The Last Three Tsars of Russia and the Decline of Imperial Autocratic Rule

The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia for over three hundred years. The head of that monarchy, the tsar, ruled the nation with an autocratic iron fist. The fundamental laws of imperial Russia stated that "To the Emperor of All the Russias belongs the supreme and unlimited power. Not only fear, but also conscience commanded by God Himself, is the basis of obedience to this power". Thus, this power, the only real power in Russia, belonged solely to the tsar, as given to him directly by God. Whether this power was wielded in a positive way for his country depended entirely upon how the tsar himself used it. No other tsars in history personified this use of absolutism and how wielding that power in a negative way lead to disastrous consequences for Russia like the last three did. Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II, the last three tsars of Russia, show the path of liberalism, reactionary conservatism, and ignorance that led to the Russian Civil War and the decline of imperial rule.

Alexander II, the last great tsar of Russia, was born in 1818. He succeeded his father, Nicholas I, in 1855, during one of the most tumultuous times in Russia's history: the Crimean War. The war was a disaster for Russia, which was standing alone against the British Empire, French Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. Alexander, in order to take Russia off of its losing course and repair the damage done by the war, decided to end it by whatever means necessary. This meant admitting defeat and accepting whatever concessions offered by the victors. This would be the first of many instances in Alexander's reign as tsar where he used his autocratic power as a means of doing the best thing for Russia instead of as a means of stubbornness that dragged the country into an underdeveloped hole.

The Treaty of Paris of 1856 ended the Crimean War. The treaty was cruel to Russia, but crueler was the realization that 200,000 Russian lives had been lost in the conflict that had cost more than one million rubles a day. Among the stipulations were that Russia was to give up its claim to the lower Danube, the Black Sea was declared neutral and Russia was no longer allowed to maintain a fleet there, and no longer would Russia claim to be the protector of Orthodox Christians living in the Ottoman Empire. The war showed the failures of the previous regime and, if Alexander wanted to make Russia a great European power again, he would have to institute changes and reforms. Despite his reputation as the Tsar-liberator and a liberal, these changes were out of necessity to make Russia great again and not out of a liberal political philosophy. Despite his intentions of instituting changes that preserved the autocratic nature of the empire, these reforms were also instrumental in leading to revolution.

Among Alexander's first reforms was his most important: the emancipation of the serfs. For generations, the rulers of Russia had considered doing this, but had wavered due to the political implications. The serfs, the peasant class, were the largest group in Russia and to emancipate them meant there would be a great upheaval in the social order. Alexander, however, saw the necessity of this act. In his view, it was better to use his power as an absolute monarch and emancipate them from above than for them to use revolutionary measures and emancipate themselves from below. Tentative plans had been underway to implement this reform since the end of the Crimean War. Alexander asked his nobles, those who owned serfs and, thus, were reluctant to give them up, to set up committees to see how they would go about doing this in an orderly manner. These requests went largely ignored. That the rights of the many were held back by the landed few was a theme that predominated Russia for much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Meanwhile, Alexander spent as much time as possible learning all he could about the vast territory that he ruled. In 1858, in preparation for the emancipation of the serfs, he made two extended tours of the provinces. Ostensibly, these trips were to gather information about his people. They were also, however, a means to gauge the amount of support he had from the people in the wake of the crushing defeat of the Crimean War. He wanted to see if he still held their favor, and he did. By actually visiting the towns and not just driving through them at a rapid fire pace as other tsars had done, Alexander gave his people the chance to experience firsthand the involved rituals of the imperial court that they would never have gotten to see. The accomplishments of these trips were twofold: the tsar met and learned from the people, and the serfs, slaves in the Russian Empire, felt closer to the tsar who had once been considered a faraway, almost mythical figure.

