Neither the army nor the fleet: why Putin dreams of being like Emperor Alexander III, but failed to copy it
The most striking example is one of Putin's latest interviews, where purely accidentally got into the frame a portrait of the Russian emperor on the wall. Usually, politicians of such a level as the authoritarian leader of the Russian Federation (which imagines its king) in this way indicate their political program, more precisely - the model. Like, look at Alexander III - I will behave just like him. So the kings themselves did.
However, if you look at the biography of the penultimate Russian emperor, then in his style is very much similar to the reign of a modern dictator. The most striking example is the fact that Alexander III is one of the few Russian rulers who did not war. The focus found out who Vladimir Putin wanted to see himself and why in the same way instead of the modern version of the reformer tsar, only pale likeness.
On the first day of spring 1881, the 36-year-old Grand Duke Alexander was shaken by the news-his father of Emperor Alexander II was killed by representatives of the terrorist organization "People's Will". Alexander had not to inherit the throne, because he was the younger son of the emperor. Accordingly, he was prepared to be an eternal prince, providing appropriate education. Cesarevich, that is, he became the heir at the age of twenty when his brother Nicholas died unexpectedly.
Inherited from his brother, in addition to the future throne, Alexander also received the bride of his brother - Danish Princess Dagmar, who, after the wedding, and therefore conversion to Orthodoxy, became called Maria Fedorovna. After 16 years, the tragic death of his father will make Alexander the head of the second largest empire in the world - after the British one. However, in Britain, a constitutional monarchy, and Russia was absolute.
So, unlike the Empress Victoria, Alexander III inherited no one and no restricted power. The first decision on the throne was the abolition of the last decree of his father, which in Russia started the constitutional process. In doing so, the new emperor outlined the dominant vector of his reign. During his father's life, Cesarevich avoided public interference in political affairs. He studied the first years after his change in his status, although he never obtained a full "royal education".
Instead, his teacher Konstantin Ventidonostsev instilled in him the ideals that became the basis of "official nationality". Its basic postulates can be presented in the form of the thesis "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality" - formed during the reign of the grandfather of Alexander Nicholas I, but it is these postulates that best characterize the foundations of Alexander III. Two emperor, two Alexandra - father and son adhered to different views and different strategies.
In the 1870s, Alexander II reformist passion slept. The emperor came to the point of non -return when he had to choose: to finish the case, coming to the interests of management states, or to limit himself to half -of -the -way decisions that would change the state only cosmetically. Choosing the second option, the emperor condemned himself for death.
At that time, everyone knew that the heir to the throne disagreed with his father in his views, but Tsesarevich behaved himself as a devoted subject to the emperor. This was especially evident during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. At that time, Cesarevich was instructed to manage a separate group of troops with what he successfully coped with, at the same time acquainted with corruption, negligence and horrible management that was inherent in the Russian army.
Two major princes were involved in the theft. Alexander favorably reported to his father, but there was no proper response to it. The disappointment for Cesarevich turned out to be foreign policy. Alexander was a supporter of the idea of the Union with the Germans, who, in his opinion, with their Prussian discipline were mentally closer to Russian autocracy than the French with their tendency to revolutions and produce all sorts of freedom -loving ideas. Friendship did not work.
The Russian Empire supported Prussia in its war against France in 1871, but at the Berlin Congress, when the fate of the Ottoman Empire was decided, German Chancellor Bismarck did everything so that Russia did not receive maximum dividends from its victory. Here with such a background, Alexander III became the emperor in the spring of 1881.
With the educational luggage of Pobereonztsev with his ideas of populism in conditions where various terrorist groups operated in the empire, and the state itself was essentially in diplomatic isolation (the only potential allied "betrayed" Russia at the Berlin Congress) Alexander saw only one way.
Alexander III was convinced that the Russian people, if gave freedom, would go through terror and violence, so after the violence with the direct culprits of his father's death, he sent all their ideological followers to whom the security service, the "Okhranka" - an analogue of the state security agencies in the next historical period.
In 1887, the next generation of activists of "People's Will" was arrested and executed on the accusation of attempted assassination attempt on the emperor, in particular - Alexander Ulyanov. This act was probably the same stick that was overtaken. After 31 years, the members of the organization, headed by the brother of the revolutionary Alexander Vladimir Ulyanov (better known under the pseudonym "Lenin") will execute the whole family of Emperor Alexander, together with his son Nicholas II.
Alexander III abolished some of his father's reforms - he also took away so small powers from local self -government bodies, which now became something similar to charitable organizations, not the authorities. He also intensified censorship and took away autonomy from universities. In foreign policy, Alexander III was less sharp. He tried to avoid war with the United Kingdom, apparently remembering the consequences of the Crimean War.
