition, the profound disappointment of the peasants and radical intellectuals in the reforms led to widespread social unrest and even violence. A struggle developed between his government and the dedicated revolutionary elements that had been organizing even as he passed his reforms. On April 4, 1866, a deranged student, Dmitri V. Karakazov, fired several shots at Alexander in an inept effort to assassinate the Tsar. Frightened and angry over the incident, Alexander moved steadily toward a reactionary response to the radicals. Several treason trials were held, and the police were given broad powers to keep order. These responses undermined Alexander's relationship with the Russian intellectuals, and the trials gave exposure to the radical cause. In the 1870s, the populists--known as Narodniki--tried unsuccessfully to influence the peasants through propaganda. The failure of the radicals to reach the masses led to conspiratorial plans. One group, the People's Will Party, placed a death sentence on Alexander and established a two-year campaign to assassinate him.

Numerous attempts were made on Alexander's life. Following a bombing of the imperial palace in February 1880, Alexander created a Supreme Commission under the chairmanship of Count Michael Loris-Melikov to combat terrorism. Loris-Melikov utilized police controls to eliminate the radicals, but at the same time he proposed concessions to the public. Promoted to minister of interior, Loris-Melikov's plan would have created a national commission with elected representatives of the Russian people. He was not creating a legislature but envisioned seating the elected delegates as consultative and advisory members within the Council of State. Known as the "Loris-Melikov Constitution," this plan could have been the beginning of constitutional reform in Russia. On March 13, 1881, Alexander hesitantly signed the proclamation giving his conditional approval to Loris-Melikov's plan. Later that morning, as Alexander rode through the streets of St. Petersburg, members of the People's Will Party hurled a bomb at his carriage. The Tsar was uninjured, but when he left his coach to attend to a wounded guard, a second bomb was thrown that shattered both of his legs. At his request, Alexander was taken on a police sleigh to the Winter Palace to die that same day. On the site of the assassination, the Church of the Spilled Blood was erected in his memory.

The significance of the life and reign of Alexander II was his realization that major change was imperative if Russia was to survive. His reforms, both in what they accomplished and in what they failed to accomplish, carry the stamp of his tolerance, creativity, and character. Despite his relapse into reaction, he produced the most significant reforms in the history of tsarist Russia. Alexander III, his successor, dismissed the Loris-Melikov proposal and enacted measures to reverse the work of his father.


-- Contributed by Phillip E. Koerper, Professor of History, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama


PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born April 29, 1818, in the Chudov Monastery in the Kremlin of Moscow, Russia; died by assassination in St. Petersburg, Russia, on March 13, 1881; son of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia and Charlotte (daughter of King Frederick William III of Prussia); married: Maria Alexandrovna (née Princess Wilhelmina Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt), April 16, 1841 (died 1880); married: Catherine Dolgruky, July 18, 1880; children: Alexandra, Nicholas, Alexander III, Vladimir, Alexis, Maria, Sergius, and Paul. Predecessor: Nicholas I. Successor: son Alexander III.

CHRONOLOGY
1818 Born in the Chudov Monastery, Kremlin
1837 Toured 30 Russian provinces; first Romanov to visit Western Siberia
1855 Succeeded to throne on the death of his father
1856 Treaty of Paris; forced to accept defeat in the Crimean War
1861 Emancipation Act freed the serfs
1864 Statutes reformed the judiciary and local governments
1866 Karakazov failed in attempt to assassinate the Tsar
1872 Alexander joined the League of the Three Emperors
1877-78 Russo-Turkish War; Congress of Berlin
1880 Empress died at Cannes; Alexander married Catherine Dolgruky in a morganatic marriage
1881 Assassinated by "People's Will" after signing a constitutional proclamation


FURTHER READINGS

Almedingen, E. M. The Emperor Alexander II. Bodley Head, 1962.


Harcave, Sidney. Years of the Golden Cockerel: The Last Romanov Tsars, 1814-1917. Macmillan, 1968.


Mosse, Werner E. Alexander II and the Modernization of Russia. English Universities Press, 1958.


Pereira, N. G. O. Tsar-Liberator: Alexander II of Russia, 1818-1881. Oriental Research Partners, 1983.


Walkin, Jacob. The Rise of Democracy in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: Political and Social Institutions Under the Last Three Czars. Praeger, 1962.


Broido, Vera. Apostles into Terrorists: Women and the Revolutionary Movement in the Russia of Alexander II. Viking, 1977.


Footman, David. The Alexander Conspiracy. Library Press, 1974.


Graham, Stephen. A Life of Alexander II: Tsar of Russia. Yale University Press, 1935.

Seton-Watson, H. The Decline of Imperial Russia, 1855-1914. Praeger, 1952.

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 сентября 2007 года

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