Why Did Alexander II Create A Backwards Economy Of Russia

Alexander II became Tsar of the Russian Empire in 1855 following his late father Nicholas I. By the time of Nicholas’ death, Russia was in desperate need of change, as Russians’ way of life “differed very little from what it had been at the end of the fifteenth [century]” (Lincoln, 1990). Alexander was conscious of Russia’s situation and knew he needed to take action as soon as possible. But he was also firmly dedicated to maintaining the autocracy and his position as Tsar, a notion that was installed into him by his father since his youth. Nevertheless, Alexander II became known as the ruler who implemented the well-known “Great Reforms”. One of the reforms considered the most consequential among the others was the abolition of serfdom, which
In order to fix this, Alexander ordered the construction of new railways and pushed the industry to expand the iron and coal production. The great number of new railways encouraged trade, making communication within Russia much easier and efficient as well. New industrial areas made their appearance which made possible a greater coal and oil production, even though a big portion of these new areas was relying heavily on foreign investment (Orlovsky, 1981). Even though Alexander II pushed industrialization and did manage to better the economic situation, development progressed quiet slowly and the Western countries were still way ahead of Russia in terms of economic
In fact, the people working with him and for him described Alexander as a confident and audacious person at times, but completely clueless as to what to do next at other times (Rieber, 1917). Alexander knew it was his responsibility as the Tsar to at least attempt to restore a broken Russia, but he did not have a clear idea as to how to tackle this task, resulting in him fearing any strong opposition when he decided to implement reforms