Spouse. The first wife of Alexander II and the legitimate empress was Maria Alexandrovna, nee Princess of Hesse Maximilian-Wilhelmina-August-Sophia-Maria (07/27/1824-05/22/1880). This marriage was not quite usual for the Romanov family, although the bride, as expected, came from a German ducal family. The fact is that the heir to the throne first married an illegitimate. Alexander met his future wife during a trip abroad in 1838-1839. , still in the status of Tsarevich. On March 13, 1839, he arrived in Darmstadt, where he met with Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse. That same evening, in the theater, the prince saw the fifteen-year-old daughter of the duke and fell in love with her. He immediately reported his feelings in a letter to his parents. Nicholas I and Alexandra Feodorovna were far from happy with the choice of their son, since the dubious origin of the princess was not a secret for European courts. Duke Ludwig II of Hesse was in a dynastic marriage with Princess Wilhelmina of Baden. But this typical for Europe of the XIX century. the mutually beneficial union of representatives of the two sovereign families did not develop into a strong marital relationship. The ducal couple gave birth to two joint children - princes Ludwig and Karl, but after that the husband and wife completely cooled off towards each other and began to lead an independent personal life Duchess Wilhelmina - a loving lady, was fond of many men, not particularly limiting herself in relationships on the side. As a result, she "gave" two bastards to the ducal house - the boy Alexander and the girl Maria. Duke Ludwig, in order not to disgrace himself and his family, recognized the children as his own. It was this Princess Mary, who was only half a princess, that Grand Duke Alexander Nikolayevich saw. He immediately asked his parents for consent to marry her, but received a decisive refusal. Alexander was stubborn and did not give up, seeking the right to marry his chosen one. He announced to his retinue: "I would rather give up the throne than marry Princess Mary." They tried to dissuade him by telling him the secret of the girl's origin, 99 to which he replied: “What of it! I love Princess Mary and will marry her." Threats to renounce the throne had an effect on the parents, they were forced to agree to a marriage, which, deep down, they considered a misalliance. In the spring of 1840, Alexander again traveled to Darmstadt, where he became engaged to Maria. In December of the same year, the bride arrived in St. Petersburg and converted to Orthodoxy under the name of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna. April 16, 1841 Alexander Nikolaevich and Maria Alexandrovna got married The question of the legality of the origin of the wife of the heir-prince, and then the emperor in Russia was never discussed again. It is difficult to say whether this marriage was truly happy Alexander was proud of his marriage and at first boasted of his happiness in letters to a friend - Alexander Adlerberg, the future minister of the imperial court. bachelor. And in his marriage to Maria Alexandrovna, Alexander Nikolayevich remained a connoisseur of female beauty, he had many hobbies on the side of the imposing Grand Duke, and then the emperor was successful with women. Maria Alexandrovna knew about this, but the free lifestyle of her parental family taught her not to notice such " little things." She conscientiously fulfilled her family duty, producing grand dukes and princesses. From this marriage, Alexander II had eight children. The first child of the then grand ducal couple, Grand Duchess Alexandra Alexandrovna (1842-1849), died at an early age. The eldest son, heir-tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (1843-1865), did not live to see the accession to the throne either. IOO After his death, Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich (02/26/1845 - 10/20/1894), the future Emperor Alexander III, was declared the heir. Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847-1909) was a great lover of art, a collector and patron of the arts (at one time it was he who acquired the famous painting by I. E. Repin "Barge Haulers on the Volga"). His grandson, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, died at an advanced age in France in April 1992. Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich (1850-1908) did not leave a noticeable trace in the history of the family. The only surviving of the two daughters, Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna (1853-1900 ) in 1874, she married the youngest son of the English Queen Victoria, the Duke of Edinburgh, Alfred Albert, who later became the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (1857-1905) - Moscow Governor-General and Commander of the Moscow Military District. He was married to the sister of the wife of Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse. Sergei Alexandrovich was killed by the Social Revolutionary I Kalyaev Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich (1860-1919) was married to the Greek princess Alexandra Georgievna (1870-1891). After the revolution, the Bolsheviks shot him in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Empress Maria Alexandrovna was tall, but thin and fragile, with thin bones. She was never in good health, and frequent childbirth had a devastating effect on her. She began to get sick often, and after the birth of her eighth child, doctors advised her to refrain from new pregnancies. She began to lead a secluded life, staying long in her IOI rooms and rarely leaving the palace. Due to health reasons, often avoiding the representative duties of the empress, she nevertheless found time and energy to engage in patronage and charity. Maria Alexandrovna laid the foundation for a new approach to women's education in Russia by establishing and maintaining all-class gymnasiums for girls; organized during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. Russian Red Cross, having invested in it all their personal funds. No wonder the maid of honor Tyutcheva wrote that the Empress could become a saint. Her way of life in the last ten or fifteen years was more in line with the behavior of an ascetic nun, and not the wife of one of the most brilliant monarchs in Europe. Still very handsome, healthy and strong, Alexander II was now forced to seek solace on the side. After a series of new short hobbies and connections, the emperor met his last true love. Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukaya (Yurievskaya) (1847-1922) became his mistress, and then his second, morganatic wife. For the first time Alexander II met Catherine Dolgoruky in August 1857. The Emperor was 39 years old. He was heading for military maneuvers in Volhynia and on the way stopped at the estate of Prince Mikhail Dolgoruky in the vicinity of Poltava. The Dolgorukovs (Dolgorukiy) belonged to an ancient princely family, who for the third century faithfully served the Romanovs, who more than once tried to intermarry with this family. On one of the warm days of the end of summer, Alexander and his adjutant were doing business on the open veranda. Suddenly a charming girl, graceful, with big eyes, ran up to them. When the tsar asked who she was, she replied that her name was Ekaterina Mikhailovna and she wanted to see the emperor. Her spontaneity touched and made Alexander laugh. He took the girl in his arms and talked with her for several minutes. The next day he walked with her a little in the garden, talking decorously and kindly, as with an important lady. Little Ekaterina Dolgorukaya was delighted and remembered this magical meeting until the end of her life. Two years later, a misfortune happened in the Dolgoruky family. Prince Michael got carried away with financial speculation and lost all his fortune. From despair, he fell ill with a nervous fever and died. To save his family from creditors, the emperor took the Teplovka estate under the guardianship of the imperial treasury, and Catherine and her younger sister Maria provided upbringing and education for Dolgoruky's six children, and her younger sister Maria ended up at the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, founded by Catherine II. Girls here were taught everything that court ladies or spouses of aristocrats needed to know and be able to. All institute girls had to carefully monitor their appearance, be able to dress and comb their hair with taste. But even among the refined pupils of Smolny, the Dolgoruky sisters stood out for their charm and grace. with regular, as if chiseled features, beautiful skin color and big eyes, they personified two types of ideal female appearance: Catherine - dark-eyed, with lush brown hair, Maria - blue-eyed blonde. The emperor, as a trustee, often visited the Smolny Institute, was interested in the success of the pupils, took part in festive tea parties. He often met with the Dolgoruky sisters and talked with them for a long time, as he was considered their guardian. However, soon the teachers and students of Smolny began to notice that the sovereign gave a clear preference to the elder of the sisters In 1864, at the age of seventeen, Ekaterina Mikhailovna graduated from Smolny. As an orphan, she received a modest pension that allowed her to make ends meet. Being an unmarried girl, Catherine settled in the family of her older brother Michael, who was married to the Italian Marquis Church Maggiore. In winter, the young Dolgoruky lived in St. Petersburg, on Basseinaya Street, and in the summer they rented a small dacha in Peterhof. In the spring of 1865, Catherine was walking with her maid in the Summer Garden. There she unexpectedly met the emperor, who was walking, accompanied by an adjutant. Alexander approached her, and then took her to one of the distant alleys, where they talked for a long time. This summer they often met in the Summer Garden, on Elagin Island, in the parks of Peterhof. At first they talked as long and well-known people, and then Alexander and Catherine truly fell in love with each other. They met when each was going through a difficult period in his life, and were firmly connected with each other until the end of the days of one of them. Ekaterina Dolgorukaya was young, inexperienced, lonely and almost poor. In the absence of a worthy dowry, she could hardly hope for a solid party. And then the attention of the emperor himself! Alexander was an imposing man who knew how to impress the ladies. The French writer Theophile Gautier, who knew European secular society well, wrote about him with admiration when he first saw him at a court ball in 1865 in St. Petersburg: “Alexander II was dressed in an elegant military suit, which favorably distinguished his tall, slender figure. It was a kind of white jacket with gold braids, going down to the hips and trimmed on the collar, sleeves and bottom with blue Siberian fox. Orders of high dignity sparkled on his chest. Tight-fitting blue pantaloons outlined his legs and descended to narrow boots. The sovereign's hair was cut short and reveals a large and well-formed forehead. Facial features are perfectly correct IO4 and seem to be made for a bronze medal. The blueness of his eyes especially benefits from the brownish tone of his face, darker than the forehead, from long travels and outdoor pursuits. The outline of his mouth is so definite that it seems to be carved from bone - there is something of Greek sculpture in it. The expression of his face is full of majestic firmness and is illuminated by minutes of a gentle smile. Well, how could one not fall in love with such a gentleman, who, moreover, is affectionate, delicate and courteous! Alexander needed Catherine no less than she needed him. In 1865, the emperor, despite the outwardly favorable impression that he made on the uninitiated, felt lonely and unhappy. At the age of 23, his eldest son and heir to the throne, Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich (beloved by his father Nix), died of tuberculosis - soft, kind, well-educated and brought up in the spirit of humanism, the hope of the family, court and society. The Empress was ill, and the doctors did not give any hope of improving her well-being. The 48-year-old sovereign at first tried to treat his 18-year-old protégé Dolgoruky in a fatherly way, hesitated, fought with himself, but then succumbed to a strong feeling that covered him like a wave with his head. What he felt for her was not like the previous short-term hobbies. Later, he only once tried to part with Catherine in order to avoid scandal and family drama, but he could only withstand six months, and did not do this again. In the autumn of 1865, the court returned to St. Petersburg. It became impossible to meet in parks in cold, rainy weather. Alexander gave Catherine a key that opened a secret door in the Winter Palace. From it a small corridor led to a small room on the ground floor with windows overlooking Palace Square. This room was connected to the former private apartments of Emperor Nicholas I. i°5 The relationship between Alexander II and the young Dolgoruky soon began to be discussed in all St. Petersburg salons. Some time later, the wife of Catherine's elder brother Cherche Maggiore was surprised to learn that secular gossip accused her of pandering, as if she had tried to get away with her sister-in-law in this way. She decided that she needed to save her honest name and honor of Catherine and, with the consent of Alexander II, took her to a few months in Naples, to his family. But this first and only separation only strengthened the feelings of the lovers, who exchanged letters every day, and the Dolgoruky family ceased to resist Catherine's romance with the emperor. For six years, this novel developed as a beautiful love story and did not require almost any special cares and obligations from Alexander II, until the autumn of 1872, Catherine informed her lover that she was expecting a child from him. Alexander was confused. He was afraid that the pregnancy would further compromise Dolgoruky, and he was afraid, mindful of the fate of his wife, for the health of his mistress. But the new situation had little effect on the appearance of Ekaterina Mikhailovna, and even her relatives, with whom she continued to live, did not notice for a long time what was happening to her. In order to keep everything a secret from the big world, the emperor decided that Dolgoruky would give birth in the Winter Palace, in those secret Nikolaev apartments where they had met for so many years. On May 11, 1873, feeling contractions, Catherine alone, without warning anyone at home, went to the palace, where she entered through the door she knew. The emperor immediately descended to her. Reassured by his presence, Dolgorukaya fell asleep in an armchair, since there was not even a bed in their room. Alexander, making sure that the birth had not yet begun, left to go about his daily business, and left her alone. At three o'clock in the morning he was awakened by an old grenadier soldier, who enjoyed the unlimited confidence of the king and guarded the door of his love nest. 10b Another trusted servant ran for the doctor and midwife, while Alexander rushed to his beloved. When the doctor arrived, the emperor ordered him to save Catherine at all costs, even if he had to sacrifice a child. But everything worked out, at half past nine in the morning Dolgorukaya gave birth to a beautiful and healthy boy, who was given the name George at baptism. The illegitimate son of the emperor was born on Sunday, and the father had to leave them with his mother and go to mass, where the royal family and the court were waiting for him, so that no one would suspect anything, Alexander II could not leave his newborn son in the palace. He entrusted it to General Ryleev, the head of personal security, who placed the child in his house in Moshkov Lane, where gendarmes carried constant guards and did not allow anyone not only to come close to the porch, but even to stop on the street. A nurse and an experienced governess were assigned to the baby. a Frenchwoman. But Alexander and Catherine failed to keep their secret. On the same day, the German ambassador, Prince de Reus, who had developed agents surrounded by the emperor, found out about the incident. He informed his daughter-in-law Dolgoruky about everything, who had not suspected anything before. The imperial family was shocked by this unexpected news. Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich and his inner circle were especially excited. An illegitimate half-brother could bring confusion into the dynastic way of the Romanov clan. Only Empress Maria Alexandrovna kept outward calmness. She became even more withdrawn into herself and her own experiences. her as one of her husband's hobbies, which have already become familiar. Now, after the birth of Catherine's child, she felt superfluous and unnecessary. Since that time, her illness began to progress noticeably. 107 In high society, the appearance of an imperial bastard was perceived with muffled disapproval. The emperor was free to have fleeting connections and affections, but now he actually had a second family. And it was already impossible not to reckon with Dolgoruky, since in the event of the death of the sickly empress, she could become the new lawful wife of the sovereign, and then, perhaps, the empress. Many resented the difference in age between Alexander and his beloved and the inability of the king to restrain his passions, as well as the insult that the birth of little George inflicted on the Romanovs. The situation worsened when, after a year and a half, the mistress gave the sovereign a second child - daughter Olga. The head of the secret office, Count Pyotr Andreevich Shuvalov, dared to express general indignation at what had happened. Under the guise of denunciations from his secret agents, he told Alexander what they thought of him and Dolgoruky in high society and at court. The emperor listened to his entourage outwardly coldly and calmly, but after a while he did not fail to avenge his insolence. would have such an influence on the emperor that he looks at everything through her eyes and is completely dependent on her in his actions. Alexander II knew how to control himself. He did not show his dislike for Shuvalov in any way, remained with him invariably amiable and benevolent. But in June 1874, he unexpectedly sent him as an ambassador to London, which meant a demotion and an honorary exile. Shuvalov's unsuccessful denunciation had other consequences. II personally destroyed the church acts, where their real parents were named. However, gossip at court acquired an increasingly threatening character for the fate of Catherine Dolgoruky and the imperial bastards. Therefore, the king decided to take care of their future. The emperor, as an autocratic monarch, could award whomever he wished with an exclusive title, and form a new noble family. That is what he did in this case. Remembering that the Dolgoruky, according to legend, descended from the famous Yuri Dolgoruky, the founder of Moscow and the Grand Duke of Kiev, he granted his mistress and children the surname Yuryevsky and the title "Most Serene Princes", only slightly inferior in dignity to the title "Grand Dukes", which was worn by his offspring from a legal marriage. On July 11, 1874, he signed a Decree to the ruling Senate: “We grant the underage Georgy Alexandrovich and Olga Alexandrovna Yuryevsky the rights inherent in the nobility, and elevate them to princely dignity with the title of “most serene”.” The decree was secret, it was not made public, and a copy of it was kept by a trusted person of the emperor - Lieutenant General Ryleev. The decree, on the one hand, definitely demonstrated that these children of Alexander II are not full-fledged Romanovs and continue not the royal dynasty, but the dynasty of their mother, on the other hand, it emphasized that the tsar recognizes them as his own through the patronymic "Alexandrovichi". At the end of the 1870s. shocked by the ordeals of the Balkan war with Turkey, exhausted by state cares, the emperor needed constant friendly participation so much that he decided to settle his second family in the Winter Palace, under the same roof with the empress and children from a legal marriage. Princess Dolgoruky was given a three-room apartment on the second floor. They were connected to the emperor's private quarters below by a special staircase. IO9 The situation was extremely awkward. The chambers of the empress were located next to the chambers of the sovereign. And Alexander's meetings with his mistress now took place literally behind the wall of his wife's bedroom. Maria Alexandrovna behaved arrogantly and tried to appear calm and cold, but inwardly she suffered deeply from her humiliating position. Once she could not restrain herself and said to her close friend, Countess Alexandra Tolstaya, the tutor of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna: “I forgive the insults inflicted on me as a monarch, but I am unable to forgive the torment that they inflict on me as a wife.” Ekaterina Mikhailovna, in turn, tried to behave as delicately as possible. She lived in seclusion, rarely leaving her apartment, did not attend social events and entertainment. But she still had to use the services of court footmen and maids, grooms and messengers, so her presence in the palace could not be completely unnoticed. To the delight of idle secular gossips, who accused Dolgoruky that relations with her exhausted the emperor morally and physically, in recent years the appearance of the always sleek and self-confident Alexander II has changed for the worse. he developed shortness of breath. However, this was not surprising for a man of his age, who had recently taken part in hostilities in the Balkans and endured the inconvenience and hardships of life in the field. The court and the light were especially annoyed that in September 1878 Ekaterina Mikhailovna gave birth to a third child - the daughter of Ekaterina the Emperor was not easily given life for two families. He felt sorry for his wife, felt embarrassed in front of her, but love for Catherine Dolgoruky turned out to be stronger than these emotions. His suffering, spiritual split ended in 1880. BUT Empress Maria Alexandrovna died on June 3 at 8 in the morning. For more than a month she had suffered from severe pneumonia and could not breathe normally. A fit of coughing interrupted her breathing forever. Death came so unexpectedly that the empress did not even have time to say goodbye to the children, and Alexander II at that time was in Tsarskoye Selo and there he learned that his wife was no more. Four days later, the body of the empress was transferred to the tomb of the imperial family in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. with the first dignitaries of the court were carried by the Emperor and Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich. Princess Dolgorukaya, despite her status as a court lady, was not present at the funeral, she and her children remained in Tsarskoye Selo. A month and a half after the death of the empress, at the end of the Petrovsky post, on July 18, 1880, Alexander II married Catherine Dolgoruky. Three days before the wedding, only true friends of the emperor were warned about him: Count Alexander Vladimirovich Adlerberg and General Alexander Mikhailovich Ryleev. The archpriest of the Great Church of the Winter Palace, Father Xenophon Yakovlevich Nikolsky, who was to conduct the ceremony, was informed the day before. The emperor did not consider it necessary to inform the heir-prince, who at that time was away, about this event in advance. To Adlerberg’s remark that the eldest son would be severely offended by this, Alexander II replied: “I remind you that I am the master of myself and the only judge of my actions.” The wedding took place at three o'clock in the afternoon in the Grand Palace of Tsarskoe Selo. The emperor was in the blue uniform of a guards hussar, and Dolgorukaya was in a modest dress made of beige cloth and bareheaded. The ceremony took place in a small hall without furniture, in the middle of which an altar was arranged. The role of the best man, holding crowns over the heads of the newlyweds, was General Ryleev and Adjutant General Eduard Trofimovich Baranov. Adlerberg was also present at the wedding. The emperor fulfilled his promise to marry, given to his beloved fourteen years ago. At the end of the ceremony, Alexander II and Ekaterina Mikhailovna did not exchange a word or a kiss. In silence, they left the palace and, together with their son George, went for a walk in a carriage. During the walk, the emperor spoke affectionately with his wife and son, but in his speech slipped a strange phrase in that situation: “I am afraid of my happiness, I am afraid that God is too much for me.” will soon deprive him." And he asked his little son to promise that he would never forget his father. In the evening of the same day, Alexander II signed an act on the conclusion of his second marriage with the maid of honor, Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgoruky. The act was witnessed by Adlerberg, Baranov, Ryleev and priest Nikolsky. At the same time, the emperor signed a secret decree with the following content: “Having entered into a legal marriage with Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgoruky for the second time, we order to give her the name of Princess Yuryevskaya, with the title of “Most Serene”. We order that the same name with the same title be given to our children: son George, daughters Olga and Catherine, as well as those who may be born later We grant them all the rights that belong to legitimate children, according to clause 14 of the Fundamental Laws of the Empire and clause 147 institutions of the imperial family (according to it, children born from one of the members of the imperial family and a person who does not belong to any of the sovereign families of Europe cannot inherit the Russian royal throne. - L. S.) ”. Alexander II and Ekaterina Yurievskaya became legal husband and wife, but their children, enjoying all the rights of members of the royal family, under no circumstances could 112. inherit the throne. The marriage documents were classified, and the Minister of the Interior, Adjutant General Count M.T. Loris-Melikov, was responsible for keeping them secret. For loyalty, he received the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called from the emperor. But soon the entire St. Petersburg world and the upper strata of the population of the empire knew about the remarriage of Alexander II. The emperor also took care to provide for his new family financially: September 5, 1880 he deposited in the State Bank securities in the amount of three million three hundred and two thousand nine hundred and seventy rubles, the right to dispose of which was received by Ekaterina