The rule of Alexander II was an era of liberalism
and long-awaited reforms. The Emperor abolished serfdom and earned the
name "Alexander the Liberator." He also introduced other domestic reforms
that modernized Russian society a great deal. BACKGROUND
Alexander II was the eldest son of Nicholas I. He was well-educated and convinced that Russia
needed reforms. The first thing Alexander II did, was to sign
the Treaty of Paris in 1856, which ended the Crimean War. EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS
The one thing that Alexander II is most remembered for, is that he liberated the serfs. He earned the name, “Tsar-Liberator,”
for that. When Alexander first opened a debate about
the emancipation of serfs, the nobility opposed him. He then concluded in a famous speech: “It
is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for the time when it will begin to
abolish itself from below.” In 1861, The Emancipation Manifesto was issued. The Manifesto finally declared all privately
owned serfs free. In 1866, all state-owned serfs were also declared
free. These great reforms affected the lives of
about forty million people in all. However, they still had to pay to the landowners
for their allocation of land in a series of redemption payments. OTHER REFORMS
Emperor Alexander II also enforced numerous other reforms: He modernized the judicial
system, reduced censorship, and started to build railroad networks in Russia. In 1864, Zemstvos, local government institutions
were also introduced, but their effect was not as expected. ASSASSINATION
When the living conditions of people did not improve as fast as was desired, people became
disappointed with Alexander. Members of several radical movements made
plans to assassinate the emperor. In 1881, a group of terrorists of the Narodnaya
Volya revolutionary organization killed Alexander II with a bomb. It was not known, then, that he had been secretly
working on a constitution project with his Minister of the Interior, Count Mikhail Loris-Melikov. Today the site of his assassination, in Saint
Petersburg, is marked by The Church on the Savior on Spilled Blood, that was built in
his memory.