ALEXANDER II (1855-1883)
Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace
Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, 1910,
Vol 1, pgs 559-561
He was emperor of Russia, eldest son of Nicholas I., born on the 29th of
April 1818. His early life gave little indication of his subsequent activity,
and up to the moment of his accession in 1855 no one ever imagined that he
would be known to posterity as a great reformer. In so far as he had any
decided political convictions, he seemed to be animated with that reactionary
spirit which was predominant in Europe at the time of his birth, and continued
in Russia to the end of his father's reign. In the period of thirty years
during which he was heir-apparent, the moral atmosphere of St Petersburg was
very unfavourable to the development of any originality of thought or
character. It was a time of government on martinet principles, under which all
freedom of thought and all private initiative were as far as possible
suppressed vigorously by the administration. Political topics were studiously
avoided in general conversation, and books or newspapers in which the most
keen-scented press-censor could detect the least odour of political or
religious free-thinking were strictly prohibited. Criticism of existing
authorities was regarded as a serious offence. The common policeman, the
insignificant scribe in a public office, and even the actors in the
"imperial" theatres were protected against public censure as
effectually as the government itself; for the whole administration was
considered as one and indivisible, and an attack on the humblest representative
of the imperial authority was looked on as an indirect attack on the fountain
from which that authority flowed. Such was the moral atmosphere in which young
Alexander Nicolaivich grew up to manhood. He received the education commonly
given to young Russians of good family at that tim - a smattering of a great
many subjects, and a good practical acquaintance with the chief modern European
languages. Like so many of his countryman he displayed great linguistic
ability, and his quick ear caught up even peculiarities of dialect. His
ordinary life was that of an officer of the Guards, modified by the ceremonial
duties incumbent on him as heir to the throne. Nominally he held the post of
director of the military schools, but he took little personal interest in
military affairs. To the disappointment of his father, in whom the military
instinct was ever predominant, he showed no love of soldiering, and gave
evidence of a kindliness of disposition and a tender-heartedness which were
considered out of place in one destined to become a military autocrat. These
tendencies had been fostered by his tutor, Zhukovsky, the amiable humanitarian
poet, who had made the Russian public acquainted with the literature of the
German romantic school, and they remained.with him all through life, though
they did not prevent him from being severe in his official position when he
believed severity to be necessary. In 1841 he married the daughter of the
grand-duke Louis II. of Hesse, Maximilienne Wllhelmine Marie, thenceforward
known as Maria Alexandrovna, who bore him six sons and two daughters. He did
not travel much abroad, for his father, in his desire to exclude from Holy
Russia the subversive ideas current in Western Europe, disapproved foreign
tours, and could not consistently encourage in his own family what he tried to
prevent among the rest of his subjects. He visited England, however, in 1839,
and in the years immediately preceding his accession he was entrusted with
several missions to the courts of Berlin and Vienna. On the 2nd of March 1855,
during the Crimean War, he succeeded to the throne on the death of his father.
The first year of the new reign was devoted to the prosecution of the war,
and after the fall of Sevastopol, to negotiations for peace. Then began a
period of radical reforms, recommended by public opinion and carried out by the
autocratic power. The rule of Nicholas, which had sacrificed all other
interests to that of making Russia an irresistibly strong military power, had
been tried by the Crimean War and found wanting. A new system must, therefore,
be adopted. All who had any pretensions to enlightenment declared loudly that
the country had been exhausted and humiliated by the war, and that the only way
of restoring it to its proper position in Europe was to develop its natural
resources and to reform thoroughly all branches of the administration. The
government found, therefore, in the educated classes a new-born public spirit,
anxious to assist it in any work of reform that it might think fit to
undertake. Fortunately for Russia the autocratic power was now in the hands of
a man who was impressionable enough to be deeply influenced by the spirit of
the time, and who had sufficient prudence and practical common-sense to prevent
his being carried away by the prevailing excitement into the dangerous region
of Utopian dreaming. Unlike some of his predecessors, he had no grand, original
schemes of his own to impose by force on unwilling subjects, and no pet
crotchets to lead his judgment astray; and he instinctively looked with a
suspicious, critical eye on the panaceas which more imaginative and less
cautious people recommended. These traits of character, together with the
peculiar circumstances in which he was placed, determined the part which he was
to play. He moderated, guided and in great measure realized the reform
aspirations of the educated classes. Though he carefully guarded his autocratic
rights and privileges, and obstinately resisted all efforts to push him farther
than he felt inclined to go he acted for several years somewhat like a
constitutional sovereign of the continental type. At first he moved so slowly
that many of the impatient, would-be reformers began to murmur at the
unnecessary delay. In reality not much time was lost. Soon after the conclusion
of peace important changes were made in the legislation concerning industry and
commerce, and the new freedom thus accorded produced a large number of limited