After many committees debated the issue of emancipation for the serfs, they were finally given their freedom on 3 March 1861, the sixth anniversary of Alexander II's accession to the throne. Coincidentally, Abraham Lincoln, who would free the American slaves almost two years later, was inaugurated for the first time the next day. Unfortunately, the freedoms granted by the tsar-liberator did not please everyone. The upper classes did not like the idea of disturbing the status quo. The peasants, the tsar realized, would have nowhere to live. Upon discovering that the government did not have sufficient funds with which to buy them land, it was decided that they could purchase lands in communes rather than individually. These communes would be governed by the aristocracy, much as the serfs had been before. The only difference was that now the peasants had some degree of personal freedom to do things like choose their own spouse. In attempting to do the best thing for Russia, Alexander ended up pleasing almost no one. The dissatisfaction over the flawed way in which emancipation was carried out would last for decades in Russia.
After receiving the first tastes of this unintentional liberalism, Alexander set out to enact new reforms in other areas in Russia. He enacted the zemstvo system, which was a form of local representative self government. Each zemstvo was responsible for various services in its district, such as education, road construction, and medical care. This was a huge amount of freedom for local governments in a nation that was largely ruled by one man. The ultra-corrupt judicial system was reformed. Modeled on that of France, the new system promised equality under the law for all citizens. Lower courts were created, corrupt landowners were removed from their judicial positions, and appeals courts were introduced. For the first time in Russia, people were tried not by the police, but by civil magistrates before juries of their peers. The most important reforms, however, were those that dealt with the Russian army. The Crimean War defeat showed that the army must be reformed in Russia was once again to become the power it was under Alexander II's great-uncle Alexander I, the conqueror of Napoleon. Previously, the army had been made up primarily of serfs who could buy their freedom with twenty-five years served and criminals who were being punished. Corporal punishment was the rule rather than the exception, which had tremendously hurt the morale. Under the new reforms, a universal draft was introduced so that soldiers now came from all ranks in Russia, not just the lowest. Corporal punishment, which had haunted the tsar since the day his father had made him watch a soldier beaten to death, was abandoned. For the first time it appeared as though Russia was really going to modernize on a level with its other European counterparts.

Alexander's reforms, meant to quell any revolutionary feelings in his people, only increased them as they began demanding more freedoms on a greater scale. The reforms he had enacted so quickly, on par with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal Plan, were not enough and fell short of the Russian people's expectations. Although the serfs had been freed and everyone was enjoying freedoms they had never experienced before, 80% of the population remained illiterate. Granting universal franchise and a fully representative parliament at this point was simply not practical. While the older people were merely disappointed, the youth turned to terror and assassination. The new liberal Russia was stopped in its tracks when, in April 1866, a revolutionary named Dmitri Karakozov attempted to assassinate the tsar. Karakazov believed that the tsar's reforms were standing in the way of socialist progress. Alexander halted a proposed new education reform. Instead, he appointed a hard-line education minister who put oppressive controls on student activities. The universities were where revolutionaries like Karakozov were forming their beliefs and becoming organized and this only strengthened their nihilistic resolve. If he took freedoms away, they could rebel against his oppressiveness. If he granted more freedoms, they had to rebel in order to save their cause and keep recruiting other members. Whether he granted more freedoms or took them away, Alexander could do nothing right in the revolutionaries' eyes.

For the rest of his life, Alexander faced multiple assassination attempts. In 1879, a socialist group called the Narodnaia Volia ("People's Will") made it their mission to kill him. In the ensuing eighteen months, they made seven attempts on the tsar's life. Often, members of the group were caught. Unfortunately, however, despite overwhelming evidence, they were often acquitted at trial. Ironically, this was due to Alexander II's own implementation of trial by jury. On one such occurrence, in the winter of 1880, a bomb hit the Winter Palace, killing forty officers and soldiers. It narrowly missed the tsar. Indeed, it had gone off just as his presence was announced in the dining room. The guilty party was found to be a recently hired janitor in the palace. The imperial family was no longer safe in its own home.

One bright spot in the last years of the tsar was his relationship with his mistress, Ekaterina Dolgorukaya, with whom he had four children. This affair had occurred under the watchful eye of Alexander's wife, Marie, who had been born a princess of Hesse. Marie was a sickly woman who had borne Alexander eight children and had been forced to appoint Ekaterina as one of her maids of honor. When she died in 1880, some accounts reported that she could hear the children of her husband's mistress playing in a room above her. Her husband was not with her, as he was at Tsarskoe Selo with Ekaterina. After Marie's death, Alexander secretly married Ekaterina morganatically, had her created Princess Yuryevskaya, and was prepared to crown her after the mourning period for Marie had passed. If his many reforms had not angered the nobles, this slight toward the deceased tsarina certainly did. After their marriage was revealed, she was regarded by the court, especially by the women with anger and disgust. Alexander's moral failings in keeping two households under one roof simultaneously illustrate the difference between good leaders and good men. Alexander II shows that one does not necessarily have to be a good husband or moral man, even if one is the head of the Orthodox Church, like Alexander was, in order to be a good leader.

