indecision complicated further the fundamentally wrong-headed efforts of the government.
Alexander III, born in 1845, was full of strength and vigor, when he ascended the Russian throne after the assassination of his father. The new ruler was determined to suppress revolution and to maintain autocracy, a point that he made clear in a manifesto of May 11, 1881, which led to the resignation of Loris-Melikov, Dmitrii Miliutin, Grand Duke Con-
stantine, and the minister of finance, Alexander Abaza. Yet it took a number of months and further changes at the top before the orientation represented by Loris-Melikov was entirely abandoned and the government embarked on a reactionary course. The promoters of reaction included Constantine Pobedonostsev, formerly a noted jurist at the University of Moscow, who had served as tutor to Alexander and had become in 1880 the Ober- Procurator of the Holy Synod; Dmitrii Tolstoy, who returned to the government in 1882 to head the Ministry of the Interior; and Ivan Delianov, who took charge of the Ministry of Education in the same year. Pobedonostsev, the chief theoretician as well as the leading practitioner of reaction in Russia in the last decades of the nineteenth century, characteristically emphasized the weakness and viciousness of man and the fallibility and dangers of human reason, hated the industrial revolution and the growth of cities, and even wanted 'to keep people from inventing things.' The state, he believed, had as its high purpose the maintenance of law, order, stability, and unity among men. In Russia that aim could be accomplished only by means of autocracy and the Orthodox Church.
'Temporary Regulations' to protect state security and public order, issued late in the summer of 1881, gave officials in designated areas broad authority in dealing with the press and with people who could threaten public order. Summary search, arrest, imprisonment, exile, and trial by courts-martial became common occurrences. The 'Temporary Regulations' were aimed primarily at the 'Will of the People,' which lasted long enough to offer the new ruler peace on conditions of political amnesty and the convocation of a constituent assembly! Although the 'Will of the People' had been largely destroyed even before the assassination of the emperor and although most of its remaining members soon fell into the hands of the police, the 'Temporary Regulations' were not rescinded, but instead applied, as their vague wording permitted, to virtually anyone whom officials suspected or simply disliked. For many years after the demise of the 'Will of the People,' terrorism died down in Russia, although occasional individual outbreaks occurred. Yet the 'Temporary Regulations,' introduced originally for three years, were renewed. Indeed, the tsarist government relied on them during the rest of its existence, with the result that Russians lived under something like a partial state of martial law.
Alexander Ill's government also enacted 'counterreforms' meant to curb the sweeping changes introduced by Alexander II and to buttress the centralized, bureaucratic, and class nature of the Russian system. New press regulations made the existence of radical journals impossible and the life of a mildly liberal press precarious. The University Statute of 1884, which replaced the more liberal statute of 1863, virtually abolished uni-
versity autonomy and also emphasized that students were to be considered as 'individual visitors,' who had no right to form organizations or to claim corporate representation. In fact most policies of the Ministry of Education - which will be summarized in a later chapter - whether they concerned the emphasis on classical languages in secondary schools, the drastic curtailment of higher education for women, or the expansion of the role of the Church in elementary teaching, consciously promoted the reactionary aims of the regime.
The tsar and his associates used every opportunity to help the gentry and to stress their leading position in Russia, as, for example, by the creation in 1885 of the State Gentry Land Bank. At the same time they imposed further restrictions on the peasants, whom they considered essentially wards of the state rather than mature citizens. The policies of bureaucratic control oi the peasants and of emphasizing the role of the gentry in the countryside found expression in the most outstanding 'counter-reform' of the reign, the establishment in 1889 of the office of
The following year, 1890, the government made certain significant changes in the zemstvo system. The previous classification of landholders, that of 1864, had been based on the form of property, so that members of the gentry and other Russians who happened to hold land in individual ownership were not distinguished. In 1890 the members of the gentry became a distinct group - and their representation was markedly increased. Peasants, on the other hand, could thenceforth elect only candidates for
zemstvo seats, the governor making appointments to district zemstvo assemblies from these candidates, as recommended by land captains. In addition, the minister of the interior received the right to confirm chairmen of zemstvo boards in their office, while members of the boards and zemstvo employees were to be confirmed by their respective governors. In 1892 the town government underwent a similar 'counterreform,' which, among other provisions, sharply raised the property requirement for the right to vote. After its enactment, the electorate in St. Petersburg decreased from 21,000 to 8,000, and that in Moscow from 20,000 to 7,000.
The reign of Alexander III also witnessed increased pressure on non-Orthodox denominations and a growth of the policy of Russification. Even Roman Catholics and Lutherans, who formed majorities in certain western areas of the empire and had unimpeachable international connections and recognition, had to face discrimination: for instance, children of mixed marriages with the Orthodox automatically became Orthodox, and all but the dominant Church were forbidden to engage in proselytizing. Old Believers and Russian sectarians suffered greater hardships. The government also began to oppose non-Christian faiths such as Islam and Buddhism, which had devoted adherents among the many peoples of the empire.
Russification went hand in hand with militant Orthodoxy, although the two were by no means identical, for peoples who were not Great Russians such as the Ukrainians and the Georgians belonged to the Orthodox Church. Although Russification was practiced earlier against the Poles, especially in the western provinces following the rebellions of 1831 and 1863 and to a somewhat lesser extent in Poland proper, and was also apparent in the attempts to suppress the budding Ukrainian nationalism, it became a general policy of the Russian government only late in the nineteenth century. It represented in part a reaction against the growing national sentiments of different peoples of the empire with their implicit threats to the unity of the state and in part a response to the rising nationalism of the Great Russians themselves. Alexander III has often been considered the first nationalist on the Russian throne. Certainly, in his reign measures of Russification began to be extended not only to the rebellious Poles, but, for example, to the Georgians and Armenians in Transcaucasia and even gradually to the loyal Finns.
The Jews, who were very numerous in western Russia as a result of the invitation policy of late medieval Polish kings, were bound to suffer in the new atmosphere of aggressive Orthodoxy and Russification. And indeed old limitations came to be applied to them with a new force, while new legislation was enacted to establish additional curbs on them and
their activities. Thus, in contrast to the former lax enforcement of rules, Jews came to be rigorously restricted to residence in the 'Pale of Jewish Settlement,' that is, the area in western Russia where they had been living for a long time, with the added proviso that even within the Pale they could reside only in towns and smaller settlements inhabited by merchants and craftsmen, but not in the countryside. Educated or otherwise prominent Jews could usually surmount these restrictions, but the great bulk of the poor Jewish population was tied to its location. In 1887 the government established quotas for Jewish students in institutions of higher learning: 10 per cent of the total enrollment within the Pale of Jewish Settlement, 5 per cent in other provinces, and 3 per cent in
