Tsar Nicholas I (in full Nikolay Pavlovich), Russian emperor from 1825 to 1855, was often considered the personification of classic autocracy; for his reactionary policies, he has been called the emperor who froze Russia for 30 years. Autocracy meant the affirmation and maintenance of the absolute power of the sovereign, which was considered the indispensable foundation of the Russian state. His impulse was always to strike and keep striking until the object of his wrath was destroyed. Aggressiveness, however, was not the Emperor's only method of coping with the problems of

He knew the condition of the poor and wanted to "Let every one, let all Petersburg see the children begging in the streets," and reform it. Education and the treatment of the mentally ill was another one of his issues. He wanted to change the attitude that "there are lots of people in Petersburg who talk to themselves as they walk. This is a town of crazy people." After a long, successful reign, on March 13, 1881, Alexander II was assassinated, and the following day autocratic power passed to his son.

Tsar Alexander II (In full Aleksandr Nikolayevich) was the emperor of Russia from 1855 to 1881. Though he is a complete opposite of his predecessor, Nicholas I, and his successor, Alexander III, it is necessary to mention him to prove the need for change in Russian society. His liberal education and distress at the outcome of the Crimean War, which had demonstrated Russia's backwardness, inspired him toward a great program of domestic reforms, the most important being the emancipation (1861) of the serfs. In 1861 and 1862 revolutionary leaflets were distributed in St. Petersburg, ranging from the demand for a constituent assembly to a passionate appeal for insurrection. Alexander II met these demands. A period of repression after 1866 led to a resurgence of revolutionary terrorism and to Alexander's own assassination, at the height of the Crimean War. The war had revealed Russia's glaring backwardness in comparison with more advanced nations like England and France. Russian defeats, which had set the seal of final discredit on the oppressive regime of Nicholas I, had provoked among Russia's educated elite a general desire for drastic change. It was under the impact of this widespread urge that the Tsar embarked upon a series of reforms designed, through "modernization," to bring Russia into line with the more advanced Western countries. Their aim and results were the reduction of class privilege, humanitarian progress, and economic development. Moreover, Alexander, from the moment of his accession, had instituted a political "thaw."

Although it is unlikely that Nicholas committed suicide, as several historians have claimed, death did come as liberation to the weary and harassed Russian emperor. He came down with a bad case of pneumonia, and died in the bitter knowledge of general failure.

"He, like every one, had heard that there were, especially in Petersburg, progressives of some sort, nihil

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Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)