Liberal Terrorists: Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Reign of Alexander II

The Great Reforms of the 1860s precipitated a simmering legal and political crisis in the Russian Empire. An independent judiciary and trial by jury now co-existed with the state’s persistent use of extra-judicial powers emanating from the tsar. The paper will show how, as autocracy prosecuted hundreds of radicals for crimes large and small, the trials became the central venue for a wider public argument about the nature of rights and sovereignty in the empire. Revolutionaries emerged as defenders of the rule of law, arguing that their inalienable civil and political rights had been violated by a repressive state which drove them into illegal activity. Sympathetic liberals embraced the revolutionaries’ arguments in their own constitutional struggles against the autocratic state. Even though their political goals diverged, reformers and radicals thus became enmeshed in their shared legal resistance to the government’s arbitrary authority. By the time of the assassination of Alexander II revolutionary terrorists had become leading public protagonists of constitutionalism in the empire.

Daniel Beer is Professor of Modern History at Royal Holloway and a specialist on Russia. He has published widely on the social and cultural history of the Russian Empire and has a particular interest in crime and punishment. His current research project explores the “Emperor Hunt”, the revolutionary campaign from 1879 to 1881 to assassinate Tsar Alexander II. His last book, The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars, won the 2017 Cundill History Prize (CundillPrize.com) and was shortlisted for the Wolfson Prize, the Longman History Today Prize and the Pushkin House Book Prize.