Alexander iis assassination

Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, is killed in the streets of St. Petersburg by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary “People’s Will” group. The People’s Will, organized in 1879, employed terrorism and assassination in their attempt to overthrow Russia’s czarist autocracy. They murdered officials and made several attempts on the czar’s life before finally assassinating him on March 13, 1881.

As czar, Alexander did much to liberalize and modernize Russia, including the abolishment of serfdom in 1861. However, when his authority was challenged, he turned repressive, and he vehemently opposed movements for political reform. Ironically, on the very day he was killed, he signed a proclamation—the so-called Loris-Melikov constitution—that would have created two legislative commissions made up of indirectly elected representatives.

He was succeeded by his 36-year-old son, Alexander III, who rejected the Loris-Melikov constitution. Alexander II’s assassins were arrested and hanged, and the People’s Will was thoroughly suppressed. The peasant revolution advocated by the People’s Will was achieved by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1917.

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Article Title

Czar Alexander II assassinated in St. Petersburg

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History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

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https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/czar-alexander-ii-assassinated

Date Accessed

February 21, 2025

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A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

March 10, 2024

Original Published Date

Feb

It was to be the People’s Will’s most daring act yet. A bomb attack inside the Winter Palace itself. The People’s Will was an extremist revolutionary group active during the reign of Tsar Alexander II. Advocating acts of violence and terror, they sentenced the tsar, whom they considered a criminal, to death. Their manifesto of regicide was based on the belief that the tsar’s death would bring about the end of tsarism. The idea took hold of the popular imagination.

One of those inspired by it was a young workman called Stepan Khalturin.

Khalturin’s carpentry skills were much in demand in St Petersburg during the late 1870s. When he got a job repairing the tsar’s yacht, an opportunity presented itself to him. Such was his standard of craftsmanship that he caught the eye of palace administrators. Would he be interested in joining the maintenance team at the Winter Palace? they wondered.

It was at this point that Khalturin made himself known to key figures in the People’s Will.

The terrorists were already planning a major operation, which involved dynamiting the tsar’s train. They didn’t have the resources to commit to Khalturin’s plan at present, but the prospect of a potential assassin inside the Winter Palace was too good to resist. They told him to take the job and wait for instructions.

Calling himself Batyshkov, and playing the part of a good-natured but not very bright peasant, Khalturin began working at the Winter Palace in October 1879. He lived in the workmen’s quarters in the cellar, but had access to every part of the palace, including the private apartments of the Imperial Family. On one occasion he even found himself alone with the tsar in his study. He thought about finishing him off there and then with his hammer but couldn’t go through with it.

When the terrorists’ other operation ended in failure, they decided to put everything behind Khalturin. The plan to bomb the Winter Palace was on.

Khalturin smuggled dynamite into th

By E. Thomas Ewing, Stratis Bohle, Justin Noel, Tim Pfeifer, Chris Porter, and Taylor Wentzel

On March 1, 1881, assassins killed Emperor Alexander II of Russia in St. Petersburg. On the following day, March 14, 1881 (in the Western calendar), newspapers across the United States reported on this remarkable act of political violence. These initial reports described the emperor’s death while also discussing the motivations of the assassins and potential repercussions for Russia’s political future. While the first reports were primarily descriptive, and based mostly on wire services, editorials provided a more critical perspective on assassination as a political strategy in the context of a despotic regime that did not provide any path to peaceful political reform.

The assassination of Alexander II in 1881 was a major milestone in Russia’s road to revolution in 1917. Soon after ascending to the imperial throne in 1856, Alexander II began implementing substantial reforms that he hoped would stave off a revolutionary upheaval. The emancipation of serfs in 1861 was followed by major military, legal, educational, and cultural reforms. Although these reforms were initially welcomed by Russia’s critical intellectuals, this early enthusiasm soon yielded to despair as entrenched bureaucrats and obstinate reactionaries obstructed, restricted, and delayed measures intended to modernize Russia’s social structures and political institutions. An unsuccessful effort to inspire popular revolution by the “To the People” movement led to the formation of radical, conspiratorial organizations determined to use assassination to eliminate the emperor, decapitate the regime, and provoke a revolutionary transformation. The assassination of Alexander II in 1881 failed to prompt a revolutionary transformation of Russia. In fact, three decades of reaction followed, until the successive shocks of military defeat by Japan in 1905, a widespread but defeated revolution in 1905-1907, stalemate

March 13, 1881

Czar Alexander II, the leader of Russia, was assassinated in St. Petersburg when a bomb was thrown into his carriage. Alexander II had assumed the throne in 1855 following his father Nicholas I and was a more liberal-minded leader than his predecessor. 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.  The Cantonist system forced Jewish males, ages 12-18, away from their families into a program of Russian and Christian education in preparation for a 25-year military conscription. Jewish leaders had to supply a quota of youth and even hired kidnappers to take children as young as eight to meet the demands. Alexander II also allowed some Jews to live outside of the area known as the Pale of Settlement, the 472,000 square mile region that comprised most of today’s countries of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, in which Jews had been restricted to living beginning in 1835. Moving outside the Pale resulted in the development of Jewish communities in Moscow and St. Petersburg.  As a result of these policies, many Jews became more involved in the cultural and intellectual life of Russia.

The assassination of Czar Alexander II became a major turning point in Jewish history. A month later, a wave of pogroms – systematic or sporadic attacks against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues – spread throughout the southwestern areas of the Russian Empire and affected hundreds of Jewish communities.  The new Czar, Alexander III, blamed his father’s liberal policies for his assassination and moved to consolidate his power into an absolute autocracy.

An investigation into the cause of the pogroms found that the Jews “have succeeded in exploiting the main body of the population, particularly the poor, hence arousing them to a protest, which has found distressing expression in acts o