Pierre weekly free press. (Pierre, S.D.) 1889-19??, 1917-04-19
SERFS were FREED
BY CAR ALEXANDER \
Grandfather of Deposed Emper-
or Was a Liberal, But Nj
hilists Killed Him.

From the Kansas City Star.
IT is a curious fact that M Of tho
greatest reforms hat ever came to
. Russia-the liberation OF the Sserfs in
1S61-came through a man educated
under the Prussian military system.
But in the case OF the Gar Alexander
III the Prussian virus did not take. Born
In 1878, the son OF a sternly autocratic
father, gr~ wing up in an atmosphere In
which it was looked upon as reason to
criticize the corner policeman, since he
was a representative of the government,
Alexander persisted in cherishing An
interest in all sorts OF humble people.
He saw how they lived n s~peculated
on how their living conditions might be
improved, and altogether turned out to
be rather a severe annoyance to his
father, Cza Nicholas /. Perhaps the
eccentricities of Alexander may be in
part accounted for by his tutor. a hu-
manltarlan poet named S~hukovSky.
S~hukovsky had lone much to make the
Russian public acquainted with another
side of Germany, which we seldom hear
much about nowadays-the German
Romanticist movement in thought and
literature, in which the desire for lib
erty passiopately expressed itself.
The result was a curious blending OF
liberalist and and conservative, with
enough conservative tendencies In
Alexander to exasperate the radicals,
and quite enough liberal tendencies to
make Russian aristocracy uneasy
xan III came to the throne in
1855, when Russia was Laundering
waist deep in the Crimean war. Russia
: was defeated and demoralized. and it
was an unusually suspicious time for
men with reform IDEAS to get a hear
Ing. Peace was made at the end of q
year and new laws passed encouraging
industry n commerce. Plans were
laid for an extensive railway system,
partly to develop he natural
OF the country and partly to increase its
military efficiency.
Landowners Gave an Opening.
Then, in 1858, Alexander received a
petition from certain great landowners
an L~ithuania, praying for a more salts
factory adjustment OF relations between
themselves and their serfs. The car
replied with lavish praises Of their pub
lie spirit and assumed that what they
wanted to DO was to improve the con-
dltlon of the serfs, which in point Of
fact was not true at all. Their petition
had given him an opening.
Without consulting his ministers the
car caused copies of his Instructions
TO the governor general of Lithuania to
be forwarded to the governors of all the
other Russian provinces. "suggesting''
that the landowners of their provinces
might also care to consider emancipa-
ton of the serfs. Local committees went
to work on the subject.
There We're in Russia at this time
some 100000 serfs, slaves of the soil.
They could not be sold away from the
land on which they were born, but in
all other respects their bondage was
virtually complete. The czar set tho
ball rolling by freeing the 5000, 900 serfs
on the imperial estates. The abolition
OF serfdom was inevitable, but the land
owners tried to stave it off as far as
possible. They submitted a plan for
maklng the serfs agricultural laborers,
, entlfely dependent upon them econom-
ltally. The ear refused to accept It..
II the serfs We're really to be free, he
decided, they must be able to own.land.
a state loan, payable annually at 6 per
cent Tor 49 years, enabled the former
serfs to buy a certain share of the farm
ianas OF Russia and become peasant
proprletors. The and was held by the
village communities and by them APP
portioned TO their members. The ukase
freeing the serfs was published March
3, 1861.
Hope famed very high in Russia at
that time, and men Of the more vision
AIRY sort o forward to an immedi-
ate Utopia. They were disappointed, of
course, and they found that freeing the
serfs did not cure all the ills to which
Russian flesh was heir. Out of their
disappointment and their impatience
that Alexander did not make Russia
into a socialist community, there de-
veloped the nihilist movement, whose
passion for revolution involved a pas
sion for assassination.
The cZar in tho meantime was en-
d~eayoring to steer "a. middle course. It
is one of the curious contradictions Of
his character that this man, who car
ried through the freeing Of the serfs
almost single handed, should have
looked with entire coldness and disfayor
upon Poland's aspirations for freedom.
Embrace the union with Russia he
told the Polish delegates, a aban-
don all thoughts Of independence, now
and forever impossible"
And in 1853 when revolt broke out in
Poland 1t was relentlessly repressed I'M
der Alexander Ii, and thereafter every
step was taken to crush the national
and traditions and make Of it an in
tegral part of Russia. The doctrine OF
Pan-Slavism took a strong hold on his
imagination and he went to war with
Turkey in 1877 feeling himself the chiy-
alric liberator OF the Christian peoples
o. the balkan country. But his hopes
of a confederation Of Slav states under
Russian rule in the Balkan peninsula
were dashed by the congress of Berlin
next yea
The last years Of Alexander's life
were dreary ones. More and more he
yielded to depression as. he saw his
high hopes for Russia fail to material
ize. Numerous attempts were made
upon his life and, after the explosion in
the winter palace in 1880, the car gave
practically dictatorial power for six
months TO Gen. Loris Melikoff, a dis
~tinguished liberal officer. Melikoff adj
Y1sed the granting OF a constitution to
Russia, and Alexander was on the point
OF issuing a a to that effect-had
indeed signed it-when he was slain.
March 13. 1881. by a Nihilist bomb. Tho
OF freedom took a long step back
ward in Russia with his death.
~Reiuvenation.
When the winters done with snow
ing. and the vernal winds are blow