At nearly 6 feet tall, with an imposing figure and a strength that was said to have bent metal objects with his bare hands, Alexander III seemed the embodiment of imperial power. But his final days were spent not on horseback or in a military camp, but at the Livadia Palace in Crimea, where he died of severe kidney disease on November 1, 1894. The emperor was only 49 years old.
Alexander Alexandrovich did not expect to become tsar. He was the second son of Alexander II, and his older brother Nicholas died in 1865. After the assassination of his father in 1881, Alexander III inherited the throne and quickly abandoned the idea of a political opening of the empire.
After the assassination of his father, the turn came
The new emperor believed that liberal changes had weakened the state and helped the revolutionary movement. In the same year, a state of emergency was introduced, allowing the authorities to restrict rights, close publications, and prosecute suspects without normal judicial guarantees.
Counter-reforms gradually reduced the autonomy of universities, limited local self-government, and returned some of the administrative power over the peasantry to the hands of the nobility. The policy of Russification increased pressure on non-Russian peoples, and the Jewish population was subjected to severe restrictions and persecution.
This aspect of his reign cannot be erased from the nickname "peacemaker tsar". Alexander III did not wage a major war, but maintained internal order through censorship, police, and fear of revolution.
Railroads, factories, and a surviving catastrophe
His period was also a time of accelerated industrialization. In 1891, construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway began, which was to connect the European part of the empire with the Far East. Industry and the railway network expanded, and the state also passed the first laws restricting the labor of children and women.
In 1888, Alexander III, his wife Maria Feodorovna, and their children survived a serious train accident near Borki. The train derailed, the carriages were destroyed, but the emperor held up part of the roof with his body until his family was evacuated. The story contributes to the legend of his physical strength.
The emperor also had a lesser-known side. He played the helikon, patronized realist artists, and collected works of Russian art. His collection became the basis of today's Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.
„Increased the quantity of good“
His foreign policy was cautious. Russia completed the main part of the conquest of Central Asia, but Alexander III avoided direct confrontation with the great European powers. The rapprochement with France in 1891-1893 changed the diplomatic map of Europe and prepared the future Franco-Russian alliance.
The severe famine in 1891-1892 and the cholera epidemic showed, however, how vulnerable the empire remained behind the facade of order and a strong state. Economic progress went hand in hand with poverty, peasant dependence and lack of political rights.
Alexander III died in Livadia on November 1, 1894, and his son Nicholas II took the throne. Thus ended the reign of the last Russian emperor, who did not lose a war, but left his heir a state in which the apparent peace concealed accumulating conflicts. History remembers Alexander III as both a peacemaker and a ruler who closed the windows of the empire just as the modern world was beginning to enter through them.
Sources: rct.uk, prlib.ru, loc.gov