Tsar Alexis I of Russia

“ For several years the maddened strife continued, producing its usual fruits of gory fields, smouldering cities, desolated homes, with orphanage, widowhood, starvation, pestilence, and every conceivable form of human misery. At length, all parties being exhausted, peace was concluded on the 2d of June, 1661.
The great insurrection in Moscow had taught the tzar Alexis a good lesson, and he profited by it wisely. He was led to devote himself earnestly to the welfare of his people. His recovery of the lost provinces of Russia was considered just, and added immeasurably to his renown. ”

“ Alexander III, Tsar of Russia, 2, 98, 102, 113, 195, 197, 198, 205, 206, 209, 218, 223, 244, 292, 306, 310
Alexander the Great, 216
Alexinsky, 569
Alexis Aleksandrovič, Grand Duke, 207
Amfiteatrov, 108
Andreev, 185, 361
Annenkov, 17, 195, 289, 290, 548
Anselm, Saint, 257, 258
Antonii, archbishop of Volhynia, 207, 435, 436, 499, 502, 503
Antonii, metropolitan, 441
Antonovič, 59, 60, 63, 68, 132
Anzengruber, 507
Aquinas, 494, 496, 497, 507
Arcybašev, 448, 459
Aristippus, 15
Aristotle, 7, 8, 472, 490, 501, 507 ”

“ Alexis, the shepherd's son, was now, beyond any question, the most powerful man in Russia. If he would, he might easily have taken the sceptre from the yielding hands of the Empress and played the autocrat, as Patiomkin played it under similar circumstances in later years. But Alexis cared as little for power as for rank and wealth. He smiled at his honours. "Fancy," he said, with his hearty laugh, "a peasant's son, a Count; and a man who ought to be tending sheep, a Field-Marshal!" ”

“ Modern history knows no more tragic figure than that of Alexander. The brilliant promise of his early years; the haunting memory of the crime by which he had obtained the power to realize his ideals; and, in the end, the terrible legacy he left to Russia: a principle of government which, under lofty pretensions, veiled a tyranny supported by spies and secret police; an uncertain succession; an army permeated by organized disaffection; an armed Poland, whose hunger for liberty the tsar had whetted but not satisfied; the quarrel with Turkey, with its alternative of war or humiliation for Russia ”

“ The interview was short, but so affecting that the tzar, losing all self-control, burst into an agony of grief and wept like a child. The dying princess commended to his care her babe and her servants, and, as the clock struck the hour of midnight, her spirit departed, we trust to that world "where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." The orphan babe was baptized as Peter Alexis, and subsequently, on the death of the Empress Catharine, became Emperor of Russia. ”

“ Frederic William IV., King of Prussia (1795-1861) , the Tsar's opinion of, 337.
—— his character and his aims for Germany, 346.
—— his coquetting with revolt, 351.
—— submits to the influence of Russia, 352 (foot-note) . ”

“ The Tsar was the one person who could bestow it, and if he would not do so voluntarily, he must be compelled to grant it. No one man had the right to wreck the happiness of millions of human beings. If the authority was centralized, so was the responsibility. Alexander's entire reign had been a curse—and emancipation was a delusion and a lie. He must yield or perish. This vicious and degenerate organization had its center in a highly educated middle class, where men with nineteenth-century intelligence and aspirations were in frenzied revolt against methods suited to the time of the Khans. ”

“ Alexis seems to have been a ruler of generally excellent intentions and very moderate ability. He was at the time of his accession a youth of sixteen: a tall, handsome youth, physically stronger than his father and fond of hunting, but nervous and irritable. It needed no keenness of vision to see that Russia was in a deplorable condition. The nobles and officials were as corrupt as ever; the fiscal system and administration of justice were atrocious; the merchants struggled feebly against foreign competition, and the serfs were crushed to the ground under their burdens. ”

