Alexander II
*Alexander II was born on this date in 1818. He was a white Russian Emperor, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland.
Born in Moscow, Alexander Nikolayevich was the eldest son of Nicholas I of Russia and Charlotte of Prussia. His uncle, Emperor Alexander I, died childless. Grand Duke Konstantin, the next-younger brother of Alexander I, had previously renounced his rights to the throne of Russia. Thus, Alexander's father, the third son of Paul I, became the new Emperor; he took the name Nicholas I. At that time, Alexander became Tsesarevich as his father's heir.
His early life gave little indication of his ultimate potential; until his accession in 1855, aged 37, few imagined that posterity would know him for implementing the most challenging reforms undertaken in Russia since the reign of Peter the Great. Alexander's most significant reform as Emperor was the Emancipation of Russia's Serfs in 1861, for which he is known as Alexander the Liberator. The tsar reorganized the judicial system, setting up elected local judges, abolishing corporal punishment, promoting local self-government through the zemstvo system, imposing universal military service, ending some privileges of the nobility, and promoting university education.
Among his most significant domestic challenges was an uprising in Poland in 1863, to which he responded by stripping Poland of its separate constitution, incorporating it directly into Russia, and abolishing serfdom there. After an assassination attempt in 1866, Alexander adopted a somewhat more conservative stance until his death. Alexander was also notable for his foreign policy, which was mainly pacifist, supportive of the United States, and opposed Great Britain. He backed the Union Army during the American Civil War and sent warships to New York Harbor and San Francisco Bay to deter attacks by the Confederate Navy. He sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, fearing the remote colony would fall into British hands in a future war. He sought peace, moved away from bellicose France when Napoleon III fell in 1871, and in 1872 joined with Germany and Austria in the League of the Three Emperors, stabilizing the European situation.
Despite his otherwise pacifist foreign policy, he fought a brief war with the Ottoman Empire in 1877–78, leading to the independence of Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia. He pursued further expansion into the Far East, leading to the founding of Vladivostok; into the Caucasus, approving plans leading to the Circassian genocide; and into Turkestan. Although disappointed by the results of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Alexander abided by that agreement. Alexander was proposing additional parliamentary reforms to counter the rise of nascent revolutionary and anarchistic movements when he was assassinated on March 13, 1881.
