Alexander II

ALEXANDER II was Emperor of the Russian Empire from 1855 to 1881, the son of Nicholas I and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. He was born in the Moscow Kremlin. He was educated privately under a specially designed programme; the poet Vasily Zhukovsky was among his principal tutors. In 1841 he married Princess Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt, who entered Russian Orthodoxy as Maria Alexandrovna. After her death in 1880, he entered a morganatic marriage with Catherine Mikhailovna Dolgorukova. Alexander succeeded Nicholas I in 1855. His reign saw the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, judicial and zemstvo reforms, and major changes in the army, education, and local administration. On 1 (13) March 1881 Alexander II was mortally wounded in an assassination attack on the Catherine Canal embankment in Saint Petersburg and died shortly afterwards at the Winter Palace. He was succeeded by his son Alexander III.