liability companies. At the same time plans were formed for constructing a
great net work qf railways, partly for the purpose of developing the natural
resources of the country, and partly for the purpose of increasing its powers
of defence and attack. Then it was found that further progress was blocked by a
great obstacle, the existence of serfage; and Alexander II. showed that, unlike
his father, he meant to grapple boldly with the difficult and dangerous
problem. Taking advantage of a petition presented by the Polish landed
proprietors of the Lithuanian provinces, praying that their relations with the
serfs might be regulated in a more satisfactory way-meaning in a way more
satisfactory for the proprietors-he authorized the formation of committees
"for ameliorating the condition of the peasants," and laid down the
principles on which the amelioration was to be effected. This was a decided
step and it was followed by one still more significant. Without consulting his
ordinary advisers, his majesty ordered the minister of the interior to send a
circular to the provincial governors of European Russia, containing a copy of
the instructions forwarded to the governor-general of Lithuania, praising the
supposed generous, patriotic intentions of the Lithuanian landed proprietors,
and suggesting that perhaps the landed proprietors of other provinces might
express a similar desire. The hint was taken, of course, and in all provinces
where serfage existed emancipation committees were formed. The deliberations at
once raised a host of important, thorny questions. The emancipation was not
merely a humanitarian question capable of being solved instantaneously by
imperial ukaz. It contained very complicated problems affecting deeply the
economic, social and political future of the nation. Alexander II. had little
of the special knowledge required for dealing successfully with such problems,
and he had to restrict himself to choosing between the different measures
recommended to him. The main point at issue was whether the serfs should become
agricultural labourers dependent economically and administratively on the
landlords, or should be transformed into a class of independent communal
proprietors. The emperor gave his support to the latter project, and the
Russian peasantry accordingly acquired rights and privileges such as are
enjoyed by no other peasantry in Europe. In the numerous other questions
submitted to him be began by consulting carefully the conflicting authorities,
and while leaning as a rule rather to the side of those who were known as
"Liberals," he never went so far as they desired, and always sought
some middle course by which conflicting interests might he reconciled. On the
3rd of March 1861, the sixth anniversary of his accession, the emancipation law
was signed and published. Other reforms followed in quick succession during the
next five or six years: army and navy organization, a new judicial
administration on the French model, a new penal code and a greatly simplified
system of civil and criminal procedure, an elaborate scheme of local
self-government for the rural districts and the large towns, with elective
assemblies possessing a restricted right of taxation, and a new rural and
municipal police under the direction of the minister of the interior. These new
institutions were incomparably better than the old ones which they replaced,
but they did not work such miracles as inexperienced enthusiasts expected.
Comparisons were made, not with the past, but with an ideal state of things
which never existed in Russia or elsewhere. Hence arose a general feeling of
disappointment, which acted on different natures in different ways. Some of the
enthusiasts sank into a sceptical, reactionary frame of mind; while others,
with deeper convictions or capable of more lasting excitement, attributed the
failure to the fact that only half- measures and compromises had been adopted
by the government. Thus appeared in the educated classes two extreme groups: on
the one hand, the discontented Conservatives, who recommended a return to a
more severe disciplinarian regime; and on the other, the discontented
Radicals, who would have been satisfied with nothing less than the adoption of
a throughgoing socialistic programme. Between the two extremes stood the
discontented Moderates, who indulged freely in grumbling without knowing how
the unsatisfactory state of things was to be remedied. For some years the
emperor, with his sound common-sense and dislike of exaggeration, held the
balance fairly between the two extremes; but long years of uninterrupted
labour, anxiety and disappointment weakened his zeal for reform, and when
radicalism assumed more and more the form of secret societies and revolutionary
agitation, he felt constrained to adopt severe repressive measures.
The revolutionary agitation was of a very peculiar kind. It was confined
to a section of the educated classes, and emanated from the universities and
higher technical schools. At the beginning of the reform period there had been
much enthusiasm for scientific as opposed to classical education. Russia
required, it was said not classical scholars, but practical, scientific men,
capable of developing her natural resources. The government, in accordance with
this view, had encouraged scientific studies until it discovered to its
astonishment that there was some mysterious connexion between natural science
and revolutionary tendencies. Many of the young men and women, who were
supposed to be qualifying as specialists in the various spheres of industrial
and commercial enterprise, were in reality devoting their time to considering
how human society in general, and Russian society in particular, could be
reconstructed in accordance with the latest physiological, biological and
sociological principles. Some of these young people wished to put their crude
notions imediately into practice, and as their desire to make gigantic
socialist experiments naturally alarmed the government, their activity was
opposed by the police. Many of them were arrcsted and imprisoned or exiled to
distant provinces, but the revolutionary work was continued with unabated zeal.