The tsar's happiness with Ekaterina would be short-lived after their marriage. The death threats had continued and Alexander, who took a public drive through St. Petersburg every day, refused to alter his schedule in any way. Finally, in March 1881, the People's Will succeeded in their goal. Traveling in a bomb-proof carriage, the tsar was heading back to the Winter Palace when revolutionary Sofia Perovskaya signaled to her comrades that he was on his way. A bomb was thrown at the carriage, which killed a young boy and created chaos in the surrounding scene. The tsar, unhurt, emerged from the carriage in order to aid the injured in any way he could. It was then that another member of the People's Will stepped forward and threw a grenade at him. His legs and stomach were ripped from his body. He asked a servant to take him to the Winter Palace in order to die. What those revolutionaries and everyone else did not know that, on the tsar's desk, was a document that granted representative government for Russia. Among his successor's first acts was that document's nullification. Alexander II, the last great tsar of Russia, died in 1881 after enacting more democratic reforms than any other tsar in history. Depending on who one asked in Russia, this was either too much or not enough.

Alexander III succeeded his father as tsar in 1881 and the two could not have been more different. Whereas the father was kindhearted and outgoing, the son was withdrawn, lacked grace, and at well over six feet tall, cultivated a large, bear-like appearance in which he enjoyed amusing his sons by tearing packs of cards in half. While the father had been well educated, the son, who spent most of his early life as the second in line to the throne, was considerably less so. Although both loved autocracy, the father used his power to grant reforms, while the son was reactionary, regressive, and despised reform, particularly after his father's murder. In family life, so, too, were they different. Alexander II's many dalliances, particularly with Ekaterina Dolgorukaya, humiliated his wife. Alexander III, on the other hand, was a loyal husband and father. His wife, the former Princess Dagmar of Denmark, had been engaged to his older brother Nicholas. After Nicholas's death, the new heir inherited both his brother's position and his fiancée. The new tsar and his wife, who took the name Maria Feodorovna upon her conversion to Orthodoxy, were happy together and free of the scandal that his father courted. Just as their personalities and family lives were different, so, too, were their reigns.

Within twenty-four hours of his father's funeral, the new tsar began enacting swift counter-reforms. Almost every position in government, from ambassadors, ministers, and cabinet members was replaced, particularly if they had liberal tendencies. Among Alexander III's first decisions as tsar were what to do about his father's assassins and the document on his desk that called for a provisional parliamentary body. Members of the People's Will sent the tsar a letter asking him to spare the lives of their comrades, calling Alexander II's death "absolutely inevitable". Alexander was understandably unmoved by this and ordered the executions of all involved in the plot. The document on his desk was promptly nullified and a new era of conservative government was ushered in under the new tsar. Authority was given to local governments to instate martial law and police rule, while the already limited press was given more restrictions and book banning became routine. Ironically, although Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was banned, Karl Marx's Das Capital was allowed. The anger over his father's assassination affected virtually every aspect of Alexander III's rule.

Another thing that dominated Alexander III's reign was his treatment of Russia's Jewish population. The Romanov dynasty was never the most tolerant in respect to Judaism, but the tsar was one of the biggest anti-Semites ever to rule Russia. To him, Jewish people were all "Christ-killers" and revolutionaries. Most of the Russian people, who practiced Orthodoxy like the tsar did, shared these views, so there were few protests when he began carrying out pogroms against Jews. In 1881 alone, more than one hundred anti-Jewish riots occurred in which Jews were beaten, robbed, and murdered. Fortunately for Russia's Jewish population, Alexander's policies were someone restricted compared to what he wished to do. Russia's economy, at this point, still depended heavily on foreign investment from Western powers. Because many of the bankers and investors were Jewish, if Alexander had made his views more public and more extreme, this would have hurt Russia's economy irrevocably. He would, nevertheless continue to appoint anti-Semites to prominent positions in government. In 1891, he appointed his brother, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich to the position of governor of Moscow. Moscow was considered an apex of radicalism and a hotbed for nihilists, socialists, and Marxists. During Passover of that year, Sergei promptly expelled the city's twenty thousand Jews, declared that they should "all be crucified", and made it illegal for them to have Christian first names. That these policies were just as much anti-revolutionary as they were anti-Semitic does not lessen their cruelty. When Sergei was assassinated by a bomb in 1905, as his father had been, it was no surprise to those who disapproved of his policies. The Romanovs' policy toward Russia's Jewish population, however, would continue.

