Alexander I of Russia

Aleksander Pavlovich Romanov or Tsar Alexander I (The Blessed), (Russian: ????????? I ????????) (December 23, 1777–December 1, 1825), Emperor of Russia (reigned March 23, 1801–December 1, 1825), King of Poland (reigned 1815–1825), son of the Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, afterwards Paul I, and Maria Fedorovna, daughter of the Duke of Württemberg.

The reforms

::Main articles: Government reform of Alexander I and Mikhail Speransky

Related Topics:
Government reform of Alexander I - Mikhail Speransky

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In Russia, too, certain reforms were carried out; but they could not survive the suspicious interference of the autocrat and his officials. The newly created Council of Ministers and State Council under Governing Senate, endowed for the first time with certain theoretical powers, became in the end but the slavish instruments of the Tsar and his favorites of the moment. The elaborate system of Education, culminating in the reconstituted, or new-founded, universities of Dorpat, Vilna, Kazan and Kharkov, was strangled in the supposed interests of "order" and of Orthodox piety; while the military colonies which Alexander proclaimed as a blessing to both soldiers and state were forced on the unwilling peasantry and army with pitiless cruelty. Even the Bible Society, through which the Emperor in his later mood of evangelical zeal proposed to bless his people, was conducted on the same ruthless lines. The Roman Archbishop and the Orthodox Metropolitans were forced to serve on its committee side by side with Protestant pastors; and village priests, trained to regard any tampering with the letter of the traditional documents of the Church as mortal sin, became the unwilling instruments for the propagation of what they regarded as works of the Devil.

Related Topics:
Council of Ministers - State Council - Governing Senate - Education - Universities - Dorpat - Vilna - Kazan - Kharkov - Orthodox - Piety - Military - Colonies - Soldier - State - Bible - Society - Evangelical - Roman - Archbishop - Metropolitans - Protestant - Pastor - Village - Priest - Church - Mortal sin - Devil

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