“ The Great Russians are the most vigorous and expansive element of the Russian nation, albeit the most mixed. Finnish blood has left its traces in their physique; Tatar dominion in their character. Before the advent of the Romanovs they formed alone the Muscovite Empire, and their czars took the title “Sovereign of all the Russias” long before Alexis, father of Peter the Great, justified this title by the annexation of the Ukraine. Hence Great Russia, under the name Muscovite, has been considered by certain foreigners the true, the only Russia. ”

“ It was a gray, cold and rainy day, in contrast to the brilliance that awaited us inside the Cathedral.
According to custom the Tsar entered first, followed by the Heir to the Crown. When Alexei appeared, it was not a strapping, healthy Tsarevich to whom all the Grand Dukes and dignitaries bowed, but a frail little boy of nine, carried in the arms of a Cossack. This was a sad moment for us. We had hoped Alexei would at least be well enough to walk but he had not recovered sufficiently from his recent illness. We stood under a canopy in the middle of the great church. Alexei sat in a chair. ”

“ The Russians of Alexander's day could not fail to note all these changes, and it was inevitable that discontent with reaction should be greatly accentuated because for so long a period the tsar had cherished constitutionalist designs and had given public pledges of reform. Moreover, Poland and Finland were granted constitutions, and in view of their own condition it was natural that the Russians should feel that this implied a slight to themselves. Progressive philosophy, opposition ideas, sociological and political journalism and literature, were widely circulated. ”

“ For the Tsar is not only the executive and the law-making power of the state, head of the Church, fountain of justice, commander-in-chief of the army and navy, but, more than all these, he is father to his people. His subjects owe him, in theory, a filial respect and obedience; and, with the exception of the Nihilists, they are dutiful children. The relation is an Oriental one, which we of the West can not understand. But it is powerfully operative in Russia. It has not been really weakened by anything that the Nihilists have done, but, on the contrary, strengthened. ”

“ There was a fierce struggle between the progressives and the moderates, between the opponents and the supporters of the institution. The emperor's position was difficult, for with two exceptions (Constantine, Alexander's younger brother, and Helena Pavlovna, his aunt) all the members of the court were adverse to the reform.
After the conclusion of peace and the issue of the peace manifesto of 1856, the tsar seized the first opportunity to instruct the delegation of the Moscow aristocracy to consider the possibility of liberating the serfs. ”

“ With such a base to the pyramid as is constituted by the peasant proprietors of Russia, aided by the enormous army, recruited almost to any extent from among their ranks, whose chief religion is a superstitious reverence for the "great father," the Tsar is safe in refusing all concessions, all improvements; and the hopeless nature of Russian reform hitherto, mainly hangs upon the conviction of the Government that nothing external can possibly act upon this inert mass. "Great is stupidity, and shall prevail." ”

“ The first practical result of the Russian revolution was the cheapening of bread and food; the great task of new Russia is to reform the bureaucracy, to turn it from the absolutist regnare to the democratic gubernare. In absolute Tsardom every bureaucrat is a tsar, and, in his own domain, the tsar. Russia is handicapped by her size ”

“ Alexander III, son of a Grand-Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt, to the extent of one thirty-second, and the present ruler, Nicholas II, who married a Princess of the House of Oldenburg, to the extent of one sixty-fourth. One sixty-fourth of the blood of the present Tsar is Russian Romanov blood. ”

“ In this part of the world, men being uninfluenced by morality, were to be governed only by rigour; and from this severity, frequently carried on to a degree of cruelty, arose slavery, and a secret thirst of revenge.
Alexis had a war with the Poles that proved successful, and terminated in a peace, which secured to him the possession of Smolensko, Kiow, and the Ukraine: but he was unfortunate against the Swedes, and the boundaries of the Russian empire were contracted within a very narrow compass on that side of the kingdom. ”

“ Foreign craftsmen flocked to Moscow during the glorious reign of Alexis, and the Russia Company prospered, but the English settlers received a temporary check when the quarrel rose between King and Parliament. Alexis, in gratitude for favours shown his ancestors by the English, sent Charles grain and furs, and banished those who declared for the Commonwealth. ”

