ALEXANDER III, Tsar of Russia. — B. 26 Feb./10 Mar. 1845, d. 20 Oct./1 Nov. 1894 at Livadia. Having succeeded his father A. II, assassinated in 1881, A. III intensified the autocratic regime at home. In foreign policy, cordial relations with Austria and Germany cooled, especially with Vienna, owing to divergent views on the Bulgarian question. Relations with the German Empire did not, however, undergo any change until Bismarck’s fall, but Kaiser Wilhelm II’s personal policy nullified the mutual advantages of the Russo-German friendship that had remained solid, despite many misunderstandings, for nearly thirty years. To avoid Russia’s isolation, A. III therefore drew closer to France towards the end of his reign.
In ecclesiastical policy, we may say that relations with the Holy See were never strained or troubled. On 24 Dec. 1882, agreements were signed in Rome between the Russian plenipotentiary Butenev and Cardinal Jacobini, Secretary of State to Pope Leo XIII, concerning the suppression of the dioceses of Minsk, Lublin, and Lutzk-Zitomir, as well as the seminaries and the ecclesiastical academy of St Petersburg. Moreover, the Russian government undertook to suspend the exceptional measures taken against Polish clergy in 1865 and to modify the Ordinance of 1866. Yet these agreements never came to any practical fruition. After 1887, when Leo XIII began openly to oppose the Triple Alliance, A. proposed a modus vivendi based on the 1882 agreements. What the Emperor chiefly desired was the introduction of the Russian language into the liturgy, a request to which the Pope did not consent. This did not, however, make relations tense; indeed, in 1894 a Russian legation was established at the Holy See, its first incumbent being Isvolski.