Alexander iii of russia biography books

Alexander III, Pogroms and Student Revolutionaries

Alexander III, thirty-six years-old when he ascended the throne, the second son of Alexander II, associated the assassination of his father with liberal reforms instead of seeing the assassination as a security failure.

He claimed that parliamentary institutions and the liberalism of Western Europe were inappropriate for Russia and that Russia could be saved from the revolutionaries only by the traditional authoritarian rule of his family – the Romanov's – including adherence to the faith of the Orthodox Christian Church, of which he was head.

The Russian writer, Count Leo Tolstoy, appealed to Alexander III to spare his father's murders and "to meet his enemies on the field of ideas." The terrorists had ideals, said Tolstoy, and he advised Alexander to count