Tsar Alexander Iii Quotes

At least Tsar Alexander III understood that the game now being played was for the highest stakes. When Giers asked him, '...what would we gain by helping the french destroy Germany?' he replied: 'what we would gain would be that Germany, as such, would disappear. It would break up into a number of small, weak states, the way it used to be'.

During [Erté]’s childhood St. Petersburg was an elegant centre of theatrical and artistic life. At the same time, under its cultivated sophistication, ominous rumbles could be distinguished. The reign of the tough Alexander III ended in 1894 and his more gentle successor Nicholas was to be the last of the Tsars … St. Petersburg was a very French city. The Franco-Russian Pact of 1892 consolidated military and cultural ties, and later brought Russia into the First World war. Two activities that deeply influenced [Erté], fashion and art, were particularly dominated by France. The brilliant couturier Paul Poiret, for whom Erté was later to work in Paris, visited the city to display his creations. Modern art from abroad, principally French, was beginning to be show in Russia in the early years of the century … In St. Petersburg there were three Imperial theatres―the Maryinsky, devoted to opera and ballet, the Alexandrinsky, with its lovely classical façade, performing Russian and foreign classical drama, and the Michaelovsky with a French repertoire and company … It is not surprising that an artistic youth in St. Petersburg in the first decade of this century should have seen his future in the theatre. The theatre, especially opera and ballet, attracted the leading young painters of the day, including Mikhail Vrubel, possibly the greatest Russian painter of the pre-modernistic period. The father of modern theatrical design in Russia was Alexandre Benois, an offspring of the brilliant foreign colony in the imperial capital. Before 1890 he formed a club of fellow-pupils who were called ‘The Nevsky Pickwickians’. They were joined by the young Jew, Leon Rosenberg, who later took the name of one of his grandparents, Bakst. Another member introduced his cousin to the group―Serge Diaghilev. From these origins emerged the Mir Iskustva (World of Art) society, the forerunner of the whole modern movement in Russia. Soon after its foundation in 1899 both Benois and Bakst produced their first work in the theatre, The infiltration of the members of Mir Iskustva into the Imperial theatre was due to the patronage of its director Prince Volkonsky who appointed Diaghilev as an assistant. But under Volkonsky’s successor Diagilev lost his job and was barred from further state employment. He then devoted his energies and genius to editing the Mir Iskustva magazine and to a series of exhibitions which introduced Russia to work of foreign artists … These culminated in the remarkable exhibition of Russian portraiture held at the Taurida Palace in 1905, and the Russian section at the salon d'Autumne in Paris the following year. This was the most comprehensive Russian exhibition ever held, from early icons to the young Larionov and Gontcharova. Diagilev’s ban from Russian theatrical life also led to a series of concerts in Paris in 1907, at which he introduced contemporary Russian composers, the production Boris Godunov the following year with Chaliapin and costumes and décor by Benois and Golovin, and then in 1909, on May 19, the first season of the ballet Russes at the Châtelet Theatre.

marriage would necessitate a change of religion, the still-hesitant Alix at first refused. But the otherwise impassive Nicky was nothing if not determined. The very day after Ernie and Ducky were married, the overwhelmed princess finally agreed to become both Russian Orthodox and wife of the heir to the Russian throne. Just as Queen Victoria, the preeminent guest at the festivities, was finishing her breakfast, Ella burst in on her grandmother with the dramatic announcement that “Alix and Nicky are to be engaged.” The wedding was planned for the spring of 1895, but the death of Nicky’s father changed all the elaborate arrangements, including sufficient time for Alix to become literate in the Russian language. Alix had just joined her future husband at the imperial summer palace of Livadia in the Crimea when Tsar Alexander III died on November 1, 1894. His widow Minnie, the princess of Wales’s sister, became the dowager empress; and her son Nicky the new tsar, Nicholas II. The morning after her fiancé’s accession, Alix was received into the Orthodox faith and at the same time given the new name of Alexandra Feodorovna. The imperial family decided the wedding should follow the late tsar’s funeral within the week. Like her mother’s wedding at Osborne in 1862, Alix’s was far more funereal in tone than joyous. All that saved it from complete gloom was the depth of the young bride and groom’s love for each other. During the years when Alice’s children were marrying their cousins and producing a multitude of little second cousins, Vicky had moved from the hurricane’s eye to near oblivion. Though she had been wounded by Fritz’s illness and Willy’s uncivil behavior, until June 1888 she at least had a loving and sympathetic husband to share her distress and lighten her sometimes intolerable burden. After his death, Vicky was left to face her martyrdom stripped of that unfaltering support. With her widowhood, her difficulties centered, inevitably, on the new emperor. Such was the exquisite release Willy experienced in succeeding his father to the throne that he took vainglory to new heights. To the horror of his mother and English grandmother, he jettisoned the standard symbols of mourning that were obligatory for a son in so visible a role, notably refusing to refrain from travel for pleasure. On a grander scale, in his eagerness to test his new powers, Willy made the most disastrous mistake of his early reign only two years after coming

The Pearl of Russia was one of fifty jeweled eggs handcrafted over a period of three decades for Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II. Each year they’d given them as Easter presents to their wives and mothers.

I came across a series of delicately crafted, limited edition Faberge eggs which were originally designed for Tsar Alexander III, of Russia. They were rare collector’s items considering the craftsmanship and history behind each egg. I was looking at the beautiful Russian heirloom collection when Ramiz came up next to me. "Young, which one do you like best?" "They are so incredibly exquisite; each has its own uniqueness. It's difficult to decide which one I like best," I replied. Ramiz continued, "Select one. I want to know your taste.

Like Peter the Great against Charles XII, Tsar Alexander decided to avoid a direct trial of strength and to rely instead on his most highly prized assets: space and climate.

The populists of the seventies had been divided over revolutionary tactics, some advocating the gradual conversion of the peasants to their cause through propaganda (as in the “going to the people” movement of that decade) and others arguing for propaganda “by deed,” meaning terrorist action. The latter group saw the Russian peasant as a potential rebel against authority, and reasoned that an act like the assassination of the tsar might spark a general conflagration in the countryside, a greater and successful Pugachev movement. The assassination of Alexander II in 1881, by members of the People’s Will, aroused no such peasant response, however, and led to more severe reaction under his successor, Alexander III. In the sequel many radicals from the populist camp turned away from the tactics of terrorism and lost faith in the peasantry as a revolutionary constituency.