IB History Impact of the Policies of Alexander II Alexander III and Nicholas II Key Definitions

A system of government in which the tsar held total, unrestricted power, answerable to no parliament, constitution, or elected body. Nicholas II swore at his coronation in 1894 to preserve the principle of autocracy exactly as his father Alexander III had left it.

The decree issued by Alexander II in 1861 that freed roughly 23 million serfs from legal bondage to the nobility. Freed peasants had to pay redemption payments for their land allotments over 49 years, and land was allocated to the village commune, or mir, rather than to individual households.

Russian revolutionaries of the 1860s to 1880s who believed the peasant commune, or mir, could form the basis of a uniquely Russian socialism, bypassing capitalism. Their 1874 campaign to agitate peasants directly, known as going to the people, largely failed, pushing some toward terrorism.

The tsarist secret police, created in 1881 after the assassination of Alexander II. It infiltrated revolutionary groups with informers, monitored the press and universities, and could arrest and exile suspects without trial.

The state-driven industrialisation programme run by finance minister Sergei Witte in the 1890s, funded by high tariffs, foreign loans, the gold standard, and heavy taxation of the peasantry, which built railways and heavy industry but deepened rural poverty.