On 13th March 1881, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by a terrorist group called The People’s Will, a radical group opposed to the autocratic rule of the Tsars. As a result, his son Alexander III became Tsar. He was very autocratic and the immediate impact of Alexander III’s rise to power was to end any further political reform. Instead, his reign is noted for being one of political repression. Part of Alexander III’s problem was the legacy left by his father who had begun reforms which raised expectations of major change within Russia.
Within the public intensions the king wanted to bring the clergymen into the sphere of his subjects. Clergymen of England were under the influence of the Pope, and saw the king as a second leadership figure. The Monasteries were also an outdated system that needed to be changed, for the better according to Henry VIII. The Dissolution would also show if the monasteries were suitable to serve as hospitals and as educational centres for the people of England. However, Henry and Cromwell had their own private intensions to dissolve the monasteries.
Under the tsar the Okrana was used defeat any political opposition, although Lenin used them the same way the name of the ‘Okrana’ was changed to the ‘Checka’ and their primary role was to imprison political opponent and send them to Labour Camps in the countryside of Russia. This was done in an attempt to make sure the Bolsheviks had complete power. I will also asses Control of the economy and how they differ between the two systems of rule. Under Tsarist rule Russia was seen as a backwards country. There were attempts such as ‘the great spurt’ spearheaded by Sergi Witte to gain Russia’s financial strength and modernise the country and it worked to some degree.
The church had some positive impact on the Tsars reign – it played a great role in the reinforcement of Tsardom by threatening to ‘curse’ the people who didn’t put full belief into the Tsar. Although the church’s played part in reinforcing Tsarism, it also pushed away believers from the Tsar and this was an underlying problem that had no indication of being solved. The lack of democracy in Russian government saw an increase in the amount of extremist groups emerging throughout the country. The Tsar had all of the power and although he had councils, they were all run by members of the nobility. Most peasants
The Russification that Alexander III embarked on wasn’t all good news for Russia as it lead to widespread racism towards the Jewish population and other religious minorities. This was because Alexander III was trying to stop the Russian culture becoming diverse and ‘diluted’ he tried to keep Russia on the Orthodox Christian line, this is one of the reforms which gained him many enemies. On the topic of Orthodox Christianity during Alexander III’s reign, he enforced laws which meant that if anyone confessed to anything illegal or conspiring to do anything illegal that the priest had to inform the authorities and betray the confessor. This wasn’t helped by the reforms that he made to the legal system which removed the jury in a lot of cases and meant that you were judged by one man and the Tsar himself could change your sentence if he thought it wasn’t harsh enough. Another reform that he made which countered that of his fathers was removing the powers of the Zemstvo and replacing them with people
To what extent did Alexander III measures create a stronger Russia? When Alexander III came into power as tsar Russia was in crisis after Alexander II was assassinated by the people will. Alexander III faced a hard job of keeping control of Russia and keeping supreme political power, this meant reform for Russia. Although he was reforming Russia like many Russians wanted to, he was actually moving backwards and launched Russia on the return to conservatism and brought an end to further political reform.Alexander III brought in new reforms to strengthen Russia after the tsar was assassinated because of Russia bad state, these reforms effected the political, financial and nearly every aspect of Russian society. One of the most radical and important changes the tsar first made was russification , this meant that in 1885 the official language was changed to Russia and was taught in all school and no other language was allowed to be used in school .
Both Tsars were thoroughly progressive, bringing reform to Russian bureaucracies and institutions that had slowly stagnated. In addition, both Ivan IV and Peter I succeeded in centralizing authority around the monarchy. Indeed, Peter the Great professed himself to be an admirer of Ivan’s. But the common perception of Ivan the Terrible’s rule as truly “terrible” in comparison to Peter’s is not without base. The latter half of Ivan IV’s reign would be characterized by a bloody reign of terror by the dreaded oprichnik and drawn out military failures in the Baltic.
Ellie Malkin Alexander the third was determined to preserve Autocracy, but in what ways did he lay the foundations for its destruction? After his Father the former Tsar, Alexander the second 'Tsar Liberator' was assassinated in 1881 so were his ideas to change the way Russia was run. Alexander the second had prepared to have a constitution written and Alexander the third destroyed any chance of that happening and once announced the Tsar began to revert the country to it's traditional values. Alexander brought in the policy of 'Russification' where he began to clamp down on anything that wasn't Russian within the empire. Alexander wanted all religions changed to Russian Orthodoxy which angered the many religions which occupied Russia, the Jewish community, which totalled to 5 million in the 1980's, prevailed over any other religions in the Pale(along the border of Poland and Russia).
While Charles concentrated on Poland, Peter had conducted small campaigns in other areas of the Swedish Empire. By 1707, when Sweden was preparing to invade Russia, Peter’s army, rebuilt by him after the “western pattern” following the 1698 Streltsy revolt, was growing in size and strength, and like Peter himself, was becoming more experienced in western warfare. In 1708, rules of combat were produced by the Russians, based on combat experience to date in the war – their tactics, developed only from experience with the Swedes, were therefore adapted specifically to counter
The internal factors primarily stemmed from Tsar Nicholas II incompetency in his position of power as emperor of Russia. Nicholas II’s repressive and autocratic rule resulted in hostile opposition from all classes preceding the revolution, which suffered from social and economic discontent as a result of issues directly attributed to a lack of incentive to lead. The Tsar’s oppressive rule can inevitably be viewed as a pivotal catalyst of the revolution. According to The Fundamental Laws of Empire, Nicholas II was an “autocratic and unlimited monarch”, who declared that his propositions and decisions as ruler were specified by God and thus his “supreme power” had greater reason to be obeyed. According to Historian Malone, the Tsar “believed totally in the tsarist system and argued that a democracy and elections would result in political collapse.''