How to prevent the Russian Revolution starting with Tsar Alexander II
Known as Alexander the Liberator, Alexander II of Russia was known for "emancipating the serfs... organising the judicial system, setting up elected local judges, abolishing corporal punishment, promoting local self-government through the zemstvo system, imposing universal military service, ending some privileges of the nobility, and promoting university education" ("Reformation by the Tsar Liberator"). He became more reactionary after he was almost assassinated in 1866, but he was proposing additional parliamentary reforms to counter the rise of nascent revolutionary and anarchistic movements when he was assassinated in 1881.
So, boys and girls, let's figure out how to keep Russia together, starting with Alexander's reign. In my OTL, he marries a British princess, so I figure he'd be more exposed to constitutional monarchies like Britain's, and he's succeeded by his eldest son, Nicholas II.
I'm not sure what keeping Russia together means: it was staying together (as a single state) after Alexander's assassination and most probably would be doing so for a much longer time if not for the incompetence of his grandson. If, OTOH, "staying together" means political uniformity, most of the European countries of that period were not "uniform".
An idea that it would take him a British marriage to find out about existence of the constitutional monarchies is a little bit on a funny side. It is too little known about his elder son so speculations in that area are pretty much pointless.
Should he have gone farther after emancipating the serfs?
Going "farther" meaning what? Confiscation of all property of the estate owners and giving it to the peasants for free?
Alexander was not operating in a complete political, economic and cultural vacuum. Russian peasantry was traditionally operating within framework of a rural community which was a collective landowner and a taxpayer. The reform left this framework intact because doing something else would cause even greater problems: prerequisites for something like Stolypin Reforms were not there, yet. Actually, even in OTL they caused a lot of protests and unhappiness but at least construction of the Transsiberian railroad allowed to move more than 10 millions people into the new territories in Siberia.
Any possible "way", earlier Stolypin-style reforms, emancipation of serfs without land, etc. also would produce a lot of unhappiness, problems and complaints.
Not that it would change anything in the mindset of the Russian liberals: they
knew that everything is BAD and is going to be bad (even if they personally had been doing quite well they would still have to keep moaning at the risk of loosing their following if they stop). The most consistent "thinkers" thought that everything will be bad until
they get the power (when they got it after the February Revolution the results were disastrous).
The revolutionaries of that period were even more straightforward: they did not bother with the ideas of a better future but just thought that if they kill enough of the members of administration/imperial family the things would change to the better (whatever this means).
The immediate byproduct of the judicial reform, trial by jury, resulted in an acquittal of a (not quite successful) political assassin on a basis that she was upset with a cruelty (not toward her) of a government official. The political convicts had been treated softly even if they were involved in the acts of terror, robbery, etc. In the US of that period for have of what these guys had been doing they'd be executed but in Russia even after assassination of Alexander II there were calls for amnesty of the assassins.
The fundamental idea of the educated classes was that their main duty is to be critical to the government and to use "liberalization" to criticize it even more (which is what they were doing after Nicholas II introduced constitution in 1905). Rather difficult to achieve political unity in these conditions and it did not really matter who was appointed to which position.
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