If historians had to choose a date and an event that completely changed the course of Russian history, it would undoubtedly be March 13, 1881, when the unthinkable happened in imperial Russia, for the first time a tsar was assassinated in an organized attack. outside the ranks of power. The victim was Alexander II, the most liberal tsar, who tried to modernize the society and government of the Russian empire.
Tsar Alexander II of Russia, born on April 29, 1818, ascended the throne in 1855. His reign was characterized both by progressive reforms and by the absolute iron control he maintained over the Russian people, during his reign the Okhrana was created, the tsarist secret police, in charge of investigating and arresting any political dissident.
The most important reform of his administration was the emancipation of the Serfs in 1861, which in theory ended Russian Feudalism, allowing the peasants, the Serfs, to move without restrictions. They were no longer forced to work exclusively for the landlord, the Feudal lord, who owned the land where they lived.
Another momentous measure that Alexander II implemented was to relax the restrictions imposed on Russian Jews by his father, Nicholas I, such as the abolition of the Cantonist system of Russification that had been established in 1827. The Cantonist system forced Jewish men from 12 to 18 years to receive Russian and Christian education in preparation for compulsory military service. In the Jewish areas, a certain number of recruits had to be delivered to the tsar, many times children were literally kidnapped to meet the required quota of recruits. Alexander II also allowed some Jews to live outside the area known as the Settlement Zone, a region that comprised 20% of the territory of European Russia, which corresponds to territories of present-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, where the Jews were expelled, from 1835.
In addition, the tsar introduced reforms in the educational, military, and judicial systems, aimed at modernizing Russia, and leaving behind the feudal trail that still refused to disappear, especially in the interior of the country. Russia was, in the middle of the 19th century, the most backward nation in Europe, without liberties, without the access of the lower and middle classes to improve their social and economic condition if they did not belong to the Russian nobility.
Despite these changes in the Russian absolutist and feudal system, the tsar did not dare, perhaps under pressure from the landed oligarchy, which owned large tracts of land, and the military, always headed by a Romanov and the nobility, to make Russia a constitutional monarchy, following the English model. Czar Alexander II, and his successors, resisted being a nominal king, reigning, but not exercising absolute power. It should be noted that this refusal would cost the life of Tsar Alexander II, and later, of his grandson, Nicholas II, assassinated by the Bolsheviks with his entire family in 1918, but that is another story.
The Assault On the morning of Sunday, March 13, 1881, Alexander II left his palace in the direction of the Mikhailovsky Armory to attend a military parade, accompanied as usual by a large retinue . The course he followed was familiar. The tsar traveled in a closed carriage through the streets of the city. Members of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will), a revolutionary group seeking to overthrow the Russian monarchy, had carefully planned the attack on the Tsar.
One of the conspirators, Nikolai Rysakov, was in position, biding his time to drop the first bomb at the tsar's carriage. As the carriage approached, Rysakov threw the bomb, which exploded under the horses, killing them and seriously injuring the driver and some security guards. However, Alexander II emerged unscathed from the attack. Believing that everything was over, he left the carriage to assess the situation.
However, the other conspirator, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, approached the tsar, unstoppable, taking advantage of the moment of confusion to drop a second bomb at the tsar's feet. The explosion was devastating, fatally wounding Alexander II and injuring others nearby.
The tsar was rushed to his palace in critical condition, but his injuries were too severe. He died a few hours after the attack. The death of Alexander II marked the end of his reformist policies, ushering in an era of reactionary rule under the reign of his son, Alexander III.
Among the conspirators was Sophia Perovskaya, born in 1853 into an aristocratic family. Although the daughter of a nobleman, related to the imperial family, she was a dedicated revolutionary and was active in planning and carrying out the plot to assassinate the tsar.
After the assassination, a persecution began against all the members of the Narodnaya Volya, managing to arrest Rysakov, who, unable to resist the torture to which he was subjected, betrayed the rest of those involved in the plot. Sophia Perovskaya and other ringleaders were arrested, tried, and later executed on April 15, 1881.
Did the death of the tsar change Russia?
Although it sounds paradoxical, the assassination of the tsar did not end the Russian autocracy, on the contrary, it strengthened it. The new emperor, Alexander III, reversed most of his father's liberal reforms. One of the frustrated reforms was the implementation of a Russian parliament, or Duma, which in practice meant, for the monarchy, sharing power with a legislative body.
Likewise, fearful of suffering a terrorist attack, Alexander III turned Russia into a police state, thousands of political dissidents were arrested, those who did not go into exile ended up in Siberia, or were assassinated.
Another of the consequences of the assassination was that minorities, especially the Jews, were once again persecuted, unleashing pogroms in various cities and towns of the Russian empire. Although it was not true, the false news spread that the Tsar's assassins were Jews, many members of this community suffered lynching and destruction of their property, re-emerging in Russia and throughout Europe, anti-Semitism, which would lead to a new era. of persecutions against the Jews in the western world.
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