ALEXANDER III. (1845-1894), emperor of Russia, sec ond son of Alexander II., was born on March Io, 1845. In natural disposition he bore little resemblance to his soft-hearted, liberal minded father, and still less to his refined, philosophic, sentimen tal, chivalrous, yet cunning grand-uncle, Alexander I. He rather gloried in the idea of being of the same rough texture as the great majority of his subjects. His straightforward, abrupt man ner savoured sometimes of gruffness, while his direct, unadorned method of expressing himself harmonized well with his rough hewn, immobile features and somewhat sluggish movements. His education was not fitted to soften these peculiarities. During the first 20 years of his life he had no prospect of succeeding to the throne, because he had an elder brother, Nicholas, who seemed of a fairly robust constitution. Alexander received only the per functory and inadequate training of an ordinary grand duke of that period, which did not go much beyond primary and second ary instruction, practical acquaintance with French, English and German, and a certain amount of drill. When he became heir apparent by the death of his elder brother in 1865, he began to study the principles of law and administration under Prof. Pobe donostsev, who influenced the character of his reign by instilling into his mind the belief that zeal for Eastern Orthodoxy ought, as an essential factor of Russian patriotism, to be specially cul tivated by every right-minded tsar. His elder brother, when on his deathbed, had expressed a wish that his affianced bride, Prin cess Dagmar of Denmark (see MARIE FEODOROVNA), should marry his successor. The marriage was celebrated on Nov. 9, 1866. The union proved a most happy one to the end. During those years when he was heir-apparent—i865 to 1881—he allowed it to become known that he had certain ideas of his own which did not coincide with the principles of the existing Government.
He deprecated undue foreign influence in general and German influence in particular. He desired to see a homogeneous Russia —homogeneous in language, administration and religion. His father, though a good patriot according to his lights, had strong German sympathies, of ten used the German language in his private relations, occasionally ridiculed the exaggerations of the Slavophils and based his foreign policy on the Prussian alliance. The antagonism first appeared publicly during the Franco-German War, when the tsar supported the cabinet of Berlin and the cesarevitch did not conceal his sympathies with the French. It reappeared in an intermittent fashion during the years 1875-7g, on the Eastern question. At first the cesarevitch was more Slavophil than the Government, but any of the prevalent popular illusions he may have imbibed were soon dispelled by personal observation in Bulgaria, where he commanded the left wing of the invading army. He did not, however, make himself con spicuous in any way during the campaign, but fulfilled his military duties in a conscientious and unobtrusive manner. After many mistakes' and disappointments the army reached Constantinople, and the Treaty of San Stefano was signed; but much that had been obtained by that important document had to be sacrificed at the Congress of Berlin. Prince Bismarck failed to do what was confidently expected of him. In return for the Russian sup port, which had enabled him to create the German empire, it was thought that he would help Russia to solve the Eastern question in accordance with her own interests, but to the surprise and indignation of the cabinet of St. Petersburg he confined _himself to acting the part of "honest broker" at the congress, and shortly afterwards he ostentatiously contracted an alliance with Austria for the express purpose of counteracting Russian designs in eastern Europe. The cesarevitch drew the practical conclusion that for Russia the best thing to do was to recover as quickly as possible from her temporary exhaustion and to prepare for future contingencies by a radical scheme of military and naval reorgan ization. In accordance with this conviction he called his father's attention to the grave disorders and corruption in the army. His representations were not favourably received. Alexander II. had lost much of the reforming zeal which distinguished the first decade of his reign, and had no longer the energy required to undertake drastic reforms. On March 13, 1881, Alexander II. was assassinated by a band of Nihilists, and the autocratic power passed to the hands of his son.
In the last years of his reign, Alexander II. had been much exercised by the spread of Nihilist doctrines and the increasing number of anarchist conspiracies. On the very day of his death he signed a ukase, creating a number of consultative commissions which might have been easily transformed into an assembly of notables. Alexander III. at once cancelled the ukase before it was published, and in the manifesto announcing his accession to the throne he let it be very clearly understood that he had no intention of limiting or weakening the autocratic power which he had inherited from his ancestors. Nor did he afterwards show any inclination to change his mind. All the internal reforms which he initiated were intended to correct what he considered as the too liberal tendencies of the previous reign. In his opinion Russia was to be saved from anarchical disorders and revolution ary agitation, not by the parliamentary institutions and so-called liberalism of western Europe, but by the three principles which the elder generation of the Slavophils systematically recom mended—nationality, Eastern Orthodoxy and autocracy. His political ideal was a nation containing only one nationality, one language, one religion and one form of administration; and he did his utmost to prepare for the realization of this ideal by imposing the Russian language and Russian schools on his Ger man, Polish and Finnish subjects, by fostering Eastern Orthodoxy at the expense of other confessions, by persecuting the Jews and by destroying the remnants of German, Polish and Swedish institutions in the outlying provinces. In the other provinces he sought to counteract what he considered the excessive liberal ism of his father's reign. For this purpose he clipped the feeble wings of the zemstvo, an elective local administration resembling the county and parish councils in England, and placed the auton omous administration of the peasant communes under the super vision of landed proprietors appointed by the Government. At the same time he sought to strengthen and centralize the imperial administration, and to bring it more under his personal control. In foreign affairs he was emphatically a man of peace, but not at all a partisan of the doctrine of peace at any price. Though in dignant at the conduct of Prince Bismarck towards Russia, he avoided an open rupture with Germany, and even revived for a time the Three Emperors' alliance. It was only in the last years of his reign, when M. Katkov had acquired a certain in fluence over him, that he adopted towards the cabinet of Berlin a more hostile attitude, and even then he confined himself to keeping a large quantity of troops near the German frontier, and establishing cordial relations with France. With regard to Bulgaria he exercised similar self-control. The efforts of Prince Alexander and afterwards of Stambolov to destroy Russian influence in the principality excited his indignation, but he persistently vetoed all proposals to intervene by force of arms. In central Asian affairs he followed the traditional policy of gradually extending Russian domination without provoking a conflict with Great Britain, and he never allowed the bellicose partisans of a forward policy to get out of hand. As a whole his reign cannot be regarded as one of the eventful periods of Russian history; but it must be admitted that under his hard, unsympathetic rule the country made considerable progress. He died at Livadia on Nov. 1, 1894, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Nicholas II.