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Lecture

William Tyler
Alexander II: The Czar Liberator, 1856-1881

Monday 20.06.2022

Summary

A deep dive into life story of the Romanov many Russians consider “The Last Great Tsar,” from his beginnings to his liberation of the serfs in 1861 to his assassination in 1881.

William Tyler

An image of William Tyler

William Tyler has spent his entire professional life in adult education, beginning at Kingsgate College in 1969. He has lectured widely for many public bodies, including the University of Cambridge and the WEA, in addition to speaking to many clubs and societies. In 2009, William was awarded the MBE for services to adult education, and he has previously been a scholar in residence at the London Jewish Cultural Centre.

To prop up The Ottoman Empire for the very fear that Russia, as they did under Alexander II, would try to muscle in on that empire, and we all know the disaster when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of the first World War in the Middle East, and indeed in eastern Europe, we’re still living with both those problems in the 21st century.

No, they didn’t aid the serfs. If you had a master, a landowner who was modern and liberal, you were very, very lucky. The Orthodox church does not engage in social work. The constitutional reform, yeah, constitutional reform simply meant that there would be a representative council, parliament, Duma, whatever word you like, and that would’ve developed into a full grown constitutional parliament, so it would probably have meant, in European terms, a written constitution in which the rights of the czar, and the rights of the Duma, scope parliament, would’ve been laid out. That’s what we mean by constitutional reform.

To get rid of czarism by killing the head of it, and establishing a socialist state. No, it wasn’t to stop the Constitution. They didn’t know about it. No one knew what he was about to sign. It was to get rid of the czar and czarism.