Mikhailovna Yuryevskaya. This amount was supposed to allow her and her children to live comfortably even after the death of the crowned spouse. In the autumn of the same year, Alexander II rested in Livadia with his son, Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich. During lengthy conversations with his father, the heir to the throne promised to protect and support Princess Yuryevskaya and her children, no matter what happened to the emperor. After this conversation, the tsar wrote a warm letter to his eldest son: “Dear Sasha. In the event of my death, I entrust my wife and children to you. Your friendly disposition towards them, manifested from the very first day of your acquaintance with them and being a real joy for us, convinces me that you will not leave them and will be their protector and good adviser. During the life of my wife, our children should remain only under her guardianship, if God calls her to him before they come of age, I want General Ryleev and one more person of his choice and with your consent to become their guardian. My wife has inherited nothing from her family All the property that she currently owns, movable and immovable, is acquired by her personally, and her relatives have no rights to this property My wife can dispose of it at her own discretion As a precaution, she handed it over to me all my property, and we agreed that if I survived it, it would be equally distributed among our children and transferred to them by me after they came of age or the marriage of our daughters. Until our marriage is officially recognized, the capital that I have placed in the State Bank belongs to my wife according to the certificate that I issued to her. Here are my last wishes, which I am sure you will faithfully fulfill. May God bless you for this. Do not forget me and pray for the soul of the one who loved you so dearly! Pa". Ekaterina Mikhailovna Yuryevskaya (Dolgorukaya) remained the morganatic wife of the sovereign, she did not have to become an empress. For her coronation, it was necessary to develop and legitimize a special ritual, since it existed only for the first spouses of emperors who were married to the kingdom together with her husband. The solution to this difficult issue was entrusted to Prince Ivan Golitsyn, but he preferred not to rush, realizing the sensitivity of the situation, the possible negative attitude of the Romanov family and the imperial court towards it. Some contemporaries later in their memoirs hinted that Alexander II wanted to achieve the coronation of Catherine Mikhailovna exclusively for reasons of principle Immediately after that, he allegedly planned to renounce the throne in favor of the heir-prince, leave with his second family somewhere in France and spend the rest of his life there as a private person, in peace and quiet. However, subsequent events did not allow either contemporaries or descendants to find out how serious these assumptions were and whether such a completion of fate was possible for the emperor. The relatively liberal, especially in comparison with the previous reign, the policy of Alexander II did not meet with unanimous approval in the society - this is the time of rampant political terrorism, which became the main means of struggle of the populist revolutionary circles against the autocracy and the existing state system. The populists, who professed the idea of "peasant socialism", were dissatisfied with the results of the peasant reform carried out in the 1860s. , and switched to terror tactics. Its main object was the tsar-liberator. The first attempt on the life of Alexander II was made on April 4, 1866. When the tsar was returning from his usual walk in the Summer Garden, he was shot at by a 25-year-old lone revolutionary D. V. Karakozov. The attempt ended in failure. Karakozov was captured and executed. The tsar was saved by the hat master Osip Ivanovich Komissarov, who was passing by, and managed to push Karakozov away at the moment of the shot. it was not some Republican Pole who attempted on him, but a Russian man, who, as Alexander was taught from childhood, had to sacredly believe in the inviolability of autocratic power and its bearer - "God's anointed". This is probably why, ten days later, the emperor agreed to the proposal of the Holy Synod to celebrate this day annually with a procession through the central squares of St. Petersburg with bells. And in vain did the Moscow Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov), a prominent theologian and a highly respected person, wonder why every year he should remind the people that now any person can encroach on the person of the sovereign - something that until recently was considered unthinkable. constant reflection and hesitation associated with the need to continue reforms in the new socio-political conditions affected the health and state of mind of the emperor. He was often thoughtful and apathetic, the court doctors suspected that he had nervous exhaustion and persistently advised rest and treatment. The state of doubt and anxiety, concern for the safety of the family gradually led Alexander to the conclusion that it was necessary to return to protective principles in domestic politics. His environment also changed. Liberal dignitaries and ministers were forced out by conservatives. But the reforms still continued. Alexander II did not give up his long-standing habit of walking alone without guards in the Summer Garden and walking around the center of St. Petersburg without an escort. He still believed that Karakozov's attempt was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and none of the inhabitants of Russia could encroach on the personality of the autocrat tsar, consecrated by God. Only one more extraordinary event forced Alexander II to take the problem of terrorism more seriously. In 1867, the emperor visited the World Exhibition in Paris, in which Russia also took part for the first time. When, after the opening of the Russian pavilion, he returned to the hotel, insulting cries were heard from the crowd standing on the sidewalk addressed to him. A young man, a Pole named Berezovsky, suddenly ran up to the carriage , and, jumping on the bandwagon of the royal carriage, shot at Alexander. Berezovsky was not dexterous enough and missed, but after this incident the emperor became more cautious and took some measures to ensure his own security. The intelligentsia's cooling off towards the personality and actions of the emperor was facilitated by the diplomatically unfortunate conclusion of the Balkan war with Turkey for Russia. The Berlin Congress, which approved its results, did not leave the Russian government hopes for territorial acquisitions and material benefits. From the point of view of society and the political elite of Russia, the results of the victory over the Turks, which cost hundreds of thousands of human lives and monstrous strain on the financial and economic system, looked depressing. The head of Russian diplomacy, Chancellor Gorchakov, stated in his note to the tsar: "The Berlin Congress is the blackest page in my service career." The emperor inscribed next to it: "And in mine too." But society did not care about the emotional experiences of the king. The patriotic upsurge caused by the Russian-Turkish war dried up, the wave of the revolutionary movement rose again. The revolutionaries were again targeted by the most prominent state officials and the unfortunate tsar, who caused so much suffering to the people during the war. In March 1879, Alexander Konstantinovich Solovyov, a member of the revolutionary organization "Land and Freedom", a participant in the "going to the people" arrived in St. Petersburg from the Saratov province. He was considered a supporter of peaceful actions and patient, long-term propaganda of the ideas of the revolution among the masses, and here he suddenly told the leaders of the organization that he had come to make an attempt on Alexander II. Solovyov's decision was not supported, and he was forbidden to act on behalf of Land and Freedom, but some of its members provided him with financial and technical support in preparing the attack. On April 2, 1879, he made an independent attempt on the tsar on Palace Square, which ended unsuccessfully. Solovyov was captured, interrogated, and on May 28 he was already executed. In August 1879, "Land and Freedom" split into two independent organizations: "Narodnaya Volya" and "Black Redistribution". Narodnaya Volya proclaimed the overthrow of the autocracy as its goal, and declared terrorism to be the main tactical means of achieving it. From the point of view of the leaders of the organization, the main culprit for all the troubles of modern Russia was Emperor Alexander II. On August 26, 1879, the Executive Committee of the "Narodnaya Volya" sentenced the tsar to death. All the human and material resources of the organization were thrown into its implementation. However, it was not easy to kill the king. The emperor and members of his family were carefully guarded both day and night. As a result of a detailed study of the options for the assassination, the terrorists came to the conclusion that the most appropriate thing was to try to blow up the train on which the royal family went on vacation to the Crimea every year, since the sovereign's guards could not check and secure every meter of the railway. Nikolai Ivanovich Kibalchich, a young scientist, talented engineer and inventor, took over all the technical preparation of the assassinations. Several explosion points were planned: in Odessa, where Alexander traveled from the Crimea by sea; near the city of Aleksandrovsk on the stretch Simferopol - Moscow and in Moscow itself. V. N. Figner and N. I. Kibalchich arrived in Odessa under the name of the Ivanitskys, a married couple of holidaymakers. They rented an apartment, and soon three more young revolutionaries joined them. One of them, MF Frolenko, managed to get a job as a watchman on a local railway line and settled in a booth near Gnilyakovo station. The rest began to bring dynamite there. Soon it became known that the emperor would not go from Livadia to Odessa that summer, and work was stopped. They began to wait for the return of the royal family home in order to attempt an attempt on the train on the way back. the explosion was prepared by a group of experienced underground worker AI Zhelyabov. He obtained documents in the name of the merchant Cheremisinov and received permission to build a leather workshop near the railway track. In this building under construction, such an amount of dynamite was laid that it would be enough to smash the entire tsar's train to pieces (the revolutionaries were not disturbed by the thought that in addition to the tsar, members of his family and innocent servants and guards would die). But something happened that no one expected: during the passage of the train on November 18, 1879, the charge did not explode, something happened to the wires. Probably, the revolutionaries were let down by insufficient technical awareness. Moscow remained. Back in September, a young married couple, who called themselves by the name of Sukhorukov, bought a small house on the outskirts near the railway. These were Sofya Lvovna Perovskaya, an aristocrat, the daughter of a former St. Petersburg governor and a member of the Council of the Minister of the Interior, and a commoner student Lev Nikolaevich Hartman, both active members of Narodnaya Volya. A few more Narodnaya Volya members secretly settled with them, among them the future major figure in science, who became an honorary academician in Soviet times, Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov. All of them were intensively digging a tunnel to the railway track, in which they were supposed to lay dynamite, designed, in their opinion, to change the future of Russia . Sofya Perovskaya closely followed the newspapers. When there was no news from Aleksandrovsk in the morning editions of November 19, she realized that the assassination attempt had not happened there, and began to prepare her group for decisive action. Everyone gathered in the house; the explosives were planted, they were waiting for the tsar's train to appear. The revolutionaries learned that the emperor was traveling to the Crimea with a large number of accompanying persons on two trains. The first, for security reasons, was always followed by a train with servants and petty officials of the court, and the king and his family rode in the second. Therefore, when the expected letter trains approached, Perovskaya and her comrades let the first one through, and the second one was blown up. However, this time, due to some technical malfunction, the service train followed the second one, as usual, and all the victims of this terrible terrorist attack turned out to be in vain. Many people died, and the tsar and his family remained alive and unharmed. The emperor was shocked by the death in fact before his eyes of many innocent people and outraged by the arrogance of the terrorists. He demanded that the police increase their activity in the fight against the revolutionaries. Mass arrests began. But this did not stop the Narodnaya Volya, who continued to carry out their sinister plans. The next assassination attempt was to take place in the Winter Palace, where the royal family lived permanently. Stepan Nikolaevich Khalturin, a member of the Narodnaya Volya, got a job in the palace carpentry workshop. Like other employees of the palace servants, he was given a room in the Winter Palace. There he brought dynamite in small batches and put it in a chest with personal belongings, standing under the bed. Khalturin was engaged in the repair of premises near the royal dining room. There he was to blow up the entire royal family on February 5, 1880, on the day Prince Alexander of Hesse and his son Alexander arrived to visit the Romanovs, in whose honor they gave a ceremonial dinner. This time everything was organized perfectly. At exactly the calculated time (the beginning of dinner was scheduled for 6:20 pm) Khalturin set fire to the fuse and quickly left the palace. He and Zhelyabov, who was waiting for him on the street, heard the sound of a terrible explosion and decided that the deed was finally done. But this time, fate kept Alexander II and his family. The emperor was ten minutes late with his home. And the princes went on a courtesy visit to the chambers of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, who did not feel well and could not go out for dinner. As a result, the sentry soldiers who were in the room on the floor below died. There were 19 killed and 48 wounded, but the king and his family remained unharmed. However, the Narodnaya Volya were stubborn. Killing the emperor became the goal of their lives. The palace and the approaches to it were carefully guarded, they had to look for other places and other ways. One of the leaders of the Narodnaya Volya, A. D. Mikhailov, proposed an assassination attempt on the Stone Bridge, along which the emperor traveled from Tsarskoye Selo to the Winter Palace. The group of terrorists was again headed by Andrei Zhelyabov, under whose leadership experienced demolition workers worked. Under the guise of repair workers, they sailed to the bridge in boats and planted dynamite. Everything was ready by August 17, 1880. During the passage of the emperor, Zhelyabov and the worker Makar Teterka were supposed to sail on a raft and blow up the bridge. At the appointed hour, Zhelyabov came to the place and began to expect a partner, but he did not appear. It was inconvenient for one to act, and the royal carriage proceeded unhindered to the palace. Only after that, Teterka ran in. The terrorists did not take into account that the revolutionary worker did not have his own watch and could not correctly calculate the time. travel to Tsarskoye Selo The repeated terrorist attacks made the authorities hesitate in choosing further political steps. The society insisted on political reforms that would bring Russia closer to the introduction of a constitution. And the government took tough measures in order to stabilize the situation. After A. K. Solovyov's assassination attempt on the emperor, the positions of governors-general with extensive police and military personnel were introduced in St. Petersburg, Kharkov and Odessa. 1 mi powers. The explosion in the dining room of the Winter Palace led to the establishment of a special authority - the Supreme Administrative Commission. General Mikhail Tarielovich Loris-Melikov (1825-1888) was appointed its head, who from August 1880 also became the Minister of Internal Affairs with dictatorial powers M. T. Loris-Melikov - former Kharkov governor-general, hero of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877 -1878 , who conquered the Turkish fortress Kars for Russia, was known as an intelligent, energetic person. He possessed the necessary political flexibility in those conditions and a penchant for liberal transformations. His contemporaries called the method of governing the country the "dictatorship of the heart" and the policy of the "wolf's mouth and fox's tail." Loris-Melikov resolutely and harshly suppressed the revolutionary movement and at the same time advocated the continuation of the reforms of Alexander II and the possible introduction of a constitution. Being a subtle politician and an experienced dignitary, the minister understood that the emperor, brought up in the consciousness of the value of autocratic power, would in every possible way oppose any steps towards its limitation. Therefore, he tried to enter into the confidence of Princess Yuryevskaya and promised to help realize her desire to become an empress. In Livadia, Loris-Melikov started talking about reforms with the emperor, mainly in the presence of his wife, and repeatedly, as if inadvertently, hinted that the Russian people would be very pleased if a woman of Russian blood became the next queen, and not another German princess Alexander listened to these hints with visible benevolence, because the dictator said what the tsar himself was constantly thinking about. - 122 by the power of an act of a constitutional type. Some time later, the third son of the emperor, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, told the Minister of War D. A. Milyutin that on March 1, 1881, the tsar signed the report of the Secret Committee and, after the departure of Loris-Melikov, announced to the grand dukes present in the office: “I gave my consent this idea, although I do not hide from myself that we are on the path to a constitution. The final consideration of the project of the Minister of the Interior was scheduled for March 4, since Alexander II wanted to enlist the support of the Council of Ministers. The emperor did not know that he was no longer allowed to live these three days on March 1, 1881. it was a Sunday. Alexander II, after meeting with Loris-Melikov, the Grand Dukes and the traditional church service, wanted to devote him to pleasant activities. He went into the chambers of his wife and told her that he intended to be present at the divorce of the guards in the Mikhailovsky Manege, then pay a visit to his cousin, the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna, and before dinner take a walk with the family in the Summer Garden. The writer Mark Aldanov, who studied the history of terrorism in Russia, wrote that Princess Yuryevskaya was oppressed by some strange foreboding. She knew how important the document was signed in the morning by her husband, and asked Alexander not to go anywhere until it was approved by the Council of Ministers, to beware of a possible assassination attempt. But the emperor laughed it off, saying that the fortuneteller predicted his death from the seventh terrorist attack, and today, if it happens, then only the sixth The spouses agreed that exactly at three-quarters of the third, Ekaterina Mikhailovna would be waiting for her husband fully dressed for a walk, and they would go to the Summer Garden. The forebodings of Princess Yuryevskaya were not the fruit of the suspiciousness of the exalted lady. that the police arrested Andrey Zhelyabov and in response, more terrorist attacks should be expected in the near future. On the evening of February 28, 123 meeting with the tsar, the minister asked him to limit travel around the capital, but he dismissed the warnings. At a quarter to one on March 1, Alexander II left the Winter Palace in a carriage guarded by six Terek Cossacks. Another Cossack was sitting on the box next to the coachman. The tsar's carriage was followed by a sleigh with three policemen, among whom Colonel Dvorzhitsky was the eldest. The emperor arrived at the Mikhailovsky Manege in a good mood. Sunday guards in the presence of the sovereign were a tradition established by Paul I. Grand dukes, court adjutant generals, foreign ambassadors were also in the arena. During the ceremony, Alexander II had a friendly conversation with them, smiling affably to the officers. After the divorce, he went to his cousin Ekaterina Mikhailovna, with whom he drank tea and talked about family matters. At a quarter past three, the tsar left her palace and went to the Winter Palace, accompanied by his guards. Along Engineering Street, the carriage of Alexander II and the police sleigh drove to the Catherine Canal. The embankment was almost empty. Several police agents were walking along it, a boy was walking with a basket, an officer was walking with two or three soldiers, and a long-haired young man was standing on the sidewalk with a small bundle in his hand. This young man was Nikolai Ivanovich Rysakov, a member of the Narodnaya Volya organization . When the royal carriage caught up with him, he threw his bundle under the hooves of the horses. There was an explosion that killed two Cossacks and a peddler boy, damaged the carriage. This was the same sixth assassination attempt, about which the emperor jokingly spoke in the morning, Alexander II remained unharmed. The coachman persuaded him to stay in the carriage, but the dignity of a military man demanded another action from the emperor. He left the crew of 124 and hurried to the wounded Cossacks to say words of encouragement to them. The police arrived in time to grab Rysakov, who tried to run, but stumbled and fell. Colonel Dvorzhitsky asked the tsar to get into the sleigh and leave the scene of the tragedy as soon as possible, but Alexander wanted to see his failed killer and the victims. When he approached Rysakov, one of the passers-by who fled to the place of the explosion asked: “Are you injured, Your Majesty?” The king replied: “No, nothing happened to me, thank God.” To which the terrorist shouted to him with an evil grin: “Aren't you too early to thank God?” At the same moment, another murderer, Ignatius Ioakimovich Grinevitsky, who was standing at the railing of the canal, to whom no one paid attention in the confusion, rushed to Alexander II and threw another bomb at his feet, just the seventh in the total. When the cloud of smoke cleared, several bodies lay on the pavement. Grinevitsky died on the spot. The emperor was mortally wounded. Both his legs were crushed, he was bleeding, but he still tried to get up on his own, leaning on his hands. In a state of shock, he muttered, “Help me… Is the heir alive? . . Take me to the palace. There to die." They put him in Colonel Dvorzhitsky's sleigh and took him to Zimny. On the March snow on the embankment of the Catherine Canal, 17 people were killed and wounded. Alexander II was brought into his private room and laid on a soldier's bed, covered with an old overcoat, which served him instead of a blanket. The emperor was dying from blood loss, medicine was then powerless against such injuries. All this time, Princess Yuryevskaya was in her chambers and waited for her husband to call her for a walk. However, instead of Alexander, a servant quickly entered the room to report that His Majesty was not well. Ekaterina Mikhailovna took several bottles of medicines, which the emperor usually used, and went down to his room. The sight of the dying sovereign shocked her, but did not deprive her of her will and ability to act. She helped the medical doctor Botkin alleviate the suffering of Alexander: she rubbed his temples with ether, brought an oxygen pillow, prepared bandages with which the doctor tried to stop the continuous bleeding. take care of your husband. For a few minutes, the king came to his senses and took communion, after which he lost consciousness. At half past four in the afternoon, Alexander II died from blood loss in the arms of his wife. According to the laws of the Russian Empire, at the same moment, the heir-tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich - Alexander III became emperor. His close associates immediately began to advise him to remove Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich and the Most Serene Princess Yuryevskaya from the court as soon as possible. But it was impossible to do this before the funeral. Ekaterina Mikhailovna insisted on fulfilling the will of the emperor to organize the funeral ritual. I will have to appear before the Lord, I do not want to look like a circus monkey, and then it will not be time to portray majesty. While the coffin was in the Winter Palace, Princess Yuryevskaya came every day to say goodbye to her husband again and again. She was the only one allowed to raise a thick veil that covered the disfigured face of the sovereign. On the eve of transferring the body to the Peter and Paul Cathedral for burial, she cut off her magnificent chestnut hair and put it in the hands of her husband, who loved to stroke and caress them so much during his lifetime. Alexander III could not prevent Yuryevskaya from attending the funeral. The French ambassador Maurice Palaiologos, a witness to the funeral ritual, wrote that after the heir and other members of the royal family said goodbye to the emperor, when foreign diplomats were already preparing to approach the coffin, the master of ceremonies asked them to wait. And then the following happened: “In the depths of the church, from the door adjacent to the sacristy, the Minister of the Court, Count Adlerberg, appears, supporting a fragile young woman under a long crepe veil. This is the morganatic wife of the late emperor, Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna Yuryevskaya, nee Princess Dolgorukaya. With faltering steps she climbs the steps of the hearse. Kneeling down, she plunges into prayer, leaning her head against the body of the deceased. A few minutes later, she rises with difficulty and, leaning on the arm of Count Adlerberg, slowly disappears into the depths of the church ... ”Shortly after the funeral, Princess Yuryevskaya with her children, at the insistence of Alexander III, left Russia and lived in Paris and Nice, where beautiful houses were purchased in her name during the life of the emperor. Ekaterina Mikhailovna was allowed to take with her from her husband’s personal belongings everything that had to do with his tragic death, including the pectoral cross that was on him March 1, and personal icons. In her luggage was also a death mask taken from the face of Alexander II on March 3, 1881. The items were kept by Yuryevskaya until her death, which happened in Nice on February 15, 1922. In 1931 they were sold at auctions in Paris and London. The Romanov family, of course, could not even imagine that, by expelling the Yuryevskys from Russia, she was saving their lives. While members of the imperial house were killed by terrorists and executed by revolutionaries, the Yuryevskys lived in grand style in hospitable France. In the banks of this country, their accounts had substantial sums, which Alexander II and his entourage took care of at one time. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was in a difficult relationship with the emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I. Nikolai Pavlovich granted him the rank of chamber junker, humiliating for the great poet, from which very young aristocrats usually began their service under the sovereign. Evil tongues said that this was done so that the emperor, a connoisseur of female beauty, could see the beautiful Natalya Nikolaevna Pushkina at court holidays and balls. At that time, Alexander Sergeevich, who was jealous of his wife for the Tsar, could not even imagine that his own granddaughter would marry the grandson of Nicholas I, and his grandson would marry the granddaughter of the same emperor. But family destinies often intersect in the most bizarre way. sixteen years old, despite the dissatisfaction of her mother and stepfather, General P.P. Lansky, she married Lieutenant Colonel of the Apsheron Infantry Regiment Mikhail Leontyevich Dubelt, son of General L.V. Dubelt, chief of staff of the gendarme corps under Nicholas I, who did a “posthumous search” at Pushkin's apartment. Dubelt Jr. was a gambler and a reveler, and the Lansky family foresaw trouble from this marriage. Young people left St. Petersburg after the wedding and went to the place of service of Lieutenant Colonel M. L. Dubelt in Ukraine: first to Nemirov, then to Yelizavetgrad. There, Natalya Pushkina was belatedly convinced of the correctness of her older relatives. Her husband soon squandered not only his own fortune, but also Natalya's dowry - 28 thousand silver rubles, inherited from her father. In addition, Dubelt turned out to be a mentally unbalanced person with a difficult character. He was constantly jealous of his wife, made terrible scandals, and even beat her. Her half-sister A.P. Lanskaya-Arapova considered this scandalous divorce to be the cause of the premature death of their mother N.N. Pushkina-Lanskaya, who “began to melt like a candle” from shame and worries. In anticipation of a divorce, Natalya Alexandrovna with three children (two daughters and a son) went abroad for four years. There, in 1867, she married in London with the crown prince of one of the German duchies, Nicholas Wilhelm of Nassau. She met him 11 years ago in St. Petersburg at one of the palace receptions Then the prince, an officer of the Prussian army, was a guest at the coronation of Alexander II. He was related to the Romanovs: his older brother, Grand Duke Wilhelm Adolf, was the husband of the Emperor's cousin, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mikhailovna. Natalya Alexandrovna Pushkina did not belong to a titled sovereign family, therefore she could not bear the surname and title of her husband - a person of royal blood. Her new son-in-law Prince Georg of Walden-Pyrmont granted her the title of Countess of Merenberg, with whom she became the morganatic wife of the Duke of Nassau. Countess Merenberg remained abroad until the end of her life She lived mainly in Germany, in Wiesbaden, only occasionally visiting Russia From her second marriage, she had two daughters and a son The eldest daughter of the Prince of Nassau and Countess Merenberg Sofya Nikolaevna Merenberg in 1891 married her grandson Emperor Nicholas I, Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich Romanov. The marriage of a member of the Russian imperial family and the semi-legitimate daughter of a German prince was concluded without the consent of the head of the Romanov dynasty, Alexander III. The emperor, outraged by this, informed the prince of Nassau and his brother Duke Adolf of Luxembourg by telegram that such a marriage would be considered in Russia as invalid and had no place. Mikhail Mikhailovich Romanov refused to annul his marriage to Sofya Merenberg and was banned from living in Russia. The couple settled in England. They had a wonderful family, three children, and they did not want to give up their happiness for the sake of titles and the ghostly honor of belonging to the imperial clan. Even when the next Tsar Nicholas II allowed them to return to Russia, Mikhail and Sophia Romanov were unwilling to do so. Sophia's brother Georg Nikolaevich Merenberg married the Most Serene Princess Olga Alexandrovna Yuryevskaya, the daughter of Alexander II from a morganatic marriage with Dolgoruky. This union once again connected the Pushkins with the Romanovs. This married couple also never returned to Russia. The third of the younger Merenbergs, Alexandra Nikolaevna, married the Argentine nobleman Maximo de Elia. The descendants of the Nassau-Merenbergs now live in different countries of the Old and New Worlds. turned out to be much more dramatic. The same fate befell the reforms of this sovereign. Recall that with the support of Princess Yuryevskaya, Alexander decided to change the political structure of Russia. On April 2, a manifesto was to appear in print informing society of upcoming innovations. But the unexpected death of the tsar disrupted the course of these events. When the servants were already washing the body of the deceased Alexander II, to his heir Alexander III approached Count Loris-Melikov and asked if he should publish the manifesto, handed to him early in the morning. At that moment, Alexander III answered him without any hesitation: “I will always respect the will of my father. Tell me to print tomorrow.” However, at night he sent Loris-I3O Melikov a written order to suspend the publication of the document. Such an act was the result of pressure on the new sovereign from his inner circle, and in the first place - the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod K. P. Pobedonostsev. Those close to him insisted that the decisions of Alexander II be frozen by his son, and then they should have been renounced altogether. Unfortunately, this happened. Already on the day after the death of Alexander II, the mood in the Winter Palace changed dramatically. The Romanov family almost openly accused the Minister of the Interior Loris-Melikov of the fact that the last attempt on the sovereign was successful. The meeting, scheduled by Alexander II for March 4, was postponed by Alexander III to the 8th. It was a dramatic clash between reform supporters led by Loris-Melikov, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and D. A. Milyutin and conservatives led by K. P. Pobedonostsev, who delivered a diatribe that denied the need for constitutional changes in Russia. The meeting did not make any decision, but on April 29 the Emperor's Manifesto was published, which proclaimed his will to preserve the inviolability of the foundations of autocracy in the form in which they had developed at the end of the 18th century. Loris-Melikov, Milyutin and many of their supporters from among the ministers and dignitaries were dismissed. Alexander III dismissed his liberal uncle, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, from the posts of fleet commander, naval minister and chairman of the State Council. Konstantin Nikolaevich left St. Petersburg and settled in the Crimea, leading the life of a private person. How can one not recall the words of another outstanding exile and exile, the poet Joseph Brodsky, written a hundred years later: “If it has already happened to be born in an empire, it is better to live in a remote province by the sea.” The resignation and voluntary exile of Konstantin put an end to the possibilities of Russia's development in the direction of a constitutional state of law. Former Minister of War D. A. Milyutin wrote in his diary: "The reaction under the guise of nationality and Orthodoxy is a sure path to death for the state." But neither Milyutin nor anyone else knew that, rejecting the project of the transition of the state system of Russia to a constitutional monarchy, Alexander III unwittingly signed the death sentence for his son and grandson, and for many other members of the Romanov family who fell after the 1917 revolution. under the red wheel. From Alexander III, neither society nor his own family expected anything outstanding. He devoted his life to the preservation of autocracy, the archaism of which was already understood by his father. His first actions after taking the throne were acts of revenge and memory. On April 3, 1881, a public execution of participants and organizers of the assassination attempt on Alexander II took place in St. Petersburg. All of them were betrayed by Rysakov, whose bombing ended in failure. According to the verdict of the Special Presence of the ruling Senate, Narodnaya Volya A. I. Zhelyabov, S. L. Perovskaya, N. I. Kibalchich, T. M. Mikhailov and N. I. Rysakov were hanged. Grinevitsky died at the scene of the explosion without identifying himself. His head was cut off and put on public display for identification. In vain, LN Tolstoy appealed in his letter to Alexander III about mercy: “Forgive me, repay good for evil, and from hundreds of villains they will go not to you, not to us (it doesn’t matter), but they will pass from the Devil to God, and thousands, millions will tremble with joy and tenderness at the sight of goodness from the throne at such a terrible moment for the son of the murdered father ... ”However, the new emperor was a different person and preferred revenge to forgiveness In memory of the death of Alexander II on the Ekaterininsky Canal (now the Griboedov Canal) a church was laid. This temple, I32, called the Savior on Spilled Blood, was built in the Russian style and resembles St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. It was erected for almost twenty years and was consecrated only on August 19, 1908. The church has survived to this day, it is clearly visible from Nevsky Prospekt. Alexander II died at the age of 63. For 26 years he ruled a huge empire, for which he probably did everything he could, given the peculiarities of his character and upbringing. A fatal explosion on the Catherine Canal prevented him from doing more. Alexander was respected by both his comrades-in-arms and political opponents. The well-known anarchist revolutionary Prince P. A. Kropotkin wrote about the impression that the emperor made on him, then still a young man: I then looked at Alexander II as a hero of the family; he did not attach importance to court ceremonies, then began to work at five o'clock in the morning and fought stubbornly with the reactionary party in order to carry out a series of reforms, in a series of which the emancipation of the peasants was only the first step. The new emperor Alexander III ascended the throne as an adult, a fully formed person. In 1881 he was 36 years old. Prior to this, for a decade and a half, he had participated in the political life of the country as the heir to the crown prince. For him, there were no secrets and insoluble contradictions in Russian politics and family life of the Romanov dynasty. He was conservative and old-fashioned; perhaps too conservative and too old-fashioned for its time. With his accession in the history of the country and in the history of the imperial dynasty of the Romanovs, a new era began - an era of stagnation that turned into a crisis.
- The Emperor of All Russia, the eldest son of Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich and Empress Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, was born in Moscow on April 17, 1818. Generals Merder and Kavelin were his tutors. Merder drew attention to himself as a company commander in the school of guards ensigns established on August 18, 1823. Nikolai Pavlovich, then still the Grand Duke, having learned about his pedagogical abilities, meek disposition and rare mind, decided to entrust him with the upbringing of his son. Merder entered this important position on June 12, 1824, when the Grand Duke was barely 6 years old, and with tireless zeal he performed it for 10 years. There is no doubt that the influence of this highly humane educator on the young heart of his pet was the most beneficial. No less beneficial was the influence of another mentor of the Grand Duke - the famous poet Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky, the head of his class studies. The best characterization of the upbringing received by Alexander can be the words spoken by Zhukovsky about his partner in the upbringing, General Merder, which can be fully attributed to him himself: “There was nothing artificial in the upbringing given to them; but the unceasing action of his beautiful soul ... His pet ... heard one voice of truth, saw one disinterestedness ... could his soul not fall in love with good, could at the same time not acquire respect for humanity, so necessary in any life, especially in life near the throne and on the throne. There is no doubt that Zhukovsky, with his general influence, contributed to the preparation of the heart of his pupil for the future emancipation of the peasants.
Upon reaching the age of majority, the heir to the crown prince traveled around Russia, accompanied by Kavelin, Zhukovsky and the adjutant wing Yuryevich. He was the first of the royal family to visit (1837) Siberia, and as a result of this visit, the fate of political exiles was mitigated. Later, while in the Caucasus, the Tsarevich distinguished himself during the attack of the highlanders, for which he was awarded the Order of St. George 4th degree. In 1838, Alexander Nikolaevich traveled around Europe and at that time, in the family of the Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt, he chose Princess Maximilian-Wilhelmina-Augusta-Sophia-Maria (born July 27, 1824) as his wife, who upon arrival in Russia received St. Chrismation according to the charter of the Orthodox Church, December 5, 1840, with the name of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna. The next day, the betrothal followed, and on April 16, 1841, the marriage took place.
From the marriage of Emperor Alexander II with Empress Maria Alexandrovna, the following children were born: led. book. Alexandra Alexandrovna, b. August 19, 1842, d. June 16, 1849; led. book. heir Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, b. September 8, 1843, d. April 12, 1865; led. book. Alexander Alexandrovich - the now prosperously reigning Emperor Alexander III (see), genus. February 26, 1845; Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, born April 10, 1847, from August 16, 1874 in marriage to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, daughter of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin Friedrich Franz II, b. May 2, 1854; led. book. Alexey Alexandrovich, b. January 2, 1850; led. book. Maria Alexandrovna, b. 5 October 1853, married to Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, from 11 January 1874; led. book. Sergei Alexandrovich, b. April 29, 1857, in marriage since June 3, 1884 with Elisaveta Feodorovna, daughter of Grand. hertz. Hessian, b. October 20, 1864; led. book. Pavel Alexandrovich, b. September 21, 1860, married since July 4, 1889 with the Greek Queen Alexandra Georgievna, b. August 30, 1870
While still heir, Alexander participated in the affairs of government. In the last years of the reign of Emperor Nicholas and during his travels, Alexander repeatedly replaced his august parent; in 1848, during his stay at the Vienna, Berlin and other courts, he performed various important diplomatic missions. Having taken military educational institutions under his control, Alexander took care of their needs with special love and the gradual improvement of both scientific teaching and education.
The accession of Alexander II to the throne on February 19, 1855 took place under very difficult circumstances. The Crimean War, where Russia had to deal with the combined forces of almost all the major European powers, was taking an unfavorable turn for us. The forces of the allies by that time had increased even more due to the addition of 15 tons of Sardinian troops to them; the enemy fleet acted against Russia on all seas. Despite, however, his peacefulness, which was also known in Europe, Alexander expressed his firm determination to continue the fight and achieve an honorable peace. Up to 360 tons of militia men were recruited, the same number was given by 3 recruiting sets. The steadfastness and courage of the Russian troops in defending Sevastopol caused enthusiastic surprise even from the enemies; the names of Kornilov, Nakhimov and others were covered with unfading glory. Finally, however, the terrible action of the enemy artillery, which destroyed our fortifications and daily carried off thousands of people, and the combined assault of Sevastopol by all the allies, carried out on August 27, forced the Russian troops to leave the southern part of the city and move to the north. The fall of Sevastopol, however, did not bring significant benefits to the enemy. On the other hand, the Russians were partly rewarded with success in Asia Minor: Kars, that impregnable fortress reinforced by the British, was taken on November 16 by General Muravyov with all his large garrison. This success gave us the opportunity to show our readiness for peace. The allies, also tired of the war, were willing to enter into negotiations, which began through the mediation of the Vienna court. Representatives of 7 powers (Russia, France, Austria, England, Prussia, Sardinia and Turkey) gathered in Paris and on March 18, 1856 a peace treaty was concluded. The main conditions of this agreement were as follows: navigation on the Black Sea and the Danube is open to all merchant ships; the entrance to the Black Sea, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles is closed to warships, with the exception of those light warships that each power maintains at the mouth of the Danube to ensure free navigation on it. Russia and Turkey, by mutual agreement, maintain an equal number of ships in the Black Sea. Russia, in the form of ensuring free navigation along the Danube, cedes to the Danubian principalities part of its territory at the mouth of this river; she also promises not to fortify the Åland Islands. Christians in Turkey are compared in rights with Muslims, and the Danubian principalities come under the general protectorate of Europe.
The peace of Paris, although unfavorable for Russia, was nevertheless honorable for her in view of such numerous and powerful opponents. However, its disadvantageous side - the limitation of the naval forces of Russia on the Black Sea - was eliminated during the life of Alexander II by a statement on October 19, 1870.
But the disadvantages of the treaty were redeemed by the good of the peace itself, which made it possible to turn all attention to internal reforms, the urgency of which became obvious.
Indeed, the Crimean War exposed many internal ulcers of our fatherland, showed the complete failure of our former way of life. A complete reorganization of many parts turned out to be necessary, but serfdom stood inexorable obstacles in the way of any improvement. The need for reforms became palpable, urgent. And with the advent of peace, a new era of internal renewal was not slow to begin. Already in the concluding words of the royal manifesto on March 19, 1856, announcing the end of the Crimean War, an entire program of the future activity of the tsar-liberator was expressed: may the striving for enlightenment and all useful activity develop everywhere and with renewed vigor, and each under the shadow of laws, equally fair for all, equally patronizing, may enjoy in the world the fruit of the labors of the innocent. Finally, and this is Our first living desire, light saving Faith, illuminating minds, strengthening hearts, may it preserve and improve more and more social morality, this surest guarantee of order and happiness.
In the same year, it was ordered to attend to the opening of women's gymnasiums and an academic committee was established to draw up and review teaching programs and study guides. On the day of the coronation, August 26, the new manifesto of the sovereign was marked by a number of favors. Recruitment was suspended for 3 years, all state arrears, miscalculations, etc. were forgiven, various criminals were released or at least the punishment was mitigated, including state ones, who participated in the rebellion on December 14, 1825 and in secret societies of that time, Recruitment of underage Jews was canceled and recruitment between the latter was ordered to be carried out on a general basis, etc.
But all these private measures, met with enthusiasm by Russia, were only the threshold of those fundamental reforms that marked the reign of Alexander II. First of all, and most urgently, it seemed to solve the question of serfdom, which, as it was obvious to everyone, was the main root of all other shortcomings of our warehouse. The idea of the need to liberate the peasants and, moreover, with a plot of land prevailed already in the time of Emperor Nicholas. The entire intelligentsia regarded serfdom as a terrible and shameful evil. Literature continuously continued in this sense the glorious tradition of Radishchev. Suffice it to mention the names of Griboyedov, Belinsky, Grigorovich, I. S. Turgenev. But the mood of the intelligentsia, which was predominantly noble, did not interfere with the fact that when the question in any form passed to the class discussion of the nobles, then in this environment it often met with rebuff. Imp. Alexander II, assuming the throne, was convinced that the liberation of the peasants should take place precisely in his reign. Such was the general mood of the intelligentsia, and even among the peasants themselves there was a vague premonition of the imminent "will." The decrees on the militia of 1854 and at the beginning of 1855 caused considerable unrest in as many as 9 provinces, as the masses of the peasants expressed their desire to join the militia, considering service in the militia a transition to “freedom”.
The question seemed, therefore, urgent. When the sovereign spoke in Moscow about the need and timeliness of the liberation of the serfs, all of Russia was seized with enthusiastic, joyful hopes ... And in 1856 a special secret committee was established, and on January 3, 1857 had its first meeting under the direct supervision and chairmanship of the emperor, whose task was to consider the decrees and assumptions about serfdom. The composition of this committee included: Prince Orlov, gr. Lanskoy, Count Bludov, Minister of Finance Brock, Count VF Adlerberg, Prince Vas. A. Dolgorukov, Minister of State Property M. N. Muravyov, Chevkin, Prince P. P. Gagarin, Baron M. A. Korf and Ya. I. Rostovtsev. Of these, only Lanskoy, Bludov, Rostovtsev and Butkov, who managed the affairs of the committee, spoke in favor of the real emancipation of the peasants; the majority proposed only a number of measures to alleviate the situation of the serfs. The sovereign was dissatisfied with the course of affairs and appointed Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich a member of the committee. Meanwhile, on August 18, a petition was received from the nobility of 3 Lithuanian provinces for the release of the peasants, but with the preservation of the right to land for the landowners. In response to this petition, on November 20, the highest rescript was given to the Vilna military, Grodno and Kovno governors-general, in which the sovereign allowed the nobility of each of the named provinces to establish a committee that would develop a project to improve the life of the peasants. In the same year, the same permission was given to the nobility of St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, and the next year - to the nobles of Moscow and other provinces; On January 8, 1858, the secret committee was transformed into the "main committee on peasant affairs", which also included Count Panin, the Minister of Justice, and in March of the same year it was formed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs under the name "Zemstvo department of the Central Statistical Committee" a purely administrative body that played an important role in the whole affair. It included such persons as N. A. Milyutin, Ya. A. Solovyov, zealous champions of the idea of liberation. The journalism of that time was also an energetic ally of the minority, and thanks to the positive will of the sovereign, the good cause, despite the opposition of the majority in the committee, quickly moved forward and even assumed wider dimensions than those that had been put in the original rescripts to the nobility. Instead of "improving the life of the peasants," the question was posed directly on the basis of their complete emancipation. Feb 17 In 1859, a decree was announced on the establishment of "editorial commissions", of which Adjutant General Rostovtsev was appointed chairman. The projects worked out by the provincial committees were submitted to these commissions. The project developed by the editorial committee was supposed to go to the commission, which was composed of gr. Lansky, Count Palen and Gen. Muravyov and Rostovtsev, where the head of affairs was d.s. With. Zhukovsky. Finally, this commission presents the draft with its own considerations to the main committee. When the provincial committees finally submitted their drafts to the editorial commissions, two times (in August and December 1859) landowners were called from the provinces, two from each, to deliver the necessary information. Between these latter there were many conservatives, the main committee was also willing to slow down the matter, but the decisive will of the sovereign, who demanded that the committee finish its work by January 1861, and the influence of its new chairman, led. K. Konstantin Nikolaevich, who replaced Orlov, quickly moved things forward. On January 28, the provisions worked out by the editorial commissions and passed through the main committee were considered by the State Council, which adopted them with some changes in the sense of reducing the size of the peasant allotment. Finally, on February 19, 1861, a great manifesto followed, which is the glory of the liberator tsar - a manifesto on the liberation of the 22 million peasant population from serfdom.