Although Alexander's regressive and reactionary actions led to the scaling back of his father's programs, widespread censorship, and violence toward Jewish people, they did lead to an unprecedented growth for Russia's industry. Textile production employed more workers than any other industry until after 1900. The number of miles of railroads increased by fifty percent, which then stimulated the growth of coal, iron, and steel. Those industries quadrupled in growth over a twenty year period. Unfortunately, however, the growth in Russia's economy hurt its peasants irrevocably. The demand for grain exports was so high that many farmers and their families went hungry while trying to make the government's quota. Despite the success in increasing the treasury, Alexander and his advisors had yet to learn the delicate balance between imports and exports. Placing the needs of the state above those of the citizens was yet another incident that helped to fan the flames of revolution.

Just as Alexander used personal feelings about his father's assassination to dictate how he governed domestically, he also allowed the prejudices of his wife to direct foreign policy. Maria Feodorovna, as a daughter of Christian IX of Denmark, who lost the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia, had an ardent dislike of Germany. The hatred of the country extended to Kaiser Wilhelm II, as well. Alexander, when speaking to Wilhelm, had a habit of turning his back on the kaiser. Alexander disliked him so profusely that he refused to speak to him face to face. In 1881, he had allied with Wilhelm's grandfather, Kaiser Wilhelm I, in the Three Emperors' League, an alliance designed by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck that joined Russia with Germany and Austria. In 1890, after Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck, Alexander distanced himself from the bombastic kaiser and withdrew from the alliance. In 1892, he stunned Europe by allying with France. Although Alexander's domestic policies typically had disastrous results, this foreign alliance with France prevented more dire consequences from befalling the already divided nation had they joined the World War I on the side of prior ally Germany.

Just as Alexander's education had been neglected as a child and young adult, so, too, did he neglect the education of his son and heir, Nicholas, on the way that one governs in an autocracy. Alexander III hated the idea of matters of state encroaching on family life. Thus, he never gave his son opportunities to improve his mind and even family members commented on this decision.He balked at the idea of giving his son any real responsibilities, such as the presidency of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and would not allow him to sit in the Council of State until shortly before his accession.The idea was that Alexander, a strong and healthy man who had once held up the roof of a railroad car so that his family would not be crushed by it, still had decades to live and did not wish to burden his young son with responsibility. This was an unfortunate decision on the part of the tsar.

In mid-1894, Alexander III, who had always been healthy, started experiencing insomnia, weakness in the legs, and loss of appetite. Nephritis, a disease of the kidneys in which there was no cure, was promptly diagnosed. From this point on, his health rapidly deteriorated and he was no longer recognizable as his bear-like self. On November 1 1894, Alexander III died and was succeeded by his son, Nicholas II. The new tsar burst into tears and embraced his cousin Alexander, crying that he was not prepared to rule and that he knew nothing about how to be a tsar and had never wanted to be one. The reign of the last tsar of Russia was not off to a good start.

The one bright spot in the early days of Nicholas's reign was that before his father's death, his parents, both Germanophobes, had agreed to allow him to become engaged to Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt. The two had been in love for years, ever since her sister, Elizabeth, married his uncle, Sergei (the aforementioned Governor of Moscow). Two obstacles stood in the way of their happiness: his parents' hatred of all things German and her reluctance to leave her Lutheran faith and embrace Russian Orthodoxy. By the time of Alexander III's death, both obstacles were cleared and they were married a week after the funeral. Some of the more superstitious Russians commented that it did not bode well for the future tsarina to arrive in Russia behind a coffin. After her conversion to Orthodoxy, Alix became Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of all the Russias. Because of court mourning there were no receptions and no honeymoon.

