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Compare and contrast the rule of Alexander II (1855-61) and Alexander III…
Compare and contrast the rule of Alexander II (1855-61) and Alexander III (1881-94).
ideology
A III was ready to reasser Tsar's autocracy after what he saw as dangerous innovations of his father
ethinic minorities subjected to anti-Semitism and Russification
position of Church as supreme power was restored
battle against liberalism (A II Tsar the liberator...
)
A III as the head of teh Church => "god on Earth"
schock of A II's brutal assassination => A III "thrust into power"
was a second son and had not been brought up expecting to be a Tsar
reforms
A III
greater censorship and control
Russians actually mourned for A II's sudden death and there was aven a mood of revulsion... consequently, there was no public outcry when A III's first action was to abandon the Loris-Melikov proposals for constitutional reform
ministers changed into more conservatives
the Statute on Measures for the Preservation of Political Order and Social Tranquility
the appointed commander-in-chiefs would have a full power to search property, arresr, interrogate, imprison and exile suspects (was still in place in 1917)
land captains
Historians Charques and E.A.Lutsky have suggested that this measure created a state of "semi-serfdom" in the countryside p.97
re-instating the domincance of the nobility
closed court sessions
wider context
Pobedonostev
was a tutor of A III and the last Tsar Nicholas II
extreme right-wing conservative
Slavophile, nationalist and strongly anti-Semitic
believed that removal of yje separate languages, cultures etc. would strenghten the tsar's autocracy and encourage stability.
However, its effect was to turn non-Russian people who had previously been loyal, into opponents of tsarist rule
sproke for need of "governmental coercion"
described the idea that power came from the people as the "Greatest falshood of our time"
historian Hugh Seton-Watson has argued that Pobedonostev imposed "an overall attitude of nostalgia, obscurantist and narrowly bureucratic paternalism" on A III's government p.92
explanation of autocracy
neiher A II wanted to weaken his own autocracy, although he was liberal
opposition
A III lived in the fear of revolutionaries (brutal death of his father)
a close supervision of intellectual life, ranging from control over schools and universities to the censorship of newspapers and books
only the upper classes became eligible for higher education
were the ordinary people becoming so educated and intellectual that they started to demand more (from A II) and criticize, so they were a threat to the auocracy?
by reducing power of zemstva and town dumas and by using the Okharna, the last two tsars appeared to have successfully avoided any weakening of teh autocracy before 1904
the growth of opposition movements during A II and especially during A III