Read the text below and find out if you were right.
Unit 7
Ex 4 Work in pairs and read the text aloud to each other.
Text 1
Alexander II (1855–81), Alexander III (1881–94), and Nicholas II (1894–1917)
Three czars ruled between 1855 and 1917.As personalities, the three men were quite different. Alexander II was shy enough, emotional, and indecisive but still capable of overcoming his deficiencies. He was able to stick to reform policies, an ability that was vital in the events that finally led to the emancipation of the serfs.
His son Alexander III was a tough, vigorous reactionary, able to adhere to his policies. Nicholas II seems to have combined many of the negative qualities of his father and grandfather. Unfortunately, he didn’t share any of their virtues. He was indecisive, stubborn, without common sense, and incapable of questioning or rethinking any of his reactionary views.
Despite their different personalities, as political leaders all the three were autocratic. All were despots, true believers in autocracy as the only form of government suitable for Russia.
This in turn explains an important commonality in their reigns: each was marked by policies of reaction as well as by programs that actually promoted the strong currents of modernization.[1]
Text 2
6. Read the text and give a title to it; then give a subtitle to each paragraph. Choose from the list below:
A. He expanded the empire B. He survived 5 assassination attempts
C. He had a sense of humor D. He ended serfdom, but not poverty
E. He got an excellent formation F. He learned how not to rule from his father
By Oleg Yegorov , September 7, 2016
1. Alexander II, the oldest son of Emperor Nicholas I (1796–1855), was born in Moscow, Russia, on April 17, 1818. Because he would become emperor one day, Alexander was taught many different subjects. He learned to speak Russian, German, French, English, and Polish. He gained a knowledge of military arts, finance, and diplomacy, or the study of dealing with foreign countries. From an early age he traveled widely in Russia and in other countries. For example, in 1837 he visited thirty Russian provinces, including Siberia where members of the royal family had never been. Unlike his father, Alexander had various military and government jobs.[2]
2. Emperor Alexander II ascended to the throne on Sept. 7, 1856. Although he went down in history as a reformer, his actions were too little too late for the revolutionaries of late imperial Russia, who managed to assassinate him in 1881. He learned how NOT to rule from his father Nicholas I, Alexander II’s father and predecessor, was one of the most conservative monarchs in Russian history. Alexander came to power in 1855, just after Russia’s defeat inthe Crimean War.
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3. Before the abolition of serfdom in 1861, Russian peasants were tied to the land on which they lived. They served their landlords, did not have freedom of movement and could not own land themselves. By ending serfdom, Alexander II freed the peasants: they could now move if they want, but for the most part of peasants continued to work land held by landlords. The difficulty in earning enough money to purchase land kept many poor Russians in virtual serfdom for many years after the reform.
4. Although Alexander modernized the army and cut the number ofmilitary personnel, he managed to greatly expand the lands under Russian control. During Alexander’s reign, Russia’s borders extended all the way to Iran, and the North Caucasus came under Russian control. He also traded the Kuril Islands to Japan in exchange for Sakhalin and sold Alaska to the United States. Both Alaska and the Kurils were considered the most remote and difficult-to-defend territories in the empire.
5. According to one story, during a visit to a small Russian town, Alexander II suddenly decided to go to a church where an important service was being held. The building was quite crowded and the local police chief, surprised by the move, rushed ahead of the emperor, pushing through the crowd to clear the way for His Majesty. «With awe! With reverence!» – the policeman shouted, punching everyone with his fists. The emperor, hearing the police chief’s words, laughed and said that now he had some understanding of how reverence and respect are taught in Russia. Another phrase attributed to Alexander II has a similar kind of irony: «It is not difficult to rule Russia, but it is useless».
6. Political unrest grew during Alexander’s rule, and revolutionaries began using terrorist attacks in their struggle for power. Alexander survived his first assassination attempt in 1866. He also managed to live through four others, including two shootings, a bombing in the Winter Palace and an attack on a train line. Nevertheless, on March 1, 1881 members of the organization “NarodnayaVolya” (Peoples’ Will) threw several bombs into the emperor’s carriage as he traveled through St. Petersburg. He died several hours later from wounds sustained during the attack.[3]
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Text 3
Read the text below and find out if you were right.
1. Serfdom was always a brutal system and had long hindered Russia’s development. illiterate and unskilled serfs were inefficient laborers, they farmed for themselves and on the large fields of their landlords’ estates. Instead of using their serfs as farm laborers, many landlords let them work in factories or in industries such as transportation in return for a cash payment, a practice that yielded a higher income to both parties. By the 1840s and 1850s landlords were increasingly demanding cash payments in place of labor even from the serfs living and working on their estates. In some of the better agricultural regions, such as in the south along the Volga, landlords actually preferred free to serf labor. None of these practices helped nearly enough, and by the late 1850s most landlords were deeply in debt. Serfdom was in relative and absolute decline.
2. By the end of the 1850s serfs accounted for just under 40 percent of Russia’s total population, slightly less than the number of state peasants. Despite the system’s growing difficulties, the nobles did not want to give up their serfs, fearing they could not survive without them. Alexander responded cogently. and directly that it was better to abolish serfdom “from above than to wait until the serfs begin to liberate themselves from below” (quoted in Seton-Watson, 1967: 335).
3. The Emancipation Edict did a great deal but left at least as much undone. It freed more than 20 million peasants from the authority of their landlords—about five times the number of slaves liberated after the American Civil War. And unlike the former slaves in the United States, the Russian serfs were liberated with land. The problem was how much land, at what price, and under what circumstances.Although conditions varied from place to place, the peasants generally received about one-third of the land; the landlords retained the best land, including most of the woodlands and pasture.
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4. On March 3, 1861, six years to the day after he ascended to the throne, Alexander II, henceforth the “Tsar-Liberator,” at last issued his Emancipation Edict granting the serfs their freedom. [4]The Edict was more than 400 pages long. [5]
[1]Adapted from "A Brief History of Russia" by Michael Kort, 2008
[2] adapted from http://www.notablebiographies.com/A-An/Alexander-II.html
[3] rbth.com/arts/2016/09/07/6-facts-about-alexander-ii-the-tsar-liberator-killed-by-revolutionaries_627977
[5]Adapted from "A Brief History of Russia" by Michael Kort, 2008
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