The emancipation of the landlord peasants took place on the following principles. First of all, it was declared obligatory for the landowner to allocate his former peasants, in addition to the estate land, arable and haymaking, in the amounts determined in the regulation. Such an obligation for the landowner to allocate allotment to the peasants was limited only to small landowners, landowners of the Don Army Land, Siberian landowners and owners of private mining plants, for whom special allotment rules were established. Secondly, along with such an obligation for the landowner to give the peasants allotments, an obligation was declared for the peasants to accept the allotment and keep in their use for the duties established in favor of the landowner the worldly land allotted to them for the first nine years (until February 19, 1870). After 9 years, individual members of the community were given the right both to leave it and to refuse to use field lands and lands if they redeem their estate; the society itself also receives the right not to accept for its use such plots that individual peasants refuse. Thirdly, with regard to the size of the peasant allotment and the payments associated with it, according to general rules, it is customary to base on voluntary agreements between landowners and peasants, for which purpose a charter charter is concluded through mediators established by the situation, their congresses and provincial presences for peasant affairs, and in app. lips. - and special verification commissions. Such a voluntary agreement is limited only by the requirement that no less than the amount of land that is determined in the local regulations grouping the provinces, to determine the size of the shower allotment in each of them, into three lanes remain in the use of the peasants; and then, in accordance with the number of per capita allotments, local provisions also determine the size of the duties that the temporarily liable peasants had to bear in favor of the landowners before the ransom was made. These duties are either monetary, or determined in the form of quitrent, or in the form of a product service, corvée. As long as the temporarily liable peasants do not redeem their lands and are in the relationship of the guilty to the former landowner, the latter is provided with patrimonial police in the rural society of the temporarily liable peasants.
The regulation, however, is not limited to the rules for allocating land to peasants for permanent use, but makes it easier for them to buy out the allotted plots for ownership through a state buyout operation, and the government lends the peasants a certain amount against the land they acquire with payment by installments for 49 years and, giving this amount to the landowner in state interest-bearing papers, he takes all further settlements with the peasants upon himself. Upon approval by the government of the redemption transaction, all binding relations between the peasants and the landowner are terminated, and the latter enter the category of peasant proprietors.
Thus, peacefully and without significant shocks to the state mechanism, the great reform was accomplished, which since the time of Catherine II was considered to be on the waiting list, but which they were still afraid to start. Instead of 22 mil. enslaved people created a free peasant class with significant self-government within the community and volost. The rights granted to the landlord peasants by the regulation of February 19, 1861, were gradually extended to the peasants of the palace, appanage, ascribed and state.
After the peasant situation in a number of administrative reforms, the most important place, without any doubt, is the provision on zemstvo institutions. As early as March 25, 1859, the highest command was given to transform the provincial and district administrations, and the following leadership was indicated: the composition of the police department; in this consideration, it is necessary to provide the economic administration in the county with greater unity, greater independence and greater confidence; at the same time, it is necessary to determine the degree of participation of each estate in the economic administration of the county. On October 23, 1859, these beginnings were indicated to be distributed for the transformation of provincial institutions. As a result, a special commission was set up at the Ministry of the Interior, the activity of which was facilitated from the very beginning by modern work carried out in a special commission at the Ministry of Finance to revise the system of taxes. As a result of all these works, the published 1 Jan. 1864 regulation on provincial and district zemstvo institutions, to which these latter are entrusted with the following matters: managing the property, capital and collections of the zemstvo, arrangement and maintenance of buildings and communications belonging to the zemstvo, management of mutual zemstvo property insurance, care for the development of local trade and industry, affairs of national food and public charity of the poor, participation, mainly in economic terms, within the limits of the law in the care of building churches, public education, public health and the maintenance of prisons, layout, appointment, collection and expenditure of local and some state monetary fees to meet zemstvo needs of the province or county. To manage all these zemstvo affairs, they are established: in each county - district assembly, meeting once a year and having its own permanent executive body called county zemstvo council; the province has provincial zemstvo assembly with its permanent executive body - provincial land administration. In connection with the reform of the zemstvo administration, there is also a decree approved on June 16, 1870. city position, to which our cities are granted considerable self-government. According to this Regulation, the city public administration consists of city election meetings, city duma And city council chaired by the mayor. The scope of urban self-government within the city is very extensive. The Duma independently arranges city administration and economy, elects officials and appoints their salaries, establishes city taxes, manages city property, spends sums, takes care of the external improvement of the city, its health, education and industry, charitable institutions, etc., moreover, the exact execution of the decrees issued by city public institutions must be strictly monitored by the police authorities.
Among the reforms that marked the reign of Alexander II, one of the leading places undoubtedly belongs to judicial reform. This deeply thought-out reform had a strong and direct influence on the entire structure of state and public life, it introduced completely new, long-awaited principles into it - which are: complete separation of the judiciary from administrative and accusatory, publicity and publicity of the court, independence of judges, advocacy and adversarial order of legal proceedings, moreover, more important in terms of the severity of crimes, criminal cases are indicated to be transferred to the court of public conscience in the person of jurors. Already 29 Sept. In 1862, the main provisions regarding the transformation of the judiciary, drawn up by the Second Department of His Own imp. majesty's office. Then a special commission was established under the direct chairmanship of the Secretary of State, which, developing these provisions, drew up draft judicial statutes, later discussed in detail and corrected by the Council of State, and, finally, on November 24, 1864, the Charter of Criminal and Civil Proceedings and the Charter of about the penalties imposed by justices of the peace.
The essence of judicial reform is as follows. The court is made oral and public; judicial power is separated from accusatory power and belongs to the courts without any participation of administrative power; the main form of legal proceedings is the adversarial process; the case on the merits can be dealt with no more than in two instances; to the third instance (the cassation department of the Senate) can be transferred only upon requests for cassation of decisions in cases of a clear violation of the direct meaning of laws or rituals and forms of production; in cases of crimes entailing punishments, connected with the deprivation of all or some of the special rights and advantages of the state, the determination of guilt is left to jurors elected from local inhabitants of all classes; clerical secrecy is abolished, and to intercede in cases and defend defendants, there are sworn attorneys at the courts, who are under the supervision of special councils composed of the same corporation. New judicial institutions received the following types: world courts, congresses of justices of the peace, district courts and judicial chambers. A county, constituting a world district, is divided into world sections, the number of which is determined by a special timetable. In each district of the peace there is a district justice of the peace, and in the district - several honorary justices of the peace; all of them are elected for 3 years from local residents who meet the conditions specified in the law, and are approved by the Governing Senate. For the final decision of the case, subject to a world trial, district and honorary justices of the peace of the district constitute regular congresses at the appointed time, the chairman of which is elected for 3 years from their own midst. - For several counties, a district court is established, consisting of a chairman appointed by the government and a certain number of members, and from one or more provinces a supreme judicial district is constituted, in which a judicial chamber is established, divided into departments, and both the chairman and the regular members of them are appointed government. In district courts and judicial chambers, to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant in criminal cases, jurors are elected from local inhabitants of all classes. Then, each of these two institutions has a special prosecutor and a certain number of his comrades. The prosecutor of the district court is subordinate to the prosecutor of the judicial chamber, and the latter is directly dependent on the Minister of Justice, as the prosecutor general.
Military administration also underwent transformations. Already at the beginning of the reign, military settlements were destroyed, the term of soldier's service was reduced from 25 to 15 years, humiliating corporal punishment was abolished, special attention was paid to raising the level of general education of army officers through reforms of military educational institutions. Further, due to the observed shortcomings in the structure of military control, which stemmed from its excessive centralization, in 1862 the highest order was given to the Ministry of War to subject the system of military control to a radical revision, bearing in mind the absolute need to strengthen control over the locations of troops. As a result of this revision, the highest approved on August 6, 1864, the Regulations on the military district administrations. On the basis of this provision, initially 10 military districts were organized, and then (Aug. 6, 1865) another 4. In each district, a chief commander appointed at the direct highest discretion was appointed, bearing the name of the commander of the troops of such and such a military district. This position may also be assigned to the local governor-general. In some districts, an assistant to the commander of the troops is also appointed. - Another significant measure for the transformation of our military system was the Charter on military service issued on January 1, 1874, according to which the entire male population of the empire, without distinction of status, is subject to military service, and this service consists in staying for 6 years in the ranks, 9 years in exile and up to 40 years of age in the militia. It must also be borne in mind that in 1867 a public court was also introduced in the army, judicial power is distributed among the regimental courts, district courts and the main military court in St. Petersburg. The composition of the courts, excluding the regimental ones, was supposed to be replenished with officers graduating from the course at the Military Law Academy.
Public education also attracted the attention of the sovereign. Of particular importance in this regard was the publication of a new and general charter of Russian universities on June 18, 1863, in the development of which, on the initiative of the Minister of Education A. V. Golovnin, a special commission under the Main Board of Schools, composed mainly of professors from St. Petersburg, participated. university. According to this statute, each university (under the general authority of the Minister of Public Education) is entrusted to the trustee of the educational district, who is entrusted with government control, within the limits determined by the statute, over the independent orders of the university. Each university consists of a certain number of faculties, as components of one whole. The management of the educational part is entrusted to the faculties and the council of the university. Each faculty constitutes an independent faculty meeting of ordinary and extraordinary professors, chaired by a dean elected by them for a term of 3 years. The council is made up of all ordinary and extraordinary professors, chaired by the rector, who is elected by the council for 4 years and confirmed in the rank by the highest order. The rector was also entrusted with the immediate management of the university. The charter determines what matters the faculties and the council can decide with their own power and what must go to the approval of the trustee and minister. For economic affairs, under the chairmanship of the rector from the deans and the inspector (invited only for student affairs), a board was established. A university court of three judges, annually elected by a council of professors, has been established to try student misdemeanors. In addition, the content of professors, the number of departments and the funds of the university are increasing.
On November 19, 1864, a new statute on gymnasiums also appeared, significantly modified and supplemented by the statute of June 19, 1871. According to these statutes, secondary educational institutions are divided into classical, in which the classical system is carried out with great firmness, and real. Public education in the full sense is regulated by the highest approved on June 14, 1864. Regulations on primary public schools. Attention was also paid to women's education. Already in the 60s, instead of the former closed women's institutions, open ones began to be arranged, with the admission of girls of all classes, and these new institutions were under the control of the Institutions of Empress Maria. Similar gymnasiums were also established by the Ministry of Public Education. In 1870, on May 24, a new Regulations on women's gymnasiums and pro-gymnasiums of the Ministry of Public Education. These educational institutions are accepted under the highest patronage of the Empress. They may be established with the permission of the trustees of educational districts in such cities where it will be possible to ensure their existence by public or private donations, and the ministry is allowed to provide these institutions with benefits, for which it is allocated a certain amount annually in accordance with the funds of the treasury, but not more than, however, 150 t. r. in year. Finally, the need for higher education for women led to the establishment of pedagogical courses and higher courses for women in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kyiv, Kazan and Odessa.
The reform of the press also had a profound and beneficial effect on the development of public consciousness. Already in 1862, the main department of censorship was closed and part of its duties were assigned to the Ministry of the Interior, and the other - directly to the Minister of Education. Finally, on April 6, 1865, Temporary Rules for Press. The Central Administration for Press Affairs was entrusted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, within which the Main Directorate for Press Affairs was opened. This department is entrusted with three types of affairs: 1) monitoring of printed works published without the permission of censorship; 2) the supervision of printers, lithographs and bookshops, and 3) the administration of the remaining preliminary censorship. All periodicals and essays of at least 10 sheets published in the capitals, as well as all publications of scientific institutions, drawings, plans and maps are everywhere exempted from preliminary censorship.
The reign of Alexander II, so rich in terms of internal reforms, was also marked in terms of foreign policy a whole series of hostilities, which in the end again raised the temporarily diminished importance of Russia after the Crimean War and again brought her a proper position in the host of European powers. As a matter of fact, despite the fact that the matter of internal renewal absorbed almost all the attention of the government, especially in the first half of the reign of Alexander, the war with external enemies went on almost continuously on the outskirts of the state. First of all, upon his accession to the throne, Alexander II had to end another war, inherited from his previous reign along with the Crimean one. It was a war with the Caucasian highlanders. This struggle, which has been going on for a long time, costing us a lot of strength and means, has not yet given any decisive results. Shamil, the leader of the highlanders, even pushed us back from Dagestan and Chechnya. At the end of the Crimean War, the sovereign appointed Prince Baryatinsky as commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, and things went faster. Already in April 1859, Vedeno, the seat of Shamil, was taken, which entailed the subordination of almost all of Dagestan. Shamil with his adherents withdrew to the impregnable heights of Gunib, but was surrounded on all sides by Russian troops and on August 25, after their decisive attack, was forced to surrender. The Eastern Caucasus was thus conquered; there was still the conquest of the West. The latter was all the more difficult because the highlanders were actively supported by all our enemies, who did not want to allow the end of the Caucasian war. Despite the peace concluded with us, Turkey accepted the highlanders as Muslims under its protection, delivered weapons and reinforcements through its emissaries. England also collected money in favor of the Circassians, and the French ambassador in Constantinople clearly took their side. In Trabzon, the European consuls (with the exception of the Prussian) even formed a committee of "assistance to the highlanders." Despite, however, all these out-of-town election meetings, urban thinking, the work of subjugating and gradually pushing the highlanders to the sea moved forward, albeit slowly, thanks to the energy and familiarity with local conditions of General Evdokimov. At the beginning of 1863, Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich was appointed governor of the Caucasus, and things went faster, so that on May 21, 1864, the Grand Duke could telegraph the sovereign about the complete conquest of the Western Caucasus.
In the same year, 2 more major events took place - the pacification of Poland and the conquest of Turkestan.
After the suppression of the Polish uprising in 1831, Poland was in the position of a rebellious country, so that next to the ordinary administration, there was also a special military and police department in it. Emperor Alexander II, having ascended the throne, destroyed this distinction between Poles and other Russian subjects. An amnesty was granted to political criminals, many benefits were granted to the Poles, and the establishment of an Agricultural Society with an unlimited number of members under the chairmanship of Count Zamoyski was allowed. Despite all these benefits, however, the revolutionary party did not give up its aspirations. The agricultural society also began to pursue the goals of national unification. The success of the Italian national movement, the unrest in the Austrian possessions - all this increased the hopes of the Polish patriots. In 1860, a series of demonstrations began against the Russians, which especially intensified in 1861. Despite these demonstrations, which even went as far as clashes between the people and the troops, the government continued its restrained and peaceful policy. The Poles were even announced the appointment of a well-known Polish patriot, the Marquis of Velepolsky, director of education and spiritual affairs, the establishment in the Kingdom of new schools and the State Council from eminent persons of the region, elected councils in provinces and counties and an elected municipal administration in Warsaw. But all this could not satisfy the revolutionary party. An attempt was even made on the life of the newly appointed viceroy of the kingdom, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, and it was announced that a new Polish government (zhond) with a central people's committee would be established in all parts of former Poland. In view of all these threatening actions, the government resorted to a decisive measure - it announced a general recruitment in the Kingdom not by lot, but by nominal call, limiting it to the urban population and those of the rural residents who are not engaged in arable farming. This measure brought the revolutionary party to the last degree of irritation, and at the beginning of 1863, when the announcement of recruitment followed, the revolutionary committee called all Poles to arms. On the night of January 10-11, an attack was made on our detachments located in different places of the Kingdom. The company generally failed. When the last attempt made by the government towards reconciliation, namely the granting of forgiveness to those who laid down their arms before May 1, did not lead to anything, the government took vigorous measures to suppress the uprising. The intercession of the Western powers, who sent their notes on the Polish question, was rejected, and the general indignation that seized Russia due to the importunate and perky tone of these notes and expressed itself in a whole mass of addresses from all noble assemblies, expressing their devotion to the sovereign and readiness to die for him, forced the uninvited intercessors back down from their demands. The uprising was suppressed thanks to the energetic actions of the governor of Warsaw, gr. Berg and the Vilna governor-general gr. Muraviev. Following this, a number of measures were taken that contributed to the final appeasement of Poland, and the main figures in this field were Prince Cherkassky and N. A. Milyutin. Polish peasants were granted landed property and secular self-government, cities and towns were freed from patrimonial dependence in relation to the landowners, in the provinces (of which the number was increased from 5 to 10) and counties, a management similar to that in force in the empire was introduced, etc. In 1869 (March 28) the highest will was proclaimed to take measures for the complete merger of the Kingdom with other parts of the empire and to abolish for this purpose all central government institutions in the Kingdom. Finally, in 1869, the Imperial University was established to replace the Main School in Warsaw.
Simultaneously with all these events, a struggle was also waged on our Asian frontier. Already in the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, the Russians became a firm foot in Turkestan thanks to the subjugation of the Kirghiz. In 1864, as a result of the energetic and intensified actions of General Verevkin and Colonel Chernyaev, our frontier line moved forward significantly: Chernyaev took Aulieta and Chekment by storm, and Verevkin, for his part, conquered Turkestan. Having learned that the Emir of Bukhara intended to occupy Tashkent, which depended on Kokand, Chernyaev in 1865 quickly moved to this city, protected by 30 tons. garrison, and, with only 2000 people. and 12 cannons, took it by open assault. The struggle with the emir continued until 1868, when Samarkand and Uzhgut were taken. The emir was forced to accept and conclude an agreement, according to which he provided Russian merchants with complete freedom of trade and abolished slavery in his possessions. Back in 1867, the Turkestan Governor General was established from the Turkestan region with the addition of the Semirechensk region to it again. In 1871, the Russian possessions were enriched by the annexation of Kulja, and in 1875 Kokand itself, which is now the Fergana region, was occupied. Even before the conquest of Kokand, the struggle with the Khiva khan began. Under the protection of their unfortunate, waterless steppes, this latter did not pay attention to the treaty of 1842 concluded with the Russians, attacked Russian merchants, robbed them and took them into captivity. I had to take drastic measures. In 1873, three detachments moved to Khiva from three different directions: a detachment led by General Markozov marched from the shores of the Caspian Sea, General Verevkin marched from Orenburg, and General Kaufman, the chief commander of the entire expedition, marched from Tashkent. The first detachment was supposed to return, but the remaining two, despite the 45 ° heat, lack of water and all sorts of difficulties, reached Khiva, took it and conquered the entire state in 2 weeks. The Khan was forced to admit his dependence on the White Tsar, to cede part of his possessions at the mouth of the Amu Darya; further, he granted the Russian merchants complete freedom of trade and exclusive navigation along the Amu Darya, their disputes with the Khivans were to be resolved by the Russian authorities; under the khan himself, a council of noble Khiva and Russian officers was established, and, finally, he had to pay an indemnity of 2,200,000 rubles. After the subjugation of the Kirghiz and Turkmens, the annexation of Samarkand and Kokand and bringing Khiva and Bukhara into dependence, the Russians had only one more enemy in Central Asia - it was the Khan of Kashgar Yakub, patronized by the British, who delivered him the title of emir from the Sultan of Constantinople. When in 1870 the Russians occupied Gulja and thus approached his possessions, he tried to resist, supported by the British. Yakub died in 1877, and the Chinese claimed his possessions, demanding that the Russians also return Kulja. After lengthy negotiations in St. Petersburg on February 24, 1881, through the Chinese authorized Marquis Tzeng, an agreement was concluded with the Chinese, according to which the Russians ceded Gulja to them and renounced their claims to Kashgar in exchange for various trade privileges.
In order to punish the Turkmens, who lived on the borders of Afghanistan and owned the cities of Geok-Tepe and Merv, for their predatory raids, an expedition was undertaken against them. On December 20, 1880, General Skobelev stormed Yanshkale, then Dengil-Tepe and Geok-Tepe, and on January 30, 1881, took Askhabad. The cession of Akhal-Teke by the Shah in connection with the acquisition of Lehabad and Geok-Tepe, however, brought us very advantageous positions on the northern border of Afghanistan. (cf. I. Strelbitsky"Land acquisitions of Russia in the reign of Emperor Alexander II from 1855 to 1881", St. Petersburg, 1881).
On the eastern outskirts of Asia, during the reign of Alexander II, Russia also made quite important acquisitions, moreover, by peaceful means. According to the Aigun Treaty concluded with China in 1857, the entire left bank of the Amur departed to us, and the Beijing Treaty of 1860 provided us with part of the right bank between the river. Ussuri, Korea and the sea. Since then, the rapid settlement of the Amur Region began, various settlements and even cities began to appear one after another. In 1875, Japan ceded a part of Sakhalin that did not yet belong to us in exchange for the Kuril Islands, which we did not need at all. In the same way, in order not to scatter its forces and round off the Asian border, the government decided to abandon our former possessions in North America and ceded them to the United North American States for a monetary reward, which served as the basis of our friendship with the latter.
But the largest, most glorious military enterprise of the reign of Alexander II is the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878.
