The Revenge of the Bear
Chapter 16 : The Bear Tsar
Alexander III was often called the “Bear Tsar” for his wide stature and athletic build, and was renowned for phenomenal strength. In October 1888, a tragedy nearly happened to the Imperial family on the 17th of October, when the Emperor’s Train carrying the entire Imperial Family came off the rails near the small station of Borky, about half a hundred kilometers away from the city of Kharkhov.
The restaurant car collapsed fully and it was a
miracle that the Tsar and his family survivedю
Photograph taken on the day following the event.
It is said that the Imperial Family was having a lunch in the restaurant car of the train at the time of the catastrophe. During the crash, the roof of the car came crashing down upon the heads of the Tsar’s family. Through an inhumane effort, Alexander supported the roof on his very shoulders, waiting until his family safely escaped the wreck of the car and only then extracted himself to safety. Throughout the rest of the day and into the night, the Emperor would personally lead rescue efforts in other cars of the train, helping rescue survivors from the wreckage.
Ever since, however, the Tsar was not the same. It appeared that the miracle did have a price and Alexander III often complained of searing pain in his waist and back. Over the years, the Emperor’s health steadily degraded. In 1894, he caught a bad cold, which did not heal and further worsened his condition. The Tsar was diagnosed with nephritis in 1894 and recommended to go for rest in the warm Crimean climate. But the Emperor’s time had come, and on the 20th of October of the year 1894, Alexander passed away.
The entire nation was in a state of deep shock and disbelief as the news reached even the most remote corners of the Empire.
Alexander III would come to be known as the Bear Tsar
However, unlike his father, Alexander III was not universally loved and hailed by the population. The Bear Tsar was far more nationalist than his father and it was even rumoured that he quietly pondered repealing some of the reforms that introduced constitutional monarchism to Russia. He never dared take on the State Parliament, for he knew that the Duma would be hostile to any reduction of the Parliament’s power. And in the State Council, he could only guarantee the loyalty of half the members by removing the serving Councillors and appointing his own loyalists. The Tsar had every right to do so, but he knew that such a move would equal a declaration of war between him and Parliament.
The Emperor promoted his idea of Russian greatness in his own ways where he could. Like in the western reaches of the Empire. No, he did not strip Poland off her autonomy, even if the desire to do so was great. But through a series of decrees, the Emperor strengthened the grip on the Jewish population of the Empire living within the so-called Pale of Settlement. What little freedom to settle outside of the Pale that the Jews had received under earlier reforms were revoked. Jews were barred from settling in the countryside, were confined to a series of cities, except for those cities that were explicitly excluded from the Pale by the decrees.
All in all, the Pale of Settlement stretched from Bessarabia in the south to Latvia in the north. Bulgaria, which had a minuscule Sefardi community and the Jerusalem Governorate, with its two hundred thousand jews, were not part of the Pale. But decrees of a nature similar to those concerning the Pale were passed, specifically targeting the freedom of Jews in the aforementioned territories to settle elsewhere. As of the Pale of Settlement itself, the vast territories were home to fourty million Imperial subjects, of them four million Jews. Despite Alexander’s best wishes to have it otherwise, Russia was the homeland of nearly half the world’s Jewish population and, thus, had the largest community than any other country.
Provinces and Governorates comprising the Pale of Settlement.
Governorates of Vitebsk and Smolesk included only partially.
Autonomous Kingdom of Poland shown in red.
Population of the Pale of Settlement in Thousands.
Kingdom of Poland : 12’626, of which Jews 1’013
Governorate of Vilnus : 3’290, of which Jews 523
Governorate of Riga : 1’740, of which Jews 40
Governorate of Vitebsk : 4’172, of which in the Pale 3’179, of which Jews 322
Governorate of Smolensk : 4’292, of which in the Pale 1’637, of which Jews 125
Governorate of Minsk : 5’455, of which Jews 650
Governorate of Kiev : 6’262, of which Jews 770
Governorate of Odessa : 4’566, of which Jews 562
Governorate of Bessarabia : 1’969, of which Jews 183
TOTAL POPULATION: 40’724 OF WHICH JEWS: 4’188
The Jews were not the only ones targetted by Alexander. In the General-Governorate of the Steppes, the Emperor ordered missionaries to convert the muslim horsemen of the steppes to the One True Faith, that is the Russian Orthodox one. By then the General-Governorate in question was already heavily settled by Russians, who presented the single biggest ethnic group and, some census data showed, were close to forming half of the General-Governorate’s population. Assimilating the “Kirgiz” horsemen (who called themselves “Kazakh”) was seen as a means of a quicker integration of the steppes into the core of the Empire.
Attempts to convert the “kirgiz” (actually “kazakhs”) met only limited success
Another muslim region that was at the spotlight of Imperial attention was East Turkestan. Its vast cotton plantations were largely undermanned, run down and inefficient. An important number of Russian peasants, who did not have the luck of becoming kulaks, decided to profit from the opportunity and try their luck with cotton. And many were indeed successful, as a new class of Russian kulaks came to improve cotton production by using native labour and up to date techniques. An improved infrastructure and the many railroads allowed to export huge quantities of much needed cotton for the factories in Poland and White Russia.
East Turkestan proved popular with Russian migrants
Before long, Russians were an important minority in East Turkestan, and even a majority in the northern Altay province, where the de facto capital of the region came to be established to the detriment of ancient Kashgar.
The sudden death of Alexander III caught Russia in a process of demographic change as many Russians, who had little luck in prospering in their native lands, would emigrate to other parts of the Empire to seek better fortune. Whether the process would continue as Nicholas II assumed the mantle of the Emperor remained to be seen.