The two were coronated the next May in an occasion that promised great pomp and circumstance. Unfortunately, in what the Russian people would once again see as another bad omen, tragedy struck that night when around one thousand people, who had been promised souvenir tankards and China, were crushed to death when someone in the crowd started a rumor that supplies were running low. The tsar and tsarina were supposed to attend a ball given by the French Ambassador, but upon hearing the news decided to cancel all celebrations and stay at home and pray. Nicholas's domineering uncles, however, intervened and told them that if they did not attend it would cause great offense to France, Russia's only European ally. The two relented and attended with heavy hearts. The next day, they visited several hospitals and Nicholas paid for individual coffins instead of the mass grave that was common for such disasters. Despite the good intentions of the tsar and tsarina, the people viewed this as a bad omen for not just their reign, but of autocracy in general and certainly against "the German woman". The new monarchs, the tsarina in particular, would never fully be forgiven for this incident.

After their ill-fated beginnings as an imperial couple, Nicholas and Alexandra set out to have children and ensure the succession. From 1895-1901, Alexandra gave birth to four daughters. While they were beloved by their parents, Russia's Salic succession required a son to succeed Nicholas. Although as tsarina she played a vital ceremonial role in government, Alexandra's only real duty was to provide a son and her failure to do so caused even more people to criticize her. Finally, in 1904, she gave birth to the long awaited heir, Alexei. Nicholas and Alexandra's happiness was to be short-lived, however. Shortly after his christening, the Tsarevich Alexei was diagnosed with hemophilia, a genetic disorder that prevented the blood from clotting properly. The disease had been passed down from his mother's side of the family, starting with Alexandra's grandmother, Queen Victoria of Great Britain. The two were heartbroken and the disease was kept secret among a select few members of the family. For the public to become aware that the heir to the throne was a hemophiliac would hurt the monarchy. Arguably, the effort that went into hiding the disease and attempting to cure the disease hurt the monarchy more.

Another event that marred the otherwise happy birth of the tsarevich was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. In 1904, Japan, announcing to the world its new position as a world power, attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur without a declaration of war. Although only three ships were hurt, the moral blow to Russia was a bigger shock than the financial or militaristic blows. It had simply never occurred to either the tsar or his ministers that the fleet might have been in danger of attack. Hours after the attack, after war had been declared, there had yet to be any response. Communication was poor and both the tsar and his senior officers were reluctant to make any decisions. In addition, since the attack had been a surprise, no stockpiles of arms had been prepared. What was prepared took seven months to reach Eastern Asia and be put into force. The war raged until 1905 when the Battle of Mukden placed victory decidedly in the hands of the Japanese. Europe was stunned as the small Asian country handily defeated the formidable Russian fleet. This had been Nicholas's first real opportunity to do as his father and grandfather had done and exert leadership and capability in a time of crisis and he had failed. For Nicholas, 1905 would prove to be an annus horribilis.

Nicholas, as other Romanovs before him, tended to bury his head in the sand when it came to recognizing the abuse that was regularly inflicted upon factory workers by their bosses. The people did not blame the tsar for this. Instead, in January 1905, an Orthodox priest led a group of 150,000 workers and their families to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg where they planned to ask the tsar for his protection against the factory bosses. It was a peaceful march and the group carried crosses and icons while singing "God Save the Tsar". What they did not know was that the tsar was not at the palace. As they tried to push through the gates, the guards opened fire and killed dozens of people, injuring hundreds more. The event became known as Bloody Sunday and it was the final catalyst that led the Russian people to believe that the tsar was not one of them and either would not or could not help them. From this point on, things would only get worse.

The next month, Nicholas's Uncle Sergei, the governor of Moscow was assassinated by a bomb. In June, a mutiny occurred on the Battleship Potemkin and sailors threw their officers overboard when served bad meat. As the months passed, violence spread throughout Russia. In October, the entire nation was plagued by a strike and everything shut down. Revolutionaries took advantage of the chaos and began organizing. In attempting to quell the fires of revolution that had begun to burn, Nicholas II issued the Imperial Manifesto in October 1905. Russia was turned from an autocracy into a semi-constitutional monarchy and the people were granted an elected parliament with limited powers, the Duma, as well as the freedoms of conscience, speech, assembly, and association. Despite the fact that this was what his subjects had been asking for, it was still not enough for the most radical leftists and socialists and they urged the people to continue to revolt. By December 1905, the riots had been put down. Russia's experiment with limited democracy had yet to be successful in sating the people.

