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meet ey went into deb the landlords received inadequate com ­ tion and lacked the pital to develop what remained of the estates; many ts ex rienced a strong n of di entation au of this ab pt change in the only way of life they knew. Perha Alexander should have gone mo slowly, encoura ng voluntary freeing or allowing li ral terms for buying freedom. that as it may, his attempt to improve the l e of s ple led to instability in Ru ian iety.
Alexander put through other re rms as well He reduced punish­ men in the army, applied con iption to the r and rich alike, reduced terms in the army to six yea (fr established unive ities, and insti­ tuted jury His rei al w the founding of the city of Vladivostok on the Pacific st that Ru ia came a rival to Jap as a Pac ic wer. He al encouraged P l is the idea that Ru ia was the dian of all Slavic opl This meant in effect t t Ru ia would rival Austria for control of the Slavic oples the Austrian Empire and that rbia would receive Ru ia's sup rt against Austria
spite of the refor s that Alexander had put through, li ral revo­ lutiona hated h cau they hated all authority. On March 1, 1881, they a inat the T r while he was riding in his carriage. That very day, Ale nder had ed a limited re rm prog m tting a repre­ sentative mbly, first in Ru ia's history, to work on draft le slation for Alexande s consideration
Alexander s n, Alexander ID (1 1-18 ) now came to the throne. His father had tried to make reforms and had en murdered His n ended all reforms and strengthened the lice. Alexander ID was al na­ tionalistic and prejudiced against Catholics and Jew He encourag indu triali tion; the Tran i rian Railroad was completed at this time. But industriali tion did not much nefit the lower cla
In 1 7 an amateu sh plot to inate Alexander was easily un­ covere and all the conspirators were hanged One of them had a brother named Vladimir Iliych yanov, who later adopted the p udonym of Nicolai Lenin. Lenin was from a comfortable, middle cla family; his fa­ ther was a bureaucrat But after his brother's execution, Lenin was not al­ lowed to continue at the university cau of his relationship to a con­ victed revolutiona . nin read Marx and came a committed Com­ munist In 1895 he stirred up strikes in St Petersburg and was ntenced to three years exile in Si ri during which time he and nine Marxists founded the Ru ian ial Dem rat r Party. This was the ginning of the career of a man who would change the world