Alexander III was the son of Alexander II and the father of Nicholas II. He is generally looked back upon as a brute and a tyrant, a particularly cruel tsar.
Alexander III enjoyed the military aspects of royal life. He was said to be not too intellectual, but he was determined, honest, and sincere. However, he was also ruthless, strong-willed, and determined. He was over six feet tall (reports say he was somewhere between six foot three and six foot four) with a wide set build and a great deal of physical strength. He lacked the manners and elegance that you would have expected from a member of the royal family, and he greatly disapproved of immoral behaviours, going so far as to impose sanctions on family members that indulged in it.
Early life and family
Alexander III was not actually the eldest son, he was the second eldest, however, after his older brother Nicholas died in 1865, he became the heir. As such, he was not raised or trained to be the tsar, nor did he have any natural predisposition towards it, in fact after his brother died he felt he had ‘a terrible responsibility’ on his shoulders.
He was very close to his late brother, Nicholas, and was devastated by his death. He then went on to marry his brother fiancée, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, which Nicholas apparently requested upon his death bed. Despite the unusual beginning to their relationship, Alexander and Dagmar were very happy together (it was noted that they were the first royal couple to refrain from infidelity since Peter I) and Alexander remarked on his death bed that he had ‘known an angel in life’ in reference to his wife. The couple went on the have five children, four of whom survived to adulthood, and Alexander was said to be far more lenient with his children than the other European monarchs of his time, once telling his children’s tutor that he ‘did not need porcelain’ and instead wanted ‘healthy Russian children’. However, that is not to say that his relationships with his children were perfect. He often thought that his oldest Nicholas was too childish, and he worried about the kind of tsar Nicholas would grow up to be (in retrospective we can say that he was obviously right to do so).
Alexander’s relationship with his own father was strained for two reasons. The first was a disagreement in political views. Alexander II was often fairly liberal, while Alexander III was far more conservative, believing in control and the significance of the military – they disagreed largely over the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 with the II supporting Prussia and the III supporting France. The second reason was due to his father’s infidelity with Catherine, which Alexander thought had ‘ruined his image of his childhood family’ forever.
His father’s death and its significance
Despite their estrangement, the assassination of his father would serve as the catalyst to Alexander III becoming a rather repressive type of tsar. Over his reign, Alexander II had introduced many liberal reforms and so, when he was assassinated anyway, Alexander III was pushed to rule in the opposite manner – he believed that the reforms were ‘ill-advised’ and ‘pushing Russia down the wrong road’ and that they had contributed to his father’s assassination and he actually went on to repeal several of his father reforms during his own reign. He rejected the notion of parliamentarianism profusely, denying that he would ever grant Russia a constitution.
What reforms did Alexander III introduce?
As mentioned previously, Alexander III ‘s reforms were almost the antithesis of his father’s reforms, but what did he actually do? His reforms can be divided up into six categories.
Emergency measures – In 1881, Alexander pass the Statute of State Security, which gave the government the emergency powers to prohibit gatherings of more than twelve people, to prosecute any single person for a political crime, to introduce emergency police rule in anywhere that public order is threatened, to set up special courts outside the legal system, and to close schools, universities, and newspapers. Because of this, the Minister of the Interior, the police force, and the provincial governors could do practically whatever they wanted including things like restricting people’s civil liberties, arresting people without having to face a court, and closing whatever universities or newspapers they wanted. Although they were supposed to be temporary, many of these rules remained in place up until the abdication in 1917. These were just examples of the repressive period people faced under Alexander III.
Control – The Okhrana, who were a secret police force, were established and a following decree in March 1882 allowed them to subject any citizen to surveillance. Dmitry Tolstoy, who was a member of the State Council of Imperial Russia, wanted government-appointed official to be in immediate control of the peasants and the village communes. They chose members of the gentry to become ‘Land Captains’ and control rural areas. They became very powerful people and had the ability to overrule district courts without anyone appealing against their decisions – naturally they were very much resented by the peasants. Censorship became an even bigger problem, with it being tightened even further. Any sort of publication that spoke against the regime could be suspended and the editors could be banned from publishing anything else.
Education – In 1884, the University Statute introduced some strict controls which reduced the autonomy of universities and reduced student freedom. All the university staff had to be appointed by the Minister of Education. University courses for women were closed and the Church was given more control over primary level education. Furthermore, the fees in secondary level schools were raised in a specific effort to exclude children from working class backgrounds, and the percentage of children of nobles and government officials rose significantly.
