Alexander II of Russia

Alexander II (29 April 1818 - 13 March 1881) was Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland from 2 March 1855 until his assassination on 13 March 1881.

Among the most important historical figures in Russia, Alexander the Liberator is best known for his emancipation of Russia's serfs in 1861. Other reforms carried out by the tsar included reorganizing the judicial system, establishing elected local judges, abolishing corporal punishment, promoting local self-government through the zemstvo system, imposing universal military service, ending some nobility privileges, and promoting university education. Following an assassination attempt in 1866, Alexander took a more reactionary stance until his death.

Alexander shifted his focus to foreign policy, selling Alaska to the United States in 1867, fearing that the remote colony would fall into British hands if another war broke out. When Napoleon III fell in 1871, he moved away from bellicose France, and in 1872 he joined the League of the Three Emperors, which stabilized the European situation. Despite his otherwise pacifist foreign policy, he fought a brief war with the Ottoman Empire in 1877-78, resulting in the independence of Bulgaria, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia, pursued further expansion into the Far East and the Caucasus, and conquered Turkestan, as well as approving plans for the Circassian genocide. Despite his disappointment with the outcome of the Berlin Congress in 1878, Alexander stuck to the terms of the agreement. An uprising in Poland in 1863 was one of his most difficult domestic challenges, to which he responded by stripping the country of its separate constitution and incorporating it directly into Russia. Alexander was assassinated in 1881 while proposing additional parliamentary reforms to counter the rise of nascent revolutionary and anarchistic movements.