HanotenTeshuaRussia.jpg 1,210 × … 1 March] 1881) was the Emperor of Russia from 2 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881, and also the King of Poland and the Grand Prince of Finland. They later divorced. He looked instinctively with a suspicious, critical eye upon the solutions which more imaginative and less cautious people recommended. The abolition of serfdom brought in its train a drastic overhaul of some of Russia’s archaic administrative institutions. Native languages such as Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian were completely banned from printed texts. The Polish language was banned in both oral and written form from all provinces except Congress Kingdom, where it was allowed in private conversations only. Following initial setbacks, Russian arms eventually triumphed, and, early in 1878, the vanguard of the Russian armies stood encamped on the shores of the Sea of Marmara. The tsar was not harmed, as he was late to the supper. The future tsar Alexander II was the eldest son of the grand duke Nikolay Pavlovich (who, in 1825, became the emperor Nicholas I) and his wife, Alexandra Fyodorovna (who, before her marriage to the grand duke and her baptism into the Orthodox Church, had been the princess Charlotte of Prussia). The affair, which it was impossible to conceal, absorbed the tsar’s energies while weakening his authority both in his own family circle (his wife, the former princess Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt, had borne him six sons and two daughters) and in St. Petersburg society. At the time Russia was involved in the Crimean War and in 1856 signed the Treaty of Paris that brought the conflict to an end. Alexander II of Russia From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Alexander II (Russian: Алекса́ндр II Никола́евич; 29 April 1818 – 13 March 1881) was the Emperor of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 2 March 1855 until his assassination. Alexander II would be the second monarch to abolish capital punishment, a penalty that is still legal (although not practiced) in Russia. The same effect was achieved by another measure of modernization, the abolition of serfdom. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. He relaxed some of the restrictions placed against the Jews of Russia by his father, including abolishing the Cantonist system of Russification which had been established in 1827. Alexander II The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia The Manifesto of February 19, 1861. A list of BBC episodes and clips related to "Alexander II of Russia". Yet, notwithstanding these measures, it would be wrong, as is sometimes done, to describe Alexander II as a liberal. At the beginning of his reign, Alexander expressed the famous statement "No dreams" addressed for Poles, populating Congress Poland, Western Ukraine, Lithuania, Livonia, and Belarus. Many people in Russia, especially intellectuals, nobles and administrators, were convinced that change was necessary and the early months of Alexander's reign saw an unusual consensus in favour of reform. He was in fact a firm upholder of autocratic principles, sincerely convinced both of his duty to maintain the God-given autocratic power he had inherited and of Russia’s unreadiness for constitutional or representative government. All who had any pretensions to enlightenment declared loudly that the country had been exhausted and humiliated by the war, and that the only way of restoring it to its proper position in Europe was to develop its natural resources and thoroughly to reform all branches of the administration. They were a success but were too sudden and too late. Rewarding loyalty and encouraging Finnish nationalism, Art, Music, Literature, Sports and leisure, Alexander II and His Times: A Narrative History of Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Alexander_II_of_Russia&oldid=1018655, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License, married 1866, Maria Fyodorovna; had children, married 1874, Princess Marie Alexandrine Elisabeth Eleonore of Mecklenburg-Schwerin; had children, married 1867/1870, Alexandra Vasilievna Zhukovskaya; had children, married 1874, Alfred Duke of Edinburgh; had children, married 1889, Alexandra of Greece and Denmark; had children—second marriage 1902, Olga Karnovich; had children. Alexander II, like his uncle Alexander I before him (who was educated by a Swiss republican tutor, a follower of Rousseau), was to turn into a “liberalizing,” or at any rate humanitarian, autocrat. if(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-newworldencyclopedia_org-large-mobile-banner-1-0')};if(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-newworldencyclopedia_org-large-mobile-banner-1-0_1')};if(typeof __ez_fad_position != 'undefined'){__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-newworldencyclopedia_org-large-mobile-banner-1-0_2')}; .large-mobile-banner-1-multi-167{border:none !important;display:block !important;float:none;line-height:0px;margin-bottom:15px !important;margin-left:0px !important;margin-right:0px !important;margin-top:15px !important;min-height:250px;min-width:300px;text-align:center !important;}. The most crying abuses of the old judicial system were remedied by the judicial statute of 1864. 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