In the history of Russia, there was a tsar who was called the "liberator" of the serfs, but was eventually assassinated by the serfs, and his death had a major impact on Russian history. He was Tsar Alexander II.
First, the great "Liberator" Tsar
Alexander II, full name Alexander II Nikolaevich, was the sixteenth Tsar of the Romanov dynasty of Russia. He was born on 29 April 1818 in the Moscow Kremlin. Although he was not born to Tsar Alexander I at the time, because Alexander I had no heirs, he was regarded by the whole palace as the heir of the empire.
Tsar Alexander I of Russia
Therefore, the court tailored a training program for Alexander II. Great poets such as Sukovsky taught him rhetoric and literature, and his father, later Tsar Nicholas I, personally trained his son in military prowess. Under such a cultivation, Alexander II had both a poetic romantic mood and an iron military style. All this laid the foundation for his future style of governance.
"Stick Tsar" Nicholas I
Nicholas I died in 1855, mired in the Crimean War, and Alexander II was crowned Tsar in Moscow in his prime. After he took the throne, he first set out to solve the problem of the Crimean War, sending foreign ministers to sign the Treaty of Paris in Vienna, ending the protracted battle. After a pause in external troubles, Alexander II's eyes turned to the centuries-old maladies in Russia - serfdom.
The defeat in the Crimean War made Russia aware of its backwardness, and in the eyes of Alexander II and a group of intellectuals, the root cause of the backwardness of the great motherland was inefficient and inhuman serfdom. Alexander II was not the first Tsar to want to touch serfdom, and from Paul I onwards, successive Tsars knew that serfdom was a huge problem, but under pressure from the nobility, they did not take any systematic measures. By the time Alexander II arrived, the burden of history was already on his shoulders, and reform was urgent, and he had to accomplish what his ancestors had not done. To explain to the nobles, he said: "Instead of waiting for serfdom to be overthrown from the bottom up, it is better to abolish it from the top down." ”
In 1861, after several years of planning, Alexander II finally decided to strike. In March of that year (February 19 in the Russian calendar), Alexander II promulgated the Declaration of February 19, 1861 and the Peasant Decree on Severance From Serf Dependency, declaring the abolition of serfdom. In the plan, he intended to abolish the personal attachment of the serfs to their masters and allow them to attain personal freedom; It is also stipulated that the land shall be owned by the village community, but the peasants can purchase a share of the land, and the government will advance the loan for the peasants. Alexander II was also ready to reform russia's government structure step by step, starting with the emancipation of serfs, so that the Russian Empire could be brought closer to the Western European powers.
Alexander II the Liberator
Because of this proclamation of the abolition of serfdom, radical Russian intellectuals enthusiastically praised the greatness of the Tsar and placed the title of "Liberator" on his head. Everyone imagines that under the leadership of Alexander II, Russia gradually returned to the top of Europe, recreating the glory of the times of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.
2. The Tsar assassinated by a mob
Alexander II's emancipation of the serfs should have given him greater prestige and became the beloved Tsar of the people of all Russia. But what he did not expect was that this "liberator" soon became an "oppressor" and was assassinated and killed.
All reforms touched the interests of the old-fashioned, and Alexander II's reforms were no exception. The conservative nobles complained that the Tsar's move was to shake the "ancestral foundation" and would bring disaster to Russia. The tsar's despotism in Russia was already heavily dependent on the support of the nobility, and the centrifugality of the aristocratic clique made Alexander II lose a large arm.
In addition, the radical reformers also did not approve of Alexander II's reforms. Because they believed that the Tsar's reform was not thorough, although the peasants got rid of their serf status, they were saddled with high loans and had to continue to rent and cultivate the land of the landlords, and their personal dependence was not improved, and their lives were even more desolate.
So these radicals secretly formed a group called the "Will of the People" to plot to assassinate the tyrannical Tsar and install a new monarch. There were as many as 7 assassinations against Alexander II. The initiator of the first was the fallen nobleman Dmitry Karakozov, who attempted to shoot and kill Alexander II, but ultimately failed due to inaccurate marksmanship. The second was the Polish democrat Anton Belyozzovsky, who still failed to succeed over the marksmanship problem. The third occurred in 1879, when the famous intellectual Solovyov shot and assassinated the Tsar, but did not hit him.
