The new Czar was greatly influenced by his former tutor, the reactionary bureaucrat Pobiedonostzev.  At first it was believed that out of respect for his father’s memory Alexander III would carry out the program of reforms formulated by Loris-Melikoff, as his father had promised to do.  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.

In this doctrine we have the whole explanation of the reactionary policy of Alexander III.  In the Manifesto of April 29th was announced the Czar’s determination to strengthen and uphold autocracy.  That was the foundation stone.  To uphold orthodoxy was the next logical necessity, for autocracy and orthodoxy were, in Russia, closely related.  Hence the non-orthodox sects—­such as the Finnish Protestants, German Lutherans, Polish Roman Catholics, the Jews, and the Mohammedans—­were increasingly restricted in the observance of their religion.  They might not build new places of worship; their children could not be educated in the faith of their parents.  In many cases children were taken away from their parents in order to be sent to schools where they would be inculcated with the orthodox faith.  In a similar way, every attempt was made to suppress the use of languages other than Russian.

Along with this attempt to force the whole population into a single mold went a determined resistance to liberalism in all its forms.  All this was accompanied by a degree of efficiency in the police service quite unusual in Russia, with the result that the terroristic tactics of the Will of the People party were unavailing, except in the cases of a few minor officials.  Plots to assassinate the Czar were laid, but they were generally betrayed to the police.  The most serious of these plots, in March, 1887, led to the arrest of all the conspirators.