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 start of his reign

"Under Paul," he said, "three thousand peasants had been given away like a bag of diamonds. If civilization were more advanced, I would abolish this slavery, if it cost me my head". But the universal corruption, he complained, had left him no men; and the filling up of the government offices with Germans and other foreigners merely accentuated the sullen resistance of the "old Russians" to his reforms. That Alexander's reign, which began with so large a promise of amelioration, ended by riveting still tighter the chains of the Russian people was, however, due less to the corruption and backwardness of Russian life than to the defects of the tsar himself. His love of liberty, though sincere, was in fact unreal. It flattered his vanity to pose before the world as the dispenser of benefits; but his theoretical liberalism linked with an autocratic will which brooked no contradiction. "You always want to instruct me!" he exclaimed to Derzhavin, the Minister of Justice, "but I am the autocratic emperor, and I will this, and nothing else!" "He would gladly have agreed," wrote Prince Czartoryski, "that every one should be free, if every one had freely done only what he wished." Moreover, this masterful temper joined an infirmity of purpose which ever let "I dare not wait upon I would," and which seized upon any excuse for postponing measures the principles of which he had publicly approved.

Related Topics:
Peasant - Diamond - Civilization - Slavery - Head - Corruption - Germans - Russians - Vanity - Liberalism - Autocratic - Derzhavin - Minister of Justice

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