And when he was snatched away in
the midst of his usefulness, a victim of unremitting devotion to his
people, not only Maskilim, but Mitnaggedim and Hasidim felt that "a
prince and a mighty one had fallen in Israel!"
(Notes, pp. 322-327.)
CHAPTER VI
THE AWAKENING
1881-1905
The reign of Alexander III, like that of Nicholas I, was devoid of even
that faint glamor of liberalism which, in the days of Alexander I and
Alexander II, had aroused deceptive hopes of better times. During the
thirteen years of Alexander III's autocracy (1881-1894) not a ray of
light was permitted to penetrate into Holy Russia. On May 14, 1881, the
manifesto prohibiting the slightest infringement of the absolute power
of the czar was promulgated, to continue unbroken till the
Russo-Japanese war.
The liberal current which had carried away his predecessors when they
first mounted the throne was checked, the sluices of Slavophilism were
opened, the history of Russian thinkers became again, as Herzen said, "a
long list of martyrs and a register of convicts."
Nicholas Ignatiev, a rabid reactionary, a second Jeffreys, became chief
of the Ministry of the Interior; Katkoff, a repentant liberal and exile,
was appointed the czar's chief adviser, the Richelieu behind the throne;
and Pobyedonostsev, whom Turgenief called the "Russian Torquemada,"
obtained supremacy over Melikoff, and was appointed procurator of the
Holy Synod.
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