The tsar who freed 23 million serfs also sold Alaska to America
In 1861 Alexander II signed the decree that ended serfdom on private estates, freeing more than 23 million people. Six years later he sold Alaska to the United States, partly fearing Britain would grab it in a future war. Few expected such a heavy-smoking, card-playing heir to become Russia's boldest reformer since Peter the Great.
Born in Moscow on 29 April 1818, the eldest son of Nicholas I, Alexander grew up under a father who stamped out free thought. His tutor, the liberal poet Vasily Zhukovsky, gave him a broad education, and in 1837 he spent six months touring 20 Russian provinces, becoming the first Romanov heir to see Siberia. On a European tour in 1839 he met the twenty-year-old Queen Victoria; one historian suspects a brief romance. In 1847 he sent money to famine-struck Ireland.
He took the throne on 2 March 1855, aged 37, in the middle of the Crimean War, and ended it on harsh terms that demilitarised the Black Sea. Humiliation fuelled reform. Rather than impose emancipation outright, he nudged landowners into forming their own committees, then backed turning peasants into communal landholders instead of dependent labourers. The law was signed on 3 March 1861, giving former serfs the right to marry freely, own property and run businesses.
More changes followed: courts were overhauled, censorship eased, some restrictions on Jews lifted, and local self-government encouraged. The army, which had drafted serfs for 25 years, switched in 1874 to conscription across all classes, and branding and corporal punishment of soldiers were banned. Railway building and limited companies spread.
Abroad he backed the Union in the American Civil War, sending warships to New York and San Francisco, and in 1873 entered the Three Emperors' League alongside Berlin and Vienna. The war with the Ottomans in 1877 and 1878 brought independence for Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania. At home, a Polish rising in 1863 led him to abolish Poland's separate constitution, and after an 1866 attempt on his life he grew more conservative. He was assassinated on 13 March 1881 while weighing new parliamentary reforms.
Source: Alexander II of Russia