Although Nicholas's political life had been fraught with disasters and complications, his public life had continued to be tranquil and happy -with the exception of his and Alexandra's shared unhappiness over their son's disease. Alexandra, as the carrier of the disease, felt particularly responsible and was constantly in prayer or in search of a cure for her son. In November 1905, Nicholas and Alexandra were introduced to a purported holy man, Grigori Rasputin. Possessing hypnotic eyes, Rasputin used emotional tranquility as a way to heal the tsarevich during his worst bleeding episodes. This gained him the favor of the tsar and tsarina, the most powerful people in Russia, who would hear no negative words against him. Unfortunately for Nicholas and Alexandra, who had kept the secret of Alexei's illness hidden so well, negative words were all that many wished to say about Rasputin as they had no idea why this man had so much power and access. The Russian people, in particular found it difficult to respect a tsarina who would allow a man known for his outrageous sexual escapades into such close quarters with small children. That the hemophilia kept the family largely isolated from the public only intensified this resentment and anger . The tsar's family, too, felt hatred for Rasputin as most of them were kept in the dark about Alexei's illness. While Nicholas and Alexandra saw only a holy man who they trusted with their most closely guarded secret, the rest of the imperial family saw a debauched mad monk who, for some unseen reason, held an inordinate amount of sway over the increasingly isolated tsar and tsarina. In 1916, some in the tsar's family decided to take action and murder Rasputin. They were greeted as national heroes. Despite the removal of this controversial figure from their lives, the imperial couple's worst days were still ahead of them.

In 1914, Russia's ally Serbia declared war on Germany's ally Austria. World War I had begun. Alexandra, as a former German princess and first cousin of the kaiser, was accused of being a spy. Not only were the tsar and tsarina personally unpopular, politically they were even more so. The army was totally unprepared for war. In a move that stunned everyone, the tsar appointed his cousin, Grand Duke Nicholas, commander-in-chief. He promptly burst into tears upon hearing this news. The war was going so poorly that troops began to mutiny and the flames of revolution were again being felt. This time, they would stay. In March 1917, forced to do so by the Duma, Nicholas II became the last tsar of Russia when he abdicated the throne for both himself and Alexei. They were sent to Ekaterinburg and, there, in 1918, Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children, servants, and even the family dog, were gunned down by Bolshevik revolutionaries. The daughters had sewn jewels into their corsets, so the bullets bounced off of them. They were them stabbed to death with bayonets. Their bodies were burned with acid and they were buried in the rural mountains. This ended three centuries of Romanov rule.

The last three tsars of Russia: Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II were the catalysts of the inevitable revolutionary end to Romanov rule in Russia. Although some much-needed reforms were enacted or attempted, they were somehow never enough and assassinations and revolutionary acts tended to follow. That they were often so consistently out of touch with the wishes and needs of the people is the best exemplifier of the failings of the autocratic system. Although the communist regime that followed for much of the twentieth century was known for its brutality, its beginnings came at a time when it was able to show the Russian people that they, the communists, understood the plight of the average person and had plans to make their lives better. The tsars of Russia, despite their untold wealth, privilege, and power, were never able to do these things.

Bibliography

Public Documents and Printed Collections

Maylunas, Andrei and Sergei Mironenko. A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra, Their Own Story. New York: Doubleday, 1997.

Books

Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia. Once a Grand Duke. New York: Garden City Publishing, 1932.

Aronson, Theo. A Family of Kings: The Descendants of Christian IX of Denmark. New York: Cassell & Company Limited, 1976.

Bergamini, John. TheTragic Dynasty: A History of the Romanovs. Connecticut: Konecky & Konecky, 1969.

Crankshaw, Edward. The Shadow of the WinterPalace: Russia's Drift to Revolution 1825-1917. New York: Viking Press, 1976.

Lincoln, W. Bruce. In War's Dark Shadow. New York: Dial Press, 1983.

------. The Romanovs. New York: Dial Press, 1981.

Mager, Hugo. Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998.

Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra. New York: Atheneum, 1967.

Radzinsky, Edvard. Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar. Translated by Antonia W. Bouis. New York: Free Press, 2005.

Articles

Wortman, Richard. "Rule by Sentiment: Alexander II's Journeys Through the Russian Empire." The American Historical Review 95 no. 3 (June 1990): 745-771.