The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1917-07-07
THE STORY OF MODERN RUSSIA

were few, and in the eighteenth cen
tury the fortunes of Russia lay in the
hands of two Expresses, Elizabeth
and Catherine II. The less we say
of their morals the better. Much
might be said of their brains. 1t was
Elizabeth, true daughter of Peter the
Great, whose armies entered Berlin
and nearly ruined Frederic the Great.
He was saved only by her death and
the accession of Peter IT,, a despica-
bic creature who, having saved
Prussia from defeat, was deposed and
assasslnated by the friends of his
wife, Catherine II, Messalina, but
woman of extraordinary ability and
force of will.
The son of two such parents as
Peter and Catherine was not likely
to be fortunate 1t is probable that
he was not sane. His childish, hap
hazard tyranny was punished by
l., succeeded, not without suspicion Of
completely in his fathers murder.
But Alexander /. is one of those men
about whom no historian can hope to
tell the whole truth. No one was
ever quite sure of him. No one who
knew him ever protested to under
stand him. He was proud and de-
termined despot, and he was a demo
crat. He began his reign yearning to
liberate Russia, and left it under a
sterner tyranny than ever. He was
not fifty when crushed" as he said,
beneath the terrible burden of
crown" he died. Many believed then,
and the tale long fingered; that he
had but pretended death as a veil for
life of lonely sanctity.
There were no half measures, no
divided councils in the mind of his
successor, Nicholas I. An iron rule
was his one notion of government,
and he is the last Of the Cars who
practised it with resolution and sue
cess. Alexander H., coming to the
throne after the disasters of the
Crimean War, had all the harder task
His father had taken the greatest
pains to bring him up in the pure air
of despotism, but there was in Alex
ander natural kindness which
would not be stified No one of the
House of Romanoff leaves upon the
page of history so amiable a picture
1t was Alexander II. who emancipated
the serfs, and no greater reform has
ever been made by one act. He gave
Russia a new and milder penal code
and a scheme of local self-govern-
ment. But the ferment of the nine
teenth century democracy worked too
quickly. Alexander had just deter
mined to concede further reforms,
when he was killed by Nihilist bombs.
Father of Deposed Gar
Alexander III, his son, could hard
ly have been conciliated by such a
declaration of the policy of the re
formers. He was not the man to be
frightened Even if his father had
not been so cruelty repaid for a
liberal policy it is, indeed, unlikely
that it would have had the support
of Alexander III He was, allowing
for the difference of period, much
more like his grandfather Nicholas.
Resolute autocracy was his mode of
government; one nationality, on re-
ligion, one language, one system of
administration his ideals for Russia
But with this went stern hostility
to all foreign influence, and that, in
the nature of the case, meant no
friendship for Germany. 1t is from
his reign and his direction Of Russian
policy that we date the Franco-Russi-
an alliance. He died, as Cars are
wont to die, worn out before his
time, a man hardly so, broken down.
despite magnificent physique, by
the burden of empire, and it passed
to the shoulders of his son, Nicholas
IL, about whom our papers have said
so much Of late.