Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 14 March 1881

Things are going better.
The Emperor of Russia has been assassinated. The newspapers will give you the details; I particularly recommend Rochefort's article, which says very aptly that the assassins did not take the man unawares — like traitors.
They began by imploring him to grant some liberty and a constitution, then they threatened. Nothing worked.
I hope the heir Alexander III will immediately grant elected chambers and responsible ministers.
Certainly, the tragic death of this old man arouses some pity — very little — but one must almost rejoice at it when one thinks of the dreadful mess that prevailed in Russia, of the atrocious regime under which we were governed, of the bureaucratic red tape, of the pillaging of the country by officials, of the arbitrary power, of the misery of the people! Besides, this event leaves me calm; I grow heated only when I think of the wretched condition of our people and of all that needs to be done for the country.
It would be good to have no emperor at all — but so abruptly as this, we are not yet ready for it. The new one is very liberal — but they all are on coming to power. The old one was: he freed the serfs and lived twenty-six years on that without doing anything else. If the new one grants elected chambers and a responsible ministry — well, that will be very fine, and he will have done everything needful. It will then be a matter for everyone.
I go to bed telling myself: Long live the Universal Republic.

Notes

Tsar Alexander II (1818–1881) was assassinated on 1 March 1881 (13 March in the Western calendar) in St Petersburg by a bomb thrown by members of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) revolutionary organisation — the second attack of the day; the first bomb wounded him but he survived; the second killed him. ↩
Henri Rochefort (1831–1913): radical republican journalist and polemicist, founder of La Lanterne, then writing for his new paper L'Intransigeant. His piece sympathised with the political logic of the assassination. ↩
Alexander III (1845–1894) in fact did the opposite: he crushed the reform movement and tightened autocracy. ↩
The Emancipation Reform of 1861, by which Alexander II freed the Russian serfs, was his principal lasting act. ↩