After the Crimean War, Russia, preoccupied with its own internal affairs, for some time completely removed itself from Western European affairs. So, in 1859, during the Austro-Italian clash, Russia limited itself to armed neutrality. The latter responded to the intervention of the Roman Curia in the government's relations with its Catholic subjects by canceling the concordat of 1847 on December 4, 1866, and in June 1869 forbidding the Catholic bishops of the empire to take part in the council convened by Pius IX. During the Danish-Prussian war, the emperor tried to be only an intermediary and remained in the same neutral position during the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. fleet on the Black Sea.
Taking advantage of the defeat of France and the isolation of England, the Russian Chancellor, Prince Gorchakov, in a circular dispatch dated October 19, declared that Russia did not intend to embarrass itself with the mentioned article any longer, and the London Conference on March 1 (13), 1871 recognized this change, deleting the article from the treaty. After the fall of Napoleon 3, the emperors entered into a close alliance with each other, called the "Triple". The Berlin Congress of 1872, the arrival of the German emperor in St. Petersburg in 1873 and the frequent visits of the 3 emperors further strengthened this alliance. The Eastern question, however, soon subjected this friendship of the West to us to a severe test.
The fate of the Slavic tribes kindred to us on the Balkan Peninsula has always attracted the attention and sympathy of the Russian people and government. Of these tribes, in the 60s, the Serbs, Romanians and Montenegrins achieved some independence; this was not the fate of the Slavs in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Bulgaria. Here Turkish oppression and arbitrariness reigned in all its unbridledness, causing frequent desperate uprisings of the inhabitants, brought to extremes. In 1874 an uprising broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Turks suffered defeat after defeat. To calm the rebels, the representatives of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary drew up a reform program for Turkey in Berlin. But the Turks, relying on England's obvious sympathy for them, not only rejected this program, but boldly killed the French and German consuls in Thessaloniki, who stood up for one Bulgarian girl, and then, not being able to defeat the rebels in Bosnia and Herzegovina, attacked the defenseless Bulgaria. Since 1864, the Port began to settle here the Circassians who were evicted from the Caucasus in order to avoid Russian domination. Accustomed in their homeland to live by robbery and robbery, these predators, called bashi-bazouks, began to oppress the Bulgarian peasants, forcing them to work for themselves, like serfs. The ancient hatred between Christians and Muslims flared up with renewed vigor. The peasants took up arms. And so, in order to avenge this uprising, Turkey sent thousands of Circassians, bashi-bazouks and other irregular troops against Bulgaria. Civilians were treated equally with the rebels. Terrible rampages and massacres began. In Batak alone, out of 7,000 inhabitants, 5,000 people were beaten. An investigation undertaken by the French envoy showed that 20,000 Christians perished within 3 months. All Europe was indignant. But this feeling was most pronounced in Russia and in all the Slavic lands. Serbia and Montenegro stood up for the Bulgarians. General Chernyaev, the winner of Tashkent, took command of the Serbian army as a volunteer. Russian volunteers from all classes of society flocked to the aid of the rebels; The sympathy of society was expressed by all sorts of voluntary donations. Serbia, however, was not successful due to the numerical superiority of the Turks. Public opinion in Russia loudly demanded war. Emperor Alexander II, in his characteristic peacefulness, wanted to avoid it and reach an agreement through diplomatic negotiations. But neither the Constantinople Conference (November 11, 1876) nor the London Protocol led to any results. The Turks refused to fulfill even the mildest demands, counting on the support of England. War became inevitable. On April 12, 1877, our troops stationed near Chisinau were ordered to enter Turkey. On the same day, our Caucasian troops, whose commander-in-chief was appointed Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, entered the borders of Asiatic Turkey. started Eastern war 1877- 78G.(see this word), covering such a loud, unfading glory of the valor of the Russian soldier.
Treaty of San Stefano 19 Feb. 1878, in addition to its direct goal - the liberation of the Balkan Slavs - brought brilliant results to Russia. The intervention of Europe, which jealously followed the successes of Russia, with the Treaty of Berlin, significantly narrowed the scope of these results, but nevertheless they remain very significant. Russia acquired the Danube part of Bessarabia and the Turkish regions bordering on Transcaucasia with the fortresses of Kars, Ardagan and Batum, turned into a free port.
Emperor Alexander II, who sacredly and courageously did the work assigned to him by fate - the construction and exaltation of a huge monarchy, aroused the delight of true patriots and the astonishment of enlightened people of the whole world, and met evil ill-wishers. With madness and fury pursuing goals incomprehensible to anyone, the organizers-destructors created a whole series of attempts on the life of the sovereign, who was the pride and glory of Russia, attempts that interfered so much with his great undertakings, embarrassed his peace and bewildered the numerous kingdom, completely calm and the king devoted. Various police measures, one after another created, and the enormous powers given at the end of the reign to the Minister of the Interior, Count. Loris-Melikov, to the great sadness of the Russian people, did not reach the goal. On March 1, 1881, the sovereign, for whom a large population was ready to lay down his life, died a martyr's death from a villainous hand that threw an explosive projectile. On the terrible site of the murder of the great sovereign in St. Petersburg, the Church of the Resurrection is being erected, the same temples and various monuments in memory of the liberator tsar were built in different places of the Russian land, and the Russian people, remembering the name of the liberator tsar, always make the sign of the cross.
Encyclopedia Brockhaus-Efron
The reign of Alexander II became a period that is often called the "epoch of reforms" that destroyed feudal remnants, a time of radical transformations of Russian society. Unlike his father, he was prepared to govern the state. The emperor received a good education, and his teachers were V. Zhukovsky, M. Speransky, E. Kankrin, who noted in the heir such qualities as benevolence, sociability, ability to study, but on the other hand, a tendency to retreat in the face of difficulties. Alexander II became emperor at the age of 36, with a well-established system of views and having experience in state activity. Having ascended the throne, the emperor was forced to follow the path of reforms.
Prerequisites for reforms
The prerequisites for the reforms were the constant threat of peasant revolts, the political and economic crisis. The defeat in the Crimean War not only reduced Russia's international prestige to the limit, but also showed the need for reforms in the financial, military, medical, and educational spheres. Another prerequisite was the dissatisfaction of society with the police Nikolaev regime and the constant threat of social performances. A situation favorable for reforms developed in the country - the emperor was supported by supporters of reforms (P. Valuev, Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich, D. Milyutin, and others); the liberals and the revolutionary movement were unorganized and unable to propose an alternative reform plan; opponents of the reforms after the defeat in the Crimean War did not dare to oppose the reforms. Therefore, in 1856, Alexander II delivered a famous speech to the Moscow nobility, in which he declared that “it is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for the time when it will begin to be abolished by itself from below.”
Abolition of serfdom
The most important event of the reign of Alexander II, for which he received the name "Liberator", was the reform of 1861, which abolished serfdom. Preparations for the abolition of serfdom began in January 1857 with the creation of the next Secret Committee, which was completely subordinate to the emperor. By November, a rescript had been drawn up announcing the beginning of the abolition of serfdom and ordering the creation of noble committees in each province to develop proposals. This was the beginning of broad discussions of the peasant question in the press. In February 1858, the Secret Committee was renamed the Main Committee on Peasant Affairs, which began to consider the drafts drawn up by the provincial noble committees. During the discussions, a project was developed, according to which the peasants are given freedom, but without allotment of land. This caused the activation of the peasant movement in 1858. The government decided to revise the project for the emancipation of the peasants and carry out a more radical reform. In order to revise the project, in February 1859, Editorial Commissions were established in St. Petersburg, which included mainly liberals, under the leadership of N. Milyutin. By the autumn of 1859, they drafted the “Regulations on Peasants”. On February 19, 1861, a reform was carried out that abolished serfdom. Alexander II signed the "Regulations on peasants who emerged from serfdom", according to which the peasants were freed from personal dependence. The peasant reform consisted of several parts: the property of the landlords on the peasants was abolished, who could now go to work in the city or be hired by the landowner to work. The landowner lost the right to punish the peasants, they became legal entities, that is, they could buy land, real estate, make deals, open enterprises. However, the peasants remained attached to the place of residence, were bound by mutual responsibility in paying taxes, and carried duties in kind.
In addition, the peasants received arable plots according to a rather complicated scheme, which also significantly limited their movement. In two years, statutory letters were to be drawn up - agreements between landowners and peasants that stipulated the terms of the redemption. After that, for 49 years, the peasants became "temporarily liable" and had to pay a ransom to the landowner. Only after that the allotments became the property of the peasants. The amount of redemption payments was determined by the size of the peasant dues, i.e., it was not the personal dependence of the peasants and not the land that was redeemed, but duties. This amount, deposited in the bank at 6% per annum, was supposed to bring the landlord an annual income in the amount of quitrent payments. The state acted as an intermediary between the peasant and the landowner, it paid the landowner at the conclusion of the redemption transaction about 75% of the redemption amount. Peasants had to contribute annually to the state 6% of this amount for 49 years. Courtyard people were declared free without a ransom, but within two years they had to serve their masters or pay dues. Serf workers of landlord and state-owned factories and plants were transferred to quitrent and received the right to redeem their former allotments. State peasants (except for Siberia and the Far East), who were considered personally free, according to the “Regulations”, retained the lands that were in their use. They could continue to pay the quitrent tax to the state or conclude a redemption deal with the treasury. The “Regulations” divided the provinces into three parts (chernozem, non-chernozem and steppe lands). Within the provinces, areas were allocated, which were divided into plots between the landowners - landowners and their peasants. The division norms were set in such a way that the landowner could choose the best plots for his share, including wedging his lands into the middle of the peasant fields. This led to the emergence of "striped stripes". The reaction of the peasants to the reform was different. So, for example, in the Kazan province, unrest began due to the spread of rumors that the tsar had granted land to the peasants for free, and the landlords “thought up” the ransom. More than 300 people were killed during the suppression of these unrest. In 1861, more than 1370 performances were recorded, later the wave of performances began to wane. In general, the liberation of the peasants was a progressive step that destroyed the feudal remnant - serfdom, which led to cash injections into agriculture, undermined the "natural" way of farming, and contributed to the development of capitalism.
Reforms in the 1960s 19th century
The implementation of the peasant reform required changes in other areas of life. Finance reform. In 1860, the State Bank was established to carry out redemption settlements between landlords and peasants. In 1862, the Ministry of Finance became the only manager of state funds, which independently planned the state budget and, together with the State Council, approved the estimates of individual departments. To control funds in 1864, the State Control was reformed, which now did not depend on the administration and carried out verification of the correctness of spending budget funds. Control chambers were established in the provinces, which checked the financial statements according to primary documents, and not the final reports, as before. Direct taxes were partially replaced by indirect ones.
Reform of local self-government (zemstvo reform).
On January 1, 1864, zemstvos (all-estate bodies in counties and provinces) were established, whose competence included: local economy, distribution of state taxes, arrangement of schools, hospitals, shelters, maintenance of prisons and means of communication. Within the zemstvo there were administrative and executive sectors. Administrative bodies - "meetings of vowels" (deputies) - dealt with economic issues and met once a year. The executive bodies - "zemstvo councils" - were engaged in the execution of the decision of the administrative sector. Funding for the implementation of the decrees was mixed: 80% of the funds came from the state, the rest came from local taxes (self-financing). Elections to zemstvo administrative bodies were held on the basis of a property qualification, by curia. The first curia - deputies from landowners - consisted of owners of land (from 200 to 800 acres) or real estate (worth from 15 thousand rubles). The second curia - deputies from cities - united the owners of industrial and commercial establishments (annual turnover of at least 6 thousand rubles). rub.). Elections for the third curia deputies from the peasants are priceless, but multistage. Zemstvos were elected for three years. The leader of the nobility was to be the chairman of the zemstvo assembly. At the end of the 70s. zemstvos were introduced only in 35 out of 59 Russian provinces. Later, during the years 1870-1880. the competence of the zemstvos was gradually curtailed, and the composition became more and more noble. But, despite many shortcomings, the work of the Zemstvos contributed to the formation of civic consciousness, the solution of some of the local problems of education and healthcare. The city reform began to be developed in 1861. Its project, presented in 1864, was discussed and reworked for a long time. On June 16, 1870, the “City Regulations” were approved, according to which the City Duma (legislative body) and the City Council (executive body) were created in the cities under the chairmanship of the mayor. The functions of city government were to take care of the improvement of the city, the patronage of trade, the construction of hospitals, schools and city taxation. Elections to the City Duma were held in three electoral meetings on the basis of a property qualification. The first electoral assembly included only large taxpayers, who contributed a third of city taxes, the second - smaller ones, paying another third, and the third - all the rest. Each assembly elected representatives to the City Duma. City councils were under the control of government officials. The mayor (elected by the City Duma for 4 years) was approved by the governor or the Minister of Internal Affairs, they could also suspend the decisions of the City Duma.
Judicial reform. On November 20, 1864, a judicial reform was carried out. It included the creation of new judicial statutes that introduced common judicial institutions for persons of all estates, with a general procedure for legal proceedings, publicity and competitiveness of legal proceedings, equal responsibility of all classes before the law, independence of the court from the administration. The country was divided into 108 judicial districts. The new structure of the court included: a magistrate's court, where they tried criminal and civil cases, the damage for which did not exceed 500 rubles. Justices of the peace were elected by uyezd zemstvo assemblies and confirmed by the Senate; District Court, where serious civil lawsuits and criminal cases were tried with the participation of jurors. The Senate was the highest judicial and appellate instance. The preliminary investigation was conducted by bailiffs. Advocacy was introduced. This system was supplemented by volost courts for peasants, consistories for the clergy, a court for the military, senior officials, etc. The most important political crimes were under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Criminal Court, which was appointed by the emperor in exceptional cases. In 1863, a law was passed that abolished corporal punishment by court sentences. Women were completely exempted from corporal punishment. However, rods were kept for the peasants (according to the verdicts of the volost courts), for the exiled, hard labor and penal soldiers. Education and press reform was carried out in 1863-1865. In 1863, a new university charter was issued, giving the universities broad freedom and self-government. In the summer of 1864, the "Charter of Gymnasiums and Progymnasiums" was introduced. The reform of public education proclaimed the principle of general and all-class education. In 1865, according to the reform of the press, censorship was significantly mitigated, the society was given the right to discuss political events. Military reform began in 1857 with the liquidation of the system of military settlements and the reduction of the service life of the lower ranks (from 25 to 10 years). In the 60s. management of the fleet and naval educational institutions was reorganized, and within 12 years, transformations were carried out in the army. In 1862, the reform of the military administration began. The country was divided into 15 military districts for the purpose of more efficient command and control of the troops. The War Ministry and the General Staff were reorganized. In 1864-1867. the size of the army was reduced from 1132 thousand people. up to 742 thousand, while maintaining the military potential. In 1865, the military-judicial reform began. In the 60s. for the operational transfer of troops, a railway was built to the western and southern borders of Russia, and in 1870 railway troops were created. New regulations appeared in the army. In the course of the reform of military educational institutions, military gymnasiums and cadet schools were organized for all classes with a two-year term of study. Officer training has been improved. On January 1, 1874, the “Charter on Military Service” was issued, according to which, instead of recruitment, universal military service was introduced. Upon reaching the age of 21, the entire male population was required to serve in active service. All this made it possible to create a fairly strong, trained army. Further reform activities were interrupted on March 1, 1881 by the assassination of Alexander II as a result of a terrorist act.
He was born on April 29, 1818. Being the son of Nicholas 1 and heir to the throne, he received an excellent versatile education. Alexander's teachers were Zhukovsky and combat officer Merder. A noticeable influence on the formation of the personality of Alexander 2 was also exerted by his father. Alexander came to the throne after the death of Nicholas 1, in 1885. By that time, he already had some experience in government, since he acted as sovereign during his father's absence in the capital. This ruler went down in history as Alexander 2 the Liberator. And a brief biography of Alexander 2 will not be complete without mentioning his reform activities.
The wife of Alexander 2 in 1841 was the Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt Maximilian Wilhelmina Augusta Sophia Maria, better known as Maria Alexandrovna. She bore Nikolai 7 children, 2 older children died. And since 1880, the tsar was married (by a morganatic marriage) to Princess Dolgoruky, from whom he had 4 children.
The domestic policy of Alexander 2 was strikingly different from the policy of Nicholas 1 and was marked by many reforms. The most important of them was the peasant reform of Alexander 2, according to which in 1861, on February 19, serfdom was abolished. This reform caused an urgent need for further changes in many Russian institutions and led Alexander II to carry out bourgeois reforms.
In 1864, by decree of Alexander 2, a Zemstvo reform was carried out. Its goal was to create a system of local self-government, for which the institute of the county zemstvo was established.
In 1870, a city reform was carried out, which had a positive effect on the development of industry and cities. City dumas and councils were established, which were representative bodies of power. The judicial reform of Alexander 2, carried out in 1864, was marked by the introduction of European legal norms, but some features of the previously existing judicial system were retained, for example, a special court for officials.
The next was the military reform of Alexander 2. Its result was universal military service, as well as army organization close to European standards. In the course of the financial reform of Alexander II, the State Bank was created, and official accounting was born. The logical conclusion of the reform activity was the preparation of the first official draft of the Constitution in Russian history.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the liberal reforms of Alexander 2, which are sometimes referred to as the "revolution from above". The result of the reforms of Alexander 2 was the active development of machine production, the emergence of new industries in Russian industry, but not only. The significance of the reforms lies in the fact that public life in the country has become more liberal, and the political system has also seriously changed. This naturally led to the activation of the social movement under Alexander 2.
The foreign policy of Alexander 2 was very successful. During his reign, Russia regained its military power, which had been shaken under Nicholas 1. In the spring of 1864, the North Caucasus was subjugated, where unsuccessful military operations were going on for a long time. The same year was marked by the subjugation of Turkestan and the appeasement of Poland. The war with Turkey of 1877-1878 that brought fame to Russian weapons. significantly enlarged the territory of the country. But Russia lost Alaska, sold to the United States for a relatively small amount of 7 million 200 thousand dollars.
The reign of Alexander 2 was overshadowed by many attempts on his life. The first of these was committed in Paris, on May 25, 1867. The second assassination attempt took place in St. Petersburg, in 1879. This was followed by an attempt to blow up the imperial train on August 26, 1879 and an explosion in the Winter Palace on February 5, 1880.
The great reforms of Alexander II were interrupted by his death. March 1, 1881 On that day, Tsar Alexander II intended to sign Loris-Melikov's large-scale economic and administrative reform project. The assassination attempt on Alexander 2, committed by the People's Will Grinevitsky, led to his severe injury and the death of the emperor. So the reign of Alexander 2 came to an end. His son ascended the Russian throne,
Coronation: |
|
Predecessor: |
Nicholas I |
Successor: |
|
Heir: |
Nicholas (before 1865), after Alexander III |
Religion: |
Orthodoxy |
Birth: |
|
Buried: |
Peter and Paul Cathedral |
Dynasty: |
Romanovs |
Nicholas I |
|
Charlotte of Prussia (Alexandra Feodorovna) |
|
1) Maria Alexandrovna |
|
From the 1st marriage sons: Nicholas, Alexander III, Vladimir, Alexei, Sergei and Pavel daughters: Alexandra and Maria from the 2nd marriage sons: St. book. Georgy Aleksandrovich Yuryevsky and Boris daughters: Olga and Ekaterina |
|
Autograph: |
|
Monogram: |
|
Reign of Alexander II
Grand Title
Beginning of the reign
background
Judicial reform
Military reform
Organizational reforms
Education reform
Other reforms
autocracy reform
Economic development of the country
The problem of corruption
Foreign policy
Assassination attempts and murder
History of unsuccessful attempts
The results of the reign
Saint Petersburg
Bulgaria
General-Toshevo
Helsinki
Czestochowa
Monuments of Opekushin's work
Interesting Facts
Movie incarnations
(April 17 (29), 1818, Moscow - March 1 (13), 1881, St. Petersburg) - Emperor of All Russia, Tsar of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland (1855-1881) from the Romanov dynasty. The eldest son, first of the grand-ducal, and since 1825 of the imperial couple, Nikolai Pavlovich and Alexandra Feodorovna.
He went down in Russian history as a conductor of large-scale reforms. Honored with a special epithet in Russian pre-revolutionary historiography - Liberator(in connection with the abolition of serfdom according to the manifesto of February 19, 1861). He died as a result of a terrorist act organized by the People's Will party.
Childhood, education and upbringing
Born on April 17, 1818, on Bright Wednesday, at 11 o'clock in the morning in the Bishop's House of the Chudov Monastery in the Kremlin, where the entire imperial family, excluding the uncle of the newborn Alexander I, who was on an inspection tour of southern Russia, arrived in early April for fasting and meeting Easter ; in Moscow, a salute was given in 201 cannon volleys. On May 5, the sacraments of baptism and chrismation were performed on the baby in the church of the Chudov Monastery by Archbishop Augustine of Moscow, in honor of which Maria Feodorovna gave a gala dinner.