Local Government – In 1890, the Zemstva Act was introduced, which reduced the independence of the Zemstvas. It centralised control under the Ministry of the Interior, and provisional governors gained the ability to veto and adapt their decisions. Overall, the governments started to interfere with local authorities even more, and the system that was used to elect people to the Zemstvas was changed to favour the landowners, meaning that the representation of peasants was greatly reduced. Despite this, the Zemstvas continued to do things like build new roads and hospitals, and they played a key role in relieving the effects of a famine in 1891 to 1892.
Legal System – The government made some changes to the legal system including: using court marshals to try any sensitives cases and avoid publicity, the Minister of Justice was allowed to order a trial to be held in private, and crimes against the state could be tried in special courts without a jury. In addition to this, judges lost the security of tenure and many were appointed by the Ministry of Justice itself, and Justices of the Peace were abolished with all of their judicial powers being handed over to the Land Captains.
Financial and Social Measures – Between 1883 and 1887, Nikolai Bunge abolished the Poll Tax, which was previously only paid by peasants, and lowered the redemption payments to ease the burdens on the lower class. However, Ivan Vyshnegradsky later increased indirect taxes which meant that the overall taxation on peasants didn’t change that much at all. In 1883, a financial institution called the Peasants’ Land Bank was set up by Nikolai Bunge to help peasants buy land and farms (although this was of limited effectiveness due to lack of funding). In 1885, the Noble’s Land Bank was established, which leant money to nobles at very low interest rates in order to help them pay off debts and invest in land. There were also some reforms introduced about restricting child labour, having a limited number of hours for women to work at night, reducing fines for workers, and providing compulsory education for young factory children, but all were limited in their effectiveness – there was also a factory inspectorate introduced to monitor the working conditions in factories.
Russification
One of Alexander III’s most memorable and significant policies was Russification, which was about making the half of the Russian population that was made up of ethnic minorities feel a sense of belong to Russia and , essentially, leading to them viewing themselves as Russian above all else.
The Church and Russification – The Russian Orthodox Church wanted to be the centre of Russification, believing not only that all citizens of the empire should become Orthodox, but that all those who were not Orthodox were inherently disloyal. Orthodox Churches were built all over the empire and more people were recruited to the clergy to fill said churches. These churches helped with the forced conversion of 100,000 Muslim Tartars from Islam to Orthodox Christianity; in the Baltic regions were Lutheran Christianity was prominent, Orthodox peasants were given more land and benefits which led to 37,000 Lutherans converting to Orthodoxy during Alexander III’s reign. The religious aspect of Russification unsurprisingly caused resentment amongst local national and religious minorities.
General account – minority nationalities had to adopt the Russian language, culture, and religion in an effort from the Russian to eradicate any other type of national identity. Russian was used in schools, law courts, and regional governments. Russian officials were brought in to run the regional governments of non-russian areas like Finland and Poland. In addition to this, the national minorities had to pay large sums of money to the imperial treasury. Many different ethnic uprisings were crushed, such as in
- Bashkira in 1884
- Armenia and Fergana in 1886
- Tashkent and Guriya in 1892
Russification and the Ukrainians – Ukrainians were the second largest ethnic group in the Russian Empire and it produced a significant amount of the empire’s grain, which meant that it was a very important area to keep under the control of the Tsar. The Tsar issued a decree to stop the production and publication of books in the Ukrainian language, and to stop the use of Ukrainian in theatres.
Russification and the Jewish population – In the 1880s, there was about five million Jewish people in in the Russian Empire. They were forced to live in an area on the eastern borders of Poland and Ukraine, called the Pale Settlement. The civil rights of Jews in Russia had been restricted since the Polish Revolt of 1863, and most lost any previously good jobs they had had and were faced with poverty. Some of the prejudice the Jewish people faced was due to the idea that they were ‘Christ Killers’, which was encouraged by the Russian Orthodox Church. Some of the rules placed upon Jewish people included: not allowed to own property and land in rural areas, could be deported if the lived outside the Pale Settlement, were denied the right to vote, were not allowed to work in certain professions like medical or legal, and they could not hold government jobs or run schools.
Russification was not just accepted across the Empire. Although some thought that the government were acting in the best interests of the country, there were many cases of of resistance. In June 1888, there were an estimated 332 cases of mass disturbance , and in 51 of these cases, the military were used to curb them. Russification also caused a deepening resentment amongst those who were brutalised in its name. The more educated Finnish, Polish and Baltic Germans would often try to petition the Tsar and would secretly publish books in the prohibited languages.
The Death of Alexander
Alexander died on the 1st of November 1894 at the age of 49 due to some sort of complication with one of his kidneys. Over his lifetime, he strengthened the centralisation of power and overturned most of the reforms that had been carried out by his father, Alexander II. He was succeeded by his son Nicholas, and is remembered largely as a brutish and repressive Tsar.