“ The council melted away. Autocracy reigned again as in all the days since the time of Rurik. Thus ended the first, if not the only, genuine attempt at a liberal government in the Muscovite Empire. This is the most important, the most significant, event in the history of Russia.
Through another century successive sovereigns sat upon the autocratic throne. In 1822 the childless Alexander I was Tsar. His brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, had been acknowledged as heir. Constantine desired to marry the Polish girl Jane Grodzinska. ”

“ What they thought of the problems of their rule I do not know; and I do not know enough of their people to understand what those problems really are. But surely no power could be more beneficently exercised than this man’s must be; and if his spirit could only animate the instruments of his authority and the innumerable officials who are necessary to administer it, the mad asperities of recrimination in Russia would be as impossible to the administration and its opponents as they are to the Tsar himself. ”

“ If by one stroke of the pen the Tsar can sacrifice ninety-three millions of revenue in order that Russia may be sober, it is not very extravagant to hope that in virtue of the same kind of benevolent despotism Russia may secure a liberal constitution and the Russian people be set free. ”

“ He was a patriot as well as churchman, and eagerly favored all measures conducing to the aggrandizement of Russia, especially where the interests of the Church were likewise involved. The supplication of the Cossacks of the Ukraine for protection, formerly presented under Michael, and now renewed to Alexis, appealed to his sympathies on both civil and religious grounds, and received his earnest support. The consequent war with Poland, advocated by him, resulting in the conquest of Little Russia and its reunion to the empire, added to his influence and increased his arrogance. ”

“ Accustomed to govern themselves within a certain range, the Russians could easily be fitted for participation in the higher duties which a constitutional government would impose upon them. A lower House could be evolved from the seeds of the Tir. An upper House could be created by the Tsar out of abundant existing materials. Thus, without any violent metamorphosis, liberal institutions might be introduced into Russia. They may come, as a spontaneous offering from the throne, sooner than their most sanguine friends in the empire now expect. ”

“ In the reign of Michael's successor, Alexius (1645-76) , the country recovered its strength so rapidly that the tsar was Alexius, 1645-76. tempted to revive the energetic aggressive policy and put forward claims to Livonia, Lithuania and Little Russia, but he was obliged to moderate his pretensions. Livonia continued to be under Swedish rule, and Lithuania remained united with Poland. Some advantages, however, were obtained. Smolensk and Chernigov were definitely incorporated in the tsardom of Muscovy, and great progress was made towards the absorption of Little Russia. ”

“ They are not down-trodden; and, out of their 100,000,000 free souls, there is a proportion of Nihilists no larger, probably, than that of Socialists in Germany, Communists in France, “Dynamiters” in London, or Anarchists in Chicago. The Tsar enjoys the confidence and love of the vast majority of his people. Russia may safely challenge the rest of Europe to exhibit a parallel to the comparative progress, social and political, which she has made in the past thirty years. ”

“ Russia will never be Protestant; Russia will never be juste-milieu; Russia will not make a revolution simply in order to get rid of Tsar Nicholas and to replace him by tsar-deputies, tsar-judges, and tsar-policemen.
Herzen now found himself able to explain certain undesirable historical facts quite in the slavophil manner.
Take tsarism, for example. Tsarism is not monarchy. European monarchy developed out of feudalism and Catholicism, and is animated by a peculiar social and religious ideal. The tsar is tsar for tsardom's sake. He is nothing more than an unlimited dictator. ”

“ In perfect accord with the reactionary spirit of the restoration epoch, Alexander became increasingly affected with religious sentimentalism, and inclined more and more towards clericalism The fact might seem to be sufficiently explained by the diffusion throughout Europe of medieval religious romanticism, but to this strong factor there was superadded in Alexander's case a yet more powerful personal motive. The tsar had had prior knowledge of the conspiracy that culminated in his father's death, and had tacitly assented to the crime. ”