At the beginning of the reign, he tried to start relations with the German states with the German states-Austria-Hungary and the Second Reich. He even restored the "Union of Three Emperors"-Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary. However, after in 1887 in Russia, they learned about a secret union agreement between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, Alexander finally changed his policy vector to his once hated France, which was already a republic at that time.
In 1891, a mutual assistance agreement was concluded with it. It should be noted that in the late 1980s, Bulgaria, which was formally remained in the Ottoman Empire, began a drift towards the German states. This was contrary to the Russian interests. In St. Petersburg, they sought to unite all the Slavs under their reign, and also considered Bulgaria as a bridgehead for a possible conquest of Istanbul (to release the Center for Orthodoxy in Muslim Turks).
However, no "special military operation" Alexander III was dared. The emperor, who proclaimed that the sole allies of Russia were the army and the Navy, tried to modernize the country. In 1891, Alexander III began the construction of the Trans -Siberian Highway, which was finally combined with the farthest points of the giant country. Alexander tried to combine the incompatible - technological progress and conservation of medieval life. And it could only be done by force.
The autocrat himself was a considerable physical strength. During the accident, the royal family traveled to the country, King Alexander, without waiting for help, raised the roof of the wagon and freed the family from a metal captivity. He tried to give the same strength to his country. However, he did not take into account the fact that the disease is not fighting physical strength, but with medicines.
Russia was already sick - and volitional decisions only covered the disease, thus giving it the opportunity to develop and eventually kill the patient. British Queen Victoria, describing Alexander III, called him "exactly not a gentleman. " Most contemporaries called him the peasant emperor. He loved the peasants, their way of life. It is rumored that Alexander III, even in his palace in Gatchin, lived in a service room.
The king wore peasant clothing and externally in his physique looked like a "man". The researcher of life Alexander Scott Malsa notes that the populism and autocracy, which the emperor sought so, reaches his roots in the Middle Ages, when the majority of the population were unwritten and the economy was built on physical strength.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of the population of the Russian Empire was still illiterate, but the country was actively industrialized, so social reforms were simply inevitable. Alexander III was not destined to see the cruel collapse of his project. He left this pleasure in inheritance to his son, who watched all the first rows. The emperor was not hypocritical in his politics. He treated himself in the same way as his native state.
As it belongs to a real man, he did not pay attention to the slaughter of the kidney, which he received after the same crash of the train. In the end, renal failure has grown into jade - a disease, then it is not feasible even for the best medicine in the world, which they still turned when it was too late - the disease came to the stage of non -return.
Emperor Alexander III died at the age of 49, leaving his son Nicholas II a deadly empire, which he allegedly put on his feet by willful efforts and skewers. However, his son had to pay fully for the sins of his father and all his previous ancestors - and in Nicholas II, in the fall of 1917, the existence of the Russian Empire was cut short.
The situation on the Ukrainian lands (Dnieper) is clearly demonstrated by Alexander III, most of which were controlled by the Russian Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. His father-reformer published in 1876 a sad known Emsky decree, under which all Ukrainian, especially language, was subjected to persecution.
Almost all active Ukrainians were forced to emigrate, in particular - the author of the words of the Ukrainian anthem Pavel Chubinsky, the "father" of Ukrainian history Mikhail Hrushevsky, Mikhail Drahomanov and many other less known persons. They were forced to act from Lviv, which in these times became the center of the Ukrainian national and cultural movement, because he was in another state-Austria-Hungary. The only exception was the theater.
The new Minister of Internal Affairs Mykola Ignatiev temporarily closed his eyes to ban the theatrical performances in Ukrainian. In the city of Elisavetgrad, a theater troupe was immediately emerged under the direction of Mark Kropyvnytsky (it is his name that now wears this city). However, in 1883, they were forbidden to put performances in almost the entire Dnieper.
Socio-economic life for the reign of Alexander III was a rigid stratification of society into rich people who lived in a fairy tale and hopelessly poor people. Only 10% of the children of the Dnieper region had at least primary education. Personally, the free peasants de facto were economically dependent on the landlords who continued to work, developing a small piece of the worst land given to them by Alexander II in the course of their land reform.
Such payments, which the peasants called the "new serfdom" lasted almost until the beginning of the First World War. The only way out for most peasants was to get into the city and get a industrial enterprise, where they had to work hard for food without any social guarantees with high risk of getting industrial injury and losing everything at all. The industry was mainly concentrated in the hands of foreigners.
The suppression of freedoms, an attempt to lift everyone in a row, a piett before the Army and Fleet - what is still in common with Alexander the Third and Vladimir Putin, who so loves to take pictures at the monument to the penultimate emperor? Conservatism, protection of the interests of the overwhelming elites at the expense of the majority of the population, facade modernization and chauvinism are things that bring together Alexander III and Vladimir Putin.