as his Sunday custom, the Czar traveled in his bulletproof carriage (a
gift from Emperor Napoleon III of France) to the Mikhailovsky Manege to
review the military roll call.
He was escorted by the police as well as his own guard, including his
Cossack personal bodyguard.
Please click the
icon to follow us on Facebook.In the crowd that gathered on the
narrow pavement to watch Alexander pass were agents from the Narodnaya
Volya ("People's Will") bent on assassinating the Czar to instill a new
order of communistic anarchy. Nikolai Rysakov was the first to strike,
throwing a bomb wrapped in a handkerchief. The explosion would kill one of
the Cossack guards and injure onlookers and more guards, but Alexander
would prove unhurt as he stepped from his carriage. The police hurriedly
apprehended Rysakov, who shouted to someone else in the crowd. Feeling the
Czar was still in danger, Police Chief Dvorzhitsky threw himself over
Alexander, violating the royal space but proving to save his life as a
second and third bomb exploded.
Alexander would refer to the assassination attempt as "the event of 1
March 1881? according to the Old Style calendar, mirroring his notation of
the first attempt on his life in "the event of 4 April 1866". Dmitry
Karakozov had shot at the Czar after handing out his pamphlet entitled "To
Friends-Workers" calling for overthrow. Alexander had been saved by
hatter's-apprentice Osip Komissarov, who happened to bump Karakozov's arm
at the time he fired, sending the shot wild. Komissarov had been granted a
title, and churches were built all around Russia in celebration, but there
would be yet more attempts on the Czar's life. In 1879, Alexander Soloviev
shot at the Czar five times and missed, and, eight months later, the
Narodnaya Volya made their first strike against him with a bombing on the
railway, though the Czar's train had been missed. The Narodnaya Volya
struck again two months later with a bomb in the Winter Palace, killing
eleven, but missing the Czar as he was late for dinner.
"i thought he got the bulletproof carriage from
germany but what do i know...there was 4 bombs i belive.. he got out of
his carriage to help his driver but than got killed by the 2nd bomb after
the first bomb deflected. alexander 2 would have killed them and no
communism because lenin was like apart of the assassination" - reader's
commentThe attacks came despite, or perhaps because of, Alexander's
push toward reforms in his empire. He had grown up among the literati of
St. Petersburg, becoming something of an enlightened ruler, and the
Crimean War had left a foul taste in his mouth for military action. While
he had been groomed to be an autocrat, Alexander finally refused and
instigated legislation that would build railways, introduce commerce, and
encourage corporations. He also improved local jurisdiction, reformed the
legal code after the French fashion, updated the armed forces, and created
municipal and rural police. Most famously, he liberated the serfs with his
declaration on May 3, 1861, creating a class of communal, yet independent,
freedmen.
This experiment with communism, which had always been among humanity in
some form or another, encouraged further thought, making some historians
credit the violent calls for revolt because Alexander was seen as someone
who could be challenged, unlike the iron-fisted autocrats of before. After
the attack on his palace, Alexander put Count Loris-Melikov in charge of
solving the terrorist menace, and the count suggested implementing plans
for a representative Duma as well as police action. Following his survival
in 1881, Alexander announced his Duma, and elections were held that fall.
With the institution of direct political reform, much of the support for
revolt died away, and the Narodnaya Volya was brought down by sting
operations by Loris-Melikov's secret police. Radicalism settled as public
outrage softened and Alexander proved iron-fisted enough to protect
himself.
Alexander II would continue his reforms until his death in 1892,
modernizing Russia into an effective competitor with the growing strength
of Germany. When his son Alexander III came to the throne, the new czar
sought to reign in some of the power lost to the royal house, but he would
die in 1895 before doing more than clarifying public bureaucracy. Nicholas
II would prove a weaker czar, seemingly uninterested in affairs of the
state, though he was willing to perform any duty. His lackluster care for
modernization of the armed forces would prove disastrous in World War I
(begun after a border dispute over jurisdiction on stolen goods taken to
Serbia), but advisers from the other Allies enabled Russia to achieve a
trench system to stop the charging Germans from taking territory too deep
into Russia. At the end of the war, Russia surged ahead economically,
using its infrastructure from the legacy of Alexander II to supply masses
of raw materials to Europe from increasingly developed Siberia. The
development would work to Russia's disadvantage, however, as Germany
invaded in the Second World War. Nicholas III, weakened by hemophilia,
died early in the war, leaving the young Alexander IV to manage the
government-in-exile after German forces chased them from Moscow.
After the war, Russia's empire would fade in a similar pattern to that of
Britain and France with its many vassals of the Ukraine, Finland, Georgia,
and over a dozen others becoming breakaway republics. A power vacuum would
come into play later toward the 1960s, instilling a new generation
appealing to conservatism while remembering the greatness that once was.