He was educated at home under the personal supervision of his parent, who paid special attention to the education of the heir. His "mentor" (with the responsibility of leading the entire process of upbringing and education and the assignment to draw up a "plan of teaching") and a teacher of the Russian language was V. A. Zhukovsky, a teacher of the Law of God and Sacred History - an enlightened theologian, Archpriest Gerasim Pavsky (until 1835), a military instructor - captain K. K. Merder, as well as: M. M. Speransky (legislation), K. I. Arseniev (statistics and history), E. F. Kankrin (finances), F. I. Brunov (foreign policy) , Academician Collins (arithmetic), K. B. Trinius (natural history).
According to numerous testimonies, in his youth he was very impressionable and amorous. So, during a trip to London in 1839, he had a fleeting crush on the young Queen Victoria (later, as monarchs, they experienced mutual hostility and enmity).
Beginning of state activity
Upon reaching the age of majority on April 22, 1834 (the day he took the oath), the heir-prince was introduced by his father to the main state institutions of the empire: in 1834 to the Senate, in 1835 he was introduced to the Holy Governing Synod, from 1841 a member of the State Council, in 1842 - to the Committee ministers.
In 1837, Alexander made a long trip across Russia and visited 29 provinces of the European part, Transcaucasia and Western Siberia, and in 1838-1839 he visited Europe.
The military service of the future emperor was quite successful. In 1836, he already became a major general, from 1844 a full general, commanded the guards infantry. Since 1849, Alexander was the head of military educational institutions, chairman of the Secret Committees on Peasant Affairs in 1846 and 1848. During the Crimean War of 1853-1856, with the announcement of the St. Petersburg province under martial law, he commanded all the troops of the capital.
Reign of Alexander II
Grand Title
By God's hastening mercy, We, Alexander II, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Tauric Chersonis, Sovereign of Pskov and Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuanian, Volyn, Podolsk and Finland, Prince of Estland , Liflyandsky, Kurlyandsky and Semigalsky, Samogitsky, Belostoksky, Korelsky, Tversky, Yugorsky, Permsky, Vyatsky, Bulgarian and others; Sovereign and Grand Duke of Novgorod Nizovsky lands, Chernigov, Ryazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Beloozersky, Udora, Obdorsky, Kondia, Vitebsk, Mstislav and all Northern countries, Sovereign and Sovereign of Iversky, Kartalinsky, Georgian and Kabardian lands and Armenian regions, Cherkasy and Highland Princes and other hereditary Sovereign and Possessor, Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn, Ditmarsen and Oldenburg, and so on, and so on, and so on.
Beginning of the reign
Having ascended the throne on the day of his father’s death on February 18, 1855, Alexander II issued a manifesto that read: “Before the face of God invisibly co-present with US, we accept the sacred object to always have the welfare of OUR Fatherland as a single goal. Yes, guided, patronized by the Providence who called US to this great service, let us establish Russia at the highest level of power and glory, may the constant desires and views of OUR August predecessors PETER, CATHERINE, ALEXANDER Blessed and Unforgettable OUR Parent be fulfilled through US. "
Signed on the original by His Imperial Majesty's own hand ALEXANDER
The country faced a number of complex domestic and foreign policy issues (peasant, eastern, Polish and others); finances were extremely upset by the unsuccessful Crimean War, during which Russia found itself in complete international isolation.
According to the journal of the State Council for February 19, 1855, in his first speech to the members of the Council, the new emperor said, in particular: “My unforgettable Parent loved Russia and all his life he constantly thought about her only benefit. In His constant and daily labors with Me, He told Me: “I want to take for Myself everything that is unpleasant and all that is heavy, if only to give You Russia arranged, happy and calm.” Providence judged otherwise, and the late Sovereign, in the last hours of his life, said to me: “I hand over to you my command, but, unfortunately, not in the order I wished, leaving you a lot of work and worries.”
The first of the important steps was the conclusion of the Peace of Paris in March 1856 - on conditions that were not the worst in the current situation (in England, the mood was strong to continue the war until the complete defeat and dismemberment of the Russian Empire).
In the spring of 1856 he visited Helsingfors (the Grand Duchy of Finland), where he spoke at the university and the Senate, then Warsaw, where he called on the local nobility to “leave dreams” (fr. pas de réveries), and Berlin, where he had a very important meeting for him with the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV (his mother's brother), with whom he secretly sealed a "dual alliance", thus breaking through the foreign policy blockade of Russia.
A “thaw” began in the socio-political life of the country. On the occasion of the coronation, which took place in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin on August 26, 1856 (the priesthood was headed by Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow (Drozdov); the emperor sat on the throne of Tsar Ivan III from ivory), the Supreme Manifesto granted benefits and indulgences to a number of categories of subjects, in particular, the Decembrists , Petrashevites, participants in the Polish uprising of 1830-1831; recruiting was suspended for 3 years; in 1857 military settlements were liquidated.
Abolition of serfdom (1861)
background
The first steps towards the abolition of serfdom in Russia were made by Emperor Alexander I in 1803 by issuing the Decree on free cultivators, which spelled out the legal status of peasants set free.
In the Baltic (Ostsee) provinces of the Russian Empire (Estland, Courland, Livonia), serfdom was abolished as early as 1816-1819.
According to historians who specifically studied this issue, the percentage of serfs in the entire adult male population of the empire reached its maximum by the end of the reign of Peter I (55%), during the subsequent period of the 18th century. was about 50% and increased again by the beginning of the 19th century, reaching 57-58% in 1811-1817. For the first time, a significant reduction in this proportion occurred under Nicholas I, by the end of whose reign, according to various estimates, it had decreased to 35-45%. So, according to the results of the 10th revision (1857), the share of serfs in the entire population of the empire fell to 37%. According to the census of 1857-1859, 23.1 million people (of both sexes) out of 62.5 million people who inhabited the Russian Empire were in serfdom. Of the 65 provinces and regions that existed in the Russian Empire in 1858, in the three above-mentioned Baltic provinces, in the Land of the Black Sea Host, in the Primorsky Region, the Semipalatinsk Region and the Siberian Kirghiz Region, in the Derbent Governorate (with the Caspian Territory) and the Erivan Governorate, there were no serfs at all; in 4 more administrative units (Arkhangelsk and Shemakha provinces, Transbaikal and Yakutsk regions) there were no serfs either, with the exception of a few dozen courtyard people (servants). In the remaining 52 provinces and regions, the share of serfs in the population ranged from 1.17% (Bessarabian region) to 69.07% (Smolensk province).
During the reign of Nicholas I, about a dozen different commissions were created to resolve the issue of the abolition of serfdom, but all of them turned out to be ineffective due to the opposition of the nobility. However, during this period there was a significant transformation of this institution (see the article Nicholas I) and the number of serfs was sharply reduced, which facilitated the task of the final elimination of serfdom. By the 1850s there was a situation where it could happen without the consent of the landowners. As the historian V.O. Klyuchevsky pointed out, by 1850 more than 2/3 of the noble estates and 2/3 of the serf souls were pledged to secure loans taken from the state. Therefore, the liberation of the peasants could take place without a single state act. To do this, it was enough for the state to introduce a procedure for the forced purchase of mortgaged estates - with the payment to the landowners of only a small difference between the value of the estate and the accumulated arrears on the overdue loan. As a result of such a buyout, most of the estates would pass to the state, and the serfs would automatically move into the category of state (that is, actually free) peasants. It was precisely such a plan that P.D. Kiselev, who was responsible for managing state property in the government of Nicholas I, hatched.
However, these plans caused strong discontent of the nobility. In addition, peasant uprisings intensified in the 1850s. Therefore, the new government, formed by Alexander II, decided to speed up the solution of the peasant issue. As the tsar himself said in 1856 at a reception with the marshal of the Moscow nobility: “It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until it begins to be abolished by itself from below.”
As historians point out, in contrast to the commissions of Nicholas I, where neutral persons or experts on the agrarian question prevailed (including Kiselev, Bibikov, etc.), now the preparation of the peasant question was entrusted to large landowners-feudal lords (including the newly appointed ministers of Lansky , Panin and Muravyov), which largely predetermined the results of the agrarian reform.
The government's program was outlined in a rescript from Emperor Alexander II on November 20 (December 2), 1857, to Vilna Governor-General V. I. Nazimov. It provided for: the destruction of the personal dependence of the peasants while maintaining all the land in the ownership of the landowners; providing peasants with a certain amount of land, for which they will be required to pay dues or serve corvee, and over time - the right to buy out peasant estates (a residential building and outbuildings). In 1858, provincial committees were formed to prepare peasant reforms, within which a struggle began for measures and forms of concessions between liberal and reactionary landlords. The fear of an all-Russian peasant revolt forced the government to change the government program of peasant reform, the drafts of which were repeatedly changed in connection with the rise or fall of the peasant movement, as well as under the influence and with the participation of a number of public figures (for example, A. M. Unkovsky).
In December 1858, a new peasant reform program was adopted: giving the peasants the opportunity to buy out land allotments and creating peasant public administration bodies. In March 1859, editorial commissions were created to consider the drafts of provincial committees and develop a peasant reform. The project, drawn up by the Editorial Commissions at the end of 1859, differed from that proposed by the provincial committees by an increase in land allotments and a decrease in duties. This caused dissatisfaction among the local nobility, and in 1860 the allotments were somewhat reduced and duties increased. This direction in changing the project was preserved both when it was considered in the Main Committee for Peasant Affairs at the end of 1860, and when it was discussed in the State Council at the beginning of 1861.
The main provisions of the peasant reform
February 19 (March 3), 1861 in St. Petersburg, Alexander II signed the Manifesto on the abolition of serfdom and the Regulations on peasants emerging from serfdom, which consisted of 17 legislative acts.
The main act - "The General Regulations on Peasants Who Have Emerged from Serfdom" - contained the main conditions for the peasant reform:
- Peasants ceased to be considered serfs and began to be considered "temporarily liable".
- The landowners retained ownership of all the lands that belonged to them, but they were obliged to provide the peasants with "estates" and a field allotment for use.
- For the use of allotment land, the peasants had to serve a corvée or pay dues and did not have the right to refuse it for 9 years.
- The size of the field allotment and duties had to be fixed in charter letters of 1861, which were drawn up by the landlords for each estate and verified by peace mediators.
- The peasants were given the right to buy out the estate and, by agreement with the landowner, the field plot, before this they were called temporarily liable peasants, those who took advantage of this right, before the full redemption was called "redemption" peasants. Until the end of the reign of Alexander II, according to V. Klyuchevsky, more than 80% of former serfs fell into this category.
- The structure, rights and obligations of the bodies of peasant public administration (village and volost) and the volost court were also determined.
Historians who lived in the era of Alexander II and studied the peasant question commented on the main provisions of these laws as follows. As M.N. Pokrovsky pointed out, the entire reform for the majority of the peasants came down to the fact that they ceased to be officially called “serfs”, but began to be called “obliged”; formally, they began to be considered free, but nothing changed in their position: in particular, the landowners continued, as before, to use corporal punishment against peasants. “To be declared a free man by the tsar,” the historian wrote, “and at the same time continue to go to corvée or pay dues: this was a blatant contradiction that caught the eye. The “obliged” peasants firmly believed that this will was not real ... ". The same opinion was shared, for example, by the historian N.A. Rozhkov, one of the most authoritative specialists on the agrarian issue of pre-revolutionary Russia, as well as a number of other authors who wrote about the peasant question.
There is an opinion that the laws of February 19, 1861, which meant the legal abolition of serfdom (in legal terms of the second half of the 19th century) did not abolish it as a socio-economic institution (although they created the conditions for this to happen over the next decades ). This corresponds to the conclusions of a number of historians that "serfdom" was not abolished in one year and that the process of its liquidation dragged on for decades. In addition to M.N. Pokrovsky, N.A. Rozhkov came to this conclusion, calling the reform of 1861 “serfdom” and pointing to the preservation of serfdom in subsequent decades. The modern historian B.N. Mironov also writes about the gradual weakening of serfdom over several decades after 1861.
Four "Local Regulations" determined the size of land plots and duties for their use in 44 provinces of European Russia. From the land that was in the use of the peasants before February 19, 1861, cuts could be made if the per capita allotments of the peasants exceeded the highest size established for the given locality, or if the landowners, while maintaining the existing peasant allotment, had less than 1/3 of the entire land of the estate.
Allotments could be reduced under special agreements between peasants and landowners, as well as upon receipt of a donation allotment. If the peasants had plots of less than the lowest size in use, the landowner was obliged either to cut the missing land, or to reduce duties. For the highest shower allotment, a quitrent was set from 8 to 12 rubles. per year or corvee - 40 male and 30 female working days per year. If the allotment was less than the highest, then the duties decreased, but not proportionally. The rest of the "Local provisions" basically repeated the "Great Russian", but taking into account the specifics of their regions. The features of the Peasant Reform for certain categories of peasants and specific regions were determined by the “Additional Rules” - “On the arrangement of peasants settled on the estates of small landowners, and on the allowance for these owners”, “On people assigned to private mining plants of the department of the Ministry of Finance”, “On peasants and workers serving work at Perm private mining plants and salt mines”, “About peasants serving work at landowner factories”, “About peasants and yard people in the Land of the Don Cossacks”, “About peasants and yard people in the Stavropol province”, “ About Peasants and Household People in Siberia”, “About people who came out of serfdom in the Bessarabian region”.
The “Regulations on the arrangement of courtyard people” provided for their release without land, but for 2 years they remained completely dependent on the landowner.
The “Regulations on Redemption” determined the procedure for the redemption of land by peasants from landlords, the organization of the redemption operation, the rights and obligations of peasant owners. The redemption of the field plot depended on an agreement with the landowner, who could oblige the peasants to redeem the land at their request. The price of land was determined by quitrent, capitalized from 6% per annum. In the event of a ransom under a voluntary agreement, the peasants had to make an additional payment to the landowner. The landlord received the main amount from the state, to which the peasants had to repay it for 49 years annually in redemption payments.
According to N. Rozhkov and D. Blum, in the non-chernozem zone of Russia, where the bulk of serfs lived, the redemption value of land was on average 2.2 times higher than its market value. Therefore, in fact, the price of redemption, set in accordance with the reform of 1861, included not only the redemption of land, but also the redemption of the peasant himself with his family - just as earlier serfs could redeem their freedom from the landowner for money by agreement with the latter. Such a conclusion is made, in particular, by D. Blum, as well as by the historian B.N. Mironov, who writes that the peasants "bought not only the land ... but also their freedom." Thus, the conditions for the liberation of the peasants in Russia were much worse than in the Baltic states, where they were liberated under Alexander I without land, but also without the need to pay a ransom for themselves.
Accordingly, under the terms of the reform, the peasants could not refuse to buy out land, which M.N. Pokrovsky calls “compulsory ownership”. And “so that the owner does not run away from it,” the historian writes, “which, according to the circumstances of the case, could well have been expected,” the “released” had to be placed in such legal conditions that are very reminiscent of the state, if not of a prisoner, then of a minor or imbecile, who is under care."
Another result of the reform of 1861 was the emergence of the so-called. segments - parts of the land, averaging about 20%, which were previously under the control of the peasants, but now they are under the control of the landowners and not subject to redemption. As N.A. Rozhkov pointed out, the division of the land was specially carried out by the landlords in such a way that “the peasants turned out to be cut off by the landowner’s land from a watering hole, forest, high road, church, sometimes from their arable land and meadows ... [as a result] they were forced to rent the landowner’s land at any cost, under any conditions. “Having cut off from the peasants, according to the Regulations of February 19, the lands that are absolutely necessary for them,” wrote M.N. , with the obligation to plow, sow and squeeze a certain amount of acres for the landowner. In the memoirs and descriptions written by the landowners themselves, the historian pointed out, this practice of segments was described as ubiquitous - there were practically no landlord farms where segments did not exist. In one example, the landowner “boasted that his segments covered, like a ring, 18 villages, all of which were in bondage to him; the German tenant who had just arrived remembered atreski as one of the first Russian words and, renting the estate, first of all inquired whether this jewel was in it.
Subsequently, the elimination of segments became one of the main demands not only of the peasants, but also of the revolutionaries of the last third of the 19th century. (populists, people's will, etc.), but also the majority of revolutionary and democratic parties at the beginning of the 20th century, until 1917. Thus, the agrarian program of the Bolsheviks up to December 1905 included as the main and in essence the only point the liquidation of the landlord segments; the same requirement was the main point of the agrarian program of the 1st and 2nd State Duma (1905-1907), adopted by the overwhelming majority of its members (including deputies from the Menshevik, Socialist-Revolutionary, Cadets and Trudovik parties), but rejected by Nicholas II and Stolypin. Previously, the elimination of such forms of exploitation of peasants by landowners - the so-called. banalities - was one of the main demands of the population during the French Revolution.
According to N. Rozhkov, the "feudal" reform of February 19, 1861 became "the starting point for the entire process of the origin of the revolution" in Russia.
"Manifesto" and "Regulations" were promulgated from March 7 to April 2 (in St. Petersburg and Moscow - March 5). Fearing dissatisfaction of the peasants with the terms of the reform, the government took a number of precautionary measures (redeployment of troops, secondment of the imperial retinue to the places, appeal of the Synod, etc.). The peasantry, dissatisfied with the enslaving conditions of the reform, responded to it with mass unrest. The largest of them were the Bezdnensky performance of 1861 and the Kandeev performance of 1861.
In total, during 1861 alone, 1176 peasant uprisings were recorded, while in 6 years from 1855 to 1860. there were only 474 of them. The uprisings did not subside even in 1862, and were suppressed very cruelly. In the two years since the announcement of the reform, the government had to use military force in 2,115 villages. This gave many people a reason to talk about the beginning of the peasant revolution. So, M.A. Bakunin was in 1861-1862. I am convinced that the outbreak of peasant uprisings will inevitably lead to a peasant revolution, which, as he wrote, "essentially has already begun." “There is no doubt that the peasant revolution in Russia in the 60s was not the fruit of a frightened imagination, but a completely real possibility ...”, wrote N.A. Rozhkov, comparing its possible consequences with the Great French Revolution.
The implementation of the Peasant Reform began with the drafting of charters, which was basically completed by the middle of 1863. On January 1, 1863, the peasants refused to sign about 60% of the letters. The price of land for redemption significantly exceeded its market value at that time, in the non-chernozem zone by an average of 2-2.5 times. As a result of this, in a number of districts they were extremely striving to receive donation allotments, and in some provinces (Saratov, Samara, Yekaterinoslav, Voronezh, etc.), a significant number of peasants-gifts appeared.
Under the influence of the Polish uprising of 1863, changes took place in the conditions of the Peasant Reform in Lithuania, Belarus, and the Right-Bank Ukraine—the law of 1863 introduced compulsory redemption; redemption payments decreased by 20%; peasants, landless from 1857 to 1861, received their allotments in full, previously landless - partially.
The transition of peasants to ransom lasted for several decades. By 1881, 15% remained in temporary relations. But in a number of provinces there were still many of them (Kursk 160 thousand, 44%; Nizhny Novgorod 119 thousand, 35%; Tula 114 thousand, 31%; Kostroma 87 thousand, 31%). The transition to redemption was faster in the black-earth provinces, where voluntary transactions prevailed over mandatory redemption. Landowners who had large debts, more often than others, sought to speed up the redemption and conclude voluntary deals.
The transition from "temporarily liable" to "redemption" did not give the peasants the right to leave their plot - that is, the freedom proclaimed by the manifesto on February 19. Some historians believe that the result of the reform was the "relative" freedom of the peasants, however, according to experts on the peasant question, the peasants had relative freedom of movement and economic activity until 1861. Thus, many serfs left for a long time to work or fish for hundreds miles from home; half of the 130 cotton factories in the city of Ivanovo in the 1840s belonged to serfs (and the other half - mainly to former serfs). However, a direct consequence of the reform was a significant increase in the burden of payments. The redemption of land under the terms of the reform of 1861 for the vast majority of peasants dragged on for 45 years and represented real bondage for them, since they were not able to pay such amounts. So, by 1902, the total amount of arrears in peasant redemption payments amounted to 420% of the amount of annual payments, and in a number of provinces exceeded 500%. Only in 1906, after the peasants had burnt about 15% of the landowners' estates in the country during 1905, the redemption payments and accumulated arrears were canceled, and the "redemption" peasants finally received freedom of movement.
The abolition of serfdom also affected the appanage peasants, who, by the "Regulations of June 26, 1863", were transferred to the category of peasant proprietors by compulsory redemption on the terms of the "Regulations of February 19". On the whole, their cuts were much smaller than those of the landowning peasants.
The law of November 24, 1866, began the reform of the state peasants. They retained all the lands that were in their use. According to the law of June 12, 1886, the state peasants were transferred for redemption, which, in contrast to the redemption of land by former serfs, was carried out in accordance with market prices for land.
The peasant reform of 1861 led to the abolition of serfdom in the national outskirts of the Russian Empire.
On October 13, 1864, a decree was issued on the abolition of serfdom in the Tiflis province, a year later it was extended with some changes to the Kutaisi province, and in 1866 to Megrelia. In Abkhazia, serfdom was abolished in 1870, in Svaneti - in 1871. The terms of the reform here retained serfdom survivals to a greater extent than according to the "Regulations of February 19". In Azerbaijan and Armenia, the peasant reform was carried out in 1870-1883 and was no less enslaving than in Georgia. In Bessarabia, the bulk of the peasant population was made up of legally free landless peasants - tsarans, who, according to the "Regulations of July 14, 1868", were endowed with land for permanent use for service. The redemption of this land was carried out with some derogations on the basis of the "Regulations on Redemption" on February 19, 1861.