Three failures made the assassins realize that the success rate of shooting was too low, and they began to use bombs to assassinate the Tsar. They planted explosives on train tracks and in the Tsar's dining room three times in 1879 and 1880, but were escaped by Alexander II. In 1881, when the Tsar returned to the Winter Palace in a carriage, the seventh assassination began. A bomb was thrown at the Tsar's carriage, but only the guards and coachmen were injured, and Alexander II was not injured. However, Alexander II, despite the persuasion of his bodyguards, got out of the car to check on the wounded. The second bomb landed precisely on the Tsar's side, and the Tsar was blown off his legs on the spot and quickly sent back to the Winter Palace. The terrorists who assassinated the Tsar, Nikolai Rysakov and Ignati, were arrested by the guards. An hour later, Alexander II was seriously wounded and died in the Winter Palace.
Alexander II was stabbed to death
The "Liberator" Tsar thus ended his life hastily. It should be known that the Russians, influenced by the idea of a "good tsar", have a strong tradition of loyalty to the monarch and rarely make the act of assassinating the tsar. Even if they did, they mostly failed. The assassination of Alexander II is very important to Russian history, both for reason and its impact.
Third, the cause and impact of the stabbing
The reason for the assassination of Alexander II, in addition to the boycott of the old aristocracy and the dissatisfaction of the radicals mentioned earlier, was related to his own character.
Alexander II was well educated from an early age, but his heart was torn apart by two contradictions: romantic literature, philosophical edification, and iron-blooded military style. Out of the poor and weak and ideal of benefiting his people, Alexander II decided to abolish serfdom. But the conservative military despotic education of his father, Nicholas I, also forced him to take care of the interests of the old nobility. In this way, Alexander II's reforms oscillated between the two, and he himself became a tool for the great aristocracy and the royalists, the reformers and the conservatives to win over and use each other. Once the interests of one side were seriously damaged and the balance was broken, the Tsar, who was at the center of the contradiction, could only face the threat head-on. Thus, Alexander II's contradictory character and ambiguous attitude laid the groundwork for his assassination.
The death of Alexander II changed the course of Russian history. These assassins thought that after the establishment of a new monarch, the new emperor would open up to the peasants and intensify reforms. However, they mistook it, and the reigning Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II, instead of continuing the process of reform, began bloody repression and highly centralized rule. They continued the rule of Nicholas I, the "StickY Tsar", suppressed radical intellectuals who pursued freedom and equality, increased exploitation of peasants and workers, and the internal contradictions of the Russian Empire became more and more serious. In the end, Russia's dismal record in World War I triggered the "February Revolution" in 1917, which ruined the rule of the Romanov dynasty, and the subsequent "October Revolution" directly led communism to the whole country and opened up a new era. To some extent, the death of Alexander II hastened the process of the fall of the Russian Empire.
Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia
Wen Shijun said
Alexander II's reforms propelled the Russian Empire forward in a pool of stagnant waters, laying a solid foundation for Russia's subsequent reforms. However, the incompleteness of his reforms, the insufficiency of the Tsar's own character, and the overly complex situation of class struggle in Russia at that time eventually led to his assassination. His death further hastened the demise of the Russian Empire. It is undeniable that the masses of the people are the creators of history. But the role of each member of the masses of the people in the process of making history is different. The role of important historical figures in the course of history cannot be ignored. The impact of Alexander II's death on Russian history is a vivid example.
bibliography
Zhang Guangxiang and Wang Mukun, "The Censorship Reform of Books and Periodicals in the Period of Alexander II and Its Evaluation", Jianghan Forum, No. 10, 2019;
Zhang Guangxiang and Li Zhenwen, "On Alexander II and the Peasant Reform in Russia in 1861", Foreign Studies, No. 4, 2016;
Sui Xusheng, "The Fate of the Liberator: The Other Side of Alexander II", Russian Literature and Art, No. 2, 2004.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Shi Hai Xunzhen)
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