Thus arose a struggle between the youthful, hot-headed partisans of
rcvolutionary physical science and the zealous official guardians of political
order -- a struggle which has made the strange term Nihilism ~q.'t.) a familiar
word not only in Russia but also in westen Europe. The movement gradually
assumed the form of ter rorism, and aimed at the assassination of prominent
officials, and even of the emperor himself, and the natural result was that the
reactionary tendencies of the government were strengthened.
In foreign policy Alexander II. showed the same qualities of claracter as
in internal affairs, ever trying prudently to steer a middle course. When he
came to the throne a peace policy was imposed on him by circumstances. The
Crimean War was still going on, but as there was no doubt as to the final
issue, and the country was showing symptoms of exhaustion, he concluded peace
with the allies as soon as be thought the national honour had been satisfied.
Prince Gorchakov could then declare to Europe, " La Russie ne boude
pas; 'lie se recucille "; and for fifteen years he avoided foreign com
plications, so that the internal strength of the country might be developed,
while the national pride and ambition received a certain satisfaction by the
expansion of Russian influence and domination in Asia. Twice, indeed, during
that period the chancellor ran the risk of provoking war. The first occasion
was in 1863, when the Western powers seemed inclined to interfere in the Polish
question, and the Russian chancery declared categorically that no interference
would be tolerated. The second occasion was during the Franco-German War of
1870-71, when the cabinet of St Petersburg boldly declared that it considered
itself no longer bound by the Black Sea clause of the treaty of Paris. On both
these occasions hostilities were averted. Not so on the next occasion, when
Russia abandoned her attitude of recueillement. When the Eastern
question was raised in 1875 by the insurrection of Herzegovina, Alexander II.
had no intention or wish to provoke a great European war. No doubt he was
waiting for an opportunity of recovering the portion of Bessarabia which had
been ceded by the treaty of Paris, and he perceived in the disturbed state of
Eastern Europe a possibility of obtaining the desired rectification of
frontier, but he hoped to effect his purpose by diplomatic means in conjunction
with Austria. At the same time he was anxious to obtain for the Christians of
Turkey some amelioration of their condition, and to give thereby some
satisfaction to his own subjects. As autocratic ruler of the nation which had
long considered itself the defender of the Eastern Orthodox faith and the
protector of the Slav nationalities, he could not remain inactive at such a
crisis, and he gradually allowed himself to drift into a position from which he
could not retreat without obtaining some tangible result. Supposing that the
Porte would yield to diplomatic pressure and menace so far as to make some
reasonable concessions, he delivered his famous Moscow speech, in which he
declared that if Europe would not secure a better position for the oppressed
Slavs he would act alone. Tbe diplomatic pressure failed and war became
inevitable. During the campaign he displayed the same perseverance and the same
moderation that he had shown in the emancipation of the serfs. To those who
began to despair of success, and advised him to conclude peace on almost any
terms so as to avoid greater disasters, he turned a deaf ear, and brought the
campaign to a successful conclusion; but when his more headstrong advisers
urged him to insist on terms which would probably have produced a conflict with
Great Britain and Austria, he resolved, after some hesitation, to make the
requisite concessions. In this resolution he was influenced by the discovery
that he could not rely on the expected support of Germany, and the discovery
made him waver in his devotion to the German alliance, which had been the main
pivot of his foreign policy; but his personal attachment to the emperor William
prevented him from adopting a hostile attitude towards the empire he had helped
to create.
The patriotic excitement produced by the war did not weaken the
revolutionary agitation. The struggle between tbe Terrorists and the police
authorities became more and more intense, and attempts at assassination became
more and more frequent. Alexander II. succumbed by degrees to the mental
depression produced originally by the disappointments which he experienced in
his home and foreign policy; and in 1880, when he had reigned twenty-five
years, he entrusted to Count Loris-Melikov a large share of the executive
power. In that year the empress died, and a few weeks afterwards he married
secretly a Princess Dolgoruki, with whom he had already entertained intimate
relations for some years. Early in 1881, on the advice of Count Loris-Melikov,
be determined to try the effect of some moderate liberal reforms on the
revolutionary agitation, and for this purpose he caused a ukaz to be prepared
creating special commissions, composed of high officials and private personages
who should prepare reforms in various branches of the administration. On the
very day on which this ukaz was signed - 13th of March 1881 - he fell a victim
to a Nihilist plot. When driving in one of the central streets of St
Petersburg, near the Winter Palace, he was mortally wounded by the explosion of
some small bombs and died a few hours afterwards. (D. M. W.)