The peasant reform of 1861 marked the beginning of the process of rapid impoverishment of the peasants. The average peasant allotment in Russia in the period from 1860 to 1880 decreased from 4.8 to 3.5 acres (almost 30%), many ruined peasants, rural proletarians appeared who lived by odd jobs - a phenomenon that practically disappeared in the middle 19th century
Reform of self-government (zemstvo and city regulations)
Zemstvo reform January 1, 1864- The reform consisted in the fact that the issues of the local economy, the collection of taxes, the approval of the budget, primary education, medical and veterinary services were henceforth entrusted to elected institutions - district and provincial zemstvo councils. The elections of representatives from the population to the zemstvo (zemstvo vowels) were two-stage and ensured the numerical predominance of the nobles. Vowels from the peasants were a minority. They were elected for a term of 4 years. All affairs in the zemstvo, which concerned primarily the vital needs of the peasantry, were handled by the landlords, who limited the interests of the other estates. In addition, local zemstvo institutions were subordinate to the tsarist administration and, first of all, to the governors. The zemstvo consisted of: zemstvo provincial assemblies (legislative power), zemstvo councils (executive power).
City reform of 1870- The reform replaced the previously existing estate city administrations with city dumas elected on the basis of a property qualification. The system of these elections ensured the predominance of large merchants and manufacturers. Representatives of big capital managed the municipal services of cities, proceeding from their own interests, paying attention to the development of the central quarters of the city and not paying attention to the outskirts. The organs of state administration under the law of 1870 were also subject to the supervision of government authorities. The decisions adopted by the Duma received force only after approval by the tsarist administration.
Historians of the late XIX - early XX centuries. commented on the reform of self-government in the following way. M.N. Pokrovsky pointed out its inconsistency: in many positions, “self-government by the reform of 1864 was not expanded, but, on the contrary, narrowed, moreover, extremely significantly.” And he gave examples of such a narrowing - the resubordination of the local police to the central government, prohibitions for local authorities to establish many types of taxes, limiting other local taxes to no more than 25% of the central tax, etc. In addition, as a result of the reform, local power ended up in the hands of large landowners (while previously it was mainly in the hands of officials reporting directly to the tsar and his ministers).
One of the results was changes in local taxation, which, after the completion of the self-government reform, became discriminatory. So, if back in 1868 peasant and landowner land were subject to local taxes in approximately the same way, then already in 1871 local taxes levied on a tithe of peasant land were twice the taxes levied on a tithe of landlord land. Later, the practice of flogging peasants for various offenses spread in the zemstvos (which had previously been mainly the prerogative of the landowners themselves). Thus, self-government, in the absence of real equality of estates and with the defeat in political rights of the majority of the population of the country, led to increased discrimination of the lower classes by the higher ones.
Judicial reform
Judicial charter of 1864- The charter introduced a unified system of judicial institutions, based on the formal equality of all social groups before the law. Court sessions were held with the participation of interested parties, were public, and reports on them were published in the press. Litigants could hire defense lawyers who had a law degree and were not employed by the government. The new judiciary met the needs of capitalist development, but the imprints of serfdom still remained on it - special volost courts were created for the peasants, in which corporal punishment was preserved. In political trials, even with acquittals, administrative repressions were used. Political cases were considered without the participation of jurors, etc. While malfeasance of officials remained beyond the jurisdiction of general courts.
However, according to contemporary historians, the judicial reform did not give the results that were expected from it. The jury trials that were introduced dealt with a comparatively small number of cases; there was no real independence of judges.
In fact, in the era of Alexander II, there was an increase in police and judicial arbitrariness, that is, something opposite to what was proclaimed by the judicial reform. For example, the investigation into the case of 193 populists (the trial of the 193 in the case of going to the people) dragged on for almost 5 years (from 1873 to 1878), and during the investigation they were subjected to beatings (which, for example, under Nicholas I was not neither in the case of the Decembrists, nor in the case of the Petrashevists). As historians have pointed out, the authorities kept those arrested for years in jail without trial or investigation and subjected them to humiliation before the huge trials that were being created (the trial of 193 Narodniks was followed by the trial of 50 workers). And after the process of the 193rd, not satisfied with the verdict delivered by the court, Alexander II toughened the court verdict administratively - contrary to all the previously proclaimed principles of judicial reform.
Another example of the growth of judicial arbitrariness is the execution of four officers - Ivanitsky, Mrochek, Stanevich and Kenevich - who in 1863-1865. conducted agitation in order to prepare a peasant uprising. Unlike, for example, the Decembrists, who organized two uprisings (in St. Petersburg and in the south of the country) to overthrow the tsar, killed several officers, Governor-General Miloradovich, and almost killed the tsar’s brother, four officers under Alexander II suffered the same punishment ( execution), as well as 5 leaders of the Decembrists under Nicholas I, just for campaigning among the peasants.
In the last years of the reign of Alexander II, against the backdrop of growing protest moods in society, unprecedented police measures were introduced: the authorities and the police received the right to exile any person who seemed suspicious, to conduct searches and arrests at their own discretion, without any coordination with the judiciary , bring political crimes to the courts of military tribunals - "with the application of punishments established for wartime".
Military reform
Milyutin's military reforms took place in the period of the 60-70s of the XIX century.
Milyutin's military reforms can be divided into two conditional parts: organizational and technological.
Organizational reforms
Report of the War Office 01/15/1862:
- To transform the reserve troops into a combat reserve, to ensure that they replenish the composition of the active troops and free them from the obligation to train recruits in wartime.
- Entrust the training of recruits to the reserve troops, providing them with sufficient personnel.
- All supernumerary "lower ranks" of the reserve and reserve troops, in peacetime, should be considered on vacation and called up only in wartime. Recruits to replenish the loss in the active troops, and not to form new units from them.
- To form cadres of reserve troops for peacetime, entrusting them with garrison service, and disband the internal service battalions.
It was not possible to quickly introduce this organization, and only in 1864 was a systematic reorganization of the army and a reduction in the strength of the troops begun.
By 1869, the bringing of troops to the new states was completed. At the same time, the total number of troops in peacetime, compared with 1860, decreased from 899 thousand people. up to 726 thousand people (mainly due to the reduction of the "non-combat" element). And the number of reservists in the reserve increased from 242 to 553 thousand people. At the same time, with the transition to wartime states, no new units and formations were now formed, and units were deployed at the expense of reservists. All troops could now be understaffed to wartime states in 30-40 days, while in 1859 it took 6 months.
The new system of organization of troops contained a number of shortcomings:
- The organization of the infantry retained the division into line and rifle companies (with the same weapons, there was no point in this).
- Artillery brigades were not included in the infantry divisions, which negatively affected their interaction.
- Of the 3 brigades of the cavalry divisions (hussars, lancers and dragoons), only the dragoons were armed with carbines, and the rest did not have firearms, while the entire cavalry of European states was armed with pistols.
In May 1862, Milyutin submitted proposals to Alexander II under the heading "Main grounds for the proposed structure of military administration by districts." This document was based on the following provisions:
- Destroy the division in peacetime into armies and corps, consider the division as the highest tactical unit.
- Divide the territory of the entire state into several military districts.
- Place a chief at the head of the district, who will be entrusted with the supervision of the active troops and command of the local troops, and also entrust him with the management of all local military institutions.
Already in the summer of 1862, instead of the First Army, the Warsaw, Kiev and Vilna military districts were established, and at the end of 1862 - Odessa.
In August 1864, the “Regulations on Military Districts” were approved, on the basis of which all military units and military institutions located in the district were subordinate to the Commander of the District Troops, thus he became the sole chief, and not an inspector, as was planned before (at the same time, all artillery units in the district reported directly to the chief of artillery of the district). In the border districts, the Commander was entrusted with the duties of the Governor-General and all military and civil power was concentrated in his person. The structure of the district administration remained unchanged.
In 1864, 6 more military districts were created: Petersburg, Moscow, Finland, Riga, Kharkov and Kazan. In subsequent years, the Caucasian, Turkestan, Orenburg, West Siberian and East Siberian military districts were formed.
As a result of the organization of military districts, a relatively harmonious system of local military administration was created, eliminating the extreme centralization of the War Ministry, whose functions are now in the implementation of general leadership and supervision. The military districts ensured the rapid deployment of the army in the event of war, and if they were available, it became possible to start drawing up a mobilization schedule.
In parallel, there was a reform of the military ministry itself. According to the new state, the composition of the War Department was reduced by 327 officers and 607 soldiers. Significantly reduced the volume of correspondence. As a positive, one can also note the fact that the Minister of War concentrated all the threads of military command in his hands, but the troops were not completely subordinate to him, since the heads of the military districts depended directly on the king, who headed the supreme command of the armed forces.
At the same time, the organization of the central military command contained a number of other weaknesses:
- The structure of the General Staff was built in such a way that little space was allocated to the functions of the General Staff itself.
- The subordination of the chief military court and the prosecutor to the Minister of War meant the subordination of the judiciary to a representative of the executive branch.
- The subordination of medical institutions not to the main military medical department, but to the heads of local troops, had a negative effect on the establishment of medical affairs in the army.
Conclusions of the organizational reforms of the armed forces carried out in the 60-70s of the XIX century:
- During the first 8 years, the War Department managed to carry out a significant part of the planned reforms in the field of army organization and command and control.
- In the field of army organization, a system was created that, in the event of war, could increase the number of troops without resorting to new formations.
- The destruction of army corps and the continued division of infantry battalions into rifle and line companies had a negative effect in terms of combat training of troops.
- The reorganization of the War Department ensured the relative unity of military command.
- As a result of the military district reform, local government bodies were created, excessive centralization of command was eliminated, operational command and control of troops and their mobilization were ensured.
Technological reforms in the field of weapons
In 1856, a new type of infantry weapon was developed: a 6-line, muzzle-loading, rifled rifle. In 1862, more than 260 thousand people were armed with it. A significant part of the rifles was produced in Germany and Belgium. By the beginning of 1865, all infantry had been rearmed with 6-line rifles. At the same time, work continued to improve rifles, and in 1868 the Berdan rifle was adopted, and in 1870 its modified version. As a result, by the beginning of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, the entire Russian army was armed with the latest breech-loading rifles.
The introduction of rifled, muzzle-loading guns began in 1860. The field artillery adopted 4-pounder 3.42-inch rifled guns, superior to those previously produced both in range and in accuracy.
In 1866, armament for field artillery was approved, according to which all batteries of foot and horse artillery should have rifled, breech-loading guns. 1/3 of the foot batteries are to be armed with 9-pounders, and all other batteries of foot and horse artillery with 4-pounders. For the rearmament of field artillery, 1200 guns were required. By 1870, the re-equipment of field artillery was completely completed, and by 1871 there were 448 guns in reserve.
In 1870, rapid-fire 10-barreled Gatling and 6-barreled Baranovsky guns with a rate of fire of 200 rounds per minute were adopted by artillery brigades. In 1872, the Baranovsky 2.5-inch rapid-fire cannon was adopted, in which the basic principles of modern rapid-fire guns were implemented.
Thus, over the course of 12 years (from 1862 to 1874), the number of batteries increased from 138 to 300, and the number of guns from 1104 to 2400. In 1874, there were 851 guns in stock, a transition was made from wooden carriages to iron ones.
Education reform
During the reforms of the 1860s, the network of public schools was expanded. Along with the classical gymnasiums, real gymnasiums (schools) were created in which the main emphasis was on teaching mathematics and the natural sciences. The university charter of 1863 for higher educational institutions introduced partial autonomy of universities - the election of rectors and deans and the expansion of the rights of the professorial corporation. In 1869, the first higher women's courses in Russia with a general education program were opened in Moscow. In 1864, a new school charter was approved, according to which gymnasiums and real schools were introduced in the country.
Contemporaries considered some elements of the education reform as discrimination against the lower classes. As the historian N.A. Rozhkov pointed out, in real gymnasiums introduced for people from the lower and middle strata of society, they did not teach ancient languages (Latin and Greek), unlike ordinary gymnasiums that existed only for the upper classes; but knowledge of ancient languages was made mandatory for admission to universities. So for the broad masses of the population, access to universities was actually closed.
Other reforms
Under Alexander II, there were significant changes in relation to the Jewish Pale of Settlement. A number of decrees issued in the period from 1859 to 1880, a significant part of the Jews received the right to freely settle in the territory of Russia. As A.I. Solzhenitsyn writes, merchants, artisans, doctors, lawyers, university graduates, their families and service personnel, as well as, for example, “persons of free professions”, received the right to free settlement. And in 1880, by decree of the Minister of the Interior, it was allowed to leave for residence outside the Pale of Settlement those Jews who settled illegally.
autocracy reform
At the end of the reign of Alexander II, a project was drawn up to create a supreme council under the tsar (which included large nobles and officials), to which part of the rights and powers of the tsar himself was transferred. It was not about a constitutional monarchy, in which the supreme body is a democratically elected parliament (which was not and was not planned in Russia). The authors of this "constitutional project" were the Minister of Internal Affairs Loris-Melikov, who received emergency powers at the end of the reign of Alexander II, as well as the Minister of Finance Abaza and the Minister of War Milyutin. Alexander II approved this plan two weeks before his death, but they did not have time to discuss it at the council of ministers, and a discussion was scheduled for March 4, 1881, with subsequent entry into force (which did not take place due to the assassination of the king). As the historian N.A. Rozhkov pointed out, a similar project for the reform of the autocracy was later presented to Alexander III, as well as to Nicholas II at the beginning of his reign, but both times it was rejected on the advice of K.N. Pobedonostsev.
Economic development of the country
From the beginning of the 1860s. an economic crisis began in the country, which a number of historians associate with the refusal of Alexander II from industrial protectionism and the transition to a liberal policy in foreign trade. So, within a few years after the introduction of the liberal customs tariff of 1857 (by 1862), cotton processing in Russia fell 3.5 times, and pig iron production decreased by 25%.
The liberal policy in foreign trade continued in the future, after the introduction of a new customs tariff in 1868. Thus, it was calculated that, compared with 1841, import duties in 1868 decreased by an average of more than 10 times, and for certain types of imports - even 20-40 times. According to M. Pokrovsky, “customs tariffs of 1857-1868. were the most preferential that Russia enjoyed in the 19th century ... ". This won the approval of the liberal press, which at the time dominated other economic publications. As the historian writes, "the financial and economic literature of the 60s gives an almost continuous chorus of free traders ...". At the same time, the real situation in the country's economy continued to deteriorate: modern economic historians characterize the entire period until the end of the reign of Alexander II and even until the second half of the 1880s. as a period of economic depression.
Contrary to the goals declared by the peasant reform of 1861, the productivity in the country's agriculture did not increase until the 1880s, despite the rapid progress in other countries (USA, Western Europe), and the situation in this most important sector of the Russian economy also only worsened. For the first time in Russia, during the reign of Alexander II, periodically repeated famines began, which had not been in Russia since the time of Catherine II and which took on the character of real disasters (for example, a mass famine in the Volga region in 1873).
The liberalization of foreign trade led to a sharp increase in imports: from 1851-1856. to 1869-1876 imports grew almost 4 times. If earlier the trade balance of Russia was always positive, then during the reign of Alexander II it worsened. Beginning in 1871, for several years it was reduced to a deficit, which by 1875 reached a record level of 162 million rubles, or 35% of exports. The trade deficit threatened to cause gold to flow out of the country and depreciate the ruble. At the same time, this deficit could not be explained by the unfavorable conjuncture of foreign markets: for the main product of Russian export - grain - prices in foreign markets from 1861 to 1880. have almost doubled. During 1877-1881. The government, in order to combat the sharp increase in imports, was forced to resort to a series of increases in the level of import duties, which prevented further growth in imports and improved the country's foreign trade balance.
The only industry that developed rapidly was railway transport: the country's railway network grew rapidly, which also stimulated its own locomotive and wagon building. However, the development of railways was accompanied by many abuses and the deterioration of the financial situation of the state. Thus, the state guaranteed the private railway companies that were being created to fully cover their expenses and also to maintain a guaranteed rate of return through subsidies. The result was huge budget expenditures to support private companies, while the latter artificially inflated their costs in order to receive state subsidies.
To cover budget expenditures, the state for the first time began to actively resort to external loans (there were almost none under Nicholas I). Loans were attracted on extremely unfavorable conditions: the commission to banks was up to 10% of the borrowed amount, in addition, loans were placed, as a rule, at a price of 63-67% of its face value. Thus, only a little more than half of the loan amount came to the treasury, but the debt arose for the full amount, and annual interest was calculated from the full amount of the loan (7-8% per annum). As a result, the volume of the state external debt reached 2.2 billion rubles by 1862, and 5.9 billion rubles by the beginning of the 1880s.
Until 1858, a firm exchange rate of the ruble against gold was maintained, following the principles of the monetary policy pursued during the reign of Nicholas I. But starting from 1859, credit money was introduced into circulation, which did not have a firm exchange rate against gold. As indicated in the work of M. Kovalevsky, during the entire period of the 1860-1870s. In order to cover the budget deficit, the state was forced to resort to the issuance of credit money, which caused their depreciation and the disappearance of metal money from circulation. So, by January 1, 1879, the exchange rate of the credit ruble against the gold ruble fell to 0.617. Attempts to re-introduce a firm rate of the paper ruble against gold did not produce results, and the government abandoned these attempts until the end of the reign of Alexander II.
The problem of corruption
During the reign of Alexander II there was a marked increase in corruption. So, many nobles and nobles close to the court established private railway companies, which received state subsidies on unprecedentedly favorable terms, ruining the treasury. For example, the annual revenue of the Ural Railway in the early 1880s was only 300 thousand rubles, and its expenses and profit guaranteed to shareholders were 4 million rubles, thus, the state had only to maintain this private railway company annually to pay 3.7 million rubles out of his own pocket, which was 12 times the company's income. In addition to the fact that the nobles themselves acted as shareholders of railway companies, the latter paid them, including persons close to Alexander II, large bribes for certain permits and decisions in their favor.
Another example of corruption is the placement of government loans (see above), a significant part of which was appropriated by various financial intermediaries.
There are also examples of "favoritism" on the part of Alexander II himself. As N.A. Rozhkov wrote, he “unceremoniously handled the state chest ... gave his brothers a number of luxurious estates from state lands, built magnificent palaces for them at public expense.”
In general, characterizing the economic policy of Alexander II, M.N. Pokrovsky wrote that it was "a waste of money and effort, completely fruitless and harmful for the national economy ... They simply forgot about the country." The Russian economic reality of the 1860s and 1870s, wrote N.A. Rozhkov, “was distinguished by its rudely predatory character, the squandering of living and productive forces in general for the sake of the most elementary gain”; the state during this period "in essence, served as a tool for the enrichment of the grunders, speculators, in general - the predatory bourgeoisie."
Foreign policy
In the reign of Alexander II, Russia returned to the policy of the all-round expansion of the Russian Empire, previously characteristic of the reign of Catherine II. During this period, Central Asia, the North Caucasus, the Far East, Bessarabia, Batumi were annexed to Russia. Victories in the Caucasian War were won in the first years of his reign. The advance to Central Asia ended successfully (in 1865-1881, most of Turkestan became part of Russia). After a long resistance, he decided to go to war with Turkey in 1877-1878. Following the war, he accepted the rank of Field Marshal (April 30, 1878).
The meaning of joining some new territories, especially Central Asia, was incomprehensible to a part of Russian society. So, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin criticized the behavior of generals and officials who used the Central Asian war for personal enrichment, and M.N. Pokrovsky pointed out the senselessness of the conquest of Central Asia for Russia. Meanwhile, this conquest resulted in great human losses and material costs.
In 1876-1877. Alexander II took a personal part in concluding a secret agreement with Austria in connection with the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, which, according to some historians and diplomats of the second half of the 19th century, resulted in became the Berlin Treaty (1878), which entered the national historiography as "flawed" in relation to the self-determination of the Balkan peoples (significantly curtailed the Bulgarian state and transferred Bosnia-Herzegovina to Austria).
In 1867, Alaska (Russian America) was transferred to the United States.
Growing public discontent
Unlike the previous reign, which was almost not marked by social protests, the era of Alexander II was characterized by an increase in public discontent. Along with a sharp increase in the number of peasant uprisings (see above), many protest groups appeared among the intelligentsia and workers. In the 1860s, a group of S. Nechaev, a circle of Zaichnevsky, a circle of Olshevsky, a circle of Ishutin, an organization of Land and Freedom, a group of officers and students (Ivanitsky and others) arose, preparing a peasant uprising. In the same period, the first revolutionaries appeared (Pyotr Tkachev, Sergey Nechaev), who propagated the ideology of terrorism as a method of fighting the authorities. In 1866, the first attempt was made to assassinate Alexander II, who was shot by Karakozov (a lone terrorist).
In the 1870s, these trends increased significantly. This period includes such protest groups and movements as the circle of Kursk Jacobins, the circle of Chaikovites, the circle of Perovskaya, the circle of Dolgushinites, the groups of Lavrov and Bakunin, the circles of Dyakov, Siryakov, Semyanovskiy, the South Russian Union of Workers, the Kiev Commune, the Northern Workers Union, the new organization Land and Will and a number of others. Most of these circles and groups until the end of the 1870s. engaged in anti-government propaganda and agitation, only from the end of the 1870s. begins a clear tilt towards terrorist acts. In 1873-1874. 2-3 thousand people (the so-called "going to the people"), mainly from among the intelligentsia, went to the countryside under the guise of ordinary people in order to propagate revolutionary ideas.
After the suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863-1864 and the attempt on his life by D. V. Karakozov on April 4, 1866, Alexander II made concessions to the protective course, expressed in the appointment of Dmitry Tolstoy, Fyodor Trepov, Pyotr Shuvalov to the highest government posts, which led to toughening measures in the field of domestic policy.
The intensification of repressions by the police, especially in relation to “going to the people” (the trial of the 193 populists), caused public outrage and marked the beginning of terrorist activity, which subsequently assumed a mass character. Thus, the assassination attempt by Vera Zasulich in 1878 on the St. Petersburg mayor Trepov was undertaken in response to the mistreatment of prisoners in the process of the 193rd. Despite the irrefutable evidence that testified to the attempt, the jury acquitted her, she received a standing ovation in the courtroom, and on the street she was greeted by an enthusiastic demonstration of a large mass of the public gathered outside the courthouse.
During the following years, assassination attempts were organized:
1878: - on the Kyiv prosecutor Kotlyarevsky, on the gendarmerie officer Geiking in Kyiv, on the chief of the gendarmes Mezentsev in St. Petersburg;
1879: on the Kharkov governor Prince Kropotkin, on the chief of gendarmes Drenteln in St. Petersburg.
1878-1881: there was a series of assassination attempts on Alexander II.
Towards the end of his reign, protest moods spread among different sections of society, including the intelligentsia, part of the nobility and the army. The public applauded the terrorists, the number of terrorist organizations themselves grew - for example, Narodnaya Volya, which sentenced the tsar to death, had hundreds of active members. Hero of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. and the war in Central Asia, the commander-in-chief of the Turkestan army, General Mikhail Skobelev, at the end of Alexander's reign, showed sharp dissatisfaction with his policy and even, according to the testimony of A. Koni and P. Kropotkin, expressed his intention to arrest the royal family. These and other facts gave rise to the version that Skobelev was preparing a military coup to overthrow the Romanovs. Another example of a protest mood in relation to the policy of Alexander II is the monument to his successor Alexander III. The author of the monument, the sculptor Trubetskoy, depicted the tsar sharply besieging a horse, which, according to his plan, was supposed to symbolize Russia, stopped by Alexander III at the edge of the abyss - where the policy of Alexander II led her.
Assassination attempts and murder
History of unsuccessful attempts
Several assassination attempts were made on Alexander II:
- D. V. Karakozov April 4, 1866. When Alexander II was heading from the gates of the Summer Garden to his carriage, a shot rang out. The bullet flew over the head of the emperor: the shooter was pushed by a peasant, Osip Komissarov, who was standing nearby.
- Polish emigrant Anton Berezovsky on May 25, 1867 in Paris; the bullet hit the horse.
- A. K. Solovyov April 2, 1879 in St. Petersburg. Solovyov fired 5 shots from a revolver, including 4 at the emperor, but missed.
On August 26, 1879, the Executive Committee of the People's Will decided to assassinate Alexander II.
- November 19, 1879 there was an attempt to blow up the imperial train near Moscow. The emperor was saved by the fact that he was traveling in another carriage. The explosion fell on the first car, and the emperor himself rode in the second, since in the first he was carrying food from Kyiv.
- On February 5 (17), 1880, S. N. Khalturin carried out an explosion on the first floor of the Winter Palace. The emperor dined on the third floor, he was saved by the fact that he arrived later than the appointed time, the guards (11 people) on the second floor died.
On February 12, 1880, the Supreme Administrative Commission was established to protect state order and combat the revolutionary movement, headed by the liberal-minded Count Loris-Melikov.
Death and burial. Society reaction
On March 1 (13), 1881, at 3:35 pm, he died in the Winter Palace as a result of a mortal wound received on the embankment of the Catherine Canal (Petersburg) at about 2:25 pm on the same day - from a bomb explosion (the second during the assassination attempt ), thrown under his feet by the People's Will Ignaty Grinevitsky; died on the day when he intended to approve the constitutional project of M. T. Loris-Melikov. The assassination attempt took place when the emperor was returning after a military divorce in the Mikhailovsky Manege, from “tea” (second breakfast) in the Mikhailovsky Palace with Grand Duchess Ekaterina Mikhailovna; tea was also attended by Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, who left a little later, having heard the explosion, and arrived shortly after the second explosion, gave orders and orders at the scene. On the eve of February 28 (Saturday of the first week of Great Lent), the emperor in the Small Church of the Winter Palace, along with some other members of the family, communed the Holy Mysteries.
On March 4, his body was transferred to the Court Cathedral of the Winter Palace; March 7 solemnly transferred to the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The funeral service on March 15 was led by Metropolitan Isidor (Nikolsky) of St. Petersburg, co-served by other members of the Holy Synod and a host of clergy.
The death of the "Liberator", who was killed by the Narodnaya Volya on behalf of the "liberated", seemed to many a symbolic end to his reign, which, from the point of view of the conservative part of society, led to rampant "nihilism"; particular indignation was caused by the conciliatory policy of Count Loris-Melikov, who was regarded as a puppet in the hands of Princess Yuryevskaya. Political figures of the right wing (including Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Yevgeny Feoktistov and Konstantin Leontiev) even said with more or less frankness that the emperor died “on time”: if he reigned for another year or two, the catastrophe of Russia (the collapse of the autocracy) would become inevitable.
Shortly before that, K. P. Pobedonostsev, who had been appointed chief prosecutor, wrote to the new emperor on the very day of the death of Alexander II: “God ordered us to survive this terrible day. It is as if God's punishment fell on unfortunate Russia. I would like to hide my face, go underground, so as not to see, not to feel, not to experience. God have mercy on us. ".
The rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Archpriest John Yanyshev, on March 2, 1881, before a memorial service in St. Isaac's Cathedral, said in his speech: “The Sovereign not only died, but was also killed in His own capital ... a martyr's crown for His sacred Head is woven on Russian ground, among His subjects… That is what makes our grief unbearable, the disease of the Russian and Christian hearts - incurable, our immeasurable calamity - our eternal disgrace!
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, who at a young age was at the bedside of the dying emperor and whose father was in the Mikhailovsky Palace on the day of the assassination attempt, wrote in emigrant memoirs about his feelings in the following days: “At night, sitting on our beds, we continued to discuss the catastrophe of the past Sundays and asked each other what will happen next? The image of the late Sovereign, bent over the body of a wounded Cossack and not thinking about the possibility of a second attempt, did not leave us. We understood that something immeasurably greater than our loving uncle and courageous monarch had irretrievably gone with him into the past. Idyllic Russia with the Tsar-Father and his loyal people ceased to exist on March 1, 1881. We understood that the Russian Tsar would never again be able to treat his subjects with boundless trust. He will not be able, forgetting regicide, to devote himself entirely to state affairs. The romantic traditions of the past and the idealistic understanding of the Russian autocracy in the spirit of the Slavophiles - all this will be buried, together with the murdered emperor, in the crypt of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Last Sunday's explosion dealt a mortal blow to the old principles, and no one could deny that the future not only of the Russian Empire, but of the whole world, now depended on the outcome of the inevitable struggle between the new Russian Tsar and the elements of denial and destruction.
The editorial of the Special Supplement to the right-wing conservative newspaper "Rus" dated March 4 read: "The Tsar has been killed! ... Russian the tsar, in his own Russia, in his capital, brutally, barbarously, in front of everyone - with the same Russian hand ... Shame, shame on our country! May the burning pain of shame and grief penetrate our land from end to end, and let every soul tremble in it with horror, sorrow, and the wrath of indignation! That scum, which so impudently, so brazenly oppresses the soul of the entire Russian people with crimes, is not the offspring of our very simple people, nor their antiquity, nor even the truly enlightened newness, but the product of the dark sides of the Petersburg period of our history, apostasy from the Russian people, treason its traditions, beginnings and ideals.
At an emergency meeting of the Moscow City Duma, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: “An unheard-of and terrifying event has taken place: the Russian Tsar, the liberator of peoples, fell victim to a gang of villains among the many millions of people selflessly devoted to him. Several people, the offspring of darkness and sedition, dared with a blasphemous hand to encroach on the age-old tradition of the great land, to tarnish its history, the banner of which is the Russian Tsar. The Russian people shuddered with indignation and anger at the news of the terrible event.
In No. 65 (March 8, 1881) of the semi-official newspaper St. Petersburg Vedomosti, a "hot and frank article" was published, which caused "a stir in the St. Petersburg press." The article, in particular, said: “Petersburg, standing on the outskirts of the state, is teeming with foreign elements. Here both foreigners, thirsting for the disintegration of Russia, and leaders of our outskirts have built a nest for themselves. [Petersburg] is full of our bureaucracy, which has long lost its sense of the people's pulse. That is why in Petersburg you can meet a lot of people, apparently Russians, but who argue as enemies of their homeland, as traitors to their people.
The anti-monarchist representative of the left wing of the Cadets, V.P. Obninsky, in his work “The Last Autocrat” (1912 or later) wrote about regicide: “This act deeply stirred up society and the people. For the murdered sovereign, too outstanding merits were listed for his death to pass without a reflex on the part of the population. And such a reflex could only be a desire for a reaction.
At the same time, the executive committee of Narodnaya Volya, a few days after March 1, published a letter in which, along with a statement of the “enforcement of the sentence” to the tsar, contained an “ultimatum” to the new tsar, Alexander III: “If the policy of the government does not change , revolution will be inevitable. The government must express the will of the people, and it is a usurper gang.” Despite the arrest and execution of all the leaders of the "Narodnaya Volya", terrorist acts continued in the first 2-3 years of the reign of Alexander III.
The following lines of Alexander Blok are dedicated to the assassination of Alexander II (poem "Retribution"):
The results of the reign
Alexander II went down in history as a reformer and liberator. In his reign, serfdom was abolished, compulsory military service was introduced, zemstvos were established, judicial reform was carried out, censorship was limited, and a number of other reforms were carried out. The empire expanded significantly due to the conquest and inclusion of the Central Asian possessions, the North Caucasus, the Far East and other territories.
At the same time, the country's economic situation worsened: industry was struck by a protracted depression, and there were several cases of mass starvation in the countryside. The deficit of the foreign trade balance and the state external debt (almost 6 billion rubles) reached a large size, which led to a breakdown in money circulation and public finances. The problem of corruption has escalated. A split and sharp social contradictions formed in Russian society, which reached their peak by the end of the reign.
Other negative aspects usually include the results of the Berlin Congress of 1878, unfavorable for Russia, exorbitant expenses in the war of 1877-1878, numerous peasant uprisings (in 1861-1863: more than 1150 speeches), large-scale nationalist uprisings in the kingdom of Poland and the North-Western Territory ( 1863) and in the Caucasus (1877-1878). Within the imperial family, Alexander II's authority was undermined by his love interests and morganatic marriage.
Estimates of some of the reforms of Alexander II are contradictory. Noble circles and the liberal press called his reforms "great". At the same time, a significant part of the population (the peasantry, part of the intelligentsia), as well as a number of statesmen of that era, negatively assessed these reforms. So, at the first meeting of the government of Alexander III on March 8, 1881, K.N. Pobedonostsev sharply criticized the peasant, zemstvo, and judicial reforms of Alexander II. And historians of the late XIX - early XX centuries. they argued that there was no real emancipation of the peasants (only a mechanism for such emancipation was created, and an unfair one at that); corporal punishment against peasants was not abolished (which persisted until 1904-1905); the establishment of zemstvos led to discrimination against the lower classes; judicial reform failed to prevent the growth of judicial and police arbitrariness. In addition, according to experts on the agrarian issue, the peasant reform of 1861 led to the emergence of serious new problems (landowner cuts, the ruin of the peasants), which became one of the causes of the future revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
The views of modern historians on the era of Alexander II were subject to drastic changes under the influence of the dominant ideology, and are not well-established. Soviet historiography was dominated by a tendentious view of his reign, which followed from the general nihilistic attitudes towards the "era of tsarism." Modern historians, along with the thesis of the "liberation of the peasants", state that their freedom of movement after the reform was "relative". Calling the reforms of Alexander II "great", they at the same time write that the reforms gave rise to "the deepest socio-economic crisis in the countryside", did not lead to the abolition of corporal punishment for peasants, were not consistent, and economic life in 1860-1870 -s yrs. characterized by industrial recession, rampant speculation and grunderstvo.
Family
- First marriage (1841) with Maria Alexandrovna (07/1/1824 - 05/22/1880), nee Princess Maximilian-Wilhelmina-August-Sophia-Maria of Hesse-Darmstadt.
- The second, morganatic, marriage with an old (since 1866) mistress, Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukova (1847-1922), who received the title Most Serene Princess Yuryevskaya.
As of March 1, 1881, the personal capital of Alexander II was about 12 million rubles. (securities, tickets of the State Bank, shares of railway companies); from personal funds, he donated 1 million rubles in 1880. on the construction of a hospital in memory of the Empress.
Children from first marriage:
- Alexandra (1842-1849);
- Nicholas (1843-1865);
- Alexander III (1845-1894);
- Vladimir (1847-1909);
- Alexey (1850-1908);
- Maria (1853-1920);
- Sergei (1857-1905);
- Pavel (1860-1919).
Children from a morganatic marriage (legalized after the wedding):
- His Serene Highness Prince Georgy Alexandrovich Yuryevsky (1872-1913);
- Most Serene Princess Olga Alexandrovna Yurievskaya (1873-1925);
- Boris (1876-1876), posthumously legalized with the assignment of the surname "Yurievsky";
- His Serene Highness Princess Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Yuryevskaya (1878-1959), married to Prince Alexander Vladimirovich Baryatinsky, and later to Prince Sergei Platonovich Obolensky-Neledinsky-Meletsky.
In addition to children from Ekaterina Dolgoruky, he had several other illegitimate children.
Some monuments to Alexander II
Moscow
On May 14, 1893, in the Kremlin, next to the Small Nikolaevsky Palace, where Alexander was born (opposite the Chudov Monastery), it was founded, and on August 16, 1898, solemnly, after the liturgy in the Assumption Cathedral, in the Highest Presence (the service was officiated by Metropolitan Vladimir of Moscow (Bogoyavlensky) ), a monument to him was opened (the work of A. M. Opekushin, P. V. Zhukovsky and N. V. Sultanov). The emperor was sculpted standing under a pyramidal canopy in a general's uniform, in purple, with a scepter; a canopy made of dark pink granite with bronze ornaments was crowned with a gilded patterned hipped roof with a double-headed eagle; in the dome of the vestibule was placed a chronicle of the life of the king. On three sides, a through gallery adjoined the monument, formed by vaults resting on columns. In the spring of 1918, the sculptural figure of the king was thrown off the monument; The monument was completely dismantled in 1928.
In June 2005, a monument to Alexander II was solemnly opened in Moscow. The author of the monument is Alexander Rukavishnikov. The monument is set on a granite platform on the western side of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. On the pedestal of the monument there is an inscription “Emperor Alexander II. He abolished serfdom in 1861 and freed millions of peasants from centuries of slavery. He carried out military and judicial reforms. He introduced a system of local self-government, city dumas and zemstvo councils. He completed the long-term Caucasian war. He freed the Slavic peoples from the Ottoman yoke. He died on March 1 (13), 1881 as a result of a terrorist act.
Saint Petersburg
In St. Petersburg, on the site of the death of the tsar, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was erected with funds collected from all over Russia. The cathedral was built by order of Emperor Alexander III in 1883-1907 according to a joint project of the architect Alfred Parland and Archimandrite Ignatius (Malyshev), and consecrated on August 6, 1907 - the day of the Transfiguration.
The tombstone set over the grave of Alexander II differs from the white marble tombstones of other emperors: it is made of gray-green jasper.
Bulgaria
In Bulgaria, Alexander II is known as Tsar Liberator. His manifesto of April 12 (24), 1877 declaring war on Turkey is studied in the school history course. The Treaty of San Stefano on March 3, 1878 brought freedom to Bulgaria, after five centuries of Ottoman rule that began in 1396. The grateful Bulgarian people erected many monuments to the Tsar-Liberator and named streets and institutions in his honor all over the country.
Sofia
In the center of the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, on the square in front of the People's Assembly, stands one of the best monuments to the Tsar-Liberator.
General-Toshevo
On April 24, 2009, a monument to Alexander II was solemnly opened in the city of General Toshevo. The height of the monument is 4 meters, it is made of two types of volcanic stone: red and black. The monument was made in Armenia and is a gift from the Union of Armenians in Bulgaria. It took the Armenian craftsmen a year and four months to make the monument. The stone from which it is made is very ancient.
Kyiv
In Kyiv from 1911 to 1919 there was a monument to Alexander II, which was demolished by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution.
Kazan
The monument to Alexander II in Kazan was erected on the Alexander Square (formerly Ivanovskaya, now May 1) at the Spasskaya Tower of the Kazan Kremlin and solemnly opened on August 30, 1895. In February-March 1918, the bronze figure of the emperor was dismantled from the pedestal, until the end of the 1930s it lay on the territory of Gostiny Dvor, and in April 1938 it was melted down to make brake bushings for tram wheels. On the pedestal, the “monument of Labor” was first erected, then the monument to Lenin. In 1966, a monumental memorial complex was built on this site as part of a monument to the Hero of the Soviet Union Musa Jalil and a bas-relief to the heroes of the Tatar resistance in the Nazi captivity of the Kurmashev group.
Rybinsk
On January 12, 1914, the laying of a monument took place on the Red Square of the city of Rybinsk - in the presence of Bishop Sylvester (Bratanovsky) of Rybinsk and Yaroslavl Governor Count D. N. Tatishchev. On May 6, 1914, the monument was unveiled (work by A. M. Opekushin).
Repeated attempts by the crowd to desecrate the monument began immediately after the February Revolution of 1917. In March 1918, the "hated" sculpture was finally wrapped and hidden under the matting, and in July it was completely thrown off the pedestal. First, the sculpture "Hammer and Sickle" was put in its place, and in 1923 - a monument to V. I. Lenin. The further fate of the sculpture is not exactly known; The pedestal of the monument has survived to this day. In 2009, Albert Serafimovich Charkin began to work on the reconstruction of the sculpture of Alexander II; the opening of the monument was originally planned in 2011, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom, but most citizens consider it inappropriate to move the monument to V.I. Lenin and replace it with Emperor Alexander II.
Helsinki
In the capital of the Grand Duchy of Helsingfors, on the Senate Square in 1894, a monument to Alexander II, the work of Walter Runeberg, was erected. With the monument, the Finns expressed their gratitude for strengthening the foundations of Finnish culture and, in particular, for recognizing the Finnish language as the state language.
Czestochowa
The monument to Alexander II in Czestochowa (Kingdom of Poland) by A. M. Opekushin was opened in 1899.
Monuments of Opekushin's work
A. M. Opekushin erected monuments to Alexander II in Moscow (1898), Pskov (1886), Chisinau (1886), Astrakhan (1884), Czestokhov (1899), Vladimir (1913), Buturlinovka (1912), Rybinsk (1914) and in other cities of the empire. Each of them was unique; according to estimates, “the Czestochowa monument, created with donations from the Polish population, was very beautiful and elegant.” After 1917, most of those created by Opekushin were destroyed.
- And to this day in Bulgaria during the liturgy in Orthodox churches, during the great entrance of the liturgy of the faithful, Alexander II and all Russian soldiers who fell on the battlefield for the liberation of Bulgaria in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 are commemorated.
- Alexander II is the last head of the Russian state at the moment, born in Moscow.
- The abolition of serfdom (1861), carried out during the reign of Alexander II, coincided with the beginning of the American Civil War (1861-1865), where the struggle to abolish slavery is considered its main cause.
Movie incarnations
- Ivan Kononenko ("Heroes of Shipka", 1954).
- Vladislav Strzhelchik (Sofya Perovskaya, 1967).
- Vladislav Dvorzhetsky (Julia Vrevskaya, 1977).
- Yuri Belyaev ("The King's Killer", 1991).
- Nikolai Burov ("The Emperor's Romance", 1993).
- Georgy Taratorkin ("The Emperor's Love", 2003).
- Dmitry Isaev ("Poor Nastya", 2003-2004).
- Evgeny Lazarev ("Turkish Gambit", 2005).
- Smirnov, Andrey Sergeevich ("Gentlemen of the Jury", 2005).
- Lazarev, Alexander Sergeevich ("The Mysterious Prisoner", 1986).
- Borisov, Maxim Stepanovich ("Alexander II", 2011).
