In a
Manifesto issued on the 29th of April, 1881, Alexander III promised to do
this, but in the same document there were passages which could only be
interpreted as meaning that all demands for constitutional reform would be
resisted and Absolutism upheld at all cost. Doubtless it was due to the
influence of Pobiedonostzev, Procurator of the Holy Synod, that Alexander
III soon abandoned all intention of carrying out his father's wishes in the
matter of reform and instituted such reactionary policies that the peasants
feared that serfdom was to be restored. A terrible persecution of the Jews
was begun, lasting for several years. The Poles, too, felt the oppressive
hand of Pobiedonostzev. The latter was mastered by the Slavophil philosophy
that the revolutionary unrest in Russia was traceable to the diversity of
races, languages, and religions. He believed that Nihilism, Anarchism, and
Socialism flourished because the people were cosmopolitan rather than
nationalistic in experience and feeling, and that peace and stability could
come only from the persistent and vigorous development of the three
principles of Nationality, Orthodoxy, and Autocracy as the basis of the
state.
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