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How Far Did Alexander Iii Bring Political and Social Change to Russia? Essay Example

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How Far Did Alexander Iii Bring Political and Social Change to Russia? Essay Example
How far did Alexander III bring political and social change to Russia?

When Alexander III took power in 1881, he introduced is manifesto in the April of that year stating all of his intention being the Tsar. With the assassination of his father by democrats, he did all in his power to avenge him by introducing laws, which went against democratic views.

Russification:

Being Tsar or the worlds biggest country, Alexander III had a big challenge ahead of him to keep the Empire together, so he began Russification where he ruled over his multi ethic empire. To help bring unity to this massive empire, everyone was made to use the Russian language and to use the Russian Orthodox Religion. This created a lot of uproar within the Empire, as many couldn’t speak Russian. It took 4 years for Russian to become to official language of the empire. With everything having to be Russian, all official documents had to be written in Russian, all education in schools had to be Russian. This badly affected Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All of the Jewish communities were persecuted as Alexander III blamed them for the assassination of his father. Over 600 anti-Jewish measured were introduced; for example, only a certain number of Jews were allowed to attend university. Most fled to either USA or Western Europe. The Russification policy was not successful and later led to resentment.

Political Repression:

With the assassination of his father, it threatened the whole political and social system in the Russian Empire, so Alexander III had a big challenge ahead of him to help try and keep the diverse country today. One of the first things he did was to replace all his fathers’ liberal ministers with Pobedonostev who instilled conservative values into Alexander III. Alexander III gave himself absolute power; they forced the schools to raise their fees to prevent the poorer classes from gaining an education this led to an illiteracy rate of 